Mum's the word!

This morning after a rather invigorating walk I bumped into the newspaper delivery boy. All of eleven years of age, the kid is extremely intelligent and goes to the seventh grade in a nearby government school.

The boy jumped into the lift with me and my wife as I squinted at the headlines which read as follows: ' Jaya meets Modi, mum on support' (Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa described her first meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday as “resourceful and rewarding”, but remained tight-lipped on whether she would accept a BJP proposal to support or join the new government.). The kid in me got the better of things and I asked, the newspaper boy (Ravi) to read the sentence. He did so with amazing diction and clarity. I went on and asked him for his explanation of the sentence, which went as follows: ' Jaya met Modi and they have agreed to support his mum!'

Even as I tried not to laugh I thought how right Ravi was. On winning the recently concluded General Elections, Narendra Modi apparently rushed off to meet his mother and sought and received her blessings. A few days later the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif was in India to attend Modi's swearing-in as Prime Minister and it is reported that his own mother was touched by Modi's gesture of visiting his mother and receiving her blessing. Modi in turn sent a shawl for Sharif’s mum which I'm sure would haveturned many an eye moist.

While politicians in India and Pakistan squabble, mum's on either side reach out to each other. Back channel diplomacy one could say.

What about Ravi? Here is a young kid who works at an hour where most other's would be stretching in bed. While I admire his strength of character and spirit, the lack of understanding of a rather simple sentence left me disappointed. The boy after all is in the seventh grade! In a country where you would be labelled literate, if you can sign your name, has cause for serious concern with reference to our primary school education system.