Random Ramblings

Why Sainik School ? That’s a question faced by most parents who have opted for their child to study there. Many pronounced it as Chinese school as the hindi word sainik never made much sense to the Tamilians. Karunanidhi, in circa 1969, as chief guest for the annual day function called it Paasarai palli (பாசறை பள்ளி ) but the term never gained currency.

Why Sainik School and why not a local day school ? The most socially acceptable reply would be that a child learns discipline there. There are some friends and relatives who just assume the boy to have gone totally beyond the control of the parents and so he required external force to reign him in much like a wild horse needs special efforts to be broken in. I have personally heard someone asking my brother about me in a low voice , “is he that violent “ or words to that effect. The Tamil word is “muradu” (முரடு) ; one of those untranslatable words.

The school did foster discipline with activities like drill and PT , with the whole hierarchy of juniors, Seniors, prefects, captains, house master etc. One just could not stray out of step or display his individuality without treading on some some toes to disastrous results.

But the moot point is that, is such enforced discipline sustainable ? I doubt. It never worked in my case at least. Be it getting up early in the morning or be it the spit and polish military turnout, it never lasted beyond the school campus. Yes, today I do get up early in the morning, go for a two hours walk ; but it is more out of self discipline after rebelling against and breaking out of the enforced discipline. Opinions will differ, but personally I feel that such kind of training should be reserved for dogs and horses.

If Discipline is given so much importance, can Punishments be far behind? There were punishments of all kinds; by the students to the students, by the teachers and by the whole system to enforce uniformity and discipline. The common offenses were not making bed, not polishing the shoes properly , insolent behaviour with a boy one class senior ; nothing much really to write home about. The less these punishments are talked about , the better it is. Most children grew stronger and became aware of the unlimited capacity to take abuse and yet survive. Some children unable to deal with such an environment may develop psychological problems. It would require experts in the field ,to come to a definite conclusion ,after a proper study of data.

Whatever be, major crimes like lying and stealing were actually encouraged indirectly as all is fair if you have the right answer. A good response to “why are you late” can get you off the hook if you can come up with a plausible lie spontaneously. Of course the golden rule here was DO NOT EVER GET CAUGHT. Other terms which feel all wrong but work all right is “beg, borrow , steal” and “by hook or crook”. Personally I would rather be in torn clothes than beg ,borrow or steal to be dressed smartly in new clothes. These are typical war time values when the ends are more important than the means. That was the kind of training given to children of Sparta to ensure a citizenry always fit for war and survival. One thing I am convinced; Punishments may foster short term discipline but robs one of dignity and a sense of self-worth,which I feel is more important in the long run.

The school did produce smart boys who could survive in any kind of environment. That can be seen from the way the alumni have proved themselves successful in all walks of life. I would say that, how this smartness was channelized depended more on the upbringing at home and of course personal efforts ; after all, to use a computer analogy, human beings are endowed with the capacity to boot up on their own.

Coming back to the original question of Why Sainik School , I would say, “The school produces smart boys fit to take on the rough and tumble and come out successful in any walk of life” .

If knowledge is imbibed through impressions in classrooms , libraries and laboratories, it is an auditorium or a central discussion hall where you learn to express this knowledge, in a way useful to your society and to yourself.

Thirukkural has a complete chapter on Stage Fright , “Avai Anjaamai” (அவை அஞ்சாமை ) . Every couplet in the chapter is a gem , but my favorite is Couplet No 726. A rough translation would go like this :- “ What have they to do with a sword who are not valiant, or they with learning who are afraid of an intelligent assembly ? “ Only of late, our engineering colleges and B Schools are waking up to the idea , generally to improve the placement prospects for their students.

Many a time you get to know yourself better by expressing yourself through a work of creativity; it could be a speech, writing , fine arts or performing arts. To that extent an auditorium plays a great role in learning. An auditorium need not be an indoor space with with world-class acoustics and interior decoration. It could as well be a raised platform set up under a banyan tree where children can express themselves freely in front of their teachers and peers.

Our school did not have a dedicated auditorium to begin with. We had a temporary construction for senior boys mess which doubled as an auditorium for all kinds of functions that required a stage and seating for 300 boys.

Going back to Feb 1968, it was just a few days after we had joined the school. Mr Selvaraj turned up at our hostel one evening , after dinner. I remember we were in our pajamas for his reading test or should we say, the audition test. He made every boy read a verse or a paragraph from a text book. Tamil is a unique language that even among native speakers of the language , a vast majority cannot handle the different sounds of ல , ள ,ர ,ற ,ழ (two Ls, two Rs and a sound not expressible in letters of the English alphabet, or for that matter any other language in the world barring Malayalam ) May be because we were the tiniest or may be because we could handle the pronunciations better , five of use were selected. I remember Baskar and Mouli and cant’t recall the other two)

It was for participation in grandiose sounding Tamil Literary Association Meeting though our role was nothing more than reciting some nursery rhymes about dogs, cats, birds and so on.I suppose , it was also a way of of welcoming our batch to the Auditorium.

The next big occasion was the Feeder House day that was celebrated along with Children’s day in 1968. Considering that we were all in class V , it must have been a tough job for the teachers to prepare us for a full fledged entertainment program as it happens on any “House Day”. The matrons Ms Gowri and Ms Julia were also fully involved in the preparations. The program included songs , dance and plays in Tamil, English and Hindi. It is surprising how a child can memorize dialogues in a language he knows little about.

The Hindi play directed by Mrs Visalakshi was about Meera and I played the role of Meera. Miss Visalaakshi, not only had large eyes as her name suggested , but also had a large heart and everything about her was XXL . She was a great singer with a sweet voice. The play had three scenes with short dialogues and a longish dance at the end where the Child- Meera is thrilled to be in possession of a Krishna idol. Since an attempt to teach me to sing turned out disastrous , Mrs Visalakshi sang in the background and Meera holding the idol of Krishna danced to “Mere Angane men murli bajao”

In our house day functions, we had a norm that the program always started with an elaborate opening tableau. A lot of efforts went into the project . It was a Still or a kind of slow animation of characters against a backdrop set to some theme like freedom struggle, education and so on.

For our feeder house day falling on Children’s day, the theme was children and so it was the scene of Krishna stealing butter. We already had a Krishna, Gnanasekar, made up and ready for the play “Meera”. They put a head scarf ,dubatta, on my head to convert child-Meera to adult-Yashodha! These days , teachers are smart. They decide the cast and crew based on the ability of parents to run around and provide costumes and accoutrement . I don’t know from where the blouse, skirts , bangles and all materialized; all procured by teachers and matrons. On the lighter side, having played the roles of Meera and Yashodha on the same day, I have become a die hard fan of Krishna . Today when most people write Sri Ramajayam , I write Om namo bhagavate Vasudevaya!

Despite this great start I never reached anywhere in the subsequent years mostly doing small roles in the House day programs , reciting poems in Hindi literary meetings and an odd participation in a debate in English.

In 1969, we moved to the new school complex and in 1970 or 71 , Avvai Auditorium came into being. It was a little more than an asbestos shed , but it had a large space for stage and we had a decent audio system. The auditorium is named after Avvaiyaar, the great Tamil poet. A plywood cutout of the poet was placed above the stage. On hindsight ,I wish we had had a grand statue or a bust .

A point to note is that Avvaiyaar was more of a poet and philosopher than a playwright . In schools auditoriums are for literary meetings , debates and quiz programs as much for music, dance and plays.

We would also remember Avvai Auditorium for the daily morning assembly. I think it is the only school , I have come across where teachers wore their academic gowns every day during the morning assembly. We had a practice of one of the choirs , one for each language; Tamil, English and Hindi singing when teachers walk in , in their academic gowns, to take their place on the stage. On my first day in the school, I remember the Tamil Choir singing the Bharathi daasan’s song “Kottu murase”. I just loved it and since then have loved every one of the songs from the morning assembly.

Any performance on the stage can be divided into stuff that is prepared and regurgitated or stuff that required thinking on your feet. While declamation and recitation fall in the first category, debates and quiz programs would fall in the second. I feel schools should focus more on getting children to think rather than memorize. To me, memorizing couplets from Thirukkural or the poem IF by Rudyard Kipling makes sense; but not memorizing poems like “The old horse dobbin out at grass…..” or a complete speech by Mirabeau on national Assembly of France. Some of my classmates may remember the hours put in on Mirabeau’s speech. Sometimes I do regret not utilizing the enormous capacity in childhood to lap up every poem of Bharathiyaar or some great couplets from Thirukkural.

The junior boys took turns to announce birthdays and read out the news for the day the seniors had to give a talk on any subject of their choice.

Many of us took the easy route of picking up an essay from the “NDA Master Guide” that was considered the ultimate store-house of all knowledge. You started with “The path of duty is the way to glory ….napoleon said this, Nelson said that and so on” . Some of us wrote our own scripts for the talk. I remember speaking about Poetry, Power of Concentration and about Dreams.

If I were to design a school building today, I will start with an auditorium and then design the class rooms and other facilities around it. I did have an opportunity to be part of a deliberation on the standard design for Army Schools. The auditorium was ‘fitted in ‘ in the space enclosed by rows of classrooms more as a space saving measure than for any reason that had to do with educational requirements.

This proposal was shot down by the majority on the plea that an auditorium with class rooms on all sides would be a big disturbance for teaching. This idea is obviously from the understanding that an auditorium was meant for musical and dance performances and the countless rehearsals that goes on to stage any function would render the place ever noisy. For most people, an auditorium is a place for the gladiators of the school to perform on the Annual day for the parents and guests to applaud.

I think , it should be a place for the children to learn to think on their feet in front of peers and teachers . It should be a place for discussions and debates and not only for guitars and drums , disco lights and dance. For our school , Avvai Auditorium definitely met the requirement.

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.

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 !