EDUCATION OF NUMBERS

I woke up today morning, shocked and horrified with the news of a little six year old girl Bharti killed by her father. The incident as the news read, took place a few days back at Balapur village in Akola district in the State of Maharashtra. Raju Kute the accused, was obviously a disturbed father who got so very upset while reviewing his daughter’s home-work that he couldn’t control his anger when she failed to recite numbers and therefore thrashed her and probably got so livid due to her inability to rise to his expectations, that he forced an onion down her throat choking her to death.

Not only that, in his effort of hiding his crime resulting out of his displeasure towards his daughter’s stumbling words, he discreetly buried her body which was later reported to the police by the heart-broken mother of the child who had witnessed this monstrous act.

This happening however, speaks volumes about the ignorance and viciousness of a man who for whatever reasons, lid his stress, allowing pressure to build up till it burst open on an innocent child of his own.

I do not know how educated Raju Kute is, but if he is an uneducated man then his action has certainly thrown light on the importance of the gathering of knowledge and working on it to acquire wisdom. If however, he is educated enough to toe the demands of the system of learning and expect perfect recitation of numerals from a six year old, then his action throws light on the lack of peaceful and happy education.

Our system of learning is a system gone crazy. It has locked its students in prisons of greed who in desperation are constantly attempting to scale walls of marks; and are being groomed in narcissism.  

A renovation with an understanding of words of an enlightened man would do this system good.

“Take someone who doesn’t keep score, who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he’s free.”- Rumi

Our educationists need to be woken up from their delusive slumberous ideas on learning because real learning can only happen when one turns away from competition.

If only Kute had read Neela Satyanarayan’s novel ‘One Full, One Half’, then he would not have considered his child incomplete without numbers. In her novel, Satyanarayan explains her juggling with a demanding career and parental affection to bring up a child with Down’s syndrome. As we read her work, we understand that one can conquer every inability or disability with love. Cheers to this parent and many more like her who value their children not because they are bright or excellent in their academics but because they love them for who they are. Satyanarayan goes on to explain her understanding of the handicap that life inflicted on her child and made her ‘look inwards’. She refuses to grieve that her child will not rise to the normal expectations of the society but instead decides that, “He and I, shall live with it and still be happy.’ She expands her thoughts and wonders if every normal person is ‘really full’, ‘complete in all respects’ and asks, ‘Why do then normal people feel that they are ‘Full’ and others like Chaitanya (her son) are half or incomplete?’.

If Kute had ever read about great men like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and many others who had learning disabilities and yet were FULL in themselves, he would not have lifted an onion.

If Kute had paid attention to his spirit man then he would have lived his life and his child’s difficulty with grace. As Satyanarayan says, ‘It is love which nourishes us. All other things are unimportant.’ But Kute must have been so lost himself, that in the race of numbers he had no time to look into the heart of his little girl.

At the end, it’s not just a sad story of an education system of figures racing to achieve a goal without dignity of tranquility and instead going perverse in the madness of gathering futile numbers; it is the end of a system of learning which has failed to teach man to be peaceful with his lot.

The modern man is so desirous to fill himself with fake expectations of the world that he does not realize how empty he is on the inside.

The ideal of this system to achieve and find placements in life is obnoxiously unpleasant and annoyingly damaging to one and all who like mindless herd simply follow it without questioning its repercussions.

The philosophy of any system of education which for the joy of learning must be based on love, harmony and care, will instead sell itself to greed of numbers, then there will continue to be acts like the murder of the little six year old Bharti.

I’m sure that Bharti’s world was ‘complete in itself, pure and innocent’ in contrast to her father’s world of ‘deceit, jealousies and ill feelings’.

Today every soul which has held on to a hope, that education will make a difference, will grieve and lament at the loss of Bharti, but like Satyanarayan it will not give up that hope. It will continue like her, for a ‘One full world – A world full of love, caring and sharing’.