BODMAS

     “The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.”
     Growing up, my report cards in school consistently carried the same comments; "Good with vocabulary, Arithmetic. Needs to improve handwriting." For some strange reason, I had it in my head that if you were good at Math, your handwriting would be a disaster. But, somewhere down the line I developed a fear, rather a disregard for the subject of my choice. It began when I was in my fifth grade. A new Maths teacher had joined the staff and his surname could easily have been Mr. Torture. He would come in every day and get us to memorize the multiplication tables. If there was a mistake, we had to spend the rest of the hour on our knees. Later, the fear of punishment would strangle our thinking and we'd end up walking to the spot as soon as a question was asked.
    By the time I reached ninth grade, Maths was alike a chapter from Stephen King's novels. And then there was a change in tide. Our new Mathematics Teacher was an elderly professor, calm and composed. He would punish us if we fooled around during his classes, the chalk would fly right out of his hand and nail us on the forehead. But there was a certain beauty to the way he taught. He would stand in front of the board, break the top of the chalk and start writing on the blackboard. Every now and then, he'd whip out the handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wipe his face. Even now, that image appears clearly in front of my eyes. I never failed in Maths after that period(except for the one time during Engineering, which was clearly a case of the University failing to approve of my intelligence), and developed a new-founded interest for the subject. I would spend hours together solving differential and integration questions, although probability was a little hard to digest initially (playing cards helped me iron out those issues as well).
     A few days earlier, I was curious to read further about Ramanujan. About the inception of 1729 and the life of a man who devoted his life to the science. And today morning, the same Mathematics teacher called up. He had received my wedding invitation on Facebook and wanted to congratulate me. For him, I was just another student, one of the thousands that he taught during his career. On the other hand, he was the architect who resurrected algebra, geometry and calculus in me.

"Sometimes it is useful to know how large your zero is."