KINDNESS

When Annie was brought in the Tewksbury Institute, nobody could do anything with her. Doctors found it difficult to even examine her. She was locked up in a cage. A hospital maid felt sorry for her and baked her some brownies. She walked cautiously to her cage and said, ‘Annie, I baked these brownies just for you.’ Then she ran behind a pillar… afraid Annie might throw them at her. However, Annie ate the brownies.

From that day, they started to be friends… she even got Annie laughing. One of the nurses noticed and told the doctor. They asked her to help them with Annie. This is how they discovered that Annie was almost blind. A year later, the Perkins Institute for the Blind opened its doors. Annie went on to become a teacher of the visually disadvantaged.

When Annie came back to Tewksbury, the Director showed her a letter written by a man about his daughter. She was unruly… almost like an animal. She was blind, deaf and ‘deranged.’ He was at his wit’s end, but he did not want to put her in an asylum. He wanted a teacher who would come to his house and work with his daughter. Annie Sullivan became Helen Keller’s ‘miracle worker’ and lifelong companion.

When Helen was once felicitated, she declared that Annie Sullivan had the greatest impact on her life. However, Annie disagreed. The woman who had the greatest influence on both their lives was a floor maid at Tewksbury. History was changed as one person took initiative triggered by the sentiment of kindness. The sentiment does rise in most hearts, but the situation transforms to be better only when thought leads to aligned action.

Let’s BE BETTER at acting upon thoughtfulness...

History is re-scripted by deeds of kindness!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

EARTHERIAN

‘Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. – Chief Seattle, 1855

There is a committed band of dynamic persons who are connecting to the larger world through their passion for astronomy, ecology and humanism. Their fascination for the earth, things therein and around, eventually breaks all possible barriers and boundaries created by mankind over the ages.

It is pertinent to note that such persons no longer remain Indian, Asian, American, Australian, African or European… they become Eartherians. As children of Mother Earth, they respond as custodians of the common good of all Eartherians including the generations to come of the entire spectrum of the web of life on earth.

To be a better Eartherian, means to shun all prejudice and aligned hatred and violence. It is all about discovering our collective heritage and our common lineage not just with all mankind but also with living and extinct animals. It is about evolving to be better at quest for knowledge and an attitude to involve in sustainable practices. It is about being, both responsible and responsive.

This Earth is ours, and the sky is too…

Let’s BE BETTER Eartherians, me and you!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

SEEKERS OF TRUTH

‘Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it’

– Thomas Paine

On 11 April, 1827, Jyotirao was born in a vegetable–vendor family from the Mali caste, in Pune. His sharp intellect was noted by his neighbours who convinced his father to admit him at the Scottish Mission's High School. Here, Jyotirao Phule was influenced by Thomas Paine's book 'Rights of Man'. He developed an impeccable sense of social justice and grew passionately critical of the oppressive caste system.

His relentless struggle to reclaim justice and equal rights for farmers and Dalits, made Phule the most significant figure in the social reform movement in Maharashtra. Along with his wife Savitribai and others, he initiated positive transformations in the spheres of education, agriculture, caste system and social empowerment of women.

He educated his wife, Savitribai and opened the first school for girls in India in August 1848. He vehemently advocated widow-remarriage and even got a home built for housing widows during 1854. Leading by example, he opened his own house and let all make use of the well water without any prejudice.

He founded the Satya Shodhak Samaj (Society of Seekers of Truth) to prevent exploitation and abuse of the Bahujan Samaj by the upper castes. Phule felt reason alone would empower society to be better at reclaiming human dignity and social responsibility. His life remains inspirational in our situation where truth suffers treason in the maze of modern superstition and hatred mongering against humanity itself.

Jyotiba Phule inspires us to BE BETTER at reason…

Humanity is abused when truth suffers treason!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

SEIDLER’S SPEECH

The emotional trauma of the Second World War coupled with the murder of his grandparents in the Holocaust, laid the seeds of David Seidler’s stammer. Attempts at speech therapy failed until he decided that ‘I deserve to be heard’. He was inspired by radio speeches of King George VI. His parents encouraged him, ‘David, he was a much worse stutterer than you, and listen to him now. He's not perfect. But he can give these magnificent, stirring addresses that rallied the free world.’

Later on David went on to study the journey of the King who overcame his speech impediment. David’s research resulted in the award winning screenplay of the film, ‘King’s Speech’. Seidler’s story as well as screenplay is inspirational to everyone who bears the burden of a speech impediment.

Much before his war-time accession to the throne, the King goes to an unorthodox speech therapist, Lionel Hogue. They work together on muscle relaxation and breath control, while simultaneously probing the psychological roots of his stammer: a strict father; the repression of natural left-handedness; a painful treatment with metal splints for his knock-knees; a nanny who would deliberately pinch him to make him cry before his parents; and the early death of his little brother.

It is pertinent to note that Hogue has no qualification other than his experience in helping shell-shocked soldiers find their ‘voice’. His highly effective methods are based on getting his learners to be better at believing they have a voice by unlearning all negative strokes from the formative years of childhood. After all, technique would be in vain in the absence of an empowered temperament.

May we BE BETTER at finding our primed voice…

Self-belief helps overcome every impediment vice!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

NUTS & GUTS

Some parents say, from your roots don’t go astray

Education in the mother-tongue is the need of the day…

Other parents say, let our children have our way

Education in English will ensure an apt global pay…

But heed the children and what they have to say

Surely they would rather learn the fun way!

A real mess is served in the education tray…

where the nut gets screwed and the gut gives away!

The syllabus is a maze real knotty, and hey…

Queries are termed naughty in the class bay!

Self-esteem is eclipsed in the mind where it held sway…

As irrelevant leads to irreverence with every passing day!

What’s the point of learning Geography, if on eclipse day

… parent and teacher retire to the dark superstition bay?

What’s the point of testing data from the Science tray…

when the permission to experiment is stalled by a ‘nay’?

The wonderful world of mathematics goes regularly astray…

As the mechanical obscures the elementary, every single way!

As dates and details get hammered into a mind turning clay,

The History lessons defeat the message in the factual fray!

Not just black on white, prose or verse is really about grey

… unbridled is imagination, but education narrows the way!

Why the compulsion to learn by rote without going astray?

Theatre-fun would be better for the Bard to seize the day!

Learning is directly proportional to the fun, they say…

Yet book is thrust in the hand that must play with clay!

‘Leave the kids alone’ sang Pink Floyd on another day

Languages are the drapes for expression, just another way

Education is to empower the nut without the gut giving way!

Education needs to be better in the primary basic way…

- Pravin K. Sabnis

PERIGEE-SYZYGY

Perigee-syzygy is a term that observers of astronomy use when a full or new moon coincides with a close advance by the Moon towards the Earth. Perigee is the point at which the Moon is closest in its orbit to the Earth, and syzygy is a full or new moon. The phenomenon occurs often, and one such extreme position happened on 19 March 2011.

The media was full of doomsday predictions by the ‘supermoon’ – a term coined by an astrologer, Richard Nolle in 1979. However, the ‘Association of Friends of Astronomy’ (AFA) in Goa chose to use the occasion to educate the public through detailed information as well as actual viewing of the astronomical occurrence.

Satish, Raj and Rakesh of AFA led an interaction that demystified the fiction encircling the event. After all, there was no evidence that the episode would trigger predicted devastation by quakes and tsunami. They pointed out that reality of earlier ‘supermoons’ was distorted by doomsayers to buttress their business of fear. Inquisitive minds sought to know whatever possible impact due to perigee-syzygy.

Obviously, the biggest impact of the event was that people of all types had gathered with a choice to be better at analytical observation and critical thinking. The dynamic team of AFA had shared their knowledge as well as attitude and extended their circle of thinking individuals propelled by a thirst for facts and a fascination to unravel the unknown.

To BE BETTER at sifting fact from super-moon-fiction…

View perigee-syzygy as a time for rationale validation!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

http://astrogoa.blogspot.com/2011/03/supermoon-demystified.html

SMS

Melville Bell had developed Visible Speech: a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. When the Bells moved to Boston in the 1870s, his son worked as a teacher at a School for the Deaf. At the age of 29 years, the son went on to be the first to receive a patent for his revolutionary invention – the telephone, on this very day in 1876. Alexander Graham Bell had successfully bettered the telegraph.

Over the years the telephone has evolved into becoming a very handy tool as well as an easily available and affordable appliance. However, it is also very true that communication via the phone is getting curt, mechanical and one-sided. The primary intent to help people communicate across a distance is being reduced a ‘telegraph’ way of communication, especially in the case of mobile phones through SMS – short message service.

There are so many of us who use the phone less to talk and use it more to send SMSs. Surely the original intention of Bell’s invention was to bridge the communication gap created by physical distance, but often we receive an SMS even from someone sitting next to us. It is not as if SMS is a bad thing, but it would be better to choose direct talk or a note or a face-to-face encounter as a better way of interpersonal communication. After all, it is said so well that the mechanical is death!

May we BE BETTER at personal connection…

Let SMS be a distant second to direct action!

- Pravin K. Sabnis