Highschool Drama

My chemistry teacher casting for drama titled "The periodic Table"
I was heaviest of all actors, and hence offered the Lead.

I am fine, how are you?

"You as a software professional can contribute a lot to this effort to spread literacy in every village."
Join Pygmalion Content Development


‘I am fine, how are you?’ - Deccan Herald - Internet Edition:

"‘I am fine, how are you?’
Kids in government schools are discovering the joy of learning English, thanks to a novel project, says Jayalakshmi K.


At the Kudremala Government Primary School in Mysore, you see happy children everywhere. Some are taking a test from a dietician. Some others talking and playing. But when they see they have visitors, all the 50 odd students ranging from six to 12 years of age, come running to greet us. Every grubby little hand wants to give a hand shake accompanied with a “How are you?” and an expectant pause for you to reply and ask the same. “I am fine, thank you.” “My name is Mohan. What is yours?” The chatter goes on for some time and we are taken to the sanctum sanctorum, the school’s single classroom that now houses the computer. A teacher is finding her way around the workings of the machine under the guidance of another.

While politicians and intellectuals bicker over the need to teach English in government schools at an earlier stage than is being done, some enterprising individuals have been on the job already. Under the leadership of Dr G K Jayaram, the first chairman of Infosys, and now founder director of ILID, an NGO that imparts professional help to the social sector, these men have been tirelessly covering distances to reach schools in remote areas and impart English education to the eager audiences there."

No, I did not conceptualize this organization

...but if you see a ".co.in" version of the same, you know who's behind it.

For every M.A. in English literature who thinks I am an idiot if I advocate phonetic spelling, I know 100 children who think "English" is stupid language if "So" , "To" and "Go" don’t rime.

SSS Aims, Objectives, Axioms: "Aims and Objectives of the Simplified Spelling Society.
Aim.
The reform of English spelling for the benefit of learners and users everywhere.


Objectives.
A. To publicize the unnecessary difficulties of English spelling and the benefits that its simplification would bring.

B. To raise awareness of the alphabetic principle, its corruption during the long history of written English, and its more rational application in other languages.

C. To promote research and debate on ways of reforming English spelling, and to prepare a graded set of proposals for relating word-forms more predictably to speech-sounds.

D. To help co-ordinate proposals for English spelling reform across both English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries.

E. To persuade the public, opinion-formers, policy-makers and relevant agencies of the need for and practical possibilities of reforming English spelling.

Six Axioms on English Spelling.
1. The letters of the alphabet were designed to represent speech sounds; that is the alphabetic principle.

2. The alphabetic principle makes literacy easy, allowing the reader to pronounce words from their spelling, and the writer to spell them from their sounds.

3. As pronunciation changes through the ages, the alphabetic principle tends to be corrupted; the spelling of words then needs to be adapted to show the new sounds.

4. Unlike other languages, English has not systematically modernized its spelling over the past 1,000 years, and today it only haphazardly observes the alphabetic principle.

5. Neglect of the alphabetic principle now makes literacy unnecessarily difficult in English throughout the world, and learning, education and communication all suffer.

6. Procedures are needed to manage improvements to English spelling as a world communication system."

Stitches on the outside!

I think the way we wear our clothes says a lot about the human psyche

We would rather endure the irritation if the stitching rubbing against our skin day in day out than display imperfections in our garb.

And then there are days when I wear all my clothes inside out and feel like god.

“I am comfortable with myself, I don’t really care what you think of me”

Icebreaker

Sunday morning at Urdu High School
Trying to make friends at the first sessions of the Reading Program

ME: Filme Dekhte ho?
KID: Haan
ME: Kaisi filme dekhte ho?
KID: {No reply, stupid question}
ME: Hero kaun sa acha laga hain
KID: Salman Khan
ME: Salman Khan Kyon Acha Lagta hain
(This is my favorite question to ask children. It is a good way to learn what drives the child, what is it that he/she looks up to in life, what he dreams. I usually use it with great success to drive the point that people ho beat up other people are not always the greatest and what they show in films is not what you should aspire....)
KID: Wo bhi musalman hain, hum bhi musalman hain.
ME: ______________{NOTHING. Somebody, please fill in the blanks for me}

He is in seventh standard, can not identify the English alphabet, works in an ice factory after school and says he will come to the reading class every weekend if he can sit next to me in the class.

Azim Parkar

Azim Parkar
Year 2000, I met this guy Azim Parkar, who taught me one way to  “Succeed in Life”
It’s quite simple really.
Whenever you meet a person just make a list.
List of three things that you like about that person.
And then every time you meet him/her keep updating that list.

May be its something that someone just told him and he just passed it on.
But the fact that he gave me this lesson is one of the three good things I remember about Azim.
The other two being

1. The fact that he empathized a lot with just about everybody


2. He thought our hostel was great place to live because it was such a peculiar mix of people

I met him in the Rs. 150 a month charitable hostel in Chincholi Bandar, Malad, next to one of the biggest dumping ground in Mumbai then. He was born and brought up in Dubai where his father was some bigshot in the National Bank there.

Testing Blogger Tool

Testing Blogger Toolbar for Microsoft Word
Click Here