A humble allowing...

Can a teacher teach? Can anything be taught? Is there anything to teach?

These are genuine questions. Even so I cannot think that this would lead us to a 'let us not teach' stand. And thus arises the question, what then is a position one can place oneself in, while being in an educative process? Of course, all this is perhaps only, theoretical dreaming, because the challenge of the classroom completely throws you open and leaves you vulnerable. That is perhaps one reason that teachers choose the strict posture. Vulnerability can be difficult to maintain and at times also counter productive. There are only few people I have read about who can be so, and mostly they seem to be people who are also very self-assured personalities and clear about their tasks for instance K or DH. Can we all be so? Ironically, these kind of people are sometimes quite stuck in their own ways.

Mostly those who are in doubt seem to be more open. And this perhaps gives us a pathway of a possible stand. That one not be very certain of one's certainties. For instance, don't we all know about patriarchy, about religious regressiveness versus modern ideas. About proper behaviour etc. Now I recall that in a school i spent time in, gender or ideas about gender issues in society were never taught. Of course, gender differentiation was minimal and the educative content was from a liberal standpoint. The school and the teachers however, never explicitly inculcated it and in fact true to the spirit of the school, questioned a simple activist kind of position - not to question it as such, but to ask students to understand what drove them to it. Even so, a girl, who saw very gendered behaviour among her neighbours was aware and disturbed by it and raised a question in a conversation at school. Now a teacher in this context can immediately tell her about how some families are not broad minded, well educated, modern or plain silly. Or the teacher can say, beta have an open mind, maybe we are judging her too harshly. Or perhaps the 'teacher' can simply stay with the student on that inquiry, share her wonder and ask questions with her... to open up the question in a way that assumptions and expectations within it, if any, reveal themselves automatically, and the student can see the situation as closely to the truth of its entirety. in that situation, the student may choose to judge, deride or sympathize with that girl - and who are we to know what is correct. Is it a correct conclusion that she dismisses her behaviour as resulting from patriarchy? Do we know that for sure! And even if it is the right answer - must she arrive at it by the teacher's intervention. Need she arrive at it at all? If we truly believe that minds must be free, we cannot have the hidden rider that only liberal minds are truly free.Can we then live comfortably with our 'regressive' students or even friends? I think more than in school education, this is a challenge in higher education, esp. the social sciences. Can the social sciences move beyond being instructors of modernity? How do we all pas out of premier social science institutes all speaking the same language? Yet we think we are more 'open minded' than say technically educated students. Is that really so? s

And yet, such a teaching is all well to talk about. Can we have the required energy to sustain it.

Finding Ground

Who am I, this person engaging with sociological, philosophical research? I cant seem to get a hold on myself.

Sometimes I feel like a blank receptor to all the wonderful perspectives I am exposed to, unable to react meaningfully to anything (of course much of this is because of being severally backward on reading). I cannot form even a temporary opinion. On what grounds does one find one approach/thinker more valid then the other? When there are no grounds for truth, except the truth of lived reality perhaps, then all we can do is read a lot and broaden the field. But then as the mind opens to more and more things, its seems to loose ground. All and none seems valid.

And so in my life in general I find there are too many of me to reconcile! And perhaps the more I broaden my education and interests, the more lost i seem to feel? Yet another split inside me? I want academics to fulfill a part of me and when that increases I want to watch trash TV. when that overcomes me I want a spree of fitness and walking and then perhaps some indulgences to relax all those frayed nerves. Within ideas i want poetry and rationality, science and speculation. On a tangent, what does this mean for the practice of life and of research. Are we perhaps only acting out the temporary 'drives' that awaken in phases of our lives? Is there anything like a well rounded personality? Or only a more and more fragmented one...

The suspending of  mental thought, is yes somewhat relieving in a pub, but especially so in non intellectual work - cleaning, cooking, drawing, even singing loudly. And yet i find funnily that it is only after the mental engagement, that my songs have the depth i like, the intuition in my drawing is layered and emotive, because without that, what would my expression express? Having said that, after a point of mental engagement, there seems an adventure in the very movement into deep manual work - craft, gardening, singing. Perhaps what the mind sees, after a point it needs eventually to act out - else I find that it re-forms into something odd, something restless.

The ground-lessness of the mind can be celebrated as its release from all prior assumptions. True. A freedom from the known, to steal only the term from Krishnamurti. But then it is like standing on the path, not knowing where to turn, how to act. Even temporary grounds needs to be built to act, but then one seems to know that one is playing a game with oneself, a masquerade, an act for the time being.

Another strand. Our personalities shift as we do research. Experiences of the 'field' open certain doors for us. Experiences that can only be expressed as affect, as revelations. True we must problematize them in our research, question our romanticisms. Break their sacredity. Can I do that? Must I do that? I feel almost that I close the path to a  journey when I choose to academize it. Is an academics that allows for the affect possible, even valid, when it is almost a deliberate a-politic? Well, perhaps then, silly Me(s), do your academics while you can, and when not, flee to life!

Poem/Song

why do we make such a big deal

when its so plain and simple

harder than most things

is to be simply happy

Chorus

oh lets just let go

oh lets just let go

and love the whole wide world

lets just lighten up

feathers unfurled

-

Oh its ok to be silly

And there’s nothing like uncool

If I know how to have fun

Its beats all I learnt at school

-

Oh lets just climb a tree

And build windmills

Walk a street and not buy a thing

What's in my hands...

Larger ideas for the environment are good and they too will take shape god willing, but i realised that I got much happiness by simply paying attention to small things I could do.

I mostly avoid carrying my chapattis in a foil, if some water cannot be used i drain it into soil rather than a drain, I DO NOT throw plastic even if i have to stuff it in my bag, I refrain from chewing gums and Styrofoam cups, i take my own cup when i visit the nearby tea shop. I know of people who choose not to consume any products sold in plastic at all - so no chip, biscuits, or chocolates which are sold in plastic packs! I cannot and so do not do that, but between the choice of a bakery and a packaged item i will choose the bakery. A leaf bowl over a plastic bowl, hand over plastic spoon and so on.

Small things, 2-3 a day... but they make me feel good.

And of course i look at, touch and smell trees - when you do that, doing something for them in turn becomes really easy - its like you're doing it for a friend, most naturally.

कविता

कभी यूँ लगता है , कि मन उमड़ रहा है

क्या कुछ नहीं कह डाले प्रवाह जो बह रहा है

पर शब्द सूरज की किरण हैं

पकड़ो तो नहीं हैं

आँख बंद कर लो तो रोम - रोम में वही हैं

कविता का प्रयास ही एक हार लगती है

की हम इतने लीन नहीं हुए की कविता का ख़याल भी नहीं आया