Four Shirts from my Father

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For the last few people who would have visited my blog. Apologies. I had promised to write about my Love in detail. I wrote my first part and then the second part is pending.  No, the love still remains the same. Just that we got our second baby recently and I have been terribly quoting that as a reason to procrastinate on almost everything. So, do wait and I will get the right mindset to write about my Love journey again.

Meanwhile, something interesting happened in Life. I thought I will better share it with you all. I know all your ears are already ears to know about this cover picture and the article title. But you got to listen to the seven year old pre-story to come to the present-story.

Shirt starts

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Ever since this word called “sustainability” hit me I have been behaving a different animal. I have been watching what I consume day in and out. Not very seriously judging my lifestyle, but seriously observing what I am consuming. Thanks to videos like this by the Story of stuff guys (to quote one of the many who influenced me). I limited the number of cloth I use. While at Chennai, I spent three years with three jeans and half a dozen T-shirts. I got tired of jeans and those jeans understood me well. They also tore apart, mainly in the knees and the buttocks. I rested them in peace.

Then I moved to three pairs of Dhoti and two pairs of cotton pants. The T-shirts didn’t went very well with the Dhoti and pants. So, slowly I accumulated half a dozen shirts. All these were never bought in a day. All are accumulations over a slow period of time, generally one in 4 months or more.

Some months I would iron my shirts, some months I would question my logic of wasting energy in ironing and won’t iron. Three years passed and my shirts kept losing confidence in me. Some shirts attracted serious unwanted attention from friends and well-wishers. May be I was way too beautiful in my dresses. In the lower end, I was rich with too many dhotis. But the cotton pants aren’t good companions. They tore off their knees very soon. I kept them all in Khakhi colors so that I don’t have to think much on my color selection everyday. It is better to keep something fixed everyday. Anyways, there are way too variables in life. Why add a variable in pant color selection.

Birth of our second baby gave a good opportunity for my family to intervene in my dresses. They took away all my dhotis citing the need for good used cotton fabric for the baby. Well they were really well-used for long and were totally soft and safe for the baby. The shirts decided to part away on their own. Ya, I missed to add about the colors I get added to my shirts every now and then. We have this screen printing setup in our office to print on our cloth bags. Every time I cross that area, surprisingly a new color gets added to my shirt. So, some of my multicolored shirts and pants got torn away.

Shirt ends

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After long years of living separately, our family lived with dad and mom for two month. You are right. We need more people when a small baby is born. May be when I was deeply in love with my baby girl, my Dad was seriously concerned about his baby boy(me!!). He advised me to get dressed well. Well, I have given away that well-looking man to the logic of inner beauty and satisfaction. A dress was more of a trouble to maintain for most days except for few days where I wanted to look well. So, Dad went to shop, picked up four fabric which matches the colors that I have been using all these years. He should have observed my shirts for the last six years. Gave the fabric to a tailor along with a sample of a good looking shirt I gifted myself 6 months back. Thus..giving birth to four nice new shirts to me.

I already have three good shirts which my screen printing colleagues are yet to connect with. So, now I have I guess more than half a dozen shirt. I have reserved one for Diwali. Too many shirts now. Don’t want to gift it to anyone as they are gifted with loads of expectation from my dear Dad.

So, no matter we talk minimalism, no matter we talk conscious consumerism, we all get over consumed by the abundance of Love in this earth.

That’s the story of my four new shirts. Happy relationships to you all folks!

Love of my times

Time has passed. Seventeen years since this thought of Love hit me so strong. My wife Gowri is with me ever since then. If there is something which I have been passionate about in my whole life, it is my efforts to attract her while in college. Till date that is the best decision I have ever taken in life. We live happily since then. I am going to spend this part of my life peeling off my skin to realize the beauty of my own memories.

Pic: Naveen Gowtham fb.com/naveengowtham.ng

So, we are talking about the year 2000. Movies were more about boy sacrificing his blood, eyes, tongue, kidney, limbs or even life for her beloved. Those were the sacred love days where you can only fall in love with only one girl in your whole life. It will be christened as Sacred Love (Punithamaaana Kadhal). If it fails, you lose your life or stay single whole life. Words like break-up, affair were not much known. Live-in relationship is a crime society couldn’t think of. I did not even know that the word girlfriend only means a romantic relationship. I thought every girl who is a friend is a girlfriend and every boy who is a friend is a boyfriend.

The movies, especially songs of my days were the bible for the society to feel, interpret and understand Love. I think it might hold true for people of all ages. So, that’s how I think I was also groomed about the thought of Love.

Not just that, you have the whole group of close friends who fall for one girl or the other. One by one, all wickets were lost. You can’t stay single. So, I also started the feel to have the feeling.

Society thought me the theory and friends thought me practical. I was alone and waiting for my turn to get into the feeling. I join college. First day of college I guess. No, not really the first day; it was the admission day. I see her there. We were the only two students (with parents) at that time slot. You should know that I studied all my school days in a Boys-only school.

At the first sight I kind of had a good feeling for her, but not really ‘that’ ‘love’ feeling. Today it proves me that I didn’t fall flat like a cow hitting the pond after months of no water. It really didn’t hit me on the first meeting, but it certainly set directions. If you don’t believe in butterfly effects, you might believe it though my story..

Back then, you might know Computer Science was a secured option to get a Job. Her father asks for my score and I say I scored 923. She had scored a little less than me and was declined a seat in Computer Science. I got a Computer Science seat already confirmedJ. They had come to pay fee and confirm admission for Maths. They see a worthless guy like me securing a Computer Science seat. They did not pay the fee and decided to re-negotiate with the college.

I didn’t know of all these. I joined college. I went for the first day. I saw her walking into this room. In my mind I thanked her dad. That set the direction even focused. Still, I didn’t get ‘that ‘love’ feeling. But I was all destined to get that feeling soon. After all, butterflies don’t flutter at random.

‘that’ ‘love’ feeling shall be discussed in the next post soon..

Happy Teachers Day

We recently had the Joy of bringing home an ornamental Betta fish. The fish bought in a lot of Joy and excitement to our five year old daughter. We started thinking of a name for the fish. As adults, we started suggesting typical pet names like ‘jumbo’, ‘micky’ and as a child she started suggesting various sounds like ‘kiya muki’, ‘mee keere’ and it went on without a decision.

Suddently she shouted “Mythili”. She said “let us call it Mythili”. We asked her “why?”. She responded “It is the name of my teacher at Bodhana. I like her.” Such is the love kids can show to good teachers.  

Happy Teachers Day!

The Uneducated Education System

Straight to the point. There are three incidents which made me write define today's education as "The uneducated education system".

1.       There was a natural calamity in my mind when I read this. "Life on this planet earth depends upon a variety of goods and services provided by the nature, which are known as Natural Resources" This is from a book on Environment education meant for Engineering students. Almost all Engineers coming under AICTE would have read this.

In what sense does the author defines natural resources as products and services. Are they consumables? If the student understand  water as a good and clean air as a service, then God help the Planet.

2.       This was written in an UKG kids book. "What does the cow give for us?", "What does the Honeybee give for us?".

Only a semi-literate can write such sentences. Are we teaching the kids that the cow and honeybee has no other job than creating milk and honey for us?. We take it from them. That is the fact. There is a lot of emotional difference between someone giving us something and we taking it from them. The system tends to teach the kids that we are supreme over all the other living organisms. Sirs and madams, Please teach them inclusiveness, inter-dependence and not dominance.

3.       A fifth standard kid approached me to help him in his school project, He has to build a wind mill model. He said he has a small motor using which he can rotate the windmill. I had to explain him that wind mill runs on wind and hence he can probably use the motor to create a fan to generate artificial wind in the model. Windmill running on motor will defeat the purpose of doing the model.

He went on to check with his teacher and the teacher disapproved of doing it as I suggested. She simply said that is not the way to make a model. The wind mill ran on a battery powered motor and there was a model done which looked like a windmill but behaved as something else. Long live the application based learning method which sells well today, but doesn't get implemented the way it should be.

The uneducated education system trying to educate the next generation. God help!