School Days: The Sherwood Imprint In Amitabh Bachchan

Brut India

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.

Transcript

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.

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