harsh in kinesphere

Once upon a time, there lived a little boy in a Mumbai suburb. Contrary to the misconception, this boy was special. He could remember minute details from school and the most trivial promises that his parents broke at bed time. So one night, it was around 10.30pm, way past his bed time.

“Our craft teacher has told us to make a Greeting card tomorrow” he said.

His mother thought he was talking in his sleep, that’s what she wanted to believe. But she knew her son too well; this had happened so many times that now she’d stopped freaking-out. She looked towards her husband who was hiding his head under the blanket by now.

The mother son duo headed to the hall, she fetched everything she needed for this undertaking from a shelf that resembled a mini stationery shop.

“So what kind of greeting card is it?” she asked the boy who was sleepier than before.

“Our teacher said something about Indian integration” he murmured.

“Fine, I’ll come up with something, go to sleep. I’ll be there in a while” she said as her brain went in overdrive.

I’m not totally against craft, infact I love origami they taught us during that class. I love drawing a pond with little fish that my paper crane will eat for food, but telling a 10 year old to make a collage with newspapers is being a little kooky. Most of the craft periods in my school would have competitions like ‘Rakhi making’, ‘greeting card making’ and we’d also make different type of boxes. On one such ‘rakhi making competition’ one of my friends thought that it would be very cool if he used an Éclair /*chocolate*/ as his rakhi centerpiece. The competition results were declared and the rakhis were returned, that friend of mine was surprised to find centerpiece on his rakhi missing. “competition ka jaane de re, par chocolate kyo liya?” were his exact words.

Craft teachers go over the top and come up with innovative reasons for parents to curse them, from collage to pop sickle stick houses; no one can guess what they’ll ask for, and all such projects come bundled with the misleading line ‘Use ordinary household waste’ /*hey I didn’t know we had 100 something plastic spoons or a bag full of pencil shavings just lying around*/. I remember a Work Experience project when we had to use grains and pulses as colors. As I didn’t want to bother my parents, I generously sprinkled tur daal and chaaval I found by myself but to my mother’s horror I had knocked Dal tadka and Kashmiri Pulav off the menu /* in my defense, like a true artist I used the best I materials could find*/.

Mother hasn’t been supportive of my projects ever since.

According to Educationalists, Craft and Work Experience are meant for the overall development of the pupil as he/she has the opportunity to think creatively beyond the curriculum and observe the world we live in, but I’m sure parents have a slightly different opinion. How does the administration come up with such stuff?? For instance, my niece had to make a rainy season wear thing on chart paper. I was making rubber cutting that somewhat resembled gum-boots and my Sis-in-law was drawing clouds on crepe paper, all the while my niece jumped around singing “Ringa rainga roses, pocket full of…..” . Indeed that was a big learning experience for her/*insert sarcasm here*/.

Many people make a fortune by displaying their craft project rejects as ‘art’ and the subject is meant to improve hand eye coordination and I feel that it should be primarily be focused on class work rather than making the parents go through the ordeal. But by the time that happens, go nuts!

Love thy donkey work

“They expect us to become engineers through clerical work”.

-An ideal engineer

/*who happens to be my friend*/

Just like a good movie that has a climax at the end, each semester has the dreaded submissions /*No, it’s not kinky, it’s brutal*/, and just like the climax, submissions decide your fate for the semester. Collectively a month of each year is spent writing innumerable assignments, photocopying notes and question papers, memorizing the trivialities encountered during the practicals –all in the name of submissions. Oral exams are added like the cherry on top of a sundae /*to give it ‘the’ effect*/. All this gets translated to term work /* its professor’s assessment of the student’s performance throughout the semester, marks are given out of 25 for each subject +25 marks for orals*/.

The concept of term work and orals is mainly based on karma, and the professors love playing god. You don’t want to catch their eye, you don’t want to stand out of the crowd, you’ll make a point not to wear T-shirts that have one liners or anything that resemble alphabets that the professors just love to read.

They are Santas for the day, so when they ask,” How have you been this semester?” your poker face only succeeds in making them go ”Ho ho ho ho” with laughter.

Teacher’s pets enjoy immunity at this time of the year. During the oral exams for a subject say, Computer organization and Architecture they’ll be asked idiotic questions like “what does ‘PC’ stand for?” while the notorious ones are bombarded with questions viz,” what does ‘Pentium’ mean?, Describe the Unix architecture or Please explain Booting of the computer”. Open your mouth to answer and get jabbed with comments like,” Did you expect standard questions during Orals?” ……and you are one step closer to a nervous breakdown, in front the professors.

Those who can’t do, teach. Not these guys, they want to teach. They give 15 to 20 page assignments even when they know that the result will only be 60 /*that’s the class strength*/ identical copies of the assignment. The assignments are duplicated to such an extent that leaving the variations in ink color and handwriting, any word will be found on the same page, on the same line and on the same place in any of the 60 assignments. Made to scribble that doesn’t remotely contain anything that you’ll be studying for the actual exam. The hand keeps writing till the wee hours of the night, rewriting things that have been heard throughout the semester, without knowing, without caring, without living. As the days pass, the files keep getting fatter and heavier, but as Miley Cyrus put it-This is the life! The files get submitted and it’s the face value that counts.

/*ehem! */As the rumor goes, the assignments /*or the answer papers for that matter*/ aren’t read, they are skimmed at roll-your-eyeball speeds, so if you manage to write lyrics of your favorite song and add some relevant terms in between, it may even be considered as a model answer paper!

If you can’t beat em, join em, thereby everything gets decorated with clean legible handwriting, neat borders and diagrams. It’s for your own good and that’s the only reason to comply.

Look around you, each individual carries a gaping void within yet can rejoice when our cricket team wins against Bangladesh/Kenya/U.A.E. Everybody is a center of their own universe and yet a death counts don’t matter. Things of utmost importance to the students hardly matter for the ones in charge.

Hindi songs being quoted during the parliament sessions, full time politicians aspiring to be stand up comedians, part time ‘actors’ /*I am guilty of labeling the GREAT Govinda */ being part time politicians and pseudo intellectual Bollywood directors giving their opinions on every damn thing. Crores being spent for protection of a convicted terrorist, but its not enough.

Apparently a medical student rightfully protesting against reservations is intolerable while minorities setting cars and buses ablaze for reservation is righteous. Thanks to some demented people saying “she’s a bomb” isn’t an expression anymore, it’s a possibility.

It’s just a matter of days when a bomb gets reported and the siren blaring police vehicles scat in the opposite direction. This isn’t a dance of democracy, it’s a striptease.

Muhahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!! Thank you yahoo messenger for teaching me this expression, as I don’t care anymore.