NavDharmyug

Of late, a video of teachers in villages and small towns in India went viral with teachers not knowing the spellings and basic general knowledge like the names of presidents and prime ministers so on and so forth. It invites many comments, acerbic, funny, condescending, demeaning. To me that whole video was so sad and heart-wrenching.  It is a sad commentary about our schooling. It is thought-provoking. What is the point of putting kids in school when they are neither equipped nor evolved enough  to be place for learning. They are not place for sharing of knowledge but rather a place where a kinship of ignorance is kindled. Teachers in most government schools in India are broken individuals who as a result of failed fate or abysmal aptitude couldn't do anything better but to teach.  They aren't overwhelming souls brimming with knowledge, but have dark gaping holes of ignorance churning with sadness inside. They are teachers since they couldn't be anything else. And it isn...

Wrote Wordsworth of Lucy, "Thus Nature spake-the work was done How soon my Lucy's race was run She died and left to me This Heath and this calm and quiet scene; The memory of what has been And what never more will be." It is not death which brings the pain, the sorrow or sadness to the fore. Death is but a definite truth which awaits us with comfort when we reach at the other end, bruised and battered with life. What transforms death from a neutral, unfeeling truth to a cold knife which cuts deep into your senses is "how soon my Lucy's race was run." Last week has been cruel, 28 kids shot dead in a school, Sandy Hook Elementary, firing in Connecticut, a girl raped, brutalised and left for dead, all of four years Pakistan, another six year old forced fed a...