How I Taught My Grandmother to Read
 Coverpage of the book - "How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories" | |
| Author | Sudha Murthy |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Puffin Books |
How I Taught My Grandmother to Read is a fictional narrative or a short story written by famous Indian prolific fiction author Sudha Murthy. This story was published in the book How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories in the year 2004 by Penguin Books India. Later on this story was included in the Class 9 English Communicative CBSE Syllabus. This story narrates the incident where the author recalls that how she had taught her illiterate grandmother to read.
Plot
The story begins as the author recalls her childhood days. She used to stay in a village in North Karnataka with her grandparents. The village was a remote place, so the morning paper was got in the afternoon and the weekly magazine came one day late.
At that time, Triveni was a very popular writer in the Kannada language and all the village people would wait eagerly for the weekly magazine Karmaveera, where one of her novels Kashi Yatre was appearing as a serial. It was the story of an old lady and her ardent desire to go to Kashi or Varanasi, where she wished to worship Lord Vishweshwara to attain the ultimate punya. But finally, the old lady sacrifices all her savings for the marriage of a young orphan girl, who falls in love but there was no money for her wedding.
Impressed by the plot of Kashi Yatre, the author's grandmother Krishtakka would listen to the story as her granddaughter (the author) read the episodes to her. She was so touched with the story that later, she could repeat the entire text by heart. She never went to school and so, she couldn't read it by herself. Afterwards, she used to join her friends at the temple courtyard and would discuss the latest episodes with them.
After enjoying a wedding ceremony for a week with her cousins, when the author returned home, she found her grandmother in tears. When the author asked her that why she was crying, she narrated her life-story to the author and expressed her grief about getting married very early and not going to school. She explained that when the author was away, Karmaveera came as usual. But she couldn't even read a single letter and felt very embarrassed, helpless and dependent. After this, she made a firm determination that she would learn to read the Kannada alphabet from the next day onwards and keep Saraswati Puja day during Dussera as the deadline. That day she should be able to read a novel by herself.
As a result, the next day onwards the author started her tuition and found her grandmother to be a very intelligent and hardworking student who did amazing amounts of homework and who could read, repeat, write and recite.
When the Dussera festival came as usual, the writer secretly bought Kashi Yatre which had been published as a novel by that time. The author got a gift of frock material from her grandmother. Then suddenly her grandmother bent down and touched her feet. The author found this as extremely bizarre since elders never touch the feet of youngsters and thought that her grandmother had broken the rules of the tradition. But in response to that, her grandmother replied that she was touching the feet of a teacher, not her 12-year-old granddaughter and in the customs it was clearly stated that a teacher should be respected, irrespective of gender and age. She explained that her granddaughter was a very caring and loving teacher who taught her so well that she could read any novel confidently in a short period of time. Thus, the author helped her grandmother to become independent.
The story ends as the author gave the gift to her grandmother and her grandmother was able to read the title Kashi Yatre by Triveni And the publisher's name aloud all by herself