BEST TEACHER

"I really can't believe it....
the day has come...when the best teacher in the whole wide world is leaving!!!
i hope that all the CBSE NISVians have understood what i am talking about....
dearest Diya Ma'am ,
you brought tears to my eyes today ! this was the first time i ever cried in school!!
ma'am you r very very veryyyyy close to our hearts!!
we love you a lot!!
ma'am please do come often to visit us at school!!
we will never forget you !!
i hope even you won’t!!
WE LOVE YOU A TON!!!
WE WILL MISS YOU ALOT!!

love you ma'am.........

from Reetika

— :-( feeling broken."

This moving message on Facebook by my niece about her best teacher was indeed straight from her heart. The helplessness and sadness at watching her best teacher leave is clearly evident in every phrase of her emotionally charged update. Curious about why she felt so strongly for her Diya Ma’am, Reetika told me in very few words the making of a great teacher. Excellent teacher, Diya ma’am was one who had a unique way of correcting the mistakes of her students. Never the one to lose her temper, nor did she raise her voice on the students. Instead Diya ma’am’s words of reason and motivation always worked magic on everyone and even the naughtiest and most stubborn souls relented. ‘There was only one Diya ma’am!’ – Reetika signed off.

Déjà vu moment!!! I am sure we all have experienced similar heartbreaks at losing our teacher who became our world, who transformed us and who provided us that extra bouncing pad that turned around our life – that teacher, My Best Teacher.

Mrs. Swamy my first teacher changed my life and the course of my life, something which I realized years later. Even after 37 years she remains ingrained in my memory and my gratitude for her grows with every passing day. Mrs. Swamy was my kindergarten teacher by accident. Yes, by accident or say by chance!

Admitted into one of the best schools in that city, my weaning away from my parents was not a smooth one. Not ready to go to school easily, my constant blubbering had my original designated kindergarten teacher literally pulling her hairs to ends. Completely clueless how to engage me in the class and contain my passionate howling, in a few days, I had become the centre of comic attraction for everyone. And then one day when I sneaked out of the college premises during school hours to go home my adventure proved too much for the comfort of my principal. I was promptly sent back home with a written note from the principal ‘ Do not send your ward to school from tomorrow’.

Today I can perhaps understand the helplessness that my parents would have felt at this juncture. Next day my parents took me to school and met the principal, a kind of last ditch effort to save me in the school. But our Anglo-Indian principal was firm on his decision. He did not want to risk it anymore especially after my effort to escape the four walls of the school. My parents were crestfallen – one at their failure to enroll me to a school and second at the fact that I was being turned away from a very good school after gaining entry in the same.

Mrs. Swamy another kindergarten teacher in the same school, who had witnessed all my crying and drama stepped in like an angel at this stage. She became my accidental teacher. Understanding me and my parent’s state, she offered to keep me in her section at her own risk for a week to see if this worked. Even principal did not know about this and Mrs. Swamy took a huge risk by keeping me in. I faintly remember that once inside the class, how she first let me cry to my heart’s content. Then came the recess and Mrs. Swamy took me in her lap and put me on the table in front of her. She opened my tiffin as well as her lunch box. I forgot my crying. She felt like mother. We both ate our tiffin together and there started our friendship. By the end of the first week, I was coming to her class happily. I waited for the recess and as the bell rang, I was on Mrs. Swamy’s desk with my tiffin. Principal sir, at seeing my remarkable progress under Mrs. Swamy’s tutelage allowed me to continue. A year passed and I was promoted to the next class. That was the last time Mrs. Swamy taught me but I kept progressing and stayed for 12 long years in that school.

Till today I feel that my schooling had a tremendous impact on me and shaped me in a way. It all would not have been possible without Mrs. Swamy.

'Mrs. Swamy wherever you are, I owe this to you and I want to say a big THANK YOU!!!'

Going back to Reetika, my niece, she told me that her Diya Mam was very understanding. She understood the concerns, anxieties and aspirations of her students. Something that made Diya ma’am standout in the crowd.

Generation Z kids (born 2000 and later) are different and need to be understood and appreciated more than anything else. A word of reason works much more than a coercion; a word of appreciation is a much bigger motivation than a certificate or a medallion.

Every teacher can be the best teacher if they make an attempt to understand the Gen Z kids – tech-savvy, very aware and very inquisitive. Remember they are much more assertive and will not accept anything without understanding the reason behind the same. Content expertise of a teacher today is a default assumption. A great teacher understands his/her students and knows a way to talk to them that can make them do wonders. Mrs. Swamy was ahead of her age I guess and Diya ma’am is right in the groove.

Understanding is the key to engagement. May Reetika, her friends and all kids find more of Diya ma’am and Mrs. Swamy.

Temporary is the new Permanent.

Temporary is the new permanent. Modern social and professional existence comes with high level of temporariness.

Employees, co-workers, neighbours, friends and relationships - all are temporary. In this uncertain, connected, global world, opportunities are not evenly distributed. The unevenness of this distribution throws people from one end of this planet to another, fueling mobility and temporariness.

Foe Generation Z kids as their parents move, their friends change; their teachers change jobs, their classroom changes; their moms and dads migrate, their city and neighbourhood changes.

For young adults, the millennial, they change their work organization, their managers and co-workers change; they break-up, their boy-friends/girl-friends change; their friends change, their place to hang-out changes and then their profile photos and updates change every other day.

And then suddenly one day a stray explosion somewhere changes everything...for everybody.

Coping with Temporariness

Coping with temporariness is both an opportunity as much it is a challenge. It could be incredibly rewarding, at the same time it could also be quite unsettling and at times, even emotionally draining. 

For individuals it could mean better rewards, better pay, global trotting and a glamorous lifestyle, it could also mean loss of friends, loved ones, absence of support system and emotional turmoil at times.

For organization the temporariness in the environment means coping with uncertain business contexts that could mean both blessing and curse; this temporariness on one hand may mean gaining access to talent, it may also means losing them to the accelerated global mobility. 

While organization try to cope up with this temporariness by building flexibility in their business models and of their workforce by improving engagement. 

When it comes to individuals, while those who develop high degree of adaptability are upto the challenge and cope with temporariness, others struggle and at times crumble under pressure. Not surprisingly stress related symptoms are on the rise - some call it the cost of prosperity.

Kids of the Times

It will be interesting to see how today's kids, the Generation Z, are conditioned in this era of temporariness. It could mean high levels of adaptability in them when they grow-up, but it may also mean emotional vulnerability and fragility. Growing up in times such as these, will they ever believe in permanent relationships be it be their personal life, social relations or professional assignments? How will this social conditioning affect them? What role would parents, teachers and society have so that temporariness impacts these kids in a positive way and they do not grow-up to be emotional wrecks. 

Interesting considerations.

Can We Save Our Kids?

I know this comes a bit late but these incidents had left me numb in my senses.

A spate of grave sexual abuse incidents of kids in Bangalore and the rest of the country has left most of us shocked, shaken and in utter disbelief. How could someone stoop so low? How could someone subject the kids to such torture? 

How could the perpetrators of such crime not see the innocence of those kids, the helplessness in their eyes and the pain in their screams? How could they do something as gruesome and as heartless? How could they….

The shock and anger does not subside. 

Worse it comes from people on whom kids put their maximum trust. Sometimes the perpetrator is a teacher, sometimes a school staff and at other times close family members. And even worse it happens at places which the kids thought was most secure - school and home.

Recent statistics (read link) destroy you from inside and  you start to lose faith on humanity itself. 

However we cannot give-up, for the sake of the kids. 

But we have to rise from the ashes and protect our kids, all kids from such demonic cannibals. 

A need for moral revolution is sourly felt. Moral corruption of the society could be devastating.  Unfortunately it is so rampant that the horizon appears dark. Hence moral discourses cannot be the change maker. Often the people who deliver such discourses are the ones who have been found to be doing nefarious activities in the garb of being Godmen.

Then what? Frankly I am clueless...Can we protect our kids? How?

FEAR as a tool for Managing People

‘The image of my physical training instructor at the school standing with a stick in his hand and making us do drills has still not faded my mind’ – one of my colleagues was telling me the other day. We were discussing the use of fear as a tool for managing people. He continued – ‘We used to hate all our drills and exercises just because of ‘Sir’. In fact we never liked him. We used to think that he was really a bad person whose only objective was to terrorize children. However many years later after passing-out from school when I met him, he was not keeping particularly well and was bed-ridden. I had gone to pay a visit to him with one of my school friends, knowing about his condition. I had been kind of forced by my friend to visit ‘Sir’. I was initially very hesitant to talk to him. But as the conversation progressed I understood that he was not a bad person. He too had a ‘heart’. However he had an unhappy life. His only son had left him after college because of his extreme strictness, for his penchant to talk with the stick then with words and to enforce his choices and decisions on him. He lamented his behaviour with his son. But it was too late perhaps. His wife had died a few years earlier. He was all alone. I felt really bad for him. However I still couldn’t reconcile with the image that I had of him in my mind as a physical training instructor…’

Fear works faster than any other tool when it comes to managing people, but it comes with a huge baggage of side effects that does not wear -off easily. Fear may achieve short-term objectives with ease however may not only jeopardizes long term purposes but also become successful in scarring people for lives.

One of the families I know, the children and the spouse of a gentleman are happier when their father/husband is touring or is in the office more than when he is at home. He unleashes fear amongst his spouse and his children and they literally are on tenterhooks when he is around. What a misfortune for that gentleman, I thought…his own family despises him.

Fear is many times also unleashed in name of discipline. I do not think both words are quite synonymous.   In fact fear-based discipline is like a spring that has been pressed hard by a palm and as soon as the pressure of the palm ceases, the spring recoils, rebounds and jumps away. You know what I mean… The effects of fear are short-lived and once the cause of fear is gone, people may answer that oppression with a huge boomerang.

I have often heard moms or dads disciplining their toddlers or kids by invoking fear in them, sometimes of the unknown spirit, sometimes of the monster waiting behind the curtains and sometimes of the stick. The impact many times may in terms of growing kids who are fearful and unsure.

Fear-based management of employees leads to a disengaged workforce who tend to develop the ‘yes Boss’ attitude. A team of ‘yes-men’ puts the company in peril for no one dares to differ or say the truth. Fear rules, everything else fails.

Similarly a country that is ruled on the basis of fear is destroyed from within. History is evidence to the damage that fear has done to some nations. Contrary to that, there is also evidence of nations where individual liberty has been respected and upheld, have marched far ahead of others. North and South Korea are excellent contrast in that respect.

Even when it comes to God, most people fear god and few love him. That is why all these touts and middle agents of religion take us for a ride and make us fight over religion, make us scapegoats in the name of religion and in return make a fortune out of it. Mahatma Gandhi had once said – ‘Where there is fear there is no religion. Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.’

When does fear work?

A person should only fear when he/she does something wrong that dangers or encroaches the liberty of others. Fear should be invoked for correction in such cases but with extreme caution and in very measured doses. That should only to secure the endangered liberty of the innocent individuals. Hence this is reserved only for habitual offenders and criminals.

For correction of everyday normal individuals fear should be the last resort and not the first or the immediate one. Even if some fear has to be instilled then that should be done with care so as to not to scar people, especially children, and should be done with an intent of helping the individuals to be corrected and not for venting frustration.

The end result should be to liberate and not captivate. The latter is something that fear does more often than not and with disastrous consequences.

The Contrasting Lives of Senzo Meyiwa and Oscar Pistorius

Two men, two athletes and such contrasting lives. One took a bullet defending his girlfriend from armed intruders who attacked her house and the other pumped bullets in his girlfriend’s body to sniff life out of a young soul.

Senzo Meyiwa  the South African football captain and star died a couple of days back when his girlfriend’s house was attacked by armed intruders. He reportedly was shot while trying to save his girlfriend. Senzo was in true sense a star, backbone of the South African football and very dear to his team mates and his countrymen. He died like a hero.

On the other hand, Oscar Pistorius the champion blade runner was convicted, also a couple of days back, for murdering his girlfriend. Oscar claiming the incident to be an accident could not escape prosecution. In one of the most publicly reported trial, anger for Oscar only grew as disturbing truth and facts about him started coming to light. He was reportedly described as a one with serious behavioural issue and his relationship with his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, whom he shot dead, was also reportedly coming to an end. Reeva had reportedly packed her bags to leave Oscar on the fateful night when she was shot dead.

What turns a person into a selfless hero and on the other hand what turns a hero into a villain? Is it genetics, environment or situation or a combination of all three? Does environment play a major role or does the situation dominate in bringing out good and evil out of people? 

PhilipZimbardo said that a bad situation turns good people into bad people but it also could produce a hero amongst them. Why Oscar and Senzo despite their individual sporting heroics come out as two different persons? Why Senzo did not save his life considering that he had a whole sporting career ahead of him? And did Oscar kill his girlfriend to prevent the world from knowing the real ugly truths about him?

These questions would keep lingering and would keep social psychologists busy. However Senzo to me remains the real hero and man who stood his ground selflessly and took the bullet on his chest while protecting his family.

Brave Senzo, RIP.

The Abandoned Baby...

What would you call the parents of a child who became not only a Olympian at an young age but went to become one of the greatest gymnast that the world has seen - a member of the US dream team. I mean the parents would have to do a lot with the success of the child, isn't it? Indeed they had. But hold on to your judgments for sometime...

The child in consideration is none other than DominiqueMoceanu, the youngest of USA's magnificent seven. Dominique's father was focused right from the beginning in raising her to become a sporting star.

All this changed overnight many years later. After a sterling and successful career, when Dominique was about to become mom herself, a mysterious letter revealed an ugly family secret. When she was just 6 years old, Dominique's mother gave birth to another girl Jennifer , whom Dominique would never see or play with. For Jennifer was born without legs and Dominique's parents decided to give her up for adoption. Dominique's father was too hard focused on his target to raise his first child as a sporting star to keep a child born with disability.

Jennifer went on to be adopted by a very loving family who raised her with pride and dignity. Interestingly, Jennifer even without legs, went on to become a power tumbler, volleyball player and performer. Thanks to a clerical error during adoption that helped the two sisters have a emotional reunion many years back.

Contrastingly, for Dominique, though raised by her biological parents, had to emancipate herself from them. Allegedly Dominique's father siphoned - off millions of dollars of her Olympic prize money and even physically assaulted her.

Becoming a parent is a tremendous feeling and nothing short of blessing of the almighty. But parenthood is in accepting a child irrespective of gender, abilities and any other ‘criteria and raising them with love and care, without for a single moment thinking that we are doing any favour to our children. The greatest favour a parent does is to himself or herself – it is the labour of love.

But becoming biological parent does not always mean that they have parenthood; and parenthood need not be a function of giving birth to children, else the world would not have seen a Mother Teresa. Dominique’s father’s karma caught-up with him sooner or later – he eventually lost both his daughters one to his butcher merchant mentality and the other to his greed.

Very recently, an Australian couple, who had twin surrogatebabies in India, decided to leave back one of them based on gender. Despite repeated requests by the agency that helped them through surrogacy, they left back one of them and took only one of the babies with them. They reportedly already had a baby back in Australia and did not want to repeat that gender. Hence they just took back one of the twin surrogate babies.

How could they do something like this? Its beyond my comprehension - have we lost our heart? What would happen to the other twin baby left back in India? Will she grow-up like an orphan? What would be the emotional turmoil that that baby would go through … who will nurture her??? 

Not so long ago another Australian couple left behind theirsurrogate child in Thailand after they found that the child has been born with Down’s syndrome. The couple who also had surrogate twins decided to take the healthy child with them leaving the one born with syndrome behind them.

Is child nothing more than a commodity? Were these couples doing baby-shopping?

I am sure that karma will catch-up with these parents as well but my heart goes out to those babies who have no clue that their parents have abandoned them for life, for their own selfish drives.

In another controversial move few companies have started to give cash incentives to women workers for freezing their eggs. If you are wondering what freezing of eggs is – in very simple terms it is suspending motherhood without worrying for the ticking biological clock. Motherhood and corporate career have never gone hand-in-hand owing to the weird policies, at times or unidirectional ambition or due to chauvinistic male partners, at other times. So some companies want their successful women employees to suspend their motherhood or in simple terms pay them to freeze their eggs during the fertile years and suspend motherhood for another day.

Having a child, bringing-up the child and seeing him or her grow, take every little step forward is the most beautiful feeling in life. People who abandon their babies have lost the most valuable treasure on this planet. 

May every abandoned child find a family like Jennifer found, find parents like she found, who may not have given birth to her but nurtured her with the glowing love of parenthood. May such children blessed with hearts that love, hands that care and the ones who hold them to their bosom when they need a hug of reassurance. Humanity and parenthood is after all not completely dead on this world.

If an Idea Can Change Your Life, a Nobel Idea Can Change Lives of Millions!!!

Mediocre people talk about people, others talk about incidents and great people talk about ideas!!!

Kailash Satyarthi had a Nobel Idea many years back that changed not only his life but the lives of millions of children in India forced to work as child labours. His relentless and silent pursuit towards freeing children of bondage of work and giving them back their beautiful childhood has been finally recognized, by none other than the highest awarding body in the world. A Noble for Peace is not only a recognition to Kailash Satyarthi's mission but a shot-in-the-arm of all those working towards eradicating child labour in India and in the entire sub-continent.

Despite Kailash Satyarthi's Noble Prize winning effort, much remains to be done. Key to uprooting the evil of child labour lies in knowing and eliminating causes that force a child into becoming a labour. Media reports emerging after announcement of Noble to Kailash that India's national capital is also the hub of child trafficking and child labour. Large number of kids trafficked from poorer centres of the country work as labours in the capital in inhumane and often dangerous conditions. Pity and shame on us.

A civilization's image is determined by how it treats its women and children. And we have fared abysmally low in that grade. Till women continue to be unsfae and children remain vulnerable in our country, we may suspend this pride that we often have on thousands of years old civilization that we have inherited, 

More strength and life to Kailash Satyarthi and people like him who lead the fight against exploitation of children.

To such angels like Kailash and to those millions of children who suffer in our nation, I dedicate these two poems of mine. I wrote both of them in my growing up years, more than two decades back and reflect my feelings and frustration at watching children suffer the devil of trafficking and  the curse of child labour -

A Child called Labour

This is not a song of bliss and solace,

nor a praise of a maiden’s beauty and grace.

Neither is it an epitome of courage and valour,

but a story of a child called labour.

The protagonist is none of great grandeur,

nor a one shining in impeccable splendour,

He is the one coloured with grease and paint,

smelling sweat that makes 'delicate' faint.

The earth laps him up like a mother,

the sky provides him his only shelter.

The ‘vagabond’, the ‘renounced’, the ‘solitary’,

he is the ‘forsaken’, made to work and to carry.

He sweats and bleeds from day to dusk,

perhaps for that ever  eluding  musk.

But that musk eludes him forever,

for he is destined to cry & to suffer.

The poor soul rolls the heavy cart,

the little hands  toil hard in the mart.

The factories swallow him with the siren.

the furnace melts childhood along with iron.

A cruel dream dawns on him every morning,

the whip of  reality and reasoning.

When cozily wrapped are the privileged bod,

working are these children of a lesser god.

The nature makes a mockery of his state,

the ‘cruel rain’ washes off his fate.

He is burnt by the ungracious summer,

and frozen by the freezing winter.

After  the day’s work, where to, is he led,

but to the pavement, to his only bed;

Where in the dirty linen patched with worries,

he drowns his pains and miseries.

Then comes the call of the reason,

Which makes him work in every season,

One that so often has made him to blubber,

the ‘fire’ in the stomach called hunger.

A piece of bread or left out of the master,

is all in the name of food, that he can muster.

Soulfully he looks at the delicacy,

an  earning of joy and ecstasy.

But  oh! someone plays a brazen game,

Our heads sink with unfathomable shame,

When the’ hound of humanity’ manages to cope,

and snatches away his food and his hope.

Dazed by his fate he looks at the sky,

he doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry,

Is this his tryst with destiny,

full of horror, pain and agony?

He closes his eyes to resent his fears,

but does sleep come in eyes full of tears!

His tears are lost in the darkness of the night,

for no one is touched by his sorrow & his plight.

***

Little Kishen

In a small corner

away from the teaming crowd,

sat Kishen, the little boy,

covered in a shroud.

Tears rolled down his cheeks

as he cried in pain,

disgraced by the cruelty of his master,

he had been whipped again.

While cleaning the bowl of milk,

his childhood had made a wish,

to taste the left-out drops of elixir

that other privileged relish.

But cruel was his fate,

like the world and his master,

who kicked and abused him

for this ‘unpardonable blunder’.

His mistake was to dream,

to make simple wishes of life,

for he was poor and downtrodden,

destined to struggle in strife.

Nine delicate years in this world,

an age for sweets and toy,

Kishen had so longed

even for a moment of joy.

Destined to work tirelessly

from the day he lost his father,

he toiled to make both ends meet,

to fend himself and his sick mother.

The day even since

with his small hands,

he searched for the mirage

in the myriad of sand.

By now hunger, thirst and pain

had pushed the young soul

into an unconscious sleep;

Or was it curtain to his role?

Rain splashed on his body,

rudely awaking him to reality,

as he struggled to stand

he was mocked by humanity.

Drenched all over,

he trudged shivering in cold.

Suddenly he fell across

when he could no more hold.

The storm had passed,

as had the night,

there lay near the roadside

an object motionless in white.

Motionless, lifeless,

he was like a stone.

Kishen had died

his mother left behind to moan.

Onlookers and passer-byes

stopped for a while out of curiosity;

Mercifully they threw some coins;

Even a coffin was in scarcity.

Kishen’s mother couldn’t cry any more,

for even the tears had dried,

as she stared at the coins

for which her son had died.

She lifted her dead son,

lovingly in her arms,

and walked towards the cemetery

leaving behind the alms.

She cried and smiled

and screamed in pain -

“How many more Kishens have to die

of poverty and disdain?”

***