Simplified Rituals - 18

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Got Busy! To be continued tomorrow...



...Posted by Ishani


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Eid Mubarak!

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Although I was the son of an ultra-orthodox pure vegetarian South Indian Brahmin couple, I had many Muslim friends during my schooling in Muthukur, the seaside village on the Coromandel Coast.

All of them excelled in games and sports and arts and amateur theater. I am sorry I lost touch with them after I left for Bengal pretty early in life. And they left schooling early to take up their family vocations like tailoring and soda-water bottling.

I used to constantly hear from them, with dread, words like Chicken Pulav, Mutton Biryani, Royyal Pulusu (Prawn Sambar), and Moghalai Korma, which they threatened to force on me playfully.

I also used to hear names of their festivals they used to call:

Bakrid, Muharram, Miladi Nab, and Ramzaan.

But I never got the significance of these rituals.

It was only after reaching Bengal that I got to hear terms like Id, and Eid.

And after resettling in Hyderabad, I know of them much more since we were living in the Banjara Hills Area for 3 years, close to the Old City called Asal Hyderabad by ToI.  

And watched images of celebrations of Eid ul Fitr (Ramzaan) after their ritual fasting (Roza) lasting a month, and the several political Iftar Parties thereafter. The most charming public display of this festive occasion is the Eid Embrace:

http://www.republicday.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Eid-Mubarak-Pictures-1.gif

It reminds me of Kolakuli, the ritual embrace following the immersion of Durga-Mai's idol on the Vijayadashami evening at the IIT Lake, always a pensive occasion for me.

I had always suspected that this Kolakuli embrace has similarities with the Eid Embrace. And Google too says so:


...Thus Kolakuli echoes the Id embrace among Muslims. Durga Pooja is a festival Bengalis celebrate without religious inhibition...

http://parvinkhetarpal.net/holidays/festivaldescr.html



At our IIT KGP's Physics Department, we used to have a senior colleague from Lucknow by name Prof Abidi, now Director of a reputed institution in Lucknow.

He was very sportive and highly cultured, all the time quoting couplets and quatrains of Iqbal, Omar Khayyam...and his own. His wife is a published Urdu poet. Both of them a warm people.

My first introduction to Professor Abidi was on the day I joined IIT KGP. Our Office Assistant, Ghoshal Babu asked me:

"You are a Shastry...are you a brahmin?"

"Yes"

"So am I" 

and he shook my hands lustily. And then this fair, slim, elegant gent arrived in the office to check his mails and was stopped by Ghoshal Babu to introduce me to him:

"Professor Abidi! Here is our new arrival. His name is Shastry. He too is a brahmin, like you"

And Professor Abidi smiled and shook my hands and took me to the canteen for the ritual cup of tea to celebrate a new arrival.

An hour later, I met Ghoshal Babu and he said:

"Shastryjee! Professor Abidi is a Muslim from Lucknow, but there are Brahmins among Muslims too"

This was news to me.

Pretty soon Prof Abidi and I became friends and I got to know many things from him. He used to host parties at his home on the Eid Evening to his close colleagues of all religions, and attend Diwali parties in their homes.

One day he stopped me in my tracks while returning from the canteen and posed a quiz:

"Sastryjee, here is a question for you:

...A Hindu who studied all the 4 Vedas is titled a Chaturvedi (Chowbey)

...One who studied 3 Vedas is called a Trivedi (Tiwari)

...And who studied 2 Vedas is called a Dwivedi (Dubey)

Tell me the title of one who studied no Vedas at all"


I fell silent and said I can't guess. And he smiled and pointed to his chest and gave his own answer to his question:

"He is called A-Bedi (Abidi)! Ha ha ha!"

I then asked him a counter-question:

"What is the title of a chap who studied only 1 Veda?"

"I don't know"

"He is just called Bedi (Bhishan Singh)"

;)

...Posted by Ishani


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Simplified Rituals - 17

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I was talking about our exam system in the good old days.

When I appeared for my Final MSc exam at the Andhra University at Vizagh in 1963, we came to know that our own teachers had no say at all in our marks. All the question papers were set by anonymous external examiners (mostly from Calcutta or Benares). The scripts were sent to them and they evaluated them and returned them with the marks they awarded in their wisdom. Even for our lab exams, there was a Guest Chief Examiner we never saw earlier.

And we were scared stiff.

And then I became an Associate Lecturer in the Physics Department at IIT KGP in 1965. And learned quickly that the students there had to face a stiff All India JEE to get into IIT. But once they entered IIT, all exams they faced were Internal...if I was allotted a Course, I set the syllabus in practice, I taught the students in my class, I set the question paper, I evaluated the scripts and awarded marks, and there were what were called Teacher's Assessment Marks (TA) too...not even our Director could change a mark once I gave it....there was no system of appeal, no grace marks, no re-evaluation by a senior teacher...no nothing...

I was struck dumb that I was God for once...

Towards the end of my first year there, I was leisurely walking in the corridor of our Department after a cup of tea in the canteen. And our then HoD, HNB, saw me and called me and asked me to run upstairs to the Exam Control Room where I would be given a 'confidential' task for 2 hours.

I ran as ordered and found that a senior gent was sitting on a chair in front of a table on which were stacked 6 or 7 bundles of answer-scripts fresh from the exam conducted the day before. He asked me to take a seat and said I had to do 'false-scripting' all those bundles. I didn't know what false-scripting was and then he pulled out and gave me the dockets on top of each bundle and a sheet on which was written, like:

True Roll Number 25...Assigned False Roll Number 82

at random. And asked me to tear off the bottom half of each script that contained the true roll number and mark the false roll number on it and post it again on the top half of the script so that when the bundle goes to the teacher, he wouldn't be knowing whose script it was and marks the script 'impersonally'.

I did my job, and the last bundle was of my own class of BSc (Hons) which had only 10 students then. I then told the gent, who turned out to be the Professor-in-Charge of Exams, that it is silly to false-script a bundle of ten students whose handwriting I knew like the back of my hand, having taken 3 lectures per week for them for a whole year. 

And then he said:

"I know...I know...but it is a Ritual we have to follow...so do it anyhow"

This Ritual was abandoned as meaningless a couple of years after I joined there...happily for all concerned.


Again, I was sitting for a whole year in the Lab as one of two teachers and taking the lab class of those 10 students for the whole year. Those days 30%  of the total marks were assigned to their lab khatas which contained reports of their day-to-day work in the lab. And they were allowed to take their lab khatas home everyday.

And then they submitted their lab khatas a day after their final exam for evaluation by me and my senior colleague, Prof HGV, who was an internationally reputed Theoretical Physicist. And we sat down for the job and I asked HGV advice on how to go about marking the 10 bulky lab khatas out of 30.  And he smiled and replied:

"I have a system known as the HGV System. You don't have to go through the reports of all the experiments done by all the students throughout the year. Just look at the Roll Number and follow the HGV Equation:

Final Mark =  (30 - Roll Number)"

I was stupefied and asked him how this Golden Rule works. And he replied:

"The Roll Numbers of the 10 students are assigned in the order of their merit in their Entrance Exam. And merit doesn't change much in a single year. So, if the Roll Number is 7, give him (30 - 7 = 23). For the topper whose Roll Number is 1, give the mark (30 - 1 = 29). And no questions will be raised"

"But why?"

"These guys are allowed to take their khatas to their Halls. And a day or two before their submission, intense topoing goes on...everyone knows it"

The greatness of the renowned HGV System was that the marks ranged between 20 and 29 out of 30...no failures at all...

Within a couple of years, students were no longer allowed to take their lab khatas home...these were stacked up in the lab. The student enters the lab, picks up his khata, does the experiment, takes readings, jots them down in his khata then and there, and returns his khata back to the shelf in the lab. And picks it up in his next class and repeats the procedure. And so the entire lab report is done in situ in the lab.

This system undermines the HGV Rule and the teacher has to necessarily go through the lab khatas and mark them objectively.

This new system is supposed to be foolproof.

Alas...there is this other Golden Rule:

"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"

http://lowres.cartoonstock.com/business-commerce-sales-sales_charts-sales_reports-bankruptcy-downturn-aban1355_low.jpg

...Posted by Ishani

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Simplified Rituals - 16

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http://www.toonpool.com/user/997/files/final_exams_school_exit_polls_884885.jpg

The exam system in our schools in the early 1950s was horrific. 

From 1st Form (Class VI) to 5th Form (Class 10) we had to appear in Quarterlies, Half-Yearlies, and Annuals which had ratings like 10%, 20%, and 70% respectively. And we had to pass in all the subjects at one go...no mercy there. However, the Question Papers were set at the District Level and evaluated by our own teachers in our own school.

If anyone failed in any subject (< 35%), he was declared Failed and had to stay back in the same class and attend school once again. And he had just 3 successive attempts to clear all the subjects at one go and get promoted to the next class. And so on.

Here is an anecdote:

In 2008 my son got married at Nellore and I had invited to the function a rich Reddy (Mr MR) who used to kindly look after my flat in Nellore during my decade-long absence. And he was kind enough to show up at the marriage pandal, and I introduced him to our new bride's father (Mr MP). They looked at each other and smiled...a weak smile of recognition from their remote past. And Mr MP asked Mr MR:

"Were we not classmates in the VR High School in our Class 9, decades ago?"

"Yes and no...I started as your senior and then became your classmate and then your junior and then gave it all up and went back to paddy cultivation and grew rich...both my sons are however Engineers in the IT in Bangalore"

As soon as we reached our SSLC (Class 11, 6th Form), things changed dramatically. The exams were at the State Level and the evaluation of answer-scripts were outsourced to anonymous other schools. And our Registers were sent up to the State Education Commissioner and arrived late in April a month after our exams were through in March. And our marks in each subject were written up on the relevant page. Still, we had to pass in each subject to be declared eligible for our college studies.

If we failed in our first attempt, we didn't have to go back to school. We could appear in a Supplementary Exam from home and try to pass, once again in all subjects at one go, in the coming September. If we failed again, we could reappear in the coming March. If we failed again in March, we could appear in the coming September ad infinitum...no limit on the number of our attempts. This system was cutely called the MSM System (March-September-March), an acronym that was borrowed from the MSM Railways prevalent then...Madras South Mahratta Railways.

If the SSLC Register got filled up in all its 16 pages and still the student couldn't clear it, an additional SSLC Register was issued as a pin-up add-on. Much like Passports.

I know of a prodigious student who got centum in all subjects except English in which he got 20% and was declared failed. On his September attempt he got centum once again in all the subjects except English in which he scored 10%...which got reduced to 5% in his third attempt. He gave it up and took up chess and soon became a State Player. And then started a Chess Coaching Institute and mints money.

Another girl who I know well couldn't clear her SSLC in her first 5 attempts and so joined as a Junior Teacher in a Multi-Purpose school and did well and forgot all about her SSLC till after 20 years when suddenly the new Government announced that she couldn't get promoted to the next cadre unless she clears her long-pending SSLC exam.

She was a mother by then to a daughter studying in college who offered to coach her. She declined and appeared in the next September on her own and passed gloriously...she was a Sewing Teacher who became an expert by then in sewing up hidden stuff in her dresses:

  

http://dir.coolclips.com/Business/Retail/Garment_Manufacturing/Seamstress/seamstress_CoolClips_vc015619.jpg

I am now told that, in our AP State, passing in all exams up to Class XII has become irrelevant...you have to only appear if you wish to and get automatically promoted provided you satisfy attendance norms like 70% (most of it by the well-known proxy-system). 

Looks like the Dream of the Ideal State of Education is here already:

...As a grandfather I view his unseen masters as complicated, sinister beings who cannot be trusted. I keep my ears to the ground to find out if there has been any incident at his school. I was opposed to the system of being prescribed a set of books by an anonymous soulless body of textbook prescribers, and of being stamped good or bad as a result of such studies. My natural aversion to academic education was further strengthened when I came across an essay by Rabindranath Tagore on education. It confirmed my own precocious conclusions on the subject. I liked to be free to read what I pleased and not to be examined at all...

...By a renowned writer of English fiction who failed in English quoting an NL in Literature who 'was also given Bengali-language lessons in anatomy, drawing, English language (Tagore's least favorite subject)' ...    

http://www.nazimcricket.com/fdc/ind4.jpg

...Posted by Ishani

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Ishani by Ishani

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 ...Posted by Ishani

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