Sudhar’s Diary[ To Express, To Reflect, To Look Back ]

I am not surprised about lack of attention to India’s representation in the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Most Indians aren’t interested in winter games and even amongst those who follow it, there is lesser people who actually play winter sports themselves.

Personally, I actually snowboard. Yep. Many of my Indian friends and family think, it isn’t much different from skiing. But it is not. I never skied so I wouldn’t know which one is harder or better. However, It did take a long time for me be a decent snowboarder, especially since I had not seen snow until I was 21 and started learning snowboarding only when I was about 25 or 26. I can come down the hill in most trails with no issue, but my speed and aesthetics still sucks in steeper trails.

Let me tell you my secret - just do it and don’t give up. Most newbie give up after the first day on snowboard. But the truth is you can really get a hang of it within the 3rd day of learning and rest is just showing up and mastering it.

I have been hitting the slopes at least 2 or 3 times a year for many years now though I only frequent ski resorts in NY area. I have tried out resorts in Colorado, Vermont, and Candada too (Tremblant!). There is no comparison to the quality of snow and the overall boarding experience in Vermont or Canada. The local resorts here are just easier to access but not for great snow.

In all these years, I have seen many people from India in the slopes. Almost all of them ski. However, I am yet to meet another Indian (1st generation Indian like me) who snowboards. I am sure there are many out there, it’s just that I haven’t had a way to connect with them. I continue to go all by myself, year after year. Its a great meditative feeling to snowboard down a long hill all by yourself.

Since the day I picked up boarding, I always wondered if an Indian will ever compete in Snowboarding in Winter Olympics. May be, who knows, someone might be training today for it.

Shiva Keshavan thinks we can do something about winter sports and India. From India’s standpoint, he is a veteran winter Olympian even though he is only in late 20s. He has been participating in Luge, representing India for three Olympics now. While I know nothing about Luge beyond being a spectator, I got to imagine its just as hard as any sport and at least, he finished at a decent spot, unlike his two other counterparts who literally ended up at the bottom of all participants. Sad as it is, I applaud their courage to participate (against the usual odds) and hold India’s flag in Winter Olympics. Let’s not forget that we got to start somewhere to get to the top!

I found just a few blogs or news items on Shiva Keshavan :

A Chance Interview with Indian Olympian Shiva Keshavan (btw, he speaks genuinely and very sensibly)

Kamala Bhatt (who also runs a popular Internet radio show) blogged about Shiva.

Lakshmi Gandhi pieced the ten facts about Shiva’s sojourn to Vancouver.

CNNGoAsia cribs about the beaten Indian team

Comments are closed since I couldn’t keep up with deleting spam. You can reach me at my yahoo at skchary.

“Most of what any of us achieve in life, of any serious degree of value to ourseleves and others, occurs in a very small proportion of our lives.”

My next article for ThinkChangeIndia is available here. This time I had the opportunity to speak to another Ashoka Fellow, Ramji Raghavan, who runs the Agastya Foundation in India. He has started an organization that directly serves rural children’s creative needs. Among other things, Agastya operates mobile science museums, an innovative idea, since the core problem is the reach. Agastya takes the science museums to the children in rural schools, instead of expecting them to visit them. You can read more in the article and through their website.

My next article for ThinkChangeIndia on DHAN is online. I had not heard of DHAN before and it was edifying experience to research and write about them. For over two decades, they have been doing some phenomenal grassroots work, getting thousands of people out of poverty. I had the pleasure of interviewing some of the senior staff there, including the head, Mr. Vasimalai and I must say it was an eye opening few hours worth of discussion. The extended version of the article and recording of the interviews is available for anyone who might be interested (email s k c h a r y @ y a h o o . c o m)

I have a stack of some of my favorite books in the bathroom. In the few minutes I have there, I love picking one at random and read whatever page opens up.

Today’s pick was page 78 of Alchemist:

…Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there…

It reminded of a simpler version from Wayne Dyer:

If prayer is you talking to God, then intuition is God talking to you

Krishna Prasad weaves a beautiful look-back satire of 2009, anchored by the deadly masala dosa!

… a truism heard commonly in South Indian kitchens—“Even the best dosa has holes”—comes closest to sounding like wisdom. So, as the year began, the IT brain behind an angelic ambulance service revealed holes, lots and lots of them, in his company’s balancesheet. And, as the year closed, the greatest golfer the solar system has seen seemed to have played with more holes than 18.

Sometimes these things just jump out for me, begging to take a step back, and commend the writer!

Anju Musafir writes in Ahmadabad Monitor that Indian education system was far sophisticated 1300 years ago than it is now. While rote learning of a series of subjects is the norm today, she points out to l-tsing’s extensive notes indicating how 7th century Indian children were trained to be superior thinkers and creative individuals. By age 15, children seemed to have grasped grammar, logic, medicine, arts and philosophy too! Whats interesting to note is that all reading and possibly writing were in the form of Shlokas. That perhaps is the missing link between why we still mug up? How else do you recite Shlokas? Today’s Children look at Shlokas as a painful exercise of mandatory recital. Ah! Shlokas were the lessons to begin with!

I am having a hard time figuring how children can learn to “heal their spirits” but I do agree with Anju that almost everything has been reduced to “conditioned learning”. In an art class, they are “conditioned to draw the statutory scene of mountains, a hut, a river, birds flying, a sun and the mandatory river!”

Speaking at the Indian Science Congress, the Prime Minister kicked off a new ‘Decade of Innovation’, and wants to “liberate Indian science from the shackles and deadweight of bureaucratism and in-house favouritism.” Elsewhere, IBN Live took advantage of the roaring success of ‘3 Idiots’ to pull together a panel to debate if the movie in fact depicts reality of Indian higher education.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I assume it makes sense to very many people. I do agree with Parasuram (Karadi Tales) that it’s not that higher institutions are the sole culprit but the system before that, as in secondary school and higher secondary schools have inculcated those habits anyway. Ranking students from 1-100 based on performance is questionable. I can speak from my experience that it was painful but I am not quite sure if that has stopped my learning abilities, at least not significantly. Used appropriately, it does tell you where you stand so you can improve.

Chetan Bhagat (on whose book 3 idiots is based off) ends by citing that our system simply stifles innovation. I think innovation is overloaded term here. What the system does stifle is independent thinking and encourages conformance and copy culture. I would even argue that India is far better in just replicating US than building a unique identity and position for ourselves. Most average Indians, (I would include myself too), don’t really pursue critical thinking. Is that because of how I was taught and experienced learning in school? Unless it’s genetically inherited or a male-thing, I got to say yes!

There are other factors too. Most children just don’t know enough. They can’t be blamed. The system and the society doesn’t expose to them very many things in a structured, meaningful, contextual fashion. What they learn is merely through informal and formal exposures in school, home, neighborhood and of course, TV and Movies. One area I am particularly interested is in building awareness within younger children about possibilities in life. Be it education or careers or living in general.

How many children know that if they really like oceans and the living beings in the sea, they could some day become a marine biologist? Even if that connection is somehow introduced early, how many children really have a marine biologist that they can relate to, as in – see, talk and believe they can be like them? Even if we get that far with a kid meeting and talking with her friends cousin’s father who is a marine biologist, the kid is left to struggle for themselves (or struggle with mostly naïve parents) piecing together how they should take up science route at high school and possibly a biology route at college. Leave aside the financial aspects and the societal pressure to “study something that guarantees a job”

I do think this problem is super real. If addressed in a sensible way, this has the potential to fundamentally shift the thinking and attitude at a younger age, so they grow up to be independent, critical thinkers. Unlike very many who just went with flow, only to realize they are still not sure what to do with life.

I look back at the year that just ended and feel thankful for everything. Personally and professionally, it has been a year with significant milestones crossed. Let the new year bring fresh perspectives and opportunities to scale new heights.

I wrote an article about the Digital Study Hall project for ThinkChangeIndia. Its a fascinating project that is attempting to blend digital technology with rural classrooms in India. I know it sounds far-fetching, but its actually working. You can read the full article here.

The recent edition of American Scholar magazine published William Zinsser’s succinct instruction on how to simply write well in English. I always look out for good writing habits and this article does a fine job of boiling it down to simple principles. For those bored of reading books on writing skills and sick of struggling to write well, this article should help immensely. It was targeted to international students at Columbia School of Journalism, but I find it applicable to just about everyone with a desire to toy with writing.

It’s really hard to write well because it’s really easy to write garbage.

I just made that sentence up as I type and I would be stunned if nobody ever said that before!!!