Wake up.. before its too late

2 months and 3 days back we were glued to TV's watching the brave hearts flush the gunmen out of the hotels in Mumbai. We prayed in silence for the souls departed. We vent our anguish on the system, on the politicians,on corruption. We awarded our warriors with awards and rewards. But we started forgetting the systems that lead to the incident. We foolishly started believing that this cannot happen to us. This may not be true in some parts of the country, but as a resident in the IT capital of India and arguably the second biggest IT income generator after Seattle, everything seems to be forgotten by the masses. I remember visiting the united states after 9/11 and the country had transformed entirely when it came to securing its citizens."ok ok, but thats US, we are a developing nation with steaming population, how can we do that"...not really true. I am not asking for armed security guards in front of my house and in front of every street. Empower the officers to take actions. The suggestion looks very simple, but it will go a long way in empowering the nation to be more responsible. When i say officers, i am not speaking only of police officers, it is anyone and everyone who is responsible to take care of the public. In other words, empower anyone who is paid from the money that we as public pay as taxes. Some may be empowered but they dont know that they are empowered. For example, a conductor in BMTC has every right to check any baggage thats carried in his bus by anyone, a traffic policeman is empowered to check any vehicle in random when the signal turns red at the station that he mans. Like that there are so many officials who either are toothless or acting ignorant of the powers. Let the government start the drive from the top to drive a campaign on letting oficers know their responsibilities.

Teachers From My School

Off late i started writing my views about different topics that appear in my school website lourdemata. com. Thought its a good idea that i replicate the same here for posterity.

I always thought teachers should be inspirational leaders who could ignite young minds by their wisdom ,integrity, courage and exceptional leadership. This makes me divide the teaching community in the school into those who swam with the tide and those who swam against it (if required). Not that the ones who swam with it were bad, but they remain in my mind as good people, not as thought leaders. Some of the "teachers" who etched everlasting memories are

With due respect, i am not mentioning Miss/Mrs here while listing the names and the numbering definitely is not ranking :)

1) Janet- She was a genius who had deep knowledge in many subjects. For her, teaching was imparting knowledge and not an exit point. She always spoke her mind irrespective of the consequences, even if she had to get the ire from her superiors

2) Volga- Not many people may remember her as she was there only for a year. She knew what is mathematics, unlike many others. I owe my transformation from a below average math student to someone who played cricket the day before my class 10 math exam and still score a 96. It was not what she taught as told in text, it was her way of challenging her students to do things.

3) Sheila Mukherjea- She knew where to draw boundaries while handling a bunch of unruly teenager's. We could talk on any subject to her. She used to curse her fate of being our class teacher, but we knew that she used to argue for us to everyone else. She was among the few who believed that the batch of 89 could pull out a miracle of 100% results. Yes we vindicated her faith. What inspires me about her is that she understood the changes happening when her 'kids' grow up--yes she used to call us 'Pillerey...' which still rings in my mind.

4) An unknown sports teacher: My apologies for not remembering her name. She came in as a hurricane and left with the same speed. Till the day she joined "Drill" was going out and having fun chatting and cricket. The first day of her 'Drill' class was warm up exercises and volley ball which was unheard in LMS till that date. She knew what 'sports' meant and was very unconventional in her approach. I remember she saying she had trained with greats like PT Usha . And she used to turn up even on weekends for practice sessions. She changed the way the management and other teachers looked at sports activities. Eventually as any other change in LMS, this was also not well received and she left the school. But she could still change the vision.

Others i definitely would like to mention are Asumptha miss, Hindi Sister(again my bad..memory),Sr Immaculate Mary(Probably the only Indian President's Medal winner to have worked in our school).

Apart from teachers, I still have no words to express my gratitude to almost all the staff of the sister's abode in school who was with me and my family when we were going through some harrowing times with their visits to my home and the motivational talks they gave me which helped a lot.I consider them as well as teachers as they were teaching me a big lesson in life- Perseverence wins.