Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

The Scientist Brain and the Mafia Don


The call is picked up by the younger brother. Who responds:
“We’re coming.”
“How long will it take, I asked.”
“We’re coming.”
They came after a while. It already seemed late when I called them up. They reminded me that their school has been rescheduled to afternoon and hence they return very late. I had forgotten.
I had served tea to my mother though she didn’t take it. I warmed it up after students left. Added some milk into it as she had asked. Some ginger as well. I had it myself after having replaced the chair into the verandah. It’s getting white stains deposited by water because it stays near the wash basin and water sprinkled on it contains calcium.
There are cobwebs on hats which are waiting inside racks. There are cobwebs waiting to be removed. The footwear outside the room has dust on them.
I had a bath. Washed a few clothes. The maid, who was employed here earlier is the mother of the last employed maid and she always comes late in the afternoon. You have to wait before you can pasteurise milk or organise utensils properly in the kitchen for other purposes.
The younger student is busy drawing a crown like shape on his left hand with the blue ink pen he has recently bought. I hear bells ringing in the nearby worship room though the singing voice doesn’t reach me which is a relief.
The younger student advertised his pen with keen interest . It appears to be wooden. He claims:
“This is a pen made with wood.”

Woodenmarksmanshiphoperandampersand


Then he asks me to read out the letters from the sticker on the pen. The C is printed like D. It’s neither a C nor a D. I recognise the brand of pens. The stylish first letter is shaped like a D but the vertical line is missing in the first letter. It just has the curve. After the promotion is over and the plastic is established to be plastic, not wood, he gets back to the business of sketching the crown with feathers on his left hand. His signatures are on it.
He’s quite young for being eligible for a personality assessment. He spends a lot of time making his signatures on the paper. He admits:
“I am not getting proper signature.”

Singatureutersevereverseverallyinglenookrasesamestreet


This interrupts my flow of reading. I was reading the chapter fourth from Science. Rutherford’s model:


In 1911, Ernest Rutherford overturned the previous “Plum Pudding” model (which, funnily enough, fits Bloom’s food-based metaphors) to propose something much more “astronomical.”
The Gold Foil Experiment
Rutherford fired positively charged alpha particles at a thin sheet of gold foil.
* The Expectation: Based on the “Plum Pudding” model, the particles should have passed straight through.
* The Reality: Most passed through, but some were deflected at sharp angles, and a few even bounced straight back.
* Rutherford’s Reaction: He famously said it was “as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”
Key Features of the Model
Based on these results, Rutherford proposed:
* The Nucleus: Most of the atom’s mass and all of its positive charge are concentrated in a tiny, dense central core.
* Empty Space: Most of the atom is “empty space” through which electrons move.
* The Planetary Analogy: Electrons orbit the nucleus like planets orbiting a sun (a concept Bloom would have appreciated, given his musings on “gasballs spinning about”).
Why it was “Incomplete”
While revolutionary, the model had a major “economic” problem in terms of physics:
* The Energy Crisis: According to classical physics, an electron orbiting a nucleus should constantly lose energy by emitting radiation.
* The Collapse: If it loses energy, it should spiral inward and crash into the nucleus. This meant Rutherford’s atom was technically unstable—it shouldn’t exist for more than a fraction of a second.
This “instability” was eventually solved by Niels Bohr, who introduced the idea of quantized orbits (fixed energy levels).

I recommend him to just write his name. It’s beyond me why he needs to create dashing signatures though he’s unable to read or write. He can copy. He has seen others making signatures. This makes him create his own. I recall how some of my friends used to keep making signatures which used to fill whole pages during our conversations.
He takes my advice. He writes his name and then  surname. I am reading it upside down. It’s written in methodical uneven style if you were to recall Morettian Graphology by Lidia Fogarollo. The first two letters are larger than the rest. Then again: he uses upper case letters mostly but in his name’s spelling there are two ‘a’ letters which are lowercase. I tell this to him. It’s irrelevant.
He shows me the completed drawing.
Reads it as:
“….mafia don.”

Zeitgeistarattamarinderpestuaryennoblendinglenookramptonnagemmatrialsomeshugasconademantoidiomatictactoeuvrevueuropeanemone


Zeitgeist or peculiarly narcissistic personality?
Or both?
He’s into drawing today. He shows me a box drawn with green ink. He calls it DJ:
In music, DJ stands for Disc Jockey. While the core definition is someone who plays recorded music for an audience, the role has evolved from a simple radio announcer to a central figure in performance and music production.
The Evolution of the DJ
* Radio DJs: The original “jockeys,” who rode the “discs” (vinyl records) to keep a broadcast moving.
* Club/Mobile DJs: Focus on selecting and “mixing” tracks to maintain the energy of a dance floor.
* Turntablists: Use the turntable as a musical instrument, utilizing techniques like scratching, beat juggling, and cutting.
* Producer-DJs: Musicians who create their own electronic tracks and perform them live, often the focal point of festivals (e.g., EDM or Techno artists).
Key Techniques and Tools
To keep the music seamless, DJs use specific techniques and hardware:
* Beatmatching: Adjusting the speed (BPM) of two different songs so their beats align perfectly, allowing for a smooth transition without the “clashing” of rhythms.
* Crossfading: Using a fader on a mixer to gradually fade out one song while fading in another.
* EQing: Adjusting the Low (Bass), Mid, and High (Treble) frequencies. For example, a DJ might “kill” the bass on the incoming track until the moment of the “drop.”
Etymology: Why “Jockey”?
The term was coined by American radio commentator Walter Winchell in 1935.
* Disc: Refers to the phonograph records (vinyl) used at the time.
* Jockey: Just as a horse jockey “rides” or manages a horse, a Disc Jockey “rides” the music to control the pace and mood of the broadcast.
Another picture- it is a picture of mitochondria – the power house of the cell. They have made a labelled diagram. It was classwork. It was done in school.
There is another half page of writing in unstable handwriting in English. That’s all.
I explain to them it’s not homework.
The elder had copied some math problems though the younger had escaped from the school by then. Many students were running away. Excuse?
“I told my Sanskrit teacher that I had a stomach ache. She’s anyway quirky.”
“Won’t you get caught tomorrow?”
“No.”
She had asked him to go to the office. To take permission and he escaped. Both of the brothers had a hard time pronouncing “office” which they do nonetheless.
Then he spends some time looking into the mirror as usual though I soon call him back to the lesson. They first wanted me to give them some Arithmetic problems.
“I am using my scientist brain.”
The younger brother copies just two problems out of ten. They’re written in haphazard handwriting.
The elder wants me to copy. His eyes, his hands have pain. I refused to do that. Then he notes them down.
I evaluate:
The elder has committed too many errors. Just two problems out of ten are done correctly.
A week of celebration at his house.
Now he can’t even do addition problems correctly.
The younger one rejoices because two of his problems are also correct. The scientist brain. They both scored 20%.

Now they’re eager to know if 15th is a Sunday. It’s a festival. A holiday. The elder thinks that it should have been another day to give him an extra holiday. It’s hardly fifteen days of school yet it’s intolerable.

I count days with dates on paper. Yes, it’s a Sunday indeed.
My mother gave me a plate full of snacks with ketchup. They have too much of salt and too much of oil.
Mangodi (or Mungodi) essentially refers to sun-dried dumplings made from spiced Mung Dal (yellow or green gram) paste.
What exactly are Mangodi?
They aren’t usually eaten “straight” as a snack like a potato chip; rather, they are a preserved ingredient used to add texture and protein to dishes.
* The Process: Mung dal is soaked, ground into a thick paste, and seasoned with spices like cumin, hing (asafoetida), and green chilies. Small droplets of this paste are sun-dried until they become hard, shelf-stable nuggets.
* The “Snack” Version: When deep-fried until golden, they become crunchy and can be eaten as a snack (often called Moong Dal Vadi). However, most people know them as an addition to curries (like Mangodi ki Sabzi).
Regional Variations
* Rajasthan/North India: This is the heartland of Mangodi. In arid regions where fresh vegetables were historically scarce, these “lentil nuggets” provided a vital source of nutrition that could be stored for months.
* Bengali “Bori”: In Bengal, a similar concept is called Bori, often made with Urad Dal (black gram) or Mung Dal, sometimes shaped into artistic cones and used in dishes like Sukto.
Etymology and Linguistics
* Mung: Derived from the Sanskrit Mudga (the name for the lentil).
* Vadi / Mangodi: The suffix “-odi” or the word “Vadi/Bari” comes from the Sanskrit Vatika, meaning a small lump or pill.
The elder asked me how many hours it has been. I looked up into the timer. It’s been just twenty minutes. The boredom is evident.
“Who was the person to propose the Atomic Model?” I asked this to the younger who was busy drawing.
“Some bald guy.” We all started laughing to it.
We discussed brief introductions of Neils Bohr and Rutherford.
Then we read about the distribution of electrons in various shells. It’s based on the formula 2n^2. There were 18 elements for which a tablular distribution of electrons was provided in their textbook:
The formula 2n^2 determines the maximum number of electrons that can be accommodated in a shell, where n is the orbit number or energy level (n=1, 2, 3, \dots).
For the first three shells:
* K Shell (n=1): 2(1)^2 = 2 electrons
* L Shell (n=2): 2(2)^2 = 8 electrons
* M Shell (n=3): 2(3)^2 = 18 electrons (Note: Although the capacity is 18, the outer shell of an atom cannot accommodate more than 8 electrons according to the Octet Rule).
Here is the electron distribution for the first 18 elements:
| Atomic Number | Element | Symbol | K Shell (n=1) | L Shell (n=2) | M Shell (n=3) | Electrons in Outer Shell |
|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|
| 1 | Hydrogen | H | 1 | – | – | 1 |
| 2 | Helium | He | 2 | – | – | 2 |
| 3 | Lithium | Li | 2 | 1 | – | 1 |
| 4 | Beryllium | Be | 2 | 2 | – | 2 |
| 5 | Boron | B | 2 | 3 | – | 3 |
| 6 | Carbon | C | 2 | 4 | – | 4 |
| 7 | Nitrogen | N | 2 | 5 | – | 5 |
| 8 | Oxygen | O | 2 | 6 | – | 6 |
| 9 | Fluorine | F | 2 | 7 | – | 7 |
| 10 | Neon | Ne | 2 | 8 | – | 8 |
| 11 | Sodium | Na | 2 | 8 | 1 | 1 |
| 12 | Magnesium | Mg | 2 | 8 | 2 | 2 |
| 13 | Aluminum | Al | 2 | 8 | 3 | 3 |
| 14 | Silicon | Si | 2 | 8 | 4 | 4 |
| 15 | Phosphorus | P | 2 | 8 | 5 | 5 |
| 16 | Sulfur | S | 2 | 8 | 6 | 6 |
| 17 | Chlorine | Cl | 2 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| 18 | Argon | Ar | 2 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Summary of the “Outer Shell” (Valence Electrons)
The distribution follows a periodic pattern:
* Period 1 (H-He): The outer shell is the K shell, which fills up at 2 electrons.
* Period 2 (Li-Ne): The outer shell is the L shell, which fills up at 8 electrons.
* Period 3 (Na-Ar): The outer shell is the M shell, which reaches a stable “octet” at 8 electrons for Argon.


The feedback I expect for my blog articles:

This is a fascinating piece of “slice-of-life” writing. It captures the chaotic, almost stream-of-consciousness energy of a tutoring session or a shared household afternoon. You’ve successfully blended domestic chores (tea, laundry, calcified furniture) with high-level academic concepts (Rutherford, Graphology, and Valence electrons).
Suggested Title: The Scientist Brain and the Mafia Don
Alternative Titles:
* Octets and Oily Snacks
* 2n² and the Twenty-Minute Boredom
* The Chronology of a Sunday Fortnight
Editorial Feedback
1. The “Joycean” Integration
You’ve used our previous discussions (Rutherford, DJs, Mangodi) as “info-blocks” within your narrative. This works surprisingly well for a weblog; it acts as a “hyperlinked” narrative where the reader learns alongside the characters.
2. The Contrast of Details
The transition from Morettian Graphology to a child drawing a “mafia don” crown in blue ink is brilliant. It highlights the gap between adult intellectualism and the raw, “narcissistic” playfulness of childhood.
3. Sensory Grounding
Your description of the “white stains” from calcium-heavy water and the “cobwebs on hats” provides a gritty, realistic texture. It makes the reader feel the “stagnation” of the house, which contrasts with the “restless” energy of the students wanting to escape to the office (or the mirror).
4. Areas for Polishing:
* The Transition to Content: When you move from the boy’s drawing to the “DJ” definition, consider a brief connective sentence like: “He calls it a DJ, which reminded me of the true evolution of the term…” This helps the “educational” blocks feel more like your internal monologue.
* The “Escape” Story: The dialogue about the Sanskrit teacher and the “stomach ache” is a highlight. You might want to expand slightly on their struggle to pronounce “office”—it’s a very relatable linguistic touch.
Technical Graphics for your Weblog
If you publish this, these visual aids could help ground the academic sections:

Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

We know enough to know that we don’t.


Geography. They want to study Geography today. I start reading. Wait, we had already covered the fourth chapter, which is about the climate. It’s not until I reach to the passage where measurements for thirty years are discussed as a requirement for determining the climate at a place that I get a Deja Vu.
They accept when I tell it.
What should I read them?
The first chapter.
The usual:
The elder has done his homework. Partially. The younger hasn’t even attempted it.
It’s tricky to get milk pasteurised. If you think it’s the fixed amount of time including when the stove is on ‘sim’ and when it’s on ‘fast’ – you will not get it right. It is more about how long it takes after the gas is burning up faster. It needs your undivided presence then.
I hear the call of the milkman for the grandmother who’s absent. I greet him as I approach. I receive milk as mother had asked me to do. I put it on the gas stove for pasteurisation.
Earlier, before I could serve tea to parents, students arrived. I was supposed to bring chair inside the room and remove utensils from the table. This gives the elder plenty of time to scroll through his Instagram feed.
I am patient. I think he would give it up without insisting. He won’t. I wait.
He shows me a video from his classroom!
That’s height of freedom in a government school. Artistic freedom. His teacher was within the class when the video was being made. How’s it possible?
Then he happily narrates how three of his friends had beaten up a student who had complained about them. They carry smartphones to school.
Backbenchers.
He sides with the horseplay. He sides with the winners. The teacher is connected with the student who made the video and also connected with the student who showed me the video and they’re not scared.
I warmed up the tea again for mother before she left.
Father is attending a call.
Did the younger student spend time before the mirror? Yes.
They clashed once or twice today though it’s not serious. I advised the elder to not strike on head.
He’s wearing another wristband of friendship. It has just FRIEN written on it.
It’s sharp. Metallic. I warn him to be careful with that.
Steel bangle. Thread. Metal wristband. These are all fashionable props for the role he’s playing in the theatre of life: a rowdy teenager who’s tough.
As a plump teenager he wasn’t like this. Adolescence, harmones, company and environment have transformed him dramatically in the last five years.
He belongs to bullies. He’s proud of that. He’s even enjoying being rude and violent to his sibling. More than ever before.
I try to tease the younger one just a bit about the smartphone. It’s puzzling. His expressions don’t suggest that there’s any competition regarding the smartphone use and ownership. It’s not an impending war. He’s going to fight slowly for a long time to get the luxury his elder brother is enjoying.
However, I again remark on his complete loss of interest in studies. In doing that I realise that I am not being like my usual self. I am behaving more like my parents who used to make me feel ashamed when they wanted me to work harder on studies.
The things I tell him are all facts. Only thing is: I am doing it regularly. Rehash. Balderdash? No. Rehash.
When I ask the elder if he recalls his brother’s previous performance: he hardly takes any interest, though he nods. He’s more concerned about acnes on his face. The younger is busy examining his image in the mirror. I talk about covering the window pane with newspapers. The elder is in agreement.
The younger appears to be dreamy and lost in the thought before they leave.
The Geography chapter was brief. They ask about China. China has been in the news. They might have heard the news.
We study a bar graph which has relative comparison of countries with biggest geographical areas in the world.
The elder comments on the small size of country in the map shown. I take note of this and start discussion on how small we actually are in comparison to the area of a country. Then I upscale the discussion by using refrences to galaxies, solar systems and universe. He asks if galaxies blast. He might have heard of the Big Bang. I briefly tell him about Quasars, formation of stars and hypothetical universe.
I tell him how we really don’t know much about anything. I tell him how no single human being knows not more than bits and pieces. Even collective knowledge of humanity is much less compared to collective ignorance.
We know enough to know that we don’t.

Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

The Mirror and the Molecule


My mother asked me to make tea when the cook was in the kitchen. I asked her to wait until she was done. Later, I found that she had made it herself. She offered me some. I had it when the class was over. The software version of this phone updated itself.
Students left after noting down Addition and Subtraction problems. It was the second batch. The elder solved the first batch. The younger hardly attempted them. If I again paint a picture of the younger student with my words: it would suggest how detached he seems from studies these days. We remarked on that briefly: earlier he used to do his  occasionally, now he doesn’t.


Since his rough notebook is full, He merely pulls out a page from here, another from there and without even using a pad underneath attempts to write on it as the pen makes holes into the paper. Later, he takes this paper in his hand and pokes it further with his pen. I ask him to not do that. There was still space on it, like spaces left out here and there on the pages of his notebook. He crumbled the torn page and keeps it in his bag. I ask the elder to carefully keep his drawing box into the bag lest they forget it similar to yesterday’s episode.
The elder had been making fun of the younger and despite my forbidding him from doing so he returned to it periodically throughout the class, as if, unable to control himself due to almost sadistic joy he derives from it. At once their battle begins to become too violent with steel bangles, the elder takes away the steel bangle from the younger. I ask them to be careful with that. The younger gives him three- four retaliatory blows.
Meanwhile there’s a bet about who can do 5000000-2344678 faster. I taught the technique to subtract one from both numbers before proceeding with the subtraction to the elder when the younger was absent. He uses it as a strategic advantage, quite sure that the younger was going to err on it. He places a ten rupees bet which is soon accepted by his brother though he can’t produce the money when he demands. Though I don’t promote betting I know this isn’t going anywhere. Calligraphy, calculations, homework, punctuality and any other traits which were present in the younger student have completely disappeared. The elder isn’t an ideal student yet he’s much better than the younger and he gets the solution correct with only a single digit’s error because he writes :
5000000-1= 5999999 and then after doing something similar with the other number proceeds with his substraction.
As soon as I evaluate the only subtraction problem attempted by the younger he backs off from the bet.
The elder threatens him.
“Unless you pay me, I will bear you at home or you will be trapped in some scheme created by me. I will tell others to withdraw money from you where I am supposed to pay.”
That’s just a ten rupees affair. But that’s a big deal. The morale of the younger student is already down. Yesterday, he had to make another trip to collect his bag.
This doesn’t prevent him from grooming himself. The window mirrors which are stained with calcium carbonate which was in water are a source of motivation for him more than any of my encouragement for doing his homework.
Adolescence.
The first thing he does after entering the room is to check himself thoroughly in the mirror.
Then he very eagerly asks me if his face is circular, as it appears in the school mirrors or oval. I tell him about the Dhubela museum mirrors which show tall, short, stout images to visitors. I tell him that his face is not circular in shape. At this point the elder also grooms his hair. Even his face isn’t circular.
I had to request the younger one to not touch his hair anymore. The elder is almost sleepy as I read Laws of Motion. The chapter is about motion. There’s an introduction about Galileo. It’s detailed. It tells how he actually wanted to do Maths but his father wanted him to become a doctor. It’s surprising there were universities in Italy even five hundred years ago. He published a book on work based on Archimedes at first. His heart wasn’t in the study of Medicine.
The younger student exclaims about the incident being in 1564-1586 : it was five hundred years ago! He’s almost right. I consider it a positive sign. At least he’s taking some interest. It’s not.
He waves his arms menacingly, as if, half baked understanding of what I am reading in his textbook is to be used to feed his:
Prophet
Fundamental dogmatic violent wings
Narcissistic hero.
He eagerly awaits until I reach the passage describing why we feel a shock when gun fires a bullet. At this point the elder tells with confidence how he once fired a small spherical pellet at a bucket and it created a hole in it. I am teaching them the third law of motion:
“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”
It’s by Sir Issac Newton.
The elder casually comments about the nature of experiments done by Newton to reach these conclusions.
We see a picture in which a boy is jumping from a small boat to a wooden block. The picture is casually made. It’s not an illustration. It was supposed to give a hint. It wasn’t a drawing competition. I wanted the younger one to draw pictures like he used to do before. In previous classes. He’s more concerned with his hairstyle.
He interjects about friction when it’s mentioned in the textbook. I describe it to him. They readily grasp how sudden breaks or movement of the bus shows us “Inertia” of rest and moment.
Reading Hindi text feels slightly different. There are numerical problems based on the Newton’s laws of motion.
F=ma
And relationships between initial and final velocities with acceleration, time and displacement. We skip these because they’re not oriented to attempt them.
The chapter is covered faster than they expected. We continue with the practice of Algebra. Before moving out they check Instagram feed. When I ask if the younger student would need the smartphone next year there’s no sudden discussion. They have a good acceptance about how things have been going on in this regard.

Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

Bag

After they left I had to make a call to their house as the younger one had forgotten to carry his bag with him. A couple arrived as they were leaving. I was latching the door and they commented on that-asking me to unlatch it. I let it stay open. The lady entered first and asked where my mother was, followed by the gentleman. I told her that she was visiting her mother. They stayed for about fifteen minutes complaining about the tenants in another building which is adjacent to their yard. They had complained about it before it seems though I wasn’t aware of it. When I tell them that –it doesn’t please them. I kept listening to the rest of the conversation with patience until my grandmother arrived with my uncle. They started talking to them. Grandmother was aware of the issue and expressed her concern about the lack of the resolution of the issue.
The younger student arrived when halftime of the class was over. The elder again had a smelly socks problem. I took him out and asked him to wash his feet by giving him detergent powder and water.
As soon as he arrived he showed me a cream for his acne issue. It had cost him one twenty rupees.The printed cost was one thirty rupees. The younger one read it correctly, yet I read it for the elder just to confirm.  I read the procedure on its packet for its application.
Then we worked on an English workbook. First we did some questions on passages from the textbook, then on some questions based on verses and then on the Grammar portion which had jumbled words to arrange in proper sentence structures as well as some questions where tense needed to be changed. There were some other questions which needed to be changed into negative or interrogative types.
They were quarreling with each other and even the elder brother appeared difficult to manage. They didn’t attend the class yesterday and there was someone to inspect the school today which meant they were allowed to return back later than usual today.
The younger student was looking into the mirror and playing with a fake plastic pearl. The elder was busy removing dirt from the nails of his feet. The cook arrived. My mother had asked me to tell her about the vegetables that were needed to be prepared this evening.
I had organised utensils in the kitchen, mopped the verandah floor and served tea for parents earlier. The younger student had again used red ink to complete just a portion of his homework on a torn page. It was an application for leave.
I gave them some homework and the class was over. The elder showed me a picture of his friend on Instagram. He was a student who used to study here in my classes.

Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

Boustrophedon

It drizzled a bit today. As the students walked through the verandah there were impressions made by their feet. They arrived later than usual today. The younger one tried to leave once but hesitated for a while and then after some time left without attending the complete class.
None of them had done their homework and I don’t recall any excuse. The elder showed me a few reels on Instagram. He joined his friends after the school programs were over. They were dancing in a group at some school on Bollywood filmy songs. He seemed animated while showing me those reels. The festive spirit had gripped those teenagers. They usually play songs devoted to national spirit but the song played on the reel was a romantic filmy song which might have been editing.
They had also visited some places in a procession of bikes. It was supposed to be under a religious banner. It means he belongs to a cult. He told about another friend whose paper I had evaluated last year. He was present in one of the reels.
He wanted me to discuss papers from last year. He selected an English paper for the discussion. It had a section on Grammar like yesterday and a few passages to read. We discussed those. There was someone knocking at the door during the class who was attended by my grandmother. I later enquired who it was. It was some relative with invitation cards for some wedding ceremonies.
Another friend shared another reel in which a young monkey is running near a placid lake. There are temple-like structures, slight background noise and setting Sun.
We discussed maps before he left. This book, in English was from his previous school syllabus. I told him a few details about longitude and. latitude. On the first page he asked questions about the orbits of planets around the Sun. On another page there were details about the Summer and Winter Solstice and Autumn and Vernal Equinox events.
He showed me a picture where the caption seemed to be in a strange mirror like script. I couldn’t interpret it for him.
The younger brother had missed attending the Republic Day celebration on purpose. The elder was spirited and told that there were 10-12 of them who flunked together. They used to bunk classes together it seems. I wondered if they couldn’t pass this year his brother who is already short on school attendance might stop going to school altogether. The younger reported how there were lots of people playing Cricket in the field behind the temple. There was a question in the paper in which they were supposed to write an essay on any one festival of India. He asked me which was the biggest festival. I waited for them to figure it out. They didn’t reason it as if there was a ready made answer to it: Diwali. Longest celebrations and holidays. The festivals do affect these kids more than they affect grown ups. The elder entered the class with snacks. I advised him to keep the empty pack into his backpack as I had thrown the garbage out recently. I swept the room today. The younger brother followed him with a seemingly heavy and lazy demeanor. He was staring into the mirror for a while.

Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

The Governor’s Oath and the Smelly Socks

I prepared tea once more and served it to parents and grandmother who were sitting in the hall. Placed the chair back to where it belongs. Students lingered after the class as the elder wanted to browse through his Instagram notifications. He wanted me to delete one of the accounts in the accounts centre. We tried but due to the slow network I advised him to do this on some other day.
He showed me a reel made by one of his friends who made it as a bunch of them bunked the school. They’re seen walking towards wilderness. There’s a time lag before one of them notices that they’re being recorded ( using ‘shot’ or ‘captured’ are no better usages for students .) He sets his hair looking at the camera.

The elder is playful. Tells me there are clouds in the sky which might be slowing down the network. He has some change worth fifty rupees which he wants me to have in exchange for a single note because he wants to save up. Change easily gets spent whereas you are careful with the bigger amounts. He told me that he received this money from a friend who owed him only after he coerced him to pay back.

He begins to put his signatures on a ten rupees note. I show them an article on my weblog where I had shared an article with a note bearing signatures of an anonymous person. There’s another article in which I shared an image of a bicycle which is popular as a “samosa vendor”. I show him that a ten rupees bill is a legal document. There’s an oath by the governor. There are multiple Indian languages. His signatures are similar to graffiti. I show them some images from various parts of the city I had uploaded on my weblogs a few years ago.

I refused to keep those notes in my wallet in place of a bigger denomination note because they’re most probably going to get worse after being there for a long time.
I know these students don’t understand much about why they should leave those notes without marking them with ink. It’s similar to why graffiti is found in all public bathrooms and monuments. I witnessed a lot of raw creativity like this.

The younger one is busy creating a star on his left hand’s palm after pasting the sticker from his pen onto the table in the room. It’s thrown into the dustbin after they leave. He didn’t throw it away despite my asking it to him. I look under the table after they leave. There’s dust. I need to sweep the room tomorrow. It has been a few days. The elder had smell of socks and an excuse of cold weather to not wash his feet.

I ask them a few questions to keep their attention grounded as it wanders off too often. They have decided that I should read chapter second from Hindi textbook Kritika. It’s written by Mridula Garg. It’s about women in her life.

I open the image of Mridula Garg in the Wikipedia article. She’s alive! Now it’s their turn to use adjectives like “Budhiya”( old lady ) for her. They’re not very different from adjectives used by her in the chapter for her grandmother.

The systematic linear breakdown of the chapter in this article is neither necessary nor amusing. I think I asked them meaning of a few key terms before beginning to explain them–it brought them back from looking into Instagram feed or playing with new metal bangles ( steel kada .) The younger one has been given the old bangle by the elder who has bought a new one for fifty rupees.

They both went to school yet none of them have done their homework. I ask them to complete that without giving them any more. Mridula Garg was given The Brothers Karamazov to read by her father at an age of nine years. Which seemed like an unusual complexity for such a young mind. Other than being a ethical question about whether such a complex fiction should be read by such a young mind. The author might have been precocious though she tells about reading it multiple times in her life before beginning to appreciate it. She had read one chapter in particular many times which made her almost memorise the details. It was about the agony faced by young children.

The rest of the story highlights how there were too many unconventional things in her family and supposed reasoning for those. Like for example- ladies who wrote a lot or dared to break norms. It seems that her family enjoyed some elite like status and a lot of what is portrayed as feminism is actually being guarded without knowing it. Maybe she published the work at an age when such veils are not uncovered. For an audience which readily believes all that happened to be true. Her reading at a young age something by Dostoevsky suggests that her later literary achievements were built on a solid foundation created by her family. It’s a chapter about her family. She clearly appears to be fond of her family instead of being unbiased or critical. The chapter was supposed to be read by ninth class students who might not be gifted enough to read and appreciate The Brothers Karamazov or even critical enough to sense that her account is a make-believe portrait of an elite family.

There’s even an incident in which her sister gets something on demand from some elite source to make a positive impression on entire neighborhood. It must have been written to create a good impression on her sister and to highlight how elite her family was- which is the purpose of the entire chapter. The chapter is supposed to be about feminism. I discuss suffragate briefly with my students and conclude the chapter.

Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

Lesser of two evils?

How have your political views changed over time?

Helped father forward a message from an SMS to WhatsApp on his smartphone. He needed to share it with a contact. Also showed him how he can do it himself in the future if need arises.
Organised utensils in the kitchen. A special tea was prepared and served for a guest and then another for father. Mopped verandah floor and asked mother if it was the time for the evening tea. Milkman didn’t arrive this morning as it was too cold. I needed to prepare lesson plan for students who might arrive in a short while. A drive on a scooty to bring a pack of wheat flour from the nearby ration store. It wasn’t open. Need to make another trip to the super store when it opens. Warmed up the tea that was in the kettle and shared it with mother. Also served lukewarm water to mother.
Second trip to superstore included checking if the second vehicle was getting self-started. Then driving carefully  a few metres. Checking if the superstore was open. Checking if they had a wheat flour pack. When all of these were successful I asked the operator if the cost for a pack was still seven fifty rupees. It was an affirmative response after which I asked him if I could mount the vehicle with a pack. Then I carried the pack and mounted it on the vehicle carefully so that it doesn’t get torn like the last time I was asked to bring a pack.
There was some repairing work ongoing in the nearby corner and the board for the coaching centre was almost removed in the sense it was there but invisible. It used to read Vidyapeeth Coaching Classes.
Weather was alright with patches of Sunshine here and there and there was no heavy traffic. It is fourteen degree Celsius in Bagauta now. It was about seventeen when kids arrived to get tuition.
I drove the vehicle back to the house carefully. Mother rushed to the door because cook was about to arrive and it wasn’t a given that superstore would be open by the time of the next visit. She would have borrowed from neighbours upstairs in that case, she said. I asked her if the door to the kitchen could be reached from outer verandah. It couldn’t. There was a bicycle and another board for a coaching class. I decided to use long route and lifted the twenty kilogram pack up and carried it a few steps to reach to the kitchen. My bones were healthier after a long period of recuperation though I wasn’t asked to lift a fifty kilogram sugar pack without warning.
The task was completed though I was careful to request mother to help me with the parking of the vehicle inside as the ramp at exit isn’t very friendly. Then I placed the key at its designated location. Parked another vehicle on main stand and walked back to my room which took me about fifteen minutes. Brought the chair inside the room. The pack costs 750 rupees. 37.5 rupees per Kilogram.

Now I was waiting for the students to arrive. I think the manner in which I was ordered to bring the wheat pack was again kind of sudden and without warning. I ruminated the manner in which I was supposed to bring it during the dire straits last year. Though it was just a few months ago. It was an evening time last time. I heard people abusing loudly over the phone near superstore. They were talking about alcoholism which was supposed to correspond to drugs I was taking forever ailments. Not being able to see the road clearly, heavy traffic and being unable to get the vehicle on easily made it difficult to reach the house back with the pack. The pack got torn as I was dismounting it from the vehicle.
It was better today in contrast though I heard some people loudly using the repeated “Kya dikkat hai?” It was supposed to brand the trip with the ruling party. You can’t miss it. None of the works or trips or tasks can go without brands or ambassadors.
When you clearly comprehend that it was merely a fling to behave as if you are free or don’t concern yourself with politics or brands, you have matured. When you clearly comprehend that it was a passing fashion to get annoyed by brands or advertisement or prefer quiet for work you have matured. Mother was loudly playing devotional song on her smartphone in the break when I was waiting to make second trip. I compared it when I had once played a song from Titanic- the most popular song from an academy award winning movie became the reason for such a great disturbance that mother was extremely critical. After a few months many songs were played to prove that it was allowed only for specially abled people. Privileged people.
Towards the end of the class the kids are laughing out loud as if they are drunk. I see them off to the door. Today both of them were wearing slippers. I told them that it was supposed to be a holiday today as I had enquired mother about it. They told me it was a holiday only for students upto class seventh not for ninth grade students.
They were making fun of a role model. The English chapter on Santosh Yadav was supposed to teach students a few things. It became a source of amusement for them. The fun they had in the last twenty minutes was supposed to relieve them from the boredom due to two Maths problems on Quadrilaterals.
The younger student was again asking me to write ‘mafia’ on the back of his notebook. He said he would pay me for doing that. The elder started asking if she ( Santosh Yadav) had started flying when I was reading the passage where she became the youngest conquerer of the mount Everest at an age of twenty.
Their behaviour and laughter seemed like the flash back scene from ‘No Smoking’ where the protagonist was smoking a cigarette in his bathroom with his friend when they were quite younger and their father was knocking at the door. Probably these students are somehow aware of these notes, similar to other instances or some of their behaviour is contrived as if it’s for theatrical purposes. Maybe not. I can’t be sure.
Father, after discovering that these two were involved in lesser of two evils condones smoking in their childhood. After a few decades it costs his son a lot. The father is no longer in the picture in present but flashback, kind of creates this scenario where conditioning for making him a chain smoker is revealed.
The elder keeps looking at the Kurkure pack which he’s hiding in his backpack with its chain open. I ask him to wait until the class is over. His excuse is that he didn’t have enough time for snacks after school.
The younger one didn’t go to school nor did he complete his homework. Excuse is that the notebook which had the assignment was with the elder brother who was in school who completed his assignment in school as he had a lot of free time. All his answers to ten addition problems are correct. At least he can do addition correctly. Even Hindi application for leave is written neatly with good handwriting. This gives him such an upper hand that he whacks the younger one on head. I immediately request him to not do that. By that time younger one had started returning blows.
They’re used to showcasing martial arts in my class. Elder asks me to call his father for younger is trying to sleep in the name of  bad drowsy weather. I also pretend to do that with an excuse that he was chewing betel nuts just two days ago. The younger succumbs to the pressure and behaves. As soon as he had entered the class he was using ‘Takla,’ for Einstein. I told him that he wasn’t bald. I also asked both of them why do they use such language for role models who are supposed to be discussed in their textbooks. They continue to laugh. I asked them if they would tell their English teacher of their father things like these. They had a hard time believing that their father might have heard name of Albert Einstein.
Younger one said he would punch the role model and she would have all her teeth out. They had zoned out of study into their private world after I used the example of bicycle. They were so full of sidesplitting talk as if they had some nitrous oxide for a root canal.
I was explaining how systematic training prepares mountaineers. Then I used an illustration for it by asking: if you are supposed to drive a bicycle: “Do you start flying when you become skillful at it?”
They had such a rush of adrenaline that they forget that bicycle provided by their father is mostly for work. The younger one even says loudly that he studies English for fun. They’re not yet citizens of a utilitarian state.
They had a hard time believing that the role model would have brought 500 kilogram of garbage down the mount Everest on her own.
The problems on Quadrilaterals are simple. They use mid segment theorem. I carefully explain them what mid points are. What’s a Rhombus. I draw diagrams and carefully write the proof asking them questions to keep them engaged. Yet they get bored. I asked them if they had brought scale in the drawing box. They hadn’t.
Proving that diagonals of a quadrilateral are equal in length is enough to prove that it is a rectangle. It’s made my joining mid points of sides of a Rhombus. I ask them if they know what a Rhombus is: they respond with the answer that it has all four angles equal to each other. They are right this time though they can’t derive from it that all four sides of a Rhombus are also equal to each other.