Tell me, how many of us have not given tests or left them half-way, on the pretext of not having a pencil or pen to write? I know that for me at least somewhere in fifth or sixth standard, not having a proper pen or pencil was one reliable excuse for fewer marks in tests. Not for my granny though. She has a heroic act to her name, even for this situation.
This happened, as she remembers, when she was in first standard. At that time, they had oral tests. Sort of a math dictation, I would say as per her description. The master would speak out some sums and the students have to write down the answers. Now that, for utter non-math people like me, is one absolute torture.
Those days they had no notebooks or pens. Slates (made of lime chalk) and chalks were used for scripting. And chalks were very expensive commodity. For one aana you used to get a small piece of chalk, which was a little more than half an inch. That used to last for a month or at least the poor students tried to make it last so much. And losing the little more than half an inch chalk, was a sin. Then you go chalk-less till its time to buy a new one i.e. after a month. (When my grandma was narrating this, I was thinking, ‘Ha! What a great way of treating spoilt brats!’ But then, a rebuttal swooshed across my mind. ‘Don’t spoilt brats have more than enough pocket money, which is why most of them are spoilt?’)
And so as the story goes, my granny committed the great sin of losing her chalk pencil and she was chalk-less at the time of this math dictation. She knew all the answers and could remember all of it, but a missing chalk was stopping her from writing them down. The time kept its pace and the test was about to get over. The students were beginning to look relieved as the test neared its end. Granny was rigid with tension, with only her mind working at a lightening pace, thinking of ways to write down her answers. Asking the neighboring kid was not an option, copying would be the offense. Telling the master was also not an option, losing the chalk would be taken as an excuse. So what to do now? ‘Oh damn, the first boy in the row has got up to give his slate to the master. He is going to get it checked. There goes the second girl. Three more and then, it will be me’ thought granny.
As the girl in front of her stood up to go the master, my granny started to chew on her slate’s edge in her frustration. All of the sudden a piece from the edge broke and simultaneously an idea struck her. She picked up the broken piece of the slate and tried to draw a line. It was not very clear, but visible enough. Quickly she wrote down her answers. She remembered them clearly and hence, was quick enough. And as the girl in front of her returned to her position, it was time for granny to go the master. She scored full in the test and returned, a big smile on her face. No one knew that granny hadn’t given the test, along with others. It is after all, about giving the tests.
It was two days later that she saw herself in the mirror and found out that a piece of her one tooth had broken off, along with the piece of slate. I giggled as she pointed out the broken tooth now, with laughter dancing in her glowing eyes and said, “That one is for math.”
