Unlearning experiences

The maid might not be here for long. She is of little use while feeding the baby, anyways. She is a great help with washing her clothes, cleaning the kitchen etc. But what I really need is someone to stand by the baby to feed and cajole her when I am off to French classes - three days a week for three hours. That is a difficult prospect with her, especially since the little one has not taken up to her too good. She is not acclimatized to ktm and it’s ways of life. She is from a village and she remains so in her behavior etc. I respect that. It is not that I don’t like people from villages. But when we are used to a certain way of life, we require that of the person who is to work with us. That is all. If we went to the village and dictated our way of things, that would be detested there too. That’s about the same equation I am trying to draw. I don’t see anything biased or untoward there. It is not about inequality or disparity. It is just about how one is brought up, like caste or your favorite pastime. One does not need to live with an opposite caste (if something of that sort exists) or some unlikable pastime. It’s your choice, not about respect.

There was a question raised in our last class by the instructor. He asked if anyone kept a journal and I said yes, I did. Everyday?! He asked a little aghast. I said, as much as I can. That is because there is this section that we are dealing with in class that teaches us to write journals – in the past tense basically and we have an assignment related to it too.

Being with fuchi and learning French: two unlearning experiences for me. Both very fulfilling.

Facebook statuses, twitter updates, linkedIn updates what else? These move your life everyday because that’s how you get connected to your brother seven seas across, keep in touch with your friend, get the world news and what happened in your town. It is also a medium of getting knowledgeable and I find it intellectually stimulating when I can see what some revered author of mine thought that day and posts it as an update on twitter. Naseem Nicholas Taleb, Margaret Atwood, Manjushree Thapa, Paul Krugman – all are on twitter and I am following them. These give me a chance to have some level of connection with them which when reading their books definitely affect me.

Dad and their generation are never going to get it and thus, they think they do not like it. But if they had it their way, they would never deny it. Like, if I asked him if he could have S. Radhakrishnan or Swami Vivekananda twit to him every day or Pandit Nehru give facebook status updates, would he deny them? He simply would reject to hear such an absurd idea, gone is gone! Or rather bygone is bygone. But he would deny to understand a parallel for us. When NNT gives an opinion about what happened this morning, when Atwood says she is looking forward to Canada day, it stirs some emotions in their readers definitely. It’s too much for dad and the like when reverence and deep respect is the only emotion they had for their authors.