IITs colleges , education and another old friend......2012-02-22

 Driver's kids, future engineers....

I am attaching a map of where we have been so far. The countdown for leaving Indore has started and things are getting very hectic. My sister came over from Delhi just for a day and we spent as much time as we could catching up. We were up till 2 to 3 am ( not sure because i was falling sleep off and on :)  She is gone back now.

This trip is turning out to be destined for meeting old friends. Out of no where another close friend from elementary ( no picture yet, her brother look the pictures) school days called, we were the four nerds , SUrekha, Sadhna , Leelavati and myself that used to hang out together all the time. I lost touch with her after eight grade.

She is the head of the department at IIT Kanpur. If you are not familiar with the IIT's : these were five colleges started by then prime minster of the newly independent India in 1950s. These are scattered around the country , Bombay, Kanpur, Calcutta, Madras and Delhi. Each one was in collaboration with a developed country who pledged to help the adopted institute. These institutes are known, through out the world,  for the quality of engineers they mint out. It is known that it is harder to get admission into an IIT than in any college in the world.  Obviously, Leela is very smart and accomplished and it was heartwarming how she remembers the little details of our days together. Those were such selfless friendships..

Anyways, speaking of IITs brings us to the second biggest business in India : EDUCATION. I learned things unique to Indian Education now , few examples that I thought were most telling are listed below:
1) Coaching classes and Dummy schools: The goal of most parents and kids it to get into some professional college and to do that around tenth grade most are enrolled in the coaching classes of various kinds to get admission in the right college ( like engineering or medical etc) . These classes cost upward of 400 to 500 thousand Rupees ( depending of the reputation of the coach) per year and are in addition to going to schools.This caused the time problem becasue there are only 24 hours in a day and kids are required to attend the normal school during the day and go for the coaching classes in the evenings and then do the homework for both......you see the problem...literally not enough hours in the day.
 So some genius business person came up with the idea of "DUMMY SCHOOLS" . You pay the tution ( typically several hundred thousand per year) , enroll i nthe DUMMY SCHOOL but you do not have to attend it full time. They fudge your attendance, even fudge your lab experiments and you spending time in the coaching class because there you learn the tricks and questions and answers to score in the common state wide exams. ...HUGE BUSINESS..

2) IITs, as you must have guessed already, are even weirder to get into. There is a multi billion dollar business to running the coaching classes for IIT entrance exams. In theory, after passing high school, one can give the IIT entrance exam and depending of the scores  one gets admission into IIT of their choice. Reality is otherwise : kids finish high school, spend two years of their lives and several hundred thousands of their parents money and attend IIT coaching classes for one to two years before taking the entrance exam. I thought irony of all this is that there are coaching classes and entrance exams to get into the IIT coaching classes ....you can extrapolate this to any degree you like :)

3) The positive side of all this is that all perents are aware of the importance of education ( at least for boys) and spend their life savings and time to educate the kids. I have talked to one driver whose kids are IT professionals at Banglore, another one , with much younger kids, is very involved with their education and asked me to talk to them ( ages 3 t o8....very cute kids)

SO, like all things about India, education has two sides of the story. One last thing about it is a joke told by one of our colleagues at engineering college. _  Question: How many engineering colleges are there in INdore? Answer : You start making a list of all of them and put the name of the dean and the chancellor next to it and by the time you are done there will be one more college just opened...:)   Correct answer at this moment is 65 ( remember there used to be ONE)

I can go on about education but it is time to get to the prewedding functions for wedding no 2. PIctures to follow in the next blog




This brings

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Roshni, Education and house help.....Indore 2012-02-21

Check out this video clip for the popular old song , "chatur Nar" ( clever lady) sung by a very old friend Tapan and a very new relative Dilip Kawathekar at the gathering for us in Indore. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1qv_a2nJts

 My college friend and Dean of Baroda Engineering College

 Roshni, a household help

I am still in Indore so lots of socializing going on and I am taking pictures of friends and family. I picked the one with Shobhna Khare. She was the only other girl with me in the engineering college in a class of about 250. We were together for five years, shared many hours of studies and  after graduation lost touch completely. She happened to be in town just for half day and a common friend arranged a lunch. It was great to see her after 43 years. It was like we never left, we talked very fast trying to catch up because she had only two hours before she had to leave.
Shobhna is the dean of a well reputed engineering college, has two kids both in LA. She and her husband are alone here and are seriously considering pros and cons of moving to LA to be close to the children and grandchildren. This is typical NRI ( non resident Indian) dilemma that many Indian parents and children are facing. The kids are well settled in USA and the ageing parents know that sooner or later they will need help and there is no infra structure to provide care of aging and old. Many are moving to USA (some  reluctantly) others are dealing with it as best as they can by making several short trips to USA  and few are trying to form groups and societies to resolve this growing need and see a great business opportunity in providing the quality care for affluent aging but I personally feel that no care can replace being close to the kids and grand-kids.
I wonder if I did not go to USA, what would my life be in the alternate universe. The Dean of an Engineering college or a disgruntal house wife or a successful business person? I guess everything in life have pros and cons and shades of grey.

This brings me to Roshni ( meaning ray of light) . Roshni does not have a last name, she does not know how old she is , she is beautiful , young, loves to watch serials ( Indian soap operas) , to  dress up and she does all the house hold work for my sister in law. She is the house maid. She has been working here for last five years , I guess she was 12 or less when she started. It is against the law, it is child labor and all other BAD things that we typically think about. But the other way to look at the situation is :  she talks about how bad it hurts when getting beaten up with a belt when she was home.Her father used to get drunk and beat up her and her mother. One day he got drunk and burnt himself. Her step Dad waits for her to come home so he can take her salary and use it to get drunk. She hates to go home but goes there for her mom. Her mom says, Roshni is safe here at my sister in law's home. If she was in village, her mom would be constantly in fear for her safety because Roshni is pretty and young. Like everything else in India , this makes you rethink and reevaluate.

One story about Roshni: Roshni found a baby squirrel , nursed it like a baby and let it go on the tree nearby. The Squirrel used to come "home" every evening, eat from her hands, hang out around her while she peeled the peas and cleaned other vegetables , ate the little larvae ( if there were any) and slept in the box made for her. This went on for five months till one day Roshni founds her dead crushed by an ongoing vehicle. Roshni did not talk to anyone for five days. ( i will put some cute pictures on next time) Good night.....

Mahasiv Ratri and such......

2012-02-20

Today is Mahashivratri. It is one of the main festivals  for Hindus, schools are closed ,people are fasting and visiting Temples of Shiva. It is morning but already newspapers have news of people dying in the crowds and the buses crashing in accidents etc  etc.  I wondered why was Mahashivratri celebrated and no one around me new the reason even though they are celebrating it by fasting .

So, I turned to trusted Google and there are many reasons to celebrate Mahashivratri, the main ones being  ; 1) Shiv Lingam appeared on this day from nothing and started the beginning of life, billions of years ago 2) It is the day when Shiv and Parvati got married 3) When the Gods ( trinity)  churned the oceans , the  churned milky waters produced life forms and a very potent poison. Shiv quickly swallowed the poison otherwise the newly created life would have been destroyed and Shiv Ratri is celebrated to remind of the event and importance of Shiv.

I like the third  reason the best, it is bits of truth to it ( even though clouded  by mystery and  religion. “Billions of year” . “ life from water” …sound close to science .

Religion and religious celebrations have increased many folds since I was growing up. We grew up with the respect for the religions and Gods but also quite Atheist. At that time, right after the freedom ( 1947 onwards) , the country, let by Nehru was going through Idealist phase of society building, modernizing , democracy  and well being of all Indians regardless of caste, religion or financial status. It was the golden era of India. Over the years, even though the prosperity for few has increased exponentially, I feel the income gap , dissatisfaction and material desire has increased and so has the religious orthodoxy. It is  almost a falsity that even though the “westernization” and  education is prevalent so is the religion and celebrations.

I am told that most rich people have a partnership with GOD. They commit to certain percentage of their income towards giving to Temples and religious purposes and that;s how the Temples are filled with the riches of all sorts ( one temple is said to be even richer that Vetican…and there are many more like that) . I guess the guilt of corruption and other activities drive people ( rich and poor) to GODS for forgiveness and trying to find salvation and MOKSHA.  Most people will rather give to Temples and spend precious time and money and risk their lives to so do the “DARSHAN ( see GOD’s statue) than give to poor or take care of themselves and family.

One of many Shiv statues around

I think, two biggest business in India are  religion and education. I will talk about education later, but on the auspicious occasion of Mahashiratri , I thought I was appropriate to talk about religion. There are people like KAnkaria Aunti and others who are involved in social causes but the majority leans towards giving a percentage of income , time and energy to GODs and Temples . They feel content about their  responsibility towards this and next life. 

Friends, Temples and Fun old songs..2012-02-19

College Friends and their Spouses

New relations

Tapan: Old and dear friend

Jain Temple in Indore

Statue of Jain preacher at the Temple ( this is a Dibamber sect)

Statue of the same preacher in the shavtamber sect of Jain religion ( different temple) 

Today was the day of friends and fun. Our friends from the engineering college had arranged a get together and a picnic at a local Jain Temple in Indore. There were about 60 to 70 people who showed up with very little notice . Most of them were Jagdish’s class mates and few mine. It was a full day of talk , talk and more talk. Most enjoyable part for me was the old funny songs sung by Tapan Mukherji and our new relative Dilip Kawathekar.  They are both amazing performers and entertained for over an hour with all sorts of fun songs. Tapan and I shared an office at the engineering college for three years. He is an excellent teacher, great industrialist and an amazing entertainer.  He is very involved with youth here and is known as Tapan Dada. I hope to get him interested in the Explorabox also. If you like a sample of his song, I will try to figure out how to upload a video

The Jain Temple is situated on a small hill and has great statues of their divine preachers , beautiful setting and a nice view. A little about Jain religion: It's origin is dated somewhere between 9 th to 6^th century BC before the Aryan’s came to India.  It has a series of 24 preachers who teach a way of complete NON VIOLANCE towards ALL living things. The religion later got divided into several sects ( like all other religions do) .  One sect, Digumbers, believe that the preachers did not wear clothes and do not adore their statues with anything. The other sect: Shavtambers are not so picky and decorate their gods wit clothes as well as give them human features and make up ( see the difference in the two statues of the same god) The Jain temples are typically at a naturally beautiful place and are very clean. The Jains , although a minority in India , are rich and powerful people devoted to building big and beautiful temples.

In the evening we went for a walk and had a nice dinner in a garden restaurant, “celebrity” and got another session of live music concert at the Residency Club. This was some famous sisters and the music was great. But, I thought the songs sung by Tapan and Dilip were more emotionally touching . Their presence , and fun way of singing was really heart warming and brought back lots of good memories.

I feel very blessed to have such wonderful friends even after 35 years of leaving the college. Good night and p to try to listen to the songs, they are precious.( but in hindi) …good night saroj

Back in Indore: Babies and Moms and things...2012-02-18

 Mothers with hours old babies

 New born in donated blankets

 So cute...just born

 More cute baby

 New Mom just few hours after delivery

 Another new mom of one day old baby

 Proud sister of five siblings

Auntie Kankaria with three new moms

I was going to write about the adventurous journey back from Khajuraho to Bhopal to Indore which took us 12 hours to drive 500km parts of which ( 60 km) were on the worst roads I have ever seen.

  But i want to write about the babies, babies and more babies and their mothers. I happen to visit my mother's old friend and our good friend Praveen's mom who lives few houses down from my childhood home. She was doing something in the backyard and when I asked her what was she doing, she showed me this totally inspirational story book thing. She ( an upper middle class house wife with grown up and gone kids) collects old news papers in kilos and sells them to a junk collector. She also collects the old clothes and sheets etc from local five star hotels and other places and converts everything into "gift kits" ( containing two outfits for new born, vitamins, calcium, mosquito net and some version of a  potion) and goes herself to distribute in the local hospitals. She has the system stream lined to the extend she gives employment to several women from slums for converting the discarded stuff into baby blankets, clothes and diapers, uses the money from selling papers to buy other stuff. I was totally impressed...then she called this morning to see if i will like to go with her to see the new moms in the hospital. Of course I was...

We left with two young guys and several bags of stuff ( kits and saris) and went to a local hospital five minutes drive away. ( i lived here 24 years of my life never thought of stepping inside this government( translation poor people's )  hospital ). There were 45 new deliveries in last 24 hours and we gave kits to all of them explaining the use of vitamins and calcium and the potion ( high protein food) . These women just had babies two to six hours before, the babies were right there with them and most seemed happy and normal.
Besides being a heart warming deed, there are several interesting things about all this:
1) All these women were paid 400 Rs and were brought in a car or bus to the hospital from nearby villages. The Government is trying to get people to use safe delivery methods and protect women and new born.
2) We ( meaning Auntie) encouraged everyone to use the birth control or get the "operation" done. All of them said either  a) need permission form the husband b) have only girls and will wait till the boy comes c) if there was one boy they wanted one more. Ones who  agree to get the "operation" done got 600 Rs more plus a saree... Government is using all means to educate the women and empower them , still there was a clear message of "WE WANT BOYS ONLY" there were few who were all alone and two that the husband and in laws had refused to come to take them and their little GIRL home.
It is a mixed feeling seeing all these women. There is so much need and so much 'life is unfairness" going on that to me it seems like the only way to address this by by education , empowerment of women and most of all people like Auntie. Yet, the babies were beautiful and the women were truly happy with the things they got from us. Auntie said they tried giving money instead but the husbands with take the money and use it it get drunk :(

Rest of the day, I have been resting and socializing. Oh, i also did the Yoga this morning in the Yashwant ( remember the upscale who;s who club) and I have to say the Leslie's Yoga in Los Altos is lot more authentic than what i did today. Another observation, Yoga is thousands of year old Indian practice and is called YOG ( meaning discipline) but just a few years of Americanization even the people in India call it YOGA..( i guess it makes them look and feel modern) So, i do not have to feel guilty about calling it yoga.

Time for a nice sleep...good night..saroj

Khajuraho, Temples , Gods and things....2012-02-17

2012-02-17

 Temple complex

 Monkeys and Gods

 Carvings on the outside walls

 Gods

Monkeys and Temples

Got to the Temples first thing in the morning at 6:30am and started the Temple tour along with tourists from all over the world.  There were groups of Israelis , Japanese, Korean and others. Fortunately, the place is well maintained and huge so it did not feel like crowded at all.

 A little history lesson:  The Temples were built by Chandale Dynasty over the period 900 to 1200 AD. The story goes that Moon God fell in love with a very pretty women  Hemwati and she got pregnant ( unwed and virgin) . He  told her to go to the jungles of Khajuraho and gave her the blessing that her son will be a powerful king and he will build the temples and the empire ( I wonder why the sons of single unwed women became powerful in old times….as in Egypt’s Pharo , Jesus and quite a few Indian kings…) . Anyways, the Temples are dedicated to Vedic Trinity but as usual mostly to Vishnu ( and his incarnations) and few to Shiva and his family( Ganesh) . Again, it is interesting to note that till that time, the Hindu Gods were only three families ( Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma) and not the now popular Rama , Krishna and others. I wonder when did King Rama and King Krishna became Gods ? It seems like the poets like Meera, Tulsi Das, KAbir and others transformed them from Kings to Gods….

Anyways, the temples have amazing carvings and unlike the popularized version of the carvings, they are mostly devoted to religious stories and to daily life of the society at that time. The society was prosperous and open minded about sex and things ( including homosexuality etc)  . All temples follow a similar pattern: There is a dome with chakra, lotus and kalash ( Indian religious symbols ) on top followed by panels the Demon king holding the temple corners and of carving on the outside. The carvings are in rows and columns with set pattern of God’s legends, Dragon legends ; daily life including the erotic images of various types.  I think it is interesting to see the openness and intermingling of Kama and Karma in the temples.

Inside of the temples , there is a statue of either Vishu or Shiva and some more carvings. Inside is all religious stories and related carvings. Overall the place is quite impressive and the carvings are amazing in quality as well as in quantity. One explanation for all these carvings is that , one has to go through life of Maya and Kama ( lust…) and overcome it before one can achieve inner peace and salvation. So, one has to go through looking at the outside carvings before you can appreciate the inside of the TempleJ

Near the Khajuraho is the wild life sanctuary of Panna. It also has Tigers but we did not have enough time to go through it but managed to see the wonderful Nil Gai ( blue cow) . It is an endangered animal belonging to the deer family.  The male is light blue …as in most animals male was so much better looking than the female.

It was time to drive back and that story in the next blog…good night..saroj

on the road to Khajuraho found Pandav Caves..2012-02-16

 Going to school on Cycle Rickshaw

 Home of a pottery maker in a village on the way ( the villages are beautiful and clean)

 Village home with Dish ANtenna

 Pandav caves where the Pandavs ( good guys from Mahabharata) hid for one year

 Khajuraho at sunset

Lord Vishu and Laxmi ( glimpse of Khajurajo)

2012-02-16

Got an early start this morning driving towards Khajurao, the ancient temple complex and a star tourist destination in India. The road was excellent, undivided one lane but smooth and not much traffic. Driving on the Indian highways is like a study of Chaos theory. Anything can happen any time and seemingly randomly. I counted things like women crossing carrying loads of wood for cooking, kids running across, monkeys jumping in and out, cows , goats, dogs, loaded trucks passing from the wrong side, men on the bicycles, girls going to school on bicycles and all present speed bumps and illegal toll booths. All these but still we moved along ( I wonder if there is an underlying simple set of rules that covers this chaos and the driver follows that) 

We stopped at the town of  Meyher  where there is a powerful temple of “Mother Sharda”. Our friends wanted to visit it and we thought it will be fun and it was. Sharda is the name of goddess Saraswati . Saraswati is the goddess of wisdom and is the wife of Brahma , the creator. She does not have many temples  neither does Brahma( I guess the wisdom is not as important as the wealth J and it is more important to please the guy who takes care of day to day things ( Vishnu and his many incarnations) than the creator who creates and then sleeps for billions of years .

The Temple was up on a hill and had a modern day convenience od the tram carrying people up and down. IT was crowded as all temples are in India but was clean because they were strict about nOT EATING And throwing trash around.

On wards towards KHajuraho, we passes the city Panna which is famous of the diamond mines but we did not buy any instead we saw the sign for PAndav caves.  We decided to check it out and it turned out to be a gem. This is where the Pandavs were supposed to be hidden for one year. If you are not familiar with the epic MAHABHARATA may be a very brief lesson is required. This is a long epic story full of lessons of life, politics and good vs bad battle. This is where in the final war, Lord Krishna gave his sermon to Arjun ( it is the famous GEETA , sort of bible for hindus) . Basically, this took place about 5000 years ago when the two sets of cousin in the kingdom in north India gambled and the good guys lost. As the part of the bet , the good guys, Pandavs , had to go to the jungles for twelve years and for one year hide somewhere so no one could find the, This is where they HID. The place is beautiful with water fall , canyon and the caves. Great place to hide.

More drive …finally reached Khajuraho around 6pm. More on Khajuraho tomorrow but it looks like a big Tourist place, fist thing wesaw was hotels like, Radisson, Hyatt and lot of Japanese and American tourists. It looks like any other place in the west. Good night from the place of 85 temples from 9^th century….saroj