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...
Q. Whats common between Aamir Khan / Big B / Rajiv Narayan? A. All three are bloggers We are all starry eyed. We all look up at Hollywood stars more than we look upto to the heavens above. We want to know what he/she has done today. We all want to read what Aamir Khan and Big B has to say in their blogs.. We all do not want to read what Rajiv Narayan thinks/does! Well, suffice to say that i wouldnt mind the bouquets and the brickbats.. So come read me and leave ur impressions in the comments box... Well, who am I talking to???? :) PS: I dont have a dog named after someone which keeps licking my toes!
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...
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