teach her, to be free?

What the hell man. It doesn’t take long for parents to grow horns. The devil inside of us is lurking and shows up at the opportune moment.

When Jispa was born my mindset was vastly different from where it is today. One the things I was happy with a girl was – she doesn’t really need to study. No – I was not being sexist but I knew that the world wouldn’t accept a guy who is a failure. While I was growing up the guy thing was clear. You are a guy and hence you have to study and make your life and earn money and be successful. If you are a girl – you figure what you want. Jasmine wasn’t forced in to studying well and graduating. I think it was just a happy thing to do. When Jasmine after studying decided not to come with me into MBA – she had done enough of studying and exams – she wasn’t questioned. When she was at home doing almost nothing – no one bothered. She was settled in and was in many ways engaged to me – the big question was – was I earning enough. Does my financial future look good enough?

So when Jispa was born I was so happy. I will not push her to study and she would be free to do what she wanted to. She would play, lean an art, draw, cook, swim, kick ass – anything. We wanted her to be free. All this resulted in a great childhood – till she hit the 4^th or more recently the 5^th standard. Now we are assholes after her life. We want her to study. We ensure she studies. Till last year Jasmine would take up her studies, but this year on – Jasmine had decided that she will study on her own. Just ensure she sits to study and that’s all. Her grades were ok so far. Now exams are on our head and Jasmine this weekend decided to just check up on her and decided to take up her Hindi. ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. She wasn’t that prepared for the Hindi test and she needed a lot of help.

I found this similar to the situation that I was in when I was her age. I remember my mom leaving me to study and once just on a lark deciding to take up and BOOM.  I knew nothing and wasn’t ready for the exam. SO now we are after her. We are making her study every day. Exams start this week – Thursday with Hindi. So there it is. We are pushing her to study, we are taking up stuff, today I woke up early and woke her up as well and did history with her. Wow. I sacrificed my badminton and got ready with her and sat to study. Basically I became the father that I never wanted to be. Never. Goddam it!

What do I do? I keep thinking? On one side I have to be the father who is fun all the time and on the other side I have this niggling doubt – if my mom would have pushed me and made me study; not by simply making me sit, but being after me – taking up, setting goals, pushing me – I would have been able to study better, earn better and make a better career for myself. So what do I do?

I spoke about Freedom in one old post. When you want the freedom to choose some freedom must be taken away from you. In effect we are taking some freedom away from Jispa. We are taking away her freedom to choose her childhood time so that we give her the freedom to choose when the time comes to choose her career. If she does well in in her studies can she have the freedom to pursue whatever field she wants to. That is the truth of our system. Exams are not attest of knowledge – they are a test of time. What all you know in that period of time – not your understanding and what you retain over a longer period – but what you know at that time. This TIME creates the pressure. SO as we teach Jispa – we are cramming into the brain something that will help her for this time. Like Hindi – dam shit – I cant understand why you need to be able to write Q&A in Hindi. I struggle to teach Jispa Hindi and there are a lot of words that I have no idea of. Swachand! WTF! I understand the need to know how to read and write Hindi. I believe it’s critical but not this way. You have to inculcate the love of the language – teach them how to talk in Hindi and not cram in Hindi. Get conversations flowing and then get the questions and answers flowing. Jispa is simply cramming the answers of the chapter. There are no discussions. A little bit that I do is allow her to express the answers in her own words. Jasmine is a bit stricter in this respect – but this I am happy to fight for. As long as the answer is written to the point – it does not matter if it is by rote. Therefore I allow for a bit of leniency but that is still no excuse – it still is a big F*&^*^ mug up.

So yes – I have sold my soul – once again. Hopefully – it’s for the right reason. Isn’t that the last refuge of the thief? The right reason. I don’t know. I try to be different and try to commit a different set of mistakes, but in the end – I feel so helpless. When I lose my cool while studying I feel really miserable. I don’t think Jispa will have too many happy memories of me teaching her school stuff. I am really bad at it and my frustration shows. I am jumpy and irritable and I tend to snap at Jasmine and Jispa. I am sorry. I try my best to then regain cool and ensure it doesn’t last too long. So far my only redeeming feature is that I haven't ever scolded her for bad results. That's the outcome. I rather focus on the input. I hope to never stoop that low. I am equally responsible for a result as she is. But i have also learnt never to say never when talking about the future. that word is only good for the past. Lets See.

But hell – grow horns – chop them off  - that’s parenting 101 for you. For me. 

Now you understood the need of the comma in the title?

its a tough job

Time again for Hindi elocution. This time we officially ran out good Hindi poems. I am dam pissed with her school. It was always left to the teacher in my school to give the poems and get the best students to recite. I remember the teacher spending long hours with the student trying to get them to recite the poems well.

These days it is completely left to the parents to search and get a poem. The teacher was telling Jispa to tell us to type Hindi poems for standard four in Google and get poems. What the hell! Of course I am aware of Google. That’s where we always first reach for. This time we were completely idea bankrupt. Jasmine and I always keeps an eye out for poems. She photographed an entire poem book from a friend. We choose a couple and sent it only to be rejected. One was too simple and another from another source was too advanced. Dam you. Beaten, we told Jispa that sorry, this year we don’t think you can take part. We don’t have a poem. Being the last year’s first place winner, the teacher was especially keen for her to participate. She suggested that we talk to another kid’s mother as that kid had two poems. Jasmine called her only to be refused as the second poem was a backup for the next year. Fair.

Luckily, out of the blue Jasmine remembered a friend who had a cousin in Rajkot who was good at elocution. Their school book had a lovely poem which was mailed to Jasmine. Voila! Saved by the skin of our teeth. We sent it to school. This time I told Jispa “don’t give it to teacher and ask her if its ok. Give it and tell her that we found a great poem that we are keen to do”. Jispa came back yesterday to tell us that when she submitted the poem saying those words there was a frown on the teacher’s face which turned to a smile as she read it and said ok. Whew.

So now the saga begins. Getting the poem memorized, then getting the pronunciation and diction right and then the voices. How much for her to do and how much for us to stress her out!

Also now the swimming season has started in earnest. Tomorrow is the first of the swimming meets. Let’s start. Jispa got a brand new sports bag to carry her swim gear in every day. She has been training long and hard. The kids are divided into age groups two years apart. With even a year being too much for these kids, two years puts the lower age kids at a distinct disadvantage. It’s officially called the disadvantage year and the advantage year. So Jispa is in the disadvantage year this year. This will be her first serious disadvantage year and it’s important that she competes well in it. That separates the wheat from the chaff. But of course it’s a long way to go, but you have to compete well in a disadvantage year to really believe you have a chance of making it.

Yesterday, after jasmine and I were discussing some stuff around Jispa’s poetry school and swimming preparations, we looked at each other and remarked – Dam it man, parenting is so bloody tough.

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’.

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.

we know not what we want

When I was a kid I always fancied myself as an actor. I knew I had the emotional range, I knew I did not have stage fright and it surely can’t take this much to win an elocution competition. I could be loud, I could be clear and I could have tons of expressions. But the truth is… I did not win any competition. How could I? you need to take part if you want to win.
Jispa has taken part every year in her school elocution competition. She is pretty cool, loud and she loves to modulate her voice and give out emotions while reciting. But she never hit the first place yet. Either second or third. That is good for me. I always wanted her to participate but I was pretty cool, if she won or not. Winning is a combination of a lot of things. The choice of poetry is also important. It must be difficult, allow for a range of emotions, long and stuff like that. So finishing in the top tree ain’t too bad.
Especially as Jispa is home coached in elocution. A lot of them from school go for elocution or speech and drama class. I find the very idea ridiculous. Why would need a class for this. Of course as one grows up and if one wants to this up seriously then it’s important to do it professionally, but for now I think the classes for the kids in the subject is nothing but a sham. And of all people, I can do enough for her now. So far I seem to have been proven right.
Our process – first thing, Jasmine and me sit and search for the right poetry. In the English elocution, I just have to open my collection of Shel Silverstein books and there – a large collection of fun poems that allow for tone to be varied during the recital as well as allow for a crucial twist in the end. For Hindi, the problem is far more severe. Till last year, we had a collection of cheap Hindi books that helped us choose a nice poem. Fun poem. But now we have exhausted the stock. No more long, fun, interesting poems there.
So this year I hit the internet in the hope of searching for a nice poem. But I did not even know where to start – elocution poems for kids? Harivanshrai Bacchan? What should I search for? I tried a few forums, a few blogs, anything; in the hope that I would hit something at least. I had been in the past searching for a poem I heard in my school elocution competition. I remember it being funny and the guy had won the competition. All I could remember of it was – gol hai kaise dhara, gol puri papad, isliya masterji, dhara bhi gol hai, marks bhi gol hai… something something. These were just words in between. They weren’t even coherent lines of the paragraph. All these years I returned a blank.
This time while searching on the net I tried some phrases from the poem again and BINGO! It was bloody there. I found the poem. I went crazy. After all these years. I must have been in the eight grade – that’s about in the year 1989 I must have heard the poem for the first time and then I saw it again. The poem name was Vinti (full poem at the end of the blog). Wow. I read through it. It was the same funny poem. But there was one catch. It seemed too advanced for Jispa. In fact to seemed too advanced for me. I did not understand some words I did not know how to pronounce some other words. Dam. What to do?
I showed Jasmine and decided to send the print to school and let the teacher decide. It got selected and we proceeded to get Jispa to learn it. We went too sure of a lot of meanings and pronunciations so we specifically asked Jispa to get it checked form her school Hindi teacher. And we explained the general meaning of the words, sentences and the poem to Jispa. Jispa is now a pro. She put in her own emotions and all we have to do is to mildly correct it here and there. Jasmine and I are also pretty tired these days. We have our hands full managing Jispa’s hectic schedule. We hardly have any time left for practicing elocution. In the evenings, jispa comes home and eats and gets ready and poof… she is asleep.
So Jispa put in a lot of emotions herself and a lot of the grammar and pronunciations were taken care of by her teacher. We put in a few corrections and she was off to go. She told me that her elocution date is a few days off, and then on the D day in the morning, I suddenly asked – it’s today isn’t it. AH yes. ok. best of luck. Jasmine went “aren’t you supposed to wear your normal uniform today for the elocution?”. Oops. Today she was wearing her PE uniform as it was PE day. So I ran inside to iron her uniform and we packed it in and left. One quick round and a few guidelines, a few reminders to be loud and clear and …. She was on her own.
19th Jan 2012. Also our 13th marriage anniversary. Jasmine calls in the afternoon and says “your daughter is such an ass.” “Now what?” I enquire. “She came in and looked all sad. She got in the car and turned her face towards the glass and refused to talk. I kept asking her what happened and then she turned and screamed – I WON!”. Yaaaaaa… good one wow... let me talk to her now..
Now I have always maintained. Forget the results, just focus on having a good time and whether the crowd laughed or clapped. The result is the judge’s problem. That’s what I always told her. SO while I was excited how could I show that on the call? I was excited beyond all what I thought I would be. so I said, “ hey, wow, Dam cool, did the crowd enjoy?” I tried recollecting all the questions I asked the last year when she finished second best and asked them again – when did the crowd laugh, which part they found funny, what did the teachers say, did the judges laugh etc etc. She said, that she came first and she beat K (name withheld). K is the one who normally comes in first. She goes for drama class and Jispa looks up to her. Jispa normally resigns to second place knowing that K is better.
It was a tough moment. I was on top of the world. I did not know that winning the elocution meant so much to me as well. Why? Not that I wanted her to win so much. I was perfectly ok missing first place, coming second or third. Finishing strong and pushing the barriers was what I was always keen on. As I said ‘the result is for the judge, not for the participant’.
I came home to hear the story better. Jispa was a little nervous this time it seemed when the results were getting announced. She was a bit jittery, when the third place was announced. Then there was a joint second result with K and I. Here is where she got ‘wobbly knees’ in her words. She was excited and possibly scared. All or nothing situation. And then it was announced that she had WON! She screamed and she felt like crying. She said that her eyes were moist and she was really excited. Those around her, wished her and some it seems hugged her. And when she went to class, the girls all pounced on her like every time. She is a legend in her class. K is one year older to her and hence in a higher class.
I came in and was emotional for the rest of the evening. I don’t know why – I felt ecstatic and I felt like crying as well. I think over time my tears seemed to have been dried up but I definitely felt the twinge in my eyes. I also felt like screaming and I felt like jumping. I did not know it meant so much to me, I had no clue. Why was I feeling so strong about this? I kept looking at jasmine and I thought I would burst any time. Jasmine knows how much I have wanted to act and how much this means to me.
While I was having a shower, jasmine comes in and tells me. “I told jispa, that papa is always proud of you, but this time he is extra proud of you.” Then she said that “Jispa said, that’s because papa likes elocution a lot nah and he taught me a lot of it and I corrected her saying that papa always wanted to do these things but never got to”. I came off the shower and went to put Jispa to sleep. As usual, her legs were hurting from the swimming and I was to oil and massage her legs. Jispa spoke “I know why you are extra proud of me”. Well yes “I am extra proud, because I always wanted to do well in elocution. When I was in school, we were three kids. India wasn’t so rich, so our parents did what they did best, pushed us to study. We had only one chance to do well in life, and that was by being good in studies. So they pushed us for that and did not encourage us for elocution. I wanted to be a part of elocution, or drama or debate, mom would not really encourage. The only time I did something was when I refused to listen to her and took part in dramatics to win the second best actors award in the play ‘the watermelon cure’. We were asked to study. Mom was busy with running a nursery to get some extra cash, then three kids, home work and everything else. so she focused only on study study study. So funnily while I always tell you it not so important to win, suddenly I am all excited and extra proud now that you have won. It a funny feeling”
Three days hence also while writing this blog I am so bloody emotional. When I first saw her on stage in school, I was a bit emotional. Now that she did well in elocution I am emotional. It means much more than what I thought it meant. What the hell. How little we know of ourselves. As parents the dreams we dream for our kids in spite of our best efforts are bloody ours. We keep trying to avoid mistakes our parents made (or seemed to have made), we want for them what we would have wanted for ourselves, we give them the infrastructure we wished for and want them to win what we wanted to. Funny. This all in spite of repeatedly, and intentionally trying to be a parent that says, its your life, your desires, your feelings. Live them the way you want to. Well at least we are aware of this. What about the kids who parents push them hard towards their own dreams. We may not push, but I got so emotional when she achieved what I buried well down inside of me. My God, am I tired, happy and content. I slept thinking I don’t want anything else of her… at least for now :). Till dream again… knowing or unknowingly.

---- ps - how tough it is to be a parent. I was visibly excited in office and one friend said, take something for her today, a gift. I said - how can I? I always tell her its not important to win and I show no great emotion - win or lose - how can I take a gift for WINNING if i dont take for losing? dam parenting. Bloody hell.

http://www.hyd-masti.com/2008/05/vinti.html

Vinti

hey prabhu itni vinay meri sun lijiye,
is baar meri naav ko us paar tho kar deejiye,
my nahi dartha pralay se ya kisis toofan se,
kaampti hai ruh meri par sadha imthihaan se.

taay-taay taay taay roj rat tha hoon prabhu,
raat din panne palatha hoon prabhu,
bhagya mein na jaane kaun sa abhishaab hai,
raat ko ratna subah maidaan milta saaf hai.

akal ko algebra jayegi jad se pacha,
3 mein se 6 gaye tho aur kya baaki bacha,
pee gayi english humari khopadi ke khoon ko
main samaj na paaya is betuke majmoon ko
paas hona chahata tha fail mujhko kar diya,
zindagi bhar main likh na paya chekislovakiya.

naash ho itihaas ka sun ke samundar beh gaye,
mar gaye woh log rone ke liye hum rah gaye,
shah jahan, humayun, akbar sahab tha,
kaun tha beta na jaane kaun kiska baap tha,
bhoo gol mein ek prashn aaya gol hai kaise dhara.

ek hi pal mein humne likh diya uttar se khara,
gol poodi, kachodi, poohe, papad gol hai,
gol ras gulla, jalebi gol laddu gol hai,
jhoom uthe masterji is anokhe gyaan se
likh diya parche par unhone badi shaan se,
teek hai beta humari lekhni bhi gol hai,
gol hai syahi humari, number bhi tumhara gol hai.
kya karo hindi, maana mujhko isme aata nahi,
laakh sir jakhjhortha kuch samaj pata nahi
gadhya ho ya padhya dono kaal hai mere liye,
dono samajho ji ka janjaal hai mere liye
haay hindi ki jagah main aaj hinda likh gaya,
bainsa ko pashu ki jagah main parinda likh gaya,

prabho chod kar saare sahare aagaya hoon dwaar par,
maar ghoonsa laat thaapad kintu baed paar kar,
hai dayamay har tarah se main daya ka paatr hoon,
naam hai deepti mera is desh ki chaatr hoon.

SANDHYA SHANKAR

a lovely mind, a simple talk

Jispa had a good lesson in competition. She is amongst the decent swimmers in her age category in her gymkhana. I think she comes in at second place. Ditto for her school. This week end she was taking part in an inter club competition at the CCI. Since there are quite a few kids, they simply take a time trial and take the timings to announce the winners. Her coach had warned us that Jispa is an eight year old in an under-nine age group. That means basically she has a one year disadvantage, which is large for her age. We were obviously expecting nothing much from her. Hopefully it might teach her a thing or two about competing. We saw the elder kids swim very well, and it was a joy for me to watch them swim real fast. It was time for Jispa’s time trial. She shot off the blocks and swam fast. I thought she swam well and quite fast. Pretty cool. She swam like she never had. But when she attempts to go fast she screws up on the technique. The hands don’t stretch as they must in their effort to go fast. But a few furious strokes later she was in the lead. She hit the other side, turned, glanced to see competition and started swimming again. Jasmine and I get tired of telling her that she need not look at competition. She has to learn to swim well and that’s more than enough. If her strokes are great and she tries her best, that’s all that matters. At her level, we don’t want her to win; we want her to get her strokes right.
Jispa’s problem is that she ends up using her over sized brain a bit too much. When I coach her, I am delighted that she listens, unlike other kids who don’t want to, but the problem is that her brain starts listening too much. She over compensates. It’s difficult coaching her then. Her technique then goes all awry. I remember last year, I was trying to get her to run correctly. Some cousin told her to get long strides in. That’s a good thing, but she ended up taking so long strides that she started jumping as opposed to running. It was like a series of long jumps. She will have this problem of brain and body not being entirely coordinated. Her super brain will take too many demands on her body. Same problem when I start elocution with her. Too much use of the brain. Suddenly she will not decide to use certain tone, or give some explanation for changing it or something. ‘Gay abandon’ is not a term I would use for her. She surely benefits from using her brain. It helps her in creative writing and the sort but sometimes in sports it pays to have an uncomplicated approach. A simple approach that seeks to hone instinct and use it. So this time while I started talking to her on running, Jasmine was pretty scared. When I was explain that in a sprint, you don’t use your heel too much and run almost on your toes, Jasmine was wondering and so was I, that she will end up looking like a bouncing ballerina. I think I too will learn about teaching her stuff. I guess I will learn to tell her to keep things simple. Just run fast and will correct a few simple things I see wrong. It’s stupid for me to mess with a good mind. I am simply not qualified enough to do that. What I can do is drill the tables in her head. Today morning I was trying to get her to write a Hindi composition that she was making a complete mess of. I tried to help her think of the essay visually. Almost like a mind map. That would help her structure it I guess. Then we went through the words, the sentences, the closing, the drama required. When she finally writes it today evening we will know if we got it anyway near right. Personally I myself do not know enough Hindi to teach her. I get it mixed up with urdu, and don’t even know the difference. But I guess today I did not do that bad.
So coming back to the swim meet, Jispa swam like she never had. She did her 50 yards in 44 seconds. I think it was her personal best. Dam cool. She also came in first within her immediate time trial. She came panting and exhausted. A dam god effort. I had o be somewhere else so I left by the time she had to compete in the medley relay. Since there weren’t enough girls from her age group for her gymkhana she was given the responsibility of the butterfly. A stroke she barely knows. I was told she did pretty bad. She swallowed water, went slow, almost did not complete. But she pushed herself to complete the race. In the freestyle time trial, while she managed 44 seconds, the first place was at around 34 seconds. Whoa, a full ten seconds. She was pretty dejected. I only met her the next day morning. Jasmine told me that she was felling down.
To my mind I told her that I think she did a swell job finishing the medley. She did not know the stroke, she swallowed water, she felt like shit but she hung on and finished the race. I told her of the time when I was in I think third standard. I barely knew how to swim and could just about manage to swim one length. Just about. That too with the support of the side wall. I still took part in the competition in school. When we were to start I ran and took the side lane. We started and I started swimming furiously. Half way through I don’t know, but I swallowed water and was coughing when the life guard thought I was drowning and pulled me out. Hah. She definitely did better than that!
I am reminded of Thomas Friedman who wrote that in places like India and China, competition is so tough that even if you are 1 in a million, there are a thousand of you. He is right. There are so many good guys around. If you want to be the best you have to train harder. I was thinking if its right for her to compete. One way is that let her see how good she is the hard way. Let her face dejection and loss. She can’t swim in her well and think that she is good. She has to see the world outside. For me. I think I will keep things simple. I will stop trying to coach her too much. I will have to stick to the philosophy part of the game. Hopefully a few years from now, she will coach me. Then she can talk technique and I can talk life. A conversation can sometimes be more than enough. A simple conversation. I can remember some of the best conversations I have had. But then that is another story.

what else matters?

I just realised that I am horrible at teaching Jispa anything that comes close to school work. I have a deep rooted abhorrence for it. First came Hindi. There I had a natural excuse. I could understand jack of what was going on. As she continues her quest on the Hindi road I am only to recollect my own fears and trauma at having to study Hindi and Marathi and get the dam ‘maatras’ right. Also I never understood why all the vernacular language teachers had to be equal terrors and evil. Just because they got their maatras right why couldn’t they understand that I had no clue which one was where.
Leaving Hindi alone, today Jasmine asked me to take her dictation. I had to open the first chapter in her Oxford English book and give spellings from there. Jispa stopped reading this level at least a year ago. She is far more advanced that what I read. But of course the spellings is another matter altogether. Spellings have been my problem as well. In many ways the spell check in Microsoft word has been specifically designed for dyslexics like me. I am still not sure on how to spell science and hence let the spelling ‘sicence’ pass, till Jasmine heard that and screamed from the kitchen. To get a sample of my spellings go to my first few posts. Then I was typing directly into the text bar of blogspot and getting all my spellings wrong. Quickly I learnt enough to type out the post on word and then transfer the same on to the post, post the corrections.
Add to it that I simply hated studies. So while I started taking her dictations, I added words like ‘at’ ‘a’ ‘ran’ etc. that was just to liven things up. Jasmine gave me a stare and then understood that I was pretty much incorrigible. After the spelling, I had to ask comprehension q’s from the chapter. That was fun. I started asking random trick questions and other funny ones. Jasmine now had had enough. She took the book from me and started asking the proper questions. Jispa was rattling off the answers. I went to jasmine ad whispered in her ears, ‘you are actually testing her comprehension on this chapter. Yesterday she read the Abhimanyu story from the Amar Chitra Katha and she could rattle off the story today morning.’ This was way down the value chain for her. She even managed some other outstanding answers that required her to think of something laterally and assume something or look beyond the story for answers. I was pretty impressed. I am not taking her tuitions for sure.
Yesterday Jispa and I got talking. One aunty was explaining to Jispa how her teacher had funny pronunciations and how they used to laugh when she said m and n and x and y in math class. While Jispa got the joke she wanted to know how the alphabets made it into math class. I thought a bit and figured that she could get a handle on algebra since her ability to take a little leap of imagination was wired in. I tried to explain that many times x is used as a blank or a dash. 1+x = 3, then what is x. she struggled a bit then I reframed it as 1+___ = 3. what plus 1 is three. A ha… x is then equal to two. Then I complicated it a bit to m+n = 2. aha… 1+1. Then further to m+n = 3. aha… m is 1 and n is 2… or I corrected her as m is 2 and n is 1. so m can be 1 or 2 and n can be 1 or 2. That was fun. This was all in the car while waiting for Jasmine. She called us out to break this conversation. I don’t know how much I could have gone on. Possibly negative numbers? Or even larger algebraic sums. Eeks. I love teaching this stuff. Especially if it’s not in the portion. The whole typecast of dad teaching math is fun. I guess it will last till her 8th or 9th standard. Beyond that the sums will confuse the shit out of me. Basically till we get to derivatives I should be fine. Post which… you are on your own Jispa. Have fun. It would be so much fun to learn from her once she majors in some thing. Anything but boring and sadistic accounts. That was the pits. I see no value add in having an accounting conversation with her. Once I even tried explaining a periodic table with her. That too was a load of fun.
I don’t know how much she gathers and retains but the moment is fun, for me and for her. We enjoy it a lot. What else matters?

sikhau

Oh man. This is soo stressful. We are trying to make Jispa study her hindi. To teach first standard hindi we require Jasmine and me together. With jasmine teaching her the basic stuff that even I find difficult to understand. In the book there are words that have two alphabets. I don’t know the meaning of so many of them. Some of them even jasmine does not know the meaning. We were wondering what on earth they are. Words such as kharal, thanak, khag, phalak etc.
So while Jasmine is teaching Jispa, I am on the internet logging into a shabkosh. Hehe. A hindi into english dictionary. Man this shit is really tough. I would have never known these meanings. And instantly as I teach them, I forget them as they come. Some of them like dapat, even the online shabdkhosh does not have. यह शब्द (दपत) अभी हमारे डाटाबेस मे नही है.
On some words I thought I knew the meaning but Jasmine had to correct me. At some time I have decided I will merely let her learn this shit by rote. I have no clue on helping her. I might have failed her first standard hindi test. so now I am merely just taking her hindi reading. If she asks me for any meaning I am going to smash her to the ground.