The last post

Dear reader,

This is the last post on this blog. I find that I have nothing more to say about our homeschooling journey.

Our daughter has successfully negotiated the minefield called school education and is in a college of her choice enjoying her learning experience. We have two more children walking the minefield but there is no fear in walking on a known path.

If you feel the need for a conversation, please feel free to write to me at arunelassery at hotmail dot com. 

 
Thanks for taking the time to read this blog,
Arun

Update: Most of my recent writing on education appears at the Society for Integrated Development of Himalayas (SIDH) blog here.

One homeschooler less

Aditi has finished her 12th standard exams and has joined a college of her choice (http://www.djad.in) and seems to be enjoying herself.

This is what she got in school. (TMA stands for Teacher Marked Assignments that the children taking the NIOS board exams have to submit as part of their course)

Pretty good considering that she studied completely on her own no?

Goood mooorning teacher!

Aditi has been using many wonderful online resources preparing for her 12th standard open school exam. I asked her to make a list and write short descriptions for each. This is what she came up with. Explore and enjoy!

Name: Khan academy
Short description: Over 3000 interestingly presented videos on maths, physics, chemistry and many other subjects. Used by millions of children across the world, Khan academy is a pioneer in online education.
Sample:
    

Name: Vi Hart
Short description: Beautiful doodle videos on geometry and other math concepts. She calls herself a 'recreational mathmusician' and is currently also on the Khan Academy team. Her videos inspired me to make my own mathematical art.
Sample:

Name: Veritasium
Short Description: 'The science video blog, from atoms to astrophysics!'. Whether it is showing how reducing the pressure in a tube of water can make it boil or how far away the moon actually is from Earth, these videos are amazing and lots of fun to watch.     
Sample:

Name: Crash Course
Short description: There are two courses here- World history taught by John Green and Biology taught by Hank Green. Entertaining, useful and very well made. The biology videos were the reason I was able to understand what my 12th standard textbook was all about. They manage to explain advanced level concepts in 10 minute doses and in a way that anyone can understand. 
Sample:

Name: Minute Physics
Short description: As the name suggests, these are 1 minute videos on physics (most of the time!). The videos on quantum mechanics helped me understand these insanely complicated concepts a little better. 
Sample:
 

Others I haven't fully explored-

Numberphile 
 'Videos about numbers, its as simple as that.'

Periodic table of videos 
They claim to be the ultimate channel for all things chemistry.

Scishow 
Videos featuring great scientists, interesting experiments, amazing facts and current news from the world of science.

Do you know of any more?

Homeschooling: A day in the life

(The cover story of the current issue of 'Teacher Plus' is on homeschooling. This article I wrote was published with the cover story. Check out http://www.teacherplus.org if you want to read other related articles) 

There are fast-moving white cotton-puff clouds in the bright blue Bangalore sky and through the big window I can see that it’s a beautiful windy day outside. I am sitting in my home-office from where I manage SeasonWatch, an India-wide tree monitoring program for school children, which brings in just enough income for the family. Teacher Plus asked me to write an article about homeschooling and every day for the last month or so, Dinkar, my 10-year old and I have been writing one story each and sharing it with the family in the evenings. Today, I thought I’d combine these two requirements and write an article-story about our homeschooling day.

As it often happens with us, all five of us are at home. So let us go around the house and see what the others are up to. In the children's room, Aditi, our 16 year old, is watching Bharatanatyam videos on YouTube. Aditi is interested in dance but her first love is photography and she is always experimenting with her high-end DSLR camera. The camera is a gift from her aunt for doing well in her NIOS 10th board exams last year. Aditi maintains a photo blog and many people like her work.

Dinkar, who unlike his brother and sister, has never been to school, is sitting on the floor behind Aditi and drawing something. He learnt to read only when he was eight years old but he has been sketching and painting from a very young age. He has a knack of representing scenes with very few lines and he likes drawing cartoons with speech bubbles.

On the dining table, Srikant is reluctantly going through his 7th standard Hindi textbook, which he should have finished two months ago before the end of the last academic year. For two years now, Srikant has been studying completely on his own, but today Kanti is sitting with him to ensure that he does not quietly move to the baithak and curl up with the Terry Pratchett novel that he has obsessively been reading.

Kanti has taken time out of her busy schedule to sit with Srikant. Her time goes in advanced level cooking, such as the multi-grain sourdough bread that she baked for breakfast today, or in experimenting with the technologies of growing
things for our kitchen on our sunny balconies, or in stitching professional looking clothes for the family, or in the hundred other simple things that keep our household ticking and fun.

Today is a Saturday – a busy day. Except for a loosely structured basketball class in the evenings, the weekdays are very flexible and free for the children but the weekends are busy. They have music and dance classes for which they walk a kilometer, catch a BMTC bus, get off and walk another kilometer to Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan for their one or two-hour class. Aditi learns Bharatanatyam and both the boys are learning to play the tabla. Srikant has an additional carnatic vocal class with a special teacher on Sunday evenings that he is very passionate about. He travels across town spending 3 hours in buses for his one-hour music class.

These weekend times when the children are away and also most weekday afternoons when the sun is bright and the roads empty, Kanti and I go for long walks. Although there is not too much of 'nature' around, I like to look at this as our reconnecting-with-nature walk. All five of us are very interested in nature and culture and a lot of the children's weekday time is spent in mostly non-academic reading, in listening to music and in a lot of free play. And because this is Teacher Plus, I feel the mischievous urge to challenge a myth. Over the year, doing two-three hours a day, with week and sometimes month-long gaps, with self-directed, self-paced, unsupervised self-learning, the children finish their academic curriculum with extreme ease.

The white cotton-puff clouds are still moving across the bright blue sky and Kanti and I have to go walk in the beautiful sunlight outside, so let me wind up this article-story with a really broad perspective on our homeschooling journey. Are you thinking that our family is made up of two stay-at-home adults 'teaching' three children? That is not how I see it! I think our journey has been about five people, who, over the last six years, have had the great good fortune to research, learn and work together with the technologies of happiness and good health and personal growth and sustainable living. And although all these may appear to you like luxuries we do not really need to focus on as we go about our busy lives, I am convinced that these are the technologies that will be valuable in a future that is just around the corner.

Perspectives on teaching, learning and education (Part 2: Practicals)

Aim:
To transform a (0% interest + 100% fear) 12th standard chemistry student to (100% interest + 0% fear) in a weeks time

Apparatus:
A. 1 hard working and intelligent 12th standard student who is going to take his board exams in a months time
B. 2 hard working and intelligent homeschooling parents of 3 homeschooled children
C. 1 ability to download (without paying even one naya paisa) content from the Internet
D. 1 Internet ready computer to do the above
E. 1 week of time to do the experiment

Procedure:
There are of course 1 million ways of doing this right. Apparatus B (the experimenters) modestly claim to have accidentally stumbled upon only one of these ways. (Detailed out in Annexure 1 but don't jump there right away because the few lines in between are carefully chosen to instruct and entertain)

There are of course also 1 million ways of doing this wrong. And apparatus B are happy to suppose that the more than 1 million schools in the world are probably doing diligent research on these ways.

Observations:
1. It was observed that apparatus A (the student) was excited not just by the chemistry resources he used but also by the very process of learning.
2. It was also observed that apparatus B who had thought that nothing from their homeschooling experience was valid for the 'conventional' school system were very pleasantly surprised to have been proven wrong.

Result:
100% interest, 0% fear and 90% of the entire 12th standard chemistry syllabus 'learned' in 1 week.

Precautions:
Doing this experiment with sub-standard apparatus can possibly cause dangerous local explosions.

Ideas for further research:
The readers are urged to do their own research on the other 999999 right ways of doing this experiment.

Acknowledgement:
Apparatus B would like to thank Shashi, apparatus A's father and, even more, Anita apparatus A's mother, for allowing this experiment to be conducted on their precious son by the often wild-eyed and admittedly volatile and unstable apparatus B.

Annexure 1: Some random notes from the experiment

Looking back and analysing what went on, it seems like the experiment had three fuzzily-demarcated and parallel processes:

- Interest generation

- Learning how to learn

- Confidence building

Some points from the above processes are listed out below in no particular order:
(Pranav is a very hardworking and very intelligent young man and every point that follows should be seen with this context in mind)

Pranav came the first day expecting to be taught! I told him that I didn't remember enough chemistry to teach a 2 year old baby (that shook him a bit :-)) but also told him that there was no question that he could ask that I could not find the answer to. Also told him that he obviously knew more chemistry than me and getting him equally confident was what the experiment was really about.
 

During the course of the week Pranav discovered on two or three occassions that indeed I (or Kanti) could answer his questions. I think our availability and capability that had got proven was enough to boost his confidence. He didn't seem to need us after that.
 

All five of us at home + Pranav sat together and watched and marveled at a three part BBC serial- Chemistry, a volatile history. Pranav as you can well imagine had no clue that this kind of stuff is what chemistry was really about. He was hooked! He also then on his own steam went through some random Russian books on popular chemistry and science that were lying around here at home.
 

He had heard about http://www.khanacademy.org but after he eagerly went through 50 or so Salman Khan videos on organic chemistry and learned the difference between 1,2-dimethylcyclohexane and 1,3-dimethylcyclohexane he was very excited that for the first time in his life he knew all this without having had to mug anything up.
 

The new way of learning we tried had no lectures, no hand holding and also no scope for rote learning (Pranav believed that many parts of his syllabus like organic chemistry required mugging up and he did not want to do this. The first time I opened the 12th standard text book, written in the Preface I discovered- 'The approach of presentation of the subject matter discourages students from rote memorisation.' Pranav's well thumbed book did not have the outer cover and the preface pages :-))
 

Pranav spent 1.5 to 2 hour intense alone periods where he shut himself into a room with no interruptions, no doubt-clearing and no distractions (his cell phone :-)). He would come out for a half hour or 1 hour in between the sessions for rest, questions, discussions and any other diversions like lunch or playing with the kids.
 

When we started, I read through the first 3 chapters just to make sure that I could hold my side of the bargain. This engagement with the subject really helped when Pranav had his few doubts. For example I discovered that I needed the 11th standard book to see the continuity of the subject. Pranav, of course,  did not have his 11th standard text book because he had already 'finished' with it last year.

Towards the end of the week Pranav was trying to get a full chapter on to a single large sheet of paper as a visual, interlinked, non-linear mind map.

Annexure 2: The last word 

(This is inspired by the ending of part 1 or the theory part of this post which, if you get interested, is available here)

Beautiful heaven, true heaven, look how I change!
After such arrogance, after so much strange
Idleness- strange, yet full of potency-
I am all open to these shining spaces;

(A fragment from 'The graveyard by the sea' by Paul Valery
Translated by C. Day Lewis)

Aditi's 10th standard marks

That is an aggregate of 73% and if you take Sanskrit out of the equation we get a respectable 77%.

We WERE thinking that it would be in the 90's you know, just like what all the other intelligent and hard working children like Aditi appear to be getting in their 10th standard board results nowadays.

But this result probably proves that you cannot get 90% if you:
a. Prepare only 3 months for a public exam
b. Do not have practice writing exams

Well, the 90 would have been a story worth shouting from the rooftops but probably just as well. Just as well, I think, because I do not at all feel confident about inspiring any more befuddled and misguided homeschoolers like us.

:-)

Peace brothers and sisters! 

GreenScraps- Nature journaling workshop

About GreenScraps:

About the organizers:

Sangeetha Kadur and Shilpashree, artists with a deep interest and knowledge about nature. Check out Sangeethas blog here. 

About what our children experienced:

Epilogue:

Dear Sangeetha and Shilpa,

Thank you both for this wonderful initiative. Your 'art' and your 'science' and your ability to form relationships with the children is awesome. Yesterday I got the children to write about the workshop. This is what they had to say.

Aditi:
The GreenScraps workshop was about observing, recording and learning more about nature. I really liked the way that we not only drew the plants and creatures but were also told their names and interesting facts about them. Both Sangeetha and Shilpa know so much about trees, plants, birds and animals! They were both very nice and made the workshop very interesting and lots of fun. We also played lots of games and did some activities like taking impressions of tree barks, finding the things they called out and also identifying a tree after being blindfolded and led to it. The whole workshop was very memorable and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
 
Srikant:
GreenScraps is a 5 day nature journalling workshop by Sangeetha and Shilpa. Although I loved all the 5 days, I particularly liked an activity called 'nature bingo', in which you draw or sketch the things in a list given to you. The only thing I was sad about was that the workshop was so short. One of the most memorable moments was when we were sketching cormorants and pelicans by the Lalbagh lake. Both Sangeetha and Shilpa are very nice teachers and people.

Dinkar:
GreenScraps is a workshop on nature run by Sangeetha and Shilpa. I liked how Sangeetha and Shilpa showed us different birds, trees and plants. I liked everything. Sangeetha and Shilpa are very good nature teachers.

Thanks again to both of you,
Arun, Kanti, Aditi, Srikant and Dinkar

About Us: In the media

The De-school brigade- Malini Bhupta in 'India Today'

No kidding we don’t go to school- Preetha Nair in 'Mail Today'

Home school home- Preetika Mathew in Andpersand

Home furnished- Nisha Susan in 'Tehelka'

A small list yet, but Tehelka? I am honored :-) 

About Us: Aditi

Details:

Name: Aditi Elassery

Age: 14

Education: Homeschooled since 2006. Probably next year taking the 10th standard board administered by NIOS

Interests:

Reading, photography, drawing, history, music, nature

Sample of creativity:

A lit paper lantern photographed by Aditi

Family's Assessment:

Aditi is...

... an introverted teenager but is still very comfortable in her relationships with both children and adults. (Arun's opinion)

... a gentle, considerate girl who can be focused and efficient when situations demand it. (Kanti's opinion)

... always trying to become better, like not getting too angry, but often forgets. (Aditi's opinion)

... a very good person but sometimes gets on my nerves and irritates me. (Srikant's opinion)

... nice. (Dinkar's opinion)

One positive external assessment:

With the simple camera that she uses and with no formal learning I have not seen anybody else who can take pictures like Aditi. (Friend Surkhab Shaukeen a professional photographer who has studied and taught in the US)

About Us: Srikant

Details:

Name: Srikant Elassery

Age: 11

Education: Homeschooled since 2006. Going through class 6 material now

Interests:

Reading, music, drawing, geography, trains, planes, cooking 

Sample of creativity:

Ship made with the pod of the tulip tree

Family's Assessment:

Srikant is...

... physically strong, musically talented and has a vivid imagination. (Arun's opinion)

... a bit enamored with the trappings of money, extremely strong-willed, a talented musician. (Kanti's opinion)

... sometimes stupid and sometimes very sensible. (Aditi's opinion)

... a nice boy but sometimes he is very selfish and stubborn. (Srikant's opinion)

... interested in planes. (Dinkar's opinion)

One positive external assessment:

If he continues, Srikant can become a professional Tabla player. (Srikant's Tabla teacher)

About Us: Dinkar

Details:

Name: Dinkar Elassery

Age: 8

Education: Never been to school. Going through class 3 material now

Interests:

Drawing, cars, planes, nature

Sample of creativity:

Family's Assessment:

Dinkar is...

... mischievous and artistic and wise beyond his years. (Arun's opinion)

... creative and intuitive, appears insubordinate because he thinks totally out of the box. (Kanti's opinion)

... very troublesome sometimes but otherwise quite nice. (Aditi's opinion)

... a very good person but very naughty. (Srikant's opinion)

... interested in playing. (Dinkar's opinion)

One positive external assessment:

Many children come to me but nobody is able to think at this level. (Shashi Maheshwari, Dinkar's drawing teacher in Delhi talking to us)

About Us: Kanti

Details:

Name: SV Kanti Ratna

Age: 40

Education: Master of Computer Science (MCS), Pune university, 1993

Current work: Full time at home

Interests:

Cooking, growing plants, stitching, education, personal growth

Sample of creativity:

Sour dough bread baked by Kanti

Family's Assessment:

Kanti is...

... the real implementer of all our strange ideas and she is very good at this job. (Arun's opinion)

... an autocratic perfectionist. (Kanti's opinion)

... a nice person to be with, though she shouts a lot occasionally. (Aditi's opinion)

... a very lovable person but sometimes she shouts a lot. (Srikant's opinion)

... nice sometimes and bad sometimes (Dinkar's opinion)

One positive external assessment:
The only good thing that Arun has done in his life has been to get married to Kanti (Arun's friend, after he met Kanti)

About Us: Arun

Details:

Name: Arun Elassery

Age: 44

Education: BTech, IIT Kharagpur, 1988

Current work: WATIS (Wipro Applying Thought In Schools)

Interests:

Talking, writing, reading, education, self development

Sample of creativity:

A picture book for children called 'The Laughing Onion' written by me. Available from Eklavya here or from A1 books here

Family's Assessment:

Arun is...

... still in the process of growing up out of a long childhood. (Arun's opinion)

... the happy philosopher captain of our family ship. (Kanti's opinion)

... a fun person to be with, though he irritates me sometimes. (Aditi's opinion)

... a very nice person but sometimes he is irritating. (Srikant's opinion)

... nice sometimes and bad sometimes (Dinkar's opinion)

One positive external assessment:

Nice article. Fun to see the picture. They failed to mention that you're a rebel mystic, though, and quite likely a danger to society. (Friend Chuck Schreiner after reading the Tehelka magazine article on homeschooling that featured us that you can see here)

Trip to Sikkim

Description:  

6 day trek from Yuksam to Dzongri (Kanchendzonga base camp) and back, West Sikkim

Date: 

Late April, 2010

Why (or why not on Discovery channel):
To stand at the highest point of our trek (14000 ft) at 5 AM in freezing cold surrounded by majestic white mountains to watch the sky lightening as the sun rises over the kanchendzonga mountain range and to feel the incredible joy and incredible sadness of being there

Team:

Family 1: Kanti, Arun, Aditi, Srikant, Dinkar
Family 2: Sangeetha, Sathish, Shalom, Ishaan
Guide: Jeet Bahadur Gurung alias JB 

Cooks: Bir Bahadur alias BB and helper Ashish
Yakmen: Mani alias Baichung and Indra the intrepid Chang drinker
Yaks: Blackie 1, Blackie 2, Snowwhite, Brownie 1, Brownie 2

Problems:
- Walking trails full of yak and pony dung, slushy slippery mud, leeches

- Bitter cold, Hailstorms and at Dzongri a proper snowstorm, leaking tents, no proper toilets, no change of clothes
- Mild altitude sickness, low energy on the way up (only for the adults, children were fine throughout)

Discoveries:
- Chang a wonderful millet wine that you have to see and taste to believe
- Our own arrogance (or is that ignorance) in thinking we could do this difficultish walk. (The first people we talked to said we can't take 7 and 8 year olds up)
- Our guide whom we chanced upon and who made the whole experience very very special indeed (Contact JB at 9647888415 if you want to do this or other treks in Sikkim. He comes with a very high recommendation from all of us adults and especially children for his exceptional efficiency and good humor)

Random photos:

 The children. Ever cheerful and ever ahead

 The tents we stayed in on 3 of the 6 nights we were trekking

JB with Ishaan. Believe me, JB is magic!

Viewpoint at Dzongri. The highest point of our trek

Majestic Kanchendzonga range. Praying distance away

Mist on the way down

Dinkar test rides a yak. Yes, I will take this one with the power steering option please!

The adults celebrate with Chang. The smiles on the faces and the haziness of the picture depicts their collective state of mind

What is 'Spiritual education'?

Over the years I have been feeling that the most important component of our educational journey, the most value we have created together, has been due to the simple fact that due to great good fortune all of us ended up spending a whole lot of time together as a family. This i have been feeling has resulted in all of us growing up TOGETHER and also miraculously growing TOWARDS each other.

Examples:
- I got interested in history because of Aditi my daughter's interest
- Dinkar our 7 year old got interested in kabir bhajans because of me
- 10 year old Srikant likes and understands carnatic music so all the rest of us are also very interested in it
- All five of us together have begun to awaken to beauty in art and nature

I can give many more examples but you get the point no?

Now take a look at this excerpt:

After all, the child is essentially a soul with a body, life-energy and mind to be harmoniously and integrally developed. The education is therefore so organised as to secure:

* the fullest possible development of the physique;
* a fruitful channelisation of the life-energy in pursuits that contribute to the growth of the personality;
* a sufficient training of the mental faculties in the fields of various Humanities and Sciences; and
* the requisite help, through a powerful spiritual atmosphere, for the soul to come forward and gradually begin to govern the rest of the being.

- Excerpt from the website of 'SRI AUROBINDO INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF EDUCATION'
 
This now makes me ready to attempt a tentative definition for what spiritual education may mean. Here goes...

IF
we can define 'Spiritual art' as art that is created by a 'spiritual' artist
(Think of Ajanta or the great temples or a beautiful Tibetan Thangka all of which if it moves you inexplicably are probably created by spiritually evolved humans)

THEN

we can probably define 'Spiritual education' as education happening around a 'spiritual' educator
(Or in other words education taking place within a spiritual atmosphere)

Does that make sense or does that sound a lot like trying to define one variable in terms of another? What do you think?

A Disclaimer

Prema and Nithya came and met us some time ago with their young children. This post is a response to Nithya telling me that she got depressed reading some of my blog posts because we seem to be superparents and superkids always DOING the right things. Her specific complaint was about our family watching the solar eclipse together as mentioned in a previous post. Nithya was convinced that she would not have the energy to organize their family looking at the eclipse together like we did.

And this I thought gave me the perfect setting to write this...

Disclaimer:

1. Our children are older than six. And this blog is about our experiences homeschooling them. If your children are not six yet, please don't get exhilarated or unhappy about anything written here. What you read here is probably not directly relevant to you.

2. I did not have to spend energy convincing or coercing my children to watch the solar eclipse. All of us were equally excited by it. Please remember that this broad commonality of purpose that is one of the miracles that we have noticed over our 4 year homeschooling experience did not happen overnight. It has come as a wonderful gift slowly over the years, unheralded and unsought. And I believe that this or other unsought gifts will come to all who are willing to take the plunge into the unknown. Just don't expect it to appear within 30 minutes like a Dominos Pizza.

3. Our homeschooling experience is 99% about long boring days, about a general air of tension in the house, about angry moments and smacked bottoms and in many other ways lots of material too boring to be talked about on this blog. We consider homeschooling to be a long term practice and we recognize that any long term practice is made up of a few peaks interspersed with many many plateaus.

4. We wanted to live a more conscious life, we needed more time together, time to think and act in a manner that was not dictated by EMIs or school or office schedules. This was our central requirement and my working from home and the children not going to school were the means to meeting this requirement. So homeschooling in our case is like an indicator or a symptom of our life choices and as such not the main focus of our lives. (I know that I need to do some explaining here and I intend to do that in a more leisurely manner in my next post).

5. All of us (and especially Kanti and me) work very very hard. (Although to the unsympathetic eye it may look remarkably like lazing around) We strongly believe that this commitment to hard work on the part of the parents is the pre-qualification to become a homeschooler.

---End of disclaimer---

Thank you Nithya for making me think about all this. I hope this public answer helps you to forgive us our superhumanbeingness.

The Rule of Ten

I think that Kanti and I discovered the 'Rule of Ten' when Aditi was two or three years old. The way we defined it, it states that-

Where one unit of effort is required (by your estimation) to get a desired outcome with your child, you have to unquestioningly, unconditionally put in ten!

I thought this important enough to communicate to my friend when he became a first time father and so I took the time to write it out in a long funny/serious email to him. (Arvind Chhabra my friend grew up in Punjab, studied with me in Bengal, worked in Bangalore, married an American and now lives in New York. He speaks fluent Bengali and his English still has a south Indian twang to it. In short- he is as mixed up as me) And reading the email again just now I thought it worth putting up on this blog. It is a long email with a single sentence message but you may enjoy reading all of it. I know that I very much enjoyed writing it!

(If you do not speak Hindi and know some Punjabi you may not 'get' the mail below and I advice you to stop reading here and find some other way of wasting your time)

And if you are a Punjabi likely to take offense at the tone of the email I have only one thing to say to you...

'Oi, tu jaanta nahi mein kaun hoon?'

...As I grew up in Delhi I used to hear this as a preface to most fights. And dear, possibly angry, Punjabi reader, the very next sentence you will hear from me will be...

'Oi tu mujhe maarne ayega tho mein yahan se full speed bhaag jaunga.'

Peace, brothers and sisters! Anyway, without further ado here is...

-----------------------------
Arun's email to Arvind:
-----------------------------

Oi pappe (literally!!!),

Great news! Amy and Arvind we take great pleasure on this occasion to welcome you to the world of parents and congratulate you on taking the first step towards being the parents of a hundred children!!! As you know, we are only two steps ahead of you and we know that moving forward together, we will soon reach that wonderful goal.

Given below...

(Just for you at a heavily discounted, once-only, special price of just $9.999, to be paid later in person when we meet)

...is the distilled wisdom of more than 10 years of full time research by Kanti and me.

-----------------------------
If you agree to pay $9.999 as mentioned above please read further otherwise destroy this email. Or my laayer will do some 'gaal-kittha-si' with your laayer. OK?
-----------------------------

General Disclaimers:
1. The author sometime lapses into pnjbi when affected by strng emotions. These lpses are usually mnifested by dropped vowels and additional 'h'es. Such lpses should under kind cnsidration be maafkaroed.
2. The author takes no responsibility of translating all these wonderful jokes into english for Amy. The author's personal viewpoint is that if the world doesn't speak pnjbi we have many muscular pnjbi men and even more muscular pnjbi women who know how to communicate real pnjbi in all languages.

Aim:
Create/devlop good bachhhhe (children).

Definitions:
Good children-> Pleayure to be with + fill you with enrgy -> Basically in pnjbi=Patiala pegs
Bad children -> No pleayure to be with + drain your enrgy -> Basically in pnjbi=golgappe ka paani

Apparatus:
One ordinary or garden vriety of child. (More than one is exponentially better, but usually diffcult to get at short notice)

Procedure:
The thumb rule (for angootha chhhaps) to follow in this all important procedure is-
eik-ka-dus
Which means that-
Where one unit of effort is required (by your estimation) to get a desired outcome with your child, you have to unquestioningly, unconditionally put in ten. No bargaining and no laziness here please!

Observations:
If
your child is irritating you OR boring you OR is a pain to be around with
then
look within- The slution is with you
goto slution
endif

If
you feel guilty of neglecting your child
then
you have been giving < eik-ka-eik and you deserve all the pain your child is giving you
elseif
you feel that you are putting fight but no results are showing
then
You have been giving only = eik-ka-eik and this is where most people get stuck
endif

slution
give >= eik-ka-dus and notice immediate changes...

Result:
Good bachhhhe te good baaps. oi waat?

Oi mei kyia balle balle,
With lots of love to Amy and you and with blessings and 'oi mei sadh ke jaawa's to baby Taj,
From Dinkar, Srikant, Aditi, Kanti and Arun

------------------
Arvinds reply:
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Oi Pappe,
This email is wrth eik-ka-dus so you dsrve, $99.99 for this advice and effort. Changa pher.
- Chhabra

What the solar eclipse taught us

The solar eclipse of 22 July 2009 was the longest total solar eclipse during the 21st century, not to be surpassed until June 2132. It lasted a maximum of 6 minutes and 39 seconds off the coast of Southeast Asia, causing tourist interest in eastern China, Japan, India and Nepal.

- From the Wikipedia

All of us were very excited about the eclipse and we wanted to catch it 'live' as it happened. (We have no TV so no 'action replay' option) So we went to Nehru Planetarium and bought the special 'glasses' that would let us watch the eclipse without becoming the first fully blind homeschooling family in the world. The glasses were actually some sort of very dark plastic set in cardboard frames and cost 25 Rupees each. We bought one for each of us because none of us wanted to share the glasses and miss any of the action.

The time for the eclipse in Delhi was between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning and the children (even 7 year old Dinkar who usually sleeps till 8:30) were all up and ready by 5 in the morning. Where we live, the roofs are connected together without any walls in between so we were thinking that the whole place would be swarming with children and their parents in a Holi or Diwali kind of festival atmosphere. It was cloudy at 5:30 and when we reached the terrace all ready for the crowd and the great experience with our special cardboard glasses we found... Yes you are right, no other children there. The only other people we could see on our terrace and on the vast sea of terraces in our neighborhood were ONE middle aged couple looking at the sky through a big Xray film.

We waited on top till almost 7:00 braving the heat and the flies and watched through the glasses as the sun played hide and seek with us through the clouds. But at around 6:30, the time for the maximum eclipse in Delhi, for about 30 seconds or so, we saw with our naked eyes, and shared amongst ourselves, the miracle of the crescent sun. And Aditi took this picture as a keepsake.

  Yes, I know, YOU went with your children and saw the eclipse but why were all the rest of the children in Delhi not on the roofs? Why didn't every school in Delhi buy the 25 Rupee glasses and make it compulsory for each student to buy it at 50 Rupees from the class teacher? Why didn't they make it compulsory for each student to be on the roof or on the road and for each student/parent to write a 250 word essay on 'The longest eclipse that I will ever see in my life'?

I think the partial answer may lie in a conversation I am almost sure I overheard:

Mother 1: Did you see the eclipse?
Mother 2: Yes. Wasn't it spectacular?
Mother 1: Which channel did you see it on? I saw it on NDTV. I think they are great.
Mother 2: Oh! I saw it on BBC. I don't trust the Indian channels. They are capable of showing us the previous eclipse and saying that it is this one you know.
Mother 2: (sympathetically) Yes, I know. You can't trust the media at all. By the way, you know 'X' is learning about it in school, so he wanted to go on the roof. Finally I had to tell him that his hair will all fall out if it gets exposed to the cosmic rays of the eclipse. That stopped him! He is very attached to his hair.
Mother 1: (Smiles) Good. I didn't let 'Y' and 'Z' go up either. It says in the newspaper that many people have gone fully blind by looking at the sun during the last eclipse.

X, Y and Z, as you may have been taught in school, are unknown variables in Algebra. In fact they are so much unknown that their mothers 1 and 2 are nearly at their wits ends about their unknownness.

Mothers 1 and 2 are post graduates, have lived abroad, dress fashionably, live on the top floors of their apartment blocks and between them have 3 children below the age of 10. Walking up to the roof with their children wouldn't have been very much more effort than pressing the remote buttons on their TVs...

...But then post graduate degrees by themselves do not necessarily make you less superstitious and high levels of intelligence do not necessarily lead to wisdom.

Why we want to grow our own food

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society - Jiddu Krishnamurti

We are shifting to the outskirts of Bangalore and plan to experiment with growing our own food. A friend who is accustomed to our weird behavior and sudden shifts of focus wanted to know why. He was very much in favor of the shift away from the city and a lifestyle closer to nature but his question really was why we wanted to take the livelihoods away from the poor farmers.

Well friend, the short answer is-

Our life as we live it now is fragmented and dysfunctional and reducing our dependence on a dysfunctional system in whatever way we possibly can seems to be the way to make it whole. Growing our own food and living in a semi-urban environment seems to be a way to reduce our dependence on the current, dominant, anachronistic, flawed economic/financial system of the world.

The long answer follows-

(Please remember that what follows is valid for people like you and me working in 9 to 5 jobs in cities and not for the large majority in this country who work without an 'appointment letter' )

Examples of dysfunctionality in our current lifestyles:
1. A working couple I know spends fifty thousand Rupees every month just on their cars. (EMI, drivers salary, maintenance, petrol etc). They also spend a lot of their time traveling in these cars in bad traffic. So they have to work to earn money to pay for their cars and a car is a basic requirement to go to work to earn money to pay for their cars.
2. We have no EMI, no car, I work from home and the activities of our children happens in our colony. We are together a lot and don't get stressed driving through traffic jams. But I am forced to work to earn money to pay the rent on our house and a house is a basic requirement to do work to earn the money that I have to pay as rent.
3. We came back from a trip to Agra and got off at Okhla station instead of the larger New Delhi station. This was at 10 in the morning- office time. We were in the AC chair car but hundreds of office-goers crowding into the two or three unreserved compartments also got off with us. This whole crowd carefully crossed the railway line which is one of the busiest in India. Then on the road outside where we thought we would get an auto to take us home we found this...

... A huge traffic jam. We walked till Nehru Place, a distance of 2 kilometers or so through the mud and garbage on the roadside before getting into an Auto on a relatively empty road. The scary thing I felt was that the people traveling by train were only doing so because they had not yet got a car. They too aspired to be stuck in the traffic with their AC's on.

Why do you and I tolerate it:
1. We are cut off from the consequences of our actions. The way we live our life doesn't seem to be directly creating any problem. (A person working in a tobacco company doesn't think that the salary he takes home causes cancer. Like you and me he is just doing a job)
2. We are cut off from the real meaning behind our monetary transactions. (When we buy bread for 20 rupees we only record the money transaction and not the fact that behind all human food stands nature and ultimately the shining sun. We mistakenly assume that getting the 20 Rupees is what we need to do to get us food)
3. After working very hard for a long time we finally became qualified to easily do well in the dysfunctional system and we were given the tools and the strong latent desires to help perpetuate the dysfunctionality. As we begin to acquire what we have dreamed of it becomes very difficult to let go of the system even when we see things going horribly wrong. We cannot usually even admit that things ARE going wrong
4. We know of no other alternatives that are less dysfunctional. The only alternative appears to be to join Ramakrishna mission or other such missions and become a monk or to become a Nanga (pardon the pun) sadhu in the Himalayas

What can you and I do:
1. Take our children out of school :-)
2. Grow our own food. Prof Dabholkar a pioneer of intensive natural farming had demonstrated how a quarter of an acre of land is enough to grow enough to fully feed a family of five. In his book 'Plenty for All' there were also photos of people who have done experiments in growing their food on their city terraces

3. Reduce our dependence on a salary. And if you say that you are not anymore dependent on a salary for your comfortable living then what are you doing still stuck in a traffic jam?
4. A friend who works for a software company grows most of his food on a 10000 sqft patch of land they have. His wife and son spend a lot of time on the farm and he joins in on the weekends. Farming is not a full time job so they also run an informal village school. He was telling me that except for his travel to and fro from office in his car, his living expense is 1500 Rupees per month.

Conclusion:
Now, in my long educational journey I didn't spend even one hour learning how food (that I cannot live without!) grows and ripens. It is only recently that I noticed what miraculous things seeds are and how easy it is to sprout them into new life. If there is a way to remove the dysfunctionality of our lives, I think that falling back on mother nature and getting in touch with the miraculous mystery at the center of the living seed may not be a bad place to start searching.

Anyway, we are going to give it a shot. If it works, you can come and join us. And if it doesnt, it would be easy for me to find you in your traffic jam. :-)

References and resources:
1. Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation- A blog post by Dmitry Orlov the author of 'Reinventing Collapse' which talks about everything covered in this post (and much more)
2. Zeitgeist addendum- A low budget 2 hour underground movie that takes a look at the ills that plague society and suggests some radical solutions
3. The story of stuff- A very well made 20 minute animated film on the consumerist society
4. Natueco farming- A scientific and more efficient reapplication of natural farming techniques

Shared holidays

Sathish and Sangeetha and their two lovely children Shalom and Ishaan recently introduced us to the joys of walking in nature. They travelled from Bangalore to Delhi, stayed with us for a day and all of us (4 adults and 5 homeschooled children) went to pay our respects to the beauty of the Kumaon Himalayas. The place was called Munsiyari and it was a 13 hour jeep ride from Kathgodam, the rail head which we got to after an overnight train journey from Delhi. On the beautiful, pine-forested, surprisingly good but steep and curvy roads up we had to make many stops to get the children unsick. Our stay and the walking trips into the mountains around town were organized by an eco-tourism NGO that works with the villagers there. We stayed in quaint small houses in a village on the outskirts of town. Like this 50 year old traditional house. Munsiyari is the end of the road. Literally! It is the place from where people start walking towards the Tibet and Nepal borders and the place from which the few tourists, who brave the 13 hours in the jeep, start their treks towards the Milam glacier. None of our city distractions worked here. No credit card, no ATM card, no cell phone (Only BSNL connectivity) and no Internet. So in the 12 full days we spent here- all of us- pizza loving kids and sedentary adults- all of us got used to eating aaloo in its many forms and to walking till our shoes wore off. Every day a local guide would take us up through the forests around our village- a little higher and to a little more spectacular place- acclimatising us till we were surprised at ourselves and at our presumption, at our easy new familiarity with slippery and cold and wet mountain heights . We also spent two days camping up at 10000 feet where we realized the inherent superiority of women and children. The people who trekked up to 12500 feet, the highest point in the neighborhood, were the two mothers and two of the older kids. The men were down with altitude sickness and by the time Sathish and I recovered it was time to walk back to the village. But I see now that the Himalayas have hijacked my post. What i wanted to talk about was the idea of two families with homeschooled children taking a holiday together to get to know each other better and to learn from their combined experience. But then maybe the photos have already told you more than I could have in my usual tongue-tied manner. So let me wind this up with a- Thank you Sathish and Sangeetha for making this trip happen. Thank you for introducing us to the fears and pleasures of communing with nature in the raw form. All of us here are eagerly looking forward to the next outing.