The noise on the first floor

I first walked into the school, early on a Monday morning. The school building looked like any other BMC school in Mumbai, save for the innumerable pigeons that greeted me with an infectious flutter at the gate. This school building houses BMC schools in four different mediums of instruction: Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati and English. The first floor houses the English medium initiative undertaken by an NGO that educates community children from the surrounding chawls and bastis.

It was still early when I reached and children were only trickling in to their classrooms. As I walked down the corridor, I was met with warm smiles from women busily going about with brooms, books or stationery in their hands. Slowly, I heard music flowing out of different classrooms. The same women were now in the classrooms, cheerfully welcoming each child as he or she walked in, all set for a new day at school. I was stunned for a few moments as I remembered my own days in school. We were herded into classrooms and quickly silenced as soon as the bell rang. Then we waited for the teacher to make her entry so we could welcome her with our “good morning teacher” in a rising crescendo.

Almost a decade later, here I was faced with the possibility of an entirely new equation between teacher and pupil.

The first floor at this school is never for a moment enveloped by the piercing silence typical to most ‘good’ schools in the country. It is always bursting with curious voices of enquiry. Today, almost eight months later, as I work with the children on the first floor, I rarely miss the silence that my school was enveloped in, always.

What to do?

Its been crazy three weeks cramming in time for the various deadlines that I've been trying to meet on all fronts. My plate has been rather stashed up with a teaching job, a freelancing project with an education firm, my masters program, enrolling for a car rally, figuring out a summer holiday, toying with the idea of starting a small circulating library and beating the Mumbai heat. The result: I haven't had time to look at my brand new inheritance of lovely old books from half a century ago or even contemplate my future career moves.
If there's one thing i dislike greatly, it is making decisions. I know its awefully lucky to be spoilt for choice, but that's one spot I dread being in. So just as I was making my peace about postponing career decisions to a later week, Shorty sent me a mail frigidly titled "freelancer?professor? student of education...?" Attached was an article by Alain De Botton on office culture.An excerpt,

"Watch anyone halfway competent at work and it’s hard to do anything other than respect them. In our age, levels of commitment that in previous societies were devoted to military adventures and religious intoxication have been channelled into numerical, legal and managerial needlework. In the olden days, home used to be the place of kindness and refuge while the workplace was cruel and blunt. Now the equation is often reversed. How politely we tend to behave at work, next to the insults we throw at one another at home, where there is no human resource department to coax us into being more civilised. Nowadays workers have to be “motivated,” meaning they have — more or less — to like their work. So long as workers had only to retrieve stray ears of corn from the threshing-room floor or heave quarried stones up a slope, they could be struck hard and often, with impunity and benefit. But the rules had to be rewritten with the emergence of tasks whose adequate performance required their protagonists to be, to a significant degree, content, rather than simply terrified or resigned. The new figures of authority must involve themselves with childcare centres and, at monthly get-togethers, animatedly ask their subordinates how they are enjoying their jobs so far. Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in a velvet glove is, of course, the human resource department.

Office work distracts us, it focusses our immeasurable anxieties on a few relatively small-scale and achievable goals, it gives us a sense of mastery, it makes us respectably tired, it puts food on the table. It keeps us out of greater trouble. "

Just a few days earlier, I found out that my designation at the place I was freelancing was that of an 'education consultant.' It had a fancy ring to it. But that was it. It was a booming, hollow fancy ring. As I sat on a swivel chair in their air conditioned office, designing 'quality' educational products I realized how 'quality' education can never be produced in the four walls of a capital driven business venture. Adding quality to education needs a human helping hand....no high end multimedia kit can bring that dimension of quality or meaning to education which an ordinary teacher can. Quality education begins and ferments in a classroom.

My work isn't merely distraction. It doesn't put much food on my plate, but I'm happy gorging on the food for thought it often leaves me with. So is the decision made? I don't know.

I'll just have to wait for another academic year to unfold... :)

What's on my Calendar

It's already a week into the month of March and I dont feel particularly resolute about anything. Except, flipping my calender maybe. It's a month when my city begins to scorch under the glare of the sun. The land turns dry and skin just melts. It just forewarns us that yes, "April is the cruelest month." March in my head is a friendlier month. It is a month which(for me) spells sunshine, happiness, color and freedom.
This month my calendar has to remind me of something that makes me go light in the head and happy. As I sat thinking about color and happiness, a film I love flashed before me. I want to bring a spray of color and a dash of life on a mute piece of blank paper. So, my calendar is going to carry a poster of Won Kar Wai's film Chungking Express. Its a film that can just scoop me out of the darkest shell and coax the cynic in me to shut up. The film is a melange of things I love ; food, a soap bar that cries, music, a gritty gun wielding blonde, a towel that weeps, a can that preserves memories, dark alleys, yellow sunshine, a simple girl who dreams, a silly man who whines, lovers who come without an expiry date. Everything about the film is a reaffirmation of life, as it is, a riot of goodness peppered with the bad,sad,mad and ugly.
It is going to be a colorful year, a few clouds, laced with a lot of happy sunshine.
What say?

Looking for the Calendar.

I've never paid attention to my New Year Calendar. It usually finds its way up my wall sometime past February or March, sometimes by chance, sometimes out of pure desperation, often because I'm gifted one.

Another cycle of twelve months has been ushered in, but the ugly miniature calendar of 2008 still clings on to my blue pin board. The month of December vacantly gazes back at me, reminding me of deadlines and doom. I flip back to a few months earlier and I see crammed scheduling, meticulous calculations and illegible scribblings. Punctuated every now and then in this bedlam, are blank white spaces. I wonder what that means. Was it a happy blank or was it a pensive blank? Was it a blank of clarity or was it an unresolved, frightful blank? I can't remember.

I'm weary of forgetting.

This year it ought to be a little different. My calendar must remind me. I'm not entirely sure what would go into making a great calendar. But I do know, I'm bored of ugly numbers squinting at me through square boxes, against a pale white backdrop. I want my calendar to remind me of some thing I like, dislike, ought to like, should care about, should think about,some thing I'd like to do.

I don't want it to be just another year that whizzes past. I want to resolve and remember and carry it over to 2010, without significant memory lapses.



Majoli,The Spartan Tree, Greece.
January : Hope?
Seeing this M said, "Here's to our very own landscapes of hope behind the screen of smoke filled streets."

Strangelove Santa

I think all I really want to be is articulate. Articulate about emotions. Articulate about feelings. Articulate about love. It feels wonderful when someone articulates to you how much they love. Santa dropped by to show me once again how easy it is to love.

Among the innumerable 'official' mails that flood my mailbox daily was a rather inconspicuous one today, which read "Happy New Year". It was my friend from the lackadaisical land of sun and sand.Her mails are always special. I eagerly open her mails because they are thoughtful, honest and loving. She's my first christmas Santa of the season who brought in the message of love and affection like the three wise men. She wasnt just sending across luke warm Christmas and New Year Wishes. It was a wonderfully touching mail which was sent out to the entire class of the Masters program, spreading the Christmas cheer and her love. She had jotted down something meaningful, nice and honest about each one of us. Santa made my day by telling me i had made a difference to her in some little way. She said, " dear heart! Such a wonderful nature, such a bright mind and such a great sense of style. How blessed I am to know you. Thank you!"I'm sure Santa made a difference to each person on the mailing list by telling them exactly how they made a difference to her. I think Santa is wonderful.

She was deeply affected the first time i said 'lol' to something that had miffed her. Then she didn't yet know what 'lol' meant in sms lingo. When i explained she said, "How can you laugh out loud to that!", rather dismayed. Now she's taught me to use the 'lol' her way. Now, between us, it only reads as 'lots of love.'

It's only i who still resorts to the crumpled, abridged, diluted 'lol', she generously splatters her smses or mails with love. She inspires me to love. Without inhibitions. She unknowingly inspires me to express affectionately, freely, honestly, fearlessly. Her sweeping, uninhibited, gestures and remarks teach me something precious.
Its okay to let someone know you love them. Expressing affectionately is not a mighty task.

It feels wonderful to be blessed with this Santa. Thank You Santa.

The Philosopher

People colorfully chequer our life. Its temptingly exciting to box people into categories and sort them in our head as types. I'm not wonderfully perceptive. Yet, I love to mentally label people in my head.My life is teeming with people; common,typical, plain, usual,conventional,strange,wierdly wonderful,attached,irreverent, melodramatic, detached, head strong,dont give a damn, cautious, evil, moral, stoic, eccentric, jovial, abusive, secretive, talkative. Its an exhaustive, ecclectic mix! And then there are some people. They zoom into your life and then right out. They just defy every conceivable idea of a type. They're defiant. They're special. They're special because they make a difference. They show you there's another way of living, another way of thinking. Another universe of being. Its rarely that I let people make themselves special to me. Infinitely, secretively special. Immensely special. One just revisited me today, briefly, over text messages.
A few short sentences punctuated a lazy sunday afternoon.An exclamation interjected the long hiatus. A question dispersed the vacuum of time. An answer reassured, things haven't changed. As always it didn't end with a full stop. It never did. He said, "call sometime..."
The cantankerous philosopher crept stealthily into the secret realm and got tagged 'special.' He's been there for a while now and not many have come close to displacing him. He does nothing to make him a worthy 'special'. He's not overtly expressive or caring. He'll never call, but will always say, 'call sometime.' He'll never send a message, but will promptly(almost affectionately) reply to every message. He'll rarely put an arm around you and say 'its going to be alright'. His green eyes, never judging, plainly do the trick. They reassure you.
He loves to talk. He can theorize about the poppy seed, the paratha or the porsche. He can see magic in a pencil top, a well toasted sandwich, a querty keypad or even a stupid cat. He'd like to own a audi or a merc, a rich woman and may be some camels. He likes the idea of a red harem, with a warm homely library, tucked away in some corner. The book shelf, he specifies, has to be of light wood, not encased in glass tombs, but open. He's thrilled at the thought of sitting on a huge heap of silver coins and flinging them in the air, just to hear them jingle.

He quit his corporate job because he wanted to quit selling his soul.

He can thrill you with ideas. He can slowly needle you on to something you never knew existed. He can puncture your zeal with his pessimistic vision. He can soar your dipping spirits with that reassuring smile, black tea and a drag. Special requests from excessively low spirits never go unredeemed, the guitar is strummed and a song is sung. The lazy bugger loves adventure, but it all HAS to be planned! Which bus? From where?Are you sure?What time?Really? Naah...I'll pass. I have to clean up the house.
Sprawled on the stony bench he throws a white beam of light on the tree overhead. He's looking for bats. He has a story. Always. But its rarely about him. You can pour your heart out to him.He'll unravel himself to you only in bits. And as you get to know him, you know there is a lot you have to compromise. Your expectations. Your ego. Your pride. What you share with him is too special to be compromised...for anything.Which is why I will call sometime...

And again we'll talk about the perfect reading room, with the wooden floors, white french windows, a low coffee table, open book shelves and old conversations.