Two Learnings from my Childhood

As usual there was power cut in our village for that evening. We two brothers were having fun near the kerosene lantern and my father lying on a bed beside. Probably I was in class 3 and my brother in a class lower. We were having a nice time chatting, teasing each other and of course making noise when my mother entered the room. Hardly anyone gave her a notice.

“What are you two doing here”, screamed my mother, “Isn’t this you study hour?”

We two brothers still undeviating continued in our childish activities. Now she turned to my father and said, “Why don’t you ask them to study?”

“What’s the need to study?” replied my father mischievously.

“Then what’ll they do in their future if they don’t study?” Now my mother was irritated.

My father paused for a silence and replied candidly, “Banijya Vasate Lakshmi.” (Business ascribes to the wealth)

From my childhood I hated someone asking me to go and study and in that sense any instruction. Now I was bit excited as the situation seemed not forcing me to the book. I turned my head to him.

My mother got angry considering the whole effort rubbish and walked out murmuring something only audible to her.

But my father continued justifying his saying, “Can’t people survive without studying higher? See, the Marwaris in the near by town, how they have set up their own shops and how well they earn. ”

Though that day my father just said something which probably he himself neither believes nor implements in his life, it was a new tree of thoughts started seeding in my mind.

In a salaried class family like mine to do anything other than study is next to sin. The only mantra taught to every child from the birth is to study harder and harder, get higher to higher degrees and ranks and get well paying jobs.

As I grew, I started observing Marwari families and friends. A boy or a girl in a Marwari family is not forced to study books. But from the childhood they learn the art of buying and selling, the skeleton of any trade. Education for them has a different meaning, not like degrees in families like mine. Over a period of time I have developed enough love and respect for the Marwaris.

The phrase ‘Banijya Vasate Lakshmi’ is as fresh and promising for me today as it was that evening. Today I know why America in the world and Gujarat in India is the richest.

The other learning was from my mother. Till class 5 I used to stay with my parents and for what ever reasons she used to say me, “Tui jaha bi karbu nije eika karbu.” (In western Odiya language that means: Do what ever but, you have to do it yourself. That implies ‘Be independent’.)

If she still remembers her teaching she must be regretting a bit today as she feels I’m extra independent for her :-) .

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