Back to Bangalore

After a couple of days in Jaipur, attending PRAXIS6, it’s back to Bangalore, to the routine.

While returning, visually archived Namma Bengaluru just as we began our descent to Bangalore from a height if 36000+ feet.

That’s misty Bangalore at this time of the year, when it’s unusually rainy

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Taste Rajasthani cultural flavour

#PRAXIS6 IN Pink City

It’s been a terrific summit here in Jaipur. The Pink City of the Muggs’s hosted the sixth version of this international summit from 15-17 th September.

One of the things that i did was to tweet crazily. It was nice of Amith to announce prizes for the top tweeter.

But for me that was not there motivation. Two things: it would add to PRAXIS6 trending. That’s very important for an event like this. Two: i myself would know how much i can tweet a day.

In Mysore i tweeted about 300 tweets. But this time i neared 500 mark. That’s quite an achievement and learning. It would inform my teaching and research.

Now almost entire crowd must have disappeared except there to team. I had to miss the latter part of PRAXIS6 due to other commitments. But i am happy to have been a part of such a lovely international event. Thanks to Amith and Roshan and Hemanth for all their hard work.

Exams are a welcome time

Ask students. And they will frown on you. But there’s no getting away from them. Exams

Teachers don’t enjoy exams either. Not most. First, they need to set question papers for exams. Second, they need to do invigilation, doing nothing else during exams while students are busy scratching their grey cells in exam halls. If the exam duration is three hours, nothing can be more frustrating to a teacher than that. You just have keep your mouth shut, which otherwise refuse to shut all day, like Arnab Goswamy’s! Then, seeing students desperately trying to copy, avoiding invigilators’ eyes is another pathetic sight.

Third, students are free after sitting their exams. But not teachers. They have to read those answer scripts, desperately looking for answers resembling something of what they might have taught in classrooms!

When done, teachers have to distribute those “corrected” answer scripts to their rightful owners, ready to face any question/ accusation by them. And complaints. It’s too much.

Exams.

But this time, i was lucky with exams. It gave me time to recuperate. Post fever, you time to recover. And i had some of it. I didn’t have to prepare my classes.

Thanks to exams, I am more or less back to my normal.

Praxis

Gauri, don’t rest in peace… till

A sad day in the history of independent India. A black day. A democracy kills its own children. Just like Gujarat 2002. Hunting down people for their self-constructed fears. For the hate they harbour. For the way they despise the little Indians. For the sheer helplessness of seeing women, dalits, tribals, minorities, and people with different opinions shining. An envy that refuses to accept differences.

Guari Lankesh was a bold daughter of India. The late daughter of the rebel writer, dramatist, poet, and journalist P. Lankesh started her journalistic career in English print media. After working a while in the erstwhile Sunday magazine of the Anand Bazar Patrika group, after the death of her father, she took over the reigns of Lankesh  Patrike.

Like her father, she did not forget to fight for justice, for women’s emancipation, for dalits, for tribals, and for minorities. In doing so, she had to take head on some of the rabid orthodoxy, fundamental forces who were shaken up. They could not digest the fact that in India, a woman could sow fear in their hearts!

She was threatened for her courageous journalism and activism. But she pooh-poohed it. But the Indian right wing meant serious threat – to eliminate her.

On 05 September at around 8.00pm, as she returned home in her car, opened the gate, and then walked the gate to close it, a helmet-wearing coward fired at her mercilessly. Initially she missed the shots, and ran inside the gate to hide herself; but the helmet-covered coward had a gun; in all, he fired seven rounds, which took Gauri’s life.

The insecure fundamentalist succeeded in silencing one voice of dissent; but in doing so, his gang has opened a can of worms: it has strengthened the debate over democracy and violence – louder than in Guari’s lifetime. It has focused the world’s attention on the incompetent, hate-mongering government which came to power in 2014 in the name of development, but has failed miserably to fulfil even a single promise. Tragic events like cold-blooded murders of thinkers, writers, journalists serve to distract people’s attention from the government’s failures. But, a thousand Gauri’s will be born, a thousand M.M. Kalburgis will be awakened. We shall overcome… someday!

When it rains, it simply pours down

This year has been very good for rains in India. Initially things looked bright, and then suddenly a pall of gloom spread over the Indian skies with rain gods refusing to “liquidate” their “gaseous” promises! I am not sure whom to talk about – the rain gods or the weather predicting gods of India. 

Then again, the skies started rejoicing, shedding thick tears of joy – most parts of the country have had plenty of rains – in access over the annual average. The surplus started in August. 

But a few parts of the country experienced dry days all the same! Especially Karnataka, which has regular tussles over water with Tamil Nadu and Goa and Kerala and Maharashtra.  

While places like Bangalore- which otherwise don’t receive too much of rains, this year it was the opposite – plenty of rains. In fact -may be highest rains ever in Bangalore. If it rains another centimeter or two (10-20mm) in Bangalore in the next two days, we would have set new records for all eternity! So much of rains. No less devastation, either.

 And Mumbai didn’t learn its lessons! Normal life has come to a stand still. The otherwise dry Mumbai is under water. And more rains in the offing. So far, the rains are said to be only second highest after 2005!  

And our administration -neither Mumbai nor Bangalore nor Chennai- learn any lessons from their omissions and commission Poor rain management by our city councils. No rain water harvesting. No drainage. Hardly any preparedness!

Sad for a country which suffers so much of loss due to lack of water, and now allowed to suffer due to excess rains! I only pray God to give our civil servants and politicians some sense of their duty and imaginative ways of managing resources. And some good civil sense to all of us – civilians.

When you don’t want to go to hospital to get treated for dengue, you do whatever you can – eat dragonfruits! I loved its mild taste, and liked it looks, warm and attractive colours, texture and the cute feel.

It is small enough to eat and big enough to fill your stomach! Two dragon fruits made a k.g.! Two fruits in two days, and all was well. No doubt, they charge about Rs. 300 per k.g. in a near by shop in Bangalore, and along roadsides in K.R. Market, ten rupees less!

When you don’t take care of your system

What happens? It’s obvious. Your system doesn’t take care you, it fails you. It forces you down to take care of it!

It’s no secret Thai I have been overwriting my system – my only, irreplaceable body. And it has served me right for a number of years. But, poor thing, how long can it pull on?

This time I had a scared of dengue too. Dengue is too prevalent in Karnataka this yeas. Hundreds have lost their lives to dengue this year alone.

For days ago I felt I couldn’t go on. Then on Friday I had a blood test done. Test revealed my platelet count was down to 150,000. That’s not the best thing to happen.

Then I started consuming pomegranate juices, fruits, and papaya leaf juice. Things are better. But not not the best. Feel giddy, phlegm in the chest, cough, and feverish.

Only I wish I had learned my lesson a. Wee bit early.

Heat in Rainy Season

There may not be much rain in Bangalore (why, even in India!) in the rainy season.

All the same we keep facing the heat – come academic year.

Our Academic Year began in the first week of June, with students pouring in in the second week. And since then, there has been no respite. YOu can very well imagine given that an ardent blogger like me finds hardly  a minute to upload his blog!

But we don’t give up!