cutta looked like a ‘B’ and ‘Y’ looked like a tapeworm that grew out of an ‘E’ that looked like a ‘C’ with teeth in the open mouth.
‘Ted is a cat. Mick is a mouse. They are friends.’ Like Gregor Sansa, another great soul who shares my initials, I awoke from uncomfortable dreams on a lockdown morning to a daunting responsibility: to write these sentences down to Kattabomman in his English notebook. As if writing that wasn’t hard at all, I had to have her write them in ‘cursive’.
It would be a great compliment to call my handwriting ‘unreadable’ – it requires grace marks to meet the eligibility criteria to be recognized as ‘handwriting’. More often than not, people – and even art connoisseurs – mistake it for modern art. To make matters worse, whenever I try to ‘cursive’, the legibility index drops. That’s why I have carved each letter individually throughout my life. But now, I had to teach Katta Cursive Writing.
“Read the first sentence,” I said.
Katta stared at the page for a long time. Then he started reading.
extraordinary flourishing
“Ta-eh-da-ted … is … a … ka-ah-ta-cat.” English is not a phonetic language. But apparently, at the KG level, it is taught as if it were one. So the katata first voices the sounds, and then mixes them into words. Don’t ask me how he’ll read words like ‘like’. Anyway, reading is a different story. It is about writing.
He started off hard. Managed to reach “Ted Is” without incident. But halfway up the curls of the cursive ‘A’, in an extravagant flourish, her pencil fell. He bent down to take her. But it had rolled to a corner unreachable until I stood up, moved my chair, and found it myself. And there’s no way I was doing that. It’s not easy to explain my reasons but I’ll try.
Since ancient times, the parent I call the oops-eye-dropped-it maneuver. Google tells me all kids ages 4 to 10 do it, and it drives me crazy. The moment you sit down with a child for ‘home work’, or even for that tedious practical joke we call ‘online class’, the child will begin their oops-eye-dropped-it maneuver . One by one, all available writing instruments are dropped under the table until each pencil, eraser, sharpener, sketch pen, crayon, ruler, and matchstick are safely deposited in an invisible crane. without which no normal sized adult can ever reach. Hitting your head against a heavy piece of furniture. I don’t know about your ward but this is a trick that katta plays on me every time. But I wasn’t falling for it again.
“Take another pencil out of the box and carry on with it,” I said.
parallel universe
But the new pencil lead was loose. When he touched the page, it broke. Katta began sharpening this second pencil (let’s call it Pencil B). But his fine motor skills are still a work in progress. So the pencil kept rolling. The sharpener kept rolling. But no dent on the pencil. It was as if pencils and sharpeners were socially distant flirtation at my expense.
I snatched the pencil and sharpener from him, did the needful and handed the pencil back. He lowered it to the page with such force that the newly minted lead broke once again.
Pressing the lid firmly on the cheekbones bubbling inside, I sharpened another pencil (Pencil C) in steady silence. Katta looked on, increasingly apprehensive. I gave him a pencil and said, “You break it or drop it, see what happens.”
I could sense that tears were in the pipeline, but we got through ‘the heck’ without any mishaps. By now, I had crossed my threshold of tolerable boredom. After reading them so many times, I was beginning to find the sentences – especially ‘Mick is a rat’ – conceptually problematic. Why are we still using western names like Mick? Are we serious about Hindu Rashtra or what? Why can’t we use names that reflect our ancient culture and heritage?
“Wait,” I said, as Catta began elaborate preparations to produce Mick’s ‘Em.
I rubbed Mick and wrote, “Loganathan is a rat.”
Katta looked surprised and blinked.
“Read the sentence,” I said.
“La-o-ga-ah-na-ah-ta-ha-ah-na … is..a … ra-ah-ta.”
“Now mix the sounds and read the sentence,” I said.
“Mick is a mouse.”
I almost dropped the pencil.
“Okay,” I said. “Write it down.”
He picked up a pencil and started writing ‘they’. But his ‘H’ looked like a ‘B’ and ‘Y’ looked like a tapeworm crawling from an ‘E’ that looked like a ‘C’ with teeth in an open mouth.
“What are you doing?” I said. “Erase everything and write again.”
He immediately dropped the eraser. As if at the signal the pencil rolled off the table. I heard it rumble on the floor. When I bent down, I could see neither the eraser nor the pencil. I believe they’ve both arrived in a parallel universe—through an empty socket on the wall that’s actually a wormhole—and happily on a planet populated exclusively by pencils and erasers dropped by five-year-olds. staying.
The author of this satire, G. Sampath is the editor of Social Affairs, Hindu,
sampath.g@thehindu.co.in
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