Flocci-nocci-what?

Those who have been through the mental, physical and emotional wringer that is the Indian educational system, chiefly of the variety that slotted teenage children into two groups: (prospective) engineers & doctors, and further classified the former class of adolescents into GRE-takers and CAT-crackers, will be no strangers to the art of expanding one’s English vocabulary by committing to memory words that drip with preponderance, sound staggeringly pretentious when used, and that lends one the presumptuousness needed for floccinaucinihilipilification of the system that produced them.

Like any corporate group, your vocabulary also has two pathways for its growth strategy: organic and inorganic.  Some choose to go about it in the organic way: boring, old-fashioned. Gleaned from reading books of various genres and periods across one’s lifetime. Some choose inorganic, achieved by spending a weekend with Barron’s. I can neither confirm nor deny whether I belong to the former group and whether or not I turned up my nose at the latter. Of course, there are nihilists who don’t believe that words are our ultimate source of magic, and drip disdain,” Say, you really think knowing  gasconade from gasbag is going to save you when the cyborgs come for us?” To them, at the risk of repeating myself, I have just one thing to say, “You, madam, are a first-rate floccinaucinihilipilificator!” Bam! QED et al.

Secretly, I had to agree with them, though, that some words have only curiosity value and cannot be expected to pop up in any conversation, particularly if the interlocutors have to maintain straight faces. And particularly if you don’t want to the give the other party a chance to smirk (as a beloved period character said once), “My, my, have you swallowed a dictionary?”

Until recently.

For those of us who are in drab corporate jobs or stuck in high-octane dealing rooms where the only scope of learning or rediscovering words are either if they are given to a newly-minted charting pattern or creative expletives hurled at the unexpected turns being taken by inflation or the inversion of yield curves (I can I can neither confirm nor deny whether I belong to the latter group), deliverance arrives from a completely astonishing quarter. In the form of policymakers of the central bank, no less, deigning to use words that you had no hope of glimpsing outside of your long-forgotten and much-maligned study material.

To my old friends, the vocab- floggers, I can finally say that ‘curiosity’ words have finally found a useful economic function: the much-vaunted ‘surprise element’ in the policymaker’s toolkit.

I rest my case.

Heck, not yet. Just one parting shot.

If you can keep your vocab when all about you,

                Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can tell the difference between capacious and commodious

                And yet not equivocate too

Then you can be a central banker, my girl!

A tribute to an icon

The founder, mentor and beloved godmother of the PSBB Schools, a icon in the fields of education, arts and culture, Mrs.YGP is no longer with us.

As I attempt to pen a tribute to the legend that was Mrs.YGP, I balk at the enormity of the task. A woman far ahead of her times, a multi-faceted personality, a role model, an inspiration for generations of students and teachers, and above all, a person overflowing with positivity and zest.

A true visionary, she was able to bring to life the idea of top-notch, global education with an Indian ethos. She applied herself with enthusiasm to the task, travelling the world to gather ideas and adapt these to the needs of her students. Decades before 'learning by doing' became a norm or even an aspiration, she gave her students laboratories not just for science but also mathematics and language. She invited parents to observe classroom activities to understand first-hand the style and quality of teaching their children were receiving. Ever willing to try new ideas, she gave her students and teachers the ability to challenge existing wisdom on pedagogy, and built a great reputation for the school in academic excellence. 

Equally, she immersed herself in ensuring all-round development of students, and encouraged her students to excel in the sports field and the stage, to appreciate all the fine things in life. At every school event, she was a rapt observer and perceptive commentator, ever available with feedback and encouragement. 

Apart from her credentials as a world-class educator, what endeared her further to us, were her credentials as a lifelong student. What greater inspiration can there be for a student than to see this dynamic lady studying for her doctorate at the ripe age of 70?

A good friend of mine had the fortune of meeting her and listening to her give a speech, as succinctly as ever, at the school annual day just weeks ago. I was not there, but I can picture her, hear her crisp eloquence, pointed observations and fitting remarks.

It is my belief that she would want us to not merely mourn her passing, but to celebrate a life well lived, to cherish and to build on her legacy.

My humble salutations Shri Gurubhyo Namaha to this teacher of teachers as she leaves, one last time, the classroom that was her life. 

I can almost hear a beaming Sukhi Bhava in response. 

:D

Black-
The darkness before dawn:
Streetlamps craning their necks
Splaying yellow anticipation
Upon our path

White-
The crispness of the hospital room:
Robes rallying around
Reassuring, repeating, pronouncing
What to expect

Green-
My garb as I transform into patient:
Wrist-banded, swept off my feet
Wheels moving, pace quickening
Ready, get set…

Yellow-
The brightness of light, dazzling:
Like the doctor’s broad smile,
Bathing me in hope, anxiety
And a countless other emotions

Red-
The singe of searing pain:
That soars, recedes and returns
Doesn’t hurt, but does indeed
A preamble to finer things

…To breathe or not to breathe…
…To breathe or not to breathe…

Brown-
The littlest, loveliest being
That I ever set eyes on,
Set her curious, shining eyes
Upon her new world
                       My New World

Don’t get mad, get even!

Or how to robot-proof your career

There used to be a time when the rich world was complaining of jobs being Shanghai-ed or Bangalore-d away. It appears now that humans, all and sundry, are at the risk of being robot-ed away.

Trending on my news feeds over the past few months are articles from a set of highbrow publications that pronounced that the liberal arts were the only resort for future humans. Trounced by AI in traditional fields of inquiry that are vulnerable to robotisation, jobs in STEM, Finance and the like were most at risk, they warned. This being so, it was argued, humans could make use of their skills in the humanities that require fuzzier forms of expertise that cannot be usurped by the coming machine onslaught. Fields such as art, poetry and music.

Fresh from reading this, and spouting my newfound anti-STEM wisdom to anyone within earshot, imagine my consternation when I discovered that the latest field to be invaded by the bots was (gasp!) poetry.  

Can there be such a thing as artificial poetry? Apparently, yes- the one in question has been written by a chatbot who has been 'learning' through interactions with people!   Naturally, this development sparked a generous amount of outrage across literary circles, apart from chilling my poetic aspirations to the bone.

A friend took one look at one of the creations of Xiaoice, a chatbot on Weibo, and reassured me that I have nothing to worry about. The offending sample reads thus:

The rain is blowing through the sea/ A bird in the sky/ A night of light and calm/ Sunlight/ Now in the sky/ Cool heart/ The savage north wind/ When I found a new world.

Not so fast. I decided to ambush my Modern poetry discussion group with this piece, passing it off as a poem by a contemporary American author who chose to remain anonymous. For a few minutes after I read it out, there was silence as the group digested the piece. Soon after, a storm of observations broke out.

"The savage north wind- what a refreshingly original thought. Surely, an oblique reference to the more traditional east wind."

"Oh, pure genius. The north wind that blows a new life, so unlike the east wind.”

"The sharp shift from the calm night to sunlight- a volte-face that brought about the discovery of the new world?"

"What an interesting thought!"

By now, I had slipped away, new hope nestling in my heart. If Xiaoice, an infant in chatbot years, could pique such ardent poetic discussions, maybe I could spin out a few quick quatrains too. Maybe I would just let the universe suggest words to me and arrange it into lines. After all, those who are keen to find meaning in lines will do so, regardless of how subtly (or grossly) it is hidden!

The house that waits

The streets are quiet, unusually bereft of the chatter of people. It is a Sunday morning and nothing stirs inside the rows of apartments. Save the giant banyan tree whose leaves sway gently in the sea breeze, even as its rope-like aerial roots swing to and fro invitingly. And the fine grains of sand that rise in the billowing clouds of dust. Something seems to be moving inside the cloud - some living, breathing being in this still, sleeping morning. It is the sweeper of the streets, engulfed in a halo of dust, emerging from the sand clouds like an ancient deity emerging from the mists. Daylight has begun to filter through the canopy of the banyan tree, lending a soft glow to the pink bougainvilleas, and rousing the hibiscuses from their slumber. A swaying prop root of the banyan brushes past my face in its pendulum-like motion. I catch it in my palm, and trace it with my eyes back to its high branch, the branch to immense trunk and the trunk to its base where it was growing around, and through the walls of the compound.

Incongrous in this street of high-rise apartments in the middle of a metropolis.  As strange as me and the street-sweeper, awake in this sleepy morning.

A survivor in this busy, ruthless city.

An unfinished building, covered in an unseemly green drape stands next to the banyan. It used to be an old, old house with a swing in the balcony and yellow windows with wooden bars. Now it's a monstrosity of concrete and green draping and a hoarding promising views of the sea. An erased relic of the past.

I avert my eyes and walk down the street, now warm with the late April sun. I am playing make-believe hopscotch on the mottled patterns of light and shade on the road.

I look up as one of patterns resolves itself into the shape of a sitting person. Somebody's grandfather. He is sitting on a chair in front of his house staring into the distance, his expression expectant- as if waiting for something.

Another being from the past- the house. With a swing and wooden bars on the windows. The thought was strangely startling. The house is empty- the diaspora children scattered across the world, leaving grandpa alone to his ruminations. Waiting. For what?

The windows are all open, the bars like teeth on a grinning face. A crack on the wall of the upper floor like a frown on its brow. Anticipation mingled with uncertainty. The mood of the house seems to mirror that of  the old man. Waiting. To join the future? A future, perhaps as a highrise with unkept promises of views of the Arabian sea.

The state of the union: A nation of two halves

Welcome to a new State of the Union. Where one half of the nation rejoices and the other wallows in disbelief. 

Once past the phase of the numb horror of defeat, the latter split into two distinct camps. One camp joined the protesters, carrying "Not my President" banners, signing petitions to overturn what they viewed as an insufferable result. The other camp, cornered into optimism, proceeded to rationalize that the American system was strong enough to resist the more extreme of Trump's plans. After all, their idol, Hillary herself, conceded that the country owed the new President an 'open mind'.

And now, as the media and sundry intellectuals embark on an election autopsy, out tumble the convenient nuggets of wisdom that hindsight bestows.

"We underestimated the number of stupid people in this country" (Yes, the stupid inner-city voters who are so out of touch with the Ivy League-educated 'real' world).

"The voter ID requirement hurt the turnout of (Democrat-supporting) minority voters" (Seriously? Care to try explaining to someone in, say 'third-world' India why asking for an ID is racist and should be discouraged)

"He didn't really win, the electoral college system is imperfect. She did win the popular vote!" (This takes the cake. Go on, question the very foundations of the celebrated American democracy. The bastion of civilised governance and preceptor to the world at large, since 1776).

Instead of falling into the trap of lazy rationalizations of this variety, one cannot help but wonder why the intellectual American, does not put her (or his) razor-sharp mind to understanding why a large section of the population found eight years of Obama's policies wanting. Why they were unhappy enough that they were willing to settle for a man who has been hauled over the coals by the media over charges ranging from not filing tax returns to unsavoury 'locker-room' talk.

None of this, from my vantage point thousands of miles away seems to get to the very roots of this tumultous transfer of power. The pivotal issue in this election does not appear to have been political pedigree or gifted oratory or familiarity with foreign policy. Or playing to baser instincts (though that may have been a tactic). This election appears to have been all about a significant section of the country turning resentful precisely of being thought witless, moronic and incapable of 'seeing the obvious'.

Can it really be true that 'that half' of the country is the ill-educated, boorish, bigoted lot that is out of sync with what is pronounced 'good' by the elites? We're not talking about a third-world country- this is a nation that led the world into democracy with its example, which has a centuries-old tradition of liberal values. If the people in such an enlightened nation are tired of status quo, it's not caprice or whim. They are saying something about the state of the nation. And unless mainstream politicians with valuable experience to offer understand the causes and try to address them, wildcard results like these should not surprise.

All over what used to be called the developed or First World, there is a movement towards reclaiming ethno-nationalism and strengthening the voice of the people through participative, in addition to, representative democracy. At the same time, there is a movement against multilateral agencies and experts, who are viewed as self-serving and conflicted. All of which has stirred up a desire for change and sense of disaffection with the establishment, however heedless or misguided it may seem in some cases.

The politics of  disaffection cannot be played by pushing more of the same policies down angry throats, but by working to solve the real issues. By not stooping to name-calling, and branding them a 'basket of deplorables', but by genuine concern over why they turned 'deplorable' in the first place.

It is important to be concerned about climate change, energy-efficiency and policy continuity and intergenerational stewardship- all of which the Hillary camp has predicted would be wrecked to pieces by Trump.

But it also helps to focus a little more on the here-and-now. Like understand why blue-collar workers feel they have been made significantly worse off by globalisation. Find out how the much-touted benefits of free trade can be reaped by everyone, and not a select few. How prestigious colleges can be made accessible to all Americans instead of an ever-narrowing circle. Don't dismiss worries about changing social fabric as xenophobia. Or of disappearing jobs as anti-globalisation. Or worse, label a large group of people as deplorable simply because they don't subscribe to your point of view.

When diverse groups of people come together, constitute themselves into a democracy and decide to subordinate their individual sovereignty to a government, they do so with a presumption of faith - in one another and their elected representatives. The unity in such a setup is only as strong as this faith. When people speak in a democracy, they mean something. Don't wish away the epidemic of rage and disaffection by mocking its symptoms.

As the country rides out this presidency, there is much to be done apart from petitioning and protesting.

Democracy doesn't work by shutting out opposing voices, and doling out insulting labels to those who think differently. It works by getting together to hear all the voices, even when they go against your worldview. Withdraw from the echo chamber of one-sided media coverage, and from the people who share your biases. Engage with those who voted against your side, find out how the other half lives and what they worry about. Maybe next time, you (and your candidate) won't find their views alien, and may learn to work with and for them, and not have to watch in despair as they fling themselves into the arms of an 'undesirable'.

For now, he may not be the leader you need, but perhaps, is he the one you deserve?

The Gift of the Forests

On these wodded hills, the narrow trails
Snake a path through the forests dense.
Which shedding the cloak of glinting mists,
Beckon me: into ceaseless silence.
















A silence so still, it can be heard.
The rustling, humming, chattering,
Scuttling, buzzing, chirping silence:
The sprightly stillness of  life itself.

What stillness is this: that soothes the mind
but sharpens the senses, that does soak
Me in its sounds and scents and sights:
The green-brown fragrance of mountain oak.

I listen to better hear myself breathe-
Not mere air, but the scent of the trees.
I see not mere trees, but living woods
That soar skywards in willowy ease.

"Follow the hooves of the horses
That have trodden this path."
Like a modern Gretel, I keep the course
In search of a Dolphin's nose.

Peek-a-boo: hills now hidden from sight-
Shrouded by films of mist. Yet on I press
Through carpets of crunchy leaves.
For a lofty prize awaits at the peak.


Gasping, I arrive-

And find myself changed.
Now become a giant,
I tower over the pines.
As a cloud skirts my ear.

Brobdingnagian, no less.

The sylvan spirits in their leafy glens-
Indulgent, smile:
At my flights of fancy.
As at an ant that exults
On scaling a rock.