Raawiya

2007-08-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

It's remarkable how some times a poem can capture exactly how you are feeling.

Thoughts on: 'Half-Nelson'

2007-05-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

Teaching is a demanding profession-one where you can't but help dredging out your soul from time to time and taking a hard look at it. It pushes you to want to do superhuman things some times. At the same time it makes you aware that despite all your good intentions that there are times when 'you' can't do anything. However,whether the story of a teacher's life needs to run like a scary chronicle of a dispirited junkie is highly debatable. Yes, it is a 'real' and 'authentic' story, but how much can we be pulled into wallowing in the mess and helplessness of a teacher, was a question I asked myself at various points in the film.

'Half-Nelson' made one mildly scornful of the protagonist. If that was the intention of the movie - it is a job well done. I suspect though, that the movie is meant to be a canvas of indulgent languidness - where one is supposed to soak in and even sympathize with the fogginess of the teacher. The non-fussy editing and the fact that there aren't many sub-layers to the story bolsters this apparent intention. The "friendship" between Drey (Shareeka Epps who was outstanding) and Dan (Ryan Gosling, the teacher) was beautifully sketched. They knew each other's most vulnerable sides- which they held with great dignity. It was refreshing to see that these vulnerabilities were not hacked to death with analysis and major soul-searching conversations - a risk that many teacher-student type movies (why even real-life situations) face.The dichotomy in Dan's life - where he passionately and consummately employs dialectics as a pillar of his pedagogy but uses none of it to reflect upon his life, came through quite neatly. On the whole, the film seemed to thrive on the understatedness of the mess that is the life of Dan and Drey.

Being a teacher myself, I could not but help being greatly involved with the film than just being a curious member of the audience. While I was able to appreciate the craft and the acting , the story itself had something to it that served as a thorn under my skin. Maybe because I was questioning the dramatizing (however understated it was) of a teacher's dysfunctionality. Maybe because I think we cannot afford to make 'art' of this dysfunctionality, the silver-lining end to the story notwithstanding.

Films do play a significant role in making us aware of realities that we ourselves do not and cannot experience. However, when 'reality' is portrayed as 'art' one has to look at it discerningly because Pathos - gritty or soppy is often the excuse.It almost is - in 'Half-Nelson'.

The Jazz Hook

2007-05-03T02:07:00.000-07:00

A musical phrase starts,seducing you into journeying with it. Just as you start going along driven by a need to find a destination,your lilting body in the way that it knows time anticipates the end, the phrase dives and opens up new possibilities. You don't resent that dive. You are seduced yet again, into journeying with the next phrase.

This the beauty that is jazz...

Somewhere in the warren of lanes between Russell St and Exhibition St, there lies a quaint jazz club. Locally referred to as the Bennetts Lane Jazz Club- for the past three days it has been a venue for the Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival - a mini festival to whet the appetite for the big one - the 'Melbourne Jazz Festival' which begins today.

Yesterday the club was host to Senator Eugene Wright-a brilliant bassist who was a member of Dave Brubeck's quartet between the late fifties and sixties. You would remember him as that person who along with the mind-blowing drummer Joe Morello brought alive every note in the quartet's album- 'Time Out'.However last nights session didn't feature the icing-on-the-cake piece that is 'Take Five' (Paul Desmond's famous tune). But going by how happy and blessed I was feeling to actually see the man and hear the magic that his fingers create, I was prepared to even listen to a rendering of 'Ba-Ba Blacksheep'!

Collaborating with Joe Chindamo ( who recorded with the amazing Ray Brown) on the piano and Mike Jordan on the drums, Mr.Wright gently nudged us into a world where 'patterns' didn't matter. Every note created was used to steer us away from our need to predict. All you do is yield - not helpless,but intoxicated.

***
For Muthu anna,
who introduced me to the world of jazz...who told me I should never look for anchors as long as I had my eyes,ears,mind and spirit open...who always asked after the welfare of these four...
......I shall keep them well anna.

2007-04-03T01:04:00.000-07:00

Sitting in my Special Ed course classes yesterday and today, I realized how much we all view the world from one framework. We all share more or less the same definitions of work, leisure, friendships,intimate relationships. Not only do we share these definitions,we are very entrenched in our certainity of these definitions... and the majority definition is the norm.

Through many of the video clippings I've seen during my 'Disability and Social Development' course, I've come to realize that I know little about love, I know little about commitment, I know little about friendships. All my relationships work in the realm of the known - where the other person and I know what is expected,what are the 'givens' and a predictable negotiation is created.

But what does it mean to love and be married to a man with ADHD-where he finds it extremely difficult to filter out the required stimulus from multiple auditory stimuli? What does it mean to be the mother of a son who is a paraplegic and cannot do anything for himself?

Can we actually be so sure about our definitions of love, success, job-satisfaction, relationship-satisfaction when we have altogether forgotten to factor in the realities of these special people...when we have altogether forgotten to understand what all the above mean to these people and the people in their lives?

Far from 'politically correct' reasons for asking these questions, I ask them because they too are a part of 'Society'. So by default and a very common sense perspective these questions need to be asked,so that the answers that come from these special people may become our answers as well. But the answers are not going to come to us on a silver platter. We need to shed our certainities...we need to look.

Botany,Food and Muscle Mermaids

2007-03-25T05:17:00.000-07:00

My 'Bachelor of Science' years were probably the most boring three years of my life,but Botany definitely has some hold over me! Which is why yesterday ,despite the unbelievably cold southern winds sweeping across Melbourne,a friend and I caught a random tram and headed out to the Royal Botanical Gardens. I was most disappointed with the place. Not because it's unusually small for a botanical garden but due to how half-hearted the whole effort looks. Very few of the plants are marked with taxonomical details -which is a huge disappointment for me,because 'Taxonomy' is one of my favourite branches in botany. The 'Australian Forest Walk' is the biggest joke of the botanical garden, as none of the trees in the "forest" are indigenous. There was nothing 'Australian' about the forest!

Finishing with the place,we headed back to the hub of the city - Federation Square. We saw a whole line - a very long line, of food stalls running along the Yarra River. It was a part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival,organised by Melbourne's hearthrob newspaper - 'The Age'. I didn't have the wine but decided to sample food from as many stalls as my meagre budget would allow. The variety of stalls was mind-blowing! We headed straight for the 'West African' stall first. I had a curry and rice sort of thing called 'Domoda'- apparently Senegalese. I must tell you that it tasted very much like south indian food-sour and spicy. But it's quite a rewarding experience to eat hot peppery food in a biting cold wind. The contrast is beautiful!

We walked down a bit more,along the snaking food stalls.But since all I seemed to want after the 'Domoda' was coffee (the south-indian conditioning of the tongue,i say!), that's just what I had next. In any case the festival is on till the 30th of this month. I plan to visit it again- I need to check out Cyprus food!

I completely enjoyed being at the festival. It reminded me a lot of the Trade Fairs I used go to as a child.

My day was to pick up,even more. After reaching home,my landlord- an ace swimmer in his sixties, mooted the plan of going to the FINA World Championships- water polo matches. I wasn't really interested in the water polo as the finals for the Synchronised Swimming were taking place as well and that's where I wanted to be. Don ( my landlord),wanting to rag me a bit, dismissed the sport as "a bunch of sheilas duck-diving"! In Aussie tongue,boys are "blokes" and girls are "sheilas".

Since I badly wanted to see the "duck-diving" I took the train to Richmond-where the Rod Laver Arena is. Yes- the Rod Laver Arena is where the Australian open happens. It's also where Melbourne's high-profile rock concerts happen but anyway... So what they did with this glorious tennis venue is that they ACTUALLY converted centre court into a swimming pool! Now why a tennis court should be converted into a pool when there is a brilliant aquatic complex the city boasts of, is a question on every Melbournian's lips. Especially since the city is going into Stage 4 water restrictions (pretty heavy ones) from next month!

I got my seat fairly close to the pool,which is actually a bad thing for synchronised swimming because you don't get the pool-surface view.The pool was gorgeous no doubt. But I couldn't help thinking throughout that it was the most idiotic thing they had done. So much idiocy prevails in the need for show,publicity and "making an impression".

As the 10 final teams came on,one after the other,I had to use superhuman efforts to stop myself from squealing! Synchronised swimming has always fascinated me and I was actually seeing it for real now! The combination of strength and grace this sport entails,captivates me.
As they dive,rise and bend to make patterns,there isn't a trace of gasping or panting! And they actually manage to keep smiles on their faces!

I noticed that the routines had become faster and more rythm based as opposed to some years ago when the music used was more melody based and was moderately paced. The music used yesterday,especially by Brazil was brilliant. But even the other countries like Korea and Russia used primarily rythm- based,techno-based music.

Whenever a team finished and the score was announced,I would marvel at how fast judges made decisions about whether say it's a '9.5' or a '9.6'. I was extremely curious about the marking criteria and how well worked out they are-as they've got to be,if scores are being fired out in seconds!

So Russia,as usual being good at sports such as these,came first with 99.000! They were the only team that actually used nose-clips to keep water from going in! It looked quite disgusting in my opinion,the skin-colour of the nose-clips notwithstanding (they should have lost points in the category of 'Artistic Impression'!) The silver went to Spain- which has the weirdest 'team-spirit' ritual which is that all of them slap eachothers' bottoms (including that of the coaches!) after their routine! The bronze went to Japan,which apparently is the only team to have "medalled" (I don't even think that's a word) at every single one of the 11 FINA World Championships held so far.Which is why I think they were literally given the bronze,as strictly speaking, China which came fourth was leagues ahead of them in every category. Even a lay-man could see that.The question about scoring criteria popped up in my head again.

I went back home,cursing the cold winds again. But I felt like one content person.

Library as Inspiration

2007-03-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

Four thousand words after four thousand words...and it doesn't stop there!The avalanche of academic 'writing tasks' had me right at the bottom of the pile of huge stones,without a clue as to which one I needed to deftly shift in order to see the light.

Three weeks ago,when I took time off from obssessing with this metaphor, I decided to take an inch-by-inch look at my faculty library-the ERC- Education Resource Centre.I had been on a "tour" of this place during orientation week but at that time it didn't make an impact on me- thanks to all the home-sickness I was busy feeling.I even walked out half-way because I found the "tour" too pedantic.Why did I go in the first place? I guess I held these huge,silent bookhouses with their complicated systems,strict librarians and the complicated machines that replaced the work of the strict librarians, in fearful reverence.I had seen nothing like them back home and decided to go in order to learn about their workings.

Coming back to "So three weeks ago"... I stepped into the ERC- this time with lower levels (but still bad!) of home-sickness and the weight of the pile of stones growing on me.I got in through the main entrance,fleeing a banshee-like cold wind, and landed up on level 3 of the library.There she was- the stern and stiff looking lady at the information desk with a sign dangling above her head that said 'Can I Help You?' And I thought to myself- "No, not looking like that!" and simply bypassed her.

I decided to saunter up to level 4,where I remembered from the tour,there is a large collection of teaching kits.So I started climbing the steps,expecting to search for a small shelf tucked away in some corner stocked with random games-which are often passed off as "educational tools".On reaching level 4,I generally looked to the left of me and saw something like 10 rows of long, 5- tier shelves holding drab cardboard boxes of various sizes.I said to myself - "they've got to be kidding me!".I went up to one of those fifty shelves and pulled out a 'teaching kit'.What happened after that can only be described in emotional terms.

There they were- the 1000 or so teaching kits.You name the topic and you had a kit for it.You open a kit and in essence what you see is the material to support the teaching of that topic in atleast five fantastic and mind-blowing ways! I remembered some of my students from the various levels I taught- the one who struggled with understanding the concept of 'Osmotic Pressure',the one who struggled with the concept that ten 'singles' make one 'ten', the one who struggled with understanding how we have seasons... That they struggled and did make it after all,made their learning valuable.But I couldn't stop myself from thinking how much more varied that learning would have been,if they could learn through these kits.

This was the day I realized I was blessed to be here.To see this.To be a part of this faculty,full of people using their deep senstivity to seek out every need of a child and applying their brilliant minds to find creative means to fulfill each need.

I was even more moved when I explored the rest of level 4 and the two levels above it.So much...so much has been studied and written about- with soul , heart and mind,for the child.So many aspects of education had been explored at such depths.I realized that in there -were several 'academic tasks' written by other people.Only now,I don't see them as "tasks".Each written piece is a black-on-white declaration that some adults care to have their eyes burn in front of the computer screen and fingers hurt knocking away at the keyboard...

...so that no stone is left unturned in finding the right education for our children.