I am in Class X’, says a diminutive Atul who looked no more than 10 years of age. Resting his legs on the ground while still seated on his half-sized bicycle and a twinkle in his eyes, he mischievously adds, ‘I am stunted’, when I expressed my disbelief about his Class.
We encounter Atul and his friends returning from their school outside the village, at the mouth of village Sarai, near the Ellora Caves in Aurangabad. The curious children were surprised to see a group of strangers eating on the streets of their village. Even more surprised to see my colleagues, Khraw and Amor. They probably had never seen anyone from the North East of India.
Atul wants to know where they are from. I say Meghalaya, and ask him whether he has ever heard of them. He promptly replies, ‘yes, probably on television’. I decide to quiz him further on his knowledge of geography, and ask him to name the capital of Maharashtra. A response of ‘New Delhi’, meets with instant disapproval from his friends who say Mumbai.
Not willing to engage in any further conversation on such trivia, Atul decides to head home, leading his pack of friends on bicycles. As a parting shot I tell him that I will soon see him at his home, which we will visit to test him and his friends. ‘Come, what is the problem, I will be there’, he retorted.
Bipash, Khraw, Amor and I had earlier finished collecting the school and village information and also mapping of a small and continuous village Sarai, where we were to pilot the tools of ASER 2014 survey. The entire exercise took us about an hour and half. The next step was to collect household information and test children in the household. The children were still in school and were not expected to back for a while, which was still a couple of hours away, so some of us decided to eat in the interim.
For the household visit, we broke up our group into 2, with Khraw and I heading for 2 sections of the village, and Bipash and the others, where each group would visit 5 households from each section.Atul, makes his presence felt again outside the 1st house that we visit. His presence was disturbing the child who was being tested. I engage him in a conversation and ask him what he would like to become when grows. As is his wont, which we found out earlier, pat came the reply, ‘a farmer’. Farm what? An equally fast response of ‘Bajra (Millet), Gehu (wheat), Ganna (Sugarcane) and Kapas (Cotton)’, threw me off. The next question drew a disdainful look from him when I ask him, are they actually grown in these parts.
It so happened the next sampled house was Atul’s, where we found out that he was actually 12 years of age and went to Class 7, and also learnt that he not only could read a story in Marathi fluently, but also read simple English sentences!