happiness

I am currently reading paul coelho's eleven minutes. I have just begun, and already, there are questions in my mind, and since its a warm sunday morning, what better way to kick start the day, than sit with a cup of hot coffee, and take a leisurely mental walk :)

And by the way, I would really like to find a better way of making double cream coffee, if its not satisfactorily made, you not only end up having a bad "kaapi day", but your "weight" conscience snaps you out of your senses, to give you an early morning briefing on how much you have grown sideways!.... while if the coffee satiates you, it takes you to a different realm, where you only meet people with a similar taste for kaapi, and u seldom take your conscience with you to this realm!

And so thee sits to pen down thee thoughts :D
happiness... I know what it is, it is this feeling of joy that wells up in you, and you feel carefree, to a certain extent; insouciant, everyone is good (atleast most of them!), in short, the world is beautiful. All your worries and tensions drain out of you, and you feel like a child again, blithely skipping down the road, with the wind hitting your face, no one or nothing can affect you now.
But i must mention, that everyone when feeling happy will definitely have an answer when posed with the reason for their happiness. That is one of the few questions in life that never goes unanswered!. But I was wondering if such a thing as an absolute happiness ever exists? Can I be happy and not have a reason? not assosiate my happiness with any thing living or dead, with any dreams, fulfilled or abandoned? In a nutshell, can I be happy and not have an answer to why I am so? I have never come across such an individual nor have I felt this way. For I feel that this is the kind of happiness that would be everlasting, nothing or noone could snatch it away from you.... its not fettered to anything or anyone in this world, so the question of it being evanescent doesnot arise, for everything connected to this world is evanescent isnt it?

All of us in a way are manacled. some to our dreams, some to our past and some to our future.
in fact, i donot blame this entirely on us, for life is short, unpredictable, so planning for the future is imperative. And no one can move on without having a dream, a purpose. But in that case, as coelho points out, you would be living your future, not the present. infact due to the unpredictability of life in general, all of us are living our future, clinging on to our dreams, they are like the compass that propel the lone ship in the sea, giving it a sense of direction.
And so coming back to our happiness, it is not surprising, that happiness brings along with it, its own baggages.

Coming to think of it, such a simple thing like happiness, is so delusive, it is like the sun, hiding behind the clouds on a very gloomy day. You never know how long the sun is going to shine down on you, and when it is going to back into hiding! This doesnt mean to say that I exhaust all my happiness pondering over how long it is going to exist..

But sometimes I feel that there is no such thing as happiness, it is just a feeling that pervades us, like a mirage in the vast expanse of a desert, to a fatigued traveller, the mirage is a new hope, in fact the mere sight of a mirage a few kilometers away resuscitates him, he moves on with a new pace, but alas!, he realises he can never close down on the pool of water, it remains a vision, the distance to which remains constant with time, but even though the realisation dawns on him, he pushes it back, realising that "knowing" would not keep him alive at this stage. The vision howevevr uncanonical it is, now becomes a part of him, it moves ahead when he moves, and stops when he stops.

pedagogy

In life I am fortunate to have been taught by a variety of teachers thereby exposing myself to variegated forms of teaching. This is self-explanatory of the fact that it would be unfair to rank these various forms of teaching without being unjust to either of them.

But there are two main teachers well-etched in my memory - Professor Nagaraj of Vivekananda College and my music teacher Mrs.Jaya Kalidas. Nagarajan Sir introduced me to chemistry, and since then there has been no looking back, while Jaya aunty brought music into my life, it was like a breath of fresh air, that was eternally rejuvenating and replenishing. But both of these two highly influential individuals had two very contrasting ways of going about their teachings.

I clearly remember, my first rendevouz with Sir. It was a sunday evening at 7 pm when myself and my parents went over to his place, to express my desire of coming under his tutelage for a period of 2 yrs. The first question he asked me was why i liked chemistry followed by why i thought i need his guidance. I dont think I sounded very convincing in my answers as i said something cliched like, my chemistry fundamentals werent cleared etc. But nevertheless, my first lesson was to be held on the succeding day. Unlike most teachers who start off with their first lessons, Sir just gave two problems to solve and sat down next to me with his "times of India" crossword. I was wondering if this was one of those trick tests to assess my depth of understanding, and this thought didnot do anything to alleviate my nervousness. Furthermore, while I was figuring out the methodology, Sir would quietly steal a glance into my rough work. I managed to figure out the answers, and to my surprise, the first question put to me by Sir was not "what is the answer" but why did I choose to solve the question the way I did, and if there was any other way i could think off. We had a brain storming session and most of the classes were a two way discussion rather than the usual didactic lectures. I think this is a perfect example of learning blended with fun. But what really appealed to me was that , even though most questions had one correct answer, what sir looked for, was the undercurrent of thought that went into solving those problems, each problem could be done in several ways, and this inturn provided an insight into each student and his reasons for choosing one method over the other. Sir never led us by the hand if you get what i mean. In a way we taught ourselves, with sir constantly watching over us. To sir, learning was a process where in he just served as a catalyst, never as the judge. Rights and Wrongs were not laid emphasis on, rather, the focus was on learning something new each day. Each student had a different approach, a different way of trying to understand the same concept or theorem, and it was these perspectives that were given importance to. We would be given a problem underlyin a theorem we had never heard of, and at the end of the session, the theorem would be presented to us. The teaching was not only application oriented, I think it was tweaked to suit every individual. Intellectual freedom was abundant in his classes, and that is what still keeps me in awe of Sir.

Jaya aunty was a complete contrast. In all her classes, we would always be first taught the correct and appropriate way to sing a particular note, the method that has always been followed conventionally. We were only occasionally allowed to improvise. The emphasis was laid on learning music the way it has always been sung. Ofcourse this is also subject to the fact that, in order to improvise on the notes, we needed to have learnt enough and mastered the original peice. We were given detailed explanations about the history of each peice and why it has got to be sung in that particular manner. We were, in other words, led by the hand. And by saying this, I donot mean to degrade this particular method of pedagogy, for as I said before, what I have picked up from Jaya aunty, I could have picked up from no other. She was undoubtedly as special and gifted teacher and I am proud to have learnt music from her.

But having said that, I must add that good teachers are very hard to find, for teaching is an art, more than a skill, it may arise out of practise, experience definitely has a role to play, but without a flair for teaching, the teacher will simply serve to be a knowledge provider. nothing else.