These Are The Days

Like it or not, we live in the days of ‘Days’. Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Before that there was Women’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Earth Day and Blah-blah Day... and after this there will be Friendship Day, Youth Day, Chocolate Day and Whatnot Day. The problem isn't with having all these days crowding the calendar, but the hype, hoopla and air of expectation generated around them. People often ask me, “Do you believe in this stuff?” More importantly, I often ask myself, “Do I believe in this stuff?”

Well, let’s see.

There was a time when life was simple - uncomplicated by all these ‘Days’. Back then, I did believe in the few that existed – Teacher’s Day, for instance, was always special. But then, the whole world and its auntie started competing to have ‘Days’ earmarked for anything and everything. Now, it’s come to the point where you have ‘Jelly Bean Day’ and ‘Dance Day’ jostling with ‘Hug a Plumber Day’ and ‘Squirrel Appreciation Day’. Yes folks, come January 21, you must go out to your backyard and shake the paws of the squirrels you meet, and give them a handwritten card. And don’t forget to dish out the jadu ki jhappi to the plumber on April 25 every year, to be assured of free-flowing drains and a stink-free home...

(I do NOT exaggerate. In fact, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Doubters, please visit http://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/2013/04/)

Anyway, coming back to the point... with each growing 'Day', my belief wobbled and weakened.

And on went the wobbling, till the day I walked into a neighborhood novelty store just before Friendship Day, and saw youngsters buy ‘friendship bands’ and gifts - all in multiples of 50. While the man at the counter grinned gluttonously and counted the obscene amounts of cash being handed over by these kids. That day, my belief crashed completely.

It was nothing but crass commercialisation, the adult in me rationalised. But even so, the child in me wanted to believe. Fuelled, I daresay, to a great deal by the tamasha the world around me was putting up...

You see, till a few years ago, it was easy for me to turn my nose up at people who asked me about Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, with a “You really don’t think I believe in all this meaningless, commercial bullshit!” – in a tone that would have chilled a polar bear. But now the world around me is making this bullshit harder and harder to ignore.

Just look at what happened yesterday. I got up and unsuspectingly picked up the morning papers - to be immediately bombarded with stories of people with boundless love for their mothers, and outsized commercials holding forth on the virtues of various items as gifts for your dear Mater – from diamonds to Volini balm. The TV, and Friends On The Telephone or FB are no better. Whatever 'Day' be it, the world around you seems to conspire to remind you that celebrations are afoot... and you are not part of it. 

And it definitely does not help that half of my closest friends are teachers. It naturally follows that they have a gaggle of students fawning over them and deluging them with cards and goodies at the drop of a hat... and as for Rose-day, Chocolate-day, Teachers’-day, Valentine’s day, Friendship Day – I suspect they need to get special cupboards built for the booty they collect!

The rest of my friends are in the “Have Money. No Commitments - Except to Spend Money” age bracket.  And they just can’t keep their big mouths shut around Friendship Day or Valentine’s Day or Whatnot Day. They start talking about gifts and cards a month before D-day... and afterwards, follow it up with discussions related to the loot.

And the feeling of inadequacy deepens...

Meanwhile, this Mother’s day came and went just like umpteen others did before that - uneventful. Well, almost - if you don’t count the slightly drooping stem of lilies my daughter brought me. She and a friend had each swiped one from the decorations on the car of a newly wedded couple in the neighborhood – with the noble intent of gifting them to their respective mothers!

Well, what the heck! I guess I’ll have to make do with that for now - after all, she was willing to take a risk for me!

And meanwhile, the jury inside my head is still out, debating, “To believe, or not to believe, that is the question...”

Kids Shids tey Chicken Khurana

At the very beginning, let me salute every fond Mama or Papa who has gladly suffered their kids’ birthday parties year after year - armed with a grin and a jar of Tiger Balm.

For me, it has been the same old story for the past 19 years... I have gotten all gung ho about celebrating the b'day of one or the other of my kids. But as D-day/B-day came near, my gung-ho-ness levels had fallen rapidly... and by the time the day had got over, I had been left wishing that I was elsewhere - maybe some serene place where wild dogs were tearing me apart, or a slobbering monster was boiling me in hot oil...

Because whenever I think ‘Kid’s Birthday Party’, a nightmarish slideshow flashes through my head: I am surrounded by about 253 open mouths – all yelling chaotically choreographed yells of ‘Auntie more cake’, ‘Auntie juice’, ‘Auntie toilet’ or some such thing. There are kids crawling out of the woodwork and tumbling out of every cupboard. And the noise!! 2-3 hours of non-stop, incredible decibel levels of NOISE! When the attack finally subsides, I am left with confetti strewn all around, unsightly coke and food stains on the sofa, maybe a few broken chairs or curtain rods... and of course, a bunch of recycled gifts.

3 years ago, I almost swore off kids’ parties of any type – after being under siege for more than 24 hours, by my daughter and her two friends who had come to spend a day at our place. Back then, I had come home from work to find that the three 9-year olds had massacred half of my wardrobe and cosmetics, left 3 huge depressions on my bed after having used it as a trampoline (WITH my high heeled shoes on, from the look of it), and used my best perfumes as air fresheners – spraying them indiscriminately all over the house.

So last week, when Ananya asked for a birthday party, I thought I would be smarter this time around, and take her out with a handful of her friends. Minimise collateral damage and all that, you know.

It was one of the MOST feather brained ideas I could have come up with. When I had asked her if she wanted to go for a movie with a few friends, the number I had in mind was 3, or maybe 4 kids. Gross miscalculation – I had neither factored in the pester power of siblings nor Ananya’s generosity when it came to handing out invitations.

Saturday, 10^th November arrived. And so did the kids – all 10 of them. No last minute no-shows (as I had half hoped)!

After they had stuffed themselves with home made namkeen and murukku (courtesy, my ma-in-law), loads of gooey chocolate cake and coke, we left for the multiplex to catch a movie. We had barely reached our seats, when a couple of kids piped up, ‘Auntie, Coke aur Popcorn?’ Of course! After all, it was all of 20 minutes since they had eaten! Rama (one of the parents who had accompanied me) and I shushed them, saying, ‘Later.’ But we knew we could not stall for too long.

And I learnt an important lesson in life... the hard way. Never, EVER take a gang of kids to watch a movie with a leitmotif of food... and farts. Luv Shuv tey Chicken Khurana is an enjoyable movie... but NOT if you are watching it with nearly a dozen kids seated in the row behind you. Everybody knows that kids turn into cola-and-popcorn-processing machines even while watching a regular movie - imagine what would happen in a movie where there is constant banter about food! And the less said about kids' affinity for fart jokes, the better.

Still, it was a novel experience! I don’t think I will ever again watch a movie where every fifth line spoken by an actor is punctuated by a dismembered voice muttering, ‘Auntie, khana kab aayega?’ behind me. And when I was not experiencing some spectral being breathing down my neck (quite literally), I was running outside to fetch water, or food, or haranguing the assistant at the food stall outside to hurry up with the food and save my life!

Finally the movie ended. And it was time for – what else, more food. This time around it was burger meals at a fast food joint. When the kids were ordering, I was certain we were ordering too much. 40 minutes later, looking at the cleaned up plates, I wondered if we had ordered too little...

Anyway, the party finally ended after dropping the kids back home. Ananya left to continue her party – at a friend’s place. Just as I was about to  change into my night clothes and fall upon the bed, my son asked which movie we had been to. “Luv Shuv tey Chicken Khurana,” said I. “Chicken! I miss chicken...,” said the lad, “Can we go out and get some... now?”

It was 10.15 pm.

But it was no point trying to... err... chicken out. There was to be no escape from food (and yes, chicken) for me that day!

45 minutes later, we were at a neighbourhood pub. As Amartya devoured chicken seekhs with gusto, I sat sipping on some warm cognac, my brain in a ‘time out’ state.

It was peacetime - after a one-day frenzied war. I felt content. The kids had enjoyed themselves to the hilt. (And though I simply hate to admit it in public, I kind of had a good time too!) My daughter, of course, was thrilled to bits with the party. 

And that, I guess, is why we Mamas and Papas of the world do it... over and over again, every year. Sure, it’s a lot of effort... but ultimately, that’s chicken feed when it's your child’s happiness at stake...

India 'International'

HELLLLLP!!!!!

We, the Indian Middle Class, are at the receiving end of an 'International' conspiracy! The infamous ‘Foreign Hand’ has diversified beyond politics now! I am speaking of the 'International' Schools that are springing up at an alarming rate all over the countryside.

Until 15 years ago or so, the magic mantra in education was 'Convent Schools'. Back then, everybody wanted the 'Convent' school tag. Every Sharmaji, Ghosh babu and Singh saab would proudly announce, "Our son goes to a Convent, you know!" And while this might conjure up the image of an adolescent boy running amuck amongst a flock of nuns, in reality it would probably mean the boy attended a school run by missionaries. It was equally likely, however, that the kid went to some place called 'St. Vivekananda Convent Public School'. Or maybe even, 'DAV Public Convent School'. DAV-Public-Convent!! What kind of lethal cocktail is that, you might think... but yeh India hai yaar, the land of Matar Paneer Pizza and International Vaishnav cuisine. Yahan sab kuch possible hai! Apart from catching Don, that is.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, what 'Convent' schools were to the Indian middle class at one time, 'International' schools are today.

Now, everybody wants to jump on to the 'International' bandwagon. No longer is ‘International’ a bastion of the rich and famous. Go to any middle-class neighbourhood in a metro. Go to Warangal, Chhindwara or Jhumri Telaiya. Chances are, there is at least one 'International' school there.

However, 'International' schools today are no more ‘International’ than the 'Convent schools' of yore were places ‘inhabited and run by nuns’. Based on my observations, I would say there are essentially 3 types of International Schools:

1. The La-Di-Da International School (Or, as they increasingly seem to prefer calling themselves now – the La-Di-Da ‘World’ School). These are the schools where the rich and famous RNIs (Resident Non Indians) send their children. These schools follow an International(IB or IGCSE) curriculum. But more importantly, the principal (male or female) has the liberty to come to school wearing shorts, and the first mandatory lesson for every student is 'How to Walk with your Nose in the Air.' They also learn other essential life skills, like - 'How to tell in half a sip whether the water that you have been served is really Evian or not'...

2. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the 'International Public Schools' - the modern day avatars of the ‘ST. Vivekananda DAV Convent Public Schools'. Schools with a 'flavour of the month' approach to education (and accordingly, tag 'Convent', 'Public' or 'International' on to the school's name) - to beckon to the largest possible number of gullible middle class parents.

3. And finally, there are the middle of the road ‘BlueToes International Schools’ of the world – who believe that adopting an outlandish name will catapult them into the class of La-Di-Da International schools. Here, the teachers themselves try to master how to walk with their noses in the air, before they impart this important skill to the students.

We are one of those hapless parents who have inadvertently landed up in the grip of the Foreign Hand. Trying to choose the 'best education' for our daughter, Ananya, we enrolled her in an International school that was set up in our neighbourhood. Two years down the line, we are rubbing our heads and trying to figure out exactly what kind of blunt weapon we've coshed ourselves with...

The 'Foreign' Hand(s)

The school, though new, belonged to a school chain of some repute, and we were given to understand that the school will:

• follow the highly esteemed Cambridge (CIE) Curriculum
• engage highly experienced teachers
• introduce a huge number of co-curricular activities
• embrace a truly ‘International’ spirit

We soon found out exactly how true each of these were...

• 'following' the highly esteemed Cambridge Curriculum – So it is done... by the teachers, at least. In other words, the teachers are 'following' the syllabus so zealously, they have forgotten all about the kids... leaving them far, far behind...
• engaging 'highly experienced' teachers – True again. For example, the Physics teacher might be an accomplished cook, and the Music teacher might have vast experience in gardening. But previous experience in what they have to teach the kids - bah, that is so, so passe!
• introducing a number of co-curricular activities – Ekdum true. A whole shedload of them, actually. Here’s a list:
  --Football coaching started. 2 full sets of football kit bought. 2 matches played. Football coaching stopped.
  --Keyboard lessons started. Huge, expensive keyboard bought. Lugged to school once every week for 3 weeks. Keyboard classes abandoned.
  --Skating lessons started. Most expensive skates in the market bought (upon teacher’s insistence) along with full skating kit. A grand total of 3 classes over 2 weeks. Skating lessons stopped.
  And that is just the beginning of the list...
  Well, they said they would introduce many activities, they introduced many activities. Who had said anything about continuity or quality, anyway?
• embracing a truly ‘International’ spirit - Sure! True 'international spirit' was amply demonstrated when the school made a dress code for the teachers - 'AVOID Indian wear'. It's also nurtured in many other small ways - like the music lessons, where the kids engage in the deeply artistic activity of downloading the latest Justin Bieber songs (and their lyrics) from Youtube. And this, under instructions from the music teacher, mind you! But recently, they truly outdid themselves in this 'International spirit' thing with a real brainwave - they made it compulsory for the kids to buy a blazer! Way to go!

Last week, I saw Ananya leave for school - yoga mat tucked under one arm, umbrella hanging from the other, 30 Kg school bag mounted on her shoulder - and of course, blazer firmly in place over her clothes. In the Mumbai rains. With the sweltering heat.

Time to look out for a new school, I guess.

Childwise

KidCommandment#1


Last week, Ananya, my 10 year-old informed me that I just have to take her to watch the just released potboiler, ‘Ready’.

While I do admit Salman’s patented brand of puerility is sometimes good for a laugh or two, I was quite up to my gills in it after Dabangg. Let me put it this way, I was not ‘Ready’-ready just yet.

So I hemmed and hawed and said,“Umm… don’t know how the film is going to be. Let us take a look at the papers and see what Shubhra periamma has to say about it.”  (The periamma in question here being my sis-in-law Shubhra Gupta, a highly regarded film critic with the Express group.)

“Ya, let’s”, she said. So I did that, and duly reported back: “Periamma says the film is a dud... pretty silly and mindless, and not funny at all.”

“Shubhra periamma said it’s silly?” said Ananya, with a furrowed brow.

“Yes”, I said.

“And not funny?” The furrow deepened.

“Yup... not a bit”, said I, barely able to hide a triumphant smile - I might not have to endure ‘Ready’ after all!

The furrow cleared and she broke into a wide smile…“Oh great! Phir toh mujhe pakka achchi lagegi film! Book the tickets, na!”

The rationale, as you must have guessed, being: ‘If a knowledgeable adult pans the film, it must be a great film for juveniles of all shapes and sizes.’ Beat that for logic!

Amazing, how kids instinctively suspect/dislike/reject anything and everything that adults close to them choose to advocate! And the other way round, too.

And I remembered incidences from my childhood… I remember rejecting ice cream - yes you heard that right! (I know those of you who have seen me in recent times tucking into a 1-litre tub of Natural's jamun ice cream or Baskin Robbin's dark chocolate will find this rather hard to believe... :-/)

But seriously, I grew up totally hating ice cream – because the gaggle of 9 adults at home tried to make sure I only had 'healthy' ice creams (Kwality ke vanilla cups to be precise, which they called the ‘doodh-wala ice cream’). My heart, on the other hand, longed for those 20-paise wala orange and cola flavoured iced lollies, which the adults back at home claimed were made with ‘gutter ka pani’. But my tongue would literally hang out at the very sight of those lollies in all those interesting colours and flavours, while I felt like puking if I so much as even smelt a ‘doodh-wala’ ice cream.

Which brings us to…

KidCommandment#1: Anything that adults recommend strongly is uncool and eminently useless.

And the natural corollary to this: Anything that adults discourage strongly is worthy of exploration.

There are other pearls of wisdom that my brats have taught me over the years, which I will put forth in the coming days... those of you who have kids of your own, do share your gems too - along with your learnings, naturally - share your  own KidCommandments!

Indore and the Outdore Kids

It all started off with an innocuous suggestion from me to the Bhanpura kids and their mothers on my last trip there – “Bachchon ko baahar ghumane le jaaoon?”

‘Haan haan,” they said, with apparent enthusiasm, “le jao le jao”. Still, I didn’t quite believe them. After all, this was a remote MP village, with a highly orthodox community where there is still no girl who has passed grade 10, and children are betrothed at the ripe age of 10 or 11.

So the disbelief continued, as 2 months later, I asked for the actual list of kids who were willing to come for an overnight trip to Indore – with a verbal consent from their parents. In a couple of hours I had 22 names - boys and girls ranging from 8 to 18, and the list was growing. I was forced to turn bureaucratic and put in age limits and other constraints to truncate the fast-growing list.

List in hand, it finally hit me - this trip was actually happening! I was going to have to take 20 kids from Bhanpura (a small 70-family village), most of whom had never ever stepped outside their village, to Indore for a 2-day picnic.

I did a casual stock-taking of things that could go wrong – suppose some kid gets lost?

Suppose a kid gets diarrhoea? Or sunstroke?

Suppose at night they all panic and want to go back home?

P-A-N-I-C!!!!

Several extra-large shudders ran down my spine. ‘Stop!”. I thought. “Focus on the planning, baaki dekh lenge...”

Bhanpura Invades...

16^th April. D-day. Nothing much went wrong in our journey from Bhanpura to Indore– if you discount a 2.5 hour delay in starting, 3 new kids joining the group at the last minute without any prior notice, and 15 out of the 19 kids feeling queasy in the vehicles (most had never been inside a vehicle for so long before).

But then, there was a bright side too... not ONE of the 15 queasy kids actually threw up. I almost started believing that god actually exists...

We reached Indore around noon, and after a quick lunch and a wash, asked the kids whether they wanted to rest or go out. Go out, was the unanimous choice. My comrades in arms consisted of Toofan, the 20-year old Bhanpura boy who shoulders a large part of the responsibility of educating Bhanpura’s young ones, and Shashanka, my crazy and quirky friend from Ahmedabad who (probably in the bravest decision of his life) had offered to join us in Indore and chaperone the kids.

So we set out – for the zoo, at 2 o’clock on a hot April afternoon! I was petrified that on a hot afternoon like this the animals would have retreated inside and the kids would be left disappointed. But clearly, God was working overtime. We were regaled with sightings of Bengal tigers, Himalayan bears, White tigers, elephants, crocodiles and numerous exotic birds. We even caught a glimpse of a couple of hippos – though they just stood still inside their dingy quarters with their behinds squarely facing us. The children could not see anything beyond their enormous behinds – and if in future they are asked to describe a hippo, I am afraid, the description might be rather biased. ;-)

The next 24 hours was a pot-pourri of experiences. We went to the airport, a mall, a movie, a park and temples of various shapes, architectural styles, and faiths. We manoeuvred 20 kids for a distance of what seemed like 10 km through a thick Kumbh-Mela-ish crowd in the old city area. We ran out of food at the mess at 10 in the night (obviously, city people underestimate rustic appetites!) and had to go out to buy extra food.

And I ran into a major, major challenge, which somehow I had not foreseen at all.

The MOST wanted destination in Indore :-/

‘Didi, mujhe zor se lagi!”

When we started off, I had no idea how many times I was going to hear this in the next 2 days!

Yes, the biggest challenge during the trip seemed to be not food, or water, or safety – but how to find a public toilet every 30 minutes or so - when one kid or the other would want to go to the loo. And these being truly unfettered ‘outdoor’ kids, it was tough to make them withhold themselves even for a few minutes. Even as I frantically looked around for a toilet, they would just happily get about the business of peeing, right where they were. 
Including in the middle of a busy road...

After throwing several blue fits in the beginning of the trip when this happened, I came to terms with it. I started planning the rest of the tour around public toilets...

Just as first timers planning a visit to a tourist destination ask locals about the nearest bus stand or hotel, I would punctuate my queries about every destination in Indore with “Achcha, wahan nearest toilet kahan milega?”

Sheela ki jawani – the Bhanpura remix

Back at the hostel at night, the kids told me they were going to put up a dance show. I was expecting some traditional fare. I was in for a surprise.

The first group started off - singing and dancing to ‘Sheela ki jawani’ – and I braced myself. Somehow, watching a bunch of ten-year-olds singing and dancing suggestively to ‘I’m too sexy for you’ was simply unpalatable to me. But it was their own remixed version, with all the offensive lines having undergone a mutation:

“My name is Sheela...
Sheela ki jawani...
ankhen dekhe for you
 main tere haath na aani...”

went their version... and I sighed with puritanical relief!

The Outdore kids

One of the best liked attractions for the kids was the Treasure Island Mall. The kids gaped unabashedly at the shops, relished Mcdonald’s ice cream cones, and screamed excitedly inside the elevators. But the biggest hit were the free rides... on the escalators in the mall! After an initial apprehension, they went up and down the escalators repeatedly, screaming ‘Didi, phir chalenge jhoole mein... phir se.. phir se!!’

How simple and easy it is, to make these kids happy! And what a welcome change from the ennui of city kids.

Whatever, in those two days I spent with the Bhanpura kids, for the first time I started understanding a bit about them and their perspective.

The first day, I behaved like a typical urban mom, trying to get the kids to drink ‘safe’ water – from mineral water bottles or pouches. I learnt my lesson rather quickly, though. They took big gulps of water, swished it about inside their mouths, gargled with it – and then squirted it out. They just would NOT drink it. ‘Yeh paani toh kadhwa hai’, they said. So we had no go but to allow them to drink regular water from filters and coolers at public places.

How polarised our perspectives were! While we swear by mineral water bottles and have actually come to like the sanitised taste, they could not stand it, and rejected it outright! And, no one was worse for the wear - not ONE upset tummy.

Then there was the issue of privacy. Or rather, their preference for the lack of it.

We had booked 8 rooms for the 16 girls and myself. We finally crowded into 4 – while 4 rooms lay completely vacant! The kids preferred crowding 4 in a room – they were just not used to sleeping in a non-crowded space.

To my consternation, even bathing and going to the loo were community activities for them... and every time I went into the bathroom, alone, I wondered if they would find it a terribly impolite action on my part... :-/

And I mused. Over how urban kids learn to guard their privacy so quickly, demanding their own room, exclusive wall space to put up pictures of stars and so on – and how the Bhanpura brigade absolutely revelled in the lack of it. Understandably so, of course.

Urban lives revolve around the self. Rural lives, around family and the community.

“Hope you survived!”

Thus spake Uma, my friend from Indore (who, incidentally, had disappeared mysteriously when she heard I was descending on Indore with 20 kids...) when it was all over. “Barely”, said I. Adding that I still had occasional nightmares about manouevering 20 kids through the Kanch (Jain) temple area on Mahavir Jayanti... and I still hear voices in my head saying "Didi, mujhe zor se lagi..."

But overall, when I think of the experience, I can only think of the joy and the excitement on the faces of the kids. I smile thinking of the time when they gasped, "Waaaaah! Itna bada TV!", when we took them to a theatre for a movie. And I smile a little more, when I think of some of the girls quietly slipping their small, sweaty hands into mine while walking on crowded streets.

Some people told me, “Arre, it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for these kids.”

I honestly hope it isn’t. Not for them. And not for me, either.




PS: Thanks Uma, for coining that lovely term, OUTDORE ;-) (And hope you don't mind my stealing it - it just fitted the context so much, I just could not resist...)

Assembly Line

Ok... this is something a lot of people might identify with..


The last 3 days, I have been trying to teach my daughter Ananya some stuff she has been learning at school – about ‘Assembly Lines’. Yes, you heard right – not Fractions, not Tenses, not even States of India – things we feel are reasonable for a 4^th grader to be learning in school... but all about Assembly lines... principles of Assembly Lines, advantages of Assembly Lines, types of Assembly lines – the whole hog...

This is definitely a far cry from the times when the only kind of ‘assembly lines’ a 4^th grader was expected to know about were the serpentine queues of students at the morning prayers. But obviously, some educationists think differently... clearly, they think the ripe old age of 9 or 10 years is the appropriate time for 'Business Studies' - the right time to learn all about Principles of Trade and Production, Primary, Secondary & Tertiary business sectors etc. .. and also about the Indus Valley Civilization, the Vedic Culture and such things in Humanities...

In her last Business Studies exam, Ananya was asked to ‘Write the functions of money’. Drawing directly from her personal experience, she wrote, “Money is for giving, getting and keeping safely.” Quite a gem, I thought. No prizes for guessing that it was marked wrong by the teacher, and awarded a zero. Who cares about appreciating original thinking...!

Last year, we had made what we thought was an educated choice, to put Ananya in a school offering the CIE (Cambridge) curriculum. We thought this curriculum would be easier, more practically oriented and less rote based. Obviously, we underestimated the capacity of our system to make a rote based system out of everything. Their Science book has  a good design to encourage the spirit of scientific enquiry - all kinds of interesting experiments to try out, provision to formulate and write down their hypotheses, then verify with the results of the actual experiment etc. It has all of this - but all they actually do is to copy some sample readings from the textbook to a work book... so much for Science learning...

And if I speak any more about their woes in Humanities and Business Studies, I will not be able to stop myself from pulling out my hair or breaking something...

Well... what can we do now – it was our choice, after all... so we woefully debate alternatives for her future... and get whatever fringe benefits we can in the meantime... Like the wonderful Lucille Ball video I found on Youtube while trying to show Ananya videos related to what an ‘Assembly Line’ looked like... She found it hilarious and showed it to her friends in school – and a new generation discovered the comic genius of Lucy (whose shows I grew up on – DD used to air them in the 70’s...) :)

(here's the link for those who love Lucy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wp3m1vg06Q)

So, we will continue to suffer silently – Ananya trying to mug up the Principles of an Assembly Line and spellings like 'Conveyor Belt' – and we trying to help her make some sense of what she is mugging up...

Meanwhile, here is my take on a good example of an Assembly Line... Ananya's school....

     SCHOOL

TEEN-da-PUNCH

Well, I have already written about one of my inventions - my daughter Ananya... but so far, I have mentioned my other invention, my teenaged son Amartya, only in passing. The time has now come to let my friends and enemies know a bit more about this invention too...

You may say, 'Friends, sure, we understand - but why tell your enemies?" Let's say, it's that time of the year where you are supposed to be kind to your enemies... and in a bid to bring some cheer into the lives of those who have long suppressed their wish to boil me in oil and other such stuff, I bring this unique Christmas gift... exposing the terrific torment I undergo at the hands of my teen.

(I notice the dictionary gives four quite different meanings of 'terrific' - astounding, terrifying, frightful and splendid - here, you can choose whichever meaning you prefer, or a combo of all four....)

I will write no more... but the 6000 words below should say it all...
(using the equation: 1 picture = 1000 words)

Stop #1: Bhatiwara (continued)

"The should we hope for our future"


(continuing the Bhatiwara school story...)

The secondary school was next. There, the teachers sat in the ‘staff room’ correcting papers of the recently held monthly tests. Meanwhile, most of the students just sat listlessly in their classrooms, doing nothing. It is funny, how without learning anything they go on having tests.

The teachers were correcting the papers with such a grave air that I did not even dare to ask them to take a class. Instead I sat around, and started looking through the corrected papers.

They were Class 8 English papers, with the usual stuff – grammar, paragraph, textual based questions.

Question #3 caught my imagination – it asked, “What should we hope for our future?”. A textual question – but an intriguing one.

Most of the papers had questions copied from the board, but not much else. The students’  favourite mode of ‘answering’ seemed to be to pick some random word (or group words) from that or some other question and rewrite those as the ‘answer’. Like:

Q: “Who were trapped in the well?”
A: “Should we hope trapped in the well”

As I looked through more papers, those of the higher scoring students, my consternation grew. In one question, the students were asked to write a paragraph on ‘My family’.

I picked the paper of the student who had scored ‘well’ on this question. This is how his answer script looked:

My family

“I have a pet dog.
His name is Moti.
He is black in colour.” 

And so on...

Sanjay, their teacher, saw me staring at this answer and explained. Apparently, the only paragraph ‘taught’/dictated in class was ‘My Pet Animal’. So the few students who had the ability to memorize, had done so and tried to reproduce it verbatim... oblivious to the fact that the topic given in the exam was quite different.

Sanjay defended it saying that he had to give marks to whoever had written anything, since the standard was so abysmal and 70% students could not write, and hence not even attempt the question.

There was more. There was an essay to be written on ‘My school’. I am replicating here part of the essay written by one of the best students in the class – interspersed with my own comments in italics. 

My School

The actual answer script

I read in Senior Middle School Bhatiwara.
(Ok. The start seems encouraging!)

It has a red building with 15 rooms.
(Well, it is actually a blue building with 3 rooms.)

There are 35 teachers in my school.
(The school has 3 teachers, counting the para teacher. Well, it is understandable that to a child 1 teacher might seem like a whole army.. but still – from 3 to 35...?)

The 'red' school building with all '35' teachers standing in front of it 

The name of my principal is Mr. S D Sharma.
(The principal of the school is Mohanji)

He is a learned prison.
(Hmm... we can debate whether this one is a ‘careless slip’ on the child’s part, or a deep philosophical comment on the education system...)

(Don't misunderstand the intention here, the humour is directed only at our toothless sytem...)


The student had just mugged up the essay from a guide book and reproduced it. In this case I was not that uncomfortable about the student scoring well, because an essay does not necessarily have to be factually correct. The fact that the student had interpreted the question correctly and written these few lines almost flawlessly was an achievement in itself!

The sad thing is - that students who have the ability to mug up and write so much, have actually not been taught anything ‘real’ – not even to substitute ‘red’ with ‘blue’ where needed!

Well, I also started to understand what these tests are about. I realized every English test here is basically a test of pattern recognition for them - irrespective of class, topic etc. The children recognise that whenever the paper contains one particular series of ‘symbols’, they need to put down another fixed set of symbols as the correct response. For example, I might go and tell the kids that they would see this sequence in the exams:

“Quadrile Gryphon advise Jabberwocky?”

They should recognise this sequence, and put down the sequence “Gryphon gobbledegook advised Jabberwocky” in response. And that is what the brighter ones will do. Reproduce it unquestioningly, without deciphering anything at all in the jumble of symbols, let alone comprehending the ‘meaning’ of a particular group of symbols... 

So much for language teaching...

But despite everything, the situation is not hopeless. Sanjay, who has started teaching just a few weeks ago and is yet to settle down into the indifferent and apathetic attitude that prevails, declares his intent of at least seeing to it that by the end of the term all the kids know their alphabet. A noble thought, and I hope he is able to do some good to some batches of students before the systemic apathy catches up.

Incidentally, one of the best answers that I saw to the “What should we hope for the future?” question was: “The should we hope for our future.” MS Word might look down on this sentence and mark it with a green squiggly line... But think of this - this kid had actually figured out some rules for himself – he had some idea of the general ‘form’ the answer to this question should take! 

Definitely, that infused me with a bit of hope...


I originally ended Part 2 of my Bhatiwara chronicles here, but a friend who read it criticised me for sounding too much like the media - sensationalising without taking responsibility. Well, while this may be somewhat true, I can't do anything much at this point - except declare that my intent is to try and bring in change - and invite ideas and discussions for the same.


I am not sure what could be done - need specific ideas. I dn't know how much longer the present class 8 batch will be there. But for the next batch of class 7 and 8 students (present 6 and 7), is there any way we can help ensure that at least 80% of students do not leave the school without learning to read at least one language with comprehension? 


I am going to try very hard to do that...