Abhimanyu Tutorials

[This piece was written in 1991]


‘That sounds nice and fits too’

‘Not a bad idea’.

This is what I got as an appreciation to a reply. When I was walking with my colleagues to attend a kitty party, one of my colleagues asked me for help to suggest a tuition teacher for a senior KG child to train for getting admission in class one.

I laughed at the way she had put the things before me and replied.
‘Tell the parents it’s too late, as my friend is ready to take tuition only to
expectant mothers. The mother can come during the day time, rhymes, lessons and sums will be taught personally as well as with an audio cassette glued to the tummy. I‘ll call it a ‘Abhimanyu Tutorials’

Fees will be fixed later. But I did not anchor my thoughts of conducting tuition classes in a big mansion, with servants at my beck and call.

Now a days, this is the only way to earn money. My husband always gives a piece of his mind by disturbing my peace into pieces when he curses his fate of selecting a life partner with an English Literature background.

‘What‘s the use of language, good for nothing,’ ‘English remains English.’ ‘If only you had been a maths graduate!’ (I could sense he would have been proud of an owner of multi-storeyed housing complex. What else can he do but heave a sigh!



I just can’t blame him. His nature is of accounting. He has the aptitude to multiply two, three digits in no time. It is his poor luck that neither his wife, undoubtedly, nor his two products are good in maths or for that matter any calculation.

I am the weakest, sometimes I do say,

’ I am like a politician; you should never ask me to account for the money you give me to spend’. He can never compromise as he feels it is birth right and it is there right in his blood.


There is a saying in Tamil’’ Vathiyar pillai makku’, ‘Vaithiyan pillai noyaali’, ‘vakil pillai kutravaali’. [A teacher’s child a dullard, a doctor’s child patient, a lawyer’s child a criminal]

It is true according to my husband that for my children ‘kanakku’ is always kashtam’. [maths is difficult.]

Whenever this topic sprouts, my son will add fuel to the fire and fan it by saying, ‘Amma , you know, in our tuition teacher’s house if you just break the wall, you will get not bricks, but you guess, what will you get, Currency notes!’

It is cent percent correct, the way I hear people charging one to seven hundreds a month, per subject from KG to college, the day is not far off when one can see many tutorial classes out-numbering the regular schools and colleges rather than schools.

I am quite sure, if given a chance, my husband would wish to have maths graduate as his life partner than a Literature graduate, who can throw only pots and pans in alphabetic expressions and not algebraic expressions. Maths is his world, numbers just fascinate him, and with figures he goes mad!