That was Magic

It was 28th February, Sunday; I was visiting our NGO project after a long time, and I was happy for that. Again it was a thrilling ride on Anup’s moped as our legs and brakes were making no difference in functioning to stop that thing moving. On the project Alisha and other guys were already on the job as usual. The children waved their hands in the air to greet us. Needless to say, though I love those waves, I don’t deserve them. Now I’m realizing in my life that the toughest job is to teach someone.

Nikita Sharma is around 8- to 9-year-old little girl comes there every Sunday, probably carrying hidden dreams in her eyes. I saw her while she was doing some subtraction in the notebook. All sums were almost correct, tagged with “GOOD” and ticked by Alisha. I decided to observe her some more time. In another round of exercise she stuck at one place where nos. like 24-18 came. Here she didn’t know how she’ll deduct 8 from 4. I asked “don’t you know how to do it?” She didn’t reply and continued to stare those digits. She’s shy. I asked her for notebook. First I thought in my mind the method how I should explain her. Meanwhile I asked her some formal question like “what will remain if I subtract 3 from 9?” she used pads of her fingers of both hands and reply within a millisecond. Wow, I thought. Again I asked a similar subtraction, again she used those tiny pads, again she replied within a millisecond and again I didn’t get how she used both hands to get the answer. Generally we use first single hand then another one. But she was using both hands simultaneously. I didn’t know how! I tried but I lost in lines between finger pads. Then I taught her what to do when the right hand digit of the number is less than the other number’s right hand digit. I explained to her like this “suppose if I’m subtracting 18 from 24 then do like this. Bring 1 from left digit and consider it as 10. Now add 10 with 4 you’ll get 14. Now subtract 8 from 14. What will you get?” Again she derived her answer by her fascinating method of both hands. She replied with spark “its 6”. I smiled “great. Now you’ve borrowed 1 from neighbor. So what will remain if I’ll take 1 from there?” It was not tough to answer for her. I thought this method is easy for me because I know the answer but she don’t have that much time to think to consider 1 as 10 then add it then again another subtraction in her exams. She was also getting confuse but didn’t tell. I though something and told her that “now don’t consider 1 as 10. Just join 1 with the right hand no. and it will become bigger. Then just do normal subtraction. It’s simple.” She just nodded and became lost in her sums. She grasped the thing with the speed of light, I tell you. She also told me that she knew how to divide two numbers and wanted to do more sums. Then Alisha gave her few examples.

I was looking to the other children then and was thinking about how to use both hands to do subtraction so fast. I thought she’s more intelligent than me. I hope she’ll teach me that fascinating stuff. I found a diamond. I hope she’ll glitter in her life. There are so many children around me who teach me new things. I’m not sure whether I go there to help them out or they help me out. I just want to continue my journey with them. I hope we will find other diamonds with Magic Stick. Believe in change. Believe in magic.