The ‘mother’ of all political battles.
I drafted a blog around 2 weeks back titled ‘Tughlak in Washington’ where I had in fact drawn parallels between the late great Bard’s work Comedy of Errors and the happenings in a developed country. The last two week’s development in my adopted state made me shelve that work and focus on the burning issue at home. This is when I realized people living in glass houses should not throw stones at your neighbors… er …not really neighbors but most of my neighbors and close friends are there in America! (I have used the American spelling for Neighbours since it was all about America First)
Well, let’s shift focus to the Lady up on Poes, the script of which was loosely prophesied by the great bard from Stratford upon Avon in his work Julius Caesar. I owe this connection to a brilliant WhatsApp forward I got. I certainly have to doff my hat to the author of that piece. Thank you whoever you are!
Dravidian politics that has been at the helm of Tamil Nadu governance over the last 5 decades or so has always been about art more than politics, so the theatrics that is happening now is not surprising to me. We had writers who scripted the do good Robin Hood stories and actors who had perfectly enacted and lipped the script and sung their ways into the hearts of the masses. The branding lasted generations. However the theatrics never came in the way of making the state one of the best in India in terms of development. Hence no one complained.
Kollywood was all about the do-good Hero, the pretty Heroin and the brilliant story tellers. There never has been a successful storyline that projected a side artist as the protagonist of the story and hope it stays that way. Nothing against the hard working side artist fraternity / sorority, it’s just that we don’t accept a scheming side artist in our scripts.
What we have been seeing in the last two weeks is a travesty of democracy. Hoping and praying people come out of the decades long theatrical hang over and start to focus on good governance. Let sycophancy also be laid to rest in peace in a well-earned memorial at the Marina.
Wishing the state a lot of good in the coming years and praying our elected legislatures be true and free as the legendary song scripts ‘Adho Andha Paravai pola Vazha vendum’ translated roughly as I want to live as free as that bird of the same flock, of the same land singing the bright song of freedom and right (Didn’t I tell you, getting the theatrics out of us is more than difficult!!). May God give them the missing vertebral columns to stand head high, chest out and stomach in and lead this great state.
For the un-initiated the title was not an error in font sizing. Please consult your close friend from Madras to understand the same!
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Friday, February 3, 2017
A day at the PTM!
Uninspired happenings around the globe sent this blog into hibernation. Two back to back Parent teacher meetings resurrected the dead writer in me. Parent Teacher Meetings or PTM’s as I will be addressing them, are a source of enlightenment for parents more than the suspects (students) in question.
By virtue of the 7 year age difference between my elder daughter and the younger one I find myself to be privileged to exchange views (mostly not exchange, just accept) and rub shoulders with the crème de la crème representing the parents from two diverse generations . For the ease of understanding let’s call them the Pre Google Era and the Post Google Era parents.
Attending the younger one’s PTM, who is in 4th grade is always a challenge as I find myself in the company of Post Google era parents. I always accompany my wife to these PTM’s. My role along with the other not so better halves is securing a place in the meandering queue in front of the class room. The better of the halves indulge in constructive conversations which borders on topics ranging from the reforms in the Indian educational system to lamenting the loss of an angelic human resources campaigner who would have supported their cause at the national level. My role as I said earlier is simply to look through the people passing by take a step forward as the person in front takes one and exchange not so educative forwards with my forty something school boys group on Whatsapp. Well, since I was also a parent of a 10th grader, I had that been there, seen this, done that, aura around me.
This time though, I entertained myself to what is otherwise a boring ritual by eavesdropping into the deep intellectual conversations, the flag bearers of the Indian educational system were indulging in around me. One was frantically waving an answer sheet not knowing why a letter was asked to be written to the grandfather instead of the uncle while the other said why letter writing was considered important in an era of emails. That lady had a point. By the next PTM they would be discussing ‘y a chld shld not LOL whn de see a clown’. The English pundits would be ‘RITGs’, for the uninitiated, I made that up…It just means Rolling in Their Graves!!! Well this was coming from a generation of parents who frequently use the non-existent word ‘Bestest’ which might well find its way into the next version of Oxford dictionary considering its extensive use thereby adding an additional degree of comparison which I might call the ‘Hyperlative’. Another was questioning the teaching methods employed in explaining the concept of Associative property and waving out a Maths answer sheet of an 8 Year old which needed to be upgraded from a B1 to an A2. Never have alpha numeric combination of the first 5 alphabets and the first 2 numerals found more importance. All this was happening when the actual stake holders of these discussions were blissfully playing among themselves an A1 hit a D2 and a B2 laughed in the company of a D1 oblivious to the war on ambitions that was being plotted in the back ground.
Day two with my 10th grader was a saner affair since I was mostly in the company of the Pre-Google Era parents. We exchanged stuff like the number of times our parents had visited school or the oil price of the day or even discussed the possibility of who amongst us will be fired first in these bad oil days. The talk of NEET, NATA, JEE, IIT, BITS, NITS also did the rounds. There were the anxious-ones, the resigned-to-the-fate ones and still-the-pushy-ones, the forefathers of the ones I saw a day earlier at the 4th grade PTM.
We are in an era where obsessive compulsive parenting, the members of which are the proponents of the rat race by imposing martial laws at home and infringing on the fundamental right to information by denying access to any kind of media, like television, tabs, phones etc. The liberals are the pariahs of parenting who think they are actually punishing their kids by asking them to watch Arnob’s News Hour.
A small fraction of the off springs go on to prove that the pariahs were not wrong while a larger percentage prove that martial law implementing parents were right all along thereby making the sceptical liberals like me look like idiots. The only hope parental pariahs like me have is that, life is not all about the school grades alone.
By virtue of the 7 year age difference between my elder daughter and the younger one I find myself to be privileged to exchange views (mostly not exchange, just accept) and rub shoulders with the crème de la crème representing the parents from two diverse generations . For the ease of understanding let’s call them the Pre Google Era and the Post Google Era parents.
Attending the younger one’s PTM, who is in 4th grade is always a challenge as I find myself in the company of Post Google era parents. I always accompany my wife to these PTM’s. My role along with the other not so better halves is securing a place in the meandering queue in front of the class room. The better of the halves indulge in constructive conversations which borders on topics ranging from the reforms in the Indian educational system to lamenting the loss of an angelic human resources campaigner who would have supported their cause at the national level. My role as I said earlier is simply to look through the people passing by take a step forward as the person in front takes one and exchange not so educative forwards with my forty something school boys group on Whatsapp. Well, since I was also a parent of a 10th grader, I had that been there, seen this, done that, aura around me.
This time though, I entertained myself to what is otherwise a boring ritual by eavesdropping into the deep intellectual conversations, the flag bearers of the Indian educational system were indulging in around me. One was frantically waving an answer sheet not knowing why a letter was asked to be written to the grandfather instead of the uncle while the other said why letter writing was considered important in an era of emails. That lady had a point. By the next PTM they would be discussing ‘y a chld shld not LOL whn de see a clown’. The English pundits would be ‘RITGs’, for the uninitiated, I made that up…It just means Rolling in Their Graves!!! Well this was coming from a generation of parents who frequently use the non-existent word ‘Bestest’ which might well find its way into the next version of Oxford dictionary considering its extensive use thereby adding an additional degree of comparison which I might call the ‘Hyperlative’. Another was questioning the teaching methods employed in explaining the concept of Associative property and waving out a Maths answer sheet of an 8 Year old which needed to be upgraded from a B1 to an A2. Never have alpha numeric combination of the first 5 alphabets and the first 2 numerals found more importance. All this was happening when the actual stake holders of these discussions were blissfully playing among themselves an A1 hit a D2 and a B2 laughed in the company of a D1 oblivious to the war on ambitions that was being plotted in the back ground.
Day two with my 10th grader was a saner affair since I was mostly in the company of the Pre-Google Era parents. We exchanged stuff like the number of times our parents had visited school or the oil price of the day or even discussed the possibility of who amongst us will be fired first in these bad oil days. The talk of NEET, NATA, JEE, IIT, BITS, NITS also did the rounds. There were the anxious-ones, the resigned-to-the-fate ones and still-the-pushy-ones, the forefathers of the ones I saw a day earlier at the 4th grade PTM.
We are in an era where obsessive compulsive parenting, the members of which are the proponents of the rat race by imposing martial laws at home and infringing on the fundamental right to information by denying access to any kind of media, like television, tabs, phones etc. The liberals are the pariahs of parenting who think they are actually punishing their kids by asking them to watch Arnob’s News Hour.
A small fraction of the off springs go on to prove that the pariahs were not wrong while a larger percentage prove that martial law implementing parents were right all along thereby making the sceptical liberals like me look like idiots. The only hope parental pariahs like me have is that, life is not all about the school grades alone.
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