learnings

This morning as I entered the temple gate to attend a Members meeting my heart burst forth with emotion. This is a temple in my neighbourhood  where my father would take me along. Being a life member of this temple, he made me a life member too. As I drove towards the temple, I recollected holding my dad's hand ,crossing the road and walking briskly alongside him. He would recount his life stories and I would listen enthralled. There have been times when I resisted going along with him too. Today watching my son cradle his daughter made me reminisce about my father. My mom recounted the lengths dad would go to put me to sleep or to stop me from screaming and bringing down the neighbourhood. Just then I received a message that the Annual General Body meeting at the temple would commence in a n hour. Spurred by the memories I decided to go.  I entered the auditorium and was greeted by my father's contemporaries. My eyes welled with tears and I was choked with emotion...

Are we doing our assessments in the right manner? The other day I was talking to a 11 year old in my neighbourhod.  He proudly remarked that he had completed his test paper in 10 minutes. The test was set for 45 minutes. I praised him saying that he must have prepared so well that he had completed the test so fast. And out of the mouth of the babe came this,' Oh my teacher had revised these very same questions just before the test. Same to same.' I turned red on behalf of my fraternity. So do we need such assessments?

This happened at a recent Parent teacher interaction at a school where my friend works. One particular teacher had a few parents around her. She was mindlessly pointing out the mistakes made by one student to his parent. She even compared him to another boy standing beside him. The boy and his parents were flustered but listened patiently and walked away. The very next day one student walked upto my friend and had a talk with her. She noted that he looked very pained. He admitted that he felt very upset. On probing he told her that he was hurt that way that particular teacher had spoken about his friend. He said,'Ma'am imagine how my friend felt when his mistakes were pointed out in front of others! And Ma'am he was being compared with another. Would it not have hurt him so much? Ma'am all the time you adults tell us that we must not compare with one another. Then why is a teacher doing so?' My friend had no words to answer. My question is why do we associat...

On a recent visit to a neighbouring city I happened to visit the children's park space which is located within a gated community. There were any children between the age group of 2-7 years playing. Most of the children were accompanied by young nannies- school children ding part time duties! They had come armed with toys. But the children did not show nay interest in the toys. Rather they were so happy playing with the beach sand available in one corner. They were outdoing each other in making mud cakes. As I watched them play I was able to detect various types of personalities: 1. The older sibling making mud cakes and sharing with the younger sister. 2. A chatty little one who was obsessed with cleaning the mud and getting the right consistency before making the mud cakes. 3. A boy who walked into their midst, very calmly destroyed all their cakes and began to make some for himself! 4. The chatty one continued with her work. But the older sibling watched for awhile. Wh...