Random Ramblings, Random Reflections!!

Standing in the balcony, watching the Bangalore skyline awash with fireworks, it struck me that we are spending too much money on celebrating Deepavali/Divali. Deepavali, the festival of lights has led to us literally burning crazy monies on fireworks which for all practical purposes does more harm than good to anyone(think of the environment!). How much of pleasure we get from seeing a firework is something we need to introspect. Though we all make a hue and cry about the need for governments to start austerity drives, we as individuals do nothing! Typical armchair middle class The thought of literally converting money to smoke and fire rattled and bothered me. While we have enough money to party and buy fireworks, there is another set of Indians who have to work their ass off to earn 2 square meals a day.. forget 3! I kept imaging how many mouths could have been fed with the money we blew up. We and me are not really bothered about the poorer lot.. this is the fact. Diwali can actua

 

Against all odds and proving all detractors wrong, i participated and completed the 25km course at the Cyclothon 2009 Bangalore this Sunday The Sunday started very early at 4.30 am. Got ready, shoved the cycle into the car with lots of difficulty and drive down to the venue-BIEC on Tumkur Road, which itself was a good one hour drive from home. While I was expecting to see 100 odd people at the venue, i was in for a pleasant surprise. There some 500-600 already gathered at the venue. Towards the flag off time, there were close to 5000 cyclists in the holdup area. It was an incredible feeling that needs to be experienced. I never imagined that so many Bangaloreans would get up so early in the morning and come and ride! BSA Hercules had also organised cycles on hire for the race. The crowd was a milieu of amateur cyclists, pure enthusiasts, corporates, army folks and kids out to enjoy. The rides were classified into Elite (60kms), Amateur (36 kms), Green Ride (25kms), Fun Ride (10kms).

I chanced upon a CBSE Social Studies textbook for Class VIII yesterday while my wife was preparing teaching notes for the kids at school. Observations from that exercise: If the syllabus in a text book is a reflection of our academic system, CBSE has been successful in shocking me. I am dismayed at the extremely superficial nature of what is being taught in schools. While there are arguments that the all studies up to Class 10 need only be superficial, I fail to understand the logic behind it.. Most of the time, the school years are spent studying, not learning. In retrospect, I feel that even if kids are just studying (and not learning!), it remains with you the rest of your life. Proof of the pudding was that, I was able to explain to my wife the background of the Mughal empire, the key distinguishing features of most of the rulers and their contributions in detail. All this, from my memory. A little bit of googling around confirmed that I was bang on! Textbooks are supposed to provi