Reflections of a Survivior

The amount of material that kids have to study these days is staggering. My nephew Ashwin has just completed his kindergarten and will be in the first standard from the next academic year. The amount of homework he used to bring home everyday was staggering. I used to feel sorry for him whenever I saw him struggling with pages and pages of homework he had to complete.

Kindergarten is supposed to be fun and learning is supposed to happen through games and activities. But nowadays, the kids are being taught words and sentences that many of us learned during our fourth or fifth standards. This raises the issue of having talented and qualified teachers in the primary schools and kindergartens. But one cannot expect a skilled professional for Rs. 2500 per month. Anjali has written an excellent post on this—The Sister Act.

In my opinion, we should give more importance to the early stages of the education of the kids. If we teach and train them well during the formative years, they would be self-sufficient and will have the necessary skills to find their way on their own when they grow up. But one of the problems with our education system is that we don’t give importance to the kindergartens and primary schools. The compensation package and hence the quality of the teachers at this level is abysmal. This has to change and the quality of the teachers has to improve (and they should have special training in teaching the kids). Otherwise the kids will learn many bad and wrong habits, which will be very difficult to correct later.

Now coming back to my nephew, he will be in the first standard this year. Before vacation, the school had started teaching cursive writing but could not complete it as there was not enough time to fit that too into the already crowded syllabus. So they took the easy way out. The wrote the alphabets on a book and send it with a note saying the kids should learn cursive writing during the holidays as the teachers will be using it in the first standard.

I was entrusted with the task of teaching my nephew cursive writing as well as revising the lessons of UKG. One problem that Ashwin’s teacher mentioned was that he was slow in writing and would not write more than a few pages at a stretch. But she was unable to find out the reason.

I asked Ashwin to write a few words and I could see what the problem was—his grip was wrong. He was gripping the pencil in the wrong way and was applying too much pressure on the pencil and on the paper. Since he was applying too much pressure on the middle finger, he couldn’t write for long at a stretch as there would be pain. Since he was applying too much pressure on the paper, the writing was slow.

I gave him a bigger pencil—a special three-sided pencil specifically designed for teaching the perfect grip (the tripod grip). Then I asked him to write without applying too much pressure. To show that he was applying too much pressure on the paper, I put a carbon paper a few pages below the page he was writing and after he wrote a sentence showed him the impressions of what he has written on the fifth page (this is a tip I got while searching the Internet).

Ashwin was finding this difficult. First he had to unlearn what he was doing till then. He had to maintain the correct grip and also concentrate on the pressure. To motivate him, I designed a token system. After each day’s session (between 6.30PM and 8.30PM), based on his performance, I would give him tokens. He could use these tokens to buy TV viewing time (only Cartoon Network and Pogo and there too only certain cartoon shows —Tom and Jerry, Oswald, Bob the Builder, Kipper, Popeye, etc.) or could use it to see a movie (animations from Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc.). He liked the idea very much.

To make study interesting I broke down the two hours into 10 minutes sessions. First 10 minutes we will study and the next 10 minutes I will tell a story. But here I faced a big challenge. I have been telling him stories since he was 3 years old and he knew most of the stories and in most cases, at least 5-6 variants of each. I had exhausted all the usual ones like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, etc. long time back. I had also told him stories from Ramayan, Mahabharat, Bhagavatam, and Bible. He was familiar with Aesop fables, stories from 1001 Arabian Nights, Panchatantra and so on. He would make me tell a story 3–4 times and when he went to my home he would make my mother tell these stories again and again. So, this time I had turned to Greek mythology and started telling stories of Pegasus, Prometheus, Hercules and his 12 tasks, and so on. So every day I had to come up with new stories.

Our learning program was going smoothly. Some days, when he is not in the mood it is very difficult to make him do anything. He will withdraw into a shell and would not do anything. Yesterday was one such day. As soon as we started he showed signs of restlessness. He wouldn’t do anything I asked him to do. He started yawing and was totally disinterested.

After sometime, I got angry. I told me him to write, he refused. Then I told him that it is for his benefit the entire exercise is being done. I told him that I have better things to do and definitely don’t want to waste my time if he is not cooperating. Still there was no positive signs from his side and I became really angry and told him that if he doesn’t want to study, that is fine with me. So we stopped the class and I didn’t give him any tokens or told him any stories. I told my brother about it and went to my room to finish a chapter I was writing.

My brother called him and tried to explain the importance of learning and how I was trying to help. My nephew calls me ‘aachachen’ (his version of Alex achachen when he was young) He told my nephew, “Aachachen is very busy and has a lot of work to do. So when he tries to teach you, you should cooperate, because if you don’t learn to write fast, then you will have problems when you go the first standard.” He added “Aachachen was very sad with your behavior” to which my nephew replied “No, he was angry and he shouted at me!” After some time my nephew told my brother the following story:

First, we (aachachen and I) died and went to heaven. When we reached heaven we became angels and we were of the same age. Aachachen’s hair was black as mine, he was young like me and he could walk. As angels, we could travel at the speed of thought and we could be anywhere anytime we wanted. We could choose to be invisible or visible.

God was sitting in an air-conditioned room. We were made guards of that room. There used to a stream of dead souls from Earth. God will test each soul with a pointed needle and the good souls were allowed to enter heaven and the bad people were sent to hell. It was our duty to push the bad people into hell.

It was very hot outside as the sun was very close to heaven. The heat was unbearable and both of us were sweating profusely. So we entered God’s room and stood there as it was cooler inside. Then a drop of sweat from my forehead fell on the floor of the room. God was angry and he asked both of us to go and stay outside. Once outside, we again started sweating. We wiped the sweat and it fell down to the Earth. Once it entered the Earth’s atmosphere, it became rain. Since we were sweating excessively, the rainfall became very heavy and soon there was a huge flood and people and animals started dying. Seeing this God called us and allowed us to stay in his room and the flood stopped.

Aachachen was bored of being an angel. He wanted to eat good food, drink Coca-Cola and SevenUp. So one day he jumped down to the Earth. He landed in velliyammachi’s (grandmother’s) stomach, came out, and grew up. All this time I was serving God. When you (his dad) and amma got married I also jumped down, landed in amma’s stomach, came out and is now 6 years old.

So, the age difference between aachachen and me is because aachachen jumped from heaven 35 years before me. Because I was not selfish and served God for 35 years more, aachachen is my uncle and I am his nephew. But we were colleagues once and were of the same rank, so aachachen has no right (and there is no need) to scold me!!!!

This story is derived from many sources—Bible (the flood), Rayamana and Mahabharat (the previous life, life after death), Movie City of Angels (angles jumping down from heaven to become human), Movie Mission Impossible (the drop of sweat falling on the floor), Glucometer (he has seen a demo of the product, when we were planning to buy one for my mother) and God only knows what others.

So, today, I am looking forward to teaching my old colleague from heaven, treating him with respect he rightly deserves…

One of my cousins who got married a few days back came to visit me with his lovely wife. He works for a multinational IT organization. We had the cake and wine ceremony, had lunch and coffee and was chatting about the marriage ceremony and their honeymoon plans.

Then, suddenly my cousin asked me “Alexchetta, what is the mobile phone you are having?” I told him that I don’t have a mobile phone as I don’t require one—mobile phones are for people who are mobile. He seemed disappointed. Then he asked my brother whether he needed a mobile phone. My brother has a Treo 750, which is barely 2-months old, so he too declined the offer. My cousin was really disappointed. I asked him what his problem was. “Have you joined a mobile phone company?” I asked him. “No, no, but I think I will have to open an electronic store!” He replied.

I was amused. He was a funny person with a wonderful sense of humor and I thought it was part of some joke he was going to tell. But he was not joking. He had received about 12 mobile phones as wedding presents. He told me that he got 12 mobile phones, 18 iPods (from iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle to iPod 80 GB), 2 laptops, 4 digital cameras; the list went on and on. He was furious and fuming. “What am I going to do with all these?” He asked me. “If I sell all these gifts, I would have enough money to buy a car,” he mused. He was correct.

This is not an isolated problem; nor is it new. My sister got around 2 dozen pressure cookers, 18 milk cookers (yes, the ones with whistles) and a lot of non-stick vessels of different sizes and shapes as wedding presents. Now mobile phones have replaced the pressure cookers, MP3 players have taken the place of milk cookers (the fact both produces music is sheer coincidence), and other standard gifts of the last decade have been replaced with electronic gadgets and gizmos of all sizes and shapes.

The newly-wed couples are now faced with a new problem—gift disposal. They cannot just give it away as it will be offending the person who gave the gift. They cannot sell them as it would look bad. They cannot gift it to somebody else, as it would be considered unethical.

A gift is supposed to bring joy to the recipient. But if it is causing trouble instead, then it is better not to gift. These days, gifting a mobile phone is waste of money, as everybody has one (if not more). Also different people have different preferences about their mobile phone as it is something that they always carry with them.

Gifting a box of Swiss chocolates to a diabetes patient is not only wrong but also cruel. The poor soul has to use all his/her willpower not to consume those. Giving a carton of cigarettes to a person who had just quit smoking or giving a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label to a person trying to stop drinking is pure torture. So it is safe not to give any gifts, if you are not sure about the person’s likes and dislikes.

Many people know that I love books and I read a lot. But they make a mistake of gifting me books. In 90% of the cases, it will be a book that I already have. So money is wasted and I have to get rid of the extra copy.

A few years back, I read an article in Reader’s Digest. It was about how an ingenious couple solved the problem of unwanted gifts. In their wedding card, they had printed the address of a shop and asked people who want to give gifts to get them from that particular shop. The shop owner was given a list of items they preferred. So people who wanted to buy presents for the wedding could go to the specified shop and the shop owner would show the list. One could choose an item that was within one’s budget. Once an item is purchased, it is removed from the list, so there won’t be any duplicates. This is not an ideal solution, as all cannot go to the specified shop, but it was a start.

Now we are seeing some novel initiatives from on-line stores. For example, Amazon.com has a wish list, wedding registry and baby registry where you can add the list of items you need and your friends and relatives can access the registry, select and send the items listed there. Once an item is bought, it is removed from the list, thus eliminating duplicates. With on-line stores, the physical location of the person ordering and receiving the gifts is not an issue. Gifting has become easier, thanks to the Internet and WWW.

So, next time when you are buying a gift for a friend’s marriage, colleague’s farewell party, nephew’s birthday, or brother’s wedding anniversary, think whether gift is appropriate for the occasion, needed by the person, and will useful. Don’t waste your time and money on something that is of no use to the recipient.

In my opinion, the policy of giving and accepting gifts should be stopped. Instead of the material gifts, give your loved one’s something better—something that money can’t buy:

Give the gift of your time,
Give the gift of your love,
Give the gift of your knowledge,
Give the gift of your wisdom,
Give the gift of your support.

And finally…
Give them the gift of privacy by not intruding, disturbing or overstaying. Let them enjoy their time alone. If you are welcome and can liven up the atmosphere or make people happy, then by all means stay. Otherwise, say what you have to say, do what you have to do, and leave as soon as possible.

P.S. Now coming back to my cousin and his gifts, I was hoping that he would ask me whether I wanted one of the laptops. I would have accepted, as I wanted one. But he only offered me the mobile phones and iPods So Martin, if you are reading this, you know where to send the laptop to…