They are all the same

Jispa’s school is supposed to be amongst the best in Mumbai. It has a good teacher to student ratio – 30 kids in a class. It supposedly has the best teaching staff, better paid, motivated and hand-picked. They have systems in place to make things run efficiently and it is definitely amongst the most sought after school in Mumbai. When I tell others that my child goes here – they invariably ask me… how did you get in? Well lucky day I guess. I answer that I should have bought a huge lottery ticket that day instead.

Well… it is a nice school. Decent, well run. The services work to a clock. The teachers are responsive and most of all, Jispa loves going to school. And I guess it’s better than the option I had. With 60 kids in a class… but the honeymoon is slowly getting over as Jispa grows up.

Now as she grows older the class work is getting tougher and the work that we as parents need to so is slowly increasing. On Wednesday we had a national holiday and I spent the better part of it teaching Jispa Hindi. I am not that great at it but simple take up should be good. We started with the opposites. I asked a few and she replied correctly. Then a few that she did not know and then… suddenly I asked her – do you know the meanings of the words you are giving answers to. “no” came the reply. NO? “what shit. You know the answers but you do not know the meaning? Didn’t your teacher teach you this?” “she just said all the meanings fast fast and made us write the words”. What non sense is that? That can be given as a typed give away. You don’t go to school to getting writing practice. She doesn’t even break the Hindi words to explain the origin of the word and its understanding. So I sent the next hour just explaining the meaning of the words to Jispa. If you know the meaning of the words then you know the opposites. You shouldn’t just learn by rote the opposites without understanding the meaning. SO I just kept asking her the English words and she had to give the Hindi translations.

She wasn’t too pleased to start with. But I am slightly better than Jasmine at this with Jispa. I keep throwing in nonsense and keep laughing at some silly ones. Also unlike mom I am not the expert who understands it all. Some words – I told her, I haven’t a clue what it meant. We would just wait till mom to come home. So I guess I am a more real tutor than others. In effect I am more like her. So I explain like her, I learn like her. And I keep egging on till it’s pushed inside the brain. Jispa realizes that and she realizes that it is a bit more fun as well as that I end up tricking her into studying more all the time. We did Hindi for around two hours before Jasmine came home and it was time for dinner.

But hell. No wonder kids go to tuitions. How do you know the meanings? And even in tuitions you are not taught meanings. After this I was talking to Jasmine. “wow. This all crap. It took me two hours to get this with Jispa and I am sure I will need further sessions with her. I think I will have no option now but to get her to sit with me and learn stuff on holidays.” Jispa has no time during the week. Suddenly for me fatherhood has a new meaning.  Till now it was just all the fun stuff, taking care and all that. I would teach stuff but not school subjects. Now I guess even Hindi is not too far from my responsibility. What shit man. I hate this stuff. But I guess someone has to do it and Jasmine’s got enough on her plate. I have to pull more weight,  and make Jispa study the boring stuff. At least I may be , just may be – ‘funner’.

so how does it happen?

Yesterday at home Jispa happily showed me her brand new geometry compass box. In Jispa’s school, the fees cover these basic things. I guess they do that so that all the kids have uniform tools. This helps eliminate kids who could possibly be tempted to get Ferrari geometry boxes (wouldn’t that be a cool product). While she showed me the same, I recollected that as a kid I rarely ever got a brand new geometry compass box. Being the third in line I would invariably get hand-me-downs. So I picked every piece from the box one by one. The divider, the compass, the protractor, the two angles and ofcourse the free pencil. The pencil has improved form my days. Now they give a pen-pencil. Yes the lovely Camlin compass box.

Then I saw her geometry book. I remember my first class in geometry very well. The same things were taught. A point, a segment, a line and a ray. The same bloody things. The definitions were also the same, the drawings were also the same. It brought back nice memories. A point – it is something that does not have any length breadth and height. It’s just that – a point. A line is nothing but a series of points. I was good at geometry always. I loved it and I just couldn’t understand how anyone would get anything wrong in geometry. Possibly because I was good at visuals so I enjoyed geometry. I remember getting all the sums right in my final tenth standard exam. They cut 2 marks for no bloody reason and I ended up at 73 out of 75. The theory was that if they give you full marks then they have to give you a medal or something, which the board reserved for students from Marathi medium schools. Well who cares. Add that to the 74 I scored on Algebra, I finished at 147 from 150 in Math at school.

In morning while dropping Jispa off to swimming class, I told her that I loved Geometry and I would always get great marks in that. She then decided to test my skills. “So tell me – which is longer – a ray or a line?”. Aha… “Nice one Jispa, both are same – they both go on till infinity”. Hehe. Nice try kid. Then something just struck me. “Jispa – a point has no length breadth or height, correct?” “Yes” she replied. “And a line is nothing but a series of points, like a thousand points together?” “Yes” she said again. So then I asked “how come that a point which is like zero length, multiplied a thousand times has a length when zero into thousand is zero. So if nothing is put together a thousand times, how do you get something?”. I felt her bulb light up in her head “Fascinating” she said. ‘Fascinating’… that’s a nice term to use, I thought. I got her thinking. The truth is that I thought of this conundrum for the first time myself. How come this shit works? I can understand that a point can be infinitesimally small. That can help denote a starting point for math. Hence it will be zero otherwise you would need to consider the size of the point as well when you calculate the distance between two points to get the length of the segment. All this I assume… I know nothing of this. But how can nothing add up to something? Jispa was right. It’s fascinating. So I asked her – “so you are going to ask your teacher about this?” “Nah, she will just reply that” “it’s too advanced” I interjected. “no, she will just say that you will learn it in higher class”. Ok same thing.

I love having these conversations with Jispa. I keep telling her. When you grow up, do something nice. Become a geologist and then I can come with you to different places. Or study History – then we can do to all the palaces together and you can teach me. Or do zoological studies and I can come to various forests with you. I love learning from anyone. My nephew is a whacko. He is a lizard and snake super freak. So every time I meet him, I ask him stuff about snakes or other creepy crawlies. He studies in Doon school and he comes down for his vacations. This time around on a friend’s BBM he learnt that there was a snake found along with the stuff that was being shifted. He caught a friend and went there to catch the snake. He was coolly telling us later that it was a rat snake and hence not poisonous. Ya sure. He did catch it. What a complete mad man. What I wonder is that the adults around let me do it. He would have shown some attitude there for the others to trust him. I don’t know if I would have let him do it I was around.

Whatever, it’s fun to learn from him and it’s fun to learn from Jispa. I guess its sweeter when someone younger is teaching stuff to you. I actively try and learn from them. Of course some stuff you don’t want to learn from them, your ego gets in the place. But for the most, I guess, I like to learn from them. There is something that the youth has that you can never ever replicate. Teaching has put in touch with them and I really do learn a lot from them.

daddy rules

Yesterday in the morning, we probably had a premonition or something. Jasmine told me to wake up Jispa. I told her to wake her up.  None of us wanted to wake her up. Waking Jispa is not an easy deal. She keeps asking for two minutes and makes a huge fuss while getting up. Of course when it’s the 5 am wake up call for swimming she knows better and is much more reasonable, but on normal school days, it’s a task. She knows she has enough time. But we parents have to wear an albatross.

Jispa has a punishing swimming schedule. She loves it but we are punished as parents. We push ourselves to the limit while parenting her. The burden is much more than physical. We have to ensure she is well fed, well rested and she is well prepared. Now the school has begun to crank up the studies. And no matter which school you go to, the teachers are always in a hurry to finish the portion and are possibly unable to give enough attention to each child. You always have to supplement the studying schedule at home. You need to revise, you need to learn and you have to redo as homework what you got wrong. So far I had been pretty sanguine about it all. But this year I realized the pressure and the need to do regular home work.

So the crucial 30 minutes we identified for revision is in the morning when there is no swimming. This si the time she should finish her breakfast at 7am and she can study till 7.30am, at which time we need to go. So that necessitates waking up on time. And that’s where the pressure builds up.

I used to take extra pride in waking Jispa with a smile, by singing, by talking and by whispering stuff in hers ears. Now that is impossible. Doing that will take away her crucial sleeping and studying time. So I can’t start early. I have to let her sleep as much as possible and then get her off the bed.

Yesterday Jasmine had her way and I had to wake Jispa. I tried to be nice, spoke well, tried to pull her off. She delays by asking for stretching time. Which I allowed and then I had to physically lift her, which is now a heavy thing to do. Then while holding her and talking to her, I was taking he rot the bath. She kept resisting and then she let off the dreaded ‘aaaeeen’. Nothing pisses me off more than the ‘aaaeeen’. It’s a scream of irritation. She signifies that she is irritated and possibly we are doing something wrong. Woah… that’s the ultimate wrong thing to do to me in the morning. Especially if I am all sweet and nice (but firm) while I am waking you up. She got a mid-sized whack on her back from me. “Stop the ‘aaaeeen’ Jispa. Just not done. I am talking to you. I am holding you, I am waking you and you can’t do this.” She cried – more for the rebuke rather than the hit. I told her stop crying. “you know why you got it and I did not hit that hard”. She went for bath and then came out refreshed and she had stopped crying. She told me “sorry dad”. “it’s ok kid. I am sorry too. Just please wake up properly. It’s just too much stress that can be avoided in the morning”.

This is just too stressful. It’s not easy being the parents of a sporting champion. Especially when you want her to be good in studies as well. We have to keep the pressure on studies. Keep revising. Keep working. Do your homework. Do your tables. Do your spellings. And that’s a job that only the parents can do at home. Schooling is just not enough.

Yesterday evening was one big realization for me on this. I am the worst Hindi teacher there is. Jispa corrects me with the correct pronunciations and the spellings. I have no freaking clue how to spell or what the meaning is of the words. I can only do some take up shit. Jispa’s job is to know the stuff and my job is to ask her what she knows. But yesterday we were doing occupations. She was struggling with a few. And engineer is called abhiyanta in hindi. She kept forgetting. So I explained this.. When you want to fix something you call an engineer and when you want to fix something- you have to fix it NOW. NOW in Hindi is Abhi hence abhiyanta is engineer. Yayyyy. She got it. Then I explained the simpler ones like Sona is gold hence goldsmith is sonar. Loha is iron and hence blacksmith is lohar. Gwala is cow herd. Cow is gai and gai ko sambhalne wala is Gwala. Reporter is one who writes letters hence patra and hence patrakar. I explained that chikitsak is one who checks you and hence a doctor. And so on and on.

Finally as a dad I felt I did my job on teaching as well. That too Hindi syllabus. Jispa remembered them very well. She was struggling with them. Similarly I explained the numbers. I was explaining that the numerals across the world were basically invented in India and then taken to the western world by the Arabic traders and then universally adopted. That’s why the sounds are similar – two in English or deux in French or dos in Spanish sounds like they do in Hindi. Same with three, teen, tres, tran etc. so now you know the English ones get the Hindi ones similarly. And once you get the counds you will get the numbers. Only one difference is the numbers ending in 9 such as 59 or 69 which is called 60 minus 1 or unsath or 70 minus 1 to give you unhattar.

I don’t think her Hindi teacher has that much time or possibly you need to be a non-hindi speaking hero to understand and learn it via other shortcuts. But hell who cares…. There is stress and sometimes bucket loads of it but if in the end “DADDY RULESSSSS” then that’s that. Daddy rules.

--

On a side note from the earlier blog… a question that Krishna raised set me thinking. Why does Jispa still take water from home? Yes sure. She doesn’t really need only home water. She drinks water everywhere. In fact she is a swimmer. We even give her sugar cane juice off the road side stalls. So why does she need home water. Well she doesn’t need the water but she needs the water bottle. So she can drink at will and she doesn’t really need to hit the water station every now and then. So now we are sending her only the bottle. In case of longer days she will take two bottles, one plain and the other with the Glucon C powder in it for her to mix. Well – that gets rid of one and a half kilo! BIG.

champion inside

Inspiration passion motivation. And many more words that keep coming out from a lot of idiots at office. I feel stupid discussing these words. There are only thrown about while pretending to mean serious business.

The other day this lovely young lady in my team was having a discussion with me. We were discussing how to choose the designs for putting the opaque stickers on the cabins. She remarked “aren’t these designs too dull. They would restrict the light and make the cabins duller.” She was referring to some design someone liked. “ya sure. But it’s ok. I don’t care. Do it if they like it.” I have learnt to buy peace. Of course I say my point of view, but if it’s not worth fighting, I don’t bother. There are many battles to be won. You don’t exhaust your energy on a few. “but, your cabin will also get affected, wont it? Shouldn’t that bother you?” she urged. “luisten lady. First things first. Its not my cabin. I sit there and I work there. but its not my cabin. It belongs to the company and they can take it away whenever they want. You never ever fall in love with your cabin or work space or anything else.” Then I explained “once many years ago, in the year 2000, when I was around 25 years old, my office shifted to a new location and they gave me one of the new ‘manager’ cubicles that lined the sides of the room”. This is a typical design thing. The big manager cubicles line the outsides with the chicken stock getting cubicles in the middle. I have always felt that the design is fundamentally flaws. It should be the reverse. The ones doing monotonous work should get the best views and windows. But no one will possibly listen to me. “so, they gave this lovely cubicle and I liked it. And then suddenly another division of the firm, the core division with its sales guys wanted to move in and they downgraded me to another cubicle in the middle. I felt so bad that time. I think I almost cried. From then on, I never fell in love with my place. I try and stay focused on the work and work around the place. That’s why I sit out many times, I come out and everyone uses my cabin and they are free to roam around. You never fall in love with your seat. You never do that.”. “acha, she said. So is that incident what motivated you to reach this level”. “NO. Impossible. No insult can motivate me to perform or do work. That is gone long back. My motivation is inside of me. Myself. I don’t look for motivation outside. No one can motivate me. Not my boss, not my family, not my peers, no body. I decide what I have to do and how much to perform. My standards are internal to me. Why look outside? It’s all inside.”

This has been my belief for many years now. Look inside. No such bull such as positive reinforcement, positive thinking and goal setting. I have never done any of this and I don’t really believe in it. You do your best, stay in the moment and look inside of you why you want to do or not do something. When I work, I decide how good I want to do or what I want to perform. So far the standards are the ones I have chosen to keep or benchmark. Why should anyone tell me what I need to aim for? They might guide or I may be inspired. But the goals are mine and mine alone. They are for me to set, understand and follow. And what goals are we talking about? Whose knows what the future holds like? I have never been a great goal setter. I am talking about lofty goals. Sure I have small milestones, some inspiring benchmark to achieve but not really goals the way the rest seem to have or preach to have.  And for the first time I read something somewhere that resonated with I am saying. This guy in the video is talking about still power which is opposed to will power. He has written a book called still power. Listen to the video.

I haven’t yet read the book and its always dangerous to extrapolate from a single interview but the fact is that I hear this man in the this interview and I resonate with what he says. Look inside. Don’t sledge your opponents. It’s not needed. Feel good about yourself. I think most of the time my sledging has never helped us.at best it may have helped my team rally around. But over the years I have learned to respect my opponents. Be friendly its ok. You are here to play your sport. In cricket as well I keep telling my team, relax, and don’t bother about the opposition. Look at the ball and then you have the bat. That is all. The game is still played with the bat and ball. Put your mind to the game and read it well.

The last year I was in the zone multiple times while playing or leading. No need to give great pep talks, no need to tell people to focus on winning. Focus on playing the game well. If enough people play the game well, you will win. Winning is an outcome not the destination. The journey, the plain, the mental toughness, that is the destination. Love it and live with it.

I kept worrying that with Jispa I never ever let her push toward a medal. You swim, you improve your timing. You enjoy your sport. She wants to do well, because she wants to do well. You win – great. You don’t win – great. Did your practice and preparation be worth it all. Yes. That’s important. And the Zone. The zone is always inside of you. It’s not outside. Whenever I have played the best cricket is when I have been in a stillness as far as my mind is concerned. It is focused on what to do then. Freedom from fear in turn is the freedom to play. Not regretting the past nor anticipating the future.

For Jispa, the freedom to lose is exactly the freedom to win. So when she swims she swims for herself, for the sake of swimming, for swimming as fast she wants to swim. When you have a 50 mtr dash, you can’t think or not think anything. You just go and swim. You back yourself. Whenever I have run the parents race – what was I thinking. Nothing. Just the feel of running fast and running through the race. You are just enjoying the moment. The rhythm and the grace of it. That’s all. You can’t think positive or negative. Of course longer sports like cricket give you a lot of time to think. But when you are about to play, you come back and you stop your thoughts. You see the field and then focus on the ball. Time always almost stands still when you are in your zone. You don’t fight negative or positive thoughts. You merely enjoy the moment. That’s all. Focusing on yourself and in your role vis-à-vis the team.

Talking about negative thoughts – I just chanced upon this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/the-positive-power-of-negative-thinking.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

The power negative thinking it says. I like that. I like this paragraph a lot “The Stoics recommended “the premeditation of evils,” or deliberately visualizing the worst-case scenario. This tends to reduce anxiety about the future: when you soberly picture how badly things could go in reality, you usually conclude that you could cope. Besides, they noted, imagining that you might lose the relationships and possessions you currently enjoy increases your gratitude for having them now. Positive thinking, by contrast, always leans into the future, ignoring present pleasures.”  This stuff has worked for me innumerable times in the past. Whenever I have faced tremendous pressure or stress, my counter has been to know what’s the worst that could happen and how I would deal with it. Then the present doesn’t seem so bad after all. It’s right. That’s been my coping mechanism for the last decade or so. That’s helped me block out the issues, helped me block out the pain. In fact once your worst case scenario is acceptable then you don’t really mind the pain. In fact I would even so much as say – I end up enjoying the pain. Possibly in saying – take that dumbass, I am unaffected by you.

There is another para in the article that caught my attention “Even goal setting, the ubiquitous motivational technique of managers everywhere, isn’t an undisputed boon. Fixating too vigorously on goals can distort an organization’s overall mission in a desperate effort to meet some overly narrow target, and research by several business-school professors suggests that employees consumed with goals are likelier to cut ethical corners.”  This is also something I have argues for. Too much goal setting always, always gets employees to cut corners. To achieve only to please. To tick mark. Yes the work is done. These guys look for external goals, external targets and then simply tick mark saying that work has been done.

Surely goals are important but mindless pursuit of them and relentless follow up of goals that are generally given top down without participation lead to such a situation. In the video the author argues that goals are limiting. They don’t allow for freedom to work around. That is true. Goals are limited only by your imagination. A set of smaller victories sometimes helps a lot. Play every day, every ball. One at a time. The broad strategy fits in by itself if you take care of small victories. That’s why it always difficult to be bounded by a large inflexible goal.

Well anyways. That’s a lot of gyan for one post. But nice. It was good to stumble upon this video and the article. It suddenly reinforced what I seemed to have found and believed in – all these years.

what a burden

“Ok let’s go. No wait. Let me see… where is our weighing scale, Jasmine?. Yes got it. Come here Jispa. Ok… that’s roughly six kgs. And you still don’t have it all. Some stuff is still missing”

Whenever we came in from Dubai for a vacation in India, we would stay for almost two months at our Granny’s house. My Granny was rich. The family had two buildings that belonged to them and she stayed on the top floor of one. One entire floor was theirs. That was great fun. We were treated like royals. Especially because we came in from abroad so we would come with bags full of foreign merchandise not available in India in those days. Simple stuff like chocolates, t shirts, chewing gums etc. We were the toast of all our cousins. OK possibly it was not all due to the stuff we bought. I am sure some would be happy just to meet us. But it was nice to feel like royalty. And yes the biggest thing in India. Servants. In Dubai you may have been rich and drinking Pepsi but in India you don’t work. You get the servants to work for you.

This was in many ways a cultural shock for us kids. It was a mixed feeling. While servants are good fun when you are sleepy and you need someone to make the bed, it never felt good to give them work. I still don’t like giving them work or getting them to do stuff for us. So as a kid from Dubai I never understood how to treat them. Was the full time maid who was possibly just about 15years old my friend, my servant or what? She would play with us but she couldn’t really win, could she? Whatever – I remember it being very very confusing.

Then we moved in to India and I was in the fourth standard. Our Granny’s house was a stone throw away from the school. Mom was a bit worried about us walking to school all alone. Would we brothers from Dubai be able to cross the roads safely? So she came with us for a few days and then I later learnt she would send us alone but follow us from afar and check if we went right. Softies from Dubai can’t negotiate the Mumbai roads. And this was in 1984, when we didn’t even have enough cars. Afterwards she sent the maid along with us to school and to pick us up. The maid would come along and we never understood what her role was. I don’t think she understood it as well. She tried to ask us if she could carry our bags. NO WAYS. Not a chance we would allow her to do that. I was around 8 or 9 years old but I would have enough dignity to carry my own school bag.

I have never understood why someone needs to carry your bag for you. It just isn’t right. We had a few kids in school whose moms or uncles would carry their bags for them. But they were few and far in between. As I grew up and the economy progressed, Jasmine and I saw a lot of maids around us. Almost anyone with a child would have a full time maid and the way we saw it he maid’s essential role was to follow the child and carry its food and drink and other essentials. They would carry the bag, carry the tiffin, carry the sports kit, everything. Oh I so bloody hated looking at it. The menace was so widespread that party invite would sometime specify that ‘no maids allowed’

Among our friends Jispa was the only one without a full time help. So she was quite used to carrying her own stuff. Her friends when they would come with us would just walk away without picking up after them in a picnic or expected to be served. Argggg. Do your own stuff dudes.

Cut to present. These days when Jispa sometimes picks her school bag I see her struggle with the weight. The bags are really heavy. Jispa has her taekwondo in school so she carries an extra amount of water – glucon C or something. So there is around one and a half litre of water in her bag. Then she has a snack box. Then she carries her taekwondo uniform and then she carries her books. The bag is really heavy. At first I tried not carrying it for her as we left home. Then I realized that it was too much for a child. So just the other day I weighed the bag (it was a light day, with a few books coming home for review), and it weighed 6 kilos. On a light day. So that would got to 7 kilos at least or possibly 8.

Pit that against the 28 kilo frame that Jispa is and you get the idea. So I kind of feel sorry for her and I carry it till the car. But to ensure that life isn’t easy for her, I let her carry my tiffin or my sports bag or something. She gladly takes the exchange offer. But from the car to the bus– she is on her own.

Wait – the car till the bus? How is that a big thing? Well I did not think of it as a big thing as well. Till I saw one kid at the bus stop. He is possibly is the 6^th or 7^th grade. He comes with his mom AND his maid. His maid carries his bag while his mom marches him to the bus stop. For the record his maid is tinier (build) than him. And then when he comes to the bus stop in the car, he walks without any encumbrances till the bus and his mother or maid carry the bag for him till there. So there. Possibly I am being quick to judge. Possibly the poor boy has a condition not allowing him to carry weight. Possibly.

But the case still is a vivid example of what I see wrong. Yes the bags are getting stupidly heavy. I also don’t understand why Jasmine has to fill water and give Jispa to take to school. The school has a filter and when I was in school, we saw anyone who carried water from home as a wimp. But that still only solves around 15% of the problem. We give the bag too much weight. And then we give the child too much care. You definitely need to carry your own stuff. Jispa must carry her own stuff, but I guess it also must be adequate for her to carry.

I feel like noting the bag weight every day and then writing a letter to school. Just stating the facts. Just stating them. Let’s see what happens.