Subversion of English Education to Promote Ideology

Notes to the Reader

• Former cult members often speak out against inside atrocities after they have been disillusioned with the leader many years later. That is the kind of atmosphere here.

• I had written an article with a similar theme last year, about some things that were bothering me. This is the second part of that.

• This time, there are footnotes. Easier to look up meanings, contexts, and references. 

• I am speaking in a sans-serif font and You-Know-Who in a serif font.
• Recommended reading: Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors, Genesis 37:3

1945: End of the Second World War
1960: The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded.
1973: The oil crisis caused the prices to rise and remain high for years, making the oil producers wealthy¹. This attracted a lot of migrant labour.
1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall
1991: Integration into the global economy. Development of bicultural identity, combining the local identity with an identity linked to global culture². Tim Berners-Lee created the first web page and the Soviet Union was dissolved.
1998: Google was founded. The Third Industrial Revolution, also known as the Digital Revolution was in progress.
2001: The attacks of 9/11. The US invaded Afghanistan.
2003: Invasion of Iraq
2004: Orkut, Facebook, and Gmail launched.

Let’s try to look through the eyes of a young man from a small-town in 2002. We will then slowly descend into the madness that led to the bizarre programme that is the main topic of this article.

I have recently graduated and need a job. I am not familiar with the job market beyond Employment Exchanges and PSC exams. I have no clue what is happening in big cities. I have been teaching in tuition centres but that is not a steady source of income. My family doesn’t own much property, feudal or otherwise. The Middle East is out of the question because I have no contacts that can refer me to a good job there. I really don’t want to go back to manual labour.

I have a worldview that was heavily distorted by popular dogmas³ I picked up from my immediate surroundings as I was growing up. I haven’t travelled much, nor have I read an awful lot of books. My taste in literature is not as sophisticated as it should be. Information technology baffles me. I wasn’t very good in my own academics. To tell you the truth, I have absolutely no idea how language and the human mind work.⁴ 

I hear a lot about these new machines called “computers''. Those contraptions are from hell and I will never go near such devilry. Not because I fear that it would explode if I press the wrong buttons, but it corrupts the soul and takes away jobs. I know this because I read it in a pamphlet. What on earth is this thing called “internet”? Must be a Trojan horse planted by the Americans before they come to invade us in the middle of the night with the rest of their military. Everybody stay away from that thing! We are at war here!! I also don’t eat okra because the mucus is actually a form of fat and fat is bad.⁵ 

I belong to the first generation to attend college or to choose teaching as a profession. My skills are rudimentary because I haven’t had enough practice with what I learned in college. If I attract more students, I can practise my skills upon them and gain some experience. Just like a carpenter who practices his craft on spare wood during early stages of his career. I shouldn't really teach them to use the language properly. That is too dangerous. Also there is a minor issue: I don’t know how to do that. 

If I can cunningly devise a scheme in which the speaker forms the idea in their first language and then translates it into English, the possibilities are endless. I will make them practise the process of translation really hard and if anyone questions the effectiveness of the programme, I can always tell them that they didn’t practise enough. If all this misinformation I'm pumping directly into their brains won't bind them to me forever, my heavy-handed daily conditioning will certainly do it.

I know that there is no proof that it works and it is mostly a product of my own fantasies. That won’t matter because I will offer the programme for free. Besides, how many linguists can you find in a sleepy rural town of barely literate parents who are too busy earning the daily bread to think about the quality of education their children are getting? Zero. I can teach them whatever I want as long as everything looks orderly. To fish in troubled waters, that’s the plan.

“For you fancy that shepherds and rulers never think of their own interest, but only of their sheep or subjects, whereas the truth is that they fatten them for their use, sheep and subjects alike.” -Plato, The Republic⁶

I am the only one standing between people and chaos. Who is single-handedly raising the quality of education in public schools of the state? Me. Do I want anything in return? Absolutely not. If I don’t step out of my house today, the streets will burn tomorrow. Anarchy will spread. People are inherently violent in nature and they always need someone like me to protect them from their own demons. These kids have no one else to look after them. I believe that a single school is as effective as ten prisons, and therefore each child is a convicted felon and I get to treat them that way.   

I will have my fingers on the pulse of many batches of students and I’ll make sure none of them gets out of the vicious circle of poverty however hard they try. Especially the tall poppies⁷. Do I look like a saint to you? If I can get a few of them on my side, that will help immensely with publicity. Those are the best billboards to advertise my skills. But I should be careful with them because they can find how dubious my methods are, more easily than the rest. Some of them already know it. That is why they are keeping their distance from me. Ignore them.

Image 1: “Ooh look at all these pliable little teenage brains handed over to me by their gullible parents for free and with full consent, buzzing and sparkling with neuronal activity that I can rewire to my will and lead to the paradise that I’m creating, turning them into replicas of my own mind.”⁸

I just need to keep up the show for a few years. After that no one will bother to look back and find out how horrendous my scheme is. Besides, I will have climbed up so many rungs of power, decorated by so many low-hanging degrees and certificates, that no one can touch me after that. In short, I can get away with it. So it doesn’t matter if my methods are basically schizophrenic. I should also let you know that I use the phrase “social engineering” in a positive way⁹. I consider myself to be a social engineer. All teachers are, in my opinion.

I am thoroughly aware that my scheme is the medical equivalent of administering truckloads of unapproved drugs, that has never been tested before, to many batches of unsuspecting kids, taken in by my clever marketing of it as a magic pill for upliftment, over the course of many years. Anything is possible¹⁰.

***

The programme started in the summer vacation of 2003. We were in eighth grade. Every year, the sessions would start in summer and continue throughout the year, finding time after school and even during lunch breaks. The school authorities freely allowed the classrooms to be used to conduct these sessions. (Coincidentally, this was also the period when an actual burglar found their way to the school at night and caused some damage. The symbolism is hard to miss.)

He would bring in people of power from outside to demonstrate how efficient his system of control is. How tight his grip over his students was. It bore close resemblance to a puppet show, but with invisible strings. There were many physical and vocal exercises that he made the students practise. He would snap his fingers in many ways and the students would do the action they were taught. These exercises got more creative as years passed and tyranny continued its free reign.

Image 2: Part of a printed advertisement for a batch that started in April 2006. The programme was marketed as a revolution in English education, a unique product of research and innovation. In reality, a simple dictionary had more value than all of it combined.

Once the programme was conducted in a private building. I was in eleventh grade (2006) and would help him with some clerical tasks. In return, he would buy me lunch and fried fish everyday for two months. I was an active part of the programme for three years. Setting up a makeshift library that students can use in their free time and occasional visits by native speakers were the silver linings on that dark cloud.


Image 3: A sample of study material from the programme, which was treated as an intellectual property and kept confidential. Note the strong emphasis on the process of translation. Practice was meant to speed up this process.

I was touted as a successful product of the programme. Poster boy. Combined with my academic performance and achievements in arts, I was one of the best megaphones he could use to shout out his message and win people over. It was unthinkable to say no to him.

Like any other typical school teacher, he had a constant need to feel respected. If you even attempt to question his worth, the consequences would be dire and the scars he can inflict on you would last a lifetime. I had a first-hand experience of this, while I was in ninth grade. He thought that I was being “arrogant” after winning a cartoon competition outside the school and would keep me out of his sessions for days. At the end I had to cry for mercy to stop this emotional bullying. Next day, he would allow me to enter the classroom―but only after making me confess the false accusation in front of everybody and telling them in detail how I had begged before him the previous evening.

"Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity." ― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed¹¹

I have seen him unleash his wrath upon other students as well. Once a few of them enrolled their names but didn’t appear for the sessions. This enraged him deeply. They would be branded as “others” for as long as they stayed in the school. Othering was a strong tactic he used against anyone who would defy his authority or competence. There were clearly defined categories of “us” and “them”. I knew I couldn't escape anytime soon because I had seen how painful he can make me feel about it emotionally. He wasn't someone who would shy away from using physical violence either.

A partial list of “others” that he kept a perpetual grudge against:

• Everyone who could but didn’t sign up for his programme
• Everyone who abandoned it midway (This is a premium category. He did everything in his power to make sure they went through hell.)
• Students who didn’t practise daily using his handouts (Everybody instinctively knew the handouts were crap, but pretended it to be of high value.)
• Schools with English as medium of instruction and parents who sent their kids there, including many of his colleagues
• Policymakers in the United States of America (because, you know, outwardly hating them is in vogue in his circles.)

He gave more emphasis to“finding thy place” than “finding thyself”. You are not supposed to pursue what you like. You should do what we ask you to do. Because you owe us every fibre of your being. He would fight tooth and nail to convince you otherwise if you told him that you wanted to pursue a creative career.

He wanted me to pursue medicine after twelfth so that I can prescribe low-cost medicines to rural patients, in a way similar to what he was doing (what the school possessed in abundance was a profound reserve of deep-seated insecurity and a desperate need for validation. Periodically, a child had to be chosen to be made a doctor, to satisfy a relentless craving for worth. My refusal to fall for it left them deeply resentful.) He knew that I could draw but wouldn’t let me take a creative profession. To his dismay, I chose engineering (which was, surprise, surprise, the only other option available to me). He didn’t like that very much. When I started earning after graduation, he wasn’t impressed by my salary. He would try to make me regret my decisions. Do you see how far his hands extended in time and space? Six years after I had left his programme. Hundreds of kilometres away. Still he had me by my throat.

In his sessions, all attempts of upward class mobility were discouraged and termed as fundamentally wrong and inspired by greed. Catch them young and nip in the bud all aspirations towards it. He made the students acutely aware of their economic backgrounds. Where they came from. There was an initiation ritual designed specially for this very purpose. Bank loans were bad in his opinion because it led to more borrowing. He seemed to have a vision of utopia in him which he wanted to see realised through his students.

Proper English education is a path to liberation, a way out of poverty. He understood it better than any of us. That is exactly why he felt the need to subvert it. It is hard to believe that he was unaware how damaging his scheme could be to the students. Severe anxiety followed you everywhere like a shadow. That shadow spoke to you. It called you worthless. You will never be free of this ceaseless commentary and criticism because it is coming from within you.

I can safely say that he was not driven by altruistic¹² motives as he would want everyone to believe. The whole circus was part of his desperate attempt to secure and maintain a government job. There are no questions of morality here as that has already been forfeited to his ideology.

When, lo, as they reached the mountain's side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children follow'd,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain side shut fast.
-The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Browning¹³

We intuitively knew at some level that he reminded us of the Pied Piper (see image 1). Once he literally made all of us walk around the village promoting the ideas he believed in, holding signs and yelling slogans which were handed down to us. This was part of his crusade against schools that had English as medium of instruction. He somehow felt threatened by those schools. Why go to a better school when I can make you fluent in English in this school, that too for free? That was the argument.

After all of this, after I got out of school, and got into college, I came face to face with the very people I have been rallying against—students from “other” schools, who were now my classmates. Good thing that they didn’t know anything about my phase when I regarded them as my sworn enemies. I can imagine how I would have felt if they showed me the same kind of hostility. They were welcoming and undiscriminating, regardless of my background.

Some arguments against learning English properly¹⁴ are listed below. Let's not discuss the reality of any of them.

• It is the coloniser’s language. If you learn to use it, that makes you an ally of the British.

• With language comes culture. Our culture is under attack from outsiders and we must protect it at any cost.

• Fear of extinction of the first language. We should try to reverse the slow withering of language-based division of democratic states.
• Thinking in first language leads to innovation. Many countries outside of the Commonwealth are cited as examples for its success.

The programme believed that these arguments were real. Parents were happy because their children seemed to be able to speak (although by parroting) and that was enough for most of them. Promoters of first-language were happy because their cause was only getting stronger every time a student practised his method.

It was the students who paid the real cost of this pseudoscientific experiment because they have to live the rest of their lives with a restless voice coming from the back of their heads that anxiously tries to translate every piece of linguistic information that is entering through the senses, all the time, whether they want it or not. After long exposures to the verbal activities of one man, your mind talks to you in his voice. It thinks like he thinks. His fears become your fears. You can no longer remember who you were before you joined the programme. You’ve been robbed of your own mind.

***

What did I learn from the programme and subsequent years of facing a harsh world for which I was severely underprepared? Here are some key takeaways:

• Lack of education reduces people into crabs in a bucket. Everybody keeps an eye out for talented individuals to make sure they don’t escape the bucket. It’s deeply embedded in the psyche of impoverished communities. They may cloth it in arguments for equality, but underneath all of that is good old jealousy of seeing someone scale new heights no one in their tribe could.
• With severely restricted resources, there is a limit to the talent that government can attract and retain. In that pitch-black talent-vacuum, many bizarre creatures dwell and thrive, often feeding off of the very people they are supposed to protect.
• What did he take away from me? My future. What did he gain from that exchange? A secure future for him and his family. Can I get it back? No. Why? Because "equality."
• When someone who grew up wanting to be a Robin Hood figure finds out that the coffers of the rich are fortified beyond his skill, turns against the poor and steals from their bowls.
• In some lawless parts of the world, it is possible to build a career exploiting fear and anxiety around getting a job.
• Extraction of value from already depleted communities is not a trait exclusive to colonialism.
• Poverty can drive men desperate and make them sell their souls to ideology.
• A man who forsakes basic morality is a threat to society.
• This isn't education. This is robbery.
• How do you make sure they don't fly? By breaking their confidence.
• There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, especially if it comes with fried fish.
• You can’t cheat the economics of education.
• There is no magic pill for upliftment. Do not trust its salesmen.
• If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
• Be careful where you invest your time.
• Extreme regionalism hinders progress.
• Don't invite your teachers home.
• Quality of education is a reality.
• Everything is not possible. 
• Guard your children.

∎∎∎

Notes

[1] "Middle East Oil: History & Production." Study.com, 20 June 2019, study.com/academy/lesson/middle-east-oil-history-production.html

[2] Eytan, A. (2004). Globalisation and biculturalism. British Journal of Psychiatry, 184(4), 362-363. doi:10.1192/bjp.184.4.362-a, https://bit.ly/3yHs4zp

[3] dogma: an authoritative principle, belief or statement of opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true and indisputable, regardless of evidence or without evidence to support it.

[4] But neither does Gafoor know where Dubai is. That doesn’t stop him from earning a decent living, does it?

Gafoor is a character in a film who would promise to take you to Dubai for a meagre sum. But only after landing would you realise that it was actually to Madras that he was taking you.

[5] Okra, sometimes called lady’s finger, has no fat in it. https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-okra

[6] Full text of The Republic: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm

[7] tall poppy syndrome: a tendency to begrudge or resent people of talent

[8] Source of illustration: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pied_Piper_with_Children.jpg

[9] “Social engineering is a manipulation technique that exploits human error to gain private information, access, or valuables.” https://www.kaspersky.co.in/resource-center/definitions/what-is-social-engineering

[10] The quote “Nothing is impossible, Everything is possible'' (sic) was one frequently used in the programme. Another one, “practice makes perfect”, was also a regular.

[11] Full English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed: https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf

[12] altruistic: showing a selfless concern for the well-being of others; unselfish

[13] The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Browning: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45818/the-pied-piper-of-hamelin

[14] Well, the US and its allies had invaded two countries already and we are not in chummy terms with them either. Who knows if we are not next on their list?

***

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.

And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.

And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.

***

And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.

And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.

Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.

Genesis 37:4–5

_

Illustration: By artist Paul Kallanode, Page 2, Standard VI Malayalam textbook, SCERT 1999

Things That Are Bothering Me: Part One | Foundations of Fear

Notes to the reader:

• What you are about to read is quite resentful in its tone. Please don't read further if you do not want to go through the unpleasant experience. Also contains graphic descriptions of bodily harm and psychological damage.
• Thanks for dropping by this sleepy blog of mine (deserted bog, more like (there's going to be a lot of parentheses (too lazy to add footnotes))). Feel free to spread the word. Commenting is also welcome.
• The language is not perfect. I am not as articulate as I would like to be. One may find a lot of misplaced definite-articles, non-native sentence structures, and unconventional punctuation.
• This post (one of the most popular so far) is being continuously improved (that is what I would like to call those obsessive nitpicking edits I make waking up during midnight) and who knows, you may encounter a totally different beast (*wink*) after a while. Enjoy.

In part one of this series, I'm trying to put down what it feels like to be on the receiving end of corporal punishment in the public school system in Kerala and its aftermath in adult life. I belong to the batch that completed its twelfth year of schooling in the year 2007. A lot of trauma and permanent damage were caused in these exchanges, which were meant to "correct" me and help me lead a healthy life. I assure you, none of that worked. Worse, it broke me in every sense. These have also contributed tremendously to the recalcitrant and self-destructive behaviour that I am still fighting to contain. See Image 1.

Image 1: The Ritual of Authority. Goya’s Saturn represents a power so terrified of its own end that it consumes its own lineage to survive. In this context, corporal punishment is not a disciplinary flaw; it is a calculated liturgy. Coming from a long history of ritualistic blood sacrifice, the act of breaking a child is the inevitable ceremony required to reinstate the authority of the few. It is the design of a system that views the autonomy of the next generation as a threat to be devoured before it can ever truly begin.

Standard V: I forgot the Maths notebook at home, or at least that was what I thought. I was sent home from the school, for the first time in my life, to fetch it. I thought the punishment would end in this humiliation. I couldn't find the darned thing in my home either. I went back empty handed. I searched my bag again and there it was! I was hit hard on my back, for the first time by any man inside or outside my extended family. The first violation I can remember (I'm trying to look away from the relative positions of the two individuals involved in the feudal and caste hierarchies. Let's attempt to open one can of worms at a time, shall we?). My father never punished me in any manner, to this day. But the Maths teacher did, and asked, "why are you pretending to be such an idiot?" I cried. Did he see me as a future threat to his authority? Did he want to eliminate that threat? Did he wait patiently for four years for my father to retire from service to lay his hands on me? It certainly looks that way. See Image 2.

Image 2: In this passage from the 1892 novel Saraswativijayam by Potheri Kunhambu, Ramar Kutti Nambiar reports to his feudal overlord on how he brutally attacked a boy for the audacity of his merit, a talent that was seen as a direct transgression against his station. There is a chilling air of satisfaction between them as they contemplate the boy’s likely death. Yet, in a fateful turn of events, the British legal system eventually brings both men to justice. The novel’s title, which can be roughly translated as Knowledge Triumphant, underscores this shift from ancestral whim to the rule of law.

Within the Kerala education system, an aided school functions as a privately managed institution, yet it relies on state grants-in-aid to cover infrastructure and staff salaries. Although many such schools explicitly disclose this standing on their signage, this one belongs to the category that simply didn’t think it was necessary to include any such mention.

Hogwood, the Grand Dragon of the local KKK: “Klan don't exist no more.”

-Sinners (2025)

To maintain their grip on the community’s social and economic future, it is in the management’s best interest to cultivate an aura of cultural superiority. They position themselves as the ultimate bastions of lineal and linguistic purity, a facade bolstered by the family’s proximity to and active involvement in the village temple. In many ways, the school functions as a local outpost of the temple. This perceived sanctity serves as a convenient smokescreen for blatant nepotism in staff recruitment. See Images 3A and 3B.

Image 3A: Snippets from the Kerala Education Act 1958—a legal framework that effectively delivers the fate of entire bloodlines to a small number of private individuals on a silver platter, as some kind of eternal payback for their role in expanding the state's school infrastructure after independence.

Image 3B: The curious case of aided schools in Kerala

While the institution—including salaries and pensions—is entirely publicly funded, the management retains the absolute right to hire anyone meeting some basic qualifications. The result is an echo chamber: at any given time, multiple branches of the same family tree occupy various roles within the school. In a village where the shadow of untouchability remains within living memory, this structure ensures that a private dynasty could be strategically preserved at the public's expense.

Manusmriti 8.281: If a low-born person tries to occupy the same seat with his superior, he should be branded on the hip and banished; or the king shall have his buttocks cut off.

I seriously believe that if his father had shown the initiative to provide him a slightly better education (they were financially capable of doing that, unlike the vast majority of parents who sent their kids to their school), he might have found a path that offered a first-hand experience of the world and less dependence on vermillion paste. Instead, he was condemned to spend his whole life within the four walls of a lower primary school in a small village in the middle of nowhere, meting out tribal violence to children and relying on biased media and comfortable lies to interpret a world he never actually saw.

Standard IX: I helped a classmate to draw a picture of a soldier as part of a home-work in English (See Image 4.)

Image 4: The picture I helped draw was based on this illustration of Abraham Lincoln in the English textbook. While happily drawing it, I was not aware of the horror waiting for me two pages ahead.
Page 2, English Coursebook, Standard IX, SCERT, 2003 

It was a stand-in teacher, whose actual subject was Geography, who was teaching us the subject at that time (some of us were of the opinion that he had a funny accent (not me, I was too terrified to notice.) with a strong MTI. Looking back now, nearly all of them had it, even the ones who were evangelical about better English. One of them came up with a heavy-handed and crude scheme to turn all of us into instant translating machines. Boy, didn't we know we were being used as Guinea pigs all along? That is a story for a later part, not this one). He found out the similarity in styles and questioned me. I admitted that I had helped to outline the picture. He slapped me. Right on my cheek. No-one did that to me ever before or ever since. And asked "will you give outlines again?" I cried incessantly, uncontrollably. For a brief moment my mother’s face appeared before my teary eyes, the image of her toiling in the sun with the hope for a better future for her family. In that moment, I saw those dreams shattered by the impact. I saw that.

When poverty leaves you with nothing but education as a way out, you naturally put all your faith in meritocracy and the rule of law. That kind of absolute trust can be dangerous, though. It ignores the grim reality of the world, a lesson that eventually cost her dearly. 

Although slightly taken aback by my reaction (that doesn't usually happen to an omniscient being like him, which only shows the scale of impact he didn't think he could cause), he made a remark to the class, "this is a sensitive boy. This is how you use the word 'sensitive', you see?" See Image 5. 

Image 5: Part of the textbook that he was teaching then. I was essentially being used as a live exhibit for the highlighted sentence. The word 'dignity' appeared just two pages ago.

Page 4, English Coursebook, Standard IX, SCERT, 2003

In a typical Kerala government school setting, it is rare to find a teacher sporting a tucked-in shirt with a belt, a pair of formal shoes, and to top it all off, a pair of spectacles. The outfit alone does most of the intimidating. A distant and outdated copy of an authoritarian British colonial martinet who looked down on people with disdain, he developed a club of students with desirable qualities, or those who he thought would 'achieve greatness in life' (read 'get into bureaucratic jobs', or "service," as he liked to call it). Being an ignorant peasant, I was obviously not worthy to enter the club, and made aware of it every time. After all these years, if he turns his head and casually looks in my general direction (God forbid), all my courage would drain instantly. He was the State (not the administrative and geographical unit, but the one that Plato wrote about. This one is likely to be a Spartan specimen, from what I can tell.) personified.

The next two incidents are not corporal, but extensions in time of what happened in the last one. These help form a bigger picture and show the stubborn nature of the perpetrator who lacks any remorse.

Soon afterwards, the guy got promoted to the department of higher secondary education in a different school and I was the most joyous person to listen to the news ("Your prayers have been answered. I hear that teachers who will not slap you are going to teach you after I leave. Good luck", he said). Years passed without fear of anticipating his petrifying gaze around the next corner of the derelict labyrinth that was the high-school complex (anyone in power who permits this school to stay open clearly doesn’t have the community's best interests at heart. There isn't even a playground, let alone one large enough to accommodate this many students. If the kids want to so much as stretch their legs, they’re effectively at the mercy of the nearby temple (same temple by the way), that owns the ground in front of the school. That being said, looking at the kind of jobs this place funnels people into, maybe this is just the right kind of preparation. In that light, the system is working exactly as intended.)

But one day, to my bone-chilling horror, after three years, he came back to the school to invigilate our twelfth board English exam (invigilators for board exams usually come from other schools). My room was at the end of a corridor on first floor and I recognised his shadow the moment it appeared at the other end, walking towards me. With my heart beating ten times faster for each door that he didn't take along the longest corridor that I had ever stood in, I was slowly becoming aware of the impending doom. And it did strike neat and clean. Both of us were in the same room again. The exam began. I was glued to the paper with the added weight of two bespectacled orbs watching over my shoulder every twist and turn of the curves that the ball of my pen was manoeuvring in. As the longest seconds ticked by, I began to regain hope that I would escape this ordeal unscathed.

No. In an answer to a question to write a letter to a newspaper, I chose a vernacular daily. His all-seeing eyes (like I said before, he sees everything, knows everything, past, present and future. I'm not kidding. He must have even foreseen this article I'm writing.) detected the mild error of my judgement and commented on it with derision. You should note that I am the first person, in my family of four, to have ever appeared for a twelfth-standard board exam. I was shaken and it must have shown on paper, for when the results came, I got an A-Plus in all subjects except English. Not that any of those grades meant anything in the long run.

 

The targeted emotional bullying continued till I was in college (it didn't continue after college simply because I ran away from the place) with the same extreme prejudice. If condescension had a human form, he would be it. My academic excellence carried on to the college years, though with much greater effort. One day I was returning from college, and this respectable gentleman was in the same bus-stop that I had to go. He asked me, smirkingly, quite joyously, "how many supplees have you got?" (The word 'supplee' is one of the most dreaded in engineering colleges, at least by some. Slang for 'supplementary exam', the one you take after you fail the first attempt. I had none and passed with honours. Again, not that it mattered much).

That pointed question was more than a casual jab; it was a weaponized application of the Golem effect, regardless of whether he knew the term or not. Within this psychological trap, the low expectations projected by an authority figure act as a self-fulfilling prophecy, dragging an individual's performance down to meet that dismal standard. By asking about my "supplees," he was not merely checking in. He was trying to manifest my failure.

Is that the first question a caring and a compassionate teacher should ask when he meets one of his former students pursuing higher studies? I was desperately trying to build a career, man. There would be no breadwinner in the family other than a low-grade pensioner (my father, retired a year before the first incident, who is unaware of any of it, and probably thinks he sent his son to the best schools out there) if I fail. And there isn't any in the family other than him. Happy now?

Was he trying to 'inspire' me with all that meanness? If so, it’s a bit of a tragedy that a man with all those years of experience behind him couldn’t find a more creative way to do it. You’d think an educated professional would have a better toolkit than just 'be a jerk and hope for the best.'

Standard IX: caned for not answering who threw the duster out of the window, in a tuition centre, by a teacher with a thick moustache who always wore a serious expression, just like the Soviet dictator. The feeling of injustice in being wrongly punished was profound. I cried.

Before closing this, I should tell the story of the classmate who took a hit for me quite unexpectedly and unwillingly while I was attempting to dodge one.

Standard X: Physics classroom. Morning hours. The teacher was checking our notebooks. I had forgotten mine (again!). When she asked, I said I had lent it to one of my classmates (who happened to be our class monitor). I said his name because he was not in the classroom and I thought he would be absent for the rest of the day and no-one would be punished. But, as if in a nightmare, as if on cue, the classmate walked into the room with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. Slap. I watched his smile turn into confusion first and sadness later. I don't think he understood my role in the whole episode. He even must have thought the notebook was with him and it was him who forgot it. Relationship between us hasn't been easy after that. I was too ashamed to apologise.

Throughout my school life, my academic performance has always been no less than outstanding. If this was my experience, one can imagine the way people on the last bench were treated, for instance. The fundamental assumption was that you are a criminal in the making. Whatever horror the teacher chooses to unleash upon you is for your benefit because he is trying to steer you away from that terrible course of life which you were predestined to take. I don't know if that would be called a Calvinistic approach, but it is certainly not the best way to start educating a child.

Vivid memories of these events (this list doesn't include them all.) continue to wreak havoc in me everyday, every time I try to make a decision, every time I utter a word. I wish there was a way out.

                                                          ∎∎∎

Translated verse of Manusmriti is from Wisdom Library: https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/manusmriti-with-the-commentary-of-medhatithi/d/doc201215.html

Literally Twice

There is a bed bug in my dictionary.

Literally twice.

But I can be surprised only once because

there is everything in it.

Literally twice.

Understanding Infinity

Ambi was born on 13th October 1989, as per many of his certificates, which may be expressed as 13101989
There is a number in mathematics called pi, which has infinitely many digits, starting from 3.14159
Ambi was surprised to find that,

"the string 13101989 occurs at position 40,160,873 counting from the first digit after the decimal point."-according to Pi-Search

Screen capture of an MIT site.
As one might observe, the billionth digit has not yet been loaded into my computer.
The string 13101989 is highlighted. Click to enlarge.

 If there is a method of translating letters to digits, it is possible then, that:

• Full text of Merchants of Venice be found exactly.
• Full text of all of Shakespeare's works be found exactly.
• Full text of all of English literature till date be found exactly.
• All literature of all of the languages till date be found exactly, if there is a method of translating all human language to digits.
• All spoken, written, printed and displayed word till date be found.
• All spoken, written, printed and displayed word in the past and the future be found.
• Instructions to become a billionaire be found. Not those self-help-books-kind-of instructions, but computer-algorithms-kind-of instructions, with details like how many grams of toothpaste should one use today.
• This blog post be found.
• DNAs of all creatures be found.
• Co-ordinates of each electron in the universe at any time be found.
• Tomorrow's stock prices be found.
• First billion digits of pi be found a billion times.
• Answers to all unanswered questions be found.
• Every-thing be found, including no-thing.

Only God would not be surprised by all these. If one is not surprised, they better get a check up done. They might turn out to be God. Just kidding.

Holograms and Pi

Built a simple device today which can project three-dimensional images to space from a surface.

The device has shape of a truncated square pyramid with transparent faces.

Place it at the centre of a display and play a video made specially for it.

It gives the effect of a free-floating object.

A 3-D video of a jellyfish being played on the device from a flat display.

It can give four different views of the object, if looked from the sides of the pyramid. We could see front, back, left and right of an object. But not any other view. It lacks a continuous 3-D feel as we expect with real objects. That is, if one slightly changes her point of view, the image remains the same, it does not rotate.

If, instead of a four faced pyramid and four images to project on them, one could use a shape with infinitely many faces and enough images to reflect on those faces, one might create a real looking object inside it. That is what I think.

Such a shape might look like a sphere. And I have a strong feeling that we are sitting inside a giant sphere.

That makes more sense when I find pi, the irrational number, in the most unlikeliest of places!

As if God placed it there so that we do not forget where we are and get lost!

Good idea mate! Thank you.

Map or Place?

I am at a place.
I have a map of the place.
I take out the map and spread it on a table.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between points on the map and points on the place.
For example, I can find a point corresponding to north-east corner of the table on the map.
But these two points are distinct.
One is on the place and the other is on the map.

Photograph taken from Richard's Photostream. Thank you.

Question:
If I am marking a point on the map, am I marking a point on the place or a point on the map?
The map is a part of the place.
Or is the place a part of the map?

The Complete Model

It all started with an attempt to predict the outcome of coin-tossing. A complex model was developed. Give air conditions, mood and geometry of hand of tosser, the model could predict whether it would be a head or a tail. Accuracy was improved as years passed.
Now someone came up with this: why don't we enlarge this model to cover all of the world? A model was developed. A big computer contained algorithms of the model. It was a preliminary model. It needed a large amount of data to begin the process and accuracy was not very impressive. But both of the problems were getting solved as more resource flew into the project. The computer was getting bigger. Initial data requirement was coming down. Accuracy was improving. Computer getting bigger was a problem. So compact machines were developed, with greater complexity.
As time passed, beauty of the model set fire to men's hearts. At one point of time the model became indistinguishable from the world it was created to predict. And people never bothered to go back.

A River and Its Two Shores

Sunrise. The river is flowing to the left, which is rare on this subcontinent.

A boat is being built.

Varanasi is one of the oldest cities of the world.

Well, who else owns this place!

On the right is a two- story bridge, trains run below, other vehicles up.

The other bank is less crowded with almost no structures. We will cross the river in the evening.

My first paid model!

They are born into, live inside, and probably die in these waters. Oblivious to the fact that their photograph is published in one of the greatest blogs of all time! What a pity!

Domestic visitors come to leave their sins and ashes of the dead, foreign to take pictures.

Three or four pyres were burning at this time, which I assume is quite less. Die rich if you intend to have a funeral as flamboyant as these.

This is from the other bank. Sunset.

The animal's ancestors could claim their roles in rise and fall of many kingdoms around here. 

Despite flowing under a summer sun, the water looks clear. But since I do not want to leave my sins to a river, I did not take a dip.

Back to the more crowded side. Booming business.

The ritual is quite famous, at least locally.

A floating flame, probably from a basket like the one two photos up. That is the end of one day. Thank you for being with me.

Cause and Effect

"Newton found that gravity is the cause of falling of an apple."
Is it true?
Saying gravity is the cause of falling of an apple is not true. Gravity alone cannot make any apple to fall. Presence of a gravitational field does not guarantee that an apple would fall.
If a cause cannot  individually and consistently produce an effect, then the cause is not a cause of the effect at all.
Can we say gravity is a cause among many other causes? No. If occurrence of many number of causes guarantees an effect, then the world is a completely predictable place. If we assume that the world is not predictable, then an effect cannot have a single cause or many causes.
For example,

1. There is an apple tree.
2. There is at least one ripe apple on it.
3. A wind is rocking the branches.
4. The tree is in a gravitational field.
5. There is a ground beneath.
6. There is enough light to see.
7. There is a man to report the fall.
8. The man is honest.
9. He knows English.
10. All the above are true.

Even with all these apparent causes if you are not confident enough that an apple would fall, then you have some idea about the working of the world. None of these individually or collectively guarantee anything. In other words, they do not cause anything, including the fall of an apple. So the word 'cause' does not mean what we mean by that word.

A Silent Happy Tree

Two eagles nested on a thorny tree with no green. I live on the seventh floor and have a top view on the whole tree. It had grown up to that height and suddenly branched into various directions. It is on that junction of four branches that the nest was built. It is not a lovely nest but it is an eagles' nest.
The tree showed no compassion. It was dry as if standing in the middle of a desert.
Yesterday I saw a baby. Light grey, in contrast to darker parents. There could be more babies.
But it is the tree which surprised me.
The thorny branches are now abundant with large red, very red flowers.
The tree must be happy now!

This could be some kind of Indian Coral tree.

There are snakes in the compound. Snakes like to drink eggs and eat newly hatched babies. But it is suicidal for any snake to raid an eagles' nest, that too upon a thorny tree. I don't know of crows, who are archenemies of eagles. Only a group attack can do any harm as a crow is smaller in size and weaker in confidence.

There are advanced ideas which would make General Theory of Relativity look like an SMS joke.

Three Trees

The three trees of Ambi's life, among other trees, are:

1. A healthy മഞ്ചാടി tree at home which he raised. Its first blooms, first fruits, and the most red first seeds were celebrated insanely by him.
2. Another മഞ്ചാടി tree which is near the gate. It gave seeds recently.
3. A third മഞ്ചാടി tree which is yet to flower, at the western end. This was the weakest of the three.

All of them counts only if they have not yet been cut down by evil forces.

They were brought from a riverside estate as tiny, weak saplings. Their parent tree is no more. Ambi saw it cut down, after the first one blossomed.

The first one is considered to be a threat to his house. During rainy seasons it gets trimmed of its many branches. Once or twice branches did fall on the house. No damages though. The evil forces are active in developing a theory that if it continues to grow at current rate then its roots may dig into the foundation and tilt or crack the building.

Collected seeds of the first tree.

The second one has not yet been called an enemy of the state. But its location close to a jack fruit tree could annoy capitalist visitors. For the latter gives relatively more valuable timber, apart from edible fruits and seeds.

The Third one is in the most vulnerable situation. It is standing close to the fence with the new western neighbors, who has been less friendly, sometimes to the tree as well. The biggest jack fruit tree of the compound is also standing nearby, which eats up most of the sunlight. No doubt why it is the thinnest and the shortest.

He may love them, but all of them will die one day. Cut down or withered, death is certain.
Is it really certain?
Ambi has no answer.

Convergence of Train and Time

Once Ambi was waiting for his train. An LED screen displayed 1244, which was the number of the next train to be arrived. A guy sitting nearby looked at the number and asked: "The time is quarter to one, right?"
Ambi looked at it and replied to him, smiling: "Brother, that thing does not show time."
He asked, feeling a little hurt:" Then what is it showing?"
"It is showing the train number.", Ambi explained.
"Oho", he showed a villager's embarrassment.
A little later, recovering from it, he asked: "What is the time, then?"
As there was no watch, Ambi looked at another LED display, which was actually showing time.

What Ambi saw is this: 12:45

This incident would later contribute heavily to Ambi's theory regarding convergence of train numbers and time at noon.
What kind of theory is that?