EDUCATION AND CUSTOMER SERVICE

Times have changed. Times are changing, yet some us still continue to live in the old times as far as values are concerned. So, when you hear that parents are the CUSTOMERS and the schools are the service providers and they must ensure customer satisfaction, it is difficult to digest, leave alone assimilating it.

Coming to customer satisfaction, it can have connotations. If it means providing good teaching, ensuring just and fair behaviour to children, and facilitating an atmosphere that leaves no room for complaints, then it is contributory to the process of producing good citizens. But there is a chance that in the effort to satisfy the parent-customers, principles and values will be thrown to the wind and mindless compromises will be made in the form of individual favours and unfairness undermining the age-old principles of teaching and learning and we will be raising small monsters instead of responsible citizens with human values. Children are far more communicative with parents today and they come to know of everything happening around them. The fear is that they will start taking deviation as something normal and will grow up to propagate such irresponsible behaviour.

When expansion and growth become the prime motive and there is cut throat competition in the educational sphere, compromises are often made. In today’s world, survival has become the prime issue and even learned and intelligent people close their eyes to the violation of a moral code which is instrumental in contributing to a corrupt society. Something good cannot be born of a compromise.

It’s a changing world and we cannot expect our children to be pupils of ancient times who worshiped their teachers and sacrificed important things for the sake of principles. The equation between a teacher and a student is also undergoing transformation. A teacher is no more an awe-inspiring Godhead for the students. The reason is pretty simple to understand. Earlier, the teacher not only imparted knowledge, he or she also moulded the character of the children. The parents thought it improper to interfere in the functioning of a teacher and put their trust in him or her. In today’s world they are merely service providers. The parents, most of them, understand knowledge in numbers and percentage. Their attitude often affects the student-teacher –parent relationship in a negative way and it affects the equation between the administration and the staff of an educational institution too. A teacher is torn between raising the level of understanding and application in the students and sometimes has to evaluate them according to the expectation of the parents. As punishment is banned there is little fear in the mind of the children and it often leads to in-disciplinary attitude and improper behaviour.

The question is, instead of being drawn into the sea of commercialism, can’t educational institutions create their own standard by motivating and forcing the parents to understand the real meaning of teaching and learning? Instead of giving in, cannot they stand for something? Do we real want turn this world into such a place where we will be uncomfortable to live in, because our instinctive nature is divine. If the demands of the external world weigh heavy, cannot we keep our steadfastness in keeping it a bit sensitive, a bit moral and a bit conscientious?

DEATH OF RADHA

He told;
Now that my greater responsibilities beckon me,
I must go, Radha,
Away from you and from my life hitherto,
Because I have to look after others too,
There is a world beyond this world of the banks of Yamuna
And there is a love greater than ours,
Radha listened quietly,
Yamuna entered her that day,
that moment,
And never ceased to flow,
It drained her of any joy she had ever known,
And any love she had ever received on her soul,
on her body,
The grief ate into her being
And she searched solace
in the groves, by the riverside,
in the places of her escapades,
in the bowers that were witness to her ecstasies of love,
stared into the night sky with tearful questions,
which answered back with silence,
Days kept changing into nights
And nights changed into moments of lingering, impending death,
She bore it upon her soul,
Her love,
Like gold, and sought relief in no one but her aloneness,
And carried the terrible disquiet
Through the monotonous milkmaid’s existence,
And the sufferance that her being had enveloped itself in,
Lived without a life,
Loved without a lover,
Burned her soul in ever-smouldering fire
That waited for the elusive,
Joy and pain became one inside her one day
and she became Goddess.

Nobody knows when Radha died or if she did,
Krisna went and fought,
Visible and invisible battles
destiny had woven in his name,
Played games that never needed to be played,
Wrote many stories for posterity,
And died,
he did.
He died much later,
Radha had died the day he left her alone,
By the side of a river
Below the Kadamba tree,
She had died
the moment her eyes had turned vacant,
And her heart had dried up in her breast.

THE LONER

If love had become the path,
Many paths would have sprouted,
To many loves,
And flowers would have paved them,
Hedges of hitherto un-existing plants would have come up,
Sprinkled with the water of
love.

The path uphill still waits,
Bearing the Gulmohar trees
ablaze with blossoms,
They see, but don’t wait for
the strangers who walk by them.
They wait for someone
Whom,
The sky, the air, the pebbles,
Even the grasshoppers know.

One who sits and stares absentmindedly into the horizon,
And the world inhabited yet unknown
So near yet so alien,
One, who sits with heartful of emptiness
With nobody to share
Yet the one
Like whom nobody holds the universe
To his being,
One who loves the mango orchard beyond the railway tracks
And its unknown grounds
same way as the unfamiliar faces in a crowd.

As the dusk touches
the skin and the breeze tell it’s time
To go back to
The world of duality,
The legs pull themselves up
And the lip stretches into a smile,
A sigh of unknown truths escapes the being
And freedom readies
To enter into the joy of
Living, amidst
Revelations,
Of accepted bondages,
And of immense realizations

PLANNING TO RE-READ? THINK TWICE.

Recently I happened to read Sanjay Shipahimalani's blog The Joys and Perils of Re-reading and to my awful perception I had also had similar experiences while re-reading a book and had found out that it could be a very demystifying or disappointing experience. But it is not that it happens the same way with all the books. Rather it is worth finding out why it happens with some books and why it is the same wonderful feeling with some other books. For reference; the first time I read the famous Oriya litterateur Prativa Roy's very well known JAGYANSENI (On the life of Draupadi, the lone wife of the five Pandavas from THE MAHABHARAT), I was held mesmerized and enthralled by the understanding and sensitive imagination with which the author had portrayed Droupadi's character. I thought it to be a path-breaking and wonderful creative peace. But, to my dismay, when I read it a second time, five years later, I couldn't go beyond six pages. The writing seemed to be labourious, dragging and full of unnecessary and exaggerated emotional outbursts. But take the example of Arun Joshi's THE FOREIGNER and some of the likes. At least lovers of literature like me can go on reading and re=reading it without the book losing any of its magnetism and romantic charisma.

Sometimes I ponder over the probable reasons to this variant experiences. Most probably some of the books answer or pose some of the eternal queries or touch upon the universal aspects of human existence. So, they invariably speak truths only. And truths cannot tire you because they are what they are, forever. They answer some callings beyond our mundane existence and touch us very deep inside where we rarely reach as worldly being lost in the mad race of life. Those books remain beautiful forever and draw us towards them now and then, and the experience is always like meeting a beloved with love and tender excitement.

TODAY"S CHILDREN: HANDLE WITH CARE

When we were young children, this question incessantly bothered me. Does power and authority essentially give the power to control the life of others. The question started in the family. When we raised any issue or questioned the pertinence of a decision or were deliberately kept away from decision making, were made to feel small and unimportant, this question was invariably born in the mind, 'what gives the right to even do wrong?'Do parents get an upper hand in dealing with children just because they are the bread earners? I don't know if such questions were ever born in the minds of children, but they always came floating into my mind. And the answers was a 'NO'. The source of power and authority should be lying in the judiciousness, fairness and righteousness of people faced with issues irrespective of whoever is the bearer of such virtues. Sometimes it is seen that children surprise us with their sense of justice and fairness and the extraordinary frankness and honesty with which they view a situation. We shouldn't ignore them just because they are children or they are yet dependent, hence , automatically dispossessed of the right to meddle in the affair of elders.

This question again came to mind when I heard a young daughter complaining to her ever-nagging mother as to whether she had no right to speak her mind just because she was younger. Do the elders possess the right to even do and speak wrong things because they are older? Are the young ever to be played down just because they are dependent?

There was a time when submissiveness before parents was considered a virtue. But didn't it amount to perpetuation of wrong at times if the parents were arbitrary, tyrannic or autocratic in their action? Nowadays, equations have changed in parent-children relationship. Children don't hesitate to raise their voice against parental excesses. Speaking the other way, parents consider themselves a harassed lot too.But isn't it a new world of their own making in the way that they fulfill each and every demand of the child.

Handling children has become an extremely delicate affair for children nowadays. Parents are to act more as friends, philosophers and guides rather than exercising control. They are more to lead by example rather than preaching and sermonizing. Punishments cannot be eliminated altogether, but the nature has to be changed from direct and harsh to subtle and emotional. The questions in the young minds are too well pronounced today, so answering them has become too important. And answering them honestly is the only way to earn their love and respect.

TOO MANY QUESTIONS

Gender discrimination makes women a pretty vulnerable species and it’s always comes natural to be concerned with women issues.

In one day, I encountered two women, directly and indirectly. I have no intention of passing judgment on them. I just met them and found them to be beautiful and strong in their own way, weak too, and subject to the duality of this world too.

One I found sleeping on a seat of a local passenger train.I will speak about her today.She was sleeping there completely in disregard to the world around her and without any female consciousness. She had her back to the rest of the people and it was difficult to guess her age that way. Only her hard and soiled feet told in a way that she was either elderly or had had a very hard life. It also told that she was alone and without any expectation of kindness of charity from the masculine world. That she was not delicate or had any illusion of good mannerism of middle class or upper middle class women who would, not even in their wildest imagination, could think of sleeping in broad day light, in a passenger train with the risk of many men and women observing her with disdain.

People wondered what woman was this, but not for long , and started discussing politics and how fickle and evanescent people's opinion was.One of the passengers was trying to explain why the opinion of the majority was a big factor in determining the eligibility of a particular leader when the girl got up from her slumber. She stretched herself to shake off the inertia and sat upright gathering her knees together as one would sit up on bed and jumped into the discussion uninvited.
-Can anyone present here tell me what economic development means?
She asked, looking at the young men who were discussing politics.Nobody had a reply.
Because chat room gossip usually has never any substance or seriousness in it. She unfolded her legs and sat up, upright, and started to explain at length what economic development meant in reality and how the present government was fooling people in the name of Industrial development. Her knowledge of facts and figures put the boys into inconvenience and they kept siting through the exposition sheepishly. I had gathered by then, using my little experience that she must be working for some NGO. On being asked she promptly replied that she was part of a socio-religious group and no NGO. Presently she was going to a religious function. She added proudly that she has also been awarded for her contributions and efforts. Only this line sounded harsh to my years because I don't quite digest bragging and boasting, especially by people who appear to be doing something good. Nobody knows, she might have been brainwashed by some individual or group to do the kind of work she was engaged in, it might too have been her own calling.But she was different in her courage, her crude intellect and the way she stood by the philosophy she believed in. She was a beautiful girl,turn hard owing to the way of life she followed. She could have chosen to marry, have the safety, security and the comfort of a home life, without having to work outside too, but she didn't choose that. And, she had no pretenses at all. She told what she thought to be true. She was able to give us complexes us and I really envied her.

DEATH AND GOOD MEN

I am not speaking of him because he was my uncle, but because he was what he was in his own capacity and because of his exceptional moral uprightness, courage and extraordinary sense of humour. You can’t help falling in love with his persona, such a charismatic man was he. He started in the army as a major and reached the rank of colonel. His loyalty and love for his profession was unquestionable. But somewhere down the line, he must have felt the subtle force of politics affecting his morale and he was not a man to compromise with his principles. He must have stood by his love for his country and the organization that ensured the safety of the people of his country to a breaking point, then the crusader would have thought of quitting. Also, his old mother was eternally sick and he would have thought of standing by the family and serve the nation and his own conscience some other way. After opting for voluntary retirement from the army, he sought employment in many renowned private and government institutions. But being a man of strong principles, he couldn’t work very long in any of these because of the sloppy and compromising attitude of all these organizations. Last he was working in Odisha Govt’s disaster management cell; when he died in a mishap.I think he would not have got much pain while he died as it was a very sudden death.
He was a man, around whom no one can remain gloomy or sad. His hearty resounding laughter was enough to disperse darkness and spread light. Whatever dissatisfaction or personal grievance he may be having, he kept it hidden in the deep recesses of his heart. Anybody who saw him saw a man who was a hard taskmaster and a very cheerful man who made people laugh. In his late fifties, he was fit as a fiddle. He walked morning and evening, and did power Yoga to keep his body in excellent working condition forever. The feudal and traditional man that he was, because of growing in the land of his ancestors, he never revealed it before others.
He used to tell that he would do something of his own, after his only son gets admitted into a professional course, something that will give him a feeling that he has given back to his people, his society, and the society he grew up in. He had plans and dreams. But he died suddenly. A man who was really capable of doing something for the society went out of existence.
The afternoon was oppressive, and my thoughts drifted towards this uncle of mine who had a dream. How unpredictable and unreliable is this life of ours. It seems all the more so, when it takes away somebody who is not ready yet, whose dreams have not become realities yet.