ExpertDabbler

For some reason, nick names are part and parcel of adolescence. All of us develop this tendency to call some funny names and laugh at someone’s expense. But this trait leaves us gradually as we grow up i guess. The last new nickname I ever heard was like 3 years back when one of my seniors at the workplace was affectionately called Mandy. I could not decipher the reason for such a name though. His original name had no relation to Mandy. But this is just an exception rather than the norm. Most of the nicknames are kaaranapeyars, name with a reason.

During my school days, the prime targets for nicknames are, you guessed it right, teachers. As someone who was in the same school right from Std1 to Std 12, we had the privilege of inheriting some of the masterpiece nicknames our seniors had given for the teachers. I think some nicknames would be passed on for generations.

Some of the popular nicknames are

Zinda - The school principal:)
Named after the villain in Vetri Vizha, a kamal movie:)

Thumbs
Thumbs, as it happens, was our physics teacher and class teacher too. A very good teacher at that.

I still remember one bit of wisdom from him to me and my friend Iyyappan.
This happened on our half-yearly examinations in the 12th. Since PK and Iyyappan, to put it diplomatically, are not exactly top scorers in physics, Thumbs was justifiably pissed off by our marks and called for our parents to talk about our ”performances” in the exams. He posed a question in front of our parents.
click here for more:)

You see, the goal was never IIT, MBBS for me and my friends. It was always clearing std 12th :).

Cycle Samy(named because his original name was rhyming with this)
My friend Mani’s class teacher and our chemistry teacher.
There was one joke which would be repeated everytime when we school buddies got together for some occasion.

Cycle to Shakhir during tuition session: “Unga anna ippo enna da pannitu irukaan?”
(Shakhir’s brother was also our school product, five years our senior. Apparently cycle knows all this)

Shakhir (sees his watch, 8 AM in the morning):“Ahem! Thoongittu irukkan”.

Uncle Bun:
Frankly, this man is one of the nicest teachers I’ve ever come across. Yet that would never stop my buddies from calling him Bun. This too was a karana peyar. He was bald headed with streaks of hair coming out from the shiny center. The whole circular shiny spot looked like Bun to my friends. The kind of furore they would create in his class is legendary. For example, they would go out of the class as soon as he enters saying they are going for dance practice for teachers day, a full 60 days before teachers’ day that is!. I doubt even the star studded charity programmes would have rehearsals for so long:)

Another unforgettable nickname was to one of our buddies. His name was NR Karthikeyan and he was always called BULB. This too was a karana peyar but I am not going to reveal the name reason:)

Nobody knew who was NR. But everybody knew BULB. I vividly remember one instance when the lesson was in physics on how a BULB glows. The whole class was in splits except this poor guy and the bewildered teacher.

Apart from that, Ofcourse Deepak is still referred to as Potti among our circles :0

After finishing our 12th and settling down in colleges, our gang visited the school. The teachers were understandably happy and had even boasted how “obedient!” we were to our juniors. My gang had nodded their heads all too smilingly and then just before leaving the campus, they took out the crackers they had saved for this since diwali and set it off, quite close to the classes during school hours and left the place.

In general, the kind of galatta Iyyappan is capable of will be reserved for another post. He is now working in Reliance Infocomm. One reason why i switched my mobile service provider sometime back.

An interesting counterpoint to Academy of Pacific Rim, was actually much closer to home than what i imagined.
The name is Pallikoodam in Kottayam. Pallikoodam means School in Tamil. I only hope this experimental school also turns out to be the school to study. And from what i read, its an interesting concept allright.
The following are some excerpts from Wikipaedia.

Students are encouraged to make music, dance, act, play and do everything that their heart desired, in order to make them into more complete, multi-faceted human beings. The extent of the success of this experiment is, of course, debatable, as the school has come under criticism for its weak science faculty and its lack of emphasis on learning. (Other shallow criticisms regarding the school’s modern outlook, ‘western’ culture and free intermingling of girls and boys, merit only this mention in parentheses)

The ‘upside’ of the Corpus Christi experiment is demonstrated by alumni who have not only gone on to study at some of the finest institutions of higher education in the country such as the IITs, the IIMs, St.Stephens College, and NLSIU, but some of the greatest institutions in the world like Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics and Harvard.

The ‘downside’ as mentioned before is the belief, among some of the alumni that, the extra-curricular activities being well and good, a little more emphasis on learning and academics would not have hurt. It is a fact that the school library although having an excellent collection of fiction and general literature, is not as well-stocked in the research section.

Concerns abound about Mrs.Roy’s advancing age and the question who would be a worthy successor, and whether such an individual would be able to take the school forward with the same dynamism and vigour with which she did. To resort to an oft-repeated cliche, ‘only time will tell.’

Just in case you are wondering about the Roy Connection and Kottayam, Yes, Mary Roy is none other than Arundhati Roy’s mother. Another feature is that Arundhati herself did her schooling in Corpus Christy, the previous name for Pallikoodam!

Another point we need to ponder is the possibility to duplicating such concept schools in other cities in India.

It is here that organisations like IDiscoveri comes into the picture. The following is an extract from Deccan Herald.

‘We learn physics and chemistry at school, but why not how the body is built and how I relate to myself and with others??’

Around 10 years ago, Ashish and four other ex-XLRI students reflected on these questions, as they watched the joyful faces of children attending the camps they held in Himalayas.

They realised nothing short of change in the system would enable young school goers like them to sustain the joy. IDiscoveri, the research and training organisation Ashish and his friends founded, is working with various school administrations to build an educational system based on creativity and experience.
Kids go to school because they want their parents to be happy and can catch up with friends in the break. Sadly, the thrill of discovering how the bulb glows or how do plants breathe, seem to be missing.

On the other hand, we have teachers who want a job for earning or escaping from mothers-in-law at home. We wanted our programme to address these realities that mitigate both the teacher’s and kid’s ability to enrich each other’s experience, Ashish says.

Only time will tell about how far these initiatives would go in improving our school standards. But these are interesting developments which deserves encouragement and respect.

APR is an education start-up. And it still functions in start-up mode. Both the teachers and students put in long hours each day. It was found by a Harvard Business School graduate who had earlier visited Japan and was inspired by the Japanese methods of teaching.

The author Po Bronson happens to interact with a young school teacher in APR of Chinese origin for his book project. He is a Yale alumni himself. Much of what we know is through this teacher. It was interesting to see his ideas of teaching and interacting with kids and how it has evolved in his stint in APR.

Initially he too has notions that what these kids need is nothing but unconditional love. So if they were disorderly in class, he would let it go away as a way of making friends with them. And the kids kicked and abused him. If he would give an inch, the kids would take a mile in terms of liberty. His class would be disturbed regularly.

Later on, he has learned the hard way that what kids need is someone to teach them habits which would lead to success in their later. He thinks it’s important to teach kids where they go wrong, how to handle social situations, how to take responsibilities and how not to make excuses. He calls this tough love. Tough love, that’s how things work in APR.

APR occupies two floors of an old glass factory. In those two floors, there’s not a scribble or graffiti anywhere. School days begin with a school wide gathering for announcements. Every morning, one student is chosen for having shown excellent character, and their teacher gives them the Gambette Award. Gambatte means Fight to the end in Japanese.

Students are not allowed to ruin the learning environment. They can’t go to lunch until they vaccum their homeroom’s carpet. The night custodian only cleans the bathroom, the rest of the work are to be done by the students.

When a student is drifting off in class, he is not just punished, but made to sit one-on-one with the superviser and go through the incident thoroughly. This is to make him to introspect and understand what he has done.

But it’s not just all rules and regulations. The teacher says they also teach character. Like How? The students are made to understand that its they who make choices and are responsible for those choices. In the English classes, they write essays on whether high school students should be required to do community service. In their history classes, they debate Supreme Court cases, and are pushed to justify how they would vote. Every Friday, the students are presented with a moral dilemma and are asked to write their own journals about how they would handle it.

They are never asked to memorize. They are only asked to demonstrate exemplary character: perseverance, respect, integrity, responsibility and courage. The highest honor in the school is not a 4.0 CGPA, but the Gambette Award.

This school goes to show what we’ve been talking about often. The things that matter most to the kids are character and good teacher. Not necessarily great marks and popular schools. Rather than crib about 5 star schools, I thought its better to highlight how a public chartered school with no selection criteria, no great infrastructure, can still mould ordinary kids to terrific students - in all aspects. I just wanted to point out the ills of our present ‘marks alone matters’ education system with a positive case study.

Note:
This APR contents are base don my reading of Po Bronsons’ What should i do with my life

After eons, a Kadhai Neram update

Schools in the west belong to one end of the spectrum. Ask any desi about the school systems in the US, UK or any western country and they always talk with some concern about the discipline of those kids studying there. It’s kind of too “free” an environment.
It’s a long known fact that American kids lag behind in Math and Science at the school level.

At the other end of the spectrum are the “premier” schools in India. The PSBB, Vidya Mandirs, DAVs etc which take pride in sending hundreds to IITs. Cool. Congratulations. But how many of those kids are below average when they joined?

My neighbour took his 2 and half yr old for LKG Admission to a DAV nearby. The admission proces includes Rs. 10,000 for donation along with an “interview” for the kid. What in the world would a 2 and half yr old baby girl know?

In a way, I would not blame the school. It’s after all a market. What would the school do if it has targets (so many has to get into IIT, REC, BITS, MBBS) each year. Add to it the prospect of thousands bombarding during admission time every year…. As I said, its after all a market. The one who has more demand calls the shots.

Apart from this, there are the schools of the third kind - Schools that torture the students to mug about each and every line in the textbook and vomit in the exam. The students get marks but by the time they finish college, they lose whatever little joy for learning they have in them.

It is in this context that I found APR intriguing when I read about it. This APR is a very successful chartered public school. APR has no entrance requirements. The students come from low and middle income neighborhoods. 65% are African American, 25% are Caucasian, 5% Hispanic and 5% Asian. When they join the school in the 6th grade, many can’t even read or write. A third flunk 6th grade and repeat, by 9th grade that gets reduced to about a tenth. By the time they finish high school many will be top students applying to Ivy League. How is this possible? That too in a liberalised western environment?. Is it not the equivalent of getting Corporation school kids in India into IITs? More on this later….

Feb 14th. 200X.

He is returning from Ahmedabad to Chennai in Navjeevan Exp. The train reaches Vijayawada on time.

He’s cell phone rings and vibrates, his “Nanban” from chennai calling.

He cuts the call.

“Tharudhalai, stupid fellow. Sunday enna padam polaamnu periya doubt vandhirukkum, idhukku naan roaming la irukkenu therinchum call adikaraaan. CellPhone Prepaid charge vera illa…”

Nanban calls again. He cuts the call again.

Abba!. This time there is no call for 5 minutes.

Exactly after five minutes,

He gets a call, this time from a different number.

“Yaara irukkum? indha tharudhalaya dhaan irukkum. but ivan vera line la irundhu ellam call panna maataaney? vera edhavadhu important calla irundha?
nama vera namba number ai matrimony profile la ellam pottu vechirukkom. yedhavadhu ponnu namma profile a parthu impress agi call pannina? Seri eduthu parpom, indha tharudhalaya irundha cut pannidalaam…”

“Hello”

“Hello”, wow a female voice.

Not the usual suspect. Nalla velai eduthom. Valentines day vera! Nalla aarambam…

“Hello”

The line gets disconnected. Aargh!!!

The mobile rings again.

“Hello”

“Hello”, the same female voice.

The line gets disconnected again. Madras ponadhum mudale service provider a mathanum. Worstu serivce.

He waits for a minute. No call this time…..

“Why dont i make a call? After all she called twice. Its only fair that i show interest and call back! Mudalaye nammala thappa ninaika koodadhu la. First impression is the best impression…”

He thinks for a minute and then decides to call the number

“Hello”

“Hello”, the same female voice.

” Hello, i am ………., i got a call from this number….May i know who is on the other end?”

” Good morning sir,we are from ABN Amro, we are giving free life time free credit card sir, no annual charges… Quick processing….”

“Err…Sorry, i am not interested”

He cuts the call. Grrr!…..

“Chey, prepaid la paisa illadha nerathiley vettiya oru call, aduvum roaming la, aduvum credit card vikkara ponnuku…”

A few minutes passes by and He gets an SMS. His Nanban

“Porambokku!, naan phone pannina edukaa maatey, oru figure phone pannina call cut aana kooda neeya phone pani pesuviya? Nee maanasthana nu parka naandhaan en aalai vittu unakku phone panna sonnen.

Ippo dhaan enakku call panni vishayathai sonna..

hehehe nalla naala aduvuma sema BULB vangirukey .. Btw Happy Valentines day da machaan…”

போடா போடா புண்ணாக்கு
போடாத தப்பு கணக்கு

tanglish version

Poda poda punnaku
podadha thappu kanakku

My close buddy, the one and only priyums has started a painting blog.

She has always been a source of inspiration to me in so many things in life.

Priyums, you rock!

HE - appa, he - son

HE: Doctor enada sonaar?

he: ‘Onnum problem illai seriya poidum’nu solraar…GERD a irukumoonu doubt panraar nu ninaikiren..

HE: ennadhu CURD a? ennada ularrey? avar edhai doubt panraar nu unakku epdi theriyum?

he:(starts proudly) CURD illa pa, GERD. Gastro Esopagheal Reflux Disease…stomach la irukara acid sometimes regurgitate agi esopheageous ku vandhudum. esophageous la stomach madhiri muscous lining kedayadhu adhanaale acid thaangama punn aydum. idhu chronic a irundha adhaan GERD.

HE: idellam unakku epdi theriyum?

he: avar eludhi kudutha medicine, plus ennoda symptoms laam google panni parthen….

HE: hmm. Idhai dhaan rathiri 12 mani varaikum marma novel madhiri padichitu irundhiya? idhai padikara vayasile padichirundha nalla mark avadhu vangi irukalaam…. ipdi kandadhai padichittu ‘namakku idhuva irukumo, adhuva irukumo?’nu manasu pottu kozhapindu…andha kalathiley laam enakku un vayasile oru vyadhi vandhadhu illa theriyuma?….ennavo GERD aam CURD aam…

he: ” ”

Actually, he still is on one the most genial of all Pakistani cricketers.
Mind you, I am talking in the context of having players who do not hesitate to bowl beamers at a batsman. Heck, the so called bowler (his bowling action is as suspect as one could possibly be) does not even apologize even as a token measure.

In the light of this, Inzi’s recent gyaan about the spirit of the game being spoiled by India during the Peshawar ODI evoked much laughter among cricket watching circles.

Imagine a player of Inzamam’s class, in the process of guiding his team to victory, suddenly comes in between the ball and the stumps while well out of his crease. And if expects the Indians to let it go, then the least we expect is, he and his team and the epitome of gentleman cricket, Moin Khan should have practiced that before they preach.

Cut to 1999-2000, Eden Gardens, Calcutta. Sachin was the Sachin of old. Most of my readers would know what’s meant by that i guess. He comes near the non-striker’s end, puts the bat in the crease, collides with the most sporting Shoahib Akhtar, and as a result his bat goes up in the air, at precisely that instant the ball hits the stumps and voila!, the most sporting Shoahib, and the gentleman Moin Khan wasted no time in appealing and had Sachin dismissed.

Now, that was some sportsmanship was n’t it?

It’s sad to see even Inzamam who obviously did not have the guts to reprimand Shoahib for bowling beamers deliberately, stoop so low like the Aussies and indulge in mudslinging while in the middle of the series.

Thanks to Thennavan and Adengappa for this.

Yeah, thats right. A particular Danish magazine is looking out for a cartoonist. The topic is Prophet Mohammed. Are you ready Mr. Hussain?

That will solve two purposes.

India will get rid of you and
You will have unprecedented ‘freedom of expression’

Only that the likes of BBC will not show you like they’ve done here. It’s after all not something silly like Hindu sentiments you see…
They will portray you as villian who has hurt the sentiments of the millions of Muslims globally.

And the last catch, You can’t get away with a simple sorry like you’ve done here for for the n+1th time. Don’t believe me? Try that and do let me know, if you are alive that is.