NEHA DEAR, IT IS 'WITH' AND NOT 'WID', OK?

August 14, 2014

Pic.: Chetna Shetty

I had dictated some notes in Neha’s* batch, last evening. After the class, I took her book so that I could dictate the same notes in the morning batch, today. And, today, as I began to dictate the notes from Neha’s book, I was doing, what the Facebook lingo tickles us to do: LOL!

“Placed an order for goods wid Arun & Co worth Rs. 2,000/-.”

“Received Rs.12,000/- from Anil & Co in full settlement of dhere account.”

I stopped dictating from Neha’s book and asked my 16-and-17-year-olds the spellings of words such as ‘with’, ‘their’, ‘your’, ‘my’ and so on; and, I asked them what some famous FB abbreviations, such as LOL, P. and D. and what not, meant...

We had a good time... yes, doing the LOL in the class...

e-mails have killed the fine-art called ‘Letter Writing’... Such a beautiful art it was, once!

Today, the young-ones have no patience to write notes... They just click a picture of it. It’s all over in a flash! Not just that, they are able to pass on the notes to scores of their friends, all across the globe... yes, even before one blinks!

So fast... So efficient!

I don’t know if fast and efficient, also, means ‘good’!

I still remember those early days in school when I was just a little boy... I, also, remember my son when he was a little kid in school... How those teachers taught, with such patience, to all of us how to write ‘A’ and then ‘a’... How to write the numbers 1, 2 and 3... It took for them weeks and months to get us do it correctly... There was no short-cut, they knew it... The only way was to bend down with the little kids, hold their tender hands, and do it over and over again... till it came right...

“Can you change your handwriting, today?” I challenge my college-kids, sometimes, when I see them taking initial concept of my subject – Accountancy – very casually. “The only time to shape-up a tree is when it is just a sapling, a little baby,” I try to drill into their heads.

I still remember the time I would spend on writing those letters – the light-blue inland-letters, the yellow Post-cards or the milk-white, watermarked letter-pads and the postal envelops – There was my Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, always, next to me as I wrote letters... And, each letter took hours, sometimes, to complete... Yes, it had to be just right... It had to be from the soul!

And, then that great – out of the world – feeling of waiting! Yes, waiting for the postman to come, the letter to arrive... the heart skipping a beat or two while opening the letters, the sweetness or sadness the contents carried!

It was simply the dance of our souls... Glorious!

I don’t know if today’s kids know what the famous Olympics mottos - Citius, Altius, Fortius – means. They need to know, that to be faster, higher and stronger in life, loads and loads of patience, determination and hard-work are required...

The famous Olympic Marathon race is held not in memory of someone who could transmit the message in a blink. It is held to honor and celebrate the brave, committed and passionate Greek soldier called Pheidippides, who had run from the battlefield, Marathon, in Greece, to Athens – almost 25 miles – just to carry to his King the news of Greek victory over Persians... The legend has it that, the brave-heart had collapsed and died after delivering the news!

There are goose-bumps in stories like this – where heroes inspire us through the long path of waiting and slogging, discovering, creating, exploring and path-breaking...

Sorry, sir, you might possess with you the fastest car in the world; but, unless you know how that car has come about – and the legend of long and hard road taken by the man who built it - Yes, unless you know this, respect it and celebrate it, what good your fastest car will serve this mankind?

I am immensely grateful to the men who invented electricity, telephone, motorcar, Internet, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and so on... Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin - all these are men who have walked that long-and-hard path, so that you and I could benefit in life...

I hope, they haven’t done it to make us approach life and success through short-cuts!