Monday, April 11, 2022

Higher Mathematics - Essay by R K Narayan - 100 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

Higher Mathematics - Essay by R K Narayan

In this two page hilarious essay , Narayan sir comically retells his school mathematics relationship and his utter dislike with the subject.

`` A mathematical discovery may thrill some people, but it leaves me cold.''




Referring to a news article of a long pending theorem which was solved by some eminent mathematician somewhere in the world, he says that numbers do not make him curious. For him Maths is like music and a matter of constitution. Some people may be tone deaf and some are figure blind. Narayan is in the latter group. He goes on to describe his school days where the Maths subject was taught with pictures completely unknown to the class - exotic fruits and shapes which would have been common in tropical islands or England (from where the authors and editors came from ). But for our poor naïve village brought up Narayan and his friends, they preferred jutkas, pence and annas.


Narayan thought that he would leave the dreaded Mathematics as an adult. But his nephew turns out to be a connoisseur of the subject and challenges him into a profit and loss question. That is when Narayan concedes defeat that Maths is everywhere!



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