Musings on Life Series

The highlights of the new Education policy with regards to school education: 1. The government had said that the focus was on bringing uniformity in education, providing universal access to quality education, improving the quality of elementary education through a new national curriculum framework that focuses on multi-linguistic, 21st-century skills, integration of sports and arts, environmental issues, etc. 2. The policy is focused on Access, Equity, Quality, Affordability, and Accountability of the education system of the country. 3. Right to Education shall cover children in the age group of 3-18 years. 4. 5. The Foundation stage shall focus on rapid brain development, play and active discovery. The Preparatory stage shall focus on build on play and discovery, transition to structured learning. The Middle stage shall focus on concepts in subjects, navigating adolescence. In Secondary stage the focus shall be to prepare for livelihood and higher education. The secondary stage would ...

Kamatchi Paati - The Meenakshi of Our Hearts   Kamatchi Paati left us feeling empty yet full of emotion thinking of her and recollecting her memories!! I shall always remember you as the Kamu paati with silver in your hair and heart made of gold!! Though I have known her only for 4 + years but I am happy to have shared good memories with her and have enjoyed the friendly banter between her and my husband – her first grandson. I don’t know how many people really know that they are lucky to grow along with their grandparents in the same house. I had been lucky enough to grow up with my grandparents and so was my husband and his sister. I remember the second time I met her was during my engagement. She hugged me, cried and told me “I held my grandson in my arms when he was a baby, he is now all grown up. Both of you should live ever happy”. At that time I felt so moved by her affection. And she had happy tears during our wedding. She loved all her four sons and their famil...

I was frustrated, angry at myself! What am I doing in this life? Why me?! Why does this happen to me all the time??? I was angry at God, myself and hated everyone around! I cried my heart out visually thinking of every failure or frustration or disappointment that I ever encountered in my life!! This thought has been striking me every time I am brought to reality by life. Failure was nothing new to me because we had been buddies for lifetime! (That’s a story for a different day!) Then came a whisper from the depth of my heart. “Hey, stop crying, didnt all these situations and experiences made you stronger than you were before! Why don’t you go back to every situation that made you cry!! Again there was a flashback rerun in my mind! It was the same situations but my perspective of looking at them changed in a minute !! I was glad and proud of myself!! Then the voice in my heart told “Not bad Aparna, you have made it here! So far, so good!”  I smiled back and when to find my headphon...

Why don’t we talk much about our failures? Because when you just had met failure the pain is real, wound is deep and you try to ignore the feeling of despair, gloom, frustration and many such negative thought processes. Any failure big or small hurts you and causes physical pain, emotional pain and it may be coupled with any stress related health issues. I personally have made friends with failure many times. It one of my favourite timepass to keep trying, fall down, achieve little something then fail miserably, cry, pick myself up to start something else afresh. I personally believe that we learn to rise up stronger right after every time we fall down. It teaches us perseverance and resilience. A beautiful quote from Anne Baxter “It is best to have failure happen early in life! It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you can rise from the ashes.” Trying and failing at something is no fun. We feel upset, disappointed, and even angry. All of us fail time to time but how we r...

A few old friends have been calling me up recently, we chatted about lot of things – marriage, life, work, family. And there was one thing that was common in all of those conversations. You know what that was! Surprisingly most felt that their Self – Identity is lost. Perhaps Echart Tolle said it best: “When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world!” And when it comes to losing touch with themselves, women seem to do that best especially when it comes to relationships and motherhood.   It is generally said that women lose track of what they believe in, what they stand for, what is important to them and what makes them happy! Women tend to do this because they happen to be in a relationship, marriage or parenthood.   Women merge their lives to the point where they have no life to back to, their entire world revolves around their spouse and kids! This is the reason why women tend to lose their identity and kind of face an identity crisis after a few year...

If you ask me what is an emotion Aparna? I would reply that it is a strong feeling – could be anger, joy, despair, sad, surprise, disgust or typically anything you feel. Emotions are strong feelings derived from one’s circumstances, mood or relationship with others. Emotions are created by our brain. Different networks in the brain can create different emotions at various levels. It is through emotions our brain processes and gives meaning to bodily sensations, triggers, perceptions and past experiences. When we begin to understand our emotions we can reflect and know that an emotional timeline exists. Any emotion begins with a trigger that starts an emotional experience and results in a response to the emotion. Psychologists explain that we experience an emotional state of mind based on: 1.       Precondition: the context which influences the way we experience an emotion. 2.       Event : an event that happens in the world or ...