Creativity, character and exams

We were once again discussing the perennial grouch of pupils against examinations - that they test crude memorising power to the detriment of far more valuable attributes like creative imagination, character qualities and so on. I asked how many people would have ever passed through school if they were tested for whether they were Einsteins and Tagores, and how they measured up against ideal characters such as Lincoln, St. Francis and Sri Ramkrishna. Predictably enough, there was a deafening silence which said everything...

Engineering wisdom

Some gags are too good not to share. Here's one such: What part of the car causes the most accidents? Answer - the nut that holds the wheel.

Marital bliss!

My mobile service provider keeps sending me a free joke every day, and an inordinate number of those are about the nasty side of marriage! One said the wife complained to her husband 'Dismiss this driver at once - he nearly got me killed!' to which the husband replied, 'Please give him one more chance...' and another defined marriage as a ceremony which involves putting rings on the fingers of a woman and chains on the hands and feet of a man. It must be a rabid misogamist who thinks up and circulates jokes like these. Strange that women subscribers haven't started protesting in large numbers. Or is it that they merely smirk, and don't care a hoot?

Ring in the new...

A wise guy told me recently that New Year's Eve was the night when millions of people got miserably drunk, frozen and broke in the quest for happiness, and a few thousand businessmen encouraged them lustily while counting their profits in warm offices before laughing all the way to the bank the next morning.

It should be clear from the above that I do not believe in special days. I had a very quiet and restful night myself, after watching crowd antics on TV for a while - exactly as I have been doing every time for almost two decades, to my entire satisfaction. My best wishes, for whatever they are worth, to all my readers nevertheless.

Intelligent life

I found this cartoon in today's newspaper irresistible: A says to B 'My calculations prove the existence of intelligent life on the moon'. B says 'If that's true, how come they've never contacted us?' and A replies irritably 'I don't think you're paying attention'.

Grassroots wisdom... Copenhagen listening?

The other day I had gone shopping, and there was this young vegetable vendor yelling lustily at hesitant customers - dordaam korben na, ei bela ja paren kheye nin, 2012-te duniya shesh hoye jachchhe - (don't haggle, eat all you can while you can, the world is coming to an end in 2012)!

Good to see that people - especially those who have to live toughly - can make a joke out of such things.

Happy families

The young husband says over the phone he can't come home in time for tea; the workload is too heavy. The pretty wife says 'No problem, I'll have another companion today, fitter than you, more attractive...' The jealous husband, all work forgotten, comes rushing home, only to find that the wife is having tea with a particular brand of biscuits.

A gist of an advertisement feature I just saw on TV. I wonder about the tastes and I.Q.-levels of the target audience for which this sort of thing is designed. I'm sure they comprise 90 percent of our young educated population in their 20s and early 30s. Isn't India shining?

Walk while you talk

I was joking only a few months ago that perhaps people actually believe that because it is called a mobile phone, you cannot sit or stand still while talking on it. Now Idea mobile service has come to this town, and Abhishek Bachchan urges everybody in the ad. to walk while they talk. So now I'm sure...

I wonder what the Delhi Police is doing about this ad...

Wow!

I have been regularly posting on this blog for the entire course of the year, and I see this is the 43rd time I am writing here.

And yet so many people are firmly set in their opinion that I am a grumpy, grouchy old man who can neither laugh nor make people laugh...!

Funny notices

Someone sent me a list of funny notices that he had found somewhere. Among them, I found this one particularly ticklish:

Sign on a doctor's door says Specialist in women and other diseases.

Reminded me of Gerry Durrell's hilarious opus, My Family and other animals.

Now here's a gem indeed!

Ananta Bandopadhyay, the leader of the Coordination Committee of state-government employees in West Bengal, a CPI(M) outfit, has said (The Telegraph, 14th November, page 7) that his organisation had 'always wanted work culture in government offices.'

If it had not been for my doctor's stern warning, I would have laughed till I screamed...

Howlers from parents

I hope, when my pupils present and ex- read this, they will newly appreciate why Sir kept insisting so vehemently that it is important to get things like spelling, words and syntax right (and I can entirely believe this article a friend sent me, because I read this kind of stuff everyday in the homework I have to mark, even from supposedly ‘good’ students).

These are real notes written by parents in the Laredo, Texas & United I.S.D. Spellings have been left intact.

1. My son is under a doctor's care and should not take PE today. Please execute him.

2. Please exkuce lisa for being absent she was sick and I had her shot.

3. Dear school: please ecsc's john being absent on jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33.

4. Please excuse gloria from jim today. She is administrating.

5. Please excuse roland from p.e. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.

6. John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face.

7. Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.

8. Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins.

9. Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.

10. Please excuse ray friday from school. He has very loose vowels.

11. Please excuse Lesli from being absent yesterday. She had diahre dyrea direathethe (shits).

12. Please excuse tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak.

13. Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.

14. Please excuse jimmy for being. It was his father's fault.

15. I kept Billie home because she had to go Christmas shopping because i don't know what size she wear.

16. Please excuse jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it monday. We thought it was sunday.

17. Sally won't be in school a week from friday. We have to attend her funeral.

18. My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the marines.

19. Please excuse Jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well.

20. Please excuse mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.

21. Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.

22. Please excuse brenda. She has been sick and under the doctor.

23. Maryann was absent december 11-16, because she had a fever, sore throat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick; fever an sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn't the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.

Now we know why parents are screaming for better education for our kids.

Riggers, teachers...

When the redoubtable (and irrepressible) T. N. Seshan was India's Chief Election Commissioner, he once publicly remarked that some rigging in our elections was always to be expected, since we Indians have rigging/cheating in our blood: after all, he said, our holiest book is called the Rig Veda!

Last night an old boy was lamenting that many college teachers, whether or not they can or want to do anything good for you, are free with threats about how much they can hurt your career if you manage to rub them the wrong way. Well, after all, I reflected aloud, that is only to be expected, wasn't it: look at how Dronacharya is regarded as a 'model' teacher by so many (the Government even gives an award in his name), and look at how he treated Ekalavya when that self-taught unfortunate dared to upstage his favourite pupil Arjuna, whose guardian paid Drona his salary! To put it in trademark Indlish, we are like that only...

Eyes

The saddest thing in the world, said Helen Keller, is not that some people don't have eyes, but that so many people have eyes but cannot see.

If she had been around, I'd only have asked her whether she didn't agree that there is so much nastiness and commonness in this world that those who can indeed see must start wishing, after a point, that they could stop seeing...

My love life, calculated

I saw a cartoon a while ago: husband and wife sitting in bed, scanning their mobile inboxes, and the husband saying 'Our marriage must be on the rocks... you haven't sent me an sms all day.'

Today my mobile service provider sent me one of those promotional short messages they routinely send out to millions of subscribers: for three rupees a minute, I can call up someone designated 'Love Calculator', and s/he will quiz me and let me know whether my wife loves me or not.

I cannot stop marvelling at the speed with which technology is bringing around all-round cultural progress...

Nobel? ha ha ha ha ha...

Barack Obama has been given the Nobel Peace Prize.

I neither can nor need to add to the humour here.

Just by the way: Gandhi wasn't good enough for the Nobel Committee. Enough said!

Plus ça change…

This news item in today’s paper says that a lot of people in Indonesia are blaming the earthquake – and other recent calamities – on their President because numerologists and other experts claim that he has an ‘unlucky’ name (or, for variety, an unlucky date of birth)! Other experts have strongly refuted the claim, insisting that the President’s stars are in fact ‘lucky’ for the country.

There is a saying in French: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more it changes, the more it remains the same). I sometimes watch how fervently our mothers tie all sorts of charms and amulets around various parts of their children’s bodies so that they may "do well in science" and get into the IITs or medical schools. Their children, if they at all notice the contradiction, find nothing embarrassing about it; indeed, some of them, having grown up memorizing science textbooks to get their master’s or doctoral degrees, get very angry when I laugh at their ‘scientific’ pretensions.

One has to pinch oneself sometimes to believe that one is living in 2009, not 1209.

Challenged

I sometimes startle myself with my prescience.

A while ago, when Taarey Zameen Par was the superhit and talking point of the hour, I happened to remark in class that a time was coming when every pupil who was simply too lazy and absent-minded to spell correctly would claim that s/he was a victim of dyslexia, and so deserving of leniency rather than stern reprimands. To that extent, Aamir Khan had done all language teachers a great disservice. In any case, dyslexia is far more uncommon than sheer cussedness (I shall maintain to my dying day that spelling correctly is the first and indispensable sign of literacy – someone who misspells ten common words per written page cannot be called educated, even if he has a PhD to his name. And nothing – besides bad handwriting – so instantly identifies laziness and sloppiness as deep-rooted character traits as poor spelling does).

Well, it came true very recently. When I ruefully asked a pupil how she could possibly spell so many words wrongly, she gave me a bright smile and said ‘Sir, dyslexia!’

Gift from an old boy

Here are a few rib-ticklers that an old boy, Archishman Sarkar, recently sent me.

"Don't I look good in tails?"
"Why not? Your ancestors did."

"You're a liar," said Muscles.
"Yeah?" grumbled the thin man. "Say that again and I'll bust your jaw."
"Consider it said."
"Consider your jaw busted."

"What sort of woman is your wife?"
"She's an angel, that's what she is."
"You're lucky. Mine's still alive."

Two old girl friends met on the street after not seeing each other for several years.
"Belle, my darling," shrieked one. "It's so good to see you. Tell me dear, do you and your husband have those terrible arguments anymore?"
"No", said Belle.
"What made you stop?"
"He died," said Belle.

Patient at a lunatic asylum: "We like you better than the last doctor."
New Doctor (flattered): "And how's that?"
Patient: "You seem more like one of us".

"But doctor," said the worried patient, "are you sure I'll pull through? I've heard cases where the doctor has made a wrong diagnosis, and treated someone for pneumonia who has afterwards died of typhoid fever."
"Nonsense," spluttered the doctor, "When I treat a patient for pneumonia, he dies of pneumonia."


Absentminded professor (leaving church): Who's the absent-minded one now? You left your umbrella back there and I not only remembered mine but brought along yours, too!"
Wife (gazing blankly at him): But neither of us brought one to the church!

Thanks, Archishman.

General knowledge, again...

Anandabazar Patrika reported a few days ago that in one of the so called upmarket schools in Delhi, a lot of pupils had written, in response to a GK test question, that model/actress Lisa Ray was the daughter of Satyajit Ray, and a lot of them had been marked right by the teacher concerned. When the scandal blew up, not only were the pupils blase about it ('How are we supposed to know?') but so were the authorities, on the pretext that the answer was not immediately available to the teacher in her textbook. We are still not supposed to ask what sort of clowns have become teachers these days; and obviously such cretins not only do not carry anything called knowledge inside their heads, but have either never heard of encyclopedias and/or google, or couldn't be bothered to check.

In my childhood, we heard of such things as caricatures - the Bengali comedian Robi Ghosh, playing the part of a 'smart' young man (as 'smart' was understood in the 1970s) glibly telling his father, as proof of being educated, that Indira Gandhi was Mahatma Gandhi's daughter. In three decades, India has progressed so much that now it's not a caricature any more, but everyday reality. 'Clever' young quizzards have said on TV that Pather Panchali was written by Satyajit Ray, and sung songs of Nazrul when asked to sing Tagore. And such things, please note, happen in highly expensive fancy schools which tomtom in the advertisements how they are giving 'world-class education' (makes you wonder what 'world-class' means these days, doesn't it?). The likes of Prof. Amartya Sen, living in faraway ivory towers, have long been lamenting the poor quality of education being given in scantily-endowed government schools all across India. When will they turn to look at the Augean stables that our best private schools have become?

In 1991 I heard this joke: What do you call a New York politician who can spell 'cat'?... You call him talented. These days millions of such talented creatures are having no trouble becoming teachers (and also doctors, engineers, scientists, lawyers, mind you). Close to home, I personally know 'bright' students who wrote or said 'I drawed a picture' and 'He teached me' and couldn't score more than 20% in an impromptu quiz and couldn't write a sensible essay when they were 16 going on to become scholars and teachers, and I keep warning every batch, 'remember, a fool, when he grows old, only becomes an old fool'! I know lots of teachers with first-class degrees who would be lost in class without the notebooks they dictate (borrowed) notes from. If this country is not in a pretty mess, what is it in?