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...
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...
In the 36 years of existence in this planet, how many times have i gone to the gym? Once and for 5 days to be precise. Not very strange considering the fact that I tip the scale a good 105 Kgs.. fat deposits carefully nurtured and built over a decade of helping Dr. VJM build his empire. And what i have achieved? Just mass! My family and wife in particular have been pestering me for ages to get going and start on a lean meal diet to at least maintain the existing weight, if not reduce. Well, being the thick skinned rhino that I am, no amount coaxing, cajoling or ridiculing from friends and relatives could do the trick. I knew that the call has to come from inside – inside me.. And it finally came last week. For some time, I have been trying to change my wardrobe, which has been relatively the same for some 4 years now.. (I’m one of those minimalist types who do not feel the necessity to buy new stuff every month). Pushed by my wife, I decided to start hunting for some shirts and Tees e...
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