Vinay - A story

4/05/2014

Vinay - A story

Vinay was desperately waiting for his father since his father used to teach him Maths and English. His father was educated till 2nd of the primary school. But he was intelligent for he could read some simple English words and was very fast in addition, subtraction, multiplication. He owed his skills to some of his educated friends.

Vinay was in second or third of Marathi primary school. He always wanted to be noticed in the class for he thought that he was very special and never thought that the so called poverty would come his way. He was as eager to learn as his father-teacher was to teach.

Vinay saw his father coming. His father was working in 'Wipro' and used to earn 50 Rs. per day. He started dancing and jumping on the Charpayee as he saw his father coming. A child becomes happy on arrival of his father for he assumes that his father may have brought him some sweet or hotel food. This wasn't the case with Vinay. He was happy because his father had the intellectual food that (Vinay) he was craving for. His father became fresh, drank  tea and came with a slate and a chalk. He started with ABCD again, introduced the vowels and taught how vowels are used to make words. Then he introduced Vinay with signs of multiplication, addition, division and subtraction. This went on for a few months untill Vinay was able to read vernacular names spelled in Englih and multiplied, subtracted, added and divided numbers faster. His father being vinay's first teacher, had subtracted his lenience for learning, added skills in him, multiplied his skills and aspirations and divided his poor thinking that 'the below poverty line people can not learn' with his positive approach towards learning.

Vinay was in Marathi School. Those days ABCD was introduced to students in 5th standard. But In third Vinay was able to read Hindi Names and Marathi names typed in English.

Vinay did not have TV in his house so he used to go to the neighbours' house. The house of neighbours was always filled with the people watching TV. When a  movie or a serial started, Vinay read the Hindi and  Marathi names typed in English. He was loud to read the names so as to be noticed by the people sitting around him.  Often his neighbours asked him to leave as he read the names so loudly that the children in the house woke up and started crying. He took pride in reading names as nobody in his class did even know the alphabets.

Vinay was so good at numbers that he played with them very easily. He multiplied at the blink, divided faster, added in a second and subtracted in a couple of seconds.

14/05/2015
It was 5.00 pm. Vinay threw his schoolbag on the veranda and cried "Aai, I am going to play." and he disappeared in a minute. This was his usual practice coming from the school, throwing the bag on the veranda and going to play. When he came home at 7.00 pm, bacame fresh, and has his dinner. This was his daily practice. On Sundays. most of time he was outside the house. His father used to go in Wipro so hardly could pay any attention to him. His mother was always busy sewing the clothes. So none of them was free to look after him and his two sisters.

Vinay's parents were completely unaware of the company he was keeping. They felt that their children would do no wrong for they took it for granted that their children were aware of the hardships they were taking to bring up them.

Being barely 10, Vinay had hardly any knowledge of what hardships his parents were taking.

After his school was over, he used to go to the Kirana shop where all of his friends gathered. Some of them were his classmates and some were his seniors.