yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Teachers we never meet There is something very poetic about this image ~ Is it about two people mature with age and experience? Or, the warmth that eyes carry when poetry flourishes? Or, about that child that a few adults carry within ~  Were they trying to delicately fit a word in a line? Or, appreciating a word? a line? a word in a line? Or, talking about their unfinished poems? Or, smiling at what they are leaving behind for us?  Harivansh Rai Bachchhan wrote on seeing Gurudev Tagore That he got to know how graceful and stunning old age could be This image perhaps is equally poignant, in a slightly different way though ~ What Ashok Vajpeyi said on Kedar Nath Singh tells u s about both, “He was a poet of both presence and absence, of love and loss .. of anxieties and questions . . And he achieved in his poetic craft that which can be only called Kedar rhythm, a verbal construct uniquely his own but simultaneously communicative" Or, is it just two amazing poets?  Poets who have t

In love with the mountains Some books take you to the mountains as you flip pages Some books remind you of the time you have invested in the mountains Some books make want to go the mountains Some books touch you gently Some books hit you hard  This book does each of these  Ruskin Bond and Namita Gokhale - a big thank you for coming out with the book For allowing me to stand on the shoulders of giants as they shared of their time in the mountains. The cover by Roerich stands tall. Authors include Rahul Sankrityayan, Rabindranath Tagore, Mark Twain, Dom Moraes and Manjushree Thapa.  This is what Namita Gokhale's website refers to the book as, " This anthology attempts to capture some of its complexity and vastness, traveling through time, place, and attitude. Beauty and melancholy, courage and defeat, philosophy and poetry surprise and illuminate us in these pages " Mountains, many a time, make us go silent So does this book Few other books on the mountains  Between Heaven

Our journey with Pratham books Anshumalika Rai and Nimesh Ved Published at Teacher Plus.  Thanks to colleagues at Teacher Plus, Pratham books and Richa.  We received a bunch of recently published books from Pratham publications for review. These books had us revisit our journey, of a few years, with Pratham books. So, rather than only review the fresh books, we take a step back to talk about our experiences with books we already had in our book room. The experience so far Pratham books have been a part of our book room since we rejigged the entire collection of books . Then we had reset not just the furniture but also the ethos of the room. We were keen to create a space that the children would enjoy being at and get the books they would like. During this restructuring phase we visited the book fair in Delhi . Here we got Pratham books. It did not take us long to figure that these were the kind of books we were in need of. Books that were colourful, diverse, and attracti

  Books and us Nimesh Ved and Anshumalika Rai   Published at Teacher Plus. We thank colleagues at APS and Teacher Plus, friends at CIHTS and Harmony, Richa and others who have held our hands in this journey.    We have written about our journey with books in our school in the July 2020 and February 2022 issues of Teacher Plus . In this article, the final in the series, we move beyond the rooms and walls. We look at ourselves. The only way to grow is by looking inwards Tim Noonan We sensed the need to visit and observe other book places to broaden our horizons. Things fell in place and we secured a membership of the library at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies ( CIHTS ) at Sarnath. To say that this library is different from the book room in our school is an understatement; be it the objectives, the collection it houses, systems in place, or the aesthetics. A love for books, however, is common to both spaces and this has enabled us to learn from the pr