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:
------------------

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.