What they do not teach in schools.....

It is very interesting to observe that schools do not teach us most of the skills needed for life.

We study maths and learn technical stuff like how to count, add, subtract but never learn that just numbers can be misleading. We study history and learn when a war was fought but never learn why nations fail or succeed. We learn to measure density of water but never taught how precious water is. Schools do not teach how to make decisions.... forget about schools, no one teaches us how to make decisions. While making decision, what all will you consider, who all will you consider are the two big questions. Personality development experts (or so called) make money knowing that all most all people get confused and try getting support in this area.

I wonder why do we learn geography in first place. There is no connection between history and geography we learn. How can that be? Great nations exploit their natural resources and win the world. Why is this not taught? What is the point in learning that Cuba is Sugar bowl of world while not understanding what is the issue between Cuba and USA?

Schools have a lot of moral stories for young children. But unfortunately whatever happens to 'history' happens to moral science too. Wars are fought and no one knows why some one won or lost!!! Greedy dogs and thirsty crows do not teach anything to the children. Even when children learn something from these stories and enhance the stories, it is not recognized. What is the reason? Is it the quality of teachers, syllabus or again, respect for people? Don't we treat our children as individuals and don't we think that they need to think independently?

Hopefully, the recent increase in the salaries of the teachers will attract knowledgible people to the teaching profession and hopefully, we Indians will start respecting ourselves.... Life will change.... for the better.....

Is there a relationship between respect for people and inventions?

After any disaster - man made or natural - all our TV channels run talk shows to discuss why we fail to recover quickly or why we can not prevent heavy losses! Last year, after the Taj attack, there was a heated discussion in NDTV, that concluded that people are not respected by government and that is why all this is happening.

I kept thinking about every now and then to see if only government does not respect people. Unfortunate discovery is, WE as individuals do not respect others. Servants are ill-treated by the employers; those who clean the roads and sewage are ill-treated by others; constables are treated badly by inspectors and they in turn are hurt intentionally by their bosses. It just means that to show our authority we ill-treat others.

We might have got this quality from our caste system or our colonial life etc. As a result of this, no one is respected in this country. Because of this disrespect, we are OK with other people's difficulties in carrying out their day to day work and hence there is no inventions from India. For example, we do not feel bad when we see a sweeper sweeping the road; so we did not invent a machine to clean the road; some other country invented the road cleaning vehicle; we buy them at exorbitant cost!!! Same thing with any other tools.

Will we ever learn to respect people? Will we ever think of simplifying their work by new tools?

Look at Indian hospitals. How long are we expected to wait? Doctors feel that waiting time is inevitable. Time is precious for everyone but this fact is not appreciated by the doctors. As a result there is no effort taken to improve the queue management, to reduce wait time!!! Doctors are in pressure always and so are the patients!!! Why?!?!?

Will we ever learn to respect people? Will we ever improve our standard of living?

Only when we learn to respect human beings, we will think of innovative ways to improve life and there will be inventions from India. Let us teach our children to respect everyone irrespective of their money, job, color, language etc; or rather, we should let children be children as they do not these differences!!! Let us not teach them to behave like us!!!

Giving a word or commitment...

We were to arrange for a small get together for about 30 people. Since we did not want to do it home, we were looking for a mini hall that can hold 30 to 40 people and good food. I requested two of my friends to take care of this requirement. Whenever I asked them about the hall, they told me that I do not have to worry about it at all. Just a week before the get together, I wanted to finalize the menu. There came the shock!!!! The hall was not booked. They had just inquired, not confirmed the booking, nor did they tell me about the constraint that the service providers (those in our neighborhood) are not ready to entertain less than 50 people. I had to do the hall searching and booking exercise all over again. Since it was a heavy demand day, it was pretty hard to get a hall.

This kept me thinking..... How many of us really respect the word we give others? How serious are we about the casual "Sure, shall come and visit you some time" at end of every friends' meeting? How many people call their friends or relatives as promised?

I am trying to understand why some of us take these "promises" seriously and others do not.

In the industry I was working in, whatever you commit counts irrespective of whether it was oral or written. But, in Government sector, only written communications are valued. You can say anything orally and get away with it. My friends are working in Government. Could this have caused this behavior or is that the way there were brought up? I'm not sure.

Are we better than Animals as we claim?

This question is haunting me more than ever. India is not the only country that suffers terrorism. Every country in the world suffers this cruelty. Every family suffers cruelty in some form.

Is fighting part of our genetic system? Most likely so. Every species in the world fights with its prey, predator. Do they fight among themselves? Many writers and poets claim that animals fight only for food that too only when they are hungry. But if you watch, Animal planet or Discovery you would quickly learn that it is not so. Animals fight to prove their supremacy to the other gender; they fight to establish their territory; they even fight to ensure that there is no competition for food, even when there is plenty of food.

We fight to prove supremacy of our beliefs, country, language, religion, skin colour, and so on. Aren’t we same as animals? To improve their economy, their trade, the governments intentionally create unrest in other countries. Look at what is happening to Sri Lanka. If there is peace in Sri Lanka, there will be more ship movement thru their ports than the other countries sharing Indian Ocean. World’s 80% of the trade is thru Indian Ocean. Think of all the countries at the shores of Indian Ocean that made tremendous growth since the time war started in Sri Lanka. Will these countries let Sri Lanka be at peace? Are we any better than animals? Probably we are worse because we are able to think better (or crueler) ways to destroy others.

Does Performance really matter for a confident living?

One 10th standard girl comes to my house every day to study her lessons. It is not that she is poor in studies nor her parents are illiterate. Her mother is an M.Phil and her father is equally / better educated. This little girl is studying in a reputed school in Chennai, so the teachers should be knowledgeable enough. I have been observing this teenager for the past three weeks. She is above average in studies and scores about 85 to 90% in most of the subjects. What is the relationship of description about this girl with the topic? With all the gifts she has (good school, good parents, good economic back ground), is she confident? I do not think so. She is scared of all the subjects – even the ones she is good at and interested in!! I know another girl, who scores only about 40% is much more confident. What does this imply? Is it the scores that make you confident?

Another example – I have a friend – an MBA from a big B school. His confidence levels are much lower than another friend of mine who is only a B.Com from a mediocre college. My B.Com friend joined a construction company as storekeeper and now is a manager leading very happy successful life. Is it the degree that makes you confident?

A family I know struggles to make the ends meet is planning to have a baby with all the confidence in the world but another software couple who are earning in lakhs is not confident of having a baby – they are not sure if they can meet the economical needs of child rearing!!! Is it the amount of money or your earning capacity that makes you confident?

I am sure actor Vadivelu is and was more confident than actor Srikanth. So, it is not the looks that you make you confident. Vijayakanth - who is not as big hero as Rajanikanth is into politics now (not that I support or despise any of these stands) and rocking. Is it popularity or fame that gives you confidence to take an action?

What decides the confidence level of a person? Does one’s expectation tie him down? One thing I observe in common in the confident lot is that they are not worried about the ‘perfect’ results. They are almost OK with any result, and they jump into action or they keep happy. Is this the real meaning of “Do your Duty - But without Concern for the Results”?

Can Drum Stick grow in a container?

I started gardening in an inevitable situation… After working as a software professional for 12 years, I had to take a break for a year due to a health reason. The first one month went in just relaxing… doing nothing except eating good food and sleeping. The second month was for cleaning the house and arranging things in much simpler and efficient way :-) Japanese 5 S, spring cleaning sites from the US, Indian beliefs on cleanliness and what not – information from all over the globe was applied. Half way thru the third month, I had no cupboard unturned, no clothe untouched, no window dirty. Cleaning took only a few minutes a day. My experience in Project Management made me prepare a checklist for each room and each of these checklists took two or three minutes to complete if cleaning was done every day.

I hate sitting idle and I can’t stand the TV serials; channels like Travel & Living, History were good but they were repetitive (Good for me :-) ). Fate forced me to sit at home doing nothing serious. This situation forced me think of new things to do.

I like plants for their green look and their capability to produce vegetables or fruits on their own. So I decided to settle down for gardening. There came the first challenge. We are living in the first floor of Government Quarters Apartment Complex. I was not supposed to use the vacant land, though it was just vacant and not used by Govt. (by anybody for that matter) for any useful purpose. My balconies were very small. 9’ X 2’ and 5’ X 2’; used for washing and drying clothes. Maximum space I could squeeze out is about 9’ X 1’ area. Next constraints (that I took voluntarily) are a) not to go for just flowering plants and b) not spend more than a few hundreds of rupees on this project.

What are the best plants that can be grown in containers? Google gave me 970,000 results in 2.1 seconds (amazing, isn’t it!!). But alas, most of the information was about flowering plants… I changed the search to best vegetables that can be grown in containers; another huge set of results in a couple of seconds. This set was useful to an extent but for that it contained details of American and English climates and vegetables. For Indian condition, that too for east coast climates, what can be grown was a difficult thing to find out for a novice gardener(!!?!?) like me. In about two to three hours of reading I got a fair idea of where to start and what to grow.

Tomato, Brinjal, and Cluster Beans were my choices. I did not buy containers for them; instead, I used old water cans (25 litters, 12 litters) and a bucket. Red soil, sand and compost were easy to find in a shop just a walk away. In two days, my containers were ready for the seeds. Brinjal seeds did not even sprout. Tomato and Cluster Beans were very good - they sprouted pretty quickly. I was in the balcony every half an hour :-) expecting some change. I knew the number of leaves in each of these seedlings.

Next week gave me a big shock; my cluster beans seedlings started dying one by one. I was very upset watching those lovely looking seedlings die in front of my eyes; I could do nothing to save them. Tomatoes were my only consolation. There were 5 of them. They were growing in good speed. The smell of the leaves was good too. On a fine morning, there were two flowers on two plants. I am not sure if farmers, other expert gardeners, environmentalists and all other species of plant growers get excited to see flowers of a tomato plant as I was!!! I was so thrilled!!!

One week passed without any other event. Next week, there were a few more flowers, but no sign of pollination. I decided to help (?!) the plants in pollination as there were no butterflies and bees around. I rubbed the flowers on each other. Every day I did the job of the butterflies & bees and eagerly waited… The wait seemed indefinite… with no change.

In the meanwhile, I got hold of contact number of a horticulture officer, who told me that adding urea will help and he invited me for a one day session on “Urban Horticulture for Apartment Dwellers”. Session was interesting. He recommended greens, drum stick, and bitter guard for my space specifications. I could not believe that drum sticks could grow in a container. Next day, I sowed a few drumstick seeds and vendayam (methi / fenugreek) seeds. Methi was a good idea. They grow about 5 cm in 7 days so you can harvest in just a week’s time. I have Methi dhal every Friday and Fridays are my sowing days too :-)

Drumstick seed was quiet for two weeks. I stopped expecting any change in that container; but I did not sow any thing new too, not even the methi seeds. I am not an emotional gardener any more it seemed! In the third week, soil in the container had a small bump. I thought it could be an ant pit and did not bother. Next day, there were two tiny leaves on a slender stem, I was not sure if it was drumstick, but I wished so. Another week passed. The seedling grew to a plant, and wow!!! It was a drumstick plant. In about four weeks from then, it touched 4 feet. I pruned the top so that the plant would start to branch out. Now it is a healthy, good looking and useful plant. This success has satisfied my urge for productivity. My neighbors followed suite. There are jasmines, bitter guards and drumsticks along with their roses now!! I am thinking of finding out another interesting thing to do now as my space is fully done and watering the plants takes just a few minutes now :-)