The visit of a genius

A Story by Nishita

A hilarious situation that every average student like me faces! Read on to see if you can relate.

Mine is a family filled with engineers. From my grandfather to the current generation and those who are not yet born. I am not sure if I should be proud of this or not. On one hand, I can lead a good and decent lifestyle but on the other hand, people have huge expectations from me. They expect me to be as genius as all the others and walk on the path of engineering. Well, now how do I tell them that I am not born with the ‘studying’ genes? I am an exception. I am a bit different from the rest of my family. In fact, so different that I am not considered a human by a few. I want to be an actress and not an engineer but unfortunately, acting is considered inhumane in the family I belong to. Believe me or not, I study only for reputation and not because I am interested. I took up science only because it is considered a subject which students with good marks take up, otherwise, I wanted to study arts. I will be going on the path of engineering because again, it is considered something which only the ‘clever’ study. Whether or not I am clever, I at least have to pretend that I am.
I had just finished my 11th grade and was taking a break during my summer holidays. Just then, my granny informed me that one of her brothers was coming home. I knew what would happen next. He arrived after a while. As usual, the welcoming of the guest happened and then the general talks. My granny sat proudly on the sofa and waited for him to talk.
“So, which grade are you studying in?” he asked for the 5th time after I had started 11th grade.
“Which college?” he asked me for the 11th time. He had stutied in the same college as I did, yet, he decided to forget it. He appreciated me for taking computer science as my fourth subject and not biology. He mentioned how hard one had to work if they took biology. He said that doctors were given least importance and were hardly paid well.

“How long did you study when you were in college?” my granny asked him. It was extremely obvious that she was indirectly asking me to study for the same number of hours. I stared at her with intense disgust. What was wrong in directly telling me to study well? I guess everyone of her age assumed that we teenagers were kids and would never understand sarcasm, things which were said indirectly or any such thing. Probably she imagined me to listen to what he said and reply- “Wow! Even I am going to study that much from now onwards!” Well, if that was what she expected, I don’t think she would be happy to know that I decided to write an article on what happened rather than running to my study table and start studying.
“3-4 hours” he replied, proudly.
“Oh!” she said and glanced at me. Now, I was supposed to forget the fact that they were siblings and they lived in the same house. I was expected to blindly assume that my granny had absolutely no idea about the number of hours he studied in spite of living in the same house and the question she asked was out of genuine curiosity. The conversation further continued about how it wasn’t wrong to study during the night and not the day.
“How long did your daughter study?” she asked, again, extremely ‘interested’ about his family.
“Well, she did quite the same. She mostly studied during the night.”
I expected her to say that even I studied during the night. I guess I had forgotten that she was least proud of her grand daughter and praising her especially when it came to studying was out of question.
“What about mathematics? How did you manage to study that so well?” she asked. Well, out of all the other subjects, she found only mathematics to be a subject to be enquired about, simply because I hated that subject and wanted to break up with it.
“Maths!” he said. It was his true love. I heard he had scored 199 on 200 in his board exams in that subject.
“I used to work out the sums a lot. I used to fill pages and pages of sums and formulas. I had dedicated an entire book for maths.” He said. He advised me to write down things rather than just reading them- something which I learnt without anyone having to tell me.
“Yes, yes! Very true”, my granny said. She behaved as though she understood all that he said although she held a Bachelor's Degree in Arts and hated maths more than I did. She exactly knew how it felt to study maths and why some people just couldn’t understand that subject no matter what. Yet, she decided to switch sides.
“Just glancing at the derivations will not help. Once you write them down, you will know where you might go wrong. Who knows, you might forget to square a number or miss out the brackets”, he continued. My granny nodded her head as vigorously as possible.
“How do you study? Do you write down things?” he enquired. I replied with a yes.
“Be sure that you write down the derivations”,he said.
“Yes, I always write them down three times. The first time, I look at it and write; the second time I…”
“Yes! That’s precisely what you’re supposed to be doing!” he interrupted me.
“The second time, I try…” I tried again, but by then he had turned to my granny and they had started a conversation of their own.
“If you become an engineer, you can be really successful in life that too at a very young age”,he said, trying to plant the seeds of a few dreams, unaware that I had already decided how my life was going to be. I stared at him. He had a very proud and happy expression on his face. I imagined how his expression would change when he would get to know that I have grown up to be an actress. What would he say? How would he react? What look will he give me when he sees me dancing on screen? I would be termed as the most unpredictable member of my family. No one has any idea where I am going in life.
Instead of imagining myself doing all that he was telling me, I was busy observing everyone’s expression and framing what to write in my article.
After the lecture, he asked me for a glass of water. Reasonable, I thought. As soon as I returned from the kitchen, I found both of them lost in a completely different conversation. So my granny had received all the necessary information she wanted and that was purely the reason for the change of topic. I waited for a while but the same topic continued. I did not find the need for me to stay there anymore. I went to my room and started this article. After a while, he came into my room as well.
“Is this your study room?” he asked. Along with dedicating a book for mathematics, he expected me to dedicate a room for studying as well. If such a thing ever happened, the room would eventually turn into a store room.
“It's my room”, I plainly said. He noticed a keyboard I had kept on my bed.
“Oh, you play this?” he asked me, excitedly. Since my family was filled with music lovers, I guess he was happy to know that even I had acquired the musical genes. To his depression, I said that I did not even know how to play it. However, I had managed to learn a bit, mainly from the internet. I played a small tune. After I was done, he pressed all the keys of it. I wondered what he was doing.
“I’m practicing what you just did”,he told me.
“This is what you did right?” he said, looking up at me. If playing the keyboard was actually that easy, I would have been a music director by now.
“Even I love playing this”,he said.
“What is this instrument called?” he asked me. I wanted to ask the world how I should react to that.
“Its called a keyboard”,I replied. I gave out all the information I knew about it. He told me that he used to play a similar instrument which had its keys at a greater height.
“Harmonium?” I asked.
“No! It was similar to this”,he said. I assumed that he was not ready to accept the fact that he played a harmonium.
After a while, he decided to leave.
“Please come again…to fill in some courage in my grand daughter”,my granny said. He just laughed. I had a fixed, sarcastic smile on my face. After he left, I returned back to my room; a room which did not judge me; a room which accepted me the way I was; a room which never forced me to study maths; a room which would welcome me no matter what… a room, which belonged to me.