Onam again....

Onam is my favourite festival. I have written many times how the sights and scents of Onam made me joyous as a young girl and later on as I had my own family. It is a festival of sharing. I loved making the traditional sadhya for my family and other loved ones. I would go to great lengths to prepare everything perfectly from dry roasting the coconut for a variety of dishes to eschewing store-bought masalas in favour of hand ground ones. It was a tradition I wanted to create. The tastes you hand down to your kids serve as the most vivid memories of childhood. Years later when you are not around to be with them, a whiff of some childhood memory will bring them comfort. Every year a few of my friends would come over to spend Onam day with us. This past year being one of bereavement, I cannot in good conscience celebrate the festival tomorrow. My husband is away in Europe. The kids and I are going to design a lavish pookalam and then go over to a friend’s house for lunch - simple and low key celebration unlike my normal one. There is a time for different kinds of Onam during a lifetime. The spirit of the festival however is always the same for me.

The symbolic idea of Onam is to celebrate a good harvest. In this day and age when practically nothing is grown in Kerala to warrant the tag of self-sufficiency, it is not harvest so much as prosperity that is celebrated. We are grateful for the abundance received and in showing our gratitude with generous feasts, we hope to make the coming year prosperous as well. The traditional celebrations of old are stories I have heard from others. The plucking of flowers like the pure white thumbapoovu, bright blue krishnapoovu, the deeper vibrant blue kakkapoovu and indeed any flower the children could lay their hands on to make the beautiful pookalams. The food prepared from vegetables and grains grown in the fields around the houses. The graceful kaikottikali dance that all the women of the house would engage in after the feast. The playing of games that are no longer in vogue. All the borrowed memories tell a tale of a simpler time when there truly was abundance in the land. Now the flowers and vegetables come from Tamil Nadu. The rice comes from Andhra Pradesh. The fields have given way to houses and high rises. Most of the children think Onam is merely a holiday to feast and burp.

In the midst of remembering the times past, its yet fruitful to be grateful for whatever we have in the present. Onam changes over the years but its vibrancy will never change. In the month of Chingam when the entire land looks its gorgeous best, when the scents of water lilies fill the air, when women look lovely in their cream and gold mundu-veshtis, when people open up to each other again simply because no one can be unhappy at Onam time, you fall in love with the spirit of this beautiful festival all over again. Happy Onam everyone!

Where are the teachers?

My eleven-year-old got me thinking this morning. It’s a Sunday but since she had a whole day of fun and enjoyment yesterday, I asked her to stop lounging about on the couch in the morning and start tackling a few concepts in science. I wanted her to list out things she had trouble with so we could learn more about them. She wasn’t exactly pleased to be ousted from the couch but she did do as I asked. While looking through her lessons, she started reciting her litany of complaints. The science teacher didn’t know squat. She yelled too much. She targeted children who asked questions. Her spellings were awful. Now I had heard some complaints about the social studies teacher as well – someone who kept saying a century meant ten years – which for a little kid is quite an eye-opener in terms of comprehending that the teacher actually made too many mistakes. I can see how disillusioned she is and how little respect she holds for a few teachers and that is truly sad.

My daughter is smart but her interest in any subject is totally dependent on the teacher who is in charge of it. I told her that she has the entire internet at her disposal. Learning can be so much more fun than the way we did it when I was a kid. So what if she didn’t have the best teachers? In her previous school she had equally incompetent teachers at twice the fees – how did it make a difference? She had her parents – S is a math whiz and I love English to the point of distraction – so why couldn’t she just ask us? That level of initiative was missing. She had to want to know things. She needed to learn how to pick up things on her own. She needed to enjoy learning.

Teachers migrate from one school to another for the salary. Yes it’s a tough job but it is also an important one. If you do not have the knowledge or ability to teach, you end up leaving the impression that teachers as a whole are a bunch of idiots who get into a cushy job for the vacation timings or simply because their child too goes to the same school and that makes things convenient. Teachers should be tested and certified every year – the kind of ignorance that is rampant among the teaching fraternity is an insult to the society as a whole. It happens because they are not questioned.

I have met a number of teachers in recent years who make me want to actually indulge in violence. I get circulars that are so full of errors I cannot make head or tail out of them. I have seen teachers who not only don’t know their subjects and sent their own kids for tuitions on the subjects they majored in but also hold regressive opinions which they foist on their students. I have seen many notebooks corrected wrongly so that I have to spend hours teaching my daughter that what was marked correct was in fact wrong. I have seen teachers using abusive language but have been powerless to intervene because the concerned parents were keeping quiet. I have seen parents suck up to teachers so that they have better grades than the rest. I have seen parents remember the teachers’ birthdays and send cakes to make that great impression.

If all of that is the hallmark of a good parent, then I obviously suck because I don’t know my daughters’ teachers by name nor do I ever compliment them on their appearance. For every meeting, I ask how she is doing and whether anything more is required of me as a parent. I am in and out of PTAs in 5 minutes. I don’t send my children for tuitions because teaching them is something I like doing (on some days ;))and it is a personal choice that I can indulge in now. Also tuitions are a way of making extra money for the same teachers who aren’t doing their job well at school. Of course there are a few teachers who are so good that just interacting with them is a pleasure but they are a minority.

The sad part of dealing with teachers who hate teaching is that its an utter waste of the child’s time. Imagine how wonderful it would be to awaken a child’s curiosity and illuminate her mind. The spark of dawning understanding is pure joy to witness. Teachers hold the future of a generation in their hands. Our former president Kalam was a fine teacher – one who believed in every child’s potential. As long as we look at teaching as just another job, we will never have truly inspired teachers and that is a damn shame.