The Ordinary 'Me'


I'm culpable of extraordinary naiveté, I suppose.
But it's a naiveté that I really don't want to abandon,
not even now or ever. 
But if at all I am to be acknowledged and cherished for anything,
I would like it to be for encouraging the agonists,
for knowing a little bit about their extraordinary courage;
and for wanting that extraordinary courage to be recognized.
My achievements made me be treated as extraordinary,
and now when being treated as an extraordinary,
I lost my right to think and behave as ordinary.
Nobody sees the obvious; nobody observes the ordinary within me.
Miracles are being expected from me but ;
I even lost the right of expectations.


1:11 AM | | 0 Comments  

A War With 'Me'

I was ever a warrior, so, one war more.  The best one and the last too.  The bugle of war which the humanity inside me was procrastinating since long has finally started blowing on my door. I would hate that death which gives up my victory before this war is fought. Won't die silently, will fight to the end. I know victory has a hundred fathers, but no-one wants to recognize defeat as his own and nor do I. My inferno mind has been dishonest with me, it too has to fight a war against my sentiments and my intellect.   The avalanche of fear, fear of my defeat which once tried to engulf me has started acknowledging its defeat.  Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I can't revoke this war anymore. Let this war begin. Let the evil inside me be defeated and peace prevail in my life, so that I may sleep and never wake up again to fight another war with myself.




1:05 AM | | 0 Comments  

Family Values-are they still significant

A culture is a mirror of society in which we get the glimpse of the language, way of life, social activities, and history; namely the culture is the thumbnail reflection of the society.  Among various cultures of the world, Indian culture is marked by the highest degree of syncretism and cultural pluralism based on the family values. 

Family values are pragmatic social beliefs that hold the joint and nuclear families to be the essential ethical and moral units of society. Family ethics are those that promote the family and its values as an institution. Although the phrase has become vague because of its shifting meanings, nowadays it is most often associated with social and religious conservatives.

Amidst all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the only one with which we all are familiar. As we follow our life’s path, our experiences within the family develops to some strong bonds. Within the family context even lies some paradoxes, however most of us hope for love and support within the family.  Absence of family values in a family equates to a haven in a heartless world, i.e. the family can also be a place of violence and abuse. 

In fact, a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dining table, but by the love, care and respect you show for the other family members, by the memories you share with each other, by the commitment of time to each other and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.  Each family member has to understand that ‘Love’ is a continuum with no discernible starting point.

We Indians have managed to preserve our established traditions, while absorbing the new ones from invaders and immigrants, and spreading our cultural influence to other parts of the world.  The American singer “Katy Perry”, who on October 23, 2010 tied the knot with comedian “Russell Brand” in India as per the Hindu tradition and the salutation ‘Namaste’ of the US President “Barack Obama”  to all the Indians during his recent three days official visit to India in November 2010 exemplifies the impact of Indian culture around the world.

Although nuclear and matriarchal families too are becoming common in urban areas, traditional Indian family values are still highly respected, and multi-generational patriarchal joint families have been the norm since ages.  Myriads of Indians have their marriages arranged by their parents and other respected family members, though with the consent of the bride and the groom.

Every family has a story that narrates itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are strictly focused on, others gets dropped, and there is often debate about what really transpired and whether it was good or bad for the family. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still a belief that this is the story of our family. And in the absence of other narratives, it becomes the insignia that the family hangs its identity around. 

On one side the elders are strictly pondering over the issue of diminishing family values among their clans, blaming the modernisation and urbanization as the root cause; whereas the progenies of those elders too are bewildered over the same issue.  Finding suffocated amidst the orthodox family values, they want to establish a different independent world for themselves; but are also willing to not to hurt their elders, hence agree to keep alive the family values within the restraints of social and religious assimilation.

Thus in modern times the family gets drifted on to the high sea of bewilderment.  In this voyage the question that runs through every mind is, ‘had the winds always blown so strongly as now? Had the currents always been so powerful making the family and independent values so fragile to navigate a separate course?

As long as the spell of love, care, respect, responsibilities and proportional flexibility lasts, the families will tend to have a strong spiritual base that facilitates everyone to work together in times of stress.

7:53 PM | | 0 Comments  

Do parents play an important role in the education of their child?

       Parents' involvement in their child's education is a key factor in the child's scholastic success. It helps eliminate the cultural barrier that separates home from school.
       The importance of involving parents in child's education can be justified on several counts. First, parents have been rightly recognized as their children's first teachers and role models. Experts suggest that parents' attitudes and practices toward diversity influences and shapes children's attitudes toward people who are different from themselves. 
       Parents themselves are important teachers. Parents’ willingness to take the risks of displaying their own ignorance, when they don't know something, working patiently to solve problems they face are some amongst the important part of teaching children. Playing with children and talking to them, even for a short period of time, is an important part of their learning. Trying new things is part of learning to teach. What a person knows is less important than what they do to find out new things.
       When parents and children explore learning together, the experience of cooperation, family support, and excitement outweighs the problems of being tired, not having enough time and embarrassment. Education includes more than just being in the classroom. The information society requires more than basic education. It rewards creativity, the ability to work together, the ability to put information together in new ways, curiosity, questioning, and asking difficult questions.
        Students’ participation in extracurricular activities like sports, school clubs, music, theatre is part of this development process and should receive as much support from parents as classroom work. Education often begins even before school i.e. at home.  The demands of future work will place more emphasis on personal interaction and building close and collaborative interpersonal relationships which is almost a difficult task to achieve until and unless the same sort of environment is created at home.
        Growing up has never been easy especially now in the new millennium amidst unprecedented prosperity, it has become more striving than ever. The cravings to know each and every fact of the existing world around him drives the inquisitive child to a stage of instability. During this stage the child cries for attention, help and love from the parents. This stage if ignored can prove to be lethal for the child.
        Parents usually prefer to discuss only the career oriented issues with the child and rest of his cravings are considered as taboo. The child is always raised with pressures to excel in life. When children are young, parents marvel at their every little accomplishment but later the primal ambition left with the pushy parents is just to see their child topping the class. The grim epithet to the tormented lives of the children is the word ‘failure’. Sometimes the children express an inability to cope with the pressure to excel, frittering the dreams of their parents.
       Examination fear, sibling rivalry, issues at school, warring parents, fear of punishment, distressed parents, divorce of parents are some of the prominent reasons roosting among the children which are making them vulnerable towards depression or a new world (without parents).
      The escalating aspirations where the youth believes in achieving anything and the need of instant gratification makes the youth bully in nature. In such cases the refusals by the parents to accept the browbeating attitude of the child drives him away from them towards the world of destruction.
      To safeguard the future of their child and to bridge the gap the parents have to bring a cluster of changes in their own behaviour and personalities. The parents should ensure that the state of anguish being brought in the lives of their children by the inchoate emotional forces running rampant in the adolescent mind of the child should not go unheeded in any case or on the pretext of being a subject of taboo. Parents should also ensure that they are least absorbed in their own lives and career and try to spend the maximum time with their child.
        On seeing their child scoring low or being flunked most of the parents are seen doing comparisons between their child and the other intelligent classmates of the child who scored the highest, such affronting creates despair in the child. Instead of doing comparisons, sermonising the child to compete in today’s rat race and creating polarities, the parents should keep patience to hear and understand the child, entice the child for study and match the child with peer. They should try to ferret out the calibre of their child and help the child hone it up.
        Some children do not want to grow up as they assume that adults have no fun in their life. They perceive all the adults in their life as stressed and permanently tired. Here too the parents should tend to talk to the child about what they enjoy by growing older, also to tell them that education is the best provision for the journey to the old age. Caring relationship has proved to be the most powerful disciplinary and learning tool for children. Parents have the most important and enduring relationship with their children. Children learn more from the home environment than any other thing.
        Parents are the truest friend a child has, when trials heavy and sudden falls upon the child; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with the child during sunshine deserts him; when trouble thickens around him, still will parents cling to their child, and endeavour by their kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to the hearts of their child.
        Being pragmatic the parents should establish a few family rules and should stick to them. If children learn to obey at home, it will be easier for them at school. Punishment for not following the rules should be non-physical. The follow ups of these little but primal elements in life by the parents and the teachers will not let the child get bogged down by anxiety, phobias, academic and socialization plights and can restore a happy life to thousands of children. These factors corroborate the statement that 'the parents definitely have a role in proper education of their child.’

8:33 PM | | 0 Comments  

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