A Special Day at School

On the 24th, I had the opportunity and the privilege to be part of a great gathering at my school, Don Bosco Mat. Hr. Sec. School, Thanjavur. This was the celebration of the Silver Jubilee (25 years of the institution) from 1982-1983. It was nostalgic and more a family re-union than a celebration of an event.

Many former Rectors and Principals of this school made it to the function. I remember especially Rev. Fr. Joseph Fernandez, Rev. Fr. Paulraj Maniam, Rev. Fr. A T Thomas, Rev. Fr. Patrick Alphonse, Rev. Fr. Amalraj Thomas. It was sad that Rev. Fr. V. V. Abraham (who gave me my first opportunity to use a laptop) was unable to attend because of an illness which has kept him indisposed in Delhi.

Several teachers, including beloved Mr. Sekar, Mr. Albert, Mr. Souvuriraj, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Kumar were able to attend the function. Mr. Paulraj, Mr. Gabriel, Mr. Balasubramaniam, Ms. Jacintha, Mrs.Hazell were all part of the events and continue to be involved in the everyday activities of the Institution.

I had the privilege to share a few words about my experiences at school, which was taken in good light by all the former rector principals who had arrived for the solemn gathering. We shared more experiences on our personal life, exchanged business cards and "re-connected" the family. I shall never know how the skills and values imbibed in me through the days at school can ever be repaid for.

Of the past pupils several from the batch of 2004 had made it. The earliest batch who managed to make it had one participant, Dr. Leo Joseph who practices in Thanjavur who also shared his experiences of the earliest days of the institution. Sadly a few residents of Thanjavur Dr.Manoj Xavier and Dr.Anand Mohan were indisposed and unable to attend the function. Most of my batch-mates (1997 pass-out) had the information too late and were unable to plan the trip due to dearth of tickets as the Music festival in Thiruvaiyar has already begun.

The day started with an early and long mass. The function had several performances from both the Primary and the High school. The function took until 1345hrs and was followed by a luncheon buffet in which all the past pupils, and parents of the past pupils partook with the members of the Salesian family.

I had the opportunity to mingle with some of my juniors (past pupils) and get to know them better. This was indeed a most wonderful and nostalgic event. The institution merely did not give us academic opportunity. All the teachers, brothers, Fathers and the non-teaching staff of the institution instilled in us skills to become better people with better values and respect. It was nice to see Ms.Lourde Marie being honoured for her service to the institution as the caretaker maid for the Primary school. I remember her getting me to eat when I was in preparatory school (then called Dominic Savio, in honour of a boy saint chared by Don Bosco.)

The values to treat individuals as equals, to respect everyone's opinion and to put morality above all else are priceless. This is what the institution had instilled in everyone. They had done this with a paradigm of education named "The Preventive System" whereby students are not "punished" for their wrongs, but rather guided in a way they would avoid mistakes and correct themselves had they committed one.

Today, Newspapers talk of the "Education Ministry's" order to prevent "punishment" in schools that cause potential injury. Most schools are ill-placed to really understand and implement this law.

The Preventive System does more than that, it instills self-discipline in the "Individual." In the words of my first Principal in school Fr. Berkman, this Family was, is and will continue to be a place for creating "Persons" (who by definition are people to whom one can relate with, not beings or individuals in isolation) with high regard for morality and social values.

We, the students of this school will always remain Students of Don Bosco Mat.Hr.Sec. School, Dear School of our Hearts!!

Under the Blue Hood

The building in the neighborhood has almost completely been taken down. This can be barely noticed under the blue tarpaulin hiding the work that goes inside and effectively keeping away the dust from the demolition. Now, at the last phase of demolition, they need to take away the car shed. The bad news is that the car shed (almost) shares a load bearing wall with my car shed.

For the last few days I knew that they had made great progress, but had no awareness of how far they had progressed. Now there does exist a chance that there will be damage to the car shed which will result in the initiation of heavy repair work; not to mention thoroughly strained relationships with the neighbor.

With the help of a close aide, I have kept watch on the work for most of today and am informed that the supervisor (again) was not present while the workers (who probably have never been to any school sadly) were sledge-hammering the car shed. I have warned that there will be legal (and more than legal) action taken if they were to attempt anything stupid without proper guidance. Further, the house owner has also been warned that the city municipal authorities will be notified if a single crack shows up.

The reason I revisit this demolition is, people seem to need constant monitoring or would get back to their old ways of doing things. In this case, the old way is irresponsible, clumsy and dangerous to self and others. The owners of the neighboring land have also shown a little less than callous attitude towards addressing this.

They have the most to lose or gain. The more clumsier and uncontrollable their contracted employees; the less the chance of a good "building" and "timely completion" of the work. Worse still is their social image in the neighborhood which already has taken a bit of a fall.

All human beings seem to operate with the ideal that once they are out of sight, no one is watching. That means they have the freedom to break every law (if it were man-made and could be broken) and fall back on every word they gave. In simple words "honor" is a lost word in society. "Honor is what no one can give you and no one can take away." - Rob Roy. People who would rather appear to be something they are not do not hold integrity. By that, their place in society is questionable. Inaction of society too can abet the destruction of society. That is precisely how the society allows people of low (or no) integrity to survive and in some sense prosper degrading society itself.

This problem of a simple building demolition with no consideration to the neighbors is probably nothing in comparison to what people are capable of doing in their own self interests. That would not mean that it is palatable and passable in society. This is just how we add on to society's woes which we finally never get to solve, unless we go "John Woo" style.

Sourcery

This weekend was spent tinkering with a lot of code and updating systems. I also have a visitor at home for the weekend which is really nice (as I tend to be alone most of the time.) I have also taken up the task of getting FreeBSD installation CDs from the web. My only concern at present is which of my boxes is to be converted. Unlike my earlier days, I now have to take these decisions far more carefully because I have lots of data stored all over the place and would really miss them if I ended up formatting or slicing things again. I have decided to postpone the decision to the end of the week.

The other news is, after a lot of talking and contacting, the neighborhood demolition work is being done professionally. I haven't had to worry too much except about the dust plumes from the site. The coming week would be really important as there are a few of my teammates shifting; and therefore throwing parties out for the same.

The Video Gauntlet

The whole week at work was spent in a gauntlet with people perceptually rating video quality on something I'm working on. Perceptual qualification, whether statistical or empirical is a nightmare. Unfortunately marketing teams have to depend on human behavioral traits to sell, so doing perceptual quality analysis is supposedly good.

This is probably the fourth time within a quarter that people who originally admitted quality was much better than prior, reverted saying it wasn't so and needed improvement. That reminded me of the Akbar-Birbal story (sometimes attributed to Tenali Rama) of how a line drawn on the floor can be made shorter without changing it. Birbal in one version of the story just draws a longer line beside it demonstrating relativism. By induction that line too could be made shorter.

Thanks to some help from a Camera expert and a few more efforts, we did get a good percentage of techies to be happy with the results. I find that as human beings our qualification of everything in this world is relativistic and based on prior experience. If something is entirely new with nothing to compare with, we still find something in our mind and provide a relativistic score as to how "good" or "bad" something is. The whole technique is platonic.

This relativistic comparison is so deep-rooted that it becomes a major drive for social improvement and improvement of civilization as a whole. Human beings always comparing and trying to find the "better" are the drive for constant improvement. Kaizen is rooted biologically in our very selves as evolution itself would be.

Engineering attempts to freeze specifications are against this very biological instinct. We probably need a new technique in this world of rapid change to create products or solutions for people. The Gordian knot here is "when do we stop comparing?" This is food for thought.

An Accident in the Neighborhood

With the demolition work going on without any engineers or supervisors involved, just goading people to "finish" work as much as they can for a measly some of less than 80 INR per day (a little less than 2 USD), one of the younger workers, probably a person less than 15 years of age fell down. Lucky for him he didn't have major bruises, but had to taken to the casualty ward at CMH (Chinmaya Mission Hospital.) A passer-by almost got under the debris but was just a few seconds away. It was nothing short of a miracle that no one was badly injured.

After a long conversation with the workers (with the supervisor and the owner of the house conveniently absent from the site), I found that this was a clear case of labour exploitation against the labour laws of India. Furthermore, the supervisor (or contractor as they refer to him, although there is really no binding contract) has been telling them that if anyone were to be harmed, the "exploited workers" would be held responsible.

Part of the problems to humanity are created by being insensitive to what happens within one's circle of influence. Today I have made sure that I enough people concerned with the problem have been informed. I can only take this one step at a time. The first step is to ensure that those who are working for two square meals a day, have a life to live after they finish this.

After safety, I shall evaluate and take up my concerns on their exploitation.
This might be a more endemic and deeper problem that cannot be addressed in too small a context. I end this day on a happy note that I have done something however infinitesimal (and irritating to some) to make life better for some others whom I have had no prior knowledge of.