NCERT Book Class 8 English The treasure within

The treasure within

Before you read

• Every child is a potential achiever and is different from other children in her/his style of learning and area of interest.

• Read the interview that follows. It is based on a conversation between Ms Bela Raja, editor of Sparsh, a newsletter from the Resource Centre, The Valley School, Bangalore, and Mr Hafeez Contractor, one of India’s leading architects.

• Hafeez Contractor was an unhappy school boy.

• He loved doing things but detested mechanical learning. Mathematics gave him the shivers.

• What his Principal once said to him influenced him deeply.

HC: “I used to have this terrible nightmare. Only now, over the last four to five years, it seems to have disappeared.

BR: What nightmare are you talking about and why do you think it has disappeared now?

HC: I used to get continuous nightmares about appearing for a maths examination where I did not know anything! Now the psyche must have gotten over it, I don’t have to think abouteducation and there is absolutely no time to get nightmares.

BR: Tell us something about your earliest memories in school.

HC: In the first and second year I was a good student. After I reached the third standard, I simply lost interest and I never studied. I used to be interested in games, running around, playing jokes and pranks on others. I would copy in class during exam times. I would try to get hold of the examination paper that had been prepared and study it, as I could not remember things that had been taught to me in class. However, later, one sentence spoken to me by my Principal changed my life.

When I approached my eleventh standard, the Principal called me and said, “Look here, Son, I have been seeing you from day one. You are a good student, but you never studied. I have taken care of you till today. Now, I can no longer take care of you so you do it yourself.”

He talked to me for five minutes, “You don’t have yourfather, your mother has worked so hard to bring you up and paid all your fees all these years but you have only played games. Now you should rise to the occasion and study.” I used to be a very good sportsman. I had been the senior champion for so many years and I also was the cricket captain. I used to play every game, but that year I did not step out onto the field.

I would go for prayers and all I would do was eat and study. I normally used to copy and pass, but I realised that once I was in SSC, I could not do that. When I got a second class, 50 per cent, in my SSC my Principal said, “Son, consider yourself as having got a distinction!” This is my memory of my school days. I did lots of other things. See, as far as my things are concerned, I can’t remember. I forget things very easily. To remember, I have to see things as a photograph. I read a book and I can remember the matter as a photograph but not through my mind. That is how it works.

BR: When you were in school and you were doing badly, did the teachers pull you up and how did you feel?

HC: I never felt anything on being pulled up. I used to be so interested in playing. I would receive a caning every week.

BR: When you knew that you had incurred the wrath of your teacher by not doing your homework or by behaving badly, when you knew you would get a caning, what was the state of your mind?

HC: State of mind? Just lift up the hand and they would cane you. It would hurt badly and then I would have to forget about it, because I would want to go and play.

BR: You never felt insecure or threatened?

HC: I was just interested in playing and nothing else. I was most interested in funny pranks. One day, I did not want to study, so I created a distraction. For one whole hour we played ‘chor police’.  Every Saturday we were allowed to go into town to see a movie. So what I would do was have no lunch and collect money from 40 – 50 students, and run and buy the tickets. On my way back, I would eat to my heart’s content. I used to be the leader of a gang. We would have gangfights and plan strategies. These things used to interest me more than any academics.

Comprehension Check

1. Hafeez Contractor wanted to join the police force. Why didn’t he?

2. In the architect’s office, Hafeez Contractor was advised to drop everything and join architecture. Why?

3. (i) What was Mrs Gupta’s advice to Hafeez Contractor?

    (ii) What made her advise him so?

4. How did he help fellow students who had lost a button?

5. Which rules did he break as a school boy?

6. (i) What is Hafeez Contractor’s definition of mathematics?

   (ii) How would you want to define mathematics? Do you like the subject?

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 8 English The treasure within