Page 27 - All India Magazine Feb-2025

much, really very much, and also I understood, it made sense), I
did the problem — the chap's face!... You see, I wasn't in that (in
the small outward person): I was constantly a witness. And I had
the most extraordinary fun. So I know the way children are, the
way teachers are, I know all that, I had great fun, really great fun.
At home, my brother was studying advanced mathematics (it was
to enter Polytechnique), and he found it difficult, so my mother
had engaged a tutor to coach him. I was two years younger than
my brother. I used to look on, and everything would become clear:
the why, the how, it all was clear. So the teacher was working
hard, my brother was working hard, when suddenly I said, "But
it's like this!" Then I saw the teacher's face!... It seems he went
and told my mother, "It's your daughter who should be learning!"
(Mother laughs) And it was all like a picture, you understand, so
funny, so funny! So I know, I remember, I know the reactions, the
habits.... That's why I didn't want to look after the School here
because I thought it would be a headache and everyone would fall
on me! Then I was forced to because of that copying affair. But
now I find it funny! (Laughing) And I tell them outrageous things!
It's so amusing, so amusing!...
For a time I attended a private school: I didn't go to a state
school because my mother considered it unfitting for a girl to be
in a state school! But I was in a private school, a school of high re-
pute at the time: their teachers were really capable people. The ge-
ography teacher, a man of renown, had written books, his books
on geography were well-known. He was a fine man. So then, we
were doing geography (I enjoyed maps more fully because it all
had to be drawn) and one day, the teacher looked at me (he was
an intelligent man), he looked at me and asked, "Why are towns,
the big cities, settled on rivers?" I saw the students' bewildered
look, they were saying to themselves, "Lucky the question wasn't
put to me!" I replied, "But it's very simple! It's because rivers are

All India Magazine, February 2025 27