A lesson on India…

Last Wednesday I had just returned from work and as it is when I am usually at home, had nothing much to do. On a normal day, I would just switch on the TV and laze while watching some of the theatrics on one of those Indian news channels. However, on that day, the High Command in our house had banned TV, so I was all the more useless. I had also pissed off most of my friends on my various chat lines and, was out of lives on Candy Crush, so actually I was totally out of any pastime activity too.

My High Command was tutoring the elder son, who was preparing for the last test of his year-end term for the 4^th grade. The subject was EVS, and the scope covered all of India’s States and Union Territories and covered a myriad of data that included, but was not limited to their Capitals, Key Ministers, Important Places, Monuments, Heritage Structures, Temples, Hills, Valleys, Lakes, Rivers, Seas, Deserts, Ports, People, Languages, Food, Dresses, Art and Dance forms, Occupation, Agriculture, Weather and whatnots.

Too vast a syllabus for an exam that had an overall worth of only 15 marks and test duration of maximum an hour, I must say. Nevertheless, all of it had to be crammed into that tiny brain, and so, mom had imposed a ban on any kind of distraction in the living room, which came in the form of banishing the younger lad out of vicinity, a ban on television and a stern diktat on me to stay away from the study area. Therefore, I sat a distance away with a sort of fake disinterested look on my face, but could not help not listening in.

Both of them had individual halos hovering over their heads. The one over mom looked more like steam ejecting out of a locomotive and read, ‘Under High Pressure’, the face though was motely painted with streaks of a variety of emotions, despair, anger, agony and joy. Are all Indian mothers just like this?  The one over the lad was simple; it said ’This one last exam, then I get two weeks off…. Hurray!’, his face though had only one word written on it ‘Lost!’

Sitting there and prying over them as they struggled with memorizing what crops grow in Assam,  what language they speak in each state and which river flows from where to where, I thought, since I fare pretty well with those KBC questions and since I have all the wealth of information gained from watching so much news on TV channels, I might as well amuse myself by having my own parallel ‘Are you smarter than a 4^th grader’ game.

I failed miserably. Yes I did.

Although I lost miserably, I learnt a lot that evening. In fact, more than what I would have after watching an hour or so of that animated and staged TV debate on Indian politics.

 

Did you know ….. that the southernmost tip of India is not the Vivekanada Rock, but a place called Indira Point in the Nicobar Islands? That the largest producer of milk in India is Uttar Pradesh and not Gujarat? That the largest port in India is at Kandla and not the Nahva Sheva in Mumbai? That the largest lake in India is the Wullar Lake in Kashmir, and all your life you thought that it is some lake in Rajasthan? That the capital of Assam is not Guwahati, but Dispur? That currently there are 28 states in India, and Delhi of which Arvind Kejriwal was the last Chief Minister, is not even a State? Such an overload of information, I must say!

Well, talking about the exam, Kevin did well. He lost just one mark, that too, because of his silly answer ‘Polar Bear’ as the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Talk about cramming; we guys had a nice laugh! Especially trying to figure out how Port Blair ended up as Polar Bear?

Now, whether you and I know or not, my wife does, and so does my nine year old lad. And so, I for one have decided that I will not contest with either of them when it comes to trivia about India. I shall therefore limit my general knowledge show off to the area of Indian Politics, which thankfully is still ever ambiguous and bluff worthy.

Thanks for reading, and as we part, one triva question for you. There are only two Indian states that have a literacy rate of over 90%. One is Kerala, which is the Second? If you know, write the answer in the comments box. And yes, no googling please.