I was dealing with a class which is about to go up to the seniormost year in school - class 12. We were studying F. Max Mueller's famous 150-year old essay What India can teach us (from which Jawaharlal Nehru quotes proudly in The Discovery of India). We had reached the point where he was waxing eloquent on India's rich mythology - whereupon I stopped and grinned at the boys and girls, saying, 'Of course, you know all about that, don't you? Any one of you could impress any westerner with gems from our rich storehouse of myths, surely, you, the smartest lot of today's Indians?... Let's see now,' and I picked on one girl at random and quizzed her 'What was Kacha's relationship with Devayani?' She looked blank, just as I had expected. 'Well, then, how were Bali and Sugriva related?' Again, she shook her head doubtfully, looking more flustered than before. No one came to her aid, though there were a few hushed mutterings. I tried one last time: 'What was the name of Lakshmana's wife?' The girl's face lit up with delight - she knew this one - and she declared, 'Sita, Sir!'
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12 comments:
Very shocking Sir!
Ooops. Ooops. So who did she think Rama's wife was....?
And not to excuse myself: I had to look up who Kacha and Devayani were...
P.S: You are wicked, Suvro da. These are the times when I laugh nervously - if at all - and a part of me, sits back, and says to me, "for all your wishing that you had been, aren't you glad then that you were never a formal student in Suvro da's class for more than an eve'? ...and thankfully enough that was too short a time to make a complete imbecile of yourself..."
all this is because the young india of today is expected to be highly "scientific", so they are advised(by most parents and teachers) to let myths and indian history take a backseat in their minds !
It's much worse than that, Debotosh. As I have noted before, even two generations ago (when my father was a boy) it used to be 'normal' even in families which wanted their sons to grow up into doctors and engineers to insist that merely reading a few textbooks and crambooks on (low-level) science cannot make an educated and cultured person; so those children usually grew up into wise, informed, and well-rounded individuals. The culture changed drastically only with those who became parents since the 1980s... the idea now being that all knowledge is basically bad, and therefore no one should read anything except the very least that is needed to somehow get into (even a third-rate-) engineering or business school.
You and I both know how 'scientific' most of your 'bright' contemporaries are, and how much of their 'success' in entrance tests depends upon blind cramming, last-minute sure-shot 'suggestions' from tutorials, plain cheating and luck. As I have often said, if the IITs made a GK test, an IQ test and an essay compulsory for entrance, along with a practical test of how one can handle machines (as engineers need to do), and assigned no more than 50% marks to the standard tests of theoretical physics, chemistry and math, the merit list of successful candidates would change drastically, in the sense that most of the currently top-1000 might not find their names on the list at all! And then so many ex-IITians would not be so keen to give up engineering in order to get MBAs and then sell soap for multinationals...
many of my friends get seriously angry with me when i say : "reading is tough, writing is tougher". so most of them call me "an idiot who believes in nothing other than non-sense"(i include my younger brother in that list!)
it is a horrifying thing that none of my present IITian friends read a single newspaper or a magazine;they say that newspapers are for the "old people", not for us ! shocking !
so it is highly likely that these scientific people can do anything other than selling soaps and ketchups for MNCs.
oops...sorry it should have been "unlikely" in the 8th line !
Shocking Sir...!!
And what you said in your reply to Debotosh is absolutely true..and something that you had said many times in those twenty months..
With regards ,
Shameek .
If the junks from Chetan Bhagat are being labeled as best sellers and newspapers continue to scream hoarse that exIITians are making India read like never before, it is of no wonder that books on Brishaspati and Sukracharya occupy some dark corner in obscure public libraries!
An even more alarming situation is that MTV roadies' hosts are becoming the youth icons of today !SHOCKING!so we should not expect "youth" to think about mother teresa, swami vivekananda and mythology !
Dear Sir,
I was shocked to read this one. But it comes as no surprise. I have always loved hearing and reading stories from mythology, but many of my friends thought that it was not 'cool' to do so. Mythology was all about imaginary creatures and people,they said, and the same friends are avid fans of the Harry Potter books (so am I). Later in the first year of Presidency College, we were made to read the stories of Greek mythology and the Bible and also the history of England, as it was considered that we wouldn't be able to grasp the basics of literature without the knowledge of these topics. A test was also taken on these topics and even before the test many of my friends (keen to study English literature) felt that it was a waste of time. The result: cramming up photocopies of notes to pass just another test.
Thanks and with regards,
Sayantika.
Leave alone mythology Sir, I was shocked upon hearing that many of our filmstars and other celebrities who shamelessly declare themselves to be Indians do not know what the significance of Jan 26 is.
Ask anyone about Valentine's day, and (s)he is so ready with answers for any question...
Shocking, isn't it?
-Subhadip Dutta
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