Amitabh Bachchan shared stories from his school and some endearing anecdotes about his poet father in this talk organised by Jamnabai Narsee School and Sujay Jairaj in 2015.
Category
๐
NewsTranscript
00:00I don't know how my parents managed to educate me and my brother in some of the
00:08most finest institutions of the country. I didn't always like or agree with the
00:13routine of a boarding school. All the rules that they had. What to do with
00:19knowledge is the path to wisdom. I was born in a very humble home in Alhabad
00:27in Uttar Pradesh. My father was a teacher at the Alhabad University. We had
00:35very limited means. His salary I think was about 500 rupees a month. But he
00:41always paid a lot of attention to education. And I don't know how my
00:46parents managed to educate me and my brother in some of the most finest
00:52institutions of the country. But I really want to acknowledge their contribution
00:57today in making me what I am. Because it is only their prayers and their effort
01:03that have brought me here. I did my early education at a school in Alhabad and
01:11then I was sent to a boarding school which was even more expensive than where
01:14I was being educated in Alhabad. And I sometimes used to ask my father how he
01:21could manage all this. So, he would work during office hours. He had been
01:26transferred to the External Affairs Ministry and he was doing a government
01:30job, was perhaps about a thousand two hundred rupees salary. But he said that
01:36just in order to give you good education, he would accept, because he was a poet
01:41and a literator, he would go out at night to different poetic symposiums, earn that
01:49money, that extra money which he would put into our education. And I really want
01:53to accept and laud that effort that parents make in order to see that their
01:58children receive the best education. I studied in a boarding school which is
02:03called Sherwood in Nainital. And I really would like to share with you some of the
02:10some of the inputs that I got during my years there. The true impact of Sherwood
02:17College that had on my life was in its ethos. This forms the core of continuity
02:25between my generation and the present one. The education of the greatest value
02:32that I received in Sherwood was how to be a human being of what is called in
02:39shorthand character. I don't mean the ones that I play in my films, but
02:45admittedly I had the benefit of inspirational parenthood. As I just said
02:50my parents always insisted on education and learning. And many a times my father
02:57would narrate several stories about how the importance of education is. He used
03:02to narrate a story which is somewhat mythological. Hanuman ji jo the unko
03:09gyaan chahiye tha. To wo gaye Ishwar ke paas, hume gyaan chahiye, kya karna chahiye.
03:14To unhe kaha dekhe aap Surya devta ke paas chahiye. Surya ke paas chahiye. Wo gaan ke
03:19bhandar hain. Wo aapko gyaan denge. To Hanuman ji Surya devta ke paas pahunche.
03:24Surya ne kaha dekhe mai to nirantar chalta rehta hoon. Kaise seekhenge aap
03:30mujhse. To Hanuman ji ne kaha ki mai aapke saamne ulta chalunga. Aap gyaan
03:37mujhe dete jayiye. Mai ulta chalta rahunga. Kehne ka matlab ye hai ki agar aapko gyaan
03:42seekhna aur jitne yahan students hain wo shayad iss baat se sahmat na ho. Aapko
03:46Surya devta ke uday hone se pehle utna palega.
03:57Aur ek unhone aur bahut achi ek sanskrit ka shlokh bataya hai ki.
04:03Matlab ye ki Surya uday hone ke baat aur ast hone se pehle jo insaan sota hai uski
04:17sari lakshmi chahe. Wo raja bhi na ho wo sari lakshmi chali jati hai. To ye sab
04:23babu ji ne humko sikhaya tha. My school motto in Sherwood was myriad. It was a
04:28Latin motto which said myriad quisque palman. Let each one merit their own
04:38prize. So each one had to be meritorious to be able to earn a prize. Secondly one
04:45must harness the power of dignity through training. The training of the
04:50mind the body and the spirit. Another word for this training is discipline.
04:56I didn't always like or agree with the routine of a boarding school. All the
05:04rules that they had what time to get up when to polish your shoes when to wear
05:08your uniform what time you have to be in we hated it. But afterwards I can tell
05:13you I really appreciated the fact that had it not been for this initially
05:18imposed regimen I could not have learned to harness the power of my own dignity
05:24myself. Academic achievement is not enough. The kind of knowledge gained
05:31through a good education is more than just the acquisition of information.
05:37Knowledge is learning what to do with all that information. That is the role of
05:45good character and learning what to do with knowledge is the path to wisdom.