Part of this luminary gathering

 Finally, very proud to be part of this luminary gathering, selected through various steps across the world.

Food in a Globalised world

 Found this so interesting and of course funny, but there is a lot of truth in it. Western food with an Indian touch in a Globalised world.

A peak into online education in a Government College in Uttrakhand

I had a good experience to see online education from close quarters. The lady who works in my mothers house and stays in the outhouse in the backyard has two sons who are going to give their intermediate Board Exam in March. They have physics, Chemistry and Maths as their main subjects, besides English and Hindi for the Uttrakhand Board. The teachers just send them xeroxed material through what's app and it just collects in their phone. The two brothers share a phone and none of their friends read this material for none of them, they tell me, can understand any of this. Some times there is a voice in a notes and the voice is so low, that even with full volume I could not  make any sense out of it. For English only the answers to the question is given and the children have no idea about the lesson and hence cannot make any sense of the answers and just ignore it. I picked up the text book and started  teaching them in the morning and at night. The text book has the first lesson titled, The Last lesson, by Alphonso Daudet which speaks of the Franco Prussian war,  when France is defeated by Bismarck, who is leading Prussia and the territory of Alsace and Lorraine that was a French territory till now goes into the German hand. For  these   Government school kids, where there is no help from home, and when they have no idea of what is Prussia, who is Bismarck and what is Alsace Lorraine how can they understand and write any answer or even comprehend what is there in the lesson when the lesson is not taught and only answered in few lines are sent through what's app. There are other lessons in the text by William Douglas, Deep waters, Christopher Silvester. There are lessons by Selma Lagerlof, A. R. Barton, Louis Fischer. Then there are poems by Kamala Das, Stephen Spender, Pabolo Naruda, John Keats, Robert Frost, Adrienne Reich. I saw a very impressive Board that is involved from the country in making this syllabus. Do they only think of students from St. Joseph, Sherwood, St Marys in making this.Many of them,  I am sure will not be giving Uttrakhand Board. Do the Board even think about the Government Schools while designing the syllabus. Why cannot we have a content, mostly from India or from the  Hills, the Himalayas that makes sense to these children. I would have been very happy to see a Ruskin Bond here. Any way, I have taken it upon myself to explain the lessons to these two boys Sonu and Mohit and in the last three days time I have seen a change in them and their excitement   to read the English lessons. In my stay here,  I want to finish their English texts so that they are able to at least understand some English lessons in which they have to give exams. I was surprised to know that even if they fail in one subject they fail the exam for there is no supplementary system in Uttrakhand Board. The English is so weak that they are not even able to read a sentence properly or understand the meanings of words like dread, scared, shanty, over the top etc. Yet they have to learn both prose  and poetry and that too by many Westerners where the language is so tough and most of it in a foreign context. I am seeing only one subject and God knows what they will do in other subjects. They go for tutions  in the evening, where the whole class comes for Physics, Chemistry. If private tutors  can meet the students and hold a class why not the regular school. The children tell me they only went to their college once last week to fill up their board form and pay  the fees. I saw so much of cluttering on their phone of all the six subjects and they have not even read it once. I really do not know how they will write their Board exams. All this online education, at least here for the Government colleges is a sham. What kind of learning  is taking place, God only knows.

In Delhi Golf Club and DSOI

 Partying with my brother, Col. Prakash Tewari, my sister in law Rashmi Pande Tewari and my two lovely nephew's at the Army club in Delhi, Golf Club and DSOI. It is really nice to meet and interact with our near and dear ones after months of isolation. Though only a small family gathering this stop over in Delhi was worth it. The face masks, the gloves and the sanitisers are the new normal though and one just removes them for a photograph.

Department of History & Ethnography, Mizoram University.

In my transit to the hills, at Delhi, I was very happy to participate in a Ph.D viva of Lalhlimpuii Pachuau from the Department of History & Ethnography, Mizoram University. Her Ph. D  thesis  was on the topic of Teachers, Curricula and the Society: A Social History of Education in Colonial Mizoram, under the supervision of Prof. Lalngurliana Sailo. She has done a good work in this area using a variety of sources. Talking about the Colonial period education in Mizoram  she has discussed  about the mission teachers, Zirtir, the curricula during this period, the experiences of teachers and the taught and what role patriarchy played in women's education. Very happy to have read and evaluated this work. The scholar was  able to confidently defend her thesis. I only hope that this is published for it will be a good addition to the historical knowledge of a region where there is still a dearth of sources.

 

Taking a flight after a gap of ten months

 In the times of Carona, this is how we travel. Taking a flight after a gap of nearly ten months.

A beautiful deepawali gift by Karan Palsania

 A beautiful gift that I received for Deepawali was a book published by my scholar Kaluram, Karan Palsaniya being published, 2020, by Books Treasures Publishing house from Jodhpur and Ahmedabad. I was very touched to see that he had dedicated this book to me. Karan was my M. Phil student and has completed his Ph. D under my supervision. Indeed very proud of you Karan . A beautiful day and you have made my Deepawali a very bright and happy one. I am wishing this is just the first book in the long line of other books that you will publish in future. Wishing you the best

Trying for nirvaan

  Finally, I feel I am a step closer to nirvaan, moksh, mukti what ever you may call it, for detachment from worldly things is the first step. When I retired, on 30 th June this year, I brought my books home and also seven boxes of papers, files and God knows what all. This after I had been cleaning and throwing stuff from my room for more than a month earlier and thanks to many of my students, especially Rizwan Ahmad, I could do this. These cartons kept lying in my garage for four months. May be as a historian documentation is in our blood and difficult to part with it. Finally, I threw all of the boxes  out but I could not part with my class teaching notes which I had meticulously kept from 1984.I have separate boxes for history and separate for Gender studies. Finally, I invited a colleague and gifted him all my class teaching notes. However, I will not call it complete nirvan because I am still attached to some moha- maaya and not totally rid of it. I still held on to my class notes in the form of a notebook which I had kept since 1976-1977. My friends used to borrow my class notes from me in my MA days for I would make such elaborate notes in class when our teachers gave their lectures. In one page, I found the time table too, Radhey Shayam, Rekha Joshi, Chandra Pant and C. B. Tripathi's classess being mentioned. I started my academic life as a student when xerox was also not available. We borrowed a book, made notes and returned to the library. Then we got xerox, though still not affordable. From Manual typing we saw electronic typing emerge. After this we saw  one computer for the whole school of social sciences and we had to book our spot to figidt  with it and learn about it with trial and error. Then we had desk tops at home and today we have lap tops, ipads,smart phones. I still cannot forget the feeling that i had and it is so fresh in my mind when I was sitting in a library in Australia and any book that I wanted was available. I told myself, life is so easy out here for the struggle of our students back then in the 80's and 90's was getting the material especially for research. Today, downloading is so easy and so much material is available in the digital font.  I can never forget the first time , I had done a PPT presentation.   I was invited by the World Health organisation to present a paper  in Kobe, Japan and I had to take a lot of help from my husbands office staff, In ICRISAT in the early 80's to place a picture, and learn the ropes of making a ppt for the first time. So much has changed in technology in the last forty years. It was with a note of sadness that I parted with my class teaching notes thinking, I will not be teaching a class now. Any way the satisfaction is that I have taught four decades of students and kept adding to my notes over the years. May be some one will benefit from these for when books were not available I had used libraries abroad in France, U. K. Australia and US to add to my notes.

Covid Deepawali, 2020

 A very happy Covid Deepawali to  my children, all relatives, students, friends and well wishers. This time Deepawali was a very low key affair with hardly any one visiting the house. In the morning  when I went to the market it was crowded  and the crowd of festival enthusiasts made me forget the Carona. Last year in the pre corona days we had a gathering of my students but this year it was a quiet affair. I cannot help but think of the various people who lost their lives in Corona and thy will not have any celebrations in their homes. Any way hope next year all this is behind us and we celebrate Deepawali as before.