Dilute Education, Dumb Down a Country

            I read an article written by U. Subramaniam, who’s a lecturer in Mumbai’s Mithibai College. She believes, and I agree with her whole heartedly, that in the process of making everyone equal, we’ve made everyone mediocre. No one wants tough exams, everyone wants ‘good’ marks to happen easily, no one wants to slog, and yet, everyone craves for great salaries. If a student in a university commits suicide, the newspapers (as if those reporters are experts in education) feel that the papers are too tough. What’s wrong in having tough papers? There are universities the world over that expect you to cope, fail if you can’t, put in more effort if you’re weak, and drop out if you can’t make the grade at all. They maintain their standards and their media don’t feel that the lowest of the low must be ‘respected’ and ‘adjusted to’. Nobody demands laxity. I loved one sentence that she wrote: “ So much of our students are capable of doing so much better. But they fail to deliver. Why?...because we molly coddle them, we fail to challenge them. We demand little, so they give less.”

            Recently at a class get-together, we found that all our mates were doing really well, wherever they were. The credit, we unanimously agreed, must go to our teachers who were stern, strict, even resorted to the occasional caning and punishment, without fear of some parent running to a television channel. Duffers were called duffers, not labeled ‘slow learners’, and were expected to put in extra effort. When a duffer did well, it was appreciated, and when a bright one ‘behaved like a fool’, he was told just that. The talk was straight, the atmosphere transparent.The entire class wasn’t expected to wait for a few to catch up.

             It’s like this, if you want to do well in athletics, you will compete against the swiftest runners, not against clumsy slow-coaches. So also, if you want to better yourself in art or maths, you’d want to get exposed to the best in that field, not to the corner budhoo. Why, then, in schools and colleges today, aren’t we promoting excellence in children? Why aren’t we raising their standards instead? Where are the teachers who believe in this philosophy? In the long run, we are dumbing down our best institutions. Once upon a time, to have studied in Goa was a big thing, for the schools were good, the standard of languages high. Today, I’m not so sure. About fifteen or twenty years ago, I knew two women who opted to do their Ph. D. in French from Goa University because they valued the quality of their guides. One of them was from Rajasthan, the other from Madhya Pradesh. It wasn’t easy for them, but they took the trouble because they wanted quality stuff and were willing to pay the price (in effort and time, not just money). Can we still boast of such things?

            The philosophy that says ‘let each person take her/his own sweet time for learning things’ isn’t the best. Some stress is required in every life to balance it out. You can’t tell an athlete, ok, take your time to win the race. In a competitive world, stress will happen. You can’t tell a surgeon or a nurse ‘koi baat nahin’ when a mistake is made, else it might be repeated, or someone else might repeat it, and someone’s life will be at stake. You can’t tell a pilot it’s ok if you don’t make the grade for he will perish along with several others if he doesn’t do his job error free. And much of that attitude, that sense of ‘let me do better’ must begin at school level. Everything, from covering books to writing the date to getting the sums right must be insisted upon.

            I remember, in my childhood, people, including those from within my family ridiculing ‘convent’ education because they gave so much importance to trivia like wearing the correct footwear and covering books and maintaining indexes in notebooks. But know what? Many of the bright students from the vernacular schools had to learn these same tiny things in the corporate world, if they were to rise. That included something not so trivial: the English language. With the Hinglishizing of English, we are destroying the one advantage we had in the world today. The further we get from the real, grammatically correct English, the better are the chances of the Chinese overtaking us. If I were a young parent contemplating my child’s future, I would take care to choose a strict, disciplined school over any other.

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Candlelit Dinners and Retired Soldiers.

             There’s a rumour that the monsoons are going to be ‘very cold’. Last December, Goa had a real ‘winter’. Goenkars claimed even their didn’t work in such conditions, and as for their efficiency (the staff’s, not the watches’), floods, rains, earthquakes have never stopped them from cooking their xeet kodi, but a temperature drop? That was something else. Goenkars are a warm lot. Anything less than twenty degrees decreases their ability to think, and motivates them to do anything but work. You need to sweat to work here, not the other way around. 

            Colleagues tell me last winter the lowest temperature was ‘eight point five degrees Celsius’; that takes me back to Srinagar. Every evening, we lit a candle at dinner time. The voltage, whenever we had electricity, made every 100 watt bulb look like it’d come from the hinterlands of Bihar or U. P., looking for rozgaar. Gloomy and cheerless. The coal-heater, known as a bukhari, if you didn’t feed and nurture it well, simple killed you off with odourless, colourless carbon monoxide. The coal that had to be used came in the form of a single large lump of rock weighing some fifteen kilos (government ration stuff) which had to be dragged half a kilometer from the main road where the bus dropped my husband off. We’d sit together, me cooking on our solitary kerosene wick-stove and keeping an eye on the toddler, the husband systematically breaking to manageable bits the lump that would be used as fuel to warm us. Much of those lumps crumbled to powder that, when the bukhari belched out the smoke, added a daily layer of soot to the already very black walls. The ceiling was low, the windows didn’t seal, and small clouds of angry mosquitoes would attack us. Once their bellies were full, they’d go to the ceiling to rest before the next sortie. That’s when we could smack them dead with a chappal. Over the season, there were plenty of footprints up on the sooty ceiling.

           

            My Goan blood never got used to winders. “Banihal bandh hai” meant the markets were empty. Our gracious landlady gave us a portion of her stored vegetables. Like we dry bombils, bangda and shark for the monsoon months, the Kashmiris dry slices of brinjals, gourds and other vegetables, and stock them in ‘garlands’ for the lean season. 

             The worst days were when the minimum and maximum hovered around zero, and the snow turned to gooey slush. One had to allow the tap to drip a bit through the night so that the water in the pipes wouldn’t freeze. Otherwise the expansion caused by the solidifying liquid burst them.

            We lived in Punjab through its curfew years. The cheery sight of stretches of golden mustard fields did nothing to dispel the ache in the bones. I remember the washing lying out at night, stiff and white with frost next morning; the husband removing his helmet to reveal specks of tiny icicles on the brows and lashes.  

            In the uttar-most part of Uttar Pradesh, it’s the season of abundance. A strong memory is of a neighbour stopping our car, standing in the middle of the road, her arms laden with leafy vegetables, forcing us to accept them, whether or not we could consume them. “Give them to your favourite charity,” she said, “Mine doesn’t want any more of these. They’re happier with their dal-kaanji.” 

           

            Rajasthan is cruelly cold at night, but the daytimes are kind and pleasant. Nevertheless, the candle-lit dinners were a necessity, the reason being no electricity, not romance. Down south, the Tamilians lived simple lives because their climate allowed it, we thought. One could live on fewer clothes, lighter meals. We were wrong. The day we arrived in Wellington, near Ooty, (it’s something to do with my behaviour in my pichla janam, for wherever I go, I welcome the coldest season in forty years), the dew poured like it was rain, and the temperature was below eight point five.

            A recent tv show that I’d seen told me about the rough time the locals in the north eastern states have in winters. My sympathy stretched to the men in uniform, our soldiers at high altitude, in desperate conditions, fighting for their lives, for the country, for our freedom of speech and activity, … and as I write this article, for a fair deal in the VI Pay Commission…keeping themselves warm with whatever sub-standard equipment our politicians have doled out. Every candle-lit dinner that I have, I think of them, in that miserable cold, forgotten by an ungrateful country. Those who’ve retired after having served the nation are mostly living in the villages, dependent on their grandchildren, worrying about their pensions. Do we care? Do we know how many Goan soldiers are living thus? They have brought glory and honour to the state. We need to support them in their quest for a fair pension. This is a country-wide movement that’s happening. Let Goans take the lead in it. 

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X-mases Around the Country.

(23 Dec ’12)

            In Mumbai, Christmas in a Protestant school meant singing a hymn at assembly. The choir sang a couple of carols, the pre-primary kids had a party of sorts, and since it coincided with the end of year, there were elocution, debates and essay competitions before school shut for a couple of weeks and we cousins steam-shipped down to Palolem. Our neighbourhood, middle-class, a mix of Gujeratis, Maharashtrians, Goans, Tamilians and Sindhis, had a handful of Christian families. To our joy, we children were always treated with cake, kalkals, chicken-mayonnaise sandwiches and a small gift like a pencil or a keychain or some cheap plastic toy which we treasured until the next year. Decorations were a star-kandil outside one window, and a small crib in a corner of the ‘hall’ (haven’t figured out why the tiny outer room was called by this name in Mumbai.)

            Marriage made me set up homes in remote corners of the country. At Diwali, the military cantonments celebrate with lights, sweets and snacks and fireworks. Religion didn’t play much of a role. Parties did. The Muslims were ‘targeted’ on Id days: for mutton biryanis, sheer-khurmas and whatever else the dear housewives could slog up. We focused on the Christians on Christmas and Easter. Our Anglo-Indian neighbour, Mrs Dutton, took help from my son and me for stirring the huge amount of batter for the cake, a month before she baked it. In return, we ate the salt-meat: no one in Goa makes it that tasty. Really. The Syrian Orthodoxes from Kerala treated us to their creamy fish curries and stews with all the members of the aapam family. Sweets followed. In the bitter winters of Kashmir, Punjab, Northern UP (now Uttaranchal) and the edge of the Thar, Christmas meant razais, silks, woollen clothes and socks inside leather shoes. Even today, no Christmas or New Year passes by without my thinking about our soldiers who go through so much hardship to keep us safe. It’s unbearably cold where they live, the landscape barren and the environment depressing. Away from home in miserable weather conditions, lonely yet motivated, these fine young men … keep them in your minds when you celebrate cheerily here in Goa.

            Camps and other closed communities have their own ideas of fun. Santa Clauses came in cycle-rickshaws, by helicopter, jeep, or walking. In some postings, we had real snow. Mostly, we did without the (cotton or thermacole flakes) pretence that modern malls and five-star hotels display. Once, the husbands were all away near a border area. We ladies entertained our children by dressing up in reds, Santesses Clausettes, so that the ‘tradition’ continued.

            In Tamil Nadu and Hyderabad, like in Goa, Christmas was ‘pleasant’ not bone-chilling cold like in the north. So no bonfires or heaters. Dancing under starlit skies and visiting churches around midnight was the norm.

            When I took up a job in the hospitality industry, I learned that The Season was serious business time. Blocked rooms, booked rooms, many-dished buffets, expensive decorations, high bills, non-availability of tickets for travel, I learnt about them all. Those who depended on this time of the year to earn much of their annual income, lobbied and manipulated to get the highest payment for singing, decorating, driving taxis, supplying pulaos /sorpotels /pickles /dodols /bebincas. The spirits of Christmas could be kept on hold whilst survival was happening.

            In the hospital where I worked, in Mumbai, nurses from Kerala learned Rangoli from their Maharashtrian friends, or got them to do the stuff on their ward floors. Blinking lights, shiny and colourful clothes came into the staid, serious corridors. So festive did the atmosphere get, that even patients often forgot about their illnesses and discomforts. The power of pretty surroundings, pleasant faces and cheeriness can’t be underestimated. It is often followed by good appetite, good sleep, and recovery.

            Sale, sale, sale. No prices ever come down, but customers flock to buy something that has a black cross on the old price and a red tick-mark on the new one.  From Diwali till well after New Year’s, this madness continues.

            In little Sangolda, away from prying tourist eyes, the chapel has been white-washed. Our man-of-all-trades, Shiva, hasn’t had a day to spare do clean up our yard, because he’s been painting the fronts of homes (the backs remain neglected for generations together), scraping compound walls, cleaning corners, destroying cobwebs, washing grills, etc.

            A little Sikh boy once asked his father, a soldier in the Indian Army, what Christmas was. The father replied, in the tradition of the sub-continent: “It’s the gurpurab of the Christians.”

            Peace be with everyone, and a jolly ho-ho-ho to you and yours.

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The Goa LitFest and Peace Cottage.

(16 Dec ’12)

            This week Goa has been celebrating books, authors, artists, musicians. Just last month we had the ThinkFest and the IFFI, and now we’re in the; midst of the GALF: the Goa Art and Literary Festival. Treat after treat of culture. Our little state is becoming quite a happening place.  India has a lot of litfests, but none as charming as this one. Panaji’s riverfront is pretty, and the whole town was involved in the fest, non-commercially. No advertisements flung in our face, no hungama. Just serious literature, serious art, serious music.

            The inauguration at KA, my favourite public place in Goa: calligraphy demonstration by Achyut Palav, and singing by soprano Patricia Rosario. Supported by Mark Troop and Amar Muchhala. The day after, at the beautiful Raj Bhavan was the rare Bhand Pather performance. If there is litfest heaven on earth, I thought, it is here, here, here.

Through the week there were book releases (Adi Parva by Amruta Patil, These My Words by Eunice D’Souza and more). Madhav Borkar moderated ‘Songs of Goa’ in which the participants were  Ramesh Veluskar, Nutan Sakhardande, Guadalupe Dias, Nilba Khandekar, and  Paresh Kamat. There was lots about the ‘Eyewitnesses to History: Memoirs of Goa’ that featured nonegarian Irene Heredia, Rudolf Heredia, Prabhakar Kamat, Pratima Kamat was hosted by Jose Lourenco. Jessica Faleiro’s ‘Afterlife: Ghost Stories from Goa’ was also launched.

What was special about this particular festival was the presence of writers from Kashmir. No one till now had given their voice a hearing outside their state, live. We heard about their problems, their points of view, and we discovered more about them than we had so far through the television. We also got to see Badshah Paather, a take on King Lear. So important was this that the CM of that state himself came down for the inauguration. It helped that our Governor’s ancestors belonged to Kashmir. Naseem Shafaie, Iftikar Gilani, Saadut Hussain, M Amin Bhat, M K Raina were present. Much credit must go to those behind the scene who made this happen: Damodar Mauzo and Vivek Menezes of GoaWriters and Nandini Sahai and Arjun Halarnkar of ICG.

            From beyond Kashmir, from Pakistan, came Cyril Almeida of Goan origin.

            All of this was done with no corporate support and on a shoe-string budget. It took many months of the volunteers’ time to make it happen. Behind the scenes, emails flew across borders and continents. (Graphic artist and author Nicolas Wild came all the way from France.) Convincing people is never easy, convincing Indians is difficult, convincing creative people tops it all. One appreciates government machinery when it isn’t there to help with bookings and manpower.

            The first LitFest was fun. The second one met with obstacles. This one, with its hiccups and all, has proved that Goa is home to one of the best LitFests in the country.   Bookworm, a venture for children run by Sujata Noronha and her team, had children’s book festival at Azad Maidan. Azad Maidan was the venue for the musical programs held in the evenings, and some of the readings. There were many venues for the various events, and one could shuttle up and down in the vehicles organized. This was a dose of culture Goa really needed. The LitFest ends tomorrow with a program by Lou Majaw of the North East.

            In little corners of Goan villages, there are some bhailley doing good work for local talent. One such is Eleanor Viegas of Peace Cottage, Betalbatim. She believes that through craft and art, the world can be a better place and she’s begun to implement her thoughts in her neighbourhood. A few village women, a few ideas, and she has fused contemporary designs with old Goan skills like quilting, to come up with really nice pieces that are worthy of being framed and displayed. The local women have come up with their own artwork, with embroideries of coconut fronds and women carrying fish. It’s been a hard grind getting people to do this, but Eleanor has managed it well. She’s having a workshop and exhibition in January. Best of all, her charming home is where children can create, imagine, express things. These festivals big and small are aspects of Goa that fascinate me. 

            This is the correct time to be living in Goa, many things happening, many like-minded people around to participate in them. In Facebook vocabulary: Like.

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