Balamanikandan

BALA MANIKANDAN C (in BLOCK letters, in English) came up a couple of days ago, for help with filling a form for "Teacher Training".He is the only student from Valagapattu to have written the XII std exam this year and he passed with just over 50% marks.

What and how he will teach, were he to qualify, is worrisome, but a different issue.

Here, we would like to focus on a society in transition. Like we have said earlier, these people were a self reliant community up until 30 years ago. They are tribals (Scheduled: Malayali tribe), there is no caste in their villages, everyone has land, people by and large have enough to eat. There is no destitution or beggary.

Then why are they poor? Perhaps because they do not have TVs , refrigerators, fancy clothes: All the stuff they watch on TV (There is a "Panchayat" TV in every village) leads them to believe themselves poor.

Their natural dignity takes a beating when they are ill-treated by the Government Officials, and cheated by the middlemen and brokers.

Boys like Balamanikandan dream of an escape from all this by becoming a teacher in the Government School set up. This would mean an assured salary and no "slogging it out" in the rain or sun.

The reality is however that it it is a lottery with the dice loaded against first generation learners all the way. It is possible (actually probable) that after all his studying, he will not get a job, and be "neither here nor there".

We know some such boys: They are unskilled in the things that their fathers are expert. They are schooled and hence do not pick up the techniques of ploughing, weeding, sowing and the hundred other tricks-of-the-trade.And, what farm-schooled children have: the stamina to work outdoors for long stretches, the ease with which they use their bodies; these school-schooled children lack altogether.

So they try things like Tailoring in Tiruppur or Auto-driving in Coimbatore. Their land lies fallow up here: They are tempted to sell it (to their stay-at-home cousins, which is perhaps still acceptable, or sometimes to outsiders which creates a whole new set of problems for the community) and move permanently to the city.

And where do they then live? Not among their native fields with their cows and goats close at hand, but in the slums of the city. And then what chance do their children have? It takes just one generation to lose the skills and knowledge accumulated over generations.

The Slum-dwellers in the city have names, and their names are Kolandaian and Govindraj and Boochi and perhaps, though we hope not (fingers crossed): Balamanikandan.

Rogue's Gallery aka Visiting Faculty

Russell was a whirlwind Scott
Who came one Thursday noon.
He left after five days' stay,
And oh! that was much too soon.

His visit leavened many things,
Not least our painting skills.
Sourdough Bread, of course, was baked;
Cakes cooled on window sills.

We learnt to 'sit' while he painted;
In an hour portraits were done.
So was the Torte Bourbonnais:
Glad I don't have to rhyme that one!

Ali, Lisa and Emma were present
In the absence, so to speak:
We look forward to the time when
They, too, can be here for a week.

A month, of course would be better:
There's so much to learn and to share.
But till such time as they travel here,
Letters should travel by air.

One can go on in this vein for ever;
The poet's art is knowing when to stop.
The cake that is folded lightly
Is sure not to be a flop.

Phoenix landing

Phoenix is scheduled to land on Mars at about 4.30 am, IST, tomorrow (26 May 2008) according to Badri Baba, who got this information from a Countdown timer at the NASA site when he was doing various other "looking for"s.

I remember, some thirty years ago,when I was Badri Baba's age, Viking was scheduled to land on Mars and I kept track through daily and sometimes twice-daily "handouts" which my father would bring home from the USIS.

Today, verily , the mountain has come to Mohammad.

The boys have been "into" the Solar System, the Universe, Space probes, and suchlike for a few months now. There are boulders on the "Nesting Grounds" which serve as Spaceships every evening, till it is too dark to be outside. They have been landing on Mars and the "twilight zone" of Mercury. So they were thrilled to bits a couple of days ago when they found that there was to be an actual landing.

Varun Baba, on hearing about Laika, Belka and Strelka being sent into space, created a world where dogs send men into space "to see if it is OK" before themselves venturing out.

Badri Baba has some stuff on the Scratch site which you can take a look at.

The house is full of paper models (truncated icosahedrons I am told) of the planets. This started off with paper models of the earth. Prior to that there were maps of various places, this possibly being sparked off by our trip to Assam, where they were tracking our train journey, in real time, on an atlas.

They have also made a map of the U.K. on which are marked Carlisle, Dumfries and Gallowgate.I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out the connection.

Some pictures

These photos are taken by Deepak., Pablo, and Madhu, when they visited here, at various times.For the uninitiated (like yours truly), click on a picture to enlarge.

Duraisamy's new diesel pump

Our neighbour, Duraisamy has just bought a Diesel Engine and pump after at least two years of saving and skimping. So we were worried about all this talk of soaring Oil prices and Rationing of Diesel...

Duraisamy was pushed in this direction by various things. Till now, he cultivated Tapioca which is the cash crop here, which required him to be here three or four months of the year. The rest of the year he would work in Kerala where he could earn more money than in TN.

His wife, Pottiamma, has severe diabetes and for at least the last two years has had daily insulin shots: She spent a week in the Hospital down in Sittilingi run by our friends Regi and Lalitha, and learnt to administer her own injections. Regi and Lalitha have also advised her to include Ragi and Greens in her diet and cut down on Rice.

According to Regi, there is a lot of diabetes hereabouts because of changes in the diet of the people:

A generation ago, there was no road up from Salem, and Old-timers speak of their going to the shandy, some twenty km away, once in six months, with their cash crop on their heads (kaddukai/harda/hartaki/terminalia chebula), and returning with salt and matches. They were self sufficient with regard to everything else! So children grew up eating a variety of grain (samai, kambu, ragi, veragarisi and others which I have never seen before coming here, let alone know the English equivalents of) and legumes and plenty of vegetables (pumpkins and gourds), and fruits for the picking (guavas,bananas, papayas, jackfruit, mangoes, wood-apples, nellikai, ber....)

Now, Tapioca is a monoculture cash crop, and most people eat only Rice, and that too Rice from the Ration shop. Trees have been cut and sold for timber: hence less fruit to pick.Vegetables, too, are sold for cash, and that means fewer vegetables for home consumption. This poverty of diet shows up in an increase in ill-health and an increase in the number of diabetics in particular.

Duraisamy hopes to grow some Ragi so that the dosage of Pottiamma's insulin intake could be reduced.

Earlier, everyone used to have cattle (to plough), and rice (and other) straw were used as cattle fodder in the dry months. Now, people have sold their cattle, and instead hire tractors to do the ploughing. Rice straw has become yet another "cash crop" which travels down to the plains. The price of Rice straw has therefore become prohibitive for people like Duraisamy who could earlier get it almost free from neighbours. He hopes, with his Diesel pump to be able to feed his cattle himself.

His movements are towards self sufficiency, but he is obviously at the mercy of The Market , The Finance Minister, and the price in dollars of a barrel of oil.

Fingers Crossed for his success!

Dipodo's Hill

New Year's Time was when we had a house full of kids and tried various ways of getting the house empty.

One such was a trek to Dipodo's Hill with Madhu

Whiter Cloth?

"Plant your words where Profit lies; Whiter cloth takes faster Dyes": This from the Panchatantra.
Both Sonati and I have been feeling/wondering for a while now about putting up a blog. to "interact" as it were. After all, we do read blogs, visit other sites etc.

Then came Sumana's article on Home Schooling

Mother knows best - livemint



This made both of us think that we should probably write from our experience.To let people know that this "Home Schooling" is not some elitist or faddist thing. It is actually about being more with our children than most people seem to be nowadays.It is also something that happens to everyone and their children.

Kids are around their parents and they learn/imbibe/whatever.

It is actually the parents' fear of consequences ("But what about their marks/certificates/chhapas of various sorts?") rather than a fear that the children will not learn anything which keeps people from home schooling. A little reflection shows that the latter is quite absurd.Children learn like Fish swim.

If one spends time and watches/listens one will be truly amazed at the things children know and can do without any formal instruction. They do not make a big deal of the things they know or can do. The day a child learns to cycle may be a big day; the next day cycling is a given!

We adults need to resolve the confusions in ourselves first. For a start we have to separate the Exam Industry from Learning.

And if you feel that your child has to write an exam, put it to him honestly: "I am scared, so you must write an exam". The child will take it on and learn to cope with the exam industry. (I speak from experience: tell the kids that exams have nothing to do with learning and they will handle it much better than half truths like exams are necessary to gauge how much you have learnt and so on)

We need to look back at our childhoods, schools, honestly and not through romantic rose tints. What, about those days, were The Good Old Days? Certainly not the monotony of the classroom and the preparing for an exam!