A few months from now, exam fever will grip the students’ community of Manipur: The famous HSLC Exams is coming about. For many prospective matriculates, one nightmare certainly would be the subject called Social Sciences Paper I or History. In my more-than-a-decade teaching career, I’ve known a lot of students complaining about this subject. ‘Dislike’ is a very modest term for it. They hated it outright.

True to this partiality, History always performs very poor in school tests and exams.

 Well, why do we hate History anyway? Why do we find it so boring? Why is it so un-scoring?

Okay, I may hit home a few good points or hit not a single nail on the head. But let me try to do something hoping it helps at least somebody in some corner of the universe. If Zogam.com is accessible there too, that is.

History. Hmm, the name itself spells doom, I mean, drowsiness, doesn’t it? A History teacher has to ramble on and on and on. But why not, he is recapitulating history, even prehistory! He is cramming a hundred, a thousand, nay, a million years into 40 or 45 minutes. Won’t that take time, naturally? Sadly though, they say man has an attention span of not longer than five minutes. The good news, however, is that there is a way to trick yourself into having a longer span of concentration.

Well, if you happen to read this line, then you have the capability to perform that trick. If you think you don’t, you never come this far anyway.

The trick, simply, is ‘perspective’. But how do you study History in perspective? The trick itself is tricky, ain’t it? I too didn’t get it. But don’t worry; let’s put it this way: The world is built on History. Cultures issue from History. Scientific findings and developments are results of long standing History. Computer is History. War and peace are outcomes of History. Religion is based on History. In short, the entire knowledge you’ve gathered so far is nothing but accumulation of History. Don’t believe?

You got punished in class today for no fault of yours. You go home, complain to your all-powerful Dad.
Obviously, you have to recount the hows and whys and whens of the event so that you carry your point forward. But this is today’s story, you say? No, that is History. All the stories you read in your History books are once ‘events of a certain day’.

Again, History is like a movie. It is full of war, intrigue, treachery, blood and gore, foibles and follies, spiritualism and Satanism, and all that ‘masala’ you wanted to see in a Hollywood blockbuster. You only have to approach it with the right frame of mind. The action will unfold in front of your eyes.

But there is a big problem: The action did not come to life in your book.

Really? Let’s try this.

Shut the present out for a moment and step into the world of the past! You will meet kings and queens and rajahs and maharajahs, courtiers and councilors. The Crusades will come back with all their bloodshed and horrors. Fat Man and Small Boy will boom in world-shattering proportions. In the meantime, the most beautiful ladies like Cleopatra, Nefertiti, Esther, Helen, Nur Jahan, Diana, Lengtonghoih, and even dubious women like Mata Hari will sashay down the ramp of time to feast your eyes. Then you’ll also meet with people like the Pope, the Christ Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Shiva, Confucius and world famous lawgivers like Manu, Hamurabi, Moses, and their entire ilk. And do you like lovers and heroes? Hercules, Achilles, Robin Hood, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Khupching and Ngambawm, Ngalngam, Kapkhovung, etc. will come to delight your visual senses.

But there’s still a problem: You cannot make your characters jump out.

Well, as regards to that, your subject is not at fault. It’s most probably that you don’t know who they are, what they do, when they live, or what they are all about. There is nothing wrong with the people, the series of events, or the locations. What’s wrong is the comprehension of the language. And here—as far as school curricula are concerned—comes in English. It’s a pity that you have to read all your books in a foreign tongue. I mean, except M.I.L. (I don’t know why they called it ‘major’ as there is nothing major in a tribal language. In fact, we are the infinitesimal minority).

If you can have your English serve you well, then, the actors in your History books will automatically leap out of the pages in three-dimensional figures and you will never get tired of them. Especially in your exams, you’ll only be writing down the scenes playing in 3D-multicolour inside your mind’s eye.

Actually, this ‘perspective studying’ applies to all subjects. I guarantee, if you can see your lessons in the prism of ‘perspective’ and make them come alive, then you can certainly make your dreams come true.

Here I share what I used to do. It may not be the best way, but I used to draw sketches and make comic strips out of my lessons. You know, I’m horrible in drawing. But it stood me in good stead. Most of the stories I learnt that way still stuck in my memory. For, they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.