AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT

Once upon a time there was a handicrafts store in Kamanhalli, Bangalore, called Simsim. Kamanhalli was a buzzing locality full of little eateries and an assortment of shops. Simsim was happy to be situated at a place that had throngs of people passing up and down, looking at its wares, or coming in to buy. After all, Simsim had pretty trinkets, colourful fabrics, smart accessories, and cutesy knickknacks—everything but light. 

The shop had no electricity. And after sunset, all went dark inside.

The shop where Simsim was, belonged to my father, and had been shut for close to eight years. It was being used as an extended storeroom for excess stuff from home. The shop had seen busy days but now lay orphaned. When I opened its shutters to purvey the intended venue of my proposed handicrafts store, unlike my family, I was not terrified of its dark, cob-webbed décor and mountainous junk. 

I saw what I wanted to see—a little, homely place. I used the old dining table and rickety racks and lame chairs that had once occupied the house as shop furniture. When Simsim opened, customers often told me that it looked like a room in a house. The only thing missing was a kitchen. 

Naturally, the shop was open in daylight hours only. When business picked up, I kept it open after sunset with the aid of gaslights. (The Bangalore of yore?) Must say the customers were a sporty set: If sharper light was called for, they stepped out to check the stuff under the street light, or the next door shop's brightly lit foyer (another sporty bunch). 

Darkness did not deter our customers. In fact, it made us quaint. As one regular remarked that we looked so cool with no running electricity!

Well, as much as we liked being different, there is a limit to being unconventional. So, we decided to get the power supply restored. Not an easy agenda. The bureaucratic maze had to be negotiated and negotiated. And finally, one day, there was light.   

All else remained unchanged around the shop: the unconventional timings (open on limited days, for limited hours), erratic interiors (no display shelves), and the tiny stock (more like samples).

Only now our loyal customers could see the wares in hard-gotten KEB-bestowed light.

THE ENGINEERING OF EDUCATION

In a way, the only two "real" subjects we learn at school would be Language and Mathematics; that is—alphabets and numbers. And possibly, the only skills needed to walk (and talk) through our regular existence.

In most professions, new entrants learn on the job: often even graduates of professional schools. Professions like medicine, engineering, accounting and others require their graduates to learn while working. The course is a theoretical framework to follow. But there is no teacher like experience—rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands on the work table.

So the Big Question is—why do we go through a system sponging up on chemical equations, mind-spinning theorems, and the digestive system of a larva? How necessary is it to memorise the names and dates of battles?  Or the height of imposing mountain peaks?

Most of us will not be doing much with our formal learning for the rest our lives. Then why do we waste our prized childhood and youth under threatening text books and tyrannical test schedules? We do that to get into a Good College. Why a good college? Because then you can get into a good professional course, which eventually helps you nail a Good Job. So basically, the education system is churning out economic entities to feed into the market.  

American educator and cultural critic Niel Postman says that the education system views children as "economic units" who are being prepared for a "competent entry into the economic life of a community." Ideally, says Postman, economic utility should be a by-product of a good education, and not the aim.

Are the by-products of education (a love for learning, responsible socialisation, personality grounding, and language skills) being acquired by our graduates? Since schools are busy feeding formulas and theorems to their students, how much time is being allotted to activities that can lead to a more rounded student self? Is our education system doing enough, as Postman says, "to provide an inspired reason for learning."

The world of education should prepare its denizens not for a career alone, but for a richer life, which only respect and love for learning can provide. A system like that will produce just not workers but collaborators.

Schools should be sacrosanct places where young minds and personalities are farmed to flourish without scanning the job bazaars. As Postman says: "Without meaning, learning has no purpose. Without a purpose, schools are houses of detention, not attention."

THE WORDS FILE

Most ideas are easier dreamed up than actually executed. And my plan for teaching writing to children and adults was one such thought. Having been a journo, and done other kinds of writing—words were what I knew something about. And, more importantly, felt and cared for. So, it was time for me to walk my words. 

After a year or so of reading books on teaching writing, going through my dusty MA notes, researching worksheets, informally test marketing, and luxuriously pondering, I came up with a blueprint for my version of an effective writing course, and chose the workshop model. 

The group for this creative writing workshop was a mix of 7- to 12-year-olds. I had made folders from red chart paper for the kids to file their worksheets. (A hangover from my handicraft shop running days.) These folders caused some buzz with my young participants. One of them came up and asked me if I was the owner of Inkpot (the label on the folder, and the name I had bestowed upon my venture), or worked there. Talk about brand exposure! 

The handmade folder distributed to the kids

The budding marketer within me glowed. But the teacher inside (the larger share) felt competitive. I decided to gauge my brand new students idea of creativity through this craft item.

A while into the workshop, I asked them why they felt I had made folders instead of just zipping across to the stores and picking up fancier ones. Their answers made me grin stupidly and do mental cartwheels:One kid declared that since this was a creative class, it was better to create things. Another said that perhaps I loved craft. A third voice solemnly added that this ensured that we had a folder nobody else had.

My young learners intuitively understood what creativity is: doing your own thing (as your imagination dictates)—in words or form—for the love of it. And being original!

PETS OVER PEOPLE

As part of their evolutionary destiny animals have been substituting humans—sometimes because they were better suited for the job or just more expendable. As beats of burdens lugging the load, winged messengers, or more recently bomb sniffers—they had jobs thrust upon them; mostly undesirable ones vacated by humans.

But often we see urban jungle dwellers extending the function of animals to a humanoid level—that is, seeking them to fulfil roles that easily could be desired by humans. What’s one to make of that?! Are humans failing to relate to each other at an interpersonal level? Why are we turning to the low rankers of the evolutionary ladder instead of the evolutionary elite?

When did animals turn human—outside of fairy tales and inside our drawing rooms?!

A pampered pet class has been around as a status statement or personal whim. But this cute-on-call pet was an accessory to the Complete Family. These lavished upon expensive breathing toys were often the affected eccentricities of the Haves. However privileged the pet, it was fitted around family obligations, social rituals, personal commitments. The pet was a pet—always an animal. When? How? Why? Did this pet turn into a person?

In this new equation the helplessness of the pet is matched by the confusion of the human. The Master is enslaved to the Servant by the forces of need created by—emotional support denied by humans, alienating situations, or the fear of intimacy/commitment. Pets have become for some (and who knows for how many to come) comfortable objects of expressed-displayed affection.  

Humans want someone to care for, relax around, and share with…just someone to come home to. But to handle the complications and emotional demands of human relationships is not always possible. So that brings in the pet into the picture subconsciously as a substitute person. The owner projects on it human feelings and wants—which the animal is not even capable of experiencing!

In science-speak, when you make an animal a person—attributing to it human motivations and characteristics—it is called anthromorphism. Or try Pet-Turned-Person.

AMITAV GHOSH IN BANGALORE

Unfortunately, I have read only one novel of Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide. He’s on my must-read list, but in spite of—or rather because ofPratibha Umashankar-Nadigerits high priority marking, I have not got around to reading him. His books belong to the category of books you want to read when you feel that inner stillness that can absorb meaning (read: concentrate). 

Ghosh descended on Bangalore for a reading of Flood of Fire, the third novel in the Ibis trilogy. The publicity emails mentioned that the author will be in conversation with a certain Rohan Murthy. (I did not make the connection.) Ghosh is, well, phenomenal so I was wondering about this unknown-to-me Bangalore intellectual who will be in a tete a tete with the powerhouse writer. At the venue, Ghosh with his shock of silver hair and black rimmed frames looked every bit the big-time author. His interviewer was suitably bespectacled alright, but sans the impressive frost in the hair and sagacious lines on the visage.   

Okay, so Rohan Murthy is Narayn Murthy's son who is doing some brilliant work in publishing with the Murthy Foundation. But to be honest, I was disappointed by the choice. I mean, how seriously can you take someone who announces in an Indo-American twang that since his notes are on his phone, the audience shouldn't misconstrue his referring to them as texting! And then he grandly announces that the said questionnaire has been put together by inputs from friends who are academicians.  He makes it a point to say that he has landed in Bangalore this morning from Boston, and makes some purportedly casual references to Ivy League: beware; these academician friends are not just academics but firang academics. I guess, we’re supposed to be suitably impressed. 

Here is one question from "a friend and gender studies professor", from I think, it was Cornell. The question: Ghosh's earlier work in the Iblis trilogy had strong women characters but his later work has only men. How does he explain this breach? Ghosh replied: he loves having strong women character but when his book is set in a garrison town, where there are no women, it was quite difficult to write in an impressive female protagonist. 

Then comes one where I think Ghosh must have inwardly rolled his eyes. The question was something like how as a novelist writing about historical events he handles a situation when he runs out of research material. Does he start inventing? Ghosh replied that his books are not historical works but stories springing from his imagination – otherwise it would not be fiction.

Ghosh talked about his role as a novelist. He said that though his books are based in historical times and he loves doing research; but at the end of the writing day, he’s not a military or trade historian. True, he pegs his novels around real events, people, and places. But what he loves is creating characters (their motivations and emotions, relationship with other principal players); and what the weather was like, or was there a festive occasion on that day. All this comes from his imagination – history is purely the catalyst.

Someone in the audience asked him that what were the real events and what were the created ones in his books. Cheekily, Ghosh remarked, that the most unlikely ones were quite the real ones.

In his intro talk, he had shared slides of what a travelling garrison would have looked like. In the long line of trooping soldiers, accompanied by cooks, book-keepers, drummers, dhobis, livestock, et al stood out a pert black dog. I never thought any one had even noticed this solitary mongrel. But someone in the audience had and was curious to know what was the mutt's role?! That took Ghosh by surprise. (He said it probably was a hunting dog as the soldiers often stopped for hunting). The limelight grabbed by the sketched dog must have left the audience vaguely baffled (most of them), indifferent (some), and stupidly pleased (me).