MEETING WITH MAHASHAKTI

How to excel in studies...

Imtiaz and late Raghuram's son Pranay were racking their brains to excel in their studies.
Imtiaz was striving hard to get through the Indian Civil Services Exams.Pranay was thinking of MBA.Both of them thought they were very poor in English.Pranay kept harping to me that he received schooling from an Odia school and that stood in the way of his success. Imtiaz also studied in a Saraswati Vidya Mandir but he was struggling hard to improve his English. He believed it could be achievable.Pranay was his opposite in this respect. Perhaps his father's death had webbed away his moral and high spirits. I refrained from making any reference to his late father.At this moment Imtiaz said something very strange and incomprehensible.

He said,"Father returned from village yesterday. He says he saw Satan.At night two men were irrigating a potato field and father was present there.It was a moonlit night. He saw a huge demon like figure standing behind a roadside mango tree. Its open  mouth was burning and flames were coming out of it.Its eyes also sent out flames....."

"A bunch of hallucinations only...." said Pranay.

I wanted to contradict Pranay. But I preferred silence because Imtiaz might have got scared.Coming events cast their shadows. This was true. I had realised the truth of it years back. One night my mother who was asleep gave a piercing scream. My brother Param and I got up with a start! "Mother what happened?" we cried in unison. She said:"I saw a huge black cat jumping at my throat!" We couldn't decipher anything from the nightmare.We fell asleep. But she had stayed awake till morning.

In the morning,my elder brother's son and my elder sister's son arrived to break the heartbreaking news that my second sister's husband who was an employee at the State Electricity Board was no more. Was it an accident? No. He had been afflicted with lung cancer and had kept it a secret from all.He didn't drink but smoked and that too very less.All of a sudden,we started crying and the people nearby were alerted.Now I was sure a great misfortune was going to befall Imtiaz's family. What to do? I was deeply worried.At night I prayed to Baba for help.In this context,I remembered two more incidents.An elderly woman had told me that her only son who was now dead,had repeatedly complained to her about a big hairy creature with shining eyes and pearly white teeth was beckoning to him standing   in front of their house. The boy died in bed without making any noise.As usual he ate his dinner and went to bed. In the morning they found him dead. The doctor said he had had a heart stroke. My wife told me that her grandfather who was 97 and quite tough for his age used to make similar complaints before his death. He would see a dark figure calling him by his pet name standing under a jackfruit tree close to the dug well at the back of their house. So I couldn't rule out some impending fatal danger to the family. I had therefore decided to seek Baba's intervention. Three days had been spent yet there was no response from Baba.On the fifth day when I was half-awake and half asleep I had someone murmuring in my ear:"Give twelve rupees to Imtiaz.Let him keep the money in his father's wallet.

The next morning both the young men came to me.They were deeply concerned about improving their English. Imtiaz was almost carrying on a research in language learning.
Both told me the same tale of picking English and learning English. They argued that an Odia medium school student learnt English consciously but the English medium school students picked English which was natural.The issue was between learning English and picking English.

I said,"Pranay,there is no difference between
learning English and picking English. It is a matter of interest only. In my opinion,Odia medium background people are far more stronger in English than their English medium counterparts.

"How...?" asked Imtiaz.

I said,"An Odia school student learns English consciously but an English medium background student learns English unconsciously.This is the difference that the scholars of language are highlighting.I learnt English consciously and remembered a vast number of  words also consciously.
But as I went on repeating my conscious English language system times out of number,the conscious language system became unconscious.I absorbed it completely. I speak as fast as any English medium background man. An English medium background child says,'Sir I will eat  my medicine now/We have done a plan/He went Delhi/I died in shame.' An Odia medium school boy or girl won't frame such unacceptabl sentences.The teacher has taught them the rules of translation.The pundits of language learning don't allow English medium students to practice translation from the mother tongue into English fearing the inflow of mother tongue influences into their English.Their purpose is a defeat because the English school students keep translating their mother tongue sentence structures into English which are incorrect and look bizarre."

I have seen many Odia medium background young men and women from universities like JNU who after reaching Odisha realise that speaking in the mother tongue has become a rather difficult business.This happens when the conscious language system has become hundred percent unconscious.At this stage the learners have tremendous self-confidence to interact in English.Your progress in English is purely a matter of interest.

"But how to do well in subjects like physics,
chemistry,mathematics etc."

I said,"I have not studied enough of those subjects but I'll give you some useful tips.Choose a physics chapter and write down in a notebook the figure 10/15/20 matching your confidence. Take a pledge that you will study the chapter 10 or 15 times with least attention to the results.
After that,you will be a little confident and to your astonishment you will understand things in a gradual manner. The only mantra is repetition.The more you repeat,the less  self-conscious you are. We will acquire very rich dividends when you have got over your self-consciousness which comes from the fear of having bad results. You know why Swami Vivekananda was able to remember almost everything he read.How ? He had no sense of dualism in him and he had no expectations about any results.While concerntating on the means we are also fearful or conscious of the results. This is why we take a lot of time to remember and do well in the exams.There was a time when I had to write an English word fifteen times on a cement floor using a piece of  chalk to remember it.I used to forget the same after a few days. I would write it down again fifteen more times. I was able to remember English words and phrases unmistakably hearing them or reading them only once when I was doing my graduation.Repeat...!Repeat...! Repeat...This is the only way to success.