WORLD OF EDUCATION

The onset of Covid-19 pandemic locked the schools. We started thinking of alternative ways to reach students. Teachers were asked to creat What’s app groups of their respective classes and they started establishing contact  with the students. Some creative teachers started recording their lessons in small duration videos and shared them with their students. Students also started sending their responses to teachers through What’sApp. I also recorded some of my videos through which I tried my level best to educate students, teachers and parents about pandemic. Since all students did not have access to independent mobiles and contacting them became an uphill task. But this did not appear to be an appropriate alternative of offline classes. Teachers started exploring technology which came to their rescue. We got apps like Classroom, Zoom, G-suite etc. in which the curricular transaction became better. Now teachers would give online classes through synchronous mode. But connectivity r...

  We, the people, have ephemeral memory. We are being 24x7 served a sensational news menu. Sometimes when the conflict arises between Indo-Pak or Indo –Sino relations, you must have witnessed news readers (we may also call them news presenters) showing virtually how would- be wars be fought if the tension between the two escalated. The body language of news presenters is so articulative as if they themselves are going to take part in it. Spoken words ooze out with powerful emotions.   Last year when one young and famous film actor passed away in some mysterious circumstances, how for months together it was telecast non-stop.Each movement of CBI was captured. Drug mafia was unearthed. But,now-nobody talks about it. We have forgotten. We watch and forget-watch and forget. This see-saw is in permanent motion.     A couple of days back a TV reporter from a leading news channel was frantically covering a story on poor rural health infrastructure from a village in Ba...

On a sunny day in mid May, I was driving from Mohali to my village in Hoshiarpur. It was a routine visit to meet my old parents. Due to week end lockdown –the traffic on roads was sparse. When I neared Hoshiarpur-I could find some fruit   sellers standing by the side of their carts. The heaps of yellow ripe mangoes, dark green water melons and pale musk-melons   tempted me. I slowed down near a fruit seller and stopped. After properly adjusting my double mask,I ventured out. Having enquired about the rates of mangoes I decided to buy some. While the seller started picking up the mangoes to keep them in weighing machine which was kept   on his cart, his mask slipped down from his nose. Teacher within me impelled to give him a signal to pull his mask up. He understood my gesture and pulled it to cover his nose. A lean and tall person, he must have been in his thirties. He had unkempt beard and wore untidy clothes. I asked him if he knew what corona virus was. He said, i...

  As thick steel plates of the Titanic were ripped apart by the fangs of an iceberg, similarly the total health infrastructure of our country appears to have collapsed like a pack of cards. Dearth of oxygen, ventilators, beds, medicines and vaccines has filled hopelessness in the hearts of everyone. The situation becomes grimmer when we see hoarding and black-marketing of oxygen cylinders, concentrators and essential lifesaving medicines like Remdisiver. By and large the spread of Covid-19 remained confined to the cities during its first wave. But during the second wave which hit us almost like a Tsunami, we see it inching towards its peak in Mid May 2021-its spread to the villages is also being reported. In some villages scores of deaths have also been reported in a couple of days. This is a serious concern for one and all. I am extremely worried about my 70% countrymen who reside in villages. These simple people very easily fall prey to the rituals and local prescriptions (de...

  COVID 19 AND HAIR CUTS Covid19 brought in unprecedented problems and their solutions too. During its first wave there was a nation wide lockdown. It was a unique experience for all of us. Both of my sons had overgrown hair on their heads as well as beards. All saloons were shut. They started imploring me to give them hair cut. I ignored it for 2-3 times. But their requests became more persistent in the next couple of days. I had never done it earlier. But in my childhood I had harvested wheat in scorching heat. And to my credit was also my experience of cutting branches of dry trees for firewood in the nearby jungle of our village. If I could do that why can’t I do this? My confidence further grew as I had a good quality trimmers, pair of scissors and couple of combs. I had a long experience of getting my own hair cuts from different barbers. My trimmer boosted my confidence as it was newly procured online. Unlike scissors-it at least does not make cuts. In Iran I had seen that b...

  Yesterday, I watched a TV correspondent in one of the cities of Punjab, appealing people to wear masks. He in fact was doing a great job. He went inside a bus and met two middle aged women who were huddling together along with their two children. None of them had masks on their faces. When the correspondent asked them to wear Masks-they apparently got perturbed. One of the children sitting in lap, reminded his mother that she had the one in her purse. So hurriedly she pulled it on her face. The other woman also followed the suit by covering her face with her chunni. An old man with a flowing white beard and a turban loosely tied on his head turned around from the corner of a street to encounter the correspondent. He, on an indication, slowed down and inquiringly looked at the correspondent. Then he put his one foot on the ground and listened to his question. “Why don’t you wear a mask?” asked the correspondent, “Don’t you know how is corona   killing people?” To this he si...