Number Crunching

I still remember that feeling. Staring at the blackboard for the full maths period, trying in vain to make sense of what Ajay Sir was rattling off with intense seriousness. In Class 8, my dismal affair with numbers saw the report card slump into red, after which arrangements for tuition were made. I thought I was getting the basics right, at least till I took my exams. It might have helped in some way, as I did manage to get pass marks once the tuition supplemented what I learnt in class.

In Class 10, I spent copious hours over my Maths textbooks, learning theorems, figuring out the algebra and everything else that went along with it. Before the exam I prayed hard - really hard. If there was anything that could pull me down, it would have to my Maths. My heart was in my hands when I made it to the exam room after the long ride from our school in Clement Town to the test centre on the other side of town. I felt I was going to be sick. Though going back was not an option. The CBSE board wouldn't give me another chance to take this test - unless I failed of course.

With the impending sense of doom, I made my way to the exam room. When I got the questions, the first thing I wanted to do was cry out loud. I couldn't make sense of half of the stuff, I couldn't even figure out one of the questions on the theorem that I thought I knew so well. I struggled, sweated and somehow got to the end of it all.

That was only the beginning. While the rest of my papers went well, I spend the extended holiday after the Board Exams in a sense of perpetual dread. Nightmares became a regular occurrence. They followed a pattern. Sit for the exam, get the result, look at the F, then cry. It was the middle of summer so each time I got up, it would be me drenched in sweat. Failure became such an obsession that the only thought that came to my mind was being back in my school in Doon.

When the result finally reached my Dad's home - at that time in Amritsar - I couldn't believe I'd scraped through. It was a 48/100. Not the best score in the world but enough to get moving on to the college journey where I vowed to stay as far away from numbers as I could.

To this day, I remain an unparalleled disaster with numbers. It takes very little for bankers to convince me about parking my money in the silliest schemes. I have to resort to a lot of finger counting when too much addition, division, subtraction, multiplication is involved.

So it is with a sense of trepidation and dread that I approach my daughter's maths exam.

Fortunately, she's got her Dad's genes when it comes to numbers. When we sit together and I'm attempting my mental maths, she would have usually solved the sums, moved on to the next one and the next one. I love to watch her in action. It's like seeing a little human calculator punching in and punching out numbers quick time. Given that she's got the edge and knows it, it's also next to impossible for me to teach her anything logical when it comes to maths.

The one time that I did, all her answers were wrong. I strongly encourage her to do it all with Bala. It works well, if he's around, it takes a disastrous twist when he's not. Which is what happened this time round when work resulted in India calling.

Straddling through numbers, I ended tossing and turning through the night with 10th standard coming back to haunt me all over again.

It wasn't for long though. The alarms went off and in less than four hours after I attempted to sleep.

I was back at work looking at numbers all around. From my cab fare, to the vending machine to cricket scores, to tennis, to soccer goals, to the markets. There truly is no escape.