Chapter 1 — How I Taught My Grandmother to Read

The story is written by Sudha Murty. Her name appears at the end of the story in the Kaveri textbook.

Krishtakka is the narrator's grandmother. The narrator calls her Avva, which means mother in the Kannada spoken in north Karnataka.

Kashi Yatre is a novel by Triveni, serialised in the Kannada weekly Karmaveera. It tells the story of an old lady who desires to go to Kashi (Varanasi) to worship Lord Vishweshwara, and of an orphan girl whose wedding the old lady ultimately funds by giving away all her savings rather than going to Kashi. The grandmother identifies deeply with the protagonist, and her inability to read the episodes alone is what motivates her to become literate.

Triveni was a very popular writer in the Kannada language whose style was easy to read and very convincing. Her stories dealt with complex psychological problems in the lives of ordinary people. She died very young, but even forty years later people continue to appreciate her novels.

When the narrator went to a wedding for a week, the Karmaveera magazine arrived as usual. The grandmother opened it and saw the picture accompanying the Kashi Yatre story but could not understand anything written. She felt helpless and too embarrassed to ask anyone in the village to read for her, realising that despite being well-off, money was of no use if she could not be independent.

Feeling dependent and helpless at not being able to read the magazine episode, the grandmother decided she wanted to be independent. She told the narrator, "We are well-off, but what use is money when I cannot be independent?" and resolved to learn the Kannada alphabet from the next day.

The grandmother set Saraswati Puja day during the Dassara festival as her deadline, deciding that by that day she should be able to read a novel on her own.

The narrator laughed at the grandmother childishly, pointing out that she was sixty-two, her hair was grey, her hands were wrinkled, she wore spectacles, and she worked so much in the kitchen. The narrator described this as a childish response.

The grandmother said, "For a good cause if you are determined, you can overcome any obstacle. I will work harder than anybody but I will do it. For learning there is no age bar."

The grandmother said she was touching the feet of a teacher, not her granddaughter, citing the tradition that a teacher should be respected irrespective of gender and age. It was unusual because elders do not typically touch the feet of youngsters — in their tradition, children touch the feet of God, elders, and teachers as a mark of respect.

On Dassara, the grandmother gave the narrator a gift of frock material, touched her feet as a mark of respect for her teacher, and then opened the novel Kashi Yatre — which the narrator had secretly bought — and read aloud its title 'Kashi Yatre by Triveni' and the publisher's name. The narrator knew then that her student had passed with flying colours.

The narrator went on to become a teacher in Computer Science and taught hundreds of students. She realised this only later, noting that little did she know at the time that teaching her grandmother would be the start of a lifelong teaching journey.

Yes, the NCERT Kaveri Class 9 English textbook PDF is free to download on CBSEPrepMaster — no sign-up or payment required.