Entrance Examination - A Rite of Passage

From Kapil Sibal, our honorable HRD minister to the kitchen maid everyone is worried about the students appearing for entrance examinations to professional courses. The society is worried that these students are stressed out unnecessarily because they have to appear for a multitude of entrance examinations.

            It is true that students passing out of XII class have to appear for a variety of entrance examinations – a minimum of three. Not only does this involve expenditure of energy but also money and time. It often involves long distance journeys and staying over.  There is a lot of tension but what is life without some stress, which can make or break an individual. Just as gold has to face high temperatures to be fashioned into exquisite jewellery; wood to face the unkind cuts of the saw by the carpenter and the stone the blows of the sculptor to emerge as a striking statue so also humans have to go through the fires of entrance examinations to succeed in life. This is a common practice all over the World and not restricted to our country only. The UMAT and GAT of Australia; NCET of China; NCT of Japan, USE of Russia, HAT, GMSAT and others of UK as also SAT and others in US impose the same stress on their teenagers leaving High School but no one gets as worked up about it as do Indians and the Indian Government.

            Parents have to realize that these examinations are like rites of passage in the olden days. In the past people while moving from adolescence to adulthood had to prove their physical strength and stamina by going through the rites of passage. In the modern World these examinations are being used to prove the mental ability of the youth to face the problems of the professional World. It is inevitable. The mother bears the pains of a child entering the World but the pains of the entering the professional World has to be borne by them. Just as the mother cannot be spared the delivery pains these children cannot be rescued from the entrance examination pains. What is needed is the right attitude – it should be faced a challenge and not as a drudgery or a punishment. The children have to be trained from childhood to acquire the right attitude towards these examinations so that they enjoy it and not dread it.
            Remember that in life stress is unavoidable whether one wants to enter professional course or otherwise. What matters is the way we handle it. The same can assume a positive force and become Eustress or a negative force and cause Distress. It is up to you as a parent and as a student how you manage it! 

Draupadi Hairstyle

Leaving hair loose, cascading down one's back is the in fashion for young girls of today. Every movie, every soap opera, every visual advertisement shows girls/women with  hair undone flowing down the back to different levels. It does not matter what activity the woman is involved in - cooking, attending a patient, playing with a baby, riding a two wheeler, running towards a lover or away from a villain - her long hair streams behind her like a flag and in some cases like a long banner. It does not matter whether the girl is a school-going child, an adolescent or adult the hair is always let down and it is only the "aunties" (an epithet for older women) who put up their hair in a knot usually a tight knot with not a tendril escaping from the demure coiffure. Oh! yes even widows are depicted with their hair in a knot preferably at the nape!

In the earlier days before the 1990s, it was considered inauspicious for women to let their hair loose. When young it was braided into two pigtails and tied up in a loop with a ribbon at the end of it, as one entered adolescence in most South Indian states, the twin pigtails were replaced by a single plait though Maharashtrians continued to spot two plaits even when they were older (Remember Lata Mangeshkar). Of course these plaits exhibited a lot of ingenuity - braided to resemble the kewra leaf, four stranded plaits, the French plait and of course the quintessential flowers being braided in for special occasions. 

Hair was never to be left loose since it was associated with Draupadi's vow in Mahabharatha. While Draupadi was being dragged by Dushasana to the court, where Yudhistra had lost her in the game of dice, her hair got undone and she vowed that she would not comb her hair and dress it only after  Dushasana's death when she could anoint it with his blood. Due to this tale in most South Indians it is considered inauspicious to leave the hair loose. Even after a head bath mothers used to dry the hair quickly using fragrant incense fumes and tie a small knot at the end of the hair.

When I first started my career as a lecturer in a missionary college, my Head of the Department warned me that if "your hair grows below your shoulder you have to knot it up". There was a reason for this rule - not only does long hair interfere with one's work, it is also uncomfortable in the hot tropical weather. Loose cascading hairstyle for a cook may result in contamination of food with hair, which would definitely be unhygienic as well as unappetizing.   Long hair left loose can also pose a risk as happened to my friend's daughter. She had gone to the Puja Pandal and during  Aarti her hair caught fire and not only did she lose a lot of hair but it was also considered a very bad omen and the family had to perform several rituals to appease the malignant spirits!

It is not to suggest that the elaborate coiffures of the past have to be followed but definitely there is a need to style one's hair according to one's task requirement. I am not against "letting one's hair down" to relax but that should be restricted to parties and other social events. Women should learn to be sensible and not follow fashion blindly.

Land for Security

“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything,” he shouted, his thick, short arms making wide gestures of indignation, “for ‘tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don’t you be forgetting it! ‘Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for—worth dying for.” - Gerald  O'Hara in the famous American classic Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell echoes the sentiment of millions of human beings,  from all parts of the world .

From times unknown man has invested on land as a saving. In India as in other countries after roti and kapada, makaan was the  priority for most people. As soon as a person settled in a job, he or she would start saving money to buy that piece of land on which he/she would build the dream house.  Earlier the middle classes struggled very hard to get that "Do Beegha Zameen" though it has become easier for the present generation to invest on real estate due to increased earning capacity. There are many stories, real life incidents and films about the troubles faced by the common man to achieve his dream of owning a land.  As Bharathiar, the Tamil poet said  "Kani nilam vendum –Parashakthi, Kani nilam vendum-angu,
                                                Thoonil azhagiyathai –nan madangal thuyya nirathinathai –antha,
                                                Kani nilathidaye –Or maligai katti thara vendum......"

Once the land was acquired time was spent in building up stage by stage. Very often the house could not be built until the person retired from service but he/she would feel happy that he at least had a piece of land - his/her main asset. To acquire this the family was even ready to sell their gold, eat less and fore go many pleasures of life during the youth. In their old age they retired to this piece of land to enjoy the golden years of old age with contentment that they were under their own roof. Land provides not only a sense of security but represents stability as if one has grown roots to stay in one place instead of wandering around like nomad. Gold and precious assets may be lost or stolen; banks may be robbed or go under; companies may fold up and lose our investments; houses and buildings may be destroyed but nothing can affect land - this is the belief that people had.

Contrary to this belief, in recent years, land grabbers and encroachers have been making away with even land from thousands nay lakhs of people all over the country -- whether it be in East, West, South or North. Everyday the news papers are full of these snatchers of dreams. Real Estate dealers, industrialists and sometimes even the Government under the guise of development or recovery steal away land leaving the common man with nothing except a broken heart and sometimes in the case of Government a paltry sum. Everyone has heard of the Land Mafia that operates in the major cities and towns of India with no one to oppose them or question their right. The police, the judiciary, the authorities and the local administration are helpless or pretend to be helpless in assisting the common man in his battle to retain his rights of property.

 Though Tolstoy may have made a case that man needs no more than six feet of land, one has to disagree with him - man's physical body may need only that but his psyche need more because that is the asset he can pass on safely to his inheritors!