Education - few thoughts on how, what and why.. :)

Whenever we debate regarding our society’s problem, we end up with education. We think that education is the key for solving all kinds of problem. But we fail when we come to the procedure of educating all. Our government is trying very hard for many years, but after spending huge amount of money and time, the result is not satisfactory, though they are still working hard. Education is very funny, if we think little deeper on it and its association with the solutions of the problems we are facing now. The irony is the kind of education we are getting also actually takes equal responsibility in causing the problem.

I mean the solution doesn't lie in mare description of saying providing education to mass. Equal importance should be given to what is being educated also. Education system is the biggest weapon we can use to shape the society – some people call it “weapon of mass instruction”. But the biggest mistaken perception our society has towards education is – it is available only inside the class room of schools, colleges and university campuses. Another wrong perception is thinking getting education is only for getting a job. It is not the mistake of the people; I would say it is the byproduct of the system that is being developed to make the procedure simpler. When I was kid, many of my friends dropped school and didn't give interest to their study, because they think their parent is not rich enough, they cannot become doctor, engineer and IAS, and therefore what is the use of education. I have friends who said, ‘after completion of master if we do not get job, what is the use of doing that’. At that time, there were many university students who were jobless. In my state still more than 90% (may be more or less) of the population think getting education is only for getting job – mostly in government organization. I don’t mean that is wrong, getting job is one important reason but there are few more things that we are not realizing, may be because of the kind of education we are getting from our schools and universities. It doesn't mean we have to blame the schools alone; it is time to see education from holistic point of view. Every damn small thing we encountered in our life taught us, and that is also an education. The kind of parents and the family culture we have, the words they used, the moral and value they follow, the kind of locality where we brought up, the kind of friends we have, and the movies and other entertainment mediums and also the festivals and rituals we follow is also an education. But it depends, some people see following wrong thing is the education and some people think avoiding the wrong things after seeing those is education. 

I feel our education system should give more importance on the morality and self esteem. And also teaching the students to be themselves and be what they want to be. It is big sin to criticize the student who doesn't want to become doctor or engineer. And also should punish those teachers who compare one student with others. We born with different face, the same way we born with different interest and that make us different – different skill sets. The actual purpose of education should be like facilitator and moral guide for guiding the student to reach his destination. It is not deciding a fix destination for all and pushing them to walk there, and eliminating those who cannot travel to that path. When morality comes, here comes the responsibility – towards self and society. Our societal value is getting down, the rape and molestation case is rising up, the crime rate is increasing, and people do not trust to each other. This is because of complete failure of the education system. The failure is because we consider only schools and universities are responsible for providing education. The things that should be constant to all are moral and ethics, not the career they choose. When paying above ten lakhs for getting a small post in governmental organization/department becomes culture, the problem is not with the people who are taking money, but the kind of education that taught to the educated youths who think giving bribe is not wrong and it is acceptable.

Just thinking - about selling fear & hope

Life insurance works crazy. I got an offer from big bazaar today for purchasing goods above rs.2500, i.e. a life insurance policy – according to policy I or my family will get Rs. 4, 00,000 if I die accidentally or permanent total disablement happens to me. They took only rs.400 from me, and there are no any other extra fees or insurance premium amount to be paid.

Now the irony is how can I explain this policy to my mother, can I say to her like this – my dear mamma, in case if your beloved son is death or permanently disabled, please go to any Big bazaar and collect Rs. 4, 00, 000. And what will be the reaction of my mother? Whether I should thank to that staff – who congratulate me and telling me “sir you got an offer” and reminding me about my death, which is too horrific death, not normal and peaceful death. I don’t want to go to in depth of their lost and profit of fear selling business. Obviously they are very smart business people, and idea is fantastic. Nobody likes to remember the end of life, and nobody wants to face any kind of accident. Even though we don’t want to think about it, these people remind us that - telling it may happen to you sir, any time, any moment, future is unpredictable, what will happen to you family and this few money will definitely help you. And finally we are convinced that bad thinks may happen to us. Seriously I never wish to and thought of these negatives thought before they explain me about the benefits of their policy – what a fantastic offer!

On the other hand, recently I have encountered with a fine gentleman who does palmistry. He came to our office, and started predicting about me, most are true – my wishes, my thought and my future. He was not like old model Sadhu type, he wore nice black color blazer, and he carries nice file cover, very professional and talks very confidently. He did some magic and predicting my thoughts and family. He told me about my luck, about my ambition and few things that I want to avoid. I was amazed. Finally he started talking about God and asked me five thousand rupees. I didn’t give him five thousand, I gave him only 200. After he went I realized that I was fooled.

I thought of his predictions –

• 1.       He said I want to make a career in education line and wish to continue further study. Question is how did he know my wishes? Answer is simple - I am working in an educational institute and I am young, obviously it is not that difficult to guess my wishes.
• 2.       He said I think too much, confused and frustrated thinking about the career and future. But it is common for everyone, whose are in my age and generation. We the Y – generation people are very much career conscious and people with age 25-30 usually thinks and doubt too much because it is our transformation stage.

He said few more things, which I don’t remember now.

Now let me explain you his business tactical strategies. He always speaks best things about me and my future, as like he is wishing and praying for my well being. He speaks about wealth – I will be very wealthy person, speaks about my future life partner – I will get a very good partner, I will have two kids, and about my career and dreams - that is for sure going to fulfill. When I looked at these predictions, I found these are the common wishes everyone have. He used more add on tactics – he said, there is a girl who is loving you secretly and you are going to find her very soon and you two are made for each other. Now the question is, if you hear this will you not happy? Who will not happy, this is human nature (though I know this prediction is completely wrong in my case, seriously I tried to find that girl by unfolding all the memory files stored inside my brain, but no clue). He didn’t say anything special things, what he said were just natural phenomena and the happy things he predicted about are also wishes everybody has.  

I was thankful to my conscience and my colleague, much senior than me, because of that and him I gave him only 200. After he left, talking to my colleague, I came to know that these people have very good business, and their clients are mostly high profile and very rich people. He had past experience; he was also fooled once in his life. They make the people comfortable in putting their hands inside the pocket.

 Our world works in very funny way. We think something, happen something and understand something. We don’t know what is reality and truth; we live with incomplete information; with all artificially build perceptions, which are agreed by all of us as truth. (Now you are confused, I am damn sure about that). By selling fear and hope we can make money, associating those with few tangible experiences. The money which is nothing but piece of paper, which everybody accepts as something valuable that can transects goods. 

An imaginary mental boundary between Lawai & Imphal...

When I was returning Guwahati from Imphal, inside the bus I saw a Manipuri film, where one guy from Lawai (village), goes to his friend’s house which is in Imphal (capital city). That guy when entered his friend’s house he had a Khongdrum(Calabash – a big one) in his hand leaning on his right solder (like Hanuman with his Gada), and bunch of big Yendem(Arum) in his left hand. He wore formal dress with a nice pair of slippers. In another scene when he was crossing the road, he saw an airplane flying above his head, his response was like, it was the first time he is seeing the airplane. It was a comedy part of the movie.

I closed my eyes and look back to my life and I was thinking, did I ever went to Imphal like that, with Khongdrum as Gada, yendem in the left hand, looking airplane while crossing the road and wearing a formal dress with nice pair of sleepers. Then I look upon my friends (in my memory), did they ever do like that. It is funny to think, why I was thinking like that. Oh! Then I found the answer, I am from the countryside of our state Manipur, which people from Imphal called Lawai. Ha ha ha! It is funny, we have a saying also “Lawai macha khongbi chao, charuna pati faba”. Meaning is “people from lawai has big hallux (great toe) and they use paddy plant as a belt”. Sometimes I seriously measured my khongbi with those of my friends from Imphal, and I found some guys from Imphal have bigger Khongbi than me ;).

If one imphal macha, mistakenly use the word “lawai macha” he will convince you with the meaning like this “see my friend Lawai is not decided by the place where you belong, it is decided by person and the choukhataba (uncivilized) thinking he has”. And some guys when they drink and when they fight each other, the most popular word they have in their mouth is “Lawai” even to the fellow Imphal mates also. In a few cases, one of your friends, Imphal macha talking about another friend mentioning lawai macha, and immediately he realized you are also from Lawai, oh! That moment! ooofff!!!. There is a big confusion with this terminology “Lawai” – it is interpreted in two ways one as a villager and another as uncivilized & out of fashioned people. In this case, your friend was talking about the second meaning to your other uncivilized friend, but the funny part is Lawai also means the village place, where you are belonging to. It is not imaginary case, it happens in reality also.

Sometimes I feel so funny, when I say about my village, they reply – “oh! That is very far” with body language like my village is 5 days away from Imphal, but in actual it takes only 1hr and 30 minutes to reach by bike. By the way, the bus service is also there, and it takes only 2hrs and thirty minutes to reach.

Some lawai machas want to act like Imphal macha, there are so many funny and interesting stories. My mother once told me a story about a lady from our village. She was eloped by a guy from some other village of Manipur, telling her as he is from Yaiskul (a place in Imphal), that girl also lied to him by saying she is from Keisampat (another place in Imphal). It must be really funny when they know the truth of each other.

Once when my friend asked me about my dream girl and asked me to choose one from our village, I replied simply as “I don’t want to marry a girl who belongs to my village”, but he interpreted it as I like a girl from Imphal (choukhatpa), he replied me as “me macha de yadeko, Imphalge choukhatpa loudoine”. Ha ha! I seriously didn’t mean Imphal, I mean any place other than my village.

Lawai nupi and Lawai pakhang are so commonly used terminology in Manipur. The guy who doesn't know current fashion is considered as Lawai pakhang, as I saw in the movie, that Lawai pakhang didn't dress according to the current fashion and he was not aware of the taste of coffee, he thought why the tea was bitter. I remember one of my students suggested me to take a nice eyeglass while suggesting she mentioned don’t choose “Lawai pakhang type”, I know she didn’t mean to tell me lawai macha. 

In reality, nowadays guys & girls from lawai also dress according to fashion. The thing is, in actual, if one girl from lawai and another girl from imphal if stands together, it is impossible to identify who is from Imphal by looking at them.

I also heard people saying, most of the guys & gilrs from Lawai are simple and innocent. It is the funniest compliment towards lawai machas, I ever heard. I don’t know how they developed such a theory. As per my knowledge, I have seen so many lawai machas also died because of drug overdose, and so many guys from Imphal are super honest, simple and innocent and vice-versa.

This Lawai & Imphal, though nobody seriously thinks about this, still has rooted in our society. The ego of a few Imphal machas and lack of self-esteem of many Lawai mchas causes this imaginary difference between the two same groups of people.

My home - sweet or bitter I love it.... :)

We have a perception that we are the king of our life. We think we live with the principle “this is my life and my world, I can do whatever I wish to do”. But in reality, life is all about choices and accepting & adapting the changing time and turning the direction of my life’s vehicle according to the road, set up by various controllable & uncontrollable factors. It requires balance and lots of sacrifice to choose the choice where I wish to travel. There are so many internal and external factors to be considered before choosing the choice. When we look every things happening in our life is, after all, the choices we take. What is called independence? Or king of my own life? Is it taking the decision which brings only difficulty and unhappiness to our life? Or is it taking the right decision so that we live our life with dignity and respect? If we look strategically we find that, the people we call successful people, are the people who work on their long term vision, which is something great and something which is very hard to achieve. But the funny thing is, in order to get what he wish, he sacrificed many important and happiness moment of his life.

   

My point is, life is not that easy as we see in movie. It is not that easy to say “I love you” to the person we love the most, wearing the dress we like the most, choosing the career we want the most, doing the job where we wish to live, and finding the love we require the most. But we find the way to give satisfaction, for temporary and not completely, by substituting of those things with something we don’t have but we wish to have. Like looking her/his photo (reference – old Hindi/Manipuri movie), by keeping the picture of those dresses we like, by dreaming about that career we want and by living with the hope “one day”. In the same way people who love his place very much but cannot live there because of the circumstances and his long term vision/goal of his life, usually express beauty and love of his place with few l lines. That gives kind of satisfaction to him.  Same way I am trying here, even though I am not a good writer.

My home - sweet or bitter I love it.... :) 

I opened the old almirah and found those old books, with spider webs on it,

Where my childhood dreams are hidden inside the pages.

 Some are buried completely, some are hidden and waiting for me to open.

The smell of the air is still the same, fresh and pure with lots of memory in it.

The sun is still rising up from the middle of two beautiful hills, which is visible from my house,

I remembered my mother and father used to tell me to pray the Sun,

while I was struggling with my small hands to open my eyes.

And I remember the question I had in my mind “is it right to pray without taking bath?”

I think of my friends, some are still in home, many are vanishes from my life to find their own life,

though their memory is still living in my mind with this village where we grown up together.

I see the field, now half occupied by Indian Army, once we used to play all kinds of sports.

I think of our cricket team and dedication we put on our game.

The sun is still hot, the air is still fresh, and field is still empty

Except those friends and I are here to play on it.

The dreams of small boys are hiding beneath the grass of that filed.

I am feeling of digging it out, but I have no time as like my other friends.

I have to leave this place with sweet memories and hope.  

An unknown love story

It was a humid afternoon of summer in Guwahati. I was looking for a mobile servicing centre. I was sweating and my mind was boiling because of anger, since the information of Karbon mobile servicing centre I got from the internet was wrong. Finally I got one local guy’s mobile servicing store. He repaired all kind of china made or unbranded mobiles. By the way, after servicing to him, I had to purchase a new mobile. It was not that easy to fix my mobile.

Small room, walls were occupied by mobile accessories and covers. I could see few unfixed, old mobiles beneath the table through the glass surface. He was trying hard using his limited resources with the limited idea. I could see he was irritated, when his friend disturbed him.

I was standing leaning on his table and practicing my patience. Sometime I felt pity on him, and some time I appreciated him and his effort of fixing up my mobile, in spite of not knowing what he was actually doing.

At that time, the time of hard time for me as well as for him, two girls came into that small mobile servicing store. They were not beautiful, I mean to my eyes, but I felt one among those girls, is very beautiful to the mobile repairer.   

I thought she was just another customer

But she was the most special customer to him.

There were happiness, there were shyness, and there were smiles in both the sides

The smile on her face, were specially for him

Her eyes were dark; her lips were red, all because of him.

Her brand new red coloured salwar kameez, was only for him.

The guy didn’t say anything, other than smile, the most precious smile.

His eyes were seeing on my mobile, but not looking at it.

His hands were waiting for the instruction from his mind,

But the instructions were blocked by his heart, it seems.

All these happened in a fraction of second.

The sun has to set, the flower has to wither, the leafs has to fall

They also had to come to reality, so they came.

He kept busy on my mobile, she was standing next to me.

I could see, she was calling on his mobile, from her mobile.

An unknown call to him, he picked up, but didn’t get any reply.

Again she called him, he was irritated.

She smiled and he smiled too.

She came to repair her not-wrong mobile.

He was also willing to repair her not-wrong mobile.

I don’t know what is their story, how they met etc.

But what I saw in that humid summer afternoon was,

People do behave, which they are not aware of, very strange, when they are in love.

Being an observer, being an idle man in that moment, I could only wish them.

I wished them silently, the success of their love story which is happening in a corner of the city

Which nobody will care, nobody will talk about.

Oh! He fixed my mobile at last. He charged Rs. 400 from me. But it again stopped working after two days.

The mirror ....

What a surprised morning it was! I could not sleep again. Half the city was sleeping. In that morning I felt very unusual feeling that I never felt before in my life, it was so unusual, I cannot even term the name of that feeling. Everything looks unusual in that morning.

I saw the mirror which was hanging on my wall, very strange, I felt like it was calling me. Like he was whispering me something, a very important lesson of life. I was curious, and because of my curiosity I went to see the mirror. I turned my face towards it, I saw my face. What a disappointment, I thought, nothing special is there, and it is the same mirror I see every day. When I was just about to turn away from that mirror, I again felt as the mirror was whispering me something, though the voice was not clear.  

It was strange, and I felt little fear too. Since I was brave (ha ha) I stand in front of the mirror for few minutes and I was trying to understand what the mirror was actually trying to say me. When I looked deeper inside the mirror, I saw me. I saw my eyelid which tells about the things which is inside my brain, about the happiness and sadness.  After sometime, slowly I started understanding what the mirror was telling me.  

That day, the mirror, which was hanging on my wall, taught me a very important lesson of life, i.e. “Life is all about reflections of what we do and think”. When I smiled, the person inside the mirror smiled me back. When I frowned, the person inside the mirror also showed me the same frowning face. When I had doubt in my mind, the person in front of me also doubted at me. When I love, I get the love back.  When I trust, I get the trust back. When I hurt, I hurt myself more.

Now I regret by thinking, why I didn’t know this lesson before. Life is all about actions and reactions. I read it in spiritual books - about good karma and bad karma, and also read in my science paper - actions and reactions. I feel it is an universal truth. I believe the sufferings we get are because of few actions that we did in the past and happiness we get is also because of good things we did in the past. Forming a career, keeping a relationship, managing a company etc. is just like gardening in my home garden. The kind of fruit we get, the kind of result we get, is depend on the kind of seed we sowed. This is where the knowledge and wisdom comes into play, to assist us in deciding the right action which will lead us to get the right reaction/result.

Attempted fiction series - 1 (A stupid love story)

After long time I am visiting my blog, thinking of writing something here. But my mind is totally blank. Let me write something different, something new and something I never wrote before. But what shall I write?

Ok. Let me try to write a love story, a short love story; a fiction love story, very short one, about love at first sight. It sounds interesting! Isn’t it?

Story starts like this..... That day I had to visit State Bank, which is in Zoo Road, Guwahati. (Let me narrate like as it was happened to me, it will be easy for me to narrate).  In Guwahati, everything starts at 10:00 am, though sun rises here before 5:00am. As usual I reached before time; I had to wait for 30 minute. There is always benefit for coming early, I completed my task as soon as the bank was opened and rushed to my office. Unlike other working youths I don’t have any bike and therefore I always have to depend on city bus. In this summer season with temperature above 36 degree Celsius, you just imagine what would be the condition inside the bus. Yes it was horrible, and it was fully loaded too. I usually go to office before 9:00am when there are fewer crowds, but that day I had to go in that condition; the natural heat because of summer, the absorbed heat because of metallic body of the bus, and carbon dioxide excreted from the people that absorbed the maximum heat and also the body heats emitted from the co-passengers just made the place horrible. In such cases I always prefer to put my headphone on my ear with few mixtures of old and new songs that diverts my mind from that tragedy filled situation. But the only thing that cannot avoid is caring of my well polished leather shoe from stamped, if you ever have traveled in bus, you must be aware that the better you polish your shoe the bigger the chances to be stamped over it. 

Now let me come to the real story. Inside that horrible environment, suddenly I saw something, which I can say the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Yes I am talking about a lady, with pink T – shirt (her shirt was exactly not pink, but I don’t know how to express the exact color) and blue jean with very natural style. The funniest thing is when first time I saw her, she also found to be looking at me. I am sure, you are little confused, I mean our eyes were caught co-incidentally in perfect time. That makes her my most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.   

If you are from India and you are familiarized with Bollywood movies, I am damn sure that you must be thinking like this, “I went near to her and there were two empty sits where we sat together, again co-incidentally, than we chatted.” But since it was not a Bollywood movie, nothing happened like that. What actually happened was, when I looked at her, when she looked at me we steal our eyes, I looked outside the door (I don’t know where she looked) and remembered about the book “Blink” where about the love at first sight is written, that once I had read in our library when I was in college. And I was concentrating to the song “ Bryan Adam’s - I finally found someone, that knocks me off my feet”.  After few minute our bus reached Ganeshguri, my stoppage and finally I wanted to see her. When I was about to get down from the bus, I turned towards her, Oh Again! Our eyes were caught, I found she was also looking at me and her eye went down. Than................................................................................................................................................................

I am tired... Let this be the first part, and let me complete the second part another day.