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

  A book that nudges you to ask questions Title: My story, my voice: Sita and Helen Publisher: Tulika Text: Shailee Illustrations: Priyadarshini Banerjee Price: 345/- Warmly thanking Teacher Plus  for publishing this and Tulika for the book.     What is the book about?   This question is best answered using two lines from the book: “ Two of mythology’s best-known women ” “ What do we know of these women themselves ”?   How did I find the book? Few, if any, of you who read this will claim to be unfamiliar with either Sita or Helen . Films, television serials, comic books, religious texts, textbooks, stories by elders at home, songs or other sources would have led you to them. How many of you drew parallels between the two? This surely never occurred to me. And after reading and rereading the book, I wondered why it did not! This is where the book scores. Its ability to surprise, to nudge one to think. This book takes you thr...

Began a newsletter for the school few months ago A once in two months affair Three issues up so far  One of the sketches made by the children, Newsletters talk about these and other actions at the school, Actions of the children, by the children, for the children, September 2024 November 2024 January 2025

Some gems from his poems, Acknowledge the poetry lovers who have created these, put them up on the web,   Me and my fetish for holding hands, resonates here, holding hands is so, so underrated,  The "when" matters, like the "how", Munir Niyazi has also expressed this eloquently,  here ,  Let us never be busy for each other, let the "come" not leave space for " go ",  New days, love, life, hope,  If home comes, can trees be far behind,  We need to be around trees, their majesticity, there is so much there,  There is a lot to learn from the day-to-day, the seemingly small,  And, to keep doing what we believe,  Previous posts on him, here and here , 

Some years of publishing The complete list (updated February 2025)  here Some author pages on the publication sites The Hindu Deccan Herald Teacher Plus First Post The Citizen Vikalp Sangam Raiot JBNHS Roundglass Sustain Scroll The Wire Earth Dialogue The Quint India Hikes Conservation India

How to teach poetry How do we introduce poetry to students and tell them what it is? Thanks to the team at The Hindu , and of course to Chandni madam.  A few weeks ago, we had organized a session on poetry for teachers. The idea was to delve deeper into poetry and discuss how best we could get children to bond better with it. The session commenced with a song and I began by asking colleagues to recall one or more film songs which, in their understanding, were laden with metaphors. The silence that followed made me wonder where I had erred. I then wrote on the board a few lines from a song to discuss the metaphors it contained. However, the participants found it difficult to connect the metaphors with the song. Most people like and listen to film songs but rarely associate them with metaphors or with any other figures of speech. Someone said that an exercise like this could suck the joy of out of songs. This left me wondering if we connect with metaphors only when we wear our t...