learning joy

Jasmine is a sweetheart. She has the best relationships with all her maids. They love to work with her. In fact when we moved here, it was a difficult thing for her maids to now search for new jobs. They love her and want to work with her. Jasmine treats people like they should be – like people. With dignity and respect. When we moved out Jasmine gave away a lot of things to the maids. Including extra clothes, cupboards and what not. We even gave away random old electronic hardware lying around. Sure we could have made more money simply selling the stuff on ebay but Jasmine and me both reckon that probably there is more value to be derived from them using it than me getting a couple of thousand for old loose stuff lying around the house.

She also treats them well, feeds them, gives them tea and generally takes care of them. So for every Sunday when Jasmine wants the old maid to come and help her around the house, she comes and then refuses to take money from her for a couple of hours work. It’s funny to see Jasmine trying to force them to take money and them running away.

We learn by observing and I learnt how to treat other humans from other people. My dad, my wife, my bosses and my friends. This is not something that can be learnt from moral science class in school. You have to experience and be willing to learn. Different people teach us how to handle different incidents. As I grew up I was a bit confused on how to treat people. I had compassion but around me was an India divided by huge chasms. The gap between the have nots and the haves was wide and there seemed to be an atmosphere of mistrust. Servants had to be kept an eye on, as they could steal and one should not intermingle too much. I think slowly as we began growing out of our disparities we learnt to deal with people.

Possibly also I learnt to deal with people as I grew up and there was no real economic change as I see it. Whatever be the case. I learnt to deal with people from other people. I do remember that being a training set. How to deal with sweet people and how to deal with irritating people. How to say no, how to cajole and how to reward. Jasmine has taught me a whole lot of all the people. She doesn’t try and influence people, she doesn’t try and push them, she just is. She just does what comes to her and people get influenced by her. They love her and work for her.

What may be my style? I am trying to hard or trying to less or the fact may be that I am trying, while Jasmine simply is being herself. I don’t know. But I do know that I try to treat people in way that I have learnt works for me. This is also basis how people have been with me. I see and I learn.

Learning is an everlasting process without a time line and structure. In fact structured learning is amongst the worst ways to learn. It surely tries to accelerate learning but it leaves much to be desired. I was talking to Jispa the other day. She goes for the international curriculum at school, which is far more advanced than what I had in school. She has critical thinking, an ability to reason and a freedom to write her mind. Her exams are more on experience, perspective rather than memory and rote. It’s lovely. But it’s only as lovely as the teacher makes it out to be. Awesome teachers make the classroom and the subject more interesting and the irritating ones make the subject boring. Some try and only explain how to attack the question paper and write things that are designed to get marks. There goes the studies.

That’s the problem with a structured education – it seeks to impart and then measure. While measuring it seeks to rank. To rank it needs a certain set of guidelines, schemes and structures for uniformity. There – we have reached a point where the twain are at odds with each other. It is now by definition doomed to failure. Should I learn for marks or should I learn for what I want to learn. I am screwed.

Yesterday with a friend we were discussing education and courses. My view was that it’s asking for way too much to get a child to figure what they want to do by the time they are 15 or 17. I didn’t know what my calling was till I was at least 25 years old. How can we ask for choice in these circumstances, so early of them? But the costs are high of wrong choice and the pressures, real. How does this work?

Forget. Right now I am trying to solve the leaking roof in the dry area from the flat above. It’s fun trying to decipher the leakage source, especially when it involves flooding that balcony with water and being Sherlock Holmes. Then taking a few calls and trying to be intelligent about things that you are so not really trained to do. Why didn’t we have carpentry, woodwork, masonry and other such base skills being taught in schools? A few classes of PT rubbish could have clubbed into this and we could have all been better off. The mechanics of a car, the innards of a toaster, the joy or raising a farm. Real life skills that allow you to work with your hands and give you immense satisfaction. Thye could have atleast taught us basic gardening, if not growing wheat. Or even now, a simple course on growing strawberries on the roof top garden… ok even parsley or basil growing would have been fun.

But this is not to be. I had a shitty education only redeemed by the fact that amazing women and a few amazing men wanted to teach as that was their choice. They loved us and we loved them back. They spoke to us, explained and inspired us. I am so happy that over that last 16 years I have done my little bit to alleviate boredom in the classrooms. Some little joys. In the process of helping people discover themselves, I discovered a whole lot about me. A WHOLE LOT.

That’s experiences and learning and joy.

diligence and dedication

What is it to be a dad? I don’t know but being one does teach you a lot of things. Having patience for one. It can be extremely rewarding and frustrating at the same time and to live with these ups and downs is a part and parcel of being a dad. It compounds with the fact that parenting is a moving target as your child grows up every day. They respond differently and more importantly I as a parent, need to think differently. I have to approach each situation differently, every time it repeats or every new day.

It’s not an easy things and it’s not that it comes naturally. In fact the natural behavior would be to deteriorate your response with the frustration of repetition. At this point, I have to control my instincts and think deeper and reach for resilience from within. I am sure Jispa too needs serious resilience from within to deal with her parents as well. And this will only get tested again and again when she grows up and is independent and doesn’t require us for her growth or wellbeing.

Today morning as I was dropping Jispa to swimming for her morning swim and I reailsed that she had forgotten her flipper bag. Again. Oh dear. There was no point in scolding her or anything. She told me that she will simply borrow a fellow swimmers bag and continue. As I left her and went back home I couldn’t help thinking – Jispa reached her national glory thanks to Jasmine doggedness. We put her in swimming and then the program took over. Jasmine found her calling in Jispa’s program and supported her. We drove her to every swim meet, we sat in the background and fed her, we got her ready for school and dropped her, we cooked her special food and basically ferried her every where and got her to stick to her swimming program.

Left to her own, I don’t think the kid would have done it. Today as we have relaxed our oversight into her program she has slipped and how. She doesn’t train as hard, she bunks at will and we realize - she is not destined for pushing herself to achieve greatness. She is a good person. A nice toughish kind of kid but she is not the natural born self-motivated sportsperson who can continually achieve greatness by virtue of relentless unsupervised practice. She is not eklavya who can make a statue of her teacher and practice away. In Many ways she reminds me of me.

I think my dad would have said that I have never fulfilled my potential as a kid growing up. In sports or in studies. Procrastination was my thing and diligence was never it. It’s only when I grew up in life and when life kicked me in the backside that I realized the value of diligence and dedication. Anything that does not have it will not get achieved. And never to your satisfaction. I think Jispa achieved what she did in swimming was because Jasmine showed these two things in helping Jispa grow with the program. My job was diligence and dedication to Jasmine’s cause. It wasn’t my thing. Even today I tell Jispa, its ok, relax, live your life, have a childhood, and don’t bother training so hard now.

Jispa will grow up and understand these things. She is better than most other kids. I am sure. She can still manager her swimming and her studies and the simple fact that she continued to swim all these years, makes me convinced that she has it in her to grow. I am not criticizing her but making the difference between kids who are good (damn good) and kids who are great. Look at the current Indian captain. After breaking into the cricket team and the big league did her realize that he has to work even harder and train like crazy if he has to break into the all-time great lists. He was a chubby child and now he is a pinnacle of fitness and hard work. I was a lazy worker and now I put in 12 hours a day trying to get things done. It takes time to grow into what you want to do in life and when you get it, then you can go for it.

I am sure Jispa will be a great coach or a good teacher or an awesome worker. She should do well. She has a lovely disposition that she got from her mother, an understated ambition (mother again) and an ability to explain her thoughts (now that’s me). This is her and I am quite proud of her. She is a far better kid than I was at her age.

Just a few days ago we had this conversation on which subjects to choose and which to drop. I told her to screw career and follow what you love. Finally she chose basis the best teachers she would get. That’s a smart choice. All subjects are good. It’s the teacher who makes us love a subject. Now she chose physics on the basis of the teacher and immediately she loves it. That’s a great choice kid. Connect to people and you will always be rewarded. Pick people you love and work with them. Then it’s always easier to handle every issue that comes your way.

have a look at them too

Jispa is learning about the great war in History class. She has been reading a lot about the Schlieffen Plan as she has that as a case study. Today she told me that she has to present the plan today to the class. I told her “that’s really awesome. I am so jealous”. She looked at me and asked if I was being sarcastic. “no, not sarcastic but real. We learnt shitty history”. She said “all shivaji and all?”. “well yes, we had Shivaji but it’s not about Shivaji that’s the issue. Shivaji would also be awesome, if taught well.”

Earlier on, I used to be quite critical of the local history and culture being imposed on the kids. At school we were taught Marathi as a compulsory subject and we had every alternate year, Maratha History in the history text book. This was kind of really painful. We used this to criticize the government and the administration. The issue really is not the force feed of local culture. Today I would vote for local culture as a part of curriculum. It’s the way that it was taught that was stupid. We should have learnt a lot about the Maratha land, in fact we should have been taught even more in detail and in depth. The great Maratha sea forts, their amazing designs, their strategic importance and the various different places where the wars were fought. The Maratha history is very interesting and they even reached Delhi via the Peshwas. They held off the British and were feared.  It was and still is an amazing piece of history. Even the fact that they taught Marathi in school is important. Here the politicians have got it right, they introduced the medium of administration as Marathi in the local offices. This allows the administrative framework to reach those to whom it really matters, the common people. Ofcourse they have made it militantly so and have kept it almost exclusively so. The non Marathi speaking population does find it intimidating to converse with the officialdom. But still, it’s still better than pushing English or Hindi down everyone’s throat. Here I like the Singapore model where English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. It’s a bit painful, but this was all communities are integrated into the government system. So, having Marathi in school is good, but the way it is taught is shit. We learnt it by rote and did not learn the basic art of conversational Marathi. Today while I understand Marathi and possibly can go for Marathi cinema (preferably with sub titles) I can’t really speak Marathi. Jispa too studied Marathi till 7^th grade but cannot speak it. The important part of it is the ability to have conversations in it. Once that’s done, the rest can follow. The script is almost the same as Hindi so that’s not the challenge.

So local culture, history and even geography is not the issue. The issue is the way it is taught. I told Jispa that “in school, we confused history with Eulogy”. “eulogy?”. “yup, here, google the word.” Eulogy: a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly, especially a tribute to someone who has just died. That’s what we did in history. We saw only one side of it and it was in many ways a tribute to the great Maratha and nothing more. A eulogy, that misses the balance in the perspective. “yes” she said. “we are allowed to see every side of history. We are allowed to criticize every aspect of everything in History. We made so much fun of King Louis of the French revolution.”. yup. That is history. Nothing but perspective from things that have happened. Something that will help us understand where we are and what we need to choose to be. History is so much more. Sadly, all my text books and teachers did was to glorify the wars the dead, have clear villains and enemies, typically those ‘Muslim invaders’ till the British came along at which time the Last Mughal Bahadur Shah Zafar became a ‘freedom fighter’. All we did was stupid dates, stupid salient features and a version was narrated to us. Jispa’s history has a whole book dedicated to the Great War, and the first thing the teacher says is that, this is a British book and hence it has the British version. If we read a Germna book, we will get the German version. I also wonder though, what a Japanese version would be.

History : From a subject that I hated and never understood its significance to a subject I read a lot about. I love it. I have tried to pass on my love for History to Jispa as well. At least at some point she wouldn’t question its importance in the curriculum like I did. I learnt nothing. 65 kids in a class, painfully bad infrastructure, stupid textbooks, stupider curriculum – what more can we expect.

Now I read so much and when I removed a few books from the cupboard, I had a few for Jispa to read. In addition to history I also asked her, if she was interested in some anti – government books. Her eye lit up. Yes, I have removed a few. Have a look at them too.

i love you baby, i love you school

I sat this Sunday with Jispa to ensure that she is up to speed on her school work. 8^th grade has started amazingly well for her. Her first set of exams have her scoring lovely marks in almost all subjects, except math. She is now working on her math as well and she is trying to score well there. The teachers are quite nice and are putting an effort in explaining the concepts to the students. They have tons of research and very little mugging up. A lot of explanations of terms and concepts and lots of interesting home work. She has to write a 1200 word essay on the French Revolution after researching whatever she wants on the internet. Now that is cool.

This is the right way to study rather than learning by rote. This is life. You will not know most of what hits you but you are expected to read and understand on the internet and then you are expected to synthesize the same in a short and efficient manner.

So when I sat to study with her, quite frankly I was quite lost. I had nothing to teach her. I just went through most of the work and asked her if she understood. She did and so I just went on and closed almost all the studies in 30 minutes flat. It was a smooth process. She studies on a regular basis, she researches and she manages her homework. I introduced her to Khan Academy.

Jispa now days is getting interested in her school work. She wants to do well and shine in the classroom. I find that very heartening. So I try and use that in motivating her to do better. I have told her about Khan academy multiple times but she hadn’t every really used it. This time while studying I spoke to her about it. I told her that since it’s a US based thing and you have an international curriculum you should be able to love what they do and you will find it relevant. That struck a chord and she was at it, watching videos and learning from there.

I was telling Jasmine that seriously, I don’t understand anything and I can’t really add value to her studies. The fact that I am sitting and discussing stuff with her is enough. Just show that her studies are important and her successes at school are important and celebrated. I keep telling her that she has done well and that we wonder how but we are happy that she is managing her studies and her swimming together.

So while finishing off her studies, I could really add value to only two subjects – Geography and English. In geography we were talking about over population. Here I completely dissed her studies. Over population to my mind is a mythical monster created by people with low imagination and will to do good work. There is no such thing such as over population. Cities have dense populations and in many ways its good for living as people are able to stay together and us mass transportation and fundamentally reduce the footprint. You can efficiently design living, transport, communications, leisure, recreation etc. People are better when they are dense as opposed to being completely spread out. So the problem is not over population but that of under infrastructure. The government tries to solve the problem by labelling it wrong. There is definitely a larger population than what the infrastructure can support but the problem is not the population but the infrastructure. Hence the problem is that there is less infrastructure that what the people need. That’s all you need to do. Reframe your issues. Jispa also completely agrees. She said that in class she also spoke about that as once I had spoken to her about this. People have ingenuity and enterprise.  They cannot be the problem. They are the solution. When we were growing up, I remember having this discussion and debate. I too firmly believed that over population is an issue. China’s one child policy is the solution that must be emulated. As we have seen, China has now devolved policy as it creates a various set of issues, that are also weird to handle – such as too pampered children, an ageing population and preference for males. You cannot see population as a problem but that as an opportunity. People can solve their problems, you have to give them freedom to express their enterprise. One will rise and feed a hundred. I look at my previous firm where one man’s dream took his company today to a height where they have over 40,000 employees. In effect feeding – directly over 120,000 people at the minimum. The ripple effect is much larger. One man’s bull headed vision. She said she tried explaining but she is one fighting many and also the teacher. I think this Thursday, in the parent teachers meeting, I am planning to have a smallish but healthy discussion with her geography teacher. It should be good fun. I might have Jasmine nudging me under the table to stop. Let’s see where that one goes.

The other subject that I help her and we have amazing discussions is English. Here I am learning as much as she is. And with which I am teaching her to go further. We had a few discussions about her homework and the stuff that she had to do. I took the paragraphs and completely pushed the envelope on its meanings. We started discussing and reached meanings on the stuff that we hadn’t thought of before. In English its awesome, we can go as far as we want to go without being right or wrong. Jispa then gets a few ideas and then she notes it down. Annotations and notes is something that her teacher has taught her as the way of studying and I think its completely awesome. This way she makes small notes on the side and then discusses it in class, or with her teacher or uses it in her essays/ work. It’s super cool. I wish I studied like that when I was in school.  This gives her an amazing edge. The only worry is that while talking, I put in more things in her head that I this is right. Not that she cannot process it and hold it, but it’s the equivalent of doing your kids homework. And then I think again. It possibly isn’t. It is just a new and different way to look at things. When I read books and see the authors point, I keep it or reject it to use again. So I guess, right now, Jispa is simply seeing various different points of view and possibly mine are very strong and powerful. She does keep rejecting bad ideas or she uses my ideas to challenge existing norms or challenge my ideas as well. Together we reach further than where we were. So in the end, I assume it’s a good thing.

This is another question to ask the teacher at school. How much should we discuss the home work. It seems to be helping her, but how much is the question.

Lets see…. But one thing I did do soon enough. I thanked Jasmine. When the school forms for admission were being given out, I was the one opposed to this school. It seemed like a ladida school and I was afraid it would be too expensive and that we would meet people from different high end backgrounds. It would be impossible to blend in I felt. But Jasmine insisted and we took the form and applied. Then we got through round 1 and then round 2. In the end, looking at everyone who did not get through, there was no way we were going to say no. This level of teaching and this manner of the teachers is worth spending an arm and a leg to get through. We have been lucky. Jispa has been awesome.

Here is one forward that her English teacher put on the whatsapp group. How do you find any fault with a teacher who sends this to the kids.

I so wish that someone taught me stuff like this when I was young and impressionable. I had lost faith in studying and teaching at the time. This is serious.

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And now some random lovely video that justifies the title of the blog. I love the video and I love this song. I can’t have enough of these guys.

whose world is it really?

These days I have been dropping Jispa to school by car. This is because her swim schedule leaves us no option but to drop her directly. It’s just not possible to go via the school bus. So I try and pick her from the pool and drop her as the school in some obtuse way in in the direction of my office. Over the years I think more and more kids are getting dropped off to school by car then by the school bus. I don’t have exact statistics but I definitely see a larger number of cars doing so than before.

While Jispa was growing up, one trend was definitely there – the maid culture. I have blogged about this before. More and more families with kids would employ a full time maid to take care of the kid. Ensuring the kid has food all the time and is dressed up, bathed etc. This leaves the parents to focus on other things as well as have a social life. We actively decided never to have one. We didn’t believe we needed one and we were sure that we could manage Jispa without one. It was fun in any case. It was my job to wake baby Jispa up in the morning and take her to the bathroom for brushing and bathing. One of my fondest memories is brushing Jispa’s teeth while she sits on my lap. “now do eeeeeeeeee”. Now days once in a while for old times sake I try and brush her teeth, just so that she knows how stupid my life was.

This maid culture was so bad that kids grew up expecting that the maid would do almost everything. All they needed was to open their mouth to be fed or just walk around and their bag would be carried. I don’t think kids who grew up like this would have the ability to handle situations on their own. I do think they will grow up with a heightened sense of entitlement as they grow up.

Over the last few months, this servant trend has gone crazy. Now when I drop Jispa to school, we keep a watch out for the comic show. Once we spot it we nudge  each other and laugh like crazy. The routine is straight forward. The car, typically a van or an SUV with the driver will come and stop as close to the school gate as possible. Then from the front a guy will step out and go to the back door and open it. He then will take out the school bag and lunch bag. This is handed over to him by the maid waiting inside. Then he will … mind you… pull the kid out from the car and place the kid on the floor. Then the kid will take a few steps forward and then the guy will then hold the bag out in order to help the kid wear it and off the kid goes to school. A variation of the above is the maid getting out from the front and helping the kid off the car. This is wild. The kid looks like a helpless paraplegic as he is literally pulled out from the car to the floor. What crap is this? Cant the kid just open the door on his own and get out taking the bag and the lunch box? Why is this such a tough thing to do? This is such a stupid thing to do. Today we saw a kid who Jispa says is from the third standard as she was helped off the car. I think I am going to sell tickets for people to stand as they watch this circus unfold every day.

Once when I had reached to pick up Jispa from school, the maids rush to the gate and pick up the bags of the kids as they come out. I remember when I was new to Mumbai and in the fourth standard, we were staying temporarily at my granny’s house, a stone’s throw away from school. My mom tried sending the maid my granny had along with us to school. She was worried that her kids, so used to Dubai would be unable to navigate the 200 meters to reach school. I remember the maid asking us to let her carry our bags and I remember my brother and me clearly saying no. Of course not. That’s not happening.

Jispa’s school is pretty laa-di-da with some celeb kids coming in as well. Once I saw a Mercedes pull up to school. In front of the Mercedes was an SUV from where three men jumped out taking all the corners of the car. Then one guy opens the door and out comes  maid with the bags and then she pulls out the kid who is escorted by the maid and the man and then as the kid goes inside the gate, the men get into the SUV and both the cars speed off. Wow. Money is good but it also comes with its fair set of issues. The father and the child probably need the security.

Yesterday Jispa came home wondering how dumb could King Louis be. This is the joker from the French Revolution. In the uprising he tried to escape and he was so dumb that he got caught again. He tried escaping in a heavy carriage with his men still in uniform and he carried less papers than the entourage and off all things he tried to escape to Paris where the revolution was at its maximum strength. Jispa said “in class we were wondering if this idiot was actually trying to escape or trying to get caught? Why would he do so many stupid things”.

I explained to her that if you are seriously rich and a king, it is quite possible that you are completely out of touch with reality. I spoke about the kids in my class and how South Mumbai residents (posh people) typically are not worldly wise and are just have lower IQ’s. They just don’t get it most of the time. Their projects are from their narrow and entitled world view. In fact in her school itself there would be so many kids who would have practically no idea about anything from reality. And then we turned on her. She too had very little idea about real life. So we started quizzing her – what’s the price of an idli. 10 / 15 bucks she said (reality 40). What’s the price of bread – 21 (reality 33). What’s the price of petrol or a bus ride or anything else? Jispa – you too lead a charmed life. You too won’t be able to escape so fast so soon.

Jispa – He was a king. He was brought to a reality that was his alone and not in touch with the rest of the country. “But he had the best tutors” she said. Of course. The way in your class you have the best tutors but you are probably different than some real entitled dumbos in your class, the same way, tutors don’t matter. What you learn is completely different.

The richer you are the more charmed your life will be. This is the truth and as your family becomes richer and your generations benefit from what you have set up from them, it becomes near impossible to break through the shackles of money to some out smarter.

Jispa too is today richer than what I was. She runs the risk of being dumb. We try and mitigate it. We try and expose her to stuff, but something will just remain tough. Some things will such that she will never be exposed to.

Jasmine spoke about our servant and her grand child. She said, the other day our servant borrowed a little money as while she was leaving, she felt that her grandchild was a bit warm and could be ill. So she took money in case she had to buy medicines for her. This child (possibly with fever) was left alone at home with no one to take care of her all day. This is the harsh reality of life that our kids are (thankfully) saved from and not exposed to.

This is the life of millions of Indians and its not that these are far away from our contact. These are people we touch daily in our lives. Its tough for us to understand them and for them to understand us. If they knew the cost of our shoes alone, they will throw a fit. I don’t think they will believe that the shoes we wear are worth 4 to five times their monthly salary. Now they will call us really really dumb.

King Louis was born into luxury and was not trained to escape. In fact the people revolted because in many ways he wasn’t connect to reality. And because he wasn’t connected to reality, he made a hash out of running away. What’s so surprising. Its not easy being rich in a poor man’s world, is it?