Sir, Are You Illiterate?

I graduated from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), one of India’s well known business schools. It has a beautiful campus designed by one of the famous architect, Louis Kahn. It is a residential campus and during the academic term it will be full of hustle and bustle. The summer days in Ahmedabad are very hot. As the summer term is a work term for the Masters’ students, only a few of the doctoral students used to be around the campus. On the other hand, summer is a good term for doctoral students to get some work done not due to the absence of other students, but simply because only the library and the computer centre  used to be air-conditioned in my student days.

Forty three years ago I was a doctoral student at IIMA spending the hot summer days in the campus working on  a complex scheduling problem for my comprehensive examination. The heat during the day used to be unbearable. My daily routine was to take shelter in the library after breakfast until the  lunch hour. A mini break during lunch hour included lunch in the mess and a walk to the paan-wala  in front of the campus.

The paan shop was  kind of a boxed cart similar to the hot dog  stands in front of downtown offices  that I see now  in Canada, but  not motorised .The front side of the covered cart  opened as a table. Gopalbahi the owner operator would sit  on a bar stool inside the  pit with all the ingredients to make a paan in front of him. Before he started the shop, he would ensure that all the small well-polished brass/copper cups full of things were in order and fresh consignments of betel leaves of different varieties (Banarasi, Calcutti etc.) were well laid up  in  nice small buckets with water. He would cut a few old cigarette boxes into fine strips and keep them  by the side of a chimney lamp at the inner corner of the table. Vast majority of his smoking customers bought one cigarette at a time and did not buy matches. They would pick a strip, dip into the chimney lamp to get the fire and light their cigarettes. With a bucket of water in front to dip his right  hand and a towel on his shoulder to dry it,  he would be ready for business after a few minutes of pooja.

In spite of  being  on a mobile cart,  I  never visualized the shop as a temporary establishment.  Its   permanence was brought by a thatched roof extension in the front. That   provided a shaded area for the customers to congregate and spend a few minutes chatting with Gopalbhai .It was customary to see people working on the road works and construction sites nearby squatting under the shaded area and taking a break enjoying their beedis. Next to the shop was a fresh sugar cane juice vendor. In summer people used to drink sugar cane juice to protect against dehydration. Due to the hot weather the  sugar cane looked  so  dry it was a miracle  he could extract juice from it. The cane and some ginger would be crushed, in a hand operated mill and the  foamy fresh juice would be  poured into a glass. Some of the customers  would bring their glass to the front of paan shop to enjoy their drink under the shade.

It was in one of my post lunch time visit to Gopalbhai that  I had my enlightening moment. There was  another  customer with him  when I had  arrived. As he knew my preferences there was no need for me to order. Just some  eye contact  and  his acknowledgement  of  my presence was enough.  Hence, I stayed back watching the road. An old woman was pulling a hand cart with a refrigerator to be delivered somewhere. She brought the cart to rest in front of the shop. I thought she was stopping to get a paan. But she approached me and pulled a crumpled piece of paper tucked in a pouch of her  colourful Rajasthani outfit and asked me in Hindi the directions for the address written on the paper. I understood her concern. With such a heavy weight  on a hot day she did not want to travel far beyond her  destination. The loader of the cart had given IIMA as a nearby  landmark  but IIMA was located at the junction of two roads and she needed to know the correct road to take for her destination. .

As I opened the paper I realized it was written in Gujarati. I had no clue as to what was written. My mother tongue is Tamil.  I Had my education in Tamil and  English medium  and  I had a working knowledge of Hindi. I never felt the need to learn Gujarati even though I was  at that time  living in Gujarat for a couple years .Not only the letters even the numbers were in the vernacular language. Unlike Tamil Nadu where I came from, in Gujarat they did not use Arabic numerals. Even in the city bus system the Arabic numbers will be only at the back side board. I never knew the number of the incoming bus but I always found out  the bus that I had missed! What will appear like an eight in the Arabic will be four in Gujarati. Hence I never ventured reading Gujarati numbers. I apologetically told the cart lady  in Hindi “Mujhe pata nahi” (I do not know).

She was stunned by my answer and  with concern asked “Saab, aap unpad hei?” (Sir, are you illiterate?)

I was speechless. She was more than my mother’s age  and she took one step further in her taunt by adding something to the effect of ”You are well dressed but illiterate. You should be ashamed.” It hit me like a thunder and  ashamed I was.

By that time my paan was ready; I picked it up and walked back  to the gates of one of the top schools of management where  only the cream of the cream got admitted. Little did the school  know that they had illiterates among them.

Suddenly I realized that outside the gates I had met one of the best teachers in my life. That was a day of enlightenment for me. My learning from that day  has helped me a lot in my forty years of teaching career. I tried to impart to my students the importance of  contextual relevance

If my knowledge cannot alleviate the pain of someone in need, I am illiterate-or my knowledge is useless. I may be capable of solving a complex logistics problem to minimize the weight times the distance travelled of goods moved, but I could not help an old lady pulling a loaded cart on a hot day.

I walked away without answering her that day. But today let me say this: “Lady I was illiterate then and perhaps still am in some other contexts and thank you for teaching me.”