My parents have helped me to excel
Nine year-old winner prestigious academic award says: “My parents have helped me to excel.”
The moment you meet nine year old Kehkashan Basu you can tell you are meeting someone just that little bit different. Flanked by her parents she does not wait for them to introduce her, she steps forward with charm and confidence and offers you a firm shake of the hand to introduces herself.
Kehkashan, a grade 4 student at The Millennium School in Dubai has just won the prestigious Sheikh Hamdam Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Distinguished Academic Performance and it is very easy to see why. She is the head girl of the junior school and excels at academic work but she is also a member of the swimming team, the school choir, an avid piano player, a dancer, an artist, an environmentalist, a writer and adviser to Gulf News and she wants to be a nuclear scientist.
Why does she want to be a nuclear scientist?
“I want to harness energy needs of our planet and use sophisticated equipment. I want to learn about nature and the environment.”
And the Gulf News link?
“I went on holiday to Australia and I decided to write about it and I sent it to Gulf News and they published it. Then they asked me to write about authors, then the environment. Then they rang me up to ask me to take part in a discussion of child safety. There were no other children there. Just adults. I had lots to talk about.”
She makes it sound so easy, so normal, the sort of thing any nine year-old would do but, of course, most don’t. Her drive clearly comes from within and from her parents who have taught her to use any opportunity that comes along because it may not knock your door again – and to create your own opportunities. For them learning is everywhere and in everyone you meet – not just in books and classrooms.
Maushum says: “I talk to her about the world and things I have read in books. I drive her to school each morning and I cherish that 15 minutes. We talk – not about school work – but about whatever we think about. I may talk about something in the news, or something I have read. She may talk about what she dreamt about last night.”
Her name is Persian for the Milky Way and her myriad interests suggest she has been aptly named. She is the only child of two devoted parents from Calcutta who have lived in Dubai for 14 years. Her success comes from her character and talent which have been nurtured by a true fusion of home and school.
Her parents have been fully engaged with her educational development since birth. Her mother Swati, who has a BEd and an MA and was a university lecturer in India, gave up her job as a school teacher in Abu Dhabi after Kehkashan’s birth.
“As soon as I looked into her eyes I knew I wouldn’t be able to give enough to teaching other children any more,” says Swati. “I went back for two days after her birth but my heart was at home and I left. You are a mother as a teacher. I did everything for my students - you did not forget them when you went home. They were as much my own children as Kehkashan is now. It was an injustice to them to stay. The staff room was full of my students crying on the day I left.”
Her father, Maushum, an engineer by education is head of marketing for Al-Futtaim Panatech, the sole distributors of Panasonic products in the UAE, so he has a big job outside the home, but he makes time for his daughter every evening after work. Kehkashan has an afternoon nap to make sure she has lots of energy left for him: “We play badminton or board games - it’s fun” he says.
Kehkashan loves going to school and misses it in the holidays. “School makes me happy and I have no fear of my teachers. School completes my identity,” she says.
Michael Gudzer, Principal of The Millennium School, says: “Kehkashan is a vivacious, enthusiastic and extremely intelligent pupils and we were quite confident she would walk away with the top prize. Her parents are equally supportive. This is a proud day for all of us at The Millennium School.”
Mum collects her from school and Kehkashan decants her day to her : “She always has lots to tell me about what went on today – what her teacher said, what she said, what her friends said - later she gets to what she has been learning and talks about that. You can’t stop her!”
At the weekend Kehkashan takes part in clubs for piano, dance and singing. But she is typical nine year -old as well – she loves Chinese food and she wants to learn horse riding but she is slightly scared of horses. “Give it time,” says Swati. These are not pushy parents.
Her favourite school subject is science, her favourite activity is reading and that is the only thing that causes friction with her parents – she will read any time, anywhere, including through family meal times if her parents don’t stop her. She reads encyclopaedias or dictionaries if she runs out of novels. “If a book is sitting beside me, I get so excited I want to read it. I need to pick it up” she says.
She reels off title after title – with author – of books she has read. She has a prodigious memory and picks things up like blotting paper picks up ink. New words come quickly because of her reading, which is why “erstwhile” pops up in her vocabulary and she talks excitedly of just learning the word ‘incognito’ from a story book.
Her English is perfect but she spoke Bengali till she went to nursery school because her parents wanted her to be secure in her native language. She now enjoys learning Arabic and French too.
She would like to go to MIT (the world leading Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA), or her father’s old university – the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, or perhaps Oxford or Cambridge. Her parents have made sure that on family holidays in America and England they have visited the area MIT is in and they have also visited Oxford. They never neglect opportunities.
Yet she is not a child who is constantly studying. Her Mum says she is very organised and gets her school work done so that she can move onto other things of her choice which usually includes an hour of piano practice. “If she gets stuck with her homework she comes and asks me or her father – we are always there if she needs help. But she does like to do it independently – she says she prefers that because then she knows it’s her own work,” says Swati.
Kehkashan spotted the GEMS parent engagement competition, ‘What does Home Mean to our Family’, on a school noticeboard, looked up the details on the website and, as a result, the family are working on their entry together and loving doing it. She actively looks for opportunities.
She learns fast and gets bored easily and likes to try new things – next on her personal agenda is learning the drums and lawn tennis. She enjoys taking part in quizzes and competitions – winning medals in areas as diverse as Chopin piano or Blockbusters competitions.
Both parents stress the importance of education, religion and being proud of your roots, but that makes them sound unremittingly earnest which they are not - they want Kehkashan to have fun and they respect her views. Says her father: “We have always treated her as an adult. We respect her views and she has strong points of view.”
She has influenced the choice of the family car and advises her mother when she thinks it is appropriate to wear traditional Indian dress – Kehkashan was smart in school uniform (although Millennium was closed for the vacation when we met) but her mother was wearing a sari. Says Kehkashan : “It’s important to wear national dress on special occasions.”
The Basus’ agree that it takes a lot of effort to be parents but that it is worth it. “We are happy to do it. We wanted to have her together. It’s a privilege to be her Mum and Dad,” says Maushum. “She is our greatest pleasure. She is our asset – far more than any other asset,” says Swati.
Which leaves the last word to Kehkashan.“My parents are the most important part of my life. It’s because of them I have become like I am. They have helped me to excel in life.”
