You are bigger than your grades

 

 

My pitch rose as I whined on about the ugly scar on my pretty glass-topped coffee table.  My friend had to raise her voice a pitch above mine to make herself heard.  What she said will stay with me forever. “You are not that coffee table.  You are not the scratch.  You are not the furniture that gathers dust and degrades. You are not the occasional failure at keeping a spit and polish home. It is okay to not make the grade. You are bigger than all this.”

As stressed out student friends talk to me of high expectations, of competitive exams they need to crack, of academic streams and prestigious institutions they are expected to gain access to, and of that BIG FAT numerical – that 98 point something they aim for, I pass on the same message I received so many years ago as I went to pieces over a scratched coffee table.

You are not your grades. If you fail and then fail again, you are still more than the sum of your failures.  If you don’t crack the IIT-JEE or the AIIMS MBBS entrance exam, you are still bigger than that seat you missed. If your Board results disappoint, you are bigger than that disappointment. You are bigger than all this.

Certainly, not cracking a competitive exam and ending up with a defaced coffee table top may seem like opposite ends of the spectrum.  Here, though, I believe it is not just about scale. Disappointments happen.  Disasters happen. Failures happen.  Big or small, they do belong to the same paradigm. The reality is that when you take on a task, you may fail at it or fall short of expectations – your own or those thrust upon you by others.

Tragically though, when failure happens, years of conditioning trigger off a reactionary response which focuses on the immediate consequences of failure, on the rebukes and the humiliation that may follow, on all those “you deserved it” remarks, rather than on how this failure can help you grow.

And yet, handling failure with level-headedness and positivity can bring rewards far more fulfilling than you may dream of.  Here I realize I can dole out clichés and quote motivational gurus on failure till the cows come home, but all your positive self-talk has only one window in which to manifest itself – the crucial buffer space between the knowledge that you have not made it and your reaction to it.  However narrow this space may seem, it is the most critical element in your “How to” self-manual on handling failure. Your reaction is determined by how intelligently you utilize this buffer zone.  If your parents and teachers have done their job well, you could be the mensch who walks through this space with fortitude, integrity and hope.

Ideally, your parents and teachers should have guided you on how to handle adversity long before the real blows started raining. Those “lesser” sorrows, those daily little hurts such as losing a race, being sidelined by friends for want of a certain look or skin colour, being slighted by a teacher, not achieving a targeted result in a lower grade – we are still talking of the same sense of despondency. If they haven’t done the groundwork of teaching you to process those big emotions, it is very simply because they did not know better. But you can still take charge.  You can parent yourself.  You can teach yourself, through example or affirmations or both, to take the setback bravely and to move on with enough self-love to believe that the future still holds promise.

And no, despite all your fears of the cataclysm that awaits you when you fall short of expectations, haven’t you seen through their bluff?  Their bark is almost always worse than their bite.  It is truly about how YOU perceive failure –as “temporary defeat” in the words of Napoleon Hill, or as doomsday. And I assure you that doomsday it is not. The brightest have failed and have survived to tell the universe of success stories far bigger than their trifling failures.

To parents, I can only say: To bounce back and succeed, your children do not need more humiliation.  Before you tell them of your expectations, do tell them of your unconditional, timeless love for them. The joy of their presence in your life and your love for them has to be bigger than their grades.  Only then can they move through life serene in the knowledge that their failures do not define them. When your children fail, make sure YOU don’t fail them.  Be there for them, keep them safe and tell them the sun will rise tomorrow as usual. Talk to them of new beginnings.  Tell them too of your faith in their abilities to find an alternative course of action.  Encourage them to have patience and to keep the faith – because healing takes time and because there is more to come.  And the levellers will come – perhaps in the form of a new talent they may discover, or a new avenue for growth, or success in a joyous, personal relationship. They need time to figure out that “it IS all for the best”. Your reaction will determine theirs.  If you catastrophize, so will they. Your ONLY option here – reach out to them, envelope them in a BIG WARM BEAR HUG and tell them you still love them.

My own life appeared to be a series of failures and setbacks, far more serious than that scratched coffee table: a failed career choice, a toxic work environment, a failed marriage, a nasty ailment that I just couldn’t wish away.  When I returned to Nagpur after eight years in Paris, two cities that are as different from each other as cheese from chalk, I looked around desperately for whatever could keep me afloat.  It took me a long time and more disappointment before the leveller came along before I could say “It was all for the best”.  I stopped pining for Paris and started considering myself blessed the day my daughter arrived.  And I swear on my life that the light in her eyes can put the City of Lights to shame. Aha! So THIS was the larger picture! Boy, wasn’t I glad I stayed away from that treacherous precipice!

The trouble with parents and schools is that they continue to put the cart before the horse, action before thought and a goal before the identification of it.  It is no wonder that we’ve ended up with an unhappy and barely employable human resource pool, a huge mass of square pegs in round holes.

To all my ex-student friends, who keep coming back to me for advice and validation, here is a loving message from me on this blog posting: As results are declared, do remind yourselves that your mission in life is to find your calling and be your authentic selves.  Your calling is what you long to do, what you enjoy doing most and what uplifts you and makes time stand still while you are at it.  It is perfectly legitimate to say NO to whatever may take you away from your calling.  And do remember, you are always bigger than your grades.

 

Protect Your Peace

I baulked mentally when a kindly friend advised me to teach my child to be cunning. Teach an 11-year-old cunning?  “Well, how then will she face the world?” she asked.

How indeed?  Cunning is in, I am learning to my dismay.  Today cunning is needed to launder money, to get accreditations, to suppress facts, to justify fanaticism.  I am convinced I will be the lousiest teacher in the “Art of Cunning”.  The first and best teachers of cunning (and much else) are parents and, in this regard, mine were blissfully ignorant of the subject. They taught me integrity, the importance of being truthful, punctual, sincere, and a lot of other “old-fashioned” values.  But “Cunning” – nope Sir – they left that to me to learn the hard way.  And the fact is that I was not cunning enough to learn it.  So that is one inheritance my daughter will not acquire from me at least.

And yet, although times are-a-changing and the world out there needs essential life skills, do kids need to learn cunning?  In a flash, I get an answer when I look back at whatever has helped me survive ever since I grew old enough to take responsibility for my actions.  When I was younger, I was convinced that perseverance and hard work would always win the day for me.  Then they came along…the good – my dear friends across the world…, the bad – glib liars and mediocre, indifferent beings…, and the very, very ugly – the racists and predators. How did I face the world then?

In every organization, in every institution, in every culture, I encountered in large measure the bad and the ugly.  I discovered a special talent I had for making impossible choices, attracting bullies and landing up in the rarest of rare soups.  But then, I was also pleasantly surprised to discover another very special talent I had for attracting sincere, straightforward and warm people who placed a premium on my trustworthiness.  They were the ones who saw through cunning at once and held it in great contempt.  They are my true friends, my “soul-sisters” and “soul-brothers” who fished me out of many an unpalatable soup, expecting nothing other than integrity from me.  We may be oceans apart today, but we write, we skype, and when neither is possible, which is rare, we send out little prayers and light little lamps for each other.

The Buddha says: “An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast.  A wild beast will wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind”.

To you, my little one, I cannot impart any lessons on cunning, but I can certainly teach you to see through cunning. I can tell you cunning only attracts more cunning.  I cannot tell you why good people suffer.  But I do know that the bad most definitely do.  For every ‘sher’ there is a ‘sawa sher’.  And ultimately, cunning will cancel out cunning.  Cunning always backfires because it diminishes trustworthiness by 101%. Only the truth prevails because the Majordomo running the universe can see through all cunning.  At the end of the day, learn how to preserve yourself.  As a well-known psychologist put it, “Have the clarity and courage to not enter every door and to not accept every invitation. Protect your peace.”

And when you suffer, when you feel deprived, remember the words of Good Ol’ Dr Seuss:

“You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes.

 You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.

You are on your own and you know what you know.

And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”

And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed!

Ninety-eight and three-quarters per cent guaranteed!”

 

 

I don’t want to write

Kermaan Satha

A relatively innocuous chat between a Swiss friend and me a year ago went as follows:

[09:57:36] chat: And, how is the little one?

[09:57:55] Kermaan: fine!  I think she is doing well although it is difficult telling what is going on in her little head.  Doing okay with studies.

[09:58:17] Kermaan: She is only 6 but is studying what amphibians are.

[09:58:32] chat: wow, they are really moving fast in school!

[09:58:45] chat: i started learning to read and write when i was 7

[09:58:57] chat: until then the sandbox was my only preoccupation.

My interlocutor’s name is Dr Roman Frigg, Professor and Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics.

I do not need to vouch for the fact that Dr Frigg is perfectly literate, despite the fact that he started “learning to read and write when …7”. The age at which Dr Frigg began his tryst with formal writing is the accepted norm in most developed countries, and they are none the worse for it.  In India, formal writing is introduced much earlier – in some preschools at two and a half years of age.  Kids are evaluated from the day they begin and routinely scolded, sometimes beaten or punished for not showing the inclination to learn.

Are Indian children really precocious or is there some obtuse reason why they need to write more, faster, earlier than their American or European counterparts? Indian school psychologists rue the fact that schools and parents are not open to a more informed perspective regarding the introduction of formal writing in schools.  Schools, even those that have got it right, cite parental pressure.  Parents cite societal pressure. I suspect that somewhere, someone mentoring the child is making a giant mental leap of 15 to 20 years into the future, catapulting his/her ward to the academic finishing line where those IIT-JEEs and PMTs will be cracked effortlessly.  In this fabulous projection, the 3-year-old is already a hugely successful engineer or doctor, whose accomplishments are due in no small measure to the head start he got in learning to read and write.  As adults, we do know what is best for the child, don’t we?

And yet, there is a universal consensus amongst educationists and psychologists, from Maria Montessori to Erikson to Piaget regarding the minimum age when children should be introduced to formal writing – which is NOT BEFORE 6 YEARS.

I cite below some sound reasons for waiting till a child is developmentally ready for a skill as elaborate as writing:

• Till the age of 6, a child lacks the physiological readiness to use finger muscles and joints in a coordinated fashion. The child is still struggling with body balance and spatial awareness and is unable to free up the brain to guide him in carrying out the fine motor reflexes required for writing.
• Visual-motor integration starts to set in only at the age of 4 when he can be trained in “writing readiness” through clay work and tactile experiences with aids such as sand slates. The concept of “before” and “after” is also not clear to the child and needs to be introduced through beadwork.
• Along with physiological readiness, the child develops a degree of abstract thinking at the age of 6, which would permit symbol formation and association of the word with the concept. Writing solicits both the left brain for mental picturing and the right brain for sight/memory reading. When children are forced to read and write before their brain is adequately developed, they tend to continue with sight reading and memorization and never really enjoy reading or writing in the absence of mental picturing.
• Drawing, scribbling, random letter strings with improper spacing, invented spellings are essential pathways to conventional writing. They represent a child’s efforts to convey a purposeful message.  Discouraging the child from any pre-writing activity would result in stilted writing in later years.
• Forcing children to write before they have reached the stage of writing readiness and then labelling them as dyslexics or ADHD kids cause stress, low self-esteem and a strong distaste for the written word.

 

When will parents and schools acknowledge that they are the ones who need to upgrade their skills and knowledge?    How long will we keep crushing tender children under undue pressures? Can’t the Ministry of Education prescribe a minimum age before which no child should be forced to write?  The arrogance and complacency are ours, as is the loss, if we do not even consider, leave alone implement, scientifically proven theories of age-appropriate education.  Let us not wait until our children are deformed and crumble under the pressure.  Many already have.

 

 

 

 

 

Hello world!

Hello world!

I am Kermaan, a free lance writer.  Formerly, I taught French and Spoken English. I named this blog the Sheramai Space for Emotional Growth.  Before I tell you more about Sheramai, I must tell you about the BIG feelings that have inspired me to start this blog.

Through my French and English classes, I noticed much more happening in my classes than language learning.  There were class dynamics.  There were hierarchies.  There were students who could not focus, sometimes daydreaming, sometimes teary-eyed.  There was baggage…and I sensed it was cumbersome.

Most of these students would hang on after class hours, request some extra time alone and pour out a dilemma or experience.  They told me they felt judged by parents and peers.  Their parents and society had given them a road map, and they felt compelled to remain faithful to it.  But…there was a gap between their authentic needs and feelings and the expectations of others.

I could help by listening.  It saddened me immensely though to see them in turmoil, struggling to stick to choices that weren’t theirs.  Their thoughts on relationships were fuzzy too.  Were interfaith marriages okay?  Were pre-marital physical relationships acceptable?  Many weren’t comfortable with their partners but had no clear concept of what constituted abuse.

Guilt, fear, anger… their BIG feelings made them these lovable but “fragile, handle with care” individuals.

These BIG feelings were mine too, so many years ago.  I am far from perfect when it comes to handling them – but I do know that, whatever the childhood trauma, whatever the “mistake”, whatever the past experience, it is imperative to understand, accept and move on.  Awareness is everything.

The French use the expression:”mourir intelligent” (to die intelligent).  Every experience, tragic, quirky, uncanny or pleasant, is ultimately about growth.

We have to educate the heart.  I learn as I write.  To me, writing is cathartic and a wonderful opportunity to share my thoughts and experiences.  If my journey can help others grow, as I have grown over the years, I would be delighted.

I do not know when and how I will leave this planet. I do know, though, that when I do, I will die more intelligent.

I pray for a more intelligent planet.  And may this intelligence be an intelligence of the heart.

The Inspiration behind the blog

“The most beautiful people we have known
are those who have known defeat,
known suffering, known struggle, known loss,
and have found their way out of the depths.
These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity,
and an understanding of life that fills them
with compassion, gentleness,
and a deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen.”

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
(1926-2004)

 

Sheramai Irani, my maternal grandmother, was a force to reckon with.  While sources of inspiration abound, Sheramai Irani, born in September 1904, remains for me an incarnation of values that I have always sought to live by:  honesty, courage, resilience, humanity.  It seemed futile for me to look elsewhere for inspiration when the bedrock of emotional intelligence could be found in my own family . Her faith in herself, healthy self-esteem, and tremendous capacity to survive, maintain her emotional balance and rise above the worst possible crises, financial and personal, made her the rare and precious being she was.

The only child of doting parents, Sheramai got married at an early age to Sohrab Irani. She had five children, of whom the youngest, my mother Homai, now aged 80, lives in Nagpur with me and my daughter, Setareh.  Sheramai’s life was turbulent, to say the least.  Her husband, my grandfather, ran a small ice factory and home-based aerated waters’ enterprise.  However, the business was barely breaking even.  Ice was manufactured using self-powered engines.  But severe breakdowns resulted in losses to the business.  The need to switch to more efficient ice-manufacturing electrical units became imperative.

Semi-literate but determined to learn and create affluence and security for her large family, Sheramai started off with noting down difficult English words with their meanings in Gujarati.  She learned accounting and started maintaining an accounts register to keep track of inflows and outflows of income.  She applied her practical sense and sturdy constitution to making aerated waters single-handedly.  Her home-based enterprise soon took off and Sheramai’s aerated waters, especially the Parsi all-time favourites, Raspberry and Ginger Ale, soon became a hit in Solapur.  When she inherited a small fortune of Rs. 25,000/-, a significant sum in her days,  she bought land belonging to the Solapur Parsi Community, built a bungalow and modernized the ice factory, naming it the Gillan Ice Factory.  She soon became the Czarina of ice in Solapur, supplying ice to Solapur and its surrounding districts.  Her sons took over the reins of the business so diligently started by her, but confessed that they could never match her extraordinary business acumen and sense of judgement.  They continued to consult her as her perfect timing, insight and intuition in assessing the clients’ needs and capacity helped the business reach new heights.

Her sense of fair play was visible in the way she treated her children, allowing them enough space to learn from their mistakes and always lending a comforting shoulder to them through their tribulations.  She nursed one of her ailing daughters-in-law so devotedly that hospital staff were surprised to learn that she was not the mother but the much maligned mother-in-law. At an age when young girls were not allowed to pursue careers away from home, she encouraged her daughter Homai who was interested in academics to do an M.Sc in Botany and then live and work alone as a laboratory research assistant at Pimpri’s Hindustan Antibiotics Limited.

She passed away in 1985.   Although the ice business fell apart soon after her death, she is still venerated as a good soul, whose emotional muscle made her a giant among women of her generation.