Mathematics & Me

Mathematics & Me I was an average student who blossomed later in life. Amongst other subjects, I was weak in mathematics, Sanskrit, English, and pretty much all other subjects. Ironically, I was good at social studies, perhaps destiny’s way of telling me where my career would lie. I had a cousin brother in my class who kept me company in poverty of math skills. Algebra troubled us; geometry terrified us, Arithmetic welled up our eyes with tears. We struggled hard but could barely remain floated. We would score 35 marks in the math tests. We came up with a tragically funny scheme of reversing that to 53 to tell our homes. We felt miserable when we scored 22 and 33 respectively in the next test. This was the last straw on the back of the proverbial camel. Homes were not amused. Hailing from modest families, both of us understood the importance of improving our maths or face life’s ire. Failing in life was not an option. A ray of hope appeared when a new teacher joined our school. His way of teaching in the class made sense to us. But we were too timid and terrified to ask him questions in a class of 40 boys and girls. My cousin and I gathered our courage and decided to visit our teacher at his home to ask him if he would tutor us. Free of cost, of course. We visited him late in the evening. I still wonder how did we procure the teacher’s home address. We walked 2 miles and located his home in a very narrow lane between a bakery and a laundry. He lived in a large, two-storied house with a cabin near the entrance to meet the visitors. It surprised him to see us and surprised him more to hear a proposal for tuition. We explained to him our dire predicament and embarrassingly added the caveat that he would have to teach us free. He left us momentarily and returned after some time. It appeared he was in the middle of cooking a meal. He said he quite understood our situation and would be happy to help us. He however laid down few caveats himself. The first one was that we would help him run some errands once we arrive for our class in the evening after school. He lived alone with his blind father and needed help. The second caveat was that while he is in the kitchen, my cousin and I would l take his blind father for his evening stroll, holding him by hand from both sides. The third and most difficult caveat was that we would not leave his house until we have completed our assignments that he would give us each day. Little did we know that often, the last one could keep us at his house till midnight! Thus began a yearlong ordeal of getting good at mathematics. We would reach his home at 6.30 pm. Run errands till 7 pm and then take his blind father for a walk, a deal we never thought would fry our brains. The old man was blind but in good health and cheer. He talked incessantly and expected answers to every trivial thing he spoke. After we deposited him at home, our math tuition started. Our teacher recognized that what we lacked was a basic understanding of concepts and the practice. He worked on both these deficiencies and made us practice hundreds of sums till we were ready to drop dead. In about a year’s time, we were flying high and our score improved enough not to have it reserved. So much work had gone into the math’s improvement that I ended up choosing physics as a second subject in my graduation and my cousin brother chose accountancy. The teacher had done his job. My cousin brother died in a tragic accident to go where he did not need math. As a salesman, I had little use for math also in my career. But the alacrity instilled by that hard rigor in math’s practice remained with me for lifetime. I don’t solve sums now but am pretty sharp in absorbing numbers. This is the gift granted by that unmanned math’s teacher.