The little joys of learning.

“Manzanas”, I said out aloud, pointing at a platter of apples, a wide grin on my face.

“Manzanas” is Spanish for apples. And I am in Spain for my masters.

The program is bilingual and I can largely get by with English. Nonetheless, I have decided to try and learn Spanish.

As I looked at the apples, I was happy with myself that I now knew what they are called in Spanish. Unlike last weekend, when I was at sea, as my landlady mentioned “manzanas”, while squeezing some apple cider vinegar into the detergent drawer of a washing machine.

Soon after, the smiling and happy image of my then 3.5-year-old son flashed in front of my eyes. As he pointed me towards a shadow he had crafted, by placing an object opposite a mobile phone torch.

Moments later, I was reminded of the elation in the voice of a childhood friend who is a physicist. As he noticed in a screen shot of my computer, that I had bookmarked Prof. Gilbert Strang’s “Highlights of Calculus.”

“Those lectures are great!”, he had remarked. The happiness was palpable in his voice. And transferred a warmth into my heart, as I reminisced on the 6 months I had spend listening to those lectures, after working-from-home, during peak covid.

My son is a little over 5-years now and lives on the east coast of India with his mother.

My physicist friend is a professor in one of the top technology universities in the world, on the west coast of India.

And I am a lawyer taking a break from work, to pursue my masters in Spain.

?But as I reminisced about these events, I felt that we are all connected, all the three of us, through the fabric of space and time, in our love of learning.

Sumiran Pujari Magister Lvcentinvs Anant Kumar Asthana tenzin tsundue