Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.

- Dan Rather

I totally agree. Here's a big Thank You to all the teachers who had the (mis)fortune of teaching me :-)

सर्वकार्येषु सर्वदा

समाजोपयोगी काम करणाऱ्या एखाद्या संस्थेला मदत करायची इच्छा आहे? पण अश्या संस्थांबद्दल माहिती नाही? लोकसत्ताने गणेशोत्सवाचा मुहूर्त साधून अश्या संस्थांची माहिती देण्याचा स्तुत्य उपक्रम सुरु केला आहे - सर्वकार्येषु सर्वदा.

वो दोस्त मेरी नजरमें बहुत माएने रखते है
वक्त आनेपर सामने जो मेरे आईने रखते है

(Forwarded)

ओंकार गव्हांकुरांचा

A recent issue of Mint Lodge introduced me to two books which I hope to read one day:

The Legends of Khasak - by O V Vijayan

Following Fish: Travels around the Indian Coast - by Samanth Subramania

Bappa - Installment 2

Spanish - Class IV

The classroom was empty when I walked in. I checked the time. 8:45am. Normally I would see a couple of sleepy heads discussing last session's notes. But today there was no one to be seen. Was I the only one from the class who wasn't informed about today's session being cancelled? But then the classroom would be closed as well, right? 'Eh, the Spanish class is held in this classroom, isn't it?' someone asked me. 'Yeah, it is. But there is no one.' 'Oh well, someone would come and tell us if it it cancelled' the student said nonchalantly as she walked past me and entered the classroom. Ah, the beauty of being 18 or 19. You have all the time in the world at your disposal. And here I was thinking about the zillion things that I could have got done if the class had indeed been cancelled.

As it turned out, it hadn't been cancelled. As the minutes ticked by, more and more people filed in. Someone came and told us that we were to collect our book. So a bunch of us trouped to the 1st floor, turned a corner, ended up at another classroom full of students, looked sheepishly about and then were informed that we were supposed to head in the other direction. Can someone please hand over a cuppa steaming coffee to me, please? I must be sleep-walking. Move over zombies from 'The Walking Dead'! So we dragged ourselves in the general opposite direction and stood outside a small cabin. When my turn came, I entered, showed the receipt and collected a book - which, honestly, I am yet to take a good look at. But all this walking did me a favor. It woke me up. By the time the teacher walked in, I was all ready for today's lesson.

Today's lesson was about the gender change. I meant about how to change the gender of the nouns. E.g. 'El Hermano' becomes 'La Hermana' because the last 'o' gets changed to 'a'. And 'El Profesor' becomes 'La Profesora' because the last letter is a consonant i.e. 'r'. Piece of cake!

In an earlier class, we had done numbers 1 to 10. Now it was the turn of 11 to 20. After making us recite the numbers 4-5 times the teacher turned it into a game. So people had to say aloud the next number when their turn came. The next time it was the next even number and after that the next odd number.

Next on agenda were the months of the year. The class was divided into two sections and each side had to say the name of a month. The other side had to respond by saying the name of the next month. On the next round, it would be the previous month and on the last round it was the second month after that. Must say it was a great way to remember things without having to learn them by heart. And a lot of fun too!

Can't believe we have already finished 4 classes out of the total 20. 20% done and looking forward to more :-)

Spanish - Class III

I don't exactly recollect how long it took me to master 'He goes', 'She goes', 'It goes' and 'They go' in school. But when the teacher said that Spanish has only two articles - "a" and "the", I was very happy. Things can't get any simpler than that, now can they? But I had no way of knowing about Masculino Singular, Femenino Singular, Masculino Plural and Femenino Plural - separate for "a" and for "the"!

Just when I thought I had got it all squared away after a couple of repetitions, the teacher dropped another bombshell - there are rules about what can be considered as masculine and what is feminine. I had blissfully assumed that the rules are rather universal. And then there are exceptions. Of course! So though you can consider many nouns ending in 'o' as masculine - El/Un Libro (book) for example - mano (hand) and radio (radio) are, for some inexplicable reason, feminine. Nouns ending in 'a' are feminine most of the times - e.g. La/ Una pizarra (blackboard) - but dia (day) and planeta (planet) are masculine.Thankfully, the rule that nouns representing male relatives are masculine and those for female relatives are feminine doesn't have any exceptions. :-)

I glanced at my cell phone at the end of couple of exercises and was amazed to see that we were already at the end of the class. As I wondered if I am gonna able to memorize all this, a part of me knew that I definitely would.

As I sat writing this, the movie 'We Bought The Zoo' was playing in the background. One of the keepers was talking to Benjamin, the new owner of the zoo. She told him all the problems that the zoo was facing and asked him why he bought the place. I paused to see what Benjamin was going to say. He simply said 'Why not?' and smiled. I found myself smiling with him. That's one hell of a reason. And probably heaps better than mine 'Spanish is the second most used language in the world'.

What say?

They say that what has been playing on your subconscious mind manifests itself in the form of dreams. But this is one dream I can't quite figure out - maybe because whenever I think of it, I shake my head in pure amusement. Well, it went like this. I am sitting in a classroom full of students and the teacher is yet to make an appearance. (I get where this one came from - I am learning Spanish where most of the class is made up of students). I am turning the pages of the notebook in front of me and suddenly someone taps me on the shoulder from behind. Who do you think it is? Well, it is the late Hindi movie actor Rajesh Khanna. And he looked like he used to during his heydays (as in movies like Kati Patang!). He asks me nervously if the teacher had given any homework last time. I say yes. He looks sheepish and says that if he had known about it, he would have skipped today's class.

The dream ended there. But what remains a puzzle to this day is whether he spoke with me in English, Hindi or Marathi. That and the fact that a hero from the Golden Era of Hindi movies - who BTW I am not even a fan of - ended up in my dream. :-)