(Very) Early Childhood Education

Yesterday, I came across 2 of my daughter's playmates - one in the LKG and another in the UKG , different schools but both affiliated to the CBSE. The LKG kid had just finished with learning strokes and now has moved to writing letters of the alphabet.

The UKG kid's "syllabus" includes writing numerals 1-100, numbers in words from one to fifty and writing 3 letter words! This boy's mother tells me the school gives him so much homework that his tiny hands start aching.

I spoke to another parent whose child is in Standard I (again CBSE). This child could write sentences last year itself and now follows the question/answer pattern.

Another child studying in LKG in a State Board school also can write letters of the alphabet in Tamil and English, apart from numerals up to 20.

What I understood from the mothers of all these children is that LKG is comparatively easy, in the sense that they start with strokes and move on to writing the letters of the alphabet and a few numbers by the end of the year. However, UKG seems to be a giant leap from there. The learning seems to speed up by this level.

The 3 Rs have now become - Rapid - Rigorous - Rote Learning!!

My question: Is there a regulatory body that takes a check on the kindergarten/nursery school syllabus followed by different schools?

There are as many different syllabi as the number of schools in town. Isn't there anyone to monitor this? There seems to be no common pattern at all.

I'm not even talking about 'alternative education' like Montessori and Waldorf that ideally integrates play, nature, day-to-day life and education. I am just talking about the regular mainstream education that city schools offer.

Adding to the confusion is the age factor for admission. Each school follows a different age bracket for admissions into the LKG level. In this mix, a three and a half year old and a child who is 4+ years old will learn the same thing in spite of a world of difference in their 'readiness' to grasp a concept.

I did some research on the Internet and I understand that in India, schools come under the ambit of any Board of Education only starting from Standard I. Anything that happens before that, is totally up to the discretion of the individual school. The school is free to either let the children sing and play all day or cram them up with heavy writing work. The Department of Education, Government of India has a jargon-filled website that indicates that there is a body to look after Elementary Education but they seem have other albeit well-meaning priorities like getting to children to come to school in the first place! I am sure there is already some structure and regulation in place that I am not aware of. If not, I feel there should definitely be some laws based on a modern look at toddlers/pre-schoolers, their developmental needs and milestones.

My point is that children are like sponges. They will learn anything you teach them - be it 100 Thirukkural verses or names of 100 countries with their capital cities. It is another topic of discussion if gifted children are 'born' or 'made'. But where early education is concerned, I think we need to draw a line somewhere - not how much a child can learn but how much a child needs to learn.

Grandpas, cell phones and back-up plans

The other day I saw a cute, elderly couple holding hands and crossing the road. The thatha (pls note: nothing derogatory but only endearing) had this little bag slung on his shoulder and I could guess what its contents could be.

1. A bottle of water

2. Spectacle case (he will never remove his specs but will still carry the case)

3. A hand towel

4. A cell phone

5. And his most prized possession, his pocket sized telephone/address book

I find it extremely cute... Though many of our darling grandpas have finally started using cell phones, they still haven't got the heart to dump their pocket-sized telephone books. And I don't think its about being techno-savvy. I guess unlike us, they don't trust technology more than themselves. Its a good idea actually.

We youngsters save every little detail on our phones and get awfully stuck when our phones don't work or worse, when we lose our phones. We end up making 10 calls to find someone's phone number, whereas the grandpa coolly refers to his address book.

I must say, grandpas are totally "back-up gurus" . I see 2 classic cases in my family - my dad and dad-in-law. The address book is the back-up for the cell phone. There is a 500 rupee note folded several times over, hidden in a secret pouch of the wallet - that's back-up cash. A well-stocked, well-labelled medicine box apart from the box they use everyday...the list goes on. My dad-in-law often jokes about having a back-up wife somewhere!!

On a second thought, I won't be surprised if the gentleman I mentioned earlier had an extra bottle of water in his bag, just in case!!!

The art of simplicity

Been watching some old Hindi movies on TV lately - Chit Chor, Julie, Akhiyon Ke Jharonkon Se... What an experience in simplicity they have been! Each of these movies, so different in their setting yet similar in the handling - simple, no melodrama - just a lot of feeling poured into each subject. Interestingly, all of them were made between 1975 and 1978.

Julie was a very bold theme, extremely well-handled for those times. Excellent portrayal by Lakshmi and Nadira.

Among these 3 movies, what really stole my heart was Chit Chor and Akhiyon Ke Jharonkon Se (AKJS). Chit Chor is a totally lighthearted, charming love story. Watched AKJS last night and couldn't sleep. I cried on watching a movie after a really long time. It is a love story, between two young college going people - a great deal heavier than Chit Chor. I've always loved the title track sung by Hemlatha but having watched the movie for the first time, the song's still ringing in my ears and I've been humming it all day.

I was surprised to see that Chit Chor was made by Rajshri Productions and while watching AKJS, I guessed it must be the same company again and I was right. The same Rajshri that later made sentimental but over-the-top family dramas like Hum Aapke Hai Kaun and the forgettable Hum Saath Saath Hain. Chit Chor and AKJS are so different from the Rajshri fare of recent times - very few characters...uncomplicated story line and Ravindra Jain's lilting melodies. And both were quite progressive for those times - open-minded parents, no negative characters or "villains" and lovers who are quite open about their fondness for each other.

In AKJS, I was surprised and actually loved the way Sachin casually asks Ranjita, "Shall we go on a date?". Yet the teenage love story is portrayed with utmost maturity and decency. The girl and boy are also shown to be of the same intellectual level, which is a rarity even today's movies. When the heroine falls sick, I thought "Man, there goes", expecting the usual plot where she will go on to hide her sickness from her lover, suffer alone and do everything to make him hate her. But in this movie, every one is aware of the girl's illness. Of course, there is pain and tears but no heavy "rona-dhona", no "blood-vomiting" scenes(a typical feature of any movie where the character suffers from any major illness). Though it has a tragic element, I somehow don't want to call it a tragedy - the movie ends so beautifully.

I'm not sure if it was the story itself or the honesty and straightforwardness of storytelling that moved me to tears. There's a sense of timelessness about the whole thing.

After catching bits and pieces of recent flicks like Aaisha and Dostana, Chit Chor and AKJS felt like having hot, home-made Rasam saadam after a month long stay in Japan!!

The question on my head since last night is why are film makers complicating things these days? Has life become so complicated that people like to delve into further knots and twists? By complexities, I also mean all the jazzy special effects, jazzy music, jazzy clothes (if at all there are any!). Talking of special effects, there was this cute song situation in AKJS where time seems to stand still for the young lovers. While they are singing and dancing merrily, everything and everyone around them is frozen. And for this shot, the supporting cast actually stood there in freeze position! No hi-fi efffects of modern movies - yet the director conveyed his idea perfectly well. Life itself was simple those days and so the movies I guess. Yes, there were some heavy-duty film makers too in the 70s like Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand etc. who were all about big-budgets and big names. But there is some magic in that set of low-budget, sweet love stories of those years featuring darlings like Amol Palekar and Co. Perhaps that was India's collective state of mind those days - freedom attained, war ended, jobs happening, society opening up...what did people do? Sail into blissful romance perhaps (Just thinking aloud. Need to do some research though).

You know what, if I had the money, knowledge and talent, I wish to make a simple love story, like the ones we were talking about, just as an experiment, to see what people think of it. Will they get bored? Will they appreciate it?

Shaam se aankh mein namee see hai

So far there have been a very few celebrities whose death moved me to tears. One was Michael Jackson, recently Swarnalatha and now it is Jagjit Singh. I don't know if it is a coincidence that all of them were singers. I cried at the news of their death because they are gone forever and will never sing beautiful songs for me anymore.

As soon as I heard the terrible news of Jagjit Singh's passing last afternoon, I pulled out my collection of his music - all of them audio tapes. Strangely I've never bought a Jagjit Singh CD. Good I didn't. Those cassettes hold much more than music I must say. Just take out a favorite cassette (if you still have one) and try it. Hold it in your hand, close your eyes and see how magically it can transport you back to the times you heard it over and over again. This is exactly what I've been going through since last afternoon.

I was introduced to the magic of Jagjit Singh's voice by my friend Niju Ravindran in the first year of college. We were in a van during a college trip and I asked her what she was listening to. She quietly passed me her walkman and said "listen to it yourself". And that's it. I got hooked on to Jagjit Singh's music for life. Niju left college the same year to study elsewhere - as if her only purpose was to get me mesmerized by Jagjit Singh. Like I always say, angels come in so many forms (I am glad to have got back in touch with her last month after almost 20 long years).

Though I appeared to be a reckless tom boy to many, the soulfulness in Jagjit Singh's voice and music somehow touched me instantly. And as years went by, the effect only increased. I wasn't familiar with Urdu or even Hindi for that matter at that time. Thankfully most album jackets had full lyrics and also meaning to some rare words (what thoughtful gesture).

Today as I go through each Ghazal in every album, it all comes back to me. I was introduced to this music as a silly college girl and it stood by me as I matured. It probably helped me philosophize and see reality. Rather than saying I felt the pain along with Jagjit, I should say he shared my pain, loneliness and taught me how to cope. I guess that answers why I don't have any CDs of Jagjit Singh...by the time technology moved on to CDs from audio cassettes, I moved on too. Got a grip on life and its ways. Like I mentioned in an earlier blog post, my family would often try to pull me out of my “ghazal moods”. They thought the songs made me sad. I never tried to come out of my locked-up room and explain to them how good the music made me feel...I could've never explained even if I tried to. Not only the Ghazals, I even loved Jagjit Singh’s devotional music. I get goose-flesh even when I think of the refrain "Jai Jai Maa" in "Mere man ke andh tamas mein jyotirmayee utro" - how the song raised my spirits during so many times of need!

Thanks to Jagjit Singh, I also started looking at other singers like Pankaj Udhas, Chandas Das, Talat Aziz, even Hariharan but nobody stayed in my heart like Jagjit Singh and he always will. Thank you Jagjit Singh...RIP

1990 – Many love stories

Last week when someone told me that his friend’s sister had eloped, I was surprised and the only question I asked was, “Do people still elope?” I thought the concept of elopement was passé because kids these days “fall in love” after so much clever calculation that it becomes impossible for the parents to object.
This incident took me straight back to the first year of my college in the 1990s when a classmate’s mother walked into our class to enquire about her daughter who’d been missing for the past 2 days! The interesting part of the story was that this absconding classmate had “eloped” with her car driver (oops...chauffer it should be). Just into college and added to it, we were students of English Literature - just imagine our state of mind when we heard the story! Of course by the end of the final year, though we had gotten used to the elopement stories we got excited every time – if it wasn’t the French tutor, it was the rich guy next-door who happened to be a glorified cowherd and then there was the girl who “ran away” with the neighbourhood auto rickshaw driver!!
Those of us who grew up in the late 80s and 1990s were mostly a bunch of dreamers. We dreamt of love stories, lovers and sometimes careers. Yes, very much in that order.
The late 80s and the 1990s was the golden-era of love stories. Cinema reflects society and vice versa and so this was the period when some of the most memorable love stories got made (memorable for us kids, unforgettable for our poor parents). Wow! What movies they were!

• Geethanjali (the cult Telugu movie which inspired our Indian film makers in so many ways)
• Maine Pyar Kiya (come on, don’t laugh. Have you forgotten? Some people were smitten by the doves and even Alok Nath)
• Qayamat se Qayamat Tak (I still sigh at the very mention of it)
• Dil
• Idhayam (the heavy, heavy Tamil movie that melted many hearts)
• Eeramana Rojave
• Punnagai Mannan
• Aashiqui
• Dil Hai ke Maanta Nahin (with a clever modern-day twist and the famous line “Pooja beti Bhaag”. Thank God the hero of that movie hadn’t yet turned a producer – else he would have written a song for the situation “Bhaag bhaag pooja bhaag”, with a few swear words thrown in )
• ....the list goes on (definitely not in a chronological order).
All these movies had the quintessential dialogue of the era “Is duniya ki koi taakat hamein rok nahin sakti” translated into all Indian languages!!! My generation grew up watching such movies and listening to songs like “Main duniya bhula doonga teri chaahat mein”, “hum pyar karne waalen, duniya se na darne waale”, “roke kab ruki hai, manzil pyaar ki”. Ha! Such inspiring words and I guess that did it. So inspired we all were that we forgot to plan ourselves a career... we just loitered around, found jobs and life-partners – some traitors didn’t even fulfil the secret pact that the youth of the 1990s had made to themselves – they quietly sneaked into arranged marriages!
The trend of the movies and the society slowly changed and brought in the idea of “sacrificing love for the sake of family respect”...with convenient happy endings. Prem and Pooja bottled up their feelings for each other (Maine Pyar Kiya) and if not for hoarse voice of Amrish Puri that said “Ja Simran”, our giggly Raj would've never got his Simran. Sacrifice became a recurring theme in half a dozen ‘SuperBad Tamil movies’ produced by SuperGood movies with melodic ‘strains’ by SA Rajkumar.
Cut to today - just like youngsters today, the characters in today’s films are straightforward, less dreamy eyed, more practical and ready to drop old lovers and pick new ones without as much as a tear drop. Parental consent is not quite an issue (if at all parents form part of the story). What is interesting is that most of the leads (both the girls and boys) have their own careers. In the 1990s, even the college-educated guys had to chop wood for a living in case they eloped!! The definition of falling in love and relationship seems to be changing. Though it broke my heart, Gautam Menon conveyed to his audience that it is only in a movie that Jessie can marry Karthik against all odds but the real Jessie (out of the movie) moves on and marries someone else. Of course there are good movies being made today too but they only have a certain love angle to a larger subject. Even in movies that claim to be in Romance genre (I hate luvv stories, Anjana Anjani, Break ke Baad, Paiyya, Engeyum Kaadhal) I somehow feel the fiery passion, an essential part of a love-story, missing. VTV, Mynaa and Madrasapattinam were perhaps some exceptions in recent times. I’m unable to think of any such strong examples in Hindi though. Please tell me if you can think of any.
Like I said earlier, cinema is definitely a mirror to the times we live in. People are keener on establishing a comfortable position for themselves in this competitive world. Relationships, if at all they happen, are just sub-stories.

Book Review: Timepass - Memoirs of Protima Bedi

Though I've been eyeing it for a long time, I picked up this book from my lending library on a day when I was particularly in a "I am-just-going-to-follow-my-heart" state of mind.
The book is a collection of letters and excerpts from Protima Bedi’s journals. She wished to publish her Autobiography someday but little did she know that it would be published posthumously.
The presentation of the book is as raw and as simple as Protima Bedi’s outlook towards life. The book does not carry any air of the classy-literary style that one would expect from a noted classical dancer's memoirs nor do you find the sensationalism of a bold model's life story. The journal entries are all straightforward and the letters are simple and straight from the heart. Beyond being known as the Nudist of Juhu and the creator of Nrityagram, we see a very simple, even innocent person at the core. Her exploits, love affairs, struggles are all discussed very honestly and in a matter of fact style. The few black and white photographs that are added could have been of a better quality. They also don't contribute much to the story of Protima Bedi. Pooja Bedi and the editor perhaps didn't have accesss to many good pictures.
Initially, I felt the title of the book “Timepass” was rather frivolous. Only later does one realise that it sums up her simple philosophy of life. She says only birth and death are the two truths of life and everything else in between is just “timepass". There are such small, sometimes unintended, nuggets of wisdom in many chapters. The book offers some surprising and shocking moments - for instance, when she casually mentions names of celebrities and well-known people as her lovers/friends and when she talks about the ordeals she faced during her Odissi training days and the initial days of Nrityagram.
The last couple of chapters are very moving and philosophical in nature. The readers are taken to another level in terms of their understanding of Protima Gauri Bedi (How she dropped the name Bedi and added Gauri is quite funny). Her thoughts and actions during the last few chapters almost seem prophetic. One perhaps just needs to be in touch with his/her inner self to walk the path to sheer Bliss.
Inspiring in parts, thought provoking and touching in parts, this book is a good read for those who appreciate the essence of of free-spiritedness and is sure to be more than just a “timepass”!

AGGRESSION, VIOLENCE AND CHILDREN

The day I realized that my 3.5 year old daughter started imitating my angry expressions and body language, I started becoming very conscious of my anger and my reaction to unpleasant situations. I realized raising one’s voice could sound so ugly and violent only after I saw her do it. I have now started controlling my temper and language, even when she is not around.

My daughter loves enacting scenes either from her favourite fairy tale or imitate her teachers at school. We also enjoy watching her do this but what she did the other day shocked me. She suddenly started yelling on top of her voice “Get out of the class” in English and in Tamil. I asked her what she was talking about but she repeatedly kept saying “Get out the class. Why did you spill the water?” On asking her if her teacher yelled this way, she said “No, not our teacher but I saw this through the window of another classroom while playing outside”. Well, I was relieved that this did not happen in her class and at the same time wasn’t sure if it is okay. Though my first thought was go and tell the school about this, I also thought, as parents, when we lose temper with our own kids, what more could be expected from a regular school with regular teachers who have to deal with brats of all sizes every day of the week.

I have always tried to keep my daughter away from violence. I consciously avoid showing her violent stuff on TV. Great! What else? I tell her traditional, mythological stories. I told her the story of Lord Ganesha and how Lord Shiva chops off Lord Ganesha’s head. Boy! How much more violent can it get? She loves to watch shows like Little Krishna, Krishna-Balaram and Chota Bheem on TV, though most of the time innocent and cute, these shows are mostly about bashing up the bad guys. Then, we sing Rhymes - the Mother Goose rhymes. An innocent sleeping baby falls off the cradle (Rock-a-bye-baby) and a poor old man gets thrown down the stairs just because he couldn’t say his prayers (Goosy Goosy Gander). As a student of Literature I know that most of these rhymes were written in the social context of England during various periods. I don’t teach my daughter rhymes that are irrelevant but can I stop her school? (Thank God for the new syllabi at schools which have new rhymes, apart from some old ones).

I even avoid telling her, at bedtime, her 2 favourite stories – namely Robot (the movie) and Rapunzel. Both of these have shades of violence, how much ever I edit it.

I take my daughter’s favourite characters and make up my own bed-time stories. My daughter loves them and in the bargain, I sleep well too but there’s so much violence everywhere in so many forms. And for how long will I be able to shield my little one from aggression and violence. Of course, I do explain in her own language that is not nice to hit or yell at someone. The TV luckily has a remote control but what about life? Should I let her explore the world on her own and figure it out herself because today hatred, violence and blood-shed are all part of daily life? If I look, I am sure there must be some way of raising my daughter who will be aware that violence does exist but will be strong enough to choose love!