HYDERABAD: It was a hot summer day in 2008. The venue was RTC Kalyana Mandapam, Nallakunta in Hyderabad. Rajeswari maa’m made 17 of her students stand next to one another facing the audience. A wide screen behind them displayed complex mathematical calculations in the form of questions. She was taking the SIP Maths Challenge on behalf of her students, all maths wizards. A super complicated multi-digit question was hurled at the students from someone in the audience. Within a fraction of a second, everyone of her 17 students gave the correct answer. The next moment, the 400-strong audience let out a collective gasp of admiration for the student’s prowess. “That moment was a pinnacle in my career as a teacher,” says Rajeswari Bandaru who has taught for 33 years at various schools such as Obul Reddy School and for a long time at Hyderabad Public School.
Interestingly, this Begumpet resident is actually an English teacher who has been learning and teaching ABACUS for the love of numbers. “I was one of the first teachers in SIP Academy, an academic body that enrolls course modules to help chidren master maths using scientific techniques. The academy follows the ABACUS style of maths techniques. The teacher said she enrolled herself at the first level out of curiosity and went on to teach scores of grandmasters every year until 2015. Rajeswari says that math calls for practice and not intelligence as many think. “Maths wizards, baring Srinivasa Ramanujan and Shakuntala Devi, are made, not born”. She cites her now world record holding Hyderabad student Neelakanth Bhanu who won applause from the President and Vice-President for his recent win in Maths Olympiad.
Today, hundreds of students who studied under her attribute their excellence in maths to Rajeswari and the retired teacher who now straddles across Hyderabad and the US, says that teaching is the best profession because when students excel, the teacher excels. We may not earn much money, but we earn satisfaction, which like the same thing for me,” she says.
What does she have to say about the negative talk that Abacus seems to have garnered a few years ago? “Abacus focuses on skill, which can be learned and not on intelligence, which is inherent. Some schools may have found that it was taking a different kind of route to teach students the subject and may have objected to it. But it gives an adrenaline rush to students when they master it,” she says.
Currently, this enthusiastic teacher spends her post-lunch time teaching maths to their apartment watchman’s son. At other times, she is busy teaching Art of Living to a small group of students.
“Maths is like Yoga. You just need to keep practicing till you feel the magic in it. Don’t give up before that. Maths is also like riding a bicycle. One need not be intelligent to learn riding a cycle. You need to understand the skill of balancing. My mission is to convince children to embrace the world of numbers until the toughness vanishes and the magic appears.”
— Manju Latha Kalanidhi
kalanidhi@newindianexpress.com
@mkalanidhi