so how does it happen?

Yesterday at home Jispa happily showed me her brand new geometry compass box. In Jispa’s school, the fees cover these basic things. I guess they do that so that all the kids have uniform tools. This helps eliminate kids who could possibly be tempted to get Ferrari geometry boxes (wouldn’t that be a cool product). While she showed me the same, I recollected that as a kid I rarely ever got a brand new geometry compass box. Being the third in line I would invariably get hand-me-downs. So I picked every piece from the box one by one. The divider, the compass, the protractor, the two angles and ofcourse the free pencil. The pencil has improved form my days. Now they give a pen-pencil. Yes the lovely Camlin compass box.

Then I saw her geometry book. I remember my first class in geometry very well. The same things were taught. A point, a segment, a line and a ray. The same bloody things. The definitions were also the same, the drawings were also the same. It brought back nice memories. A point – it is something that does not have any length breadth and height. It’s just that – a point. A line is nothing but a series of points. I was good at geometry always. I loved it and I just couldn’t understand how anyone would get anything wrong in geometry. Possibly because I was good at visuals so I enjoyed geometry. I remember getting all the sums right in my final tenth standard exam. They cut 2 marks for no bloody reason and I ended up at 73 out of 75. The theory was that if they give you full marks then they have to give you a medal or something, which the board reserved for students from Marathi medium schools. Well who cares. Add that to the 74 I scored on Algebra, I finished at 147 from 150 in Math at school.

In morning while dropping Jispa off to swimming class, I told her that I loved Geometry and I would always get great marks in that. She then decided to test my skills. “So tell me – which is longer – a ray or a line?”. Aha… “Nice one Jispa, both are same – they both go on till infinity”. Hehe. Nice try kid. Then something just struck me. “Jispa – a point has no length breadth or height, correct?” “Yes” she replied. “And a line is nothing but a series of points, like a thousand points together?” “Yes” she said again. So then I asked “how come that a point which is like zero length, multiplied a thousand times has a length when zero into thousand is zero. So if nothing is put together a thousand times, how do you get something?”. I felt her bulb light up in her head “Fascinating” she said. ‘Fascinating’… that’s a nice term to use, I thought. I got her thinking. The truth is that I thought of this conundrum for the first time myself. How come this shit works? I can understand that a point can be infinitesimally small. That can help denote a starting point for math. Hence it will be zero otherwise you would need to consider the size of the point as well when you calculate the distance between two points to get the length of the segment. All this I assume… I know nothing of this. But how can nothing add up to something? Jispa was right. It’s fascinating. So I asked her – “so you are going to ask your teacher about this?” “Nah, she will just reply that” “it’s too advanced” I interjected. “no, she will just say that you will learn it in higher class”. Ok same thing.

I love having these conversations with Jispa. I keep telling her. When you grow up, do something nice. Become a geologist and then I can come with you to different places. Or study History – then we can do to all the palaces together and you can teach me. Or do zoological studies and I can come to various forests with you. I love learning from anyone. My nephew is a whacko. He is a lizard and snake super freak. So every time I meet him, I ask him stuff about snakes or other creepy crawlies. He studies in Doon school and he comes down for his vacations. This time around on a friend’s BBM he learnt that there was a snake found along with the stuff that was being shifted. He caught a friend and went there to catch the snake. He was coolly telling us later that it was a rat snake and hence not poisonous. Ya sure. He did catch it. What a complete mad man. What I wonder is that the adults around let me do it. He would have shown some attitude there for the others to trust him. I don’t know if I would have let him do it I was around.

Whatever, it’s fun to learn from him and it’s fun to learn from Jispa. I guess its sweeter when someone younger is teaching stuff to you. I actively try and learn from them. Of course some stuff you don’t want to learn from them, your ego gets in the place. But for the most, I guess, I like to learn from them. There is something that the youth has that you can never ever replicate. Teaching has put in touch with them and I really do learn a lot from them.