THIS was on Women’s Day, it just happened to be.

There were the usual schemes running in malls for women shoppers, discounts for women in bars, lounges, nightclubs…the urbane upper middle-class woman was being toasted, but she is a fraction of the women in this country. I love the concept of celebrating the female sex, but why restrict it to a single day? I certainly met a very interesting woman at one of this all-women-cocktails-lunch event. I happened to praise the fact that class 10 pre-boards had been scrapped. Phew! What a relief, I said. Well, she said, what great education we give our children anyway, scrap the whole damn thing. My daughter will never have the need for x, y or z in her life. Instead, why don’t they teach her how to change a light bulb? Arithmetic is great if it can be backed up with learning how to build a wall, what goes into buildings. How to make a cup of soup and an egg would be of more use than say learning the subjunctive in grammar. Why don’t they teach children how to make good buys in a supermarket? Speak with confidence? Speak out against injustices? Learn self- defence? Visit parliament so ministers can see that youth are the torchbearers of the future.

A great nation is one that fosters its youth.

She said she had heard someone say “my education started when I left school”.

“So you don’t think from these neat rows of schools emerge these model citizens who drive the national economy?” I asked her.

“Do you…”, she retorted, “Schools should teach skills along with education. Girls should walk heads held high with the boys and the boys must respect the girls… we must teach our daughters the importance of self-worth, of knowing that being tender-hearted is not the same as faint-hearted…of knowing women are not the weaker sex. Let men have babies, let men ferry children between school and activities, let men juggle home, work and in-laws…let men see how the balance of yin and yang is a delicately kept secret by the woman of the house!” Cheers to that, I said, she made us feel good, we all raised a toast to the company on hand. I looked at this frail lady, really looked at her and asked what she did, “I mean do you work?’ I asked this silly social question.

She said she taught the piano. Turned out she was married off when she was 18 and when alone at home, she learnt the piano. It filled the void in her life, and the long lonely hours since her husband worked at sea and her daughter went to school. She began teaching the piano “straight from the heart”.

“All children are gifted. The ones that play, can identify notes and melody are lucky. The ones that cannot still take the melody home with them. Learning is all about fire in the belly, it must come from the heart. The true student burns to know and the teacher is just a medium on that road to self knowledge… a good teacher in turn recognises that fire and helps nurture it, so together they can play a duet.” This woman brought home Women’s Day for me. This high-school graduate piano teacher.

The writer is a theatre director and novelist