N amo namaha. Aavayoha guru bhaaratasya bhojanasya padhhatim aavaam varnitavaan.
An intriguingly musical shloka? Not really. This is a cute video narration uploaded online five years back by nine-year-old Ashok and 11-year-old Siddhartha based out of Pennsylvania, the US. Translated, it means, “Greetings. Our guru has taught us how to eat food the Indian way.”
If you go to YouTube and type “Sanskrit Corner,” the first video that comes to your screen will be two boys, in red kurtas, reciting the recipe for a traditional prasad: panchamritham . The video has received about 40,000 hits so far. And their channel, Sanskrit Corner, has over 800 subscribers. In an interview in Chennai, Siddhartha shyly says, “When we were kids, we used to check the number of views on a daily basis. Now, the numbers don’t really matter to us.”
The brothers, who are now teenagers, can write in and speak fluent Sanskrit. Once he completed Kovida, a BA equivalent Sanskrit course, with distinction, Siddhartha says he went on to learn the panch maha kaavyas (five great works in poetry).
What started as a past-time hobby has now become an obsession for the brothers, who are determined to continually improve their understanding of the language. In 2010, they returned to Chennai to pursue Sanskrit seriously. Siddhartha, now 16 years old, teaches the language at Ramakrishna Mutt to students ranging from 10-year-olds to senior citizens. Confessing that his 10-day Sanskrit workshop is a challenging and intimidating crash course, Siddhartha says, “During the workshop, I have to teach the language to both youngsters and senior citizens simultaneously, without using English or Tamil. It is mentally exhausting, since I have to rely on props and signs.” The boys say their mother, Vijaya Vishwanathan, who relocated to Chennai with them, is their inspiration. Impressed by the Vedanta discourses of Swami Dayananda Saraswati 14 years ago, she began to study the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and Brahmasutra and learn the language. “I learnt Sanskrit along with my sons at Samskrita Bharathi in USA and we used to write exams together. It was the official secret language in our household,” smiles Vijaya, an alumna of Wharton Business School, who runs a pharmaceutical consulting firm based out of USA with her husband.
She then took her children out of their elite private school in Pennsylvania and started home schooling. Ask Vijaya the reason, and she says, “The school they went to had children from highly well-to-do families and immense peer pressure to conform to pop culture, which was not aligned with our core values. That apart, I felt home schooling will teach them far more than what they learn in schools.” She taught them physics and mathematics, while English and fine arts were ‘outsourced,’ and they gave regular exams online.
After relocating to India, the brothers did attend school but immediately discontinued. Siddhartha and Ashok are currently learning from the Stanford University’s online high school curriculum and give standardised examinations. Both boys state that they don’t miss formal school. They have time to pursue music and play the violin, apart from attending Veda classes and teaching Sanskrit. They are also learning Carnatic music from Trivandrum G. Seethalakshmi Ammal and the violin from Charumathi Raghuraman. Siddhartha says he is studying rare compositions from Padmashree SR Janakiraman.
“I can choose the subjects I want and there is no pressure of studying. I get to play a lot as well with my friends in the evening after my Veda classes,” says Ashok with a smile.
However Siddhartha affirms, “We seem to have a lot of free time, but both of us need to be very self-driven and self-motivated for this system to work.” He attributes this discipline to his upbringing. Vijaya adds, “We have no TV. Other than my cell phone and a computer, used for only educational purposes, we don’t have any other gadget in the house. This has helped them to be very focused in what they do. They have like-minded peers and mingle with them.”
