When Learn = Play

Of the numerous run-in I had with Missus of late one pertained to the junior activity list in the middle of a hop-skip & jump kind of Holiday.

Not far long ago , when our lives were as predictable as the Doordarshan Programme schedule, the last test paper of our final exam meant a release of nearly two months before we hit the next standard. Which we celebrated like holi by spraying ink of whatever was left in our pens!

With CBSE curriculum, Junior had to go back to school after a brief lull and the summer break kicked in only much later. It was during this lull that I suggested that he got out of the house & played with kids in the neighborhood.

Instead of first hand real life experiences, I felt he was too much into gaming & TV shows. His whole day is spent in screen based entertainment, either laptop games or Sony Playstation or Ninja Hatodi else Doremon or such thing on TV. And not to forget Mobile Games.

All in no particular order or sequence as such.

Wifi grouse was that the brat would end up doing something if left unsupervised? That’s exactly the point I insisted!! Lets leave him unsupervised so that he learns naturally to make friends, take turns in groups and deal with problems.

Sue Palmer in Detoxifying childhood rues that ‘Play is one of the main ways we learn and yet when we reach adulthood we tend to forget all about it. Its like a ladder children climb toward adult understanding and as soon as we’ve climbed it we kick it away’. She pegs play as crucial for preparing a child for social life outside home.

Her mantra is ‘Play is a crucial form of learn‘ where a child 

1. Grasps common sense understanding of the world and how it works (the properties of Mud,Wood, Sand & so on ; the effects of friction & leverage)
2. Makes Risk assessment (including judging distances), testing boundaries, learning who & what to trust.
3. Social Skills (making friends, turn taking, sorting out difficulties, getting along , Organizing & cooperating)
4. Self reliance & control ( getting lost & found, coping with play related injuries most of which are minor mishaps)
5. Pleasure of doing, making, creating, imagining (dens, forts, houses)

She goes on to add that by keeping children indoors, we miss out Children on the above vital lessons. 

These skills cannot be learnt second hand from a screen (of which there are plenty today), they can do so through first hand life experiences

Homo Stupidus

There are a few among us who stand erect yet by some quirky fate of evolution carry the same stuff in their cranial bones as that of the Neanderthal man. In my opinion they can be easily classified in a new sub genus called Homo Stupidus in the world of Anthrpology. 

I thought Sushil kumar Shinde was the front runner to take the coveted prize of Homo Stupidus man of the year for his late flurry of gaffe'ose utterances. 

That is until I read the ET of March 6 . Like Usain Bolt just waltzing past his fellow-sprinting erectus competitors, this guy, a Washington state lawmaker beat him with enough and more to spare to amble past the finishing line. And to do some after jig also before Shinde or others could actually touch the finishing line. 

His scorching run on the dumbing-down-circuit goes like this; 

“ If I am not mistaken, a cyclist has an increased Heart rate and respiration…since CO2 is deemed a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride” - Ed Orcutt, a member of the house of representatives.

This wins the trophy, atleast in my mind, not for the sheer audacity of the intellectual chasm but for the string of words and the pearl of a thought which flies in the face of all logic and comprehension.

Its now apparent that Mr.Orcutt was arguing for a fee on bicycles to help pay for street infrastructure but went scurrying for cover after the ensuing public outrage his utterances created.

Following closely on the heels of Ed Orcutt for the coveted post was another US politician Richard Mourdoch’s with his famous “ rape babies are what God intended”

A Tale of Two Scams: Why Sahara Got the Rap While Kirloskar Walked Free

Big Corporate names swindling ordinary investors is not everyday News. Getting penalized by the regulators and pilloried by the courts is even rarer news.

The Flimsy Promise: Luring Ordinary Investors with High Returns and Deceptive Security

Seeing Sahara getting a rap on its knuckles gives a flickering hope that the wheels of justice in this country are finally moving.

Scores of ordinary investors, lured by the high rate of Interests and the deceptive sense of security in investing in big Corporate names would have been left in the lurch had the Supreme Court followed by SEBI not intervened.

The newspaper advt put by Sahara in its defense was nothing but bizarre. With a picture of ‘Bharat Mata’ it claimed that it had nothing to pay & rather eligible for a refund from SEBI !

I wonder when will the Kirloskar’s meet this fate? In the early 1990’s, KIFL (Kirloskar Investment & Finance Limited) sprung up and mopped up large amounts of money from Retail Investors .

Assuring of a 14% rate of Interest and additional 1-2% incentive offered by the Agent, several thousand retail investors of the conservative variety got lured into its Fixed deposits.

Reports came in later that the company had invested the proceeds into dubious real estate investments and financial transactions and was unable to meet the redemption's. Many senior citizen Investors like my late father are yet to recoup their investments.

 Unequal Justice: Comparing the Fate of Sahara's Assets to the Kirloskars' Free Pass

Kirloskar Investment & Finance Ltd followed a similar trail as Sahara and was charged by regulatory bodies like RBI, SEBI, BSE, & CLB on various counts 

• Non compliance with RBI Laws
• Non compliance with SEBI listing guidelines
• Collecting money from public in money circulation schemes by making tall promises of high returns

Despite the winding up process in this case, no action has been taken against the Kirloskar family, its group companies or any of its promoters. In this context, singling of Sahara by freezing its accounts including group firms and attachment of properties seems particularly harsh.

Meanwhile the Kirloskar's who disowned this completely  celebrated 100 years of existence in 2010 as a proud Kirloskarwadi .Can somebody hand me a rotten egg or slipper or something?

Cast Away

"When a big tree falls, the earth shakes" so commented a politician after the death of a former prime minister in 1984. Worst still he was using this phrase to explain the situation of violence against the Sikhs that ensued. Cut the scene 30 years later and nothing much has changed, except that new phrases have come in popular lexicon. Something like ‘Mango people in Banana republic’. Politicians however have remained the same, some morphing into rabid regional chieftains in this period.

So when these local trees, with public profiles as large as General Sherman tree fall, you can be assured of only one thing. The ground rattles, the dust rises and the surroundings cower in fear. It doesn’t matter whether the tree fell due to a natural death or someone sawed it. That’s the law of Nature, they say.

Last week I was in Mumbai and went through a harrowing time because one such large tree fell. The large metropolis that throbs with life 24/7 simply folded up like a Venus flytrap . All the hotels & business establishments downed shutters and the hawkers and roadside vendors simply vanished as the news of death flashed.

Many thoughts and emotions crossed my mind, for once I felt like Chuck Noland in Cast away i.e., marooned in a lonely island with the prospect of living on only air & water for the next 2 days. Staying with a good old friend (who was away) in his bachelor apartment on the Jogeshwari link road proved a costly proposition. It was cozily close to my area of work but the timing of visit seemed to have boomeranged.

A few hours into this piquant situation, I made a recce of the surrounding few blocks to see & salvage whatever was available. Empty streets with stray dogs & cattle greeted me, the tension & fear in the air was palpable. And my stomach was already growling at the prospect of a cold night on an empty stomach.

Just as I was returning to the flat dejected, the watchman at the entrance of the Building asked  “Kuchh nahin mila kya ”? As I nodded in despair, this 50 something person took some mercy on me & whipped out his pocket book. The guy had a decent demeanor and looked like someone who was doing odd jobs after retirement. He asked me to dial out a number and then picked my mobile and spoke in chaste Marathi to check whether the ‘Dabba’ services was still available.

To my relief it was still on. Some enterprising lady in a neighboring apartment, who worked in a bank I was told, was still continuing with her services. The nature of her service & the fact that I was almost next door helped. Sure enough the carrier arrived an hour later with 4 chapatis, 2 Sabzis, Rice & Dal, all at an economical Fifty rupees.

After the watchman placed the order I thanked him in Marathi and gave him a tip. He accepted my offer but continued the conversation in Hindi. After a pause I asked his whereabouts & learnt that he was a Gujarati. The true spirit of Mumbai once again overwhelmed me.