how to win friends and influence people

responses to an essay prompt '__ has just started out at a new school where he knows noone. the children here are not as friendly as at his old school and he had to have lunch all by himself in the first week. during his second week, however, another child who seemed nice sat with him. later, in PT class, __ noticed a lot of the other kids making fun of his new friend for being overweight and calling him unkind names. __ wants to fit in and make friends, but he also does not want to hurt his new friend. what should __ do? what would you do? have you ever been in a situation where somebody was laughing at a person you care about? what would you do?'

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• for getting new friends, you needs to earn respect by getting 1st in class in studies and sports. 
• you should throw little parties, give people presents and help them out in studies, homework and classwork. maintain your physique and become smart.
• have proper manners and become sophisticated. 
• do not break into fights, tease people or call them names.
• for getting respect from teachers, you need to be polite, good-looking (hair combed, nails cut and in discipline) 
• remember that 'first impression is the last impression'.

please don't take it personally. after all, it is only my opinion based.

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if i were him, i would not try to make friends so fast. i would do it slowly, so that it happens properly. if i were a new boy, i would feel very happy if old students would have sat next to me, as that would mean that people are starting to get comfortable with me around them.
if the children of my school make fun of my friend, i would not mind them at this time, as they are not making fun of me. 
later on, i would spend more time in making friends one at a time, as this would easier, and i would automatically be friends with the person i had previously befriended. this process will take some time.

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if anyone is teasing my new friend, i would go to him and tell him don't lose courage, everything will be o.k. i would try to make him happy by telling a joke or something and say something to distract him from the teasing. when he has gathered enough courage to resist the teasing, i would tell him to just ignore them.


well, from my real life experience, i am sure that they would stop teasing him, but still some people might not stop. so, the next step is to try and make friends with them and then to tell them that what they are doing is not right. the difficult part is to make friends with them but still not make my friend feel that i am teaming up with the others and that he will be left out.

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when they were making fun of his new friend, he felt stuck in the middle of the 'making friends scale'. he wants to make new friends, but he also wants to stay friends with the persons who first came to shake hands.
if you want to know what i would do, here it is-
1) i would try to talk to a few people who seem nice and explain to them that you cannot make friends seeing how fat or skinny people are.


after they understand, it is time for number 2.
2) i would tell the people who understood to tell their friends. and soon, everyone will be friends with each other.
3) if they still don't understand, i would take charge, and tell people that it is not nice to be mean to people.


if people still don't understand, then i don't have any other plans. if people don't agree, they are heartless and very bitter. people who understand are sensitive to things.

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i experienced this when my father was learning to drive. he had to park his car, taking a reverse. his car touched the bumper of a rickshaw. the rickshaw driver started shouting at my father and he said that you and your father are fools. if you don't know how to drive a car why are you driving? other people started laughing and the rickshaw man shouted at my father to pay me, pay me.


when they were shouting and laughing at my father i felt that i should tell them how bad it feels when people laugh at you when you make a mistake. but i could not, because they are adults who are stronger than me, and it could be injurious to me.

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the complex, cruel labyrinth that childhoods are lived in. 

only adults can think with fond, selective amnesia about the innocence of childhood. the intrigues, rivalries, griefs and betrayals of childhood are that much fiercer because it is in many ways the hurts of a community that is voiceless in the midst of all the love.

god let me never lose sight of this.

figuratively speaking

from the Personification exercise today-

"the softboard shivered in fright on seeing the pin." and "the tooth struggled to hang on to the gum."

such gems.
after i had spent the requisite amount of time moaning, i realised i ought to be heartily glad none of them mentioned poop, pee or any other staple of that most enduring of all school-favourites - The Toilet Jokes.

walking on petals strewn on the ground - just another day at work

24 happy little people rushing out of the class to shout hello and give hi-fives is no ordinary welcome. it is a good thing that teachers of little people and mothers have arms like the law - very long. long enough gladly, to expand to hug very many little people at the same time, while simultaneously rapping a few on the head.

i walk over nicely wilted flower petals to the door.

i'm instructed to close my eyes and get pushed into the classroom by encouraging hands. on getting permission, i open my eyes into a bouquet staring me in the eye and welcome back on all the writing surfaces. everyone has been hard at work.

they must be indeed glad to see me back. they volunteered the supreme sacrifice of foregoing 5 minutes of their much-awaited sports class to complete an essay.

royal welcome, or what.

if home is where the heart is, then this is home. i am home and i am happy.

the angst of someone who is understood

i'm being understood.

curiously enough, i do not like it. at all.

it is not nice being understood by a class-full of 10 year olds. to them, i wish to appear mysterious, benevolent and unpredictable. most of all, unpredictable. i seem to be losing the unpredictability. so much so, that now they have started completing my sentences. like a long-married couple.

i begin, "my dear friends...." and they complete "life is not fair."

i begin, "this is...." and they complete "RIDICULOUS!!"

i begin, "you better come with your homework done or else....." and they complete "i'll skin you alive and hang your pelts on the wall."

i barely begin, "how...." and they chorus "STUPID!!"

i try to growl, "i suggest you stop that right now or else...." and they helpfully complete "i'll assassinate you personally."

all this is most depressing. i shall have to think up some new threats. they are beginning to think i am cute. that will definitely not do. i must not lose my fangs. the fangs are essential tools of the trade.

ah well.

at least it is better than the first week, when i would ask for silence, and the class would obligingly erupt in 24 people yelling "keep quiet, stop talking, look at madam" simultaneously. now i can achieve instant silence of the pin-drop variety by just throwing them a glance with a glint in it.

all in a day's work

my class has a severe problem with writing. they whine more plaintively than a galley-full of ill-treated slaves when faced with a writing assignment of any sort. which means that my brain is constantly addled with all the thinking i have to do to disguise writing in sheep's clothing.

today i decided to introduce some dirty competition into the academic equation. poster-making - topic of choice; individual or pairs; tone-persuasion/awareness/warning; 30 minutes.

Jehan's poster. most people liked it for its striking use of color and graphics and the catchy slogan. the poacher looks rather woebegone though.

Appy and Dhruvin's poster. i liked the symbolism of the graphics and the artwork in general. nice and pessimistic, that is us.

hitarth's broken arm proved to be pure serendipity. he left the writing monochromatic because he could not finish coloring it in time, but the audience liked how the no-smoking sign stood out against all the white and black of the rest of the space.

Meet's work. i like the spotlight effect created by the two circles. a rather glamorous family - everyone is very cosmopolitan and smokes! i especially liked the copious amounts of tears the rest of the family is shedding. enough to drown them all. the dead body looks on quite cheerfully from the pyre.

These and two more went as prizes. on-the-spot artwork by the teacher. perhaps there is something wrong with me. everything i draw turns out to be wide-eyed. something freudian perhaps.

day one of the new term

can't say i'v not been warned.

in my inbox - "i hope you have enjoyed yourself in the vacation. from tomorrow we are coming back to harruss you. my dear." followed by a very malignant looking smiley.

well, well, well.

the rabbi

kids are the sweetest things. and they say the darnedest things. my favorite bits out of my Teachers' Day tribute -

the cover has a picture of me looking like a constipated criminal, but i'v decided not to crib.

"..she is very buetiful and a vigorous reader with many suggestions to give us about books." vigorous reader. perhaps i flip the pages with a lot of vigor?

"..is always carm and cool. for her nobody is good and nobody is bad. she explains and not take action." i think he meant to say that i am fair. i hope so, anyway. or maybe he meant that i am an unfeeling twerp?

stamp of approval from someone experienced. serious stuff - "..you will never get bored in her class. i say this, because i am experienced."

"with a cup of tea, her mood is very good"

"she organises her space, time perfectly" little monster. calling me fussy.

i am going to quote him when i win the Peace Nobel - "once we were lost, but she came and guided us to the right path. because of her hard work, we are at this stage." the state of the stage is questionable. i am not sure if he meant the last bit as a compliment.

things that make little boys grateful - "when she scolds us, she also jokes. she sometimes gives us extra time for submitting our work. she also shows us videos and asks questions in a quiz."

"whenver it is her turn to teach, i never get bored. she gets angry less often. and because of her, i somewhat started to like Math." high praise. intelligent kids are so difficult to keep interested.

lucky, lucky day. i have found a helpmeet in this difficult world - "my teacher is very serious about work. she gives us homework that is lengthy but at the same time interesting and joyfull. she says if we want to have fun we also need to follow some rules. she gives us many options in working. we will follow her rules and help her to manage this difficult world." yahoo.

" ma'm is supper best. if there was gold on one side and ma'm on the other i will choose ma'm. when my mode is bad i see her and it becomes good." this is my cue to start teaching Degrees of Comparison, and work a bit on getting their spellings in order. 'supper best' is definitely more interesting than a tame super best, but there are times when one has to be conservative.

"she scolds in the regular way. she cares about us and wants us to be healthy. i eat my salad now." he does, he does. small battles won.

my favorite - "she follows nonviolence, peace and politeness." i do indeed. surprising really.

"'she cooperates with us and we also do sometimes." the 'sometimes' is so totally totally true. thank god for small mercies.

"i like her because of her way of speaking even if it is a scary movie. her facial expressions are nice."

"when ma'm speaks i think that a cut sparrow is speaking to me." i sincerely hope he meant 'cute sparrow'. i'll seriously have to do something about the spellings. or, good heavens - my voice.

it is funny. one does not even realize when it is that other peoples' kids slowly become one's own. how so much space can be created in an ordinary human heart. this is such a delicate, frightening thing, this handing over of precious people to be looked after at strange hands.

How to acquire fans and impress people

.....provided they are armpit(or below)-height people.

anyway;

Ingredients:

Item Description Quantity

child small a few

window foggy one, to begin with

finger preferably your own one, for starters

Process:

Make sure intended audience is not (a) sleepy, (b) fighting with its neighbour, (c) busy sticking its head/hand out of the window, (d) reading a book - it happens sometimes, (e) picking its nose - it happens often.

Do something to grab attention - simple things like vomiting, bumping one's head against the seat-back opposite one, or putting up both hands over one's head and wiggling one's fingers work generally.

Once attention is grabbed, work fast. juvenile attention dissipates faster than the fizz out of a cola bottle.

Draw a figure on the foggy glass with your finger. Try a fish for starters (If you cannot do even that, go and die immediately)

Wait for someone to notice "fish" in a bored voice, and then proceed. Draw a larger fish, with a more sinister expression.

Next, draw a turtle.

Then draw a whale.

Follow it up with a starfish.

Wait for awe to descend on the audience. When suitable amounts have descended - it is characterized by shrill voices yelling Madam drew a fish/turtle/whale/starfish,,,look, look - continue.

Graciously oblige further requests and draw on demand - jellyfish, sea horse, octopus, sea snail, sea anemone, and shark.

Listen to awe-stricken comments in the nature of Wooww madam, you have such nice drawing.

Bask in the glory.

Follow-up:

Bestow benign smiles on said conquests when you meet them next, and wave a royal palm at them when they yell hellos/goodbyes at you. Sure to make parents/teachers wonder at your animal magnetism.

I now have a devoted following, who sit very close to me in the hopes of there being a repeat performance the next time it rains.

pre-k

the campus is suddenly full of little people. positively crawling.

the bus ride to school has shot up on the entertainment index, though. there is this particular small person who keeps asking every two seconds "where is daddy?" and another one, who wails heartrendingly for his mommy. on the first day, the wailer tried wailing for a full half an hour, before he threatened to hit the driver on the head if he did not take him back, pronto. the driver displayed suitable fear, and promised to take him straight back home, once the bus dropped the rest of us unfortunate people at school.

poor things. maybe they think we are kidnapping a busload of kids. silly kids, though. why would we kidnap other people's kids? decidedly second hand. we can very well have our own.

on the seat next to me sit a diminutive brother and a slightly less diminutive sister. the sister, by dint of her worldly experience of having gone to school for the last year, keeps dispensing pearls of wisdom to the brother in the lines of - there are dinoasurs in the school (i spent some time wondering about this earthshattering discovery, before i noticed one of the other little creatures point at a chameleon and yell -what else- dinosaur!) and it is better to eat one's bruch and drink all the water in the water bottle in the bus itself, so that the bag becomes easier to carry to class.

each able-bodied adult over the age of 7 is entrusted with one such weepy human being to ferry to their respective classes. all the first graders are swelling with pride at being treated as seniors, and it is a common sight to see five people hearding one kindergartener.

walking to and fro on the campus is nothing short of courting disaster. little persons keep getting under your feet all time.

telling tales

little four year old mishri sat in my lap today and told me her pet name is 'mish', and that catterpillars camoflage in the green grass, and that she does not beat up, or pull the hair of, her older sister, and that her mother put her hair into french braids, and that dishita's sister is in harbinder ma'm's class who is very stick. so stick, infact, that she makes you finish everything in your lunch dabba.

hoppity

we caught a frog today.
the little fellow was labouring under some severe identity crisis. the boys found him in the class courtyard, trying to climb up the glass doors, all spread-eagled like spiderman or something. i am now convinced that that old dreaded word-problem from my school days, which went something like if a frog slides back 2 metres for every 3 metres it climbs up a pole (maybe it was not a frog after all. perhaps a monkey?) when will it be able to get out of a hole that is some umpteen metres deep? struck some text-book writer with a sadistic streak when he might have been watching some distant relative of our slimy friend go through a similar circus . anyway,
after getting a ringside view of the amphibian-acrobatics for a good 10 minutes of lunchtime, kalpit caught him/her, and instantly became a hero among the girls who did their bit by squealing most satisfactorily in the best tradition of heroines.

now we are faced with the necessity of having to go insect-hunting to feed him/her, everyday. zenith suggests that we go looking for cobwebs every morning, as they are sure to have some insects trapped in. not a bad idea, but noone seems to have any sympathy to spare for the poor spiders who are soon going to find themselves homeless -and, to add insult to injury- hungry as well! i didnt dare raise this question, coz i dont want my brains picked by demands to go cricket-harvesting, instead of cobweb-robbing. anyway, i hope poor froggy has not given up his soul in the plastic dabba that is his temporary home.

oh, and the paper-crane idea worked! and how!
we now are going to make as many paper cranes as we can, and send it all to the sadako shrine at the hiroshima peace park. the kids are a bit upset that they won't be able to manage a thousand cranes before august 6th, but are chipper about sending a package to japan. some of them are already working on the letter that they plan to send with the cranes.

beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder (causing major eye-ache)

the class decided to have an origami workshop. they are to teach each other whatever items they know. so far, so good.
my death-wish leaped to the fore, and i offered to teach them how to make a paper crane. this met with unanimously approving noises, and i got all self-congratulatory thinking of what a master manipulator i am - the idea being, to trick the little dragons into getting interested in cranes, then in japan, and then to lead it to the hiroshima-nagasaki bombing and then on to a discussion on ww2.
i spent the entire evening learning to make the crane, and got frustrated to the point of wanting to personally shoot/poison/strangle/pan-fry all cranes in the world. i finally did master it - i am not called obsessive for nothing. i managed to finish making one crane, and rushed into class holding aloft the magenta masterpeice and yelled eureka fashion - look-at-this, look-at-this! what's this?
the answer? dinosaur!!!!

robert burns did get it right when he wrote - "The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley" in his ''to a mouse'.
in case anyone is interested in learning to make the crane, this is a good link http://monkey.org/~aidan/origami/crane

i used this, though.

empty nest

last day of school. the kids left today. the girls were in tears. they will always remain special - and to think that i had thought last year that they were the special-most batch that i shall ever teach. now i feel the same about this batch as well.....that no one shall be so special.

the senior section's galaxian tonight. going to wear a sari. the bro is going bonkers with glee making dire predictions about how i shall look like a toothpick with a ribbon around it.

the gang plus one husband and two kids home for dinner. glad they came. the day was not a total washout after all.
a very nice morning today. dewy. drops kept falling onto our faces and arms as bro drove me to the bus. frosted windows.

things are looking up.







waiting for summer. pomegranates. very oriental. very my name is red. fruit salad time.






reading teesta's manga shakespeare version of romeo and juliet. liking it. plan to use it next year to design a unit on the bard. also thinking of using excerpts from the original, some abridged peices and baz luhrmann's william shakespeare's romeo+juliet. should be fun.

here is a review of the book - readingyear.blogspot.com

the cover looks thus:

PMS

to parody the lycra ad, i have got it, have you?
i call it misery. mom calls it 'showing your true colours'.

The Day After Pill

Everyone all tired out and droopy-eyed, so all of us unanimously decided to watch a movie, and not study at all today, in the interests of our sanity. Saw Bebe. I love that pig.
Diwali vacations from tomorrow till the 19th. I’ll miss the kids. Got some greeting cards made on note-paper with “Happy Diwali ma’m” on them. The thought counts, yeah, it does.

Himalay met me on the way to the bus. Turns out he is making what he optimistically calls ‘bookmarks’ to sell to all and sundry, collect the cash, and donate it to lesser privileged kids this Diwali. He is also giving up his pocket money for the good cause. I bought the four remaining ones he had left. A kid with a conscience – one of the many reasons I just love this little bat-child of mine.

Going to A’bd tomorrow to see Ms. Sethi about the next term’s planning. I’m doing a bit too much of traveling lately. Living out of a suitcase and all that. They’ll be calling me Pegasus the Winged Horse if this continues much longer.

The Incident In The Toilet, Damsel to the Rescue and Other Tales of High Adventure:

(the southern reservoir-cut into rock partly, n partly brick-built)


I love teaching, no doubt about it. What is a little doubtful is all this in loco parentis thing one is expected to do as one goes about teachering. Take for example, The Incident in the Toilet.
It goes thusly –

Setting: the citadel at Dholavira.

Cast: Darvish, yours truly and assorted etceteras.

Curtains Up!

We were all listening carefully to the guide and nicely into the note-taking business. I had just done my bit about how the Indus Valley people were such marvelous engineers, when I noticed the grimace gracing the countenance of the hero of this tale. Total ijit that I am, I took it to be a look of intense concentration. Well, one lives and learns. The worst is yet to be, baby…..

It turns out our hero had disdained the opportunity to visit the loo-loos in the hotel, and now had serious cause for concern.

Moral Dilemma - What does a dedicated teacher do in such circumstances? Does she give in to her demons and laugh gleefully, and say ‘I told you so?’ Nope. Nada. She plays martyr, and offers to guide the erring gentleman to the nearest available spot wherein the said gentleman can answer Nature’s Urgent Call.

So off we went. The drama ends not here, my pretties….

Revelation – What does a toilet in a remote excavation site with only a rude man posing as the curator and a couple of drunkards to watch over it, look like? Answer – like only a toilet in a remote excavation site with only a rude man posing as the curator and a couple of drunkards to watch over it, can look like.

To move on….

Our hero turns up his nose at the establishment and expresses some doubt about doing something so important in such a place. The teacher points out the abject lack of choice, in case he hadn’t noticed. So our hero, like the true gentleman that he is, goes in. One offers to wait outside. Offer accepted. One settles down on the doorstep looking forward to a few minutes of peaceful beholding of Nature – a lot of scrub bush and a brown mongrel, in this case. But, but, but - did the righteous ever have it easy? No sir. Ask the early Christians. The righteous got thrown to the lions.

D: “Umm.. ma’m, there are a few cats in here.”
Moa: “oho?”
D:………
Moa: “Problem?”
D: “Well, you see, I don’t like animals. Once a dog bit me…so…”
Moa: “Just don’t pay much attention to it. It will go away. Won’t hurt you.”
D: “Are you sure? It is looking at me very rudely.”

(One detects growing panic in D’s normally sanguine voice, and goes in to find not one, not two, but three cats giving the world the disconcertingly superior stare that only cats and mothers can manage.)

Time for idle talk is past.

Moa: (ever the one for action, cat-shooer-off par excellence.) “You just have to flap your hands thisaway.”
This continues for sometime. One hasn’t done so much hand-flapping since one’s P.T. classes from school, but one gives it all one has got. The cats watch in interested silence. One takes a chance and turns around to have a look. The feline nearest the opening in the thatch roof turns menacingly.
D: (in that reassuring manner he has, screams)“Ma’m, he’ll attack you! Watch out!”

The he (or she, one can’t be too certain. One wasn’t in a position to check the anatomical details of one’s adversaries, and even in case one had, one wouldn’t have had the slightest clue.) left! The others followed. Victory! It may have been a small step for a cat, but a giant step for Mankind Trapped in the Toilet with Angry Brood of Cats.

So that was that.

Oh there are perks of course. On the way back, I get the most sincerely meant, fervent ‘thank you’ ever. We call ourselves the Brotherhood of the Toiletally Challenged now, and offer to write about it in our respective blogs for our respective friends to laugh at.
Here I am, keeping up my end of the bargain.

(this is what Dholavira might have looked like all those years ago.)

Damsel to the Rescue:
Murphy’s Law: (not my fault if he didn’t state it. If he had had any sense, he would have.)
The urgency of the desire to tinkle is directly proportional to the distance you are from human habitation, and by inference, from anything remotely approaching toilets.

The truth of this wise dictum was proved to me as we were on our innards-jolting 320km. bumpy ride to Dholavira from Bhuj. Having a busfull of giggly pre-teens is no help. Pee-stops had to be carefully maneuvered. It goes without saying that when it comes to matters like this, even teeny almost-men will balk at having a teacher of the female variety around. So the bus had to be emptied of all the gents (except the driver, of course) at promising places in the care of Salilbhai - our escort for the trip. We then had to take the bus a good distance away, persuade the ladies to have a go right in Ma Nature’s lap, so to speak, and stand watch, after which, we turned back to where we had jettisoned the male members of the party, picked them up, and continued on our merry way.






( this is one of our more scenic pee-stops.)


Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon:

This is the name Stuti gave to the contortions we had to put ourselves through, to attain some level of privacy while doing what I described the younger ladies doing in the previous para. Elegant, huh? It has ruined the film for me anyway. I don’t care, I don’t care! The Gods could have laughed for all I care! I am not a bloody camel to go without drink for an entire day the way Gunjan did.

A Room With a View (and a toilet that flushes)

Bhuj is a lovely city. Dusty, colourful.

The lake in the middle of the city shines and sparkles and dances in the sunlight. Our hotel Lakeview has a lovely view of the lake from all its windows.
We reached Bhuj around 10:30, allotted rooms to the kids, got them all washed, combed and freshened up and down in the dining hall by 12:00. That’s record time.
No one complained, threw up, demanded ketchup or threatened to starve during lunch. A long bus trip is the best appetizer.

After lunch, we went for a spin around the lake. No visit to any place in Gujarat is complete without a visit to a local temple - permanent fixture on any itinery. We did not go against custom. I particularly wanted the Gods on my side for this trip.


We then took the kids to the park next to the hotel, and they all attacked the monkey bars and slides with all the pent-up energy of seven hours of relative inaction. I wonder where they get all this energy from. After all that travel, I just wanted to curl up and die in peace somewhere. Teesta climbed up one of those contraptions which has a rope ladder at one end and a step ladder at the other, with a platform on top, and could not get down for a good 15 minutes. The guys all surrounded her from all sides, and would not let her climb down. Revenge for all the times she smart alecks them in class, I think.

Rhythm showed off spectacularly doing the most daredevilish things like hanging upside down from puke-inducing heights and crossing the monkey bars at one go, repeatedly. Stuti and I spent some time speculating who among the young ladies in the audience was the intended target audience for this circus. He has a huge soft corner for both of us, and now we think Teesta may be the one to grace the third unoccupied chamber of his heart. Hmmm…..gives one furiously to think, like Poirot used to say. Will
have to do some serious detective work once we are back.





Back at the hotel, all of us spent the next 20 minutes rushing around like our pants were on fire, trying to get ready to start for Dholavira as soon as we could, so that we could reach the site by 4:00p.m., when we get news that the routes are closed down for repairs again. We’ll have to reschedule the trip to tomorrow early morning 4:00. That means waking up at 3:30.

We got to visit the still-spectacular 18th century palace Aina Mahal, which was considerably ruined in the earthquake that rocked the state.




Not even Gaia could hurt the beauty of the walls so beautifully built, the latticed windows from where queens might once have peeped out, the pillars with dragons and hibiscus flowers carved on them, the grand durbar hall, the huge mirrors….. the kids were a bit disgusted with all the stuffed heads on the walls - tigers, antelope, lions, lynx, even a hippo! Those princes were something!

The museum next door had a lovely portrait, a miniature, of Mastani. When Stuti and I were exclaiming over the oval perfection of her face, Ashita (who can say the darnedest things at the darnedest times) announced aloud for all to hear, “but she is not wearing proper clothes” driving the boys hanging around us many shades of red brighter. (Well, truth be told, the costume was a tad too transparent. Probably fashionable harem attire.) Poor Rhythm, he was trying his debonair, man-about-town act. He did not deserve such mortification. We could not help laughing.
The museum has very interesting old photographs. There was this picture of Lord and Lady Mountbatten taken when he was in Burma.

That evening, after a shopping trip, ice creams and dinner, we let the kids play for an hour before bedtime. All 30 of them ran about whooping and yelling their heads off. The other guests put their heads out of their windows to see what the commotion was about. Just my kind of game. Anything that requires one to yell at the top of one’s voice and run about at top speed is my kind of game. I would have joined in, dignity be damned, if Stuti had agreed to play too. Still, just sitting about watching people bump into plants, fall over chairs and call each other names was grand entertainment as well, so no complaints.

The Maachi Game:

Teesta suggested a new game, one invented by Nirman when they were in the fourth grade. Rather interesting. It goes like this – the person who gives the ‘den’ has to go about like a zombie with his hands outstretched saying “maachi, maachi…” till he touches someone. Then both of them do it, and so on till everyone is touched with the maachi. What makes me like this game so much is the sheer inventiveness of it. One can substitute maachi with whatever disgusting thing one can think of, say “charak” or “podhro”.

I’m planning to suggest to The Gang that we play this the next time we meet, in place of the tame Antaksharis and Dumb Charades we normally play.

For the uninitiated:
Maachi – fish
Charak – bird shit
Podhro – cowdung

Oh I know, I know. But the best kind of humour one gets from 11 year olds is sparkling toilet humour. The best kind. Actually, the only kind. I’m resigned to it now. That old saw about ‘if you can’t beat ‘em….’

The odyssey:

I’ll be taking my class to visit the excavated remains of the Indus Valley site Dholavira in the Rann of Kutch on this 30th.

There are evidences of city planning found at the site, dating from 2500 B.C.
The 3rd millennium city, which was spread over an area of 250 acres, had an incredible 17 man-made, interconnected, canalized lakes for rainwater harvesting. Situated on the island formed by the rivers Mansar and Manhar, it was very systematically planned, like any Indus Valley settlement, into four. What historians call an acropolis, divided into two – the castle and the bailey, the lower town, the middle town and the burial place.

All of us are very excited. Never before have I wished for a Sunday to rush past.

I shall overcome....

Well, regular Monday blues apart, noone laughed at my hair. not many people did, anyway. atleast not to my face.
i did get some eyeballs though.
Darvish gave me a once over and went 'oh so u cut your hair? hmm....', Teesta went and announced it to the B's at loudspeaker pitch prompting an immediate stampede which ended somewhere behind me. after much deliberation, Ashna totally threw me. she went, 'ma'm, i'm now convinced u are a girl!'. well.

can't say i don't know what 'being the cycnosure of all eyes' is about. now i do. and how. not very pleasant.
that blooming idiot desai got our trip to dholavira postponed to early next week. hope he gets a flat tyre, or a pimple on his nose, or bird shit on his head.

missing Someone-i-Should-Not-Be-Missing. very, very strange. i get hungry, thirsty and sleepy, as usual, so it cannot be u-know-what. oh gawd! nooooo....