Students shouldn’t be given the notion that the past must be edited to fit the present. They should understand the past as it was. Simplifying something is not the same as altering it. Simplifying means.....
जनीं सर्वसूखी असा कोण आहे।विचारें मना तूंचि शोधुनि पाहे॥मना त्वांचि रे पूर्वसं.....
முடிசூடா இராணி மங்கம்மாள் ஆண்கள் மட்டுமே கோலோச்சி வந்த திருமலை நாயக்கர் வம்ச வர&.....
Arjuna didn’t want to kill. He would die rather than kill his own brothers and uncles. But Krishna, an incarnation of God, convinces Arjuna that killing is his duty. Go, kill. That’s the starting point of the Gita...
One of the numerous reactions on social media to the ban of CJP on X When a former student asked my opinion yesterday about Cockroach Janata Party [CJP], the satirical movement someone started as a joke on social media, my response was: “A rather unexpected reaction to an unsavoury remark. I don’t think it will make any headway. But the initiative was good and needed.” The Government of India had not banned CJP on X when I made that response. Now with the ban, I am driven.....
Friedrich Nietzsche was an unusual philosopher. He celebrated vitality, power, courage, and living dangerously. But his own life was marked by chronic illness, migraines, loneliness, poor eyesight, and eventual mental collapse. He wrote like a prophet of strength while inhabiting a body of weakness. Paradox plagued him even after his death. He had fiercely opposed conformity, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and blind obedience to any authority. Yet after his death, parts of his work w.....
"मना सज्जना भक्ती पंथेस जावेतरी श्रीहरी पाविजे तो स्वभावे"जनी निंद्य ते सर्व सोड&.....
There is a peculiar silence that inhabits cities. It is not the silence of empty spaces, but of crowded rooms. Not the quietness of absence, but of disconnection. We brush shoulders on metro trains, share walls in apartment towers, scroll endlessly through lives that appear fuller than our own. Yet, somewhere within, a quiet loneliness persists. The city promises almost everything: opportunity, mobility, anonymity… Anonymity can be a boon or a curse. It can relieve y.....
This miniseries holds a special place in my heart. The subject matter was highly relevant, as my siblings and I lived in one of the pigeonholes at Rifle Range Flats, which we called home, from 1970 to 1981...
The social media demands reaction. But societies require reflection. Between reaction and reflection lies a fragile space, the space where thought resists speed, where judgment yields to understanding, and where conscience is not performed but lived...
Authority without restraint is tyranny. Authority without legitimacy is fragile. Authority, tempered by conscience, can exert a unique impact on human civilisation. Nelson Mandela was one of those powerful impacts. Mandela did not assume authority; he became it. Long before he took the oath of office, his moral stature had already outgrown the structures that confined him. On Robben Island, where he spent years in a sparse cell, something paradoxical occurred: the pris.....
One of the students of my last batch ever said in a farewell speech that I was the first teacher who used AI [Artificial Intelligence] in their class. I think it was in 2024 that I used ChatGPT to generate instant MCQ test papers in class for the first time. As soon as the day’s lesson was over, I asked ChatGPT to generate a test on the lesson. My students were impressed both with the efficiency of AI and their own ability to answer most of the questions correctly. I didn&.....
Beneath the surface of history's Brownian motion lies something far more enduring and alluring: the story of human character. For example, what will Donald Trump appear as to a student of history in 2100 CE? Will he be viewed as a villain on a throne or a clown on a trapeze? April is the month of A – Z Challenge at Blogchat.....
India’s Central Board of Secondary Education [CBSE] is one the largest education boards in the world. It operates over 27,000 schools across India and 28 other countries serving about 6.4 million students. Maybe such enormity of size makes it terribly inefficient in some matters. The assignment of assessment duties to its teachers is one area where the Board has failed again and again. I pointed this out to the regional director of the Board in Thiruvananthapuram many years ago. The.....
No sooner had the second part of the class eight social science textbook, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, been released than it was withdrawn from the classroom because the Supreme Court of India was displeased with some inconvenient truths in it. How can you teach young students that the Indian judiciary is corrupt? That’s what the SC asked. The judiciary can be corrupt, but that truth should not be revealed to young students, according to our judges. According to reports, the.....
My friend Jose Maliekal sends me a couple of messages every morning. I guess that’s more a friendly gesture than a sacerdotal duty. Given my waywardness that age has not mellowed nor custom staled, the latter possibility is not tangential, particularly because Maliekal is a Catholic priest. Anyway, I find many of those messages quite stimulating. One of the messages this morning was a quote from my beloved Albert Camus: "Nobody realises that some people expend tremendous ene.....
This is the 12th and last of a series of posts I’ve been writing on education. Forgive me if this sounds more like a rant than all the pedagogy that the previous posts carried. As I was contemplating this personal note this morning, the first person that rushed to my mind was P. I presented her at some length in this very space last year. Right now she is an assistant professor at the Central Institute of Educational Technology (CIET), NCERT, Delhi. Whe.....
A 14-year-old girl, student of grade 9, was raped and killed by her own boyfriend of grade 11 a few weeks back in Kerala. Reason: suspicion and jealousy. The boy thought that the girl had another boyfriend as well. This is not an isolated incident. Heinous crimes are on a rapid rise in schools. Just a few days back, The Hindu reported that “New cases of HIV among those in the 15–24-year age group, which was 9% in 2022, had risen to 14.2% in 2024. This.....
On 31 October 2025, which was also rather ironically the National Unity Day, a Hindi movie titled The Taj Story was released. Hardcore right-winger Paresh Rawal is the protagonist of the movie which aims to show that the Taj Mahal was originally a Hindu temple, Tejo Mahalaya. There is no historical evidence at all for the claim. Even the Archaeological Survey of India, which has become a handmaiden of the BJP government in India, has repeatedly rejected the claim that the Taj Mahal was orig.....
Instead of asking “How do I implement this?” a teacher should be given the freedom to ask: “Why is this necessary? For whom? Under what conditions?” The health of an education system depends on which question teachers are allowed to ask...
