Closure

Sometime you are forced to choose
   to let it go
and see the ends remain loose
  just so.

Damaging it may seem to others
  friend or foe
holding on could make it only worse
  you know

The time, the energy, the soul
  invested
infuriating it was, the whole 
  appeared wasted

Path of reason was to detach
  not falter
taking that path was so much
  though harder

The job remained undone
  years passed by
bitterness was never a solution
  in my eye

Difficult people also meet difficulties
  and get wise
they may not plan so but life can be a tease
  they realise
 
Satisfaction of completion
  had to wait for that moment
closure to that chapter did happen
  so late that a non-event

Finally!

One would imagine that after nearly a decade of teaching, an academic would become organized enough, experienced enough and composed enough to be rather unaffected by the starting and finishing of a semester. Quite the contrary, as the end-sem exam is going on I am awash with an immeasurable sense of relief, want to break into a jig and stomp on some bubble wrap if it was around. It is high time that the horns that I tend to grow and the claws that I draw out during term time can start receding and I hope that I can find the way back to being myself again soon enough.

Office-bullies

Let us say work-life hasn't been exactly a bed of roses lately. I am not sure what has majorly ticked off some of my colleagues but something surely has because I see an initiative to put me in my place. It is a big let down when people who you thought to be quite reasonable, open-minded and supportive are the ones who are reveling in their rather off-putting new avatar specially when in each others company.

In the last two decades, I have had my fair share of interactions with academics to know that we academics, however much we deny, crave for appreciation and respect from peers. To this end, it is often understood that having an impressive CV is what it takes to earn it. Once you commit yourself to that path you realize that the process of building an impressive CV could take its pound of flesh, and if one is not careful, along with it some of your integrity. As you hop on the ball and call out, "Look at me, look at me, look at me now, I can do all this and that and of course more as I hop on the ball", you may find there are still some out there whose regard is not coming that cheap. Perhaps it is frustrating- how dare anyone not care? Why is the tangible performance index not deciding the worth of my opinion on matters academic or non-academic? The likes of us must join together and show once and for all who is the boss around here, specially to the people who haven't been paying their due respects.



 

Tke Kokkum race

The summer vacation that ended quite abruptly a few weeks ago was enjoyed in so many ways that one could almost forget the debilitating heat and the meltdown inducing visits to the passport office. And still, in spite of all the joy I am increasingly becoming aware of the fact that slowly but surely I am getting sucked into the kokkum race, and unless I dig in my heels it will end just the same way it ended many years ago. I know, must explain in more detail. Another time.

Sartorial therapy

Some experiences are more rattling than others in that they require desperate measures to get out of the funk. To infuse some crispness to my sulking soul, I wore a saree today.

Stale questions

I love November as it comes with 'THE END' of  teaching for the semester. While I love the subject that I taught this semester, it being an under-grad course I had a large class to handle and it was hard to keep it together for the whole semester. It is a little weird that over the years one of the aspects I used to rather enjoy in the beginning of my teaching career has slowly  become something I am finding myself disliking more and more every passing year and that is preparing question papers for exams. God, how I used to sit with various books and come up with each question that would be easy to comprehend but would require good understanding for one to be able to answer all parts of it. Yes, each question used to have at least three parts, two of them would test their basic skills but the third/last part would test their intuitive understanding. In effect I would end up giving my undivided attention to the making of any exam paper a minimum of two to three days! And of course since these problems were all self-made they didn't come with their ready solutions. So another good chunk of time used to go for that. And then I would eagerly wait in anticipation for the exam to get over to take a look at the answer books to see if students got it or not. 

It was of course a lot of fun and excitement at that point in time and I thoroughly enjoyed doing things that way but now things are different. There are so many things I feel committed to that putting in that kind of time and effort seems a complete waste and therefore have resigned to using, god forbid, ready made questions with ready made solutions. Sacrilege!  

What is in a name?

Correcting the quiz papers made me see the 50 possible shades of my name. Luckily I am not prone to a rage attack at the sight of my name misspelled but really- Bhenargee!!

Of mothers and sons

Today was just one of those weird days. My mind was mostly at another place where a person whom I absolutely adore was getting operated, but I had these bunch of evaluations (12 of them) to conduct in which the time had to be maintained, questions had to be asked, some quick judgement on the performance had to be passed etc. etc. The hardest part was watching my own students make a really sorry presentation of their decently good work. At the end of it I was sitting in my office feeling so dejected when the sms came from her son that she was out of the operation theater and everything seemed to have gone alright. It was a big relief to see that and I immediately felt incredibly guilty to be thinking about anything else.

Back at daycare RRJ was least interested in being picked up for a drop to cricket because through some clever scheme he and 3 others had managed to get the permission from the rather strict principal to play cricket right in front of the daycare. He wanted to finish the game before heading to the other place. The principal teased him, "what have you got in your body, look like a skeleton, haan?" "I have got cricket in my body, maam." The kid shows sparks of brilliance at times. He lights up my darkest of moods effortlessly even if 90 percent of the times he is the primary cause of the dark mood.

Troubled waters

Our institute is at present having a fairly open and heated discussion on the policy that the hostels must have for the students who reside with in the campus. The institute being a residential one has a fairly large population of students and therefore having any new rule or getting rid of an existing one affects many. So far if you weren't part of the hostel administration you hardly got to know anything and it was all a large happy family in which the unhappiness was neither expressed loudly nor was it given much importance. The administrators decided based on what they felt was the right thing to do and others had very little choice in the matter but to follow as told because it was all for their good. From the sequence of recent events it seems like the turning point was the idea of having an open discussion between students and the wardens of these hostels where the students reside

• big question was asked in the open forum "I am 21, what is your problem if I am having sex with my girl friend or whoever in my room?"
• then there was a spate of emails between the wardens lamenting the generation gap, the callous parenting which hasn't conveyed the value of touching feet of elders to their children, the student's demand for privacy, the students wanting to do whatever they want, the fraction of students having the risk-taking behaviour reaching critical limits, the possibility of students talking about alternate sexual preferences, the audacity of students to ask questions in an open forum etc. etc.
• next the email-thread gets leaked to the national newspaper and makes headlines
• this preempts the disclosure of the content of the emails by one of the wardens to all within the institute and with in minutes the inbox was flooded with reactions and reactions to reactions.

These discussions often bring out so much about people especially when they are in a position to control. In the name of feeling responsible, it is so hard to not want to impose your own moral value system and accept that it doesn't mean anything to others. And it is so easy to dismiss others concerns and decide what is good for them.

In all this, it is totally understood that to run a system, in this case the hostels, you do need a set of rules which by and large should ensure safety, hygiene, reasonable food and an ambiance where people with diverse interests can co-exist. But beyond that any policing in relation to personal conduct seems rather oppressive. What students do is their responsibility and if we fear the worst all that we can do is to make them aware  of the possible consequences that bother us. I think most of us are hard-wired to protect self-interest, and this instinct needs regular tuning by facing the consequences of what we do or what we don't. Over protection or over control by others, I feel, can often lead to either suppression of that rather vital instinct or an all out rebellion.
  

O Mentor Where Art Thou

A meeting with one of my favourite students has given me the rudest of shocks. There I was, a little smug of my ability to connect as a normal human being with the students specially a few of the under graduates and there he was telling me what a false idea that was. Just three years ago this bright little kid had his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm for anything challenging about mechanics and asking questions which made me learn and relearn. Unquestionable ability, the desire to learn and discuss being right there, all that we, the teachers, had to do was to expose him to the wonderful world of mechanical engineering. Now graduating, not a kid anymore, the student is convinced that mechanical engineering: academia or industry is just not for him. While I respect the growth of a person and their quest for their calling in life, but I can’t deny the sense of deflation I feel. There is something hugely wrong in our academic system, instead of inspiring a few who don’t even want to consider engineering as an option we are managing to do exactly the opposite. And I come to know of this transition in one of my favourite students after three years!

Seeing parallels between parenthood and being a teacher comes naturally to me perhaps because both happened to me around the same time. The under graduate student is like a newly arrived who slowly picks up the basic skills and the language of his/her profession for survival in the later life. We the teachers like parents must provide the infrastructure, we must convey the passion for our subject, but more importantly we have to spend some quality time. Even when the student wants to run to his/her peers we must want to share their joys as well as anxieties of these growing years. In this mad rush to satisfy all the demands of academia and self-growth perhaps it is easy to forget these are young minds who come to an academic institution with hope and aspirations. We cannot let them come and go without ever being involved with them.