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We had great fun with our anomalous book-learning in our village school at Muthukur in the early 1950s.
Ours was a sandy seaside village with few gardens. So we had little chance to see a real bee. But we had this poem in our English text book:
The honey part was ok...we bought honey from the itinerant tribals who sold their forest produce at our doorstep. The flowers were also ok. But we never watched that little busy bee opening flowers by the shining hour. And our teacher went on sermonizing that we should all work like the busy bee and not laze like drones...he never saw a drone I am sure...drones don't come out of their hives till their fateful mating day.
We also had the lovely poem Rainbow by Christina Rossetti...with a figure of the river, the bridge, the lonely boat and the overhanging rainbow. But there were no rainbows in Muthukur during my time there. The dozens of rainbows, both primary and secondary, that I watched were at KGP much later.
We also had cute little stories from the Bible. The one that stuck is the story of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz. The names sounded funny...unlike Devi, Rani and Rao. And there was this 'alien corn' that stumped me. Since our teacher was petulant about taking inconvenient questions, I asked my Father what a corn was. And he replied:
"Jonnalu"
and kept quiet. I had never seen a sheaf of corn then. Our staple cereal was rice...broken and imbedded with pebbles.
And there was this 'manna from Heaven'. Even Father kept quiet about this manna...it was not there in his COD perhaps. Here is what Webster says about it:
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We had great fun with our anomalous book-learning in our village school at Muthukur in the early 1950s.
Ours was a sandy seaside village with few gardens. So we had little chance to see a real bee. But we had this poem in our English text book:
| How doth the little busy bee | |
| Improve each shining hour, | |
| And gather honey all the day | |
| From every opening flower. | |
How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower! - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20295#sthash.WMJyoY0R.dpuf
How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower! - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20295#sthash.WMJyoY0R.dpuf
How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower! - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20295#sthash.WMJyoY0R.dpuf
How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower! - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20295#sthash.WMJyoY0R.dpuf
The honey part was ok...we bought honey from the itinerant tribals who sold their forest produce at our doorstep. The flowers were also ok. But we never watched that little busy bee opening flowers by the shining hour. And our teacher went on sermonizing that we should all work like the busy bee and not laze like drones...he never saw a drone I am sure...drones don't come out of their hives till their fateful mating day.
We also had the lovely poem Rainbow by Christina Rossetti...with a figure of the river, the bridge, the lonely boat and the overhanging rainbow. But there were no rainbows in Muthukur during my time there. The dozens of rainbows, both primary and secondary, that I watched were at KGP much later.
We also had cute little stories from the Bible. The one that stuck is the story of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz. The names sounded funny...unlike Devi, Rani and Rao. And there was this 'alien corn' that stumped me. Since our teacher was petulant about taking inconvenient questions, I asked my Father what a corn was. And he replied:
"Jonnalu"
and kept quiet. I had never seen a sheaf of corn then. Our staple cereal was rice...broken and imbedded with pebbles.
And there was this 'manna from Heaven'. Even Father kept quiet about this manna...it was not there in his COD perhaps. Here is what Webster says about it:
"the sweetish dried exudate of a Eurasian ash (especially Fraxinus ornus) that containsmannitol and has been used as a laxative and demulcent."
Hmm!
RKN was worse off as he alludes in his troubles with arithmetic. All his text books were straight imported from Britain and he must have felt too embarrassed to ask his teacher and his HM Father what hot buns and muffins were...they only knew idly, vada, dosa, and perhaps pakori.
We also had a charming story about a woodpecker and a kingfisher, with cute figures of them going about their business like those little busy bees. But we saw neither a woodpecker nor a kingfisher in Muthukur which was full of crows.
Talking of crows I am reminded of my first reading of Mark Twain on the Indian Crow. I was so pleased that I hailed it the best prose piece I ever read. All because I could relate to our Indian Crow as closely as to any of my classmates.
The trouble didn't cease even when I enrolled in my University at Vizagh. We had to mug up this charming ode of Keats to the Nightingale...oh ok...the poem was great but I never saw nor heard a nightingale...till now.
And we had to read the Treasure Island and mug up the FAQs in our exams. But the story was full of nautical terms which were as foreign to us as Stevenson was.
When we were kids in Muthukur there was this Andhra Patrika Weekly that ran a serial on Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn translated into Telugu prose by a chap whose knowledge of English was worse than mine as I can now see. His transliteration of the hero of the book went like:
"Hakal Burfin"
I thought Hakal was an Urdu word and Burfin was a misprint for our sweet dish:
"Burfi"
Physics was no better even in our University. We had to mug up Thomson's model of the atom which he called:
"Plum Pudding Model"
Even now I am unaware of how a plum pudding looks and tastes, although I read PGW's semi-biographical novel of a similar name: Plum Pie.
Talking of apples, we had to mug up: 'A for Apple' before we saw an apple.
Now, has our virtual learning been all useless and tiresome?
No...on the other hand, it allowed our imagination run riot and we just loved it...
Talking of apples, we had to mug up: 'A for Apple' before we saw an apple.
Now, has our virtual learning been all useless and tiresome?
No...on the other hand, it allowed our imagination run riot and we just loved it...
...Posted by Ishani
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