Ban on English in Bangalore Schools

More than 100,000 English-speaking children in India’s information technology capital of Bangalore will soon have to switch to schools offering lessons exclusively in a Dravidian regional language, following a crackdown on more than 2,000 English-medium institutions in the state of Karnataka, reports the Financial Times in this news article.

Excerpts:

The state government’s promise on Monday to enforce a widely flouted 1994 language policy requiring compulsory Kannada-medium education in primary schools reflects resentment at the influx of relatively wealthy English-speaking IT workers into Bangalore.

The crackdown has seen 800 schools stripped of their status and a further 1,500 face closure, according to an education department official.

Well, this is definitely a backward step taken by the government. Hopefully a public debate will follow and oppose this move. Read the full article.

Also posted on the Dream School Forum Blog.

“Your test starts now”, hollered the class teacher.

“I will speak out the word, you have to write it down on your paper.
And remember, leave one finger-space distance between each word.
I will say the word only two times”, the teacher screamed while looking at Amit who was seated in the first bench.

“The first word is Physics (pause) Physics”.

Rajani scribbled down “Fysics” on her paper.

“Next word is Biology. Biology”.

Rajani wrote down “Biology” on her paper.

After Chemistry Chemistry, History History, Social Social, Independence Independence, the teacher reached the end of the list of words.

“The last word is Pneumonia. Pneumonia.”

Rajani’s pencil lead was almost about to break as she managed to write down “Neumonia”.
She had remembered the spelling vaguely and knew that her answer was correct.

The bell rang five minutes later and she placed her pencil and the broken lead in her pencil box. The box, originally a bright red one, was shaded gray at many places due to pencil shavings and broken leads.

She put her bag on her shoulder, carried the lunch basket in one hand and started walking down to the school gate.

The auto-man at the entrance was piling everyone’s lunch basket onto the handle of his rear-view mirror.
Rajani used the railing of the auto-man’s seat from behind and hauled herself into the auto. Her friends were exchanging their ribbons and she didn’t have one today. She was wearing a hair-band, a colourful plastic hair-band. She had cried the other day for that hair-band but now she no longer liked it. She wanted ribbons. The ones that her friends were exchanging. Not bothering to speak to her friends, Rajani sat quietly in the auto until her home arrived.

She jumped off the auto, picked up her heavy lunch basket and climbed up to the first floor of her apartments.
Sunrise Apartments was a new building in this part of the town and was built exactly opposite a slum.

Rajani’s maid, who lived in the slum, opened the door and received Rajani by removing her shoes and socks and getting her evening glass of milk with Bournvita ready. Rajani’s mother was in the balcony cleaning the rice. Rajani dropped her school bag on her bed and changed into her favourite black frock. She wanted to buy ribbons from the store located at the entrance to the slum.

The maid’s daughter, Shruti, was Rajani’s best friend. Shruti worked with her father at the dhobi-ghat located at the farther end of the slum. Rajani skipped her glass of bournvita milk and rushed down hurriedly towards the dhobi-ghat.

She had one rupee in her pocket from last week and knew that Shruti would be able to help her use that money to buy a ribbon.
At the dhobi-ghat, she saw Shruti watching a huge tanker unload water into a big shallow tank. The water was gushing out of the tanker and creating a mist-effect around the tank. Rajani, with a smile on her face owing to this wonderful sight, walked up and stood beside Shruti.

“I need to buy ribbons”, she said, turning towards Shruti.

“What? Can’t hear in this noise”, Shruti screamed back as the sound of the water filling the tank submerged the noise of the street.

After about 10 minutes, the tank was full and the water tanker had begun to leave.

Rajani showed the money to Shruti and told her about the ribbons.
Shruti, who spent most of her time washing others’ clothes, was not too excited about colourful garments or ribbons. Instead, she wanted to swim in the recently filled tank. The tank was only 2 feet deep and was more than 20 feet wide.

Shruti jumped into the water and asked Rajani to join in. Rajani smiled and wanted to but there was a problem. She was wearing her favourite black frock. She couldn’t let it get wet.
So she sat down at the edge of the tank, dangling her legs against the water surface while Shruti swam from one end of the tank to the other.

After about half an hour, Shruti got out of the tank, shivering in the cold and laughing uncontrollably. It was 7 in the evening and time to go home.

However, Rajani wanted to buy the ribbons. The scene in the auto was fresh in her mind. Tomorrow she wanted to exchange ribbons with her friends. She persisted Shruti to buy them for her. Shruti, fervently shivering by now, contemplated going home and changing into dry clothes. But then, her home was on the other end of the slum and the ribbon shop was on the other. She decided to skip going home for now and instead went along with Rajani to buy the ribbon.

At the store, there were 3-4 customers buying cigarettes, paan and other assorted items of daily consumption. The shop keeper had blue and red coloured ribbons. Rajani, after a few minutes of conflicting views inside her mind, decided to buy the blue ones. Shruti paid the shopkeeper, sneezed once and ran home. She was already feeling the cold gripping her.

Rajani held the blue ribbon carefully in her palms and headed home. A warm soup and bread was waiting for her. It was cooked by Shruti’s mother, who worked as a maid and as a cook at Rajani’s home.

Shruti, in the meanwhile, reached home and changed into drier clothes. She also reached out for her old blanket and decided to lie down for a while. The sneezing had become more frequent.

The next day morning, Rajani and her mother were sitting in the balcony. Rajani’s mother was tying the blue ribbon onto Rajani’s hair. The watchman from below screamed out that the maid would not be coming that morning.

“Why?”, screamed back Rajani’s mother.

“Her daughter has caught pneumonia”, yelled the watchman.

“Pneumonia. Why can’t these maids ask their children to be a little more careful?”, she said aloud to herself as she tied the knot of the blue ribbon.

Rajani touched her blue ribbon gently.
As she picked up her school bag and walked down to wait for the auto-man, the word Neumonia kept running in her head. She was quite confident that her spelling was correct.

An early morning breakfast.
Note that early morning is 9 am.

Three of us at the table.
Friend 1: “Mr. XYZ who came down yesterday is an IIT graduate, then did his Masters from MIT, and then an MBA from Harvard”.

Friend 2 (between bites of paratha): “Hahaha. What a jobless fellow”.

All three of us laugh.

Friend 1: “Guess what. He now works at Microsoft”.

Friend 2 looks at me. We start laughing.

Friend 1 joins in. We all start laughing uncontrollably.

Alright, it was extremely funny at that point. Infact I am still laughing.

A new search engine for Shakespeare.
The site is called Shakespeare Searched – “Go search like nobles, like noble subjects”.

The tagline of the site has been taken from Pericles – Act 2, Scene 4.
It is quite a wonderful site, since it gives you precise location of particular names or phrases from the bard’s works.

It is also better than google (only if you are searching for Shakespeare’s works) since it gives a contextual reference to its search results.

Enjoy.

As has been my habit, the contrast continues to come in my line of sight.

The scene shifts a few months back in time.
A blood donation camp organised by a club that I am a member of.

I was allotted to man the registration counter at the entrance from 12 noon onwards.

I reach there at 11:45 am to find that the turnout has been a little low.

The few volunteers have already donated their blood and the single volunteer at the registration counter has been sitting there since morning. I donate my blood and take the place at the registration counter, asking the other person to go ahead and have his lunch.

A few students approach me and I give them the mandatory form to be filled before they could go inside to donate blood.
The form seeks contact details, past medical history and other information that I don’t recall now. Some of the students joke about the fact that they were drunk the previous night and so there would be a lot of beer that would get collected.
I force a smile and nod my head.

Sitting there thinking about what I had left behind in Bangalore, I see this waiter from the dining hall approaching me. He was probably around 45-50 years old.

“Sir, I would like to donate blood”, he says in Hindi (except for the Sir ofcourse).

I rise up from my seat. Here was a person close to my father’s age and addressing me as a sir.

“Sure”, I say with a smile and remove a form and hand it to him.

He looks back at me, shrugs his shoulders and says with a smile, “Sir, I can’t read or write”.

Feeling a little awkward of having given him the form and probably made him feel embarrassed, I take back the form and start filling it on his behalf.

Name, Contact Address, Age all answered and filled.

“Mobile Number?” He shrugs and says he doesn’t have one.
“Landline Number?” Once again, he doesn’t have a landline number.

He continues standing there while I take my time filling up the form. He is a little amused that all this procedure is required.

“All I want is to donate blood. I have done it many times before. Last year’s batch had also organised this and I had donated blood. I still have the certificate”, he proclaimed with pride.

I smiled. I took the form and handed it to the concerned doctor inside. I then went inside and when the waiter was done with donating blood, I offered him a glass of juice, biscuits and a banana.

“You will need it for the others, since there are so many yet to come.”, was his reply to this offer of food and juice.

I continue manning the food and juice section. As the day goes by, more and more students have started pouring in. Some of them come directly to the food and juice counter, pick up a glass of juice, gulp it down and joke around loudly claiming that they came only for the food and juice and not for donating blood.

I force a smile, once again.
Many students donate blood. A few pick up a handful of biscuits and a few almost pickup a breakfast. These few do not donate blood. They believed there was nothing wrong in what they were doing.

Ofcourse there was nothing wrong in what they were doing. These were, after all, people who would shape the future of the country, future of the world.

They were also far superior than the insignificant waiters standing along with them in the line. Insignificant waiters who didn’t know how to read or write.

Bring on the biscuits and the juice.
The blood shall flow anyway.
The contrast shall flow anyway.

Nothing is rocket science.
Not even rocket science.

The Divine Trip – 2

Starting off from Mathura, we went through Delhi on to the road which had a huge green banner saying Hardwar with an arrow pointing upwards. Suddenly the upward arrow had an altogether different meaning.

As we continued to travel through the various towns and villages, I suddenly realized that India is a lot more than coffee shops and cubicle-savvy companies. There are people who tow tons of cargo on handcarts, there are people who earn their living by selling tea in 2 feet by 2 feet shacks. There are people who drive trucks from one end of the country to another just to make sure you get your fresh stock of fruits. There are people who actually wait for those packed buses. There are people.

We approach Hardwar and I was very eager to catch a glimpse of the mighty Ganga. The river that is the backbone of most Indian epics and is known to be the river of the Gods. We drive down the road leading to Hardwar, take a turn around a slope and there it was. The Ganga in full flow. The river that I had heard so much about and the river that carried divinity in every one of its drops.

We got off at the bank and were told that we were in time for the Ganga aarti. The aarti is a daily tradition where thousands of devotees and pilgrims gather on either sides of the river and chant a prayer to the mighty river.

The aarti is a sight that cannot be described in words. The feeling that one gets cannot be described by the threads of thoughts of the mortal mind. I shall attempt to write about it, but it would not cover even a smidgeon of the actual visual vividness.

A crowd begins to form on both sides of the river. The crowd keeps getting bigger and bigger as the time of the aarti comes closer. Thousands of devotees – some sitting, some standing, some with their hands together and eyes closed as if in a trance, some carrying flowers and some just in awe of the whole scene.

The aarti is led by the main priest who holds the flames of the aarti to the Ganga. The prayer is broadcasted on the loud speakers and everyone joins in. It is a beautiful prayer with the drums and the cymbals adding to the transcendental experience.

Hundreds of diyas are lit in earthern lamps on large leaves. These are then gently set afloat on the river. Within minutes, one sees these hundred odd lamps lighting the entire river. The river takes these offerings in a hurried manner and pulls them away towards the horizon. A hundred lights bobbing up and down in the river ensuring you that your faith remains alive as long as you are willing to continue looking at it.

Water and fire blended together under a calm saffron sky and everything was a part of everything else.
The drums and cymbals kept the symphony going and it is then you realize that this place is just not an ordinary pilgrimage site. It has more to it than just the temples. It has the divine river that seems to remind you of the fact that there is something beyond what you see in your daily lives.

Then it was time to have tea at one of the roadside tea stalls, sipping on sweet milky tea in sticky cups, letting that wonderful phantasmagoria sink in to the recesses of your soul. After a dinner comprising of a motley mix of various roadside eatables, we head off to the foothills of the Himalayas – to the town of Hrishikesh.

Coming up next: Hrishikesh.
Read part 1 here.

Of all the subjects that I have this term, the one I really like is Government, Society & Business.
As part of a discussion on ethics in this class yesterday, we were told about the Milgram experiment – “Obedience to Authority”.

I found this of particular interest considering the results that this experiment has produced.

Stanley Milgram is a pioneer in psychology who is most remembered for his work with obedience to authority. He was highly interested in the reasons why the average person would submit to obedience through an authority figure although he/she knew that he/she was harming an innocent third party.

It is ironic that virtues of loyalty, discipline, and self-sacrifice that we value so highly in the individual are the very properties that create destructive organizational engines of war and bind men to malevolent systems of authority.(Obedience to Authority, 1974, p.188)

Read the experiment details here. (Under the heading “Theory of Obedience”).

Milgram has this to say about these factors and findings from his study, “The results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to this author disturbing. They raise the possibility that human nature, or -more specifically-the kind of character produced in American society, cannot be counted on to insulate the citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority.”

Psychology would be another subject that I would like to formally study. Some day.

This post is on quantum physics, one of my favourite areas in physics.
Favourite because I believe that, on one fine day, quantum physics will be able to provide us with the key to the understanding of the universe.

The unified theory of everything (if at all its possible to have it) shall clear all doubts and provide us with that one true wisdom. Until then, we shall continue our focus on wordly matters.

CERN’s Large Haldron Collider is claimed to have the capability of producing tiny black holes. The idea is to simulate the physical environment that existed just after the Big Bang.

Now, Stephen Hawking has stated in one of his essays (I don’t recall which one it was) that tiny black holes are created and destroyed practically all the time all around us. Since their dimensions are miniscule to the point of being negligible, we do not see loss of information or matter.

Hawking also proposed that a black hole decays into the “Hawking Radiation”, the rate of decay depending on the size of the black hole.

This article at the lifeboat foundation aims to highlight the fact that creating black holes in a laboratory might have dangerous consequences.

“This is but one example — Any physicist will tell you that there is no way to prove that generated black holes will decay! The consequences of being mistaken are unfathomable. This subject deserves serious unbiased discussion.”

While we are discussing black holes, it is definitely worth reading this article on how quantum wormholes might be able to carry people in the future.

“All around us are tiny doors that lead to the rest of the Universe. Predicted by Einstein’s equations, these quantum wormholes offer a faster-than-light short cut to the rest of the cosmos – at least in principle. Now physicists believe they could open these doors wide enough to allow someone to travel through.”

Stephen Hawking in the introduction of his book, “Essays on Black Holes and Baby Universes”, says something to this effect – “Someday we shall know as to how the universe was created and how it functions. However, one thing we shall never know is why it was created”.
I believe that once we know how it was created, merging quantum physics with a higher spiritual learning might be able to answer the crucial “Why?”.

This brings me to another point that I have been thinking about – There have been “quantum” advances in the area of science, however the area of spiritual learning hasn’t progressed proportionately. Are we missing out on something? How? Why?

Plato and Socrates come out of the movie hall. Around 200 other people also come out of the movie hall.

Plato is whistling to keep himself occupied. Socrates, as always, is in a pensive mood. The white robed master is walking ahead of his brown robed disciple.

Plato (catching up with his master): “Let’s talk about loneliness. Solitude rather, to make it seem more important. ”

Socrates is busy looking at the glazed flooring that looks so bright under the dull white lights enhancing the ceiling.

Plato: “Well?”

Socrates (continuing to look at the floor): “What about solitude?”

Plato: “Well, what is a state of solitude?”

Socrates: “Pedantically, it is a state of social isolation. It could also be a disposition toward being alone.”

Plato: “Disposition? You mean there would be a tendency towards wanting to be alone?”

Socrates: “The flooring is made of granite isn’t it? Yes is the answer to your question.”

Plato: “Explain this – in a crowd of 200 people watching a movie, you suddenly feel alone. How? Why?”

Socrates: “Disposition.”

Plato raises his eyebrows. A pretty skirt passes by.

Plato: “Isn’t there something more to it than just plain disposition?”

Socrates: “Did you just see that?”

Plato strains his neck to see the last flutter of that skirt go around the corner of the corridor.

Plato: “Yeah, pretty isn’t it?”

Socrates: “Well yes, but very geometric.”

Plato: “Er…What?”

Socrates: “The pattern on the granite floor.”

Plato: “Ah….yes. Geometric indeed. ”

Plato shakes his head and picks up coffee from the vending machine. Socrates switches on his laptop and the music starts playing.

That thing you do by The Wonders drifts across the corridor.

Plato: “How about a remedy to fight solitude?”

Socrates: “Disposition.”

Plato: “Disposition towards not staying alone, I presume?”

Socrates: “Could be.”

Plato raises his eyebrows once again. The coffee tastes like warm sweet water.
The song continues in the background.

Plato: “The geometric patterns on the floor are easy to comprehend.”

Socrates: “Geometry is always easy to comprehend. What is not easy, however, is the thinking that goes behind making geometry a regular pattern. ”

Plato: “So is the case with life, right? Almost impossible to predict the thinking that goes behind a usual regular pattern.”

Socrates and Plato walk off into the night that has already started receding to make way for the day. Night and day – just another regular pattern of an irregular life.

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