Today , is auspicious to begin anything , as per a tradition and belief from ancient times , especially  to initiate a child to literacy . As we are all children in many forms and life long learners, my parents taught me to do a ritual on every Vijaya Dashami day with the blessings of Saraswati , the Vidya Devi . I still follow this tradition at home and my wife Malathi also do the same . After the morning bath and Puja [prayer] , we write the following –

Aum , Hari Sree ,Ganapataye Namah , Avighnamastu , Sriguruve Namah [ It means in English – Aum , O Lords , Hari, Sri and Ganapathi , We bow to you , Please remove all the obstacles in our life , We bow to our Guru[s] . Thereafter , we open a sacred text like Ramayana or Gita and read a few lines .

In spite of all the varied experiences and cultural transitions in our life , we have been able to do this ritual every year and also initiated our children and grand children to this during a ” Vidyarambham –  Initiation to Literacy ” ceremony

While my father initiated me to this when I was may be two and a half years old , I went through the rest of the learning process with many Teachers , Mentors and Gurus in my life span of 75 years with a work life spanning 52 years . In the beginning , my first teacher Sanku Asan , taught me Malayalam alphabets writing on sand . Later , we used what is called ‘Thaliyola ” in Malayalam which means palm leaves using a ” Narayam ” – metal pin to engrave letters and words . By the time ,I went to school at the age of 5 , we had note books and printed text books  supplemented by charts to teach Science and Geography .

We never had electronic aids during our times. Most of the learning was  through repetitive memorizing and retrieval during tests . Mechanical instruments , Log tables ,Laboratory equipment  and slide rules were used during my Engineering Classes. I started using electronic calculators , main frame computers etc during the 80’s and Laptops during the 90’s . Mobile devices came to my help only during the late 90’s when I was working with the IT Industry.

I used e-learning extensively to supplement my class room teachings during the later years and became reasonably literate in those areas also.Besides, during my long Army Service spanning 31 years ,I have used battle field simulation both during training and later during teaching.  But , notwithstanding all these stages of learning , I never forgot my roots and the first initiation process of “Vidyarambham ” . An image of what me and my wife wrote on a piece of paper today is given below.



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