Other Side of the Coin: What Kind of Education?

The story that I heard today really disturbed me. I got a frantic call at 9 am this morning from someone I know very well. Tired, after a hectic weekend, I was in no mood to pick-up the call or talk to this person — however as goes my disposition, I picked up after two missed calls. This lady was calling me up to know what should she do with her twelve year old niece, studying in class -IXth? How should she counsel her? I was intrigued, asked her if there were those pre-teen age problems that many kids encounter these days involving friends, boys, and parents-children dynamics. She was confused and said I must hear the entire story before I can draw my conclusions. I am writing this article with her permission.

She told me that this young lady of twelve years has been harassing her eighty year old grandmother, to give her a complete control over her grandfather’s house and three bedrooms of that house. Not only that, she wants all the property like beds, chairs, sofas, and books, of her late grandfather removed from the rooms of the house and thrown out, because they are old and unnecessary.  She wants the house arranged as per the tastes of her and her friends. Moreover, she has apparently threatened the old grandmother to throw her out of the house if she is not given her ‘share’. I just couldn’t believe my ears — how can a twelve-year old say something like that? It’s a joint family property, the lady informed me and they have a lot of emotional attachment to these properties as the last token of memory of their late father.

Sleep vanished  and I replied “what!” How can such a small kid say these things? This is not possible — kids are completely beyond these adult skirmishes about properties and land. These are school-going children, how can they be a part of these unnecessary family quarrels.” I have briefly met this little girl before — she is a bright young lady, studying in a “good” school, getting fairly good grades. However, this came as a complete shock for me.

I hung-up and made enquiries from other family friends and they all confirmed the news. The old lady is petrified and she has been sent off to the home of some other relatives for a week or so. I called back my acquaintance and asked her that “how does this girl study? when does she get the time to study if she has been into threatening and fighting  her own folks? are the parents instigating her?” My curiosity was regarding the education and the way all these internal family disputes existing in the crumbling joint family structures affect the studies and psyche of children. As far as I remember, our parents were extremely finicky about our education. They went to the extent of being over-protective when we were studying, such that internal family matters, were kept out of the ambit of all children. We were not even invited to sit in the drawing room when uncles, aunties, parents gathered. And here is a child who is threatening her grandparent for a ‘share’ in the property! Completely incomprehensible for me.

I got a strange and intriguing response. The lady told me “You see these are the new generation children. They are very planned and focused. They know very well that CBSE boards have been relaxed and with the new grading systems, every other person gets a First Division and in fact good grades.  They are completely sure of the grades they want and the grades that they get. Moreover, they can threaten with suicides and other such steps in extreme cases, saying that studies are disturbing their mental balance. They do not aim for the best in higher studies — they know very well that a seat can be easily secured in the engineering colleges of their own locality, and after that a job in a company or a small startup is guaranteed. What else do they need? They just have to finish their school, engineering studies and go for a job. With a future as secured as that, what else do they need to do — spend time on Facebooking, talking for hours over mobile phone, or threatening grandparents to concede their properties. They are well-prepared for their future. They do not need parents to fight these battles — they can fight their own battle of inheritance.”

I am shocked  to hear this interpretation. Grades, schooling, higher-studies — everything build us up, true, but I had sincerely not thought of the moral and ethical dimensions involved in them.  It was shocking for me, because after years of higher-education, we are still unclear  about our own future — how can these kids be so secured? If they are then I would call it a dangerous level of complacence and a dangerous trend for a still developing society.

A few years ago my cousin sister-in-law had visited me at the hostel at IIT with her two and half year old kid. We went to shop in a mall. This little child was so sure of what he wanted to wear that I was completely surprised. She could not buy a single dress that was not his choice — if she did, he shrieked at the top of his voice and ran away to hide in the trial room . I was amused then, but later was scared of the coming generations. Children being completely isolated and purely independent at very early ages disturbs me. Many of our moms still buy our clothes and advise us what to wear and what not to, friends advise us what to choose, grandparents advise us what to think, dads tell us what investments to go for, we tell ourselves which advises to seek and which not to. It is a collective activity  …..

I am not a sociologist or a psychologist to be able to comment on these changes in the society. I think from an idealistic perspective.  Even though single, I am crazily fond of kids — have an idea that children can do or think no wrong and if they are, then it is we who are to be blamed. But, I am seriously rethinking our own stance as adults in the society. Are we into literacy rather than education? Education teaches you to be wise and sensible, but literacy teaches you only alphabet that can cater to your hunger, not your wisdom.  What are we doing to our children? What are we preparing them for? The case of this little girl is not an isolated case –  have been hearing similar cases for some years. I often ask my students in the class regarding what literary books have they read? They reply with none or one or two cursory readings. I find it truly dangerous — reading and reading beyond texts is important if we have to develop the ethical, moral and the ‘thinking’ side of individuals.

Agreed, that children should not be over-protected and nor should they be pampered — they should be given rights to voice their opinion. Agreed, that some grandparents are conservative to the extent of being over-interfering in the life of grand children. But, is it desirable that children should be allowed to talk about inheritance and property at such early stages? If I were a parent, I would be extremely strict about such issues being discussed by my child. It would be  unacceptable.

I am confused and nervous about this parenting business. I have heard a statement that “men go for wives who they think can prove to be good mothers for their children”. I am rather unsure of the entire adult population now, men or women — you might call me old fashioned or conventional, but a generation that doesn’t care for its senior citizens will be insensitive towards a lot of other things in my opinion. You might agree or choose to disagree.

Youth: What Ideals and Which Direction?

I was taking a walk this evening through the lanes of my new world and new campus. 9.30pm is not such a late evening I suppose. Post-dinner walk is a routine for me for the past many months — but lost as I am always in my own thoughts and my own world, more-so without specs, it’s difficult for me to recognize faces. Suddenly from one dark corner of the lone building someone shouted at the top of his voice, “good evening maam” — the voice was warm, mischievous and naughty, enough to jolt me out of my somnambulism . My immediate response was to turn around and respond with a “good evening” as loud as his, but he ran away and vanished in the fraction of a second. I stood there waiting for him to come back so that I can return his good-evening with my own response and in fact inquired from people around in order to know the name of this boy who had the powers of vanishing . Stood there for 10 mins or so, I knew very well that he will not come back  — perhaps he was afraid I might scold or complain, or perhaps it was just a part of a prank to make me aware that a world exists outside my own hemispheres. If the second case is true, I must thank my unknown benefactor.

Yet, I am concerned and slightly afraid of the trends. Not that am too far in times or social status to judge the present generation but there is something much more deeper and more troubling  which needs to be looked at seriously.  The first aspect that I am thinking of is regarding the safety of women/ girl students in smaller towns, localities or suburban colleges in India. How safe is a girl actually? How safe are her peripheries and her zone of movement? There is something extremely lurid in the depiction and imagination of women in India. However, if our role models are so problematic then what do we expect of a younger generation? On Friday night, I was just browsing through the news channels and happened to come across a late night edition of IBN Live ‘s show where Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai,  Mr. Suheil Seth, Ms.Nikunj Malik, and Mr. Siddharth Basu were discussing the fate of Rahul Mahajan and Dimpy Ganguly (I am desperately trying to search that video on net in order to give you an evidence of the tone of such a conversation, but the video seems to have been removed). Except for Siddharth Basu, the rest of the team seemed to take an unhealthy pleasure in maligning a couple going through rough times. In fact, the extent of the discussion was such that Mr. Sardesai asks Ms. Malik if she would like to get married to an eternal bachelor like Mr. Seth and further deeper innuendos on Friday evening and the social and cultural background of a character like Dimpy. Not that I have any special corner for either the couple or malign against the news channel but the kind of discussion that was on was simply in ‘bad faith’. On the one hand, Mr. Sardesai talks of Indian audience being extremely voyeuristic and on the other there is a vocal discussion of Friday late night jokes where the trauma of a family is open to national scrutiny. Personally, I feel that there ought to be no room for academic snobbery while sitting on the editor’s desk  especially to ridicule a girl as that ‘Dimply’ and with statements that would implicitly imply “she deserves it because she got married to a wife-abuser in a third-rate show”.  Is this what a nation condemns its women to? What do we name this? The media and national news channels are supposedly live schoolrooms where students learn not only General Knowledge but also facing the nation with a certain degree of respect and responsibility. Students learn the very alphabet of a code of conduct from the media that they get exposed to. If national televisions and news channels themselves are so dramatically bent towards publishing lewd paparazzi or superstitions then where do young minds of not more than 18-20 yrs stand in this ruthless onslaught of information? Many women are subject to not only physical but also linguistic and imaginative violence at every stage of their life. In this context, where does a young girl just out of her teens not even sure of herself, joining college for the first time stand her chances? I don’t have an answer….

The second aspect that troubles my thought is that I have been observing cultural shows and galas of late at various institutions. There seems to be a dearth of imagination and all the shows boil down to just dating, flirting and dancing for so called ‘love’ and the ‘moving on’ aspect post the one-evening love. These shows have either Bollywood or else TV shows with Swayamvar kind of content. Drama, especially theater where students actually learn to perform as well as understand texts that would enrich their vocabulary as well as understanding of life seems to have vanished somewhere. Everyday communication has taken center stage and there seems to be hardly the time to read, understand and assimilate. I am not sure if in the craze to make technology and communication ‘simpler’ we are trying to produce a crop of students who do not understand any other language except the ‘simplified’ language of MMSes, SMS, social networking sites or cliff-notes for studies. I am slightly pessimistic regarding the role of a teacher to motivate students to ‘read’. Remember Robin Williams’ role in the classic movie ‘Dead Poets Society’? All this seems very attractive and motivating on-screen but how far we are able to bring out that which we are supposed to bring out in the young minds…I am still in doubt.

A recent study published as an article in an online portal called ‘Boston Globe’ states that there is a sharp decline in students across the world regarding their motivation and the hours they put in study. The amount of time invested by students to study has dramatically reduced over the years to an extent that now students study less than an hour a day.  That is scary!  I have a very strong reservation against compartmentalizing academic disciplines.  We will prepare good servants not good leaders or bright futures of this society if we limit ourselves to academic disciplines. Einstein also read philosophy, Gandhi did read Ruskin (the economist) to prepare his political ideologies, and if we look at the people of today Nandan Nilekani or Narayan Murthy or Kanwal Rekhi, in my perception have not limited themselves to studying Computer Science or Information Technology. In order to rule the roost, the secret of any leader’s achievement is her/his capacity to read, understand and assimilate things across disciplines. We cannot and should not stop a mathematician to learn Sanskrit or Prakrit and we cannot stop a doctor to understand literary theory. If we intend to divide curriculum on the basis of disciplines and if as students we have the apathy in accepting a new thought, a new idea or a new stream of knowledge, it is our gross misfortune. The world  has opened up to disciplines — it has become interdisciplinary. The sooner we accept the fact, better it is for a growing economy like ours.

As a nation, we are gifted with a population comprising largely of the younger generation. You must have seen the cola ad everywhere regarding ‘Youngistan’ a pun on ‘Hindustan’. What kind of nation do we want to build? Is there a nation to build at all? Is there an India? Why not call each of our states just by their individual names instead of calling the whole geographical chunk as ‘India’? How many of us agree to that proposition? None…because of some weird sense of a ‘hidden’ nationalism at the idealistic level, and economic as well as political reasons at deeper levels.  However, when it comes to positively building a nation by contributing in ways which can help those sections of the society which actually need our help, we back-off.  What kind of younger generation are we preparing for tomorrow? A generation that exists for itself? Selfishness, unscrupulousness and dishonesty in personal and professional lives — is this the kind of nation we want to give to the ‘Youngistan’? Are we building a literate mass that knows how to read and write and talk, talk ‘Hinglish’ and talk to the interview board with street-smartness not with integrity or knowledge?  I am reminded of an ad of a fairness company launching a male fairness-cream brand. The ad shows a good-looking smart male snatching away a job from the interviewers with his street-smart attitude and his good-looks. If that is what it takes to get a job these days then why are we setting up institutes of learning? We just need some companies to groom our looks and develop our power of talking confidently….

All these thoughts crossed my mind this evening…  ‘good evening’ to you as well!

On Suicide

Sari ummr hum mar mar ke jee liye

Ek pal toh ab humein jeene do…

(We have lived every second of our lives by dying a new death, beg give us one moment of life to live. My transl.)

I have been rather muted about unnatural deaths in my posts. This post attempts to move beyond the moral debates on suicide. I know I am trespassing forbidden grounds, but I have a utopian ideal that the day we give up our inhibitions will we learn to save a lot of human beings.

I thought I should write today on the topic that is closest to the problems of the youth — suicide.  Parents, students, in fact the entire younger generation live in a state of denial that suicide can be a reality of our times. But let us face it — it is a true phenomenon which can happen to anyone at any moment of life. The demands and the compulsions of modern Indian life clashes with the demands of tradition and ancient value systems to the maximum extent. The tug of tradition and the push of a bohemian, modern life is sometimes too difficult for many to handle. These are those crucial weakest moments where we succumb to what we have denied for our entire lives — the question that how can you kill yourself? But the worst part of the problem results from the fact that people think that living in a state of denial, making death amount to sin and citing scriptures or religion as the source of scaring away from self-murder are the only ways in which suicides can be averted. No they cannot be. A person who is in a borderline between life and death, between deciding to live on or to finish life is beyond scriptures or religious doctrines or for that matter threatening or denying it as a reality, as a fact of life.  In India, we still need a certain amount of intellectual and moral honesty to face the realities of everyday existence. Denial, threatening, scriptural injunctions or even religious conversions (check many websites on the Internet and some promotional shows on the television that use the vulnerability of an individual for conversions) are not the antidote to death itself.  Death or desire for death is something that can happen to anyone and the more sinful you attempt to make it the more horrific it becomes. There is only one thing that can prevent it — intense love for oneself and intense love to be shown for the person who is going through this phase. Moreover, there is a need to understand your self while dealing with such an outburst of pathological and psychological emotion.

At some point of life we all become vulnerable,many of us go through this emotion with a lot of intensity. We could save some people and we couldn’t save some others and they had to leave us forever.  Let us begin by saying that death-wish and self-killing are not a sin. It is a neutral force resulting because of unequal coping mechanisms. Each of us cope with situations differently and the same stress might have different effects on different people. I do disagree to the fact that a person who commits or attempts suicide is a sinner, someone who is boiled in the cauldron of hell or someone who is ostracized from society. I disagree. Yes, suicide is extremely problematic because you terminate a life by force not by choice. However, suicide is a symptom not a disease. It is a symptom of the failing coping mechanisms, of social neglect, of emotional inadequacy, of material failure, of familial discord, of physical ailments or of complete psychological breakdown. These are the real diseases, suicide is only the culmination of these diseases into an extreme physical form. I have a belief that people are driven to suicide in many parts of India — being mentally challenged and feeling suicidal are different stories, as human beings we do not choose to die .

In his autobiography Dev Anand describing his friendship for Guru Dutt wrote that the latter should have made happy films instead of the melancholic ones because such films eat away a human being (recounted from memory). If you observe Pyasa or Kagaz Ke Phool both are movies that are classics in their genre but they are also like the panic SOS of a drowning man. The unfortunate part about feeling suicidal is that very few people take such people seriously or are completely scared to handle them. Their call is for help not to arouse fear in the other person. Their friends, family and so called loved ones think that these calls are not serious, their outbursts are taken just as anger and pathetic behaviour. Moreover, who has the time or energy to cope with others’ issues when you have an entire pandora’s box of problems to take care of?

A friend who lived two blocks away from my room during my graduation days used to display extreme anger and would cry at the smallest matters.  Those days we had a common phone — a landline in the hostel and we all used to get irritated with her because she spoke for long with her parents and would cry relentlessly. After a few months of our final year exams she committed suicide. The apparent reason was frustration but internally she belonged to a broken family, parents living in separation and there was considerable tension going against her to bear at that young age. According to common friends, she had warned and told before but none took her seriously. A distant relative of mine, a lady who went through years of physical and mental abuse by her alcoholic husband recently committed suicide. She kept on complaining to her parents about the behaviour of this man, but her family was economically not well-to-do and they had to let her stay on until she could take it no longer.  In fact, in Indian society this chalta hai attitude has remained integral to our thought systems. There is a thought that everyone is equally capable. Stress-coping mechanisms are different for each one. The flaw of our society is creating grand narratives of greatness and sacrifice, where individuals are considered irrelevant. In fact, in Vidarbha or in Jharsuguda the farmers who committed suicide had neither psychological nor moral agenda. Economics drove them to take this ultimate step. Especially, the era that we exist in has this strange imbalance between life and culture, between politics and practice, between personal and professional and between being humane and being divine/demonic.  People who claim to be composed, to be intellectual and to be balanced succumb to pressures of society. The result — problems in coping with the demands of life and demands of being an individual.

During my M.Phil days once I met a long lost friend at the bus stop. She had come from a remote village and lived in the same hostel during graduation.  She used to visit my room often because my room-mate was her closest friend. Those days she used to be very humbly dressed. People did not take her seriously perhaps because of her economic stature or her dressing mode. I still have some old photographs of the three of us posing for the camera dressed in borrowed sarees during Ganesh Puja celebrations. When I met her after all those years, those moments came back to me. But when I met her,  she was really blooming, looked extremely pretty, happy and very “upmarket”. I could not believe that I was meeting the same person once again. She was full of happiness and joy. She took me to a cafe and confided that she was in a long-term relationship and in a live-in with a man of an upper caste. Live-in was something very new for me then and I could not believe what I heard. But, seeing her happiness I started feeling relieved after a few odd moments and thought that if someone is really happy with a person then why not let them be. She however had one tinge of sorrow, their families do not accept it and they have to live in secrecy — I screamed at her and said this won’t last. She just smiled and told me: “everything lasts if you are really in love” . After two weeks, I was lazying around in the hostel visitor’s room, picked up the newspaper and saw that her and her boyfriend’s dead bodies were in the cover-page. They apparently committed suicide, but it was a suspected honour-killing.

Agreed, that societal norms cannot be and should not be changed. However, my anger is regarding the apathy that we have towards people especially friends. What do we do when we make friends? Just have fun, parties, socialize, listen and forget? Or just “tp” “timepass” till we get our own partners or closer friends? Or is there more to our human responsibility? Also, there is something called self-responsibility. People judge friendship by the amount of time they have contributed and by the energy they have spent during those days of parties and fun. Rest, things pass into history and so do human beings.  There are many intellectual debates raging these days regarding academic pressure leading to suicides. I disagree once again with such a view. In fact, the movie ‘Three Idiots’ which has come to champion the cause of youth under academic pressure itself shows these flaws. Academics has to be there and it has to be rigorous, else the economic and psychological standards of our society would fall drastically. Quality of education should still remain a priority. How can one account for drunken students, peeing in front of teachers’ quarters, coming next morning to class and committing suicide when not able to cope up with studies? I don’t have an answer and personally think that this is not a justified reason. Drinking, taking drugs and then landing up into death alleys — how do you negotiate with such behavior? There are many causes and multiple symptoms of such a behaviour — friend circle, love affairs, competition during placements or perhaps just a sense of experimenting with life.

We do not exactly know what goes into these aspects. If we knew we would not have lost legends like Guru Dutt, Parveen Babi, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson or Marilyn Monroe.  Life is not difficult but it is also not that simple, those of us who survived the hunt of time refuse to own up or take responsibility. We live for ourselves and in our deaths also people accuse us of selfishness. They say time is the greatest healer and time takes care of everything, but it is understood that surviving the attack of time is the greatest bravery. A very close friend once explained it amazingly well to me, she said if you feel low just close your eyes and dream about all those things which you want for yourself, not those that are hurting you, but those that you may not have thought for yourself. She said think about a lovely evening in the sea-beach or cool breezy walk in the mountains with bluebirds flying all around you or think of a brand new car which you are learning to drive, imagine a family that you have created in deepest love and see how different you feel. She also said that when you feel sad think that only your smile can brighten this world and this world turns and twists only with a smile on your lips.

Finally, living and not living are not personal choices. We were not brought into this world with our own accord, we were forced to be born from the maternal womb. Similarly death too is not in the hands of society. The society sometimes stones and kills a person of lower caste, the same society forces dowry and forced marriage on its young children, the same society exists in denial of extreme forms of corruption and unemployment, and the same society forges its rules to prevent deaths. Ironical,  yet true….I wish as a society we had some degree of collective responsibility towards everyone including animals and plants.

However, still the benefit of living on is that you have a choice to choose a better life…

Need Help?

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0104/01040490.htm

http://www.darkmother.com/themereproject/nosuicide.html