My First Student  

Kanan Mishra
with an introduction by Punya Mishra
June 2001

Introduction
This following story is a very important story for me personally. But before we get to it I would like to talk a little bit about something else. I don't know how many people have seen the Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's trilogy Apu's Sansar (Apu's World). The three movies are about this one individual, Apu, and tell the story of his life, from his childhood till about middle age. I would like to tell you about this one scene in the second movie. Apu lives all alone with his mother, his father having died towards the beginning of the movie. They are extremely poor but his mother manages to send him to school. And this scene I am talking about is about Apu sharing the ideas and things he has learned in school with his mother. It is a wonderful montage of short scenes in shuddering black and white. There is the lantern standing in for the sun and the little ball that is the planet and there is Apu showing his mother how night and day happen. There are two tins of water at different levels and Apu sucking in water in a pipe from one and seeing it flow over the edge into the lower pan. There is Apu running in the fields, with a skirt of leaves and a toy spear screaming "Ami Africa Desher Raja"( I am the King of Africa).

These scenes intrigued me in some inexplicable ways when I first saw them. Which is why, I guess, they have stayed with me. Today many years later, I am an educator and these scenes come back to me, revisited, raising more questions than ever. I wonder: Just what is this thing we call learning? Why is it fun? Why do we want to know? Why is Apu, a poor little boy, who has barely enough to eat, excited by the fact that water can flow over an edge? And that the earth moves around the sun?

I was reminded of Apu when I read the following piece written by my mother. This piece is special to me because I think it captures very clearly why I think learning is important. Often we create instrumental reasons for learning (it will get us a job, allow us to function in society, and so on) All of these are somewhat important but not as much as they are made out to be. As T.S. Eliot said "That is not it at all." I think we love learning for its own sake. We just love to know. Oppenheimer once said, "Understanding is a lot like sex.  It's got a practical purpose, but that's not why people do it normally." We love to understand because it gives us pleasure. I think that we often ignore this aspect of learning.  

Note:
My mother grew up in a medium sized city in eastern India but she often visited her grandfather's village with her father (my grandfather) when she was a child. My grandfather was an academic, and at the time of this story had just returned from England with his Ph.D. in Linguistics. The village was a tiny average village in Eastern India with subsistence farming being the main mode of making a living. My mother, at that time, must have been around nine or ten years old. I am guessing the year was 1953 (give or take a year). Oriya is the language spoken in that part of India.

My First Student
It was evening and my father was sitting on a cot in front of our house when he asked me to bring my harmonium and sing a song. I obliged him eagerly. It was his first trip to the village after returning from London and the entire family had accompanied him.

There were only a couple of villagers sitting near my father when I started singing. But by the time I finished my first song, the whole front road was swarming with them. The quiet nocturnal breeze carried my voice to the farthest end of the village and the farmers, rich and poor, came out of their houses in lines like steady streams of red ants. They sat on the dusty ground and enjoyed my songs gaping at me in wonder. I sang almost all the songs that I had learnt, barely six or seven in number.

That will do for tonight. My father told me and the villagers dispersed one by one. But when I got up to go home for dinner, I found still one farmer sitting there. He was lean and fair with sunken cheeks and a hooked nose. His face was partially silhouetted and only his profile was visible through the reddish light of the soot stained lantern. He wore a two stranded necklace made up of dried basil twigs that made him look somewhat religious. Next day in the morning, when I was playing in the verandah I saw him emerging from his house, which was only a few yards away from ours. I think he was waiting for this opportunity to meet me. He came and sat with me in the verandah. "What is your name?" He asked me.

'Kanan. And what is yours"? I asked him.

"Nirmalya" He replied and the name sounded unusual and wonderful to me.

We began talking. He asked me innumerable questions- about my music lesson, about the town I lived in, and about my school. All my answers seemed to fascinate him very much and finding such an impressionable listener, I went on talking enthusiastically.

"What do you study in the school." Nirmalya asked me after sometime.

"Oh. We study so many things, Oriya, arithmatic, geography." I was going to prolong my list by adding science and history but Nirmalya interrupted.

"...Geography what is geography?" Oriya he knew. Arithmetic he could understand. But geography was beyond his comprehension

"In geography, we learn about the earth, the earth that you and I live in", I explained.

"And what do you learn about the earth.." Nirmalya asked again with the inquisitiveness of a child.

"We read so many things, for example, we read that the earth moves around its axis."  I was going to tell him that this is what causes day and night, but he interrupted me again. "Oh No, How can the earth move? If it moves, won't we lose our balance and fall down"

Nirmalya seemed puzzled.

I was sure in my knowledge that the earth moved around its own axis but I didn't know how to explain it to him. But then I do not know how and why a strange comparison came to my mind.

"Well, you must have driven a bullock cart' I asked Nirmalya and he nodded. He had done it many times.

"When the cart moves the wheels also move, don't they?" I asked again.

"0f course the wheels move around the axle. Otherwise how would the cart move?" Nirmalya laughed and answered.

"Suppose you leave a tiny red ant in the spoke of a moving wheel. Will the ant walk about freely or fall down"? I asked him again.

Nirmalya thought for a few seconds. "No, the ant won't fall down. It would move about". He said after some thought.

"See. You yourself admit that. Similarly compared to the earth, we are exceedingly tiny creatures, much smaller than the red ant. So even if the earth moves, we don't feel it and we don't fall down." I told him smiling.

I had won my point and Nirmalya was convinced. He sat spellbound for a few minutes uttering exclamatory remarks about my wisdom and left for his home.

From that day onwards, Nirmalya would come almost daily and would sit with me anytime he was free. He would sit hunchbacked on the ground clutching both his knees tightly with his crossed arms and would ask me questions about my studies and within a week I told him all that I had learnt in the school. I told him about the story of Gautam Buddha and I told him about what the Red Cross did. I told him the names of the nine planets and I also explained to him as to how the seasons changed. I was in class five (fifth grade) then and my own knowledge was less than rudimentary and it seems laughable now that I tried to impart that knowledge to Nirmalya. But he drank deep of whatever I said and was always eager to know more.

In a few days we returned to the city and I didn't have the opportunity of seeing Nirmalya again after that and, moreover, there really was no reason for me to remember him. But I did remember him much later in my life.

I was teaching geography to my little son. The earth goes round its axis once in twentyfour hours, I told him and he asked me the same question that Nirmalya had asked me once so long ago. Of course by this time, I knew about the gravitational pull of the earth and told him so. And it was then that the picture of Nirmalya came to my mind. The emaciated looking farmer innocent and illiterate, with the sacred necklace of dried basil twigs around his thin bony neck, sitting hunch-backed on the ground and listening to the chatterinq of a little girl, flashed back in my memory.

I am yet to see such tremendous thirst for knowledge in anyone else.