Factory of The Mind

During a discussion with Chetan (my younger brother) about starting a school, I sent him my perspective on education. Its probably worth keeping on record and even sharing. The Mythological story about education God was faced with the question of education for the young ones of various living beings. For all except the man, the answer was fairly simple: The parents will educate the child. In case of the man, it wasn’t so simple for a few reasons. Firstly, apart from the skills required for physical survival, education includes certain mental and spiritual aspects. After all, man has been bestowed with the power to choose and his choices can potentially nurture or destroy. Secondly, there is an inherent diversity among human beings, which is very critical to maintain balance for sustainable existence. Thirdly, the education period or the learning timeline was substantially longer than other species.   One may identify a few more reasons why education in case of a human being is comp...

Many consider relationships to be amongst the most important aspects of life and managing them is so important. Many respected thinkers and philosophers also opine the same. I’m inclined to think that the first part is quite natural, given the interdependent nature of life but I have a serious reservation about the management aspect. On deeper thought, I think ‘management’ as an activity is unnatural and may also be at the root of many problems. My assumption is that management originates from thought and is necessarily not intuitive. One may reach the same intuitive action after thinking, but once thought is applied, it falls in the arena of management. Another way of looking at it may be that management is ‘doing’ and not ‘being’ and I consider ‘being’ as a higher state than ‘doing’. I’m generally not very particular about ‘maintaining’ or ‘managing’ my relationships. Friends, relatives, peers, family, all my relationships are good, bad, strong, weak, not because I intended them to b...

It gives me great pleasure to be independent. Independence means not being dependent on someone to satisfy basic needs. Interdependence is surely a higher virtue, but it often crosses the line and gets into the arena of exploitation. This is a separate subject and is a huge aspect of our normal life. Moving ahead on the path of independence, a new skill got added recently – milking the cow. I can’t express how liberating the feeling is. We now have a cow and a calf within our house premise and I milk the cow twice a day. Kids now drink fresh, unadulterated, organic milk of a free grazing Indian cow – something experts claim as the best possible. We’re also able to get very small quantities of cream, turn it into butter and then into pure, organic, Indian cow ghee. Just a few spoonsful every 3 days, but unmatched quality! All this independently! The learning, which got reinforced with this experience, was that the biggest bottleneck in learning something new is inertia. I’d given myself...

Education of children is of utmost importance to us. It is one of the main reasons we decided to move into a different lifestyle. Both Rekha and I feel that they haven’t lost anything because we pulled them out of the schooling system. I am certain that I’ve saved them from the system, which is designed to instill fear. When we moved to Barkheda, we were happy to find a school here. Though we didn’t send them to the school to study, they played with the children after school. Then one day, we were faced with an opportunity to take on the responsibility of the school. We gave it a thought and came to a conclusion that we should run a school, where we can send our children as well. We gave a deep thought to the why, what and how of education. We spoke to a few people, looked at a few methods. Finally, we figured out that it has to be residential learning space, which doesn’t separate living from learning. Since learning is round the clock, it doesn’t make sense to carve a school time. Le...

Our relationship with family, friends, relatives and people at large has undergone a major change in the context of our new life. This change was one of the striking experience during our vacation and after. Most people don’t seem to be able to relate us and vice versa. College friends, who once were a part of my being, everyday, were in touch every now and then, while I was in the city, aren’t interested in meeting me now and I don’t feel any pinch. Office colleagues are almost total strangers; I didn’t feel like and therefore did not visit my office, though I stayed there for over a month, not even spoke to anyone on phone! Relatives seem to be getting acquainted afresh, not excited, but inquisitive, curious. No one is rude, no one seems to be avoiding me, but just seems a little guarded and I’ve become quite indifferent. A large vacuum has thus been created and sometimes I feel very lonely. Immediate family, parents, siblings have filled part of the vacuum by being more interactive ...

"गलत क्या है जानने से फरक नहीं पड़ता। गलत को सही करने से फरक पड़ता है।"                            -- सिंघम   "दिल अगर सच्चा हो, रब सब कर दे सेटिंग। "     -- हैप्पी सिंह 

Agriculture… A student of economics views agriculture & allied activities as ‘primary sector’ in the structure of a country’s economy. Industry is considered secondary and Services as tertiary. Developed economies are those in which the dependence on agriculture is miniscule (less than 5%). Lesser the % of population dependent on agriculture, more developed is the economy considered. Someone has taught this to the world and today it has become an almost an unquestionable law of economics. I view the ingraining of this thought as nothing short of systematic brain-washing. It’s probably nothing different from what happens with fundamental extremists. Agriculture and allied activities ensure survival. When we say that 70% of the population is dependent on agriculture, we’re assuming earning money is the only need. But for physical survival, every person is dependent on agriculture. Think of it, what constitute the secondary and tertiary sector are not life essential, but agricultural ...

Happiness Staying in Barkheda poses significant challenges to a city dweller. So many things we take for granted in a city are a struggle. The flip side is that many of these things, when accomplished, give genuine happiness. Procuring clean drinking water, being able to burn the  chulha , electricity, things we take for granted in a city, which give no happiness in a city, give tremendous happiness here. When I realized this, I thought it strange. Is this the kind of happiness I’ve come here to get? But on second thought, what the heck! Happiness is not this kind or that. If something makes you happy, just be happy. That’s all there is to it. Profession We in a city are so trained to match skills with people. For example, a doctor, a mason, a plumber, a mechanic, a cook, a carpenter, all are supposed to be people with special skills. So much so that we’ve even classified some work as something which only the maid can do! But in a village, almost everyone is able to do the basic wo...