Offtrack: Lucknow; In Word and Deed

offtrack

India Today
Sep 21,1998

LUCKNOW
In Word and Deed

A couple raise their three children on an undiluted diet of Sanskrit to prove a point.

By Farzand Ahmed

In Word and Deed It's a sun-drenched Sunday morning at Lucknow's Snehi Nagar. A milkman, Ali Hassan, comes jauntily riding his cycle, stops in front of a small red-brick house and rings the doorbell. "Dwadam udghate ... dughdam aagate (Please open the door ... milk has come)," he calls out. A bespectacled youngster opens the door, folds his hands in greeting, and says, "Suprabhatam (good morning)."

What sets the residents of this quaint, half-built house, Sanskritalaya, apart from others is an obsession with Sanskrit. Vir Bhadra Mishra, 60, and wife Anita, 45, have made their home a centre for learning the ancient language. They are using their children -- daughter Sanskrita, 15, and sons Sarvagya, 13, and Suvigya, 10 -- as test cases to prove that Sanskrit can be learnt with ease. "They are not allowed to speak or read any language other than Sanskrit which is their mother tongue," says Mishra.

So contagious is his passion that all those who come in daily contact with the family have picked up a smattering of Sanskrit. This is partly dictated by necessity as the children do not understand Hindi. Home for the Mishras is a language laboratory where they spend all their waking hours proving that Sanskrit can be spoken by the common man. In doing so, they want to rebut those who disparage Sanskrit as "a dead language". A sparsely furnished room in Mishra's home doubles up as his office, library and teaching centre. The adjoining room is strewn with Sanskrit books, scriptures and textbooks translated into Sanskrit.

The "Sanskritwallas", as the neighbours call the family, have a set of inflexible rules which the children have to abide by. They are discouraged from mixing with others lest it corrupt their "mother tongue". Once, recalls Anita, her sons shouted out to some children, "Aagachya (come)". The youngsters, thinking it was their name, started calling them Aagachya. The children's life is a throwback to an ancient past. They wake at the crack of dawn, perform puja and dhyan (meditation) and touch their parents feet before reciting the Vedas. Though modern subjects form a part of their studies, Sanskrit dominates their lives. Life is going to become even tougher for them. After their upnayan sanskar (sacred thread ceremony), for a year the children will wear unstitched clothes, sleep on the floor and recite the Vedas. This, Mishra feels, will make them understand the meaning of tyaag (sacrifice). Mishra leaves his baggage of the past behind when it comes to the rights of women. When Sanskrita was 11 years old, she underwent the upnayan sanskar. Mishra says in the Vedic age, women were allowed to wear the sacred thread.

While studying law in Lucknow, Mishra did a course in Sanskrit. This changed his entire life. He later did his PhD in the language and became a lecturer. It was then that Anita came into his life. She was a student, and a common love for Sanskrit forged a bond. Mishra confided in her his plans to raise a family nurtured in Sanskrit to prove it was a vibrant language. Though much younger than him, Anita asked him how he, a bachelor, could do so. "She proposed, I agreed," says Mishra. When a daughter was born, they named her Sanskrita. By the time she was five year's old, she was fluent in Sanskrit. At a Sanskrit conference at Jammu in December 1986, she was introduced as a girl "who only speaks and understands Sanskrit". In junior college now, she wants to become a doctor and is learning Hindi and English. When people tell Sanskrita that she inspires them to learn Sanskrit, "we think our mission has succeeded," says Anita.

Mishra has compiled a dictionary, Sanskrita-Prayogkosh, and some Sanskrit textbooks. His conviction has won him many admirers. Homage comes in unusual ways. It may come in a gush of praise or even in the form of eatables. An acquaintance, who owns an ice cream factory, often sends them his products. Recently, Mishra got an offer from a university in Netherlands but refused: "I knew I would get a hefty salary but I am happy with what I am doing here." For him, his service to Sanskrit begins at home.

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