Neetu

The other day, my mother, the roving philanthropist that she is, blasted our grocer Behram Choudhary for his orthodox gender biased modus operandi when it came to educational segregation. With three children, the two sons are sent to a decent elementary school, while their daughter goes to a municipal run-down institution with no teachers, only a “father”. Probably a volunteer who tries his best. In the larger perspective, you see upper class families practicing this fallacy with much belief, of course operating mostly in the higher education realms. I have experienced the same notion myself, and trust me, to be thought of as a non-achiever really sucks. Behram does it to save money, and clasping onto the strong belief that his daughter would grow up to be a maid in a flourishing, rich household in a high rise, somewhere in Bandra or otherwise.

The girl promptly arrived on Saturday afternoon for her first English language tutorial from me, as my mother promised her. Due to asphyxiation in a hellhole also known as Chakala, I asked her to come back around 4 pm, and promised I would do my best.

Her brother comes to drop her and as I see her little hand grasped firmly in his, he breaks into a smile as I catch his glance. She shyly baby steps, looking downwards, neatly removing and aligned her tiny slippers outside. I’m thinking tutoring means reinforcing a couple of words, pronunciation, spellings, etc. Or so I thought. Her tiny frame entered the living room; I motioned her to sit on the dining chair while I “prepared” myself for this lesson. When I returned a couple of minutes later, she stood where I had left her, clutching her plastic bag (which had her notebook and pencil case I assumed). I don’t think my physical appearance could intimidate, and soon she broke out in a wide grin, like this was something she’d been excited for. Her eyes lit up when I opened her activity book. Her name is Neetu, she studies in the sixth grade and is eleven years old, but looked like a kid of six or maximum seven.

Here comes the scary part. I see words like day, gold, night etc. and ask her to read them out aloud. After 30 seconds of silence, she blurts, “Par mujhe padna nahi aata” (But I don’t know how to read). For a minute I thought I heard wrong. So there’s this pamphlet sort of book which asks them to name objects, create anagrams etc, and this little girl here, is unable to read. A small surge of panic overflows. From what I interrogate, it seems, she can:

1) Recite the alphabet. Identify characters, but has no clue about the difference of capital letters and lower case. Cannot read at all.
2) Can count numbers – right up to a hundred, but is unable to spell one, two or three.

What kind of school is this, I shuddered? I didn’t know where to start. Should I tell her about vowels, or start all over? When things like this smack you off guard, you genuinely cannot think straight. I tried to retrace my memory to being three or four, and how I was taught. What is the order of language learning? I know that I don’t want to get this wrong for her. There was no point in pronouncing the words in this activity book created by some smart ass. Who devises these courses? What are the fucking teachers/fathers doing? What were the rest of the kids pondering about? Growing up with English as a language and not being able to read a fucking word like “way” until halfway through school. Suddenly I was so mad at the dumb government. This is surely a crisis. And this is one in a class of fifty.

So I skim through the first page and there were a couple of pictures, namely a fan, sun, note pad, etc. And Neetu tidily written the words next to the illustration. How did she manage, I ask. She copied from the book, she says. Which book, I provoke? Her brother’s text book? From a classmate’s answers? And I knew, if she could flawlessly copy letters and pronounce words like “goat”, then I had some hope. Or at least she did.

So until I could google some sort of help on this catastrophic situation or contact teacher friends or the NGO Akanksha, I wrote out alphabets, and stressed on the emphasis of learning English. I told her she has to be that shining star in the eyes of the unsure father who thought she wasn’t important enough. (Although I didn’t put it like that, I didn’t want her to hate him or anything) But yeah, I was pissed.

What the fuck is building a sea link going to do, when a kid can’t even write her name in English. I keep thinking about how she’ll grow up and have to do put up with some crappy job and pay as a receptionist or assistant (somehow I keep thinking of the receptionist at my dentist as I picture this) In today’s time and age, without English, I know that’s wishful thinking. A goddamn receptionist takes messages, she has English-speaking clients calling, she has to read the names on the packages that the courier boy brings.

I ended assigning her a week’s homework (perfecting the alphabet for sure), and watched her scurrying exit as she enthusiastically thanked me. Saturday nights come and go with much fanfare, but throughout the remainder of the evening, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. A pang of guilt, and sheer responsibility to get her out of this uneducating shithole. One the bright side, her hindhi handwriting is a thousand times better than mine. I wasn’t even sure if she’d turn up next Saturday. But I really wanted her to. I really wanted the joy of reading her first word ring through her body. She could read stories, listen to people, and lead a less harassed life. Today another friend told me about how these delivery guys who pop over at her house are desperate to learn English, and asked me for an NGO or organisation that would teach these kinds of people. I don’t know. But somewhere, we have to become that NGO.