I thought I had a problem with the language of mathematics. I always used to get confused between ‘addhai’ and ‘dhed’. Occasions wherein I paid one instead of the other with sometimes hilarious consequences are too many to recount.

But just as I stopped crying about my not having shoes when I met a man who had no feet, my mathematical challenges paled into insignificance when I met Prof Y. Z. Reddy who is popularly known as X Maaaastaru in Cuddapah District.

He told me about an errant student of his who for the life of a dinosaur could not fathom the difference between thousands, lakhs, crores etc., and always got confused by the number of zeroes these represented. Even when they tried to teach him street level jargon like peti, khoka and so on, it just didn’t work.

So this kid lived his adolescent life below the pass mark and stumbled from one class to the next only because his family had a grave digging background. Any one who did not treat them well, this family took very gravely…and seriously annihilated families by the dozens.

That would have been okay and the kid would have got tucked into the many folds of history if not for the fact that his father (God Rest his Soul) became the Chief Honcho of an enterprise called Andhra Pradesh.

And lo and behold, the son put the scare of the holy ghost in all and sundry and started collecting funds as a hobby. The only problem was that when he actually wanted a few thousands, he would ask for a few lakhs…and when he wanted a few hundreds he would demand crores. Poor chap. Even after he had grown up his counting skills were still suspect as hell. Or so the CBI enquiry established.

And now we come to the moral of the story. Those people who are good at maths, allow themselves to be limited by their vocabulary. But here is a case of the chap who didn’t know his onions from his tomatoes waking up one morning and suddenly being told that accumulation of obscene wealth to the tune of several lakh crores was not acceptable…was not quite the gentlemanly thing to do.

Last heard of, the lamenting son was planning to impregnate his wife again in the hope that she would beget him a son who could be taught the right numbers…so that by the time he was a full grown man, he could set right the books of his father and get him out of jail or CBI Custody whichever was closer.