Sensory Overload

TV channels' efforts to optimize screen space is making it difficult to view the program.

A ticker at the bottom with information running, a scroll bar on top with information flashing, weather forecast on top right corner flickering away, sound track for a documentary that suppresses the speaker's voice, half screen images of interview and the other half showing a song or some pictures on the interviewee............

Please please pass this feeback to channels and help the likes of me

Join the dots

football - servant - landlord - daugther - son- woman- lust- love- reason - boredom - fantasy - an orgy - love - marriage - happiness - heartache - anger - pain - separation - togetherness - coming together - repel - outside - inside - reason - manipulation - sincere- loneliness - marriage - friends

There are no random acts in this world everything is connected

Whining IT

A remote village in Kerala has no bus service, people come together, organize for a bus service
- a road is in bad shape in a village, villagers do shram dhan and get it fixed.

Bangalore roads - the golden highway that connects the IT barons' nests, is in bad shape - whine, whine, whine and whine more. Is it too difficult to get all employees to give away a day's pay, get them in groups to do some shram dhan and get the road fixed. Hasnt this gone on for too long.

I am not excusing the govt of its responsibilities, it is inept in a lot of ways. Isnt it better to look for a solution rather than point to the problem for years.

It is not new for corporate houses to take care of parks and green zones in traffic junctions, why not this too?

In fact in one of the TV shows where NRN was talking about the infrastructure and particularly the roads a doctor from Narayan Hridayalaya said - I see patients from villages that have unheard for roads and therefore a bad road does not bother my patients nor me. Isnt there something to learn and see here.

Pampered IT lot should start looking at the rest of the country too and then crib about their problems.

Interviewing Skills

TV channel interviewers are turning unnecessarily aggressive these days. Arnab Goswami in his interview with Sharukh, was nauseatingly aggressive and the same seems to be the style with Rajdeep and his wife too. These interviewers are starkly different from Vir Sanghvi who is very direct, does not sugar coat his words yet at the same time protects the respect of the interviewee. Barkha Dutt is so very patronizing to people and her approach seems to be " them and her with her speakers and audience. Is it a culture thing that we know either to be servile or to disrespect only.

This aggressive style seems to be an attempt to ape some of the BBC interviewers like Steven Cole and Tim Sebastain. What seems to be missing with our interviewers is the home work and the ability to identify spots where blunt directness is warranted. Steven and Tim do not maintain their directness throughout the session.

English - someone who is an English expert please correct me -

I hear news readers saying that's the wrap on today's news - is this correct, also I heard Aishwarya using expressions like - move forth, viewers have not oft seen a mujra. Sharukh saying I put my child to sleep (my heart skipped a beat when I heard this).

While I can understand cine personalities making errors, I think news readers need to be a l0t more careful.

I always thought wrap up is the expression and also it is move forward and and often seen and getting a child to sleep.

Nakeeran community, indha postil kutram kurai irundal mannithu porutharulga.

Sweet and sour teens

Same home, same parents, same school ....

First son (sixteen) concerns - how to help him get the highest score in school finals, which subjects to choose for higher studies, which place to send him, how much will it cost ................

Second son (fifteen) concerns - will he finish his school finals, what will he do to look after himself, will he get into drugs .............

Is there a magic mantra on parenting so that the concerns are limited to the ones for the first son ????

Equality

Once as a little girl I was given a lesson on equality by my father. The conversation went like this:

What do you think of equality?
I dont know

When your teacher in the staff room offers you a seat when you enter - is that equality?
Yes - she is allowing me to do that - so yes it is equality

Freedom and equality are not given - do you know that?
Me thoroughly confused

Here let me explain - when you go the staff room and sit on a chair and when your teacher does not say anything about it - only then you can assume there is equality in that relationship.

Today I realize he had simplified the abstract concept using teacher and staff room as an example - but the lesson is so deep rooted in me that I shudder and abhor any inherent power structure - be it schools, offices or home.

Wish he had lived longer, at least for me to check if I understood the word correctly now.

Definition of knowledge

Vijay TV hosted a very heated and meaningful talk show on reservation. Gyani brought up a wonderful perspective on defining knowledge.

He said 'if we walk through the campus where this talk show is being hosted and ask the gold medalists from schools/colleges, to name the trees, they may be at a loss, but a child from a village would be able to identify them with their common names like nochi, oomathai etc. Unfortunately we are unwilling to recognize that kind of knowledge as meaningful and we have defined ability to name the capital of Scandinavia as knowledge'.

How very true and his points on pro reservation were also very scientific and rational. I know I am opening a pandoras box with this last sentence :)-

3%

Vice Chancellor Vasanthi Devi has written an article in Ananda Vikatan two weeks ago. A must read article. Her lines 'education is geared towards the three percent whose aspiration is to work for an MNC" is very salient in the current context.

Free will

Got into one more loop - I am a strong believer in God though not in rituals and rites associated with worship. What does freewill mean to me?

I am torn in two directions - when I think that everything is predetermined and I am only a tool in the hands of God why am I investing so much effort and trying to change aspects of me and my life - does free will exist for believers in God????????????????????????????

Relationships

'No one is perfect', 'Kutram parkil sutram illai'

Cycle of relationships - Get close to someone, know more about them, honeymoon period , know some more, disenchantment - then comes the million dollar question to withdraw or to pursue

When an issue disenchants a relationship with one individual how come we accept another person and ignore the issue with them ?

What is the unique factor with each relationship that makes us forgive, forget with one and break off from the other?

Stationery Items/Office supplies .....

These two words are obsession for me. I hoard them, give them away, use them, see them, feel them, smell them (yes .. smell!!!).... the list is endless.

I have tried to figure out why and how and when this passion started, no answers till now.

Venus pencils (bottle green, hexagonal pencil with black stripes), in a carton is my first memory. My father got these for me from Thirumalai Stores in T Nagar. This shop used to be close to Nalli. I checked for these pencils two weeks ago and they are 14Rs each. I asked myself as to why did my father buy these for me. I know that he was very proud of my handwriting.

Then came the pen days - camlin pens - these had a transparent part just below the place where the cap ends. You could check how much ink was in the pen through this. It is so funny that my cousin and I, will get these from my mother and immediately - dont be shocked - press the nib on a hard surface and make the nibs get crooked. Since both of us had taken a fancy for a particular kind of handwriting, the deformed nib could only produce the best form. If it is a blue pen, my cousin will smear manja podi/vermillion on the pen and produce a dirty green color - I used to be thrilled with it.

Then came Hero pens. Dark maroon and black were my favorites. These nibs were small and a much smaller part of it will only be visible. These wrote really well, smooth flow .... they had a gold cap.

These days my passion is with paper mate, schwann, Bic etc. I do look at monte blanc, cross etc, but these dont give the same high as the plastic pens. Dont know why.

It is a ritual everyday to choose a pen to bring to work and by the end of the day give it away to someone who says it's a nice pen and then I buy some more. I am not sure if I buy to give or give to buy more.

Inclusive Education

NDTV's show had Bharka Dutt holding a discussion on inclusive education.

Latha Vaidyanthan from Modern School Delhi spoke about the readiness of these schools to take children with impairment of any kind.

My mother taught in a government aided school and she had two children who had hearing and speech impairment in her class and her colleague had one girl who was spastic.

One of my classmates was totally blind and the other was a polio afflicted child who could not walk. These were ordinary schools with nothing fancy to cater to the special needs of these children. Teachers and the headmistress used their hearts and not their heads while dealing with us and therefore never thought of 'readiness' and use that as an excuse to deprive some section of the population, their right to education.

Tell me something - in India , how many homes have special toilets, how many places have ramps and dont people with impairment manage. It is an appalling state of affairs that we dont have facilities to cater to special needs and we need to change it , but the reality is that people manage.

Wont kids and parents be happy that a school is catering to the educational needs and find a work around for other needs? In the process of making every thing ideal, we tend to lose time and several children get impacted.

If we use our heart and not head we can make things happen like the headmistress and the teachers of a government aided school did and continue to do that .

Schooling in India

Elitist - A small group of powerful people (Webster's definition).

This is how a lot of schools these days describe themselves in India. NDTV showed a mother's tales of woes while she tried for admisssion into schools for her 3 year old child. One of the schools apparently asked the child to identify the names of cars !!!!!!!!!!

After all these gruelling process once you get the child into school, be prepared for the weeding process - if you think I am referring to the garden in the school - you are mistaken. Children who are borderline performers, who are mischievous, playful etc will be asked to leave under a number of pretexts - most common among them being cultural incompatability, child not being able to cope with the stress of studying, disrupting class activities and impacting other children, or with a veiled threat I can give a TC for misconduct etc. If you dig into specifics, one will be amused since incidents these schools quote would be so trivial and definitely not life threatening to either the child in question or to anyone in the environment :)-

If a parent is lucky the weeding will happen in class 7 or it can happen in class 9. If the child is from class 9, God help the parents and child. No other school will touch this kid and the future is more or less sealed for the kid. Rich and famous parents will find alternatives and middle class parents will either drive the kid to killing herself/himself or if they are lucky, will find some institution that will take the child in for a vocational course or something else.

Then comes the nightmare of board exams - dont want to get into the gory details of this totally ineffective and inefficient process that destroys hapless parents and children alike.

One needs to be an elite or kids need to act like mini adults from the age of 2 to complete the tortorous process of schooling.

Where are the teachers and schools that could take everything that a child does as a process of growing and dealt with humaneness and sense of humor. I remember my friend giving a nick name to my teacher and the teacher laughing with us for the name given to her. In today's world it will result in instant dismissal of the child from school.

The entire system appears to be a conspiracy to end childhood at the earliest. The sooner childhood ends it is better for the person and the parents - sadly that is the reality.

Wish I could do something to let childhood exist for everyone for however long they wish for it to be so.