murali – Page 8 – Random Ramblings

Learning to Learn

When I look back and try to identify, what was the most useful thing I learnt at school, it is not the formulae and equations in mathematics ,physics or chemistry, nor the grammar in languages, it was just “learning to learn”. Once a teacher kindles the curiosity in you rest is an automatic process ; one just needs to be allowed to learn by experimenting and the teacher just needs to provide the timely help when one is badly stuck and there’s the danger of losing interest. Kindle the curiosity and keep the interest alive and that’s all there is to it.

Today there’s a lot of talk about technology aided teaching. There are three dimensional multimedia presentations to explain every principle and process in Science. Even the text books have color graphics. Those days a teacher was everything; even complex subjects had to be explained with just chalk and talk augmented by the experiments in laboratories and even outside them.

When I try to recall the lessons taught by Mr Venkateswaran, it is not just the subject , I still remember the way he went about introducing an idea. It was the first lesson on singled cell organisms . It was in class VI, Venky sir walks in , asks a boy to open his mouth and proceeds to pick a bit food debris from between the teeth and make a slide then and there. Then we all trooped into the lab to peer at that slide. We could not make out much , but sure we saw some living things moving about. It could have been shown on a pre-prepared slide or a chart . But the fact that my classmate Sivakumar, I still remember the boy with the open mouth, could be hosting an universe of micro-organisms in his mouth kindles the kind of curiosity, that one wants to learn more and more.

The same teacher , to introduce the human digestive system, made a boy do a headstand in the class. It was Satyanarayanan, I wonder if he remembers. He made the boy drink a sip of water in that unusual position. Then he went on to explain that food we eat does not travel through the alimentary canal by gravity , but through a muscular process , and is independent of the position you are in . It was called peristalsis, a word that I can never forget ,even If I wanted to.

I can go on and on from circulatory system , skeletal system to reproductive system, I can still recall the way the subject was introduced and an interest created.

As for mathematics , we were taught just the theorems and principles in class. We had to do a whole lot of exercises on our own to be discussed in the class the next day. When Mr Ram Kalia , terror to some, inquired to know who all could get the solutions right, it was absolute thrill to put up your hand and walk up to the board. The prospect of this moment motivated me to work and solve it on my own the previous day. This is one thing I missed , be it in college or anywhere else.

Mr Cherian introduced the idea of the first law of motion like this. He took an ink bottle from a boy , placed it on a piece of paper on the table. The idea was to show that as long as he moved the paper slowly, the ink bottle would move with the paper; but if he did it in one quick motion the paper would come free leaving the ink pot at the same place. Easier said than done. The way he was charged up I was expecting the ink bottle to go flying across the class room , break into pieces splashing ink all over. As it happened , he took a ruler from another boy and with one quick whack on the paper, released it clean off the table. There was so much energy put into teaching. The entire picture and the law of inertia is etched in my brain for ever.

As for English, I can say, we did most of the exercises in Wren and Martin book , and on our own. Then we had English Today, by Ronald Ridout, generally referred to as just “Ridout” , a gem of a book. We never heard about anything called “learning questions and answers” . The only thing we learnt probably was how to question yourself, how to push yourselves and find the answers. After all what is better learning than learning to learn ?

May be it was just Zeitgeist; the spirit of the times, and I am making too much of it. There was an enthusiasm to share knowledge without thinking of marks and competitions. It was truly lighting a lamp rather than filling a bucket.

What We Ate

The first thought that comes to mind when I think of the food we had at the school was that it was wholesome but not extravagant bland but not characterless; something that one gets well used to while at the school but would not like to go back to later. Like most things are in life it was a mixed bag.

During the vacations ,this was one aspect that visiting mamas and mamis , these days called uncles / aunts, had lots of questions to ask about. After the first question “Why Sainik School?” the next query invariably went like “Kalambara enna poduva ?” . The question literally translates to “what do they put in in morning ?“. Even in Tamil it sounds more like feeding cattle or horses than children. I presume it meant a lack of choice and feeding of children en masse. Then other questions follow like whether it would be like Aathu saappadu, meaning home cooked food. Some go into the details of the kind of rice and cooking oil used. In a typical brahmin household parboiled rice for meals was sheer blasphemy, and so were certain types of cooking oil. I generally answered in monosyllables in yes or no format . Honestly I never knew what I was eating except the name used for the final form. Khaja was a sweet served generally on Saturdays ; I could fairly describe what it looked like and tasted like but if someone were to ask me whether it was made of atta or maida , dalda or groundnut oil, sugar or jaggery and so on I was totally clueless.

I was never a foodie and never cared to remember what I had for the previous meal and what I am likely to have for the next meal. It is quite unlike my children who would ask about the menu for dinner at the breakfast table and could say with authority , “no not Chinese, we just had it three days back!”. Till date, I can have idli or bread ,day after day without getting bored or even repeat the breakfast fare for lunch. I wonder if the trend started at the school where the menu was fixed for years together ! Can’t really say that as I see many of my then class mates now turned to greedy gourmands . Who knows!

Coming back to the main idea of what we ate at school, I’ll go over some of the unique features and dishes rather than the weekly menu that was repeated for forty weeks in a year; considering that about 12 weeks went off in vacations. Every place has some unique signature dishes . If you ever come across an Ex NDA , someone who has been through its haloed campus in the last seventy years of its existence , ask him about cold coffee, scrambled eggs, or tipsy pudding. You will find an instant gleam in the eyes followed by cartwheels and back-flips for the next 5-10 minutes!

We too had some unforgettable dishes like cutlets, Jaangri, mysorepak and so on. More then the dish itself, it is the association of a weekday with a particular item that one remembers fondly; Thursaday Jaangri ,Fridays Cutlets, Saturdays idli & Khaja , Sundays Dosai and Mysorepak and so on. Items like sweets and cutlets and Dosais were controlled items while rice and sambaar /daal were unlimited. Bread for breakfast, as I recall, fell somewhere in between highly controlled and totally decontrolled. There was a default number of four slices per head which was more than enough for people like me and there were boys who, always asked for more like Oliver Twist. Butter , Jam and milk were limited in any case so one learnt to stretch these items through half a loaf of bread or more. There was a peculiar way of eating bread in that slices were further broken into small bits and stuffed into half a tumbler of milk. It is amazing to learn how many slices can be stuffed that way to be eaten with a spoon like some kind of pudding.

I know I have missed out totally on meat dishes, as those days I scrupulously avoided non veg stuff including eggs. The kind of vegetarian substitutes we used to get were pathetic; a handful of monkey-nuts, a spoon of butter or some such thing; nothing really to write home about. The potato cutlet in place of fish cutlet was an exception.

There were some guys who were very choosy and would demand bread in place of idli ; but by and large, most of us were omnivorous. Anything on the table was demolished with gusto, with a keen eye on what else could be got from neighbours and / or a helpful waiter.

If you ask anyone , what was the single most despised item of food, it is likely to be something we called “chukka roti”. Much later in life I learnt that it was “sookha roti” in hindi meaning dry bread with no oil or ghee, that became “chukka roti “ for us Tamilians. It was covered with powdery atta ,dry and bitter . On hindsight it must have been made through subsidized govt supplied wheat flour. Be that as it may, I never recall leaving anything on my plate ; sweet, sour, burnt or bitter. The practice stands till today.

One can’t ignore that we are all prisoners of our times. Those were the days when most people consumed food from Public Distribution System and open market was expensive . There was no junk food . Be it at home or the school ,one waited for the regular meal times and were not too picky about food . Nothing was wasted and anything edible was always welcome. Today , when I go back to the Boys Mess or cadets’ Mess as they call it now, I tend to compare it with the food at NDA or other residential schools. But looking through the eyes of a young boy in the 70s, I must say, it was one of the best fares one had as a child.

School

The Youth and the Old

Quote generally attributed to Somerset Maugham

The other day I was watching a typical show on a business channel on investment advice.

Life is full of ironies. We find on TV Channels that it is mostly twenty somethings fresh from college armed with a degree on finance management, who offer a wide range of advice to people of all ages , who have faced all kinds of financial calamities and have been battered by life. I wonder why most of them have to be girls; at the risk of sounding misogynistic, I feel , the riskiest undertaking, these advisers would have faced on investments and risk management, would have been exposure to online booking of air tickets and hotel rooms. I don’t think they would be under pressure to support a family or even support themselves by holding on to a job.

So, they generally stick to laid down formulae for risk taking. One formula goes like this ; 110 minus your age in years should give the percentage of investment you have in equities.

Coming to the TV Show, what caught my attention was that the younger investors were easily alarmed by any downswing in the market and consequent erosion of wealth. They have the youth and energy to earn more money and recoup losses and also they enjoy good health to hope to see their investments grow over the next 25 -30 years. But then human behaviour is strange.

On the contrary, there were a whole lot of retirees who were not only prepared to take risk, but were also ready for the long haul, if the market forces turned adverse.

A conversation went on like this :-

Investor : I have investments in 10 MFs (lists all the funds) . I am a long term investor ……

TV Anchor : Your fund selection is excellent for long term investment. What is your age now and how much do you earn per annum?

Investor : Just retired about a couple of years back. I am about 63.

TV Anchor : At your age, it is advisable to reduce investment in equities or equity based MFs….. blah ..blahh

Investor: I can wait. No problems. The market will improve . BY 10-12 years I am sure the returns will be good.

From the facial expressions and the body language, unspoken words from the Anchor were loud and clear .

– No doubt , the fund will stabilize in ten years time, but will you be stable then ?

– Wonder what are you going to do with the bumper returns at 75 !

Obviously she could not ask these questions explicitly. So the conversation went back and forth; she harping on matching his risk profile with his age and he assuring her that he was okay to wait for ever.

Old age not only gives you lots of time in the present, but also gives you the patience to wait for a future reward.

The youth neither has time in the present nor the patience to wait for a future reward.

Viva Old-age !

Games We Played

Sainik School is known for Games and Sports . We did play a lot of organized games like Basket ball and Foot ball in the regular games period. But the much looked forward to games period lasted for just about 40 minutes or so, and the day had 24 hours; too long to be spent sleeping or studying.

Boys are boys, as they say, and mind you those were the days when computers and video games were unknown. Even a humble transistor radio dishing out film songs on Vividh Bharathi was not accessible and regular sports items were not available other than during games period. Necessity is the mother of inventions and everything from sticks and stones or regular use items like buttons and slippers were marshaled to invent a plethora of games.

Of course Kabbadi was the best game to play which needed no equipment at all. But it required a number of players. There were many major and minor games that could be played by two to ten players, but I’ll restrict myself to three unique games we played; Snake pit tennis, Slipper cricket and button – carrom. I know the names themselves must be sounding outlandish though we never really referred to these games by any name as such.

Amaravathinagar was infested with snake and scorpions . In the senior houses , every house had a knee-deep , rectangular shaped snake-pit or trench at the main entrance to keep the crawly creatures away. It is a different matter that the snakes were more scared of the boys than the other way around. It was not uncommon to see a disciplined squad trooping along the road for the evening prep ,suddenly breaking ranks to join a hunt , when one of those reptiles is sighted off the road. A snake can never outrun , or may be out crawl the boys and generally ends up stoned to death. Other unfortunate creatures in the campus that were hunted down were lizards, scorpions, tadpoles or the most popular Pon-vandu (metallic wood boring beetle in English)

Coming back to snake-pit tennis, it involves two players taking positions inside the pit on opposite sides, having first cleared the pit of scorpions if any. The net is formed by the flip flop slippers that is generally taken off during such games. A tennis ball , generally bald and worn out , is hit with bare palms in table-tennis fashion. The score is also kept like in Table Tennis and one could go on and on , the whole Sunday.

Button – Carrom is a simple indoor game played on the mosaic tiled floor . Buttons of assorted colors and sizes are used as coins and a button from the rain coat is plucked out to be used as the striker. The game starts with the ‘coins’ thrown on a tile so that all coins fall within the area of a single tile. Since there are no pockets, just hitting a button out of a tile was considered good enough to earn the coin. The catch was that each button was to be hit without disturbing any other button. Coins were given values based on its color and size.

Slipper cricket was played in the Shoe-room in the junior houses. A tennis ball is hit with a flip flop slipper worn like a glove on one hand to form a ‘bat’ . Bowling was done under arm and the opposite wall was the boundary. A hit on to the opposite wall without touching the floor qualified for a six. For anyone following only the sound from outside it would seem like a lively game of squash. This was a game very hazardous to the health of window panes and tube-lights ; so generally one had to keep a watch for the warden.

There were many such improvised games , I am sure each batch would have come up with new ones or improved on the existing ones.

This account may give an idea that it was all fun and frolic at the school. Nothing could be far from truth. Inspections were scheduled generally on Mondays ; which could be dress inspection or house inspection. A dress inspection meant working on the shoes and brass buckles of the belt ,for the whole Sunday, till you could see your face on it. House inspection meant removing every speck of dust from every nook and corner, to be inspected by the whole hierarchy from house-prefect to house master before the final inspection by the Principal on Monday.

My adult avatar says, these whole gamut of improvised games only served to mitigate the existential suffering faced by young boys cooped up in dormitories , away from homes, away from civilization for five long months at at time.

Whatever be ,while recalling, it does sound we had a hell of a great time, after all.

The Unsung Heroes In Making Of A Great Institution

When you look back to your school days , normally you tend to look at the events as once seen through the eyes of a child. I have had two unique opportunities that prompts me to look at the events simultaneously as a child and as an adult, a part of the management at that. The first one was about day to day management of an Army Public School. As it happened this school was about seven years old, the same age as that of of Sainik School Amaravathinagar , in the year I joined.

This school had everything in terms of funding and infrastructure but it badly lacked the vital force that makes an institution a live , throbbing entity. Despite the subsidized fee for army children, there were very few applications for admission. An institution is like a living organism and in the early years it does go through the pangs of growing up. There is the energy of the young and at the same time lack of stability that comes only with experience.

The second opportunity was overseeing the NCC activities in our school as part of NCC Group Headquarters , Coimbatore. I came across a lot of new information about the history of the school. To put it briefly, the school was original planned to be set up at Kodaikaanal , and Amaravathinagar had been selected as the interim location as the place had a lot of temporary constructions made by PWD for personnel working on the Amaravathinagar Dam. As it happens , land acquisition efforts at Kodaikaanal had run into trouble and Amaravathinagar came to be the permanent location for the school.

That is how the School had to start functioning with excess of temporary constructions and very few buildings designed and built for the purpose of running a boarding school. The first meal I had in the school in the year 1968, was in the boxing ring; yes, a boxing ring that doubled as Junior Boys Mess. The Seniors Mess doubled as an auditorium and on movie days / special functions , the dinner was served outside.

What the school lacked in infrastructure was more than made up in the quality of staff ,both teaching staff and Non-teaching or administrative staff. Almost the entire staff was in the age group of 25 to 35, all young, dedicated people who had staked their own future in the future of the school.

If an institution can be looked at as a living being, the brain certainly would be the academic staff. It was the administrative staff including office staff, mess staff, laboratory attendants and whole gamut of class IV employees that formed the all important back bone. Infra structure could be seen as arms and legs and Funds as steroids or tonics. When the body is weak, tonics and steroids can strengthen the body but without the solid back bone ,no organism can grow and without the brain there would be know directions for growth and evolution. I think, in this aspect of brain and the backbone the school has been very very fortunate.

Almost every part of the huge campus can be identified with a dedicated individual taking care of the facility. When I think of the Arts class, it is not the class room that comes to mind but the then young art teacher who retired from service from that place. So is it with crafts class ,Library or PT. While teachers no doubt played a great role ,it is the unsung heroes at each facility or place that , I think , played as great a role or may be even a greater role. I simply cannot visualize the physics or chemistry labs without recalling the lab attendants who were as much part and parcel of the lab as the Bunsen burners and Colorimeter.

The MI Room had a compounder who was more than a doctor for us. With the kind of out door activities including horse riding and boxing ,the school always had a number of walking wounded in all kinds of plasters and bandages . That one person with an assistant handled all kinds of injuries and quarantines. The doctor was only seen very rarely.

We had two NCOs from army who, I always thought were part of the school. Only twenty years later did I learn that they actually came under the NCC Group Headquarters at Coimbatore. The bonding was so complete that these two gentlemen lived in the school campus and participated in most of the school functions including hikes and excursions .

The picture I have of the sports stores in the swimming pool complex is that of a groundsman issuing stores, receiving the stores during games period . At other times he was busy repairing the foot balls, basket balls or cricket gear that the boys just used or misused and dumped in the store after the games period. I find it difficult to believe that a even personal item of sports kit like a hockey stick was actually provided to boys on the house. Boys are boys . Some of us took mighty swings with the hockey stick at pebbles . Today, I feel ashamed that some of us even pilfered twine that is used in the handles ,for personal use. As for foot balls and basket balls the casualty rate was rather high . Unlike the present times, those days everything was repairable and was repaired and re-used till the item lost its original shape completely. It is these grounds-men who ensured that a punctured bladder was fixed,leather re-stitched and the ball inflated and kept ready for use the next day.

I realized the importance of this kind of dedicated staff only when , at another school, I saw a huge pile of broken rackets and deflated balls just dumped in the store to be charged off and destroyed during the annual stock taking exercise.

As for the cadets mess we had such waiters who were permanently affiliated to a house and considered themselves part of the house. They knew the likes and dislikes of every boy and did what they could to make a simple meal great. Some of the boys, of course were smarter than others and could use their charms to wheedle a larger piece of chicken or an extra mysore pak. These waiters worked from morning bed tea, through every tea or meal till dinner time and I wonder what motivated them to keep going on and on. Today, in most places we hear of outsourcing and contract labour where attrition rate is very high and customer satisfaction is very low.

During the later part of our stay , many of our teachers moved on to better appointments in other schools as there was a growing demand for principals in Navodaya Schools and Private Schools. But most of the administrative staff stayed on till superannuation.

A thing I noticed only very recently was that our Feeder House photo of 1968, includes not just the House Master and House Tutors , but the whole team of Matron, Warden, Barber, Washer-Man and Sweeper . I have not come across such group photos in the recent times.

I feel, these are the small things that goes into making a great institution. A positive aspect of this entire teamwork is that it is not an exploitative relationship between the employee and the institution , but a kind of symbiotic relation. The employees and their families grew with the school. Today many children from these families are holding high positions in our defense forces and in other walks of life.

Those days HR was not studied or talked about much as a subject , but sure they did practice it. As alumni we owe a lot to these unsung heroes of our school.

Quarentine Days !

No doubt we are going through very challenging times ; the lock-down days are going to be talked about for a long long time.

As I write this, we have just completed 21 days of quarantine period and have moved on to the extension period of another 21 days.

What do I miss the most? May be the morning walk and of course the assurance that God is heaven and all is well on Earth and that I could take a leisurely stroll around Mhow whenever I wanted. Now there is so much uncertainty about the future what with the daily or hourly reports coming through TV and Social media. In reality, nothing much has changed for an introvert retiree like me.

The first time I heard about the term quarantine was way back in 1968, in school.

It all started like this. We had just come back after a long vacation. It was arts period ; a time for a bunch of ten year-olds to play around with crayons .

We had drawing benches or Art donkey bench as they were called. These days I don’t see such furniture in schools. Most of the kids were more interested in his neighbour’s board than in his own and we were in peeping distance or should we say pinching distance.

One of the boys saw a nice juicy looking pimple on his neighbour’s cheek and decided to explore. It was the classic, pink, fluid filled blister , a definite sign of chicken pox. One pinch and the blister broke leaving a gooey stuff on his hands. He must have cleaned it as a kid would normally do; on his clothes or more likely on another boy’s shirt.

The chain of infection started. Before you could say Chakroborty Rajagopalachari, four boys had been identified with chicken pox. The “Patient 0” then, is an internationally known author – publisher today.

We were about 55 boys in Class V and all of us were boarding in two blocks called feeder houses. On hindsight , I can now visualize, the school authorities must have been greatly concerned about the disease spreading to boys of other classes and to the whole school.

It happened suddenly; the next morning we were told to just stay put in our hostels; and it was for an indefinite period. We had a system of keeping our text books and note books in our school desks ; so we didn’t even have any study materials; a happy state indeed. Activities for the older boys , class VI upwards went on as usual while we were isolated.

Every morning , we lined up for inspection by matrons for signs of chicken pox. Of the two blocks in the feeder house, one was earmarked for active cases and the other for the unaffected and recovered. Every day, some boys were moved to the active block on detection of symptoms and some moved back to the healthy block after recovery. It went on for about two months. About 50% of us were affected. Why only 50% and not all ? There were people like me who had gone through the ordeal, much earlier in life. Those were the days when you could hardly find any kids not baptized by fire; who had not been through chicken pox /measles /mumps etc.

My memory of those two months is rather weak. I remember playing a lot of Carrom and ludo. Though I could play chess, there were hardly any partners. Droughts and a game called jumping jack were popular. Monopoly was played with improvised currency notes and sale deeds. There were many other games played with paper and pencil and even buttons. As I was good at carrom, time really flashed by between breakfast and lunch. The meal times were something to look forward to. There were no tables or chairs; we sat in long lines on the floor making a lot of ruckus.

In the evening , what used to be called prep during working days , we were kept busy with spelling competitions and singing film songs.

I remember some boys were exceptionally good at telling stories. Of course, all film-stories were narrated scene by scene in great details . It helped that die-hard MGR/Sivaji fans saw their hero’s films a number of times; sometimes even 4-5 times. And there were kids who could make up their own stories. Some names that come to mind are Sundar and Kumar. They were always sought after for the story sessions; you could see groups of 8-10 boys perched in close groups, generally on two cots pulled close to each other.

I really don’t remember , ever getting bored; nor do I remember how we coped up with the academics we had missed.

Today, as I look back ,it was a very very responsible and courageous action on the part of school administration to have taken up looking after 50 odd ten year- olds during an epidemic. They could have just sent the whole class back home with a rejoin-date. But they didn’t. During subsequent years in the school, there were some boys isolated for chicken pox ,about 4-5 boys at a time; but there were none from our batch as we all had been fully immunized for good.

That was part of our class ..stuck for two months in quarantine.

Janta Curfew

My journal today.

The day of Janta Curfew called by the PM. A self imposed Curfew is so apt for a democracy. With our country, there is simply no way to predict a likely response to such a call.

I am sure , even absolutely ‘couldn’t careless type’ people must be going through all kinds of thoughts on where the world is heading to. It is time to record these random thoughts.

The world at large is really at crossroads.

People in the western world, the first world are dying like flies totally helpless against an unseen enemy. When 9/11 happened , US and its allies went berserk and bombed the hell out of who they thought was their enemy. in this case there is nobody to bomb, all the advancements in Science appears woefully inadequate to meet the new threat. It is not that one was not aware of the possibilities of an outbreak of epidemics. One had the confidence in modern science and technology and the dollars to help overcome the problems. It was the third world that succumbs to epidemics.

Asian and African countries actually seem to be getting along better than American or European countries , at least as of today.

Our own millennials have readily adapted to the western ways and believe in the ‘scientific’ or economic approach to problems of humankind as against social or spiritual approach. It’s time to pause and think. Is dollars and work efficiency everything? Here we have one problem where you cannot even get out of your house unless every human being on earth is adequately protected. It is not enough to work for individual comfort and dismiss the collateral damage with a ‘not my problem’ shrug. One really , really has to think of the safety of every human being in every country.

How is India going to deal with this one day curfew ?

Came across a very sensible tweet from Chetan Bhagat . He lists a number of activities to spend the day fruitfully rather than complaining of boredom.

Study. Cook. Clean. Talk to family. Call old friends. Watch TV. Surf the net. Exercise at home. Meditate. Sleep. Rest. Eat. Shower. Repair something broken. Rearrange cupboards. Organise your paperwork. Write down your goals. Plenty you can do.

A wonderful todo list . I can add a few more exciting things to do; “write a journal, review a book, maintain a machine, organize music, get creative; make some cute bags, pouches,wall hangings, posters,book marks….etc etc.”

For a generation that glorifies multitasking, these are time to do many tasks ,one by one ,relishing, savouring every minute , rather than getting caught up in a cycle of mindless multitasking.

Today , I saw a story in TOI, “home cooking is back” really?? When did it leave? to come back now? Nobody told me.

These days I hear /read on SM the kind of language I come across only in western novels.(happens to someone living in the book -world)
Grab a sandwich, catch the movie …
It gives an idea of a world in which you and everything is perpetually in motion.
Why can’t one pick up a sandwich or watch a movie?
These are times to pause; to stop grabbing and catching stuff ; to consider, reflect ,cook, eat , read, watch , every act be savored. Cooking is not just for eating ; cooking is for cooking and cleaning is for cleaning. Every act be enjoyed for itself rather than as an unavoidable punishment to be compensated by reward later ; like the boring act of cooking compensated by yummy moments of eating!

Nothing sums up this attitude as “work hard , party harder” or “work-life balance”;
as if if work and life are mutually exclusive.
Why not just work happily, party happily ?

Recently , I learnt of a new term to describe my kind of living, “social distancing”

I have always avoided crowded places; may be that’s why I spend so much time in libraries, some of the least crowded spaces. Have always scrupulously avoided the happy hours (that would actually make me unhappy) , some of the most crowded spaces. The happy hours can be absurdly extended to Bacardi nights or Blenders Pride nights where free liquor flows through the most crowded bars at DSOI, Mhow.

Selfies matter, but backdrop to your selfies matter more

Of late there’s a lot of peer pressure or shall we say ‘virtual peers’ pressure to be at all the happening places.

There are people putting up selfies of their successfully and defiantly breaking the curfew.

Exciting times ahead. What kind of selfies are we going to see tomorrow ?? Sure there would be the show of support by banging plates at 5 pm. There would also be some defiance by the show of middle finger from some balconies.

Some liberal Italians did a very enthusiastic show of hug a Chinese , about a month back.. will any liberal do a hug an Italian now , anywhere in the world ??

Some liberals are making a big show of their presence outdoors under the belief that their wealth would keep them safe… Collateral damages are not their concern.

Remains to be seen.

Let’s hope for the best!

Rest after 5 PM.

As it happened , the response from the people at 5 PM was overwhelming, taking even the hard core RW by surprise. There were a few jarring notes too, but that’s ok in a land of billion plus people.

But what marred the whole day was the kind of celebrations that spontaneously broke out across the country , after the 5 PM show of unity. People simply forgot all about social distancing and moved on to the streets with dholak and bhangra as if some Corono World cup has been won ! This country needs not one God but 33 crore gods and goddesses to protect the people at every nook and corner from idiocy and stupidity .

Down the memory lane – II

Earlier blog on get together at School in 2011 Read

Having settled down North of Narmada, it is not often that I get to attend functions at Chennai or South of Chennai. And whenever it happens it has always been very special.

As one ages ,one doesn’t really change but just becomes more of what one was , as a child.

At sixty-plus , most of us have retired from active careers and those who are still in service are doing it for fun rather than any compulsion. With career out of the way and children having left home, this is the small window in one’s life span when you have the time, money and health to indulge in attending such social events , wherever, whenever . No wonder senagers (sixty-plus behaving like teenagers) are the new big consumers today.

I graduated from School in 1975 and there are some classmates I never got to meet in the intervening 40 odd years. Yet when we meet, it feels as if we never parted. Now that our children are in the process of getting married , a wedding becomes an ideal occasion to catch up.

On 7 Feb, Chandramouli’s son got married and on 6th Feb we had a great get together at Nambi’s house. A big , big thanks to Dr AP Nambi.

Ladies too had a great time and probably felt being part of the community as much as the ‘boys’.

Something unique about high school classmates’ reunion i s that you find guys from all walks of life. During a gathering of classmates from professional colleges or Military Academies most conversations ramble on around the profession while with High school types it’s more like the age of innocence; conversations are unstructured and care free. The event was particularly special as three very senior teacher now in their eighties graced the occasion and one of them even took a class though on general issues and not on Biology, that was his subject.

Many thanks to Chandramouli , Nambi , all ladies who have been putting up with the overgrown boys and all wonderful people who made it so lively be their sheer presence.

Before signing off , I convey my grateful thanks to my hosts Girija and Baskar, whose wonderful company we enjoyed for four days at West Mambalam.

Bhutan the Land of Happiness – On Happiness

Bhutan is a unique country to give importance to Health and Happiness over Money and Development, at least, that is the official stance. Any write up about Bhutan is not complete without a discussion on Happiness.

It is not that other countries or for that matter individuals do not want happiness. After all America in particular and the western democracies in general, value Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness to be fundamental rights.

The major difference is that , in the West, money and development of infrastructure are considered absolutely necessary for happiness whereas Bhutan probably recognizes that , however temporarily, health and happiness cannot be put on hold for the sake of Gross National Product.

Incidentally, as per World Happiness report from UN, Bhutan stands 97th among 156 countries

We’ll look at this anomaly later.

Happiness is an intriguing subject for psychologists and philosophers alike. I don’t claim to be an expert nor am I an expert on Bhutanese culture. After a trip to Bhutan , many questions cropped up in my mind and am just trying to find answers. So, let us have a look at some of the issues before considering if Bhutan indeed is a land of happiness.

Some issues to ponder

Presuming that one has gone through all these links , where does Bhutan stand in its progress towards happiness ?

- Bhutanese culture lays a lot of stress on preservation of culture and alignment with environment as against the western concept of Equality and Individual Freedom(both these values are contradictory , study of which will require another post by itself) As I understand Bhutanese culture accepts inequality and promotes peace and harmony through cooperation and preservation of nature. This aspect is poignantly explained through the story of Four Friends from Jataka tales. The picture of Four Friends is found at many Dzongs, homes and public places. It guides the national policy.

- Material comfort is less but essential facilities like good network of roads and reliable Water and Power supply are provided by the government. Education and Basic Healthcare are free for all citizens and that takes the stress of people to a great extent. One is not under pressure to amass wealth for children’s education or the health care of elderly.

- There is emphasis on self-discipline, healthy life style and spiritual practices which aim to attain a perpetual state of joy rather than getting trapped in a continuous and relentless chase of sensual pleasures.

The debate will go on as to what would be right approach; to become a buddha finding Nirvana by treating pleasures and pain alike or building up material comforts to minimize pain and fill up every moment of life with pleasure and more pleasure. Bhutan certainly seem to be going the Buddha way.

Why does Bhutan rank so low in happiness index ?

Mostly happiness is evaluated based on certain parameters like life-expectancy, infant mortality, employment opportunities, individual freedom to choose your job or your partner , ownership of material comfort enablers like a house, car, house-hold gadgets and so on.

Many Senagers ( sixty plus with disposal income , looking for adventure and behaving like teenagers) today, who have the money but not the health and wish, that , in their younger years, they could have focused a little less on money and a little more on health. Then pursuit of happiness would make more sense today. But then that is hindsight; we also see a number of retirees who wished that they had made more money in their productive years or wished they had been born in a period when there was a better infrastructure for air travel , Tele communication , medical facilities and general facilities that contributed to physical happiness.

Does a long life necessarily mean a happy life ? Does a ride in a bus to school mean a happier way to commute rather than a walk through the hillside in a pristine environment ?

Is physical comfort everything ? I never cease to wonder how some people can keep smiling even while engaged in mundane monotonous jobs like mopping floors or washing utensils.

During my stay at Bhutan, I did not see many school buses but saw many children in groups of twos and threes merrily walking along. I did not see the monstrous school bags that we are used to in India.

While automobiles were not seen as an everyday requirement, good road network and provision of reliable power supply did make a lot of difference in happiness quotient.

Another issue is freedom of choice to evaluate happiness. The current generation is realizing that your freedom to choose / change your spouse also means your spouses’s freedom to do so. Even within the country , the states leading the suicide numbers are not impoverished , less literate states but the other way round. The young people with maximum freedom to choose are also maximum insecure. It doesn’t mean that arranged marriage is the best option followed by ’till death do us apart’. But some consideration of concepts like culture and ethos as against merely swearing by individual freedom would lead to more stable state of happiness.

Such nuances are not considered while ranking the countries on the happiness index.

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Individual or community

A traditional family puts happiness of the community first. So you have an hierarchy in the family or the village. There are strict dos and don’ts, the elders benevolent control is always felt, at whatever age or stage of life. generally we hear (or say) “It is for your good that I scold /beat/restrict you, “. Doesn’t such an environment impinge on individual happiness ?

The present generation focuses on individual happiness. Every being is responsible for his or her own happiness. Does it work ? Are individuals happier with all family-fetters broken ?

Both these ideas are contradictory unless you can find a fine balance. Bhutan certainly falls under the first option.

Happiness or Joy

So, What brings happiness ? Happiness comes from having something; like buying a guitar, doing something like playing a guitar and finally being someone like a musician. It is said, the degree of happiness increases from having to doing to being.

Happiness is said to a fleeting feeling related to some pleasurable physical experience like good food , sex , touch, sight , sound or psychological like appreciation.

Joy is a more stable state resulting from a feeling of self worth, contentedness, knowledge of oneself, understanding of the environment etc. Loosely , it may be said that happiness is related to physical well being while joy is related to mental well being.

I presume Joy is superior to Happiness.

Approaches to Attaining Happiness

Epicurean:- A philosophy advanced by Epicurus that considered happiness, or the avoidance of pain and the emotional disturbance, to be highest good and that advocated the pursuit of pleasures that can be enjoyed in moderation. Most people take it that just chasing activities that fills every moment of life with good wine, good food and sartorial pleasure is what an Epicurean does. Epicurus himself warns that it is not easy to pursue pleasure and he advocates moderation leading to almost an ascetic life. For more …

Biological

Nothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan: ‘Happiness Begins Within.’ Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.(Yuval Harari)

Is it possible to pop a few pills and feel happy.

In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, published in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, happiness is the supreme value and psychiatric drugs replace the police and the ballot as the foundation of politics. Each day, each person takes a dose of ‘soma’, a synthetic drug which makes people happy without harming their productivity and efficiency. The World State that governs the entire globe is never threatened by wars, revolutions, strikes or demonstrations, because all people are supremely content with their current conditions, whatever they may be. Huxley’s vision of the future is far more troubling than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Huxley’s world seems monstrous to most readers, but it is hard to explain why. Everybody is happy all the time – what could be wrong with that ? (from Sapiens by Yuval Harari)

The Buddha Way

Buddhism teaches that understanding the fleeting nature of happiness or sadness leads to freedom from suffering.

Buddhism shares the basic insight of the biological approach to happiness, namely that happiness results from processes occurring within one’s body, and not from events in the outside world. However, starting from the same insight, Buddhism reaches very different conclusions.

According to Buddhism, most people identify happiness with pleasant feelings, while identifying suffering with unpleasant feelings. People consequently ascribe immense importance to what they feel, craving to experience more and more pleasures, while avoiding pain. Whatever we do throughout our lives, whether scratching our leg, fidgeting slightly in the chair, or fighting world wars, we are just trying to get pleasant feelings.

People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. (Yuval Harari : Sapiens)

Roseto Effect

This is not exactly a path that one can pursue, but it does make a difference to live in a close knit community to attain happiness. The Roseto effect is the phenomenon by which a close-knit community experiences a reduced rate of heart disease. The effect is named for Roseto, Pennsylvania. The Roseto effect was first noticed in 1961 when the local Roseto doctor encountered Dr. Stewart Wolf, then head of Medicine of the University of Oklahoma, and they discussed, over a couple of beers, the unusually low rate of myocardial infarction in the Italian American community of Roseto compared with other locations

Happiness Enablers and happiness Killers

There are any number of philosophers , self-improvement gurus and scientists who put forward any number of theories; but what does it all mean to a common man? How does he apply this concept in his own life ? I am sure one can identify the activities , people, possessions that make one smile to himself and there are situation that makes one frown or tense. An effort to generalize these happiness enablers and happiness killers:-

happiness enablers

Being in control of self or discipline.
Doing something one is good at.
Company of people on same frequency.
Being prepared for any foreseeable situation.

happiness killers

Guilt feelings (A good Conscience is a continuous Deepawali)
Feelings of Fear and hatred
Insecurity about future.

Applying to everyday life would be different for different people. For example, let’s take the first battle of the day is what I call ‘the battle of mind over mattress‘ . When the alarm goes off in the morning and it is still cold and dark outside, the Epicurean in you loathes to trouble the body ; but when you think of the good feel you get at the end of an hour and a half walk, the self-control muscles play up. Another thought is that guilt of missing the exercise for the day might keep nagging you the whole day. So, the simple act of getting out of the bed in time earns you a few units of happiness!.

Then if you can make a short list of things to do for the day and actually doing those things gives you many more units of happiness by the time you go to bed.

Unfortunately, happiness cannot be stored ; one needs to be constantly doing things that needs to be done and being what you want to be all day and every day.

Four Friends

The Western society believes values equality and individual freedom a great deal. The republicans focus more on individual freedom and end up creating a more unequal society. The democrats believe in taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor ,thus ending up violating the individual freedom of the rich. The west believes in competition and promotion of merit, thus contributing to individual aspirations. In a way, it is the Darwinian Survival of the Fittest in the corporate World. It has a plus point that the capabilities of a person is stretched to full potential. The flip side is that , it creates a very very unequal society , so unequal that it also impinges upon the other main value of a Western Democracy, Individual freedom. What does a single mother do with individual freedom when she is constantly struggling to meet the essential requirements of herself and her children?

In Bhutan , there is an image that is ubiquitous, be it homes or dzongs. It is an image of an elephant, monkey, hare and a pheasant. There are a number of interpretations to this starting from basic physical level to subtle spiritual level. But all interpretations are about Harmony and cooperation .

The four animals are anything but equal and for a simpleton the obvious attributes could be strength of an elephant, flexibility of a monkey, speed of a hare and the capability to fly of a bird.

For the philosophically inclines the image depicts the harmony between various elements in one’s own nature; physical, mental, intellectual and spiritual. It may sound like a tale from Kathopanishad. The elephant represents body, monkey the mind, the hare emotions & bird the soul.

In Bhutan, the story gives a national identity for people to live in harmony with nature, for people to co-operate with each other even with cultural differences, and for families to work together. It is believed that Bhutan code of ethic bought in by the unifier of the Country “Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel” and Bhutan’s national policies is based on it that influences.

The four animals represent the different habitats of the animal world—the sky, the trees, the ground, and underground.

For more about this fable click here, here , here and here