Religious Dogma and Change

Well, I have so many things on my mind. Let me put a few of those down here:
On Facebook, I see a lot of Sabarimala related posts, and a few posts about Mother Teresa and her sainthood. 
My thoughts: I am an atheist and so, I tend to feel detached from religious matters...unless they threaten lives. In matters where people protest and call for change, I am inclined to be on the side of science (as I know it) and morality (again my morality: including feminism, humanism...)...
And yet, my knowledge that my loved ones, who have different spiritual orientations and preferences, carry such an emotional depth and conviction in their hearts encourages me to desist from laughing at them, ridiculing them or from even motivating them, of my own volition, to change status quo. This, is not because I am a status-quoist! Anyone who knows me a bit, knows I'm all for change for the better. But, I know how religion and beliefs are held so close to the heart and can drive deep wedges between people. Also, I have seen my loved ones derive solace from their beliefs and faiths. When I cannot provide them alternate ways of succour, who am I to argue with them and drive them out of their idea of godliness?
In the same vein, I shall desist from 'asking' (for want of a more non-violent and neutral term) for women's entry into certain temples or for calling awards of sainthood as fraud though you may well guess what my stand on these matters are... By selecting outrage on certain issues, we run the danger of leaving out certain other issues which are more urgent and not taken.
Peace!

TEACHERS' DAY

On this day, I would like to do two opposite things: one, humbly pay tribute to all my teachers, right from my parents and grandparents, my teachers from early school years to the ones who taught me at university. A large part of what I am intellectually, politically and also as a human being is because of all my teachers. 
Two, more importantly, I would like to acknowledge the immense contribution of the early audience of my performances as a teacher - my classmates at school (KV BEML), who sat (or seemed to) with delight and encouraged me to perform :-). They suggested without saying it, that I would do well as a teacher and I joined RIE, Mysore, for a teaching degree.
When I did 'practice teaching' at Basel Mission school at Dharwad, the students sat with admiration... This too egged me on to surely take up teaching as a profession.
When I joined Sawan Public School, my first full-time teaching job, my dear colleagues were good role models for me, and my very dear students showed me the power of being a caring and loving teacher. The respect they still shower on me is without parallels in my life. I am most grateful to them for that.
When I joined DPS-Doha after that, my amazing students, apart from enjoying the informality I shared with them, showed me how rewarding it was to respect students as thinking individuals themselves, in a very Paulo Freirean way. The ideas of knowledge co-construction (Vygotskian perspectives) took seed in my mind here... Thanks to all of the amazing students I had there, some of who still remain active in discussions with me on diverse matters...
I carry the cumulative sum of all these micro-learning experiences in my heart and mind as a teacher at SSNCE now, and I still continue to learn from my students. A big collective thank you to all my students for the growth they showed, making me a proud teacher in reflected glory, and more importantly, for helping me grow as a teaching professional. Much love to all of u... I am a lucky teacher.
Disclaimer: By no means am I suggesting that I have reached the pinnacle of learning, as a teaching professional. Hardly... If I'm better today than in 1999, when I set out teaching, I owe a large part of this to my students. That's what I imply here. Cheers...!

Un-othering

An amazing incident happened yesterday. I was riding a scooter in a lane near home, and I stopped at a turn when a child was playing in the middle of the road as his father was walking beside him. Seeing me on the scooter, his father caught hold of the child with a jerk and moved him to a side of the lane. He then said to me in a genuine apologetic tone, "I am sorry!"
I said to him in an accommodating, non-condescending way, "Please don't say sorry to me. This (the street) is as much his as it is mine..." The father was amazed, and probably rightly so. 
We live in a world filled increasingly with the idea of ownership. 'My', 'mine', 'myself' are the watchwords. We are all the time trying to prove to others or even to ourselves sometimes, that we are better than the others... The road is created for our convenience, the vehicles are there for our use, the vendors exist to sell wares to us. We are at the centre of our universes...
I, like all of us, need to reflect on this tendency of ours, and realize and remember, that we exist among others. We would be nothing without the others. As Bakhtin would probably say, my identity belongs to all - what I am is determined by what I am to others...
PS: I am glad I spontaneously said those words to the child's father... I want to be like that more and more! I hope I can...

Are we merely the sum of our parts?

At a time when we arrogate ourselves into believing that we are unitary beings and we are so full of ourselves and our abilities..., the 2013 film The Ship of Theseus, which I revisited now, makes us think about a few very basic questions:
- Who are you? Are you the sum of your various body parts?
- Can you really think you are an independent entity or are you truly a knot in the 'web of life'?
- Does someone else's organ in you (eyes for example) change every thing about you? Are you now the very same person? Are you somehow more plural now?
I quote the insightful opening lines of the film:
"As the planks of Theseus' ship needed repair, it was replaced part by part, up to a point where not a single part from the original ship remained in it, any more. Is it then, still the same ship?
If all the discarded parts were used to build another ship, which of the two, if either, is the real ship of Theseus?"
Simply brilliant, the message of the film, in terms of the questions it raises. The shots, the music and the sounds in the background... (Y)
So much more relevant in the context of Organ Donation day/week being organized, and in the situated memory of my dear younger brother we lost a few years ago, a few days before a kidney transplant procedure was due on him, on an otherwise-ordinary August (09/08) morning. Today (04/08) is his death anniversary as per the lunar calendar. My Achan and Amma are performing a ritual at their spiritual centre in the hope that his soul is at peace!

02 August

This day
Six years ago, having taught in schools for eleven years,
I entered a classroom
Again as a student, prone and vulnerable
And felt out of place
With a group of twittering, giggling girls and boys,
Almost
Like an artifact from some paleolithic age.
I quickly adapted myself, as I remembered
With fondness my friend at college - Joseph Leo
Who, had quit the Novitiate and was older than us,
Full of the elusive elixir of life, trying to mingle with
A bunch of 17-year olds fresh from school.

Now
As I teach 17-year olds fresh from school,
they remind me of 02 August, when
I had gone back to a 'Novitiate' myself to
Unlearn some, relearn some and somehow learn much
About the intuitive art and the calculated science of teaching.
The powerlessness of a student occupies the foreground
Of my mindscape every time I now enter the classroom
Filled with eager, restless, bubbly boys and girls...
More power to them for enRICHing my life!

Awe

Awe
Is what I felt as a lanky, starry-eyed teenager
For a much talked-about senior with her very formidable self.

Awe
Is what I feel still, for your very rare kind of far-sightedness
For your rigour to the minutest detail
For your tireless, infectious bounce in the step
For efforts you put for what's weeks or even months away

Oh
How with pain you must writhe watching this quintessential creature of the nth hour!
Oh
How your heart must pound seeing this 11:59:59 man!
Oh
How your nerves must agitate looking at him spring into action but ever, only in the nick of time!

Or
Do you too somehow feel some awe? An awful awe for this Artful Dodgerian penchant for the here and now?

Marriages
Are not made in any imaginary heaven. They take sweat and toil and hours and hours and hours of dogged determination. Yes!

But
What I saw in you, and you in me, all those years and years ago, must have been certain human traits that we never had but each held much in awe...

You, chalk: firm, full of resolve, proper and prim.
I, cheese: floppy, maverick, happy-go-lucky, not trim.

You: earthy and grounded
I: breezy and starry-eyed

Even today, when waves of loneliness, storms of emotions, flashes of anger and roars of anxiety hit me, I simply close my eyes and the very imagined sight of you calms my nerves, and I am back to my tranquil self...

Awe
Is what I must feel for the happy fact that you picked the college to join and I followed you in this very choice.

Oh
How blissful that we have both spent now, many many years WITH each other than without...!

PS: Happy birthday Shantha, and thanks for growing up with me!

My fav pic of my fav woman

The raging fire

This fire called life...
Yes, it did keep me warm on cold, lonely nights
Its glow presenting to me such delight,
And indeed I yearned for it often times,
And I wouldn't know what I would do
But for its familiar paternal presence...
But,
I just got so precariously close
that I could have singed in the flames,
or the alluring blue and yellow dancers
Could have devoured me, my idea of me.
I recoiled just in time, in the nick of time...

How strange that the very life-giving fire
Can engulf you in a deathly embrace!