My experience with the very first day biology class largely
determined my attitude toward the subject. I had joined the school in Feb. 69.
In the biology class on the first day Shriman Asthanaji began the class with a
monthly test. Till then I had never attended a single class in biology in my
life. I could just copy something from a picture hanging in front of me in the
biology lab and submitted the answer. Later on I went to him and told him about
my situation. He assured me that he would take care of it. I ended with a 'D'
in the monthly test. On my further plea he told me that in case I was able to
score better in the next monthly test he would upgrade my earlier grade
accordingly. In the next monthly test I had a 'C'. I approached him to revise
the earlier month grade to 'C'. He said that with such a poor score how could I
expect any revision. The final month grade was to be the average of all the
grades during the year. I was hopeful that I would be accorded a 'C' for that
month as the average of the previous two grades. However I was awarded a 'D'
for the final month thereby flunking in biology in the first year. Subsequently
I was given a special promotion in the first year along with 2-3 other students
who had similarly flunked in one or more subjects. Theoretically persons of my
ilk should have been thrown out of the school for poor academic performance.
Next year biology was taught by Shriman Vasudevanji. That
year I ended up scoring mostly 'A' or 'B+' in biology. That did made me
somewhat enthusiastic toward biology. However in the third year Shriman
Asthanaji came back as the teacher of the 'A' Section. I again ended up
consistently scoring 'C' in the monthly tests. To me as well as his own
disbelief I scored quite high marks in the mid-term and end-term in biology. In
fact in maths IInd paper I was scoring only around 50% as I used to be making a
lot of silly mistakes, which the maths teacher used to punish very harshly in
my case. Despite that I ran away from the biology stream in the fourth year. I
loved maths despite my marks. In fact my series of silly mistakes and poor
marks in maths continued throughout the fourth year. Only in the fifth year
pre-board for the first time in Netarhat I had a score of 91 in general maths
and 81 in advanced maths. In the Inter first year initially we were told that
biology as well as maths were to be compulsory, which all of were able to
resist successfully. We did attend a few classes of biology for a week. At the
end of a class by Vasudevanji I used to feel like continuing with biology as
the optional subject. All that used to get floored as soon as I used to enter
the class of Asthanaji. All this taught me the critical role sensitivity plays
in our lives - for ourselves as well as in our interactions with others.
Rajesh 53,
Vikram Ashram (1968-75)
