Education.

What was once Education is now termed Wisdom. Rather than being an experience enriching an individual’s intellect and making sure they’d ease into the society, Education today has become a means to an end. The Ends being getting into XYZ University, Getting an ABC Degree, so that you can be a PQR at an MNC. Has the system corroded or has the one most powerful weapon of civilization taken the necessary evolution to keep humanity on track for the years to come? Read on to find out.

In so far as the rest of the article is to continue, It is my own take on how education might have come into being and institutionalised specifically in my own capacities as a writer.

While many regard Ramayana, Mahabharata, Quran, Bible, Guru Granth Sahib and several other religious texts to be the docets of their religions, I believe they were mere reflections of people trying to bring out an ideal world, an ideal man, and all possessed a core set of beliefs which would appeal to the masses to make them believe truly that this path was a nice one to take. Irrespective of beliefs, faiths, Religion and Religious works are and will continue to be a human’s first experience with the process of Education. They educate you about their own versions of Good and Bad, God and Devil, and so on.

Moving further on, Education has gone through a lot of changes from time to time, adapting itself to the needs of the day. Education at one point of time meant creating fire out of rubbing flints, and in another age meant bending wood into circular shapes and making wheels, and at another meant learning the arts of their trade, war tactics and the like. It has gone from being elitist to being a beacon of hope for the poor to get to the same level playing field of the rich, to being the only distinction between being cultured and non-cultured, and becoming the process any human around the world would look at as the critical requisite and way for better things to come.

During the ages of colonization and world wars, many viewed education as a foreign evil, and denounced it in retaliation. Well, that is history now isn’t it? The very fabric on which many modern countries are built on today are based on the same newer more liberal thoughts brought about because of the varied forms of education at the foray. Education has indeed changed the course of human history more than we credit it for. It’s indeed gone places from sketched on the wall to having its oldest manuscripts protected within the comforts of the four walls of a museum. It has indeed ushered us to greater heights and given us a common platform, setting up all the minds around the world to brainstorm and put their collective efforts to keep humanity on track; But hey! It has also given us destruction, annihilation, deep rooted racism, and much more.

What do we do when we go heads up against a problem with the very same system that is supposed to solve all problems? Education today is nothing more than the prep up for a rat race that is ridiculed with problems of elitism and institutionalisation. India, today has more people going to school than it ever did in it’s past, but is it educating its masses the right way? Or is there a blink and miss somewhere? When youngsters aren’t allowed to drive on roads if they’re younger than 18 because you can’t trust them with a vehicle, What good is the system doing by letting them make potentially life altering choices from as young as 16 years old? 
Education needs to be hands on, leave alone rote learn everything! I do indeed understand the need for having a strong base in all the possible subjects we are mandated to learn till our high schooling, but it is the profiling done soon after that leaves me both spellbound and awestruck. The amount of stress put on children is abnormally high and leaves a very strong imprint on them. Not pointing fingers here! If this system gave us the smartest minds yet, think of all the possibilities it’ll hold when we better and perfect this system! It’s just about time we stop treating education as a cash cow and keep milking it by offering ridiculously high cost education which is worthless and start changing the way we educate and make it approachable for everyone, rich and poor alike.

I do realise these topics have been brought forward many many times over, but then the reason for them popping back up so often signals at how the problem was never tackled efficiently. Schools these days try so hard to sell the idea of holistic development, but trust me when I say this, no kid will ever grow holistically if you keep burdening him with the orthodox ways of teaching. Fortunately or unfortunately this generation’s attention span is the same as the memory capacity of a goldfish, minute. We can’t reverse their evolution, but we can definitely change our methods to better cater to the needs of today. Before we teach them the complex intricacies of Differentiation and Integration, lets teach them why they pay the taxes that they do over the food they eat, the clothes they buy, and how do they know their money is well spent.

Years from now, we’ll see a revolution anyway. People like me are merely the starting drizzles creating ripples on the surface of education. Well, what do they say? When it rains, it pours! Change will come our way, it’s only about how prepared are we to tackle it. We need our youth smarter now than before. We’ve seen the world go at loggerheads with itself and start a world war, let’s hope we educate our youth well enough to make sure humanity is never threatened by itself again. Should there comes a day when Education leads to the downfall of humanity, it’ll be another brick in the wall, and Pink Floyd will be humming away, ‘We Don’t Need No Education…’

Death, And Yada Yada Yada.

Right from when I was a kid, I always had a strange perspective to look at ‘Death’. All I knew was that Death meant the end of life and that, that person will cease to exist after that. What started off as a fear, and some sort of a horrible feeling that made me cry every time I lost someone to it, Death turned out to be an ally I never set out to forge, but came together anyway. While the whole of humanity definitely agrees on the fact that Death means the end of this life, there’s more to it than what meets the eye. While Death is the biggest source of Inspiration for me, it means a whole lot of different things for different people! Over the years, the concept of Death has taken a beating, but yes! Like several other archaic concepts, this one’s magically survived the test of time. While on one side of the spectrum, people are trying sick stunts to defy death, on the other end, people are spilling big bucks to defeat it. So, I thought, Like Always, Let’s shake things up a bit! And see what exactly death means now.

In an effort to better understand the various commentaries and views about death, I set out by asking people what their first thought was, once they heard the word ‘Death’. And as far as they understood the word, Death, they termed it to be- Silence, Oblivion, Freedom, A reminder of Mortality, The end of a cycle and the birth of another, First Step on the path to heaven, a balance, An Unfair and Unjust thing and so on. Well it doesn’t stop there. Many writers and poets, in the past, have personified Death to be a humanoid figure, and go on to express their versions of Death as a person.  While I am neither that qualified or acclaimed, I’ll try to turn it over and try and make as much sense of it as possible while casually preaching what I feel about it. So at this point of time, the real question is, why is everyone fascinated by Death? Why is it that more often than not, there is always a God of Death, A toll reader who decides where you “after” death, A Hell and A Heaven? While most of these questions have their answers rooted in the same mould out of which we crafted our religions out of, some extra sense can be made out of them.

Death. My most painful meeting with it was when I lost my kitten, some 8 weeks old to street dogs and saw its corpse. I lost every sense of feeling, went numb, tears rolled down my cheek involuntarily and my knees lost every single ounce of energy in them. I was weak, vulnerable, and in pain. All of this, because my kitten has died. Death has embraced him as one of his own. When I think of it now, I only realise I stopped crying because there was nothing more left for me to do. What could I do? I’m no god to miraculously resurrect my dear kitten. But it brings me more than just that feeling of helplessness, it brings me the idea that the same death, that takes our strength away, can motivate us to work harder. It reminds me that we are all temporary. It gives me that so called ‘Reality Check’! While billions of us are walking the earth every day, and millions suffering from a death every day, it only makes more sense if we tap into it. Yes. You heard me right. Death, brings about a hell lot of changes in a lot of lives. It can shake you, It can rattle your lives up, it can leave you stranded, and in those times remember. If there’s something you’ll never ever lose even if you lose your all, It is death. Everyday I wake up, I realise that is another day I have snatched out of the clutches of Death. As it was aptly put in one of my favourite movies, I shall work my heart out, put in every effort humanly possible, move every rock and stone, to make sure I’m on my path to where I want to be, and If Death comes at me with its greedy claws and hungry jaws, I’ll fight it with my hearts rage and every desire that I’ve worked so hard to satisfy.

While that’s me being optimistic, there are many who don’t quite take it so adventurously. Death is the ultimate unfortunate event. It the end of this life and the beginning of another. While one life’s passing affects the lives of many, they all look at death as something that pushes them into the depths of oblivion. Well that’s how we humans are, aren’t we? We spend all our life chasing material comforts and our hearts deepest desires and yet in the end we come back to believe we’re nothing but mere mortals. Death, or near death experiences have always proven to be an excellent but dangerous way of realising that you are indeed alive. Your heart is actually pumping that blood. The adrenaline junkies are an excellent example of the same. They’ll go to just about any extent to feel alive, even if the risk is Death. Some even model a lot of things along the word – Death. Death Star (STAR WARS!) Death Note (YEAH!) and it still hasn’t gotten any prettier than before.

People often speak of how before dying their whole life flashes before them, they realise that they have so many responsibilities, so many desires, so many of many things that will no longer come true because Death, my friend doesn’t quite give you second chances. It is somewhat like that one video game you paid an exorbitantly high amount for and spent ages solving it all and you realise that the game just won’t save and if you die, there is no restart. Pissing off isn’t it? Aggravating too? Well that is exactly what it is. A Constant reminder than we are Human. The moments we have are temporary, These history books people are trying so hard to get into by living the large life, they’ll wash away with time too. People will always be after the big pie, trying to get a bite at it, but life isn’t just that. It is in fact the one ticket to a wonderland called earth, and yes, It comes with an expiry date, Death.

DEATH. The one real fear everyone has. The only real inspiration I have. It is indeed the last frontier. The next great adventure. And If there is indeed life after death, It is respawn, but with none of the cool upgrades you bought with all that hard work. It is transformative. It is necessary. It brings balance. Where there is life, there is death. No one loves playing the bad guy, but it is indeed true, the Grim Reaper is more so the keeper of the equation than the harbinger of sadness. So they tell me that a New Year is the modern day favourite for a new start, so let’s start with this. Death, is definitive. It is definite too. And while we are at it, let’s give it the wild goose chase and, I might as well express my disgust and apathy towards those who believe they can inflict death on others.

While a very dear friend of mine terms death as the last page of the novel you absolutely fell in love with, knowing that it’s over, you still rare for more. I can’t actually compete against that. Everything in this world is temporary. So is the fear of death.

We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, We’ve Bled,

We’ve sung, we’ve danced, and we’ve read,

But no matter what we’ve heard and what we’ve said,

There’s life, and after it, there’s only death ahead.