(Writing to create awareness about Specific Learning Difficulties (Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia) and a bit of ADD / ADHD, hope it helps if you see someone with similar traits)
Over the last few years, when I meet old friends one thing that I hear often is some saying “वीरू वेगळा होता”, Raju, Sujit, Atul, Harsha, Makawana Sir, Shrenik, Kamy, Gautya, and many others have said so. Though it feels good to hear that now, growing with the feeling of being different was not so pleasant/comfortable. I have said a few times that I don’t have many good memories of school days and it's probably the reason.
I had a pretty normal childhood, was all fun and play like most privileged kids. Till 7th - 8th I used to play with other children of similar age, games like marbles (गोट्या), टिक्के, गज-गज, hide and seek, chess and other board games, etc. No cricket though for some reason (which I love).
Since early years I had preferred playing alone more, in mud, doing stuff like baking miniature bricks, building mud homes, dams, rivers, making furnace, playing with fire - boiling/burning various items, experimenting with cement concrete, learning the mixture of water, sand, planing electricity distribution but poles made from खराटा sticks and wires from strings. Made a circus tent with movable characters (by strings), a work in progress, but was destroyed by neighboring kid.
In around 1st std, I had designed a railway that could run using steam, also had designed people (robots) who could walk. Had a notebook maintained with wheel diameter, rail track width (that notebook got thrown away). All to be made from metal sheet (पत्रा), I was after Pappa to get me a mini-welding machine. Had tickets made, routes and stations decided - and drawn on शहाबाद floor with Pop’s ink pen. Also had decided to get it inaugurated by Indira Gandhi and dreamt of a photo in the newspaper. Of course most of it was childish, and my Pop always said he will get the welding machine ‘next time’.
The fact was I could visualize all these ideas, designs, movements of parts, forces, and a lot in my mind but didn't or couldn’t express/speak to others. I could/can see solutions, in motion, manipulate objects/processes in mind (AND I AM NOT CRAZY!).
I also liked opening things to see how they worked, the toy camera in the attached photo was probably one of the first that I remember, I didn’t want to break it open myself so once when Pappa was taking a nap, I placed it near his hand, so that when it moved the camera would fall and break. Had to repeat that a few times and then blamed Pop for breaking but was happy to see how the film was and how it moved and enlarged via the lenses.
I enjoyed reading a lot (I am not ‘dyslexic’ per se or could be on milder side), I had a liking of science, more of Physics and Astronomy. Being in a small town had its own problems - availability of books. There was this one book on astro-physics in town library which was only read by me. The library folks then made an exception and let me keep it for a long time and issued other books as well.
In mid-late teens I became a fan of Dr. Narendra Dabholkar and ANS (अंधश्रद्धा निर्मूलन समिती) - so his followers know what one faces in society. I was fortunate that my parents didn’t oppose me about my thoughts.
But there was a problem when it came to certain academics aspects, I couldn’t do math quickly, couldn’t memorize tables after 6/7, rote/learning by heart was nearly impossible, remembering dates and relations in history was terrifying - I used to get taunted sometimes for these and sometimes totally ignored. In 6th std, I had failed a math unit test and had attempted to cheat by taking a piece of paper with a 3 line definition of some geography lesson (didn't use it for another reason).
There were a few teachers who liked me and for many I was non-existent. In 10th (HSC) I had severe doubts about being able to pass in History and English.
All this had started making me an introvert; I used to get frustrated/irritated when others didn’t get such a simple thing I was telling/talking about.
To be continued...
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Some of the crazy things I did:
- Making electromagnet by winding copper wire around core extracted from Tube light choke and inserting the terminals directly into socket - was lucky to have not died, the home main fuse burnt. I was saved as the copper wire had enamel which I knew nothing about then
- Trying to make “neon” light by trapping kerosene ‘gas’ in a glass bottle and trying to pass A/C current through it. (could have exploded if there had been a spark)
- Being curious about a plastic cap behind TV’s voltage stabilizer and opened it to find a springy shiny thing - which I pressed - and later realized I was 3-4 feet away from the TV, don’t remember how! (It was actually a live fuse)
- Made a pinhole camera in 7th (first image below), and followed up by a pretty neat, compact B/W film camera which had shutter (rubber band powered), viewfinder, roll forwarding mechanism, a tiny window to see the number on the negative (yes, negatives had numbers printed on them), had a dark room, photo developing solutions and all - it was all hands on learning - so the initial efforts failed and then I moved on to other things, like Electronics
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