Anniversaries.... bane of my life.

It’s Shivaji jayanti today. That’s the birth anniversary of Shivaji maharaj. I have every respect for him and would love to read the stories about his fight against the moghuls as a child. This blog is not about Shivaji maharaj but about the fact that these historical dates were the bane of my life during childhood. I would love to read historical/mythological stories but was never able to remember the important dates. History exam would get me into a sweat… even mugging couldn’t help me. I could get the century right (well whats a 100 here or there!! ) but the exact date… well that was an entirely different story.
Here I couldn’t remember one birth date and these people would have 2. I mean why wasn’t a consensus taken so that each person whether living or dead could have just one birthday. Shivaji has 2 birth dates… oh well the Queen of England too celebrates 2 b’days…. I really don’t mind them celebrating any amount of days they want to….but why did I need to learn each and every one.
The only school year that I really enjoyed history was in the 8th standard and that too because we had history of architecture which I used to love and no exact dates… well this was my cup of tea… cos I would def get the centuries right.
That’s the reason why I cannot accept the way history is taught in our schools even now. When I see the text books now… it is full of details which have absolutely no connection to our day to day lives. Why should I know how many children the Deshmukh’s during Shivaji’s period had or what their names were? Why cannot this be taught to the children as a story and the questions asked accordingly. When I am hard pressed to get the details beyond my great grandfather from the municipality why would I want to remember the names of the children of Shivaji’s mavalas. Can someone explain this to me? The question papers have these questions and not about the actual cause that Shivaji fought for. Not every one has the chronology cell in their brains and this makes taking these exams a major aggro.
I myself lack this cell and sympathise with all the kids in this similar position. Each person has a like and dislike for certain subjects. It’s interesting to note that I would love maths but could not get these b’dates right.
This blog came up as I happened to look at the calendar and the date was in red so went to check what the event was and I remembered that a few days ago I had seen the BMC people cleaning Shivaji maharaj’s statue to get it ready for his jayanti. Ask me next year and I will still not be able to tell you the date…. I love watching the history channel…. The world events…etc…. can some one help me here… how I could start remembering the dates…. PPPPLLLLLEEEEAAAASSSEEE!!!!!!!!