GOODWILL
EDUCATION
BEST FACULTY-BEST QUALITY
How I
taught my Grandmother to read
1. What caused the delay in
the arrival of newspapers and magazines in the author’s village?
The author had her childhood spent in a
remote village of Karanataka, in the first half of the 20th century. The
village was far from being developed and it had a transport system in its
infancy and this caused delay in the arrival of newspapers and magazines
in the author’s village.
2. What made Triveni a popular
writer in Kannada literature?
Triveni was an amazingly talented writer of
stories in Kannada literature. Her stories discussed the very complex
psychological problems of the simple people, especially women, of
Karnataka. Because she wrote stories that dealt with the very simple people and
because these simple people constituted the majority of the Kannada population
of that time, Triveni became a known writer of her time.
3. What was unfortunate about
Triveni and Kannada literature?
Triveni’s literary popularity was souring
high when suddenly she died very young at the age of 35, in 1963. She was
unique in her line of writing and Kannada literature had to wait long for
another similar writers who knew women and their problems more.
4. Why did the old lady in
Kashi Yatre give away her savings to the orphan girl?
The old lady, the protagonist of the novel,
had for long cherished a pilgrim journey to Varanasi, the holy city of temples
to worship Lord Vishweshwara. She put together her earnings to this end and
waited but one day she abandoned her dearest wish. She did this to help an
orphan girl get married. The old woman made such a decision because she thought
spending her money for her salvation was less important than getting the girl
married. By helping the orphan girl have a family to love her was a great act
of mercy which no pilgrimage could guarantee.
5. Why did grandmother want to
learn to read at a very late age?
The grandmother had ardent love for learning
since she was a child but life had been a struggle for her. She had to abandon
schooling and learning for her family and for her younger siblings. With a very
early marriage, children and responsibility, she was tied up and school was a
distant dream for her. Later, when she was free from the family bonding, to
read Kaashi Yatre without someone’s help, she decided to learn reading. It came
out of her wish to be independent.
6. Do you justify the
grandmother’s act of touching her grand daughter’s feet?
It is easy to talk about humility but in real
life killing one’s ego and touching someone’s feet, especially one younger, is
next to impossible. Indian tradition respects teachers next to God and beyond
religions and teachings, people here agree in theory but there is hardly any
here who can bend down in front of his little granddaughter to touch her feet
becasue of the presence of ego. What the grandmother did was not a sudden,
thoughtless act, it was done with the same intensity of determination with
which she started learning.
7. What was the author’s gift
for her ‘student?’
Sudha Murthy presented to the grandmother a
complete edition of the novel Kaashi Yatre, which had driven the old lady to
reading, as a gift on her successful completion of learning to read.
8. How was the grandmother an
extra ordinary woman in her society and at her time?
The grandmother lived in such a society full
of ordinary people with the same psychological complexities that novelists like
Triveni touched and dealt with. The grandmother was another ordinary woman but
her unique wish to be independent in the matter of reading places here in a
unique level of women – the successful ones. In the past and even today, women
need to work harder to reach a level of importance than men have to and this
enhances the grandmother’s greatness. It is to be remembered that none else in
her society thought of learning at such a point of life and old-age literacy
programs were unknown at that time.
9. From what dependence did
the grandmother want to be free?
The grandmother was illiterate. She used to
depend on her granddaughter for reading stories that she loved to read. But
suddenly she decided to be free herself from depending on someone to read and
went on to learn reading.
10.
Do you think the grandmother was a good student who
should be a model for all the students of all the time? Explain.
Though the concept of ideal student has
changed with regards to the change of the ideal teacher concept, there remains
the ideal student and the ideal teacher in countries like India. Students
today, for whatever reasons, do not feel the respect that they show with their
good-mornings and ovation. They speak words that are believed to evoke respect
just by uttering those words. In India bending and touching the feet of the
elders has become a joke as the young ones are either asked to bend or expected
to touch the feet. Speaking only about teacher-student respect, the grandmother
stands poles away from the new generation children that it appears that the
grandmother did something foolish or unacceptable, but the truth remains
unchallenged – the grandmother had possessed such a height of character and
content that our dead civilization needs to rise to the same height to which
the grandmother had grown from a very backward village.
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