Written by :Umashankar Joshi
Translated by : Divya Joshi
Written by :Umashankar Joshi
Translated by : Divya Joshi
First Edition : 3,000 copies, August 2010
Total : 54,000 copies
I.S.B.N :81-7229-095-0
Published by :Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal - Gandhi Book Centre
299 Nana Chowk,
Tardeo Road,
Mumbai 400 007,
MS, India
Navajivan Mudranalaya,
Ahmedabad - 380 014,
India.
Printed by :Jitendra T. Desai
Navajivan Mudranalaya,
Ahemadabad-380014 (INDIA)
© Swati Umashankar Joshi
As soon as the school closed, the little Mohan would hurry back home. He was always afraid, ‘lest someone should poke fun at me’. To be at school at the stroke of the hour, and to run back home as soon as the school closed-- that was his routine. He used to be very shy and avoided talking to anybody. He had no friends at all.
He always respected his teachers and never tried to deceive them. Once, there was an exam during his high school. Education Inspector Giles had come for inspection of the school. He gave the students five words to write. Mohan misspelled the word ‘Kettle’. The teacher warned him with the point of his boot. But, he would not be warned. It was beyond his imagination to believe that the teacher wanted him to copy the correct word from his neighbor’s slate. For, he had thought that the teacher was there in fact to supervise the students against copying.
All the students spelt all five words correctly and it was only Mohan who proved to be stupid. The teacher later tried to explain his stupidity to him. But, Mohan says, ‘It did not affect me the least. I could never learn to copy from others.’