JHAPA: Grandmas across the world generally wake up to a conventional morning schedule to see their grandchildren off to school, but a 55-year-old granny here in Jhapa district has something more to do.

Pancha Maya Baraili of Jyamirgadhi-2 of Jhapa in the south-eastern tip of Nepal leaves her grandchildren to the school and hurries off to Kalika Primary School where she studies in Grade One. She is a regular student attending full classes from 10 am to 4 pm with four- to seven-year-old pupils.

This believe-it-or-not sort of fact may sound amusing to our ears, but the reason working behind the sudden propulsion that has driven this middle-aged woman to attend classes is enough to raise your eyebrows.

Baraili decided to join school as she could not help herself from her inability to decipher the letters and words used in her mobile phone.

She has two sons, aged 36 and 26. Both her sons are in the foreign land as migrant workers. Her youngest son is in India with his spouse. The grandma currently lives with her elder daughter-in-law and grandchildren.

She is finding it hard to use the mobile phone which her son presented her. “I have asked many to teach me how to use the mobile phone,” Baraili said. For many days, she asked others to dial the number and after finding out the problem, she decided to take the unprecedented step.

“I was ashamed at the beginning to go to school and study beside students of grandchildren’s age,” she confided, adding “But, I made the decision as there was no other way out except for understanding to decipher the letters.”

Her daily life has changed after she started to attend school. She wakes up in the early morning, and after ritualistic offerings and prayers to the God, she sees her grandchildren off to school and then heads to her own school.

Her grandchildren study at a local private school.

An employee at the Bhaibav Tea Garden, Baraili retired voluntarily due to age bar this year.

In her tender age, Baraili was deprived of the opportunity to go to school and got married at the age of 16 with Hasta Bahadur Baraili.

At the school, her peers call her "grandma" and she addresses them as grandchildren. She does not hesitate to ask the children what she does not understand in class. “They are young, but it does not matter,” Baraili said, adding, “They teach me well.”

For her teachers, the woman is a diligent student and does home works at her home when she has spare time.

Rita Pyakurel, a teacher at the school, is exuberant to see the zeal and motivation in Baraili.

“It was difficult at the beginning to teach her,” Pyakurel said. “I found it hard to teach a woman of the age of my mother, and then how could I scold her,” she added.

Pyakurel further said that her eldest student has made better and expected progress in writing and reading.

And, yes, by now she has also started using her mobile phone without any help needed!