I was at the Aurobindo Ashram at Raiwala last summer. We met a little French girl named Jayalakshmi and her mother. Seven-year-old Jaya, was one of the most free souls I have met. She wears only pajama bottoms. Her skin looks like it has been tightened on to the bones. When she runs, she is running at an angle, cutting into the wind. A young leopard, I thought.
She had Lakshmi and me entranced within minutes of us meeting her. She was showing Lakshmi how to do the frog, crab and rabbit. The frog could leap really high. She had learnt all this yoga by herself, just hanging around, looking at others.
Her mother mentioned that she had been studying at the Auroville International school in Pondicherry and then she had pulled her out of school to home-school her. And now she was being un-schooled. “I did not want to chew the food half-way and shove it into her mouth with a spoon” she said. She would now only answer questions that the little girl came up with herself and only as much as she wanted. At first she said she wondered if she would ever reach mathematics or physics but now she is less concerned.
Jaya took Lakshmi to the library and started showing her books on optical illusions. Just look into this picture, keep looking at your nose – and the three-year-old actually did. Then she played us two musical instruments all on her own.
Ever since I got back, I have been pointing out things less and waiting for Lakshmi to ask. (This is hard…I have to really curb myself from showing her things…).
The results:
On the potty…
Q. Where does my potty go?
A. Down into the drain…
A day later
The same route…then…
Q. What is the drain? Draw and show me…(we have been doing this draw this and that thing for a while now…)
A. I draw three potties for the three floors and join them all up and then draw the drain into a tank where the clean water comes out and the potty is dried and goes to plants.
Another picture to show some people send the drain into a nala which goes directly into the Yamuna…(we had been boating down the Yamuna a month and ago and had seen how dirty it was…)
She drew a bigger rectangle which took up the whole page and showed Vish – she had drawn a very big tank to clean all the potty…
Another day – we repeat the whole thing…
Q. Show me the dried potty that is put into the plants…
A. wait till we buy fertiliser next time…(we do buy the Okhla one sometimes…)
A few days later…We go to a classmate’s house and they have a fancy round wash basin…
Q. Does this have a drain?
A. Yes it does…
A couple of days later …we are standing at the corner …at the Adchini Red light waiting for someone…
Q. What is that one?
A. (I keep looking and finally realize that she is talking about the ditch…) That is a ditch – drain for the rain water to flow…
Q. But there is no water there…only dried leaves…
A. It will be there when it rains…
Q. Where does that go?
A. I don’t know…I could find out…
I haven’t heard the last of this potty and drain thing – she looks into the potty every time to see if it has gone and we repeat the same story and take it a little further…I kind of understand where this rote learning thing came from…But the difference is that she is figuring out what she wants to and repeating it to make sure she gets it…
Next thing…
Q. Can u draw me a guitar?
Q. Now can u draw me a violin?
I draw a guitar looking thing with a bow…This actually led me to asking a couple of girls how to depict a violin…it led to a 15-minute discussion…How many strings? Is the stem shorter? What are the differences in shape that can be exaggerated in two dimensions? I still haven’t looked up the drawings but soon will.
(she has asked that of three people)
This weekend…
We found two feathers outside the Meghdoot theatre…
Q. Which bird is it?
A. I don’t know…we could ask Sajeev Uncle…
Q. How did the feather fall down? Did the bird get hurt? How will it fly?
A. I don’t know…we could ask Sajeev Uncle…but it has not lost all its feathers…
There was a picture of two openbills in Bharatpur in the newspaper…
Q. What is that?
A. It says two openbills…
Q. Mama and Daddy…
A. Yeah…
Q. They want to build a nest…I’m the daddy…I’m bringing twigs…she brought some iron rods from a broken chime and put them one upon another in a circle. Then put a cushion on top. “Shhhhhhhh…Mama, we have to hide the nest…you lay the eggs…”
Come here’s the water…lets go down and eat fish…and bring some back…This goes on over and over again…
After a little while…
We bring lots of neem twigs (from some earlier trip) to build nests – all three of us are building nests…
Then it becomes wood to build a home…with a door and a chimney…
Q. If I’m the daddy woodpecker and you are the mama woodpecker…will we live in this nest?
A. No we would live in a hole in the tree…
Q. Here’s a hole in the tree…a hole is made between two cushions…
I get a doubt – do woodpeckers too live in tree holes? We look up the net…
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