Khaandaan Ka Paandaan.... cont

Forty-five minutes make an hour

Study time was usually an hour long for both Jasper Nana and me unless of course I was doing Math, which made it longer for me.

We were never supervised…..you see we were Christian children and supposed to be obedient and good. I must mention that we were obedient and we were good. I must also reiterate that, we were kids too. And there were days when Math was too tough to tackle and the game the kids were playing outside a lot more fun. So the little devil on my shoulder would start whispering in my ear and hey presto! The hour would have only forty-five minutes.



Now I didn’t know how to read the time on the clock, but Jasper sure could. So I’d use all my kid sister wiles, emotional blackmail et al, and get him to put the clock ahead. Of course I’d want it bucking by a bigger margin but he warned me that it would be obvious!

It was all I could do to keep a straight face when Mummy would keep re-setting the time on the clock and grumbling about the poor quality of things. All this was fun till I grew up and lost precious percentage due to poor grades in Mathematics.

If only I had put myself to it more seriously at the start; if only folks had been more patient with my Math problems; if only I hadn’t put the clock ahead, I’d regretfully think. So many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’.

Needless to say I still need my fingers to add beyond a certain number ( that's an exaggeration, but I'm awful at math) And that's not funny.


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Khaandaan Ka Paandaan.... cont...

Two times Nine is…..umm…is…er…

I think I should add a few incidents with Mummy. Daddy’s been hogging all the space till now. Not that there’s much that transpired with her and me together…..I was always a Daddy’s girl…a tomboy. Anyway, Mummy was, as all mummies are, my teacher at home. Very bad really, when it came to Math, because she was short on patience and I was short on memory, especially when it came to Multiplication Tables. By the end of an interminably long study hour, I’d manage to finally get through one Table and escape. Oh yes! Escape it was. For my face, which would be burning with the tight slaps she’d land so precisely on my small cheeks, and the palms that got whacked with a ruler, or my legs that got thwacked with a ladle or whatever was in her hands. Getting away was the greatest relief of the day.

Poor thing, she must have been relieved too! When I think back to the almost stupid way I’d stare at her, while I stumbled and hemmed and hawed my way through the same old Table day after day, my heart goes out to her…..any one would go crazy. So I had to find a method to remember my Multiplcation Tables and avoid a beating. And what a way I devised!!

I’d generally wait till she was in the kitchen instructing the cook and doing odds and ends. I would stand against the door jamb, in the pantry and Jasper Nana would stand behind me hidden from her view. Then I’d very quickly and very loudly say the whole Table and hey without a mistake! Jasper Nana’s prompting got me a lot of praise and shorter study hours, till the day she decided to quiz me. My prompter failed me. Ah! It was back to the grind and a good slapathon.

I still dislike Math!

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