The choice made by Jatayu

In the Ramayana, the King of Lanka Ravana kidnaps Sita after distracting Rama and Lakshmana. As Ravana carries away Sita in a flying chariot, Sita cries for help.

Several birds, animals and repitiles hear her cry, but no one is able to intervene. Some are just plain incapable of flying, others are too scared to face Ravana. Jatayu, the king of of vultures was an old bird. He barely had strength to fly, and he knew that he was no match for Ravana. But Jatayu did not hesitate. He saw that adharma was happening before his eyes, and he felt the need to take action. He rose into the sky and fought Ravana. The fight ended in a short span, as Ravan cut off Jatayu’s wings.

As Jatayu lay bleeding and close to death, Rama and Lakshmana approached him. Even as Rama held him in his arms, Jatayu did not say – “Look, I tried saving Sita and now becasue of that I am dying.” Instead, he said – “Pardon me Rama, I did not have the ability to stop Ravana and rescue Sita. I could not stop adharma from happening.”

When we see that society is going down a wrong path, we have three choices:

1. Do not try to change anything. This is a reasonable choice if your assumption is: “The Lord has created this situation, and the Lord shall change it. In any case, all is Maya.”
2. Attempt to make a change, but only if it has a guaranteed outcome or benefit. This is a wrong choice, an adharmic choice.
3. Attempt to make a change, irrespective of the consequences. This is the choice made by Jatayu.

Steps 1 and 3 are born out of different forms of Bhakti. Step 2 is ahankaara. The choice one makes usually depends on their mindset, previous karma, and their current circumstances. And this choice will effect their future karma.

Urban vs rural development

A few years ago, I opened a computer lab at one Govt school. It then expanded to two schools. Now, I am planning to open labs in additional schools. My long term goal is to start a polytechnic in the village. A lot of people asked me – why start this in the village? If you want to educate these kids, why not send them to the city? There are many schools like navodaya vidyalayas, Narayana’s, Chaitanyas. After 10th and 12th there are many polytechnics, BSc, BTech, BPharma courses. Not only that, there are many Govt programs already offering discounted education. Why not prepare the students for these? This article hopes to address some of those questions.

1. One argument is that moving a child from village to city will give them a better perspective; it is just like someone going abroad for studies. It is not the same. A student who has finished Bachelors and is going abroad has already achieved some amount of maturity. The age is such that one can overcome sudden cultural changes. A child in 12th grade moving from village to city will find it more difficult to internalize such changes. The prospect of facing new languages, new people, new lifestyles magnifies the pressure of academic performance. Also, an Indian student does not go to the US or Europe for a better perspective. The student goes because the student does not want to come back to India; they believe there are no opportunities in their own country. If a student genuinely goes abroad to study and then comes back to live and work in the home nation, then the country can be proud. A country whose child has to leave the shores due to no opportunities should be ashamed. Similarly, if a child has to leave a village due to lack of opportunity, we should be ashamed, not say that it gives the child a good perspective.
2. A lot of people insist that moving from villages to cities leads to upward mobility. That an educated person will earn more in day than a farmer earns in a year. This is only part of the truth. A city dweller earns more, but also has to spend more.
3. Another popular opinion is that a villager has become a jada pravritti (lazy, disinterested) person, and making a person move to a city will force the individual to be enterprising/satisfied. If merely moving to a city would make someone enterprising, then everyone in the city would have been leading happy lives. This is clearly not so. Many lead a miserable existence. There is a population of people who are educated, but unemployed. They have it even worse. Education gives them qualification, but no skills. They cannot be employed in the city, nor will their pride let them return to the hometown/home village. Many of these people have studied not because they love their subject, but because they were told that education will give them a GREAT job. But the promise of white collar jobs for everyone is only a mirage.
4. A related question is the difference between luxuries and wants, salaries and wages, profits and shares. There is a HUGE difference between “premium, high paying jobs” and “blue collar, subsistence jobs”. Continuing this status quo can only lead to more inequality and the ensuing social strife. There is not enough steel on the planet to give cars to every person. But there is enough in nature to provide transport for everyone.
5. Villages do not have any avenues of self-development. This is precisely why educational institutes must be strengthened in villages, and possibly in tier-2/3 towns. If every resource – hospitals, schools, entertainment centers, shops, manufacturing move to cities, what will villages do? Who will farm? Education and healthcare is a basic necessity. Society must provide these at no cost to every individual. And the quality should be world-class. If one has accessible healthcare and education for every, say 10-20 villages, a few allied services also will emerge around these. India only seems to be interested in developing economic zones, and large urban sprawls. What will happen to villages, 2nd and 3rd tier towns? Ancient Indian education had the concept of Gurukulas – where pupils lived with teachers in ashrams away from cities. It allowed a child to focus on studies instead of getting distracted. Universities were setup in cities for higher education. We are not saying that all education has to be moved to villages. But to the extent possible, education must be available to everyone, everywhere. Especially when today’s technology and eLearning can make this happen.

Health care must also be available to everyone everywhere. But that is a different thought, for a different day.

Free education: What, how, and why?

A few friends were speaking about modalities of education: Paid,  Subsidized, or Free. In paid education, the teacher is given an income to teach. Subsidized education is when the act of teaching gets the teacher some amount, and a different activity (consulting/farming/business etc) gets the teacher some amount. Free is when the teacher is not paid to teach.

In this definition, modern University education falls under the bucket of Paid or Subsidized. Teachers are generally paid well at Universities. There are also adjunct and visiting faculty who are paid a small amount to teach part-time. Free education is when a teacher does not depend on the teaching activitiy for income, or even subsistence. When we discussed free education further, the how and why also came up:

How can education be free?

It is claimed that in ancient India, education was “free”. Sages, saints, and teachers apparently never took money for teaching. I am saying apparently because I am yet to meet a saint who will teach for free. Teachers are also humans, and have needs. These needs were met by picking up grains from fields, begging from house to house, or accepting donations from rich people. When a student was graduating, the teacher could express a wish that the student needed to fulfil. But this was also called “dakshina”, or donation. Technically, the teacher could not demand a fee. In some parts of India, this was called “Uncha vritti”. Uncha vritti places a very high demand on the teacher. It is possible that on certain days, a teacher may not get anything from uncha vritti. The challenge is familiar to Indians who may have read the Mahabharata. Dronacharya, an expert teacher of warfare becomes an acharya for the royal family of Hastinapur. Dronacharya is not able to afford milk for his infant son. But according to the custom of the day, he can only beg, but not demand any salary. This leads to his bitter enemity with a King called Drupada, and the story is summarized here.

India apparently had the concept of Agrahara – land was donated by kings or rich people where teachers established centers to learn, and recite vedas. These were mostly religious in nature, and there is an introduction here.

One can argue that the University system enables somewhat “free” education. A university offers salary to a teacher in return for taking classes. The argument made is that this salary is very very small as compared to salaries offered in industry. But the university in modern days no longer supports the philosophy behind “free” education. With salary negotiations, perks, and all benefits taken into account, a good University job is quite cushy. A department or faculty is often measured in terms of how much grant money they can attract and how many publications they get. Universities do not care if the grant lead to social change, or challenged the boundaries of human understanding. Hard and hot science departments (Computers, Materials, Biology etc) are flourishing, with entire buildings and campuses dedicated to their pursuit. But humanities and fine arts departments are struggling for existence.

Modern social structure also no longer supports “free” education. Society itself rewards a hard hitting coder than a soft playing pianist. Students do not go to a teacher to learn a topic for the love of the subject. They learn a subject because the right keywords in a resume will get them a job. Ergo, they will offer the best enticement to a teacher who can promise the best “career”. In some horrifying situations, students do not even care if the teaching was of a good quality or not. The perception of getting a “degree” with good grades is more important than the knowledge gained in a classroom.

eLearning can offer somewhat “free” education. The computer is is non-emotional. The process of teaching facts and figures can be made “free”, universally available. eLearning cannot replace teachers, or the thrill of a classroom. It cannot offer knowledge or mentorship, but it can be a good stepping stone, a resource where there is no alternative.

Why should education be free?

Many friends argued that free education is not good and cannot have good quality. In their definition, good quality is when education translates into applications and careers. Such education is a ticket out of poverty and towards modern living. The argument made here is that such eduation will require the latest technologies, the best and the most updated teachers. And such paraphrenalia will command a good price. So, education must be free for the customer, but it cannot be free for the teacher. Let the Government, philantrophy or some other mechanism pay on behalf of the student. But the University and teacher must have commercial interests in their mind. I also shared this view for several decades.

But now I realize that there is one risk. Most careers lead to greed, accumulation, aggrandization of the ego. This directly or indirectly feeds the many conflicts in this world. The original conflicts among humans were for control over natural resources – rivers, land, minerals, food, manpower. Those fights exist, but more nuanced reasons have been added – it is called “market share”, “profit”, “ideology”, “religion”, “way of life”.

Why is this competition/fighting related to education? Education leads to knowledge and technology, and these often give a winning edge. Knowledge allowed countries to design cannons, guns, rockets and atom bombs. Knowledge allows companies to design products that are better than their competition: faster screen, better fuel efficiency, more fashionable, more screen time, more customer engagement, increased dwell time, higher click through. Countries, religions, ideologies, companies, sports teams, colleges, schools, and individuals, everyone have started indulging in this hyper competitive race at the respective level. And any form of education that can give even the minutest edge has the most commercial success.

Free education is required because it can help us question the premise of competition. If education turns into a transaction that binds students, parents, or society into a pre-concieved notion of success, it is not true education. Truly free education may force at least some people to think: “Who are you competing with? Another human, member of another species, nature? Is this competition worth winning?”

Whatever be the model, such education can only be free if an individual teacher can, to some extent overcome the demands of a materialistic life.

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Personal disclaimer: I am yet to become a “free” teacher. Currently, I am a “paid” teacher.

Two days, two lectures, two thoughts

On 20th Aug and 21st Aug, two events occurred that made me ponder a lot. The first event was at Yellakonda school, where I realized the shocking extent of undernourishment among school children. I teach computer science classes at the Nareguda and Yellakonda village on Tuesdays. This is part of a more long-term effort at developing these two villages (Families of Sustainable Living). During this class, I was using the weight of children to explain a scientific concept. The first child had a weight of 31, the second 32, third 30, the fourth 28. I then reminded myself that this was extreme malnourishment. It was not like I did not know the extent of mal-nourishment in villages. I was very fimiliar with it since 2004. But it shocked me that this was still rampant in a village that was so close to a bustling metropolis.

The second was a lecture that I delivered at a management institute on 21st Aug. Officers from Indian security forces were also in the audience. The audience was extremely knowledgeable. The questions they asked revealed their genuine seriousness in the subject. But one question stood out – AI will require implementing several large IT and non-IT pieces. Many Govt departments will have to come together to work on it. What is your thought on how this can be done? I had several points in my answer, but I basically suggested increased collaboration, policy changes, and rising above departmental turf wars.

What connects these two events? The reason why our school children continue to suffer after decades of “development policies” is broadly the same reason why our forces suffer after decades of “growing GDP”.

Not all children who sit in classroom will turn out to be a scholar or sportsman, neither will all soldiers say “Yeh dil maange more” when faced with the enemy (Capt Vikram Batra, PVC).

Almost every child trusts that the classroom will offer tools to improve onself and maybe become something in life. But the low body weight, and caries in the teeth will effect the child’s performance. At the other end is a young 20-something pilot who sits in an aircraft with dreams of soaring into the sky and if needed, dying for the nation. The pilot sits in it with the confidence that the nation is behind every fighting soldier. But the pilots performance will be limited by the aircraft which is possibly older than many serving pilots and a rigid bureaucracy that halts every attempt at modernization.

The spirit of this nation is strong. And we see positive changes everyday. I hope the change continues to be steady and becomes faster. The body and mind have been racked by sicknesses for decades, and hopefully the medicine being applied will be timely. Will the body continue to remain straight jacketed with rules and regulations that are from a socialist era, or from the occupying British Govt? Will the mind continue to tear itself apart with theoretical discussions and opinion pieces by intelligensia sipping their morning tea in lofty offices?

Setting up lab at Yellakonda ZPHS

Today I checked the monitors at Yellakonda school. Mr Bhaskar, the social studies teacher was present at the school. Two students Madhu and Kiran helped us with checking the ten monitors and ensuring we could use them. Hopefully by next week, the lab should start in this school as well. I will be buying 10 raspberry PI B+ to power these systems. We would also need 2 VGA cables, 10 mice and keyboards.

Improving villages through knowledge

Read a report about how laptops distributed in Rajasthan to school-kids were lying unused. The Govt must encourage experts to engage more thoroughly with students. Giving laptops is great, but empowering teachers, and asking industry experts to work closely with students is more necessary.

On Sept 29, 2016 I donated 2 laptops to the Nareguda ZPHS in Vikarabad Dst. Photos from that are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Gd1m7U3PSfvVvgFR8.

Since that time, I have been trying out a few ideas on technology based education at this school:

1. Skill labs where experts can interact with children in ZPHS. Document that describes some of the details is here. I and  Dr Konda Kishore have started a lab at the Nareguda ZPHS. A few videos are here. 
   1. Photos from different events: (a) Certificate distribution for the first set of students who finished our course on computer science. (b) First written exam on computer science. (c) Class on binary numbers.
2. Automatic vending machine to give nutrition based food. Design is here.
3. Continuous assessment of students and teachers. A part of this was tried out during my stint at CMU Africa, and I will be trying that more seriously a the ZPHS. Maybe by end of 2018, I should have more definite progress on this.

Science Exhibition

I was invited to judge a science exhibition today. I never realized that this innocent participation on my behalf would be a Pretoria moment. Students had to prepare mock ups on one of the following topics: Software development life cycle, Innovation in computer science, Different types of software systems, eGovernance, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Networking, Real life uses of computers, Innovation using computers, evolution of operating systems. The students had to prepare posters describing the topic, speak about it, and then demonstrate any working prototype, if they had one. The posters were very colorful and meticulously prepared. Barring few, all the students had parroted a script and were repeating whatever was written on their respective posters. However, many students did not even know the meanings of the terms they had used.

The very first team I had spoken to was from Andhra Pradesh. There were two children manning the poster. I asked the name of one girl. “Sharada (name changed) sir, from ABC school.” I asked the other girl for her name. She showed a shy smile and took a step back. Sharada said: “Sir, she is just there to hold the poster”. I said: “It is OK, let her give the name”. Mahita, it was. Sharada started with her demonstration on the evolution of operating systems. She got stuck several times in between. For a student of class 8, it was a bit odd that she had not tried to learn the basics of what she was presenting. A lot of effort had gone into designing cardboard models of computers, paper mache models of an RTOS, several Android phones, and even the scale model of a city. But she clearly lacked knowledge of the topic. Unfortunately for her, the poster holder Mahita also ended up answering a question. Sharada was peeved, not at her own lack of depth but at the ignominy of a “helper” answering her question.

Raj, a student of class 9 was presenting on eGovernance. His presentation covered a slew of ideas: eBanking, eHospitals, eRegistration, eLearning, eEverything. I asked him: “Are there any disadvantages of eGovernance”. Raj: “People are losing jobs due to eGovernance and Govt has to provide replacement jobs. Govt cannot provide jobs anymore. Google is doing a project along with TCS to replace education systems. They will covert everything to a e-Sysytem, and provide jobs”. Clearly surprised, I asked: “Son, who gave you such information?”. Raj: “Sir, you may not know everything. My father is a professor in the computer science department at AU in Vizag. He told me all this”. I asked: “What is his name?”. “Sai Bhaskar” came the reply. I asked: “Dr Sai Bhaskar?”. Raj replied: “No sir, only Sai Bhaskar. He was a professor, now he is not a professor”. After we left his table, he came up walking towards us and said – “Sir, how do we prevent hacking? What can be done to prevent people from taking money from ATM machines after hacking them? I heard that hackers can use ultrasound to break into computers. Flipkart once crashed because of this.”

Sukesh from Bangalore, participating in the innovation section spoke about “LiFi”. In his demo, the audio out of an android phone and a 2.5v battery was connected to an LED. The LED was shining brightly, likely from the 2.5 v battery. The audio out was also connected to a small computer speaker. The speaker was getting power from the mains, and also had a solar panel taped to it. His claim was that when the LED was on, and placed close to the solar panel, the speakers were having more amplitude. I asked Sukesh: “How do you know this is due to LiFi.” Sukesh hold the speaker up, close to his ear and says: “Hear it sir, it is louder”. I did not have the heart to even correct him.

There were other bloopers in the science meet, but Sukesh was the most jarring. I could not comprehend how the school teachers could allow such shallow presentations to come to a regional competition. I dont know if it is a failure of the system, parents, or some strange phenomena within children. I am seriously terrified of the future prospects of my nation.

This is the first school exhibition I attended. Over the next few weeks, I will try to attend other science meets. I hope there will be some succour to be found.

PS: All names and location details have been changed.

A few articles about education

My family knows I do not agree with how education happens. I have not yet done anything concrete about it, other than visit several schools that support alternative modes of teaching. I have learnt about some of these techniques. Often, I have doubted my own observations, tending to ask myself: “Even though these systems exist, majority are not following them. They must be doing something right.” But honestly, my belief is not that they are doing right. I am scared to experiment, play with something as fundamental as schooling. I have seen too much proof that the current education system needs to be modified in some form. A few links:

Why children should move. Main article here:

Ironically, many children are walking around with an underdeveloped vestibular (balance) system today–due to restricted movement. In order to develop a strong balance system, children need to move their body in all directions, for hours at a time. Just like with exercising, they need to do this more than just once-a-week in order to reap the benefits. Therefore, having soccer practice once or twice a week is likely not enough movement for the child to develop a strong sensory system.

Children are going to class with bodies that are less prepared to learn than ever before. With sensory systems not quite working right, they are asked to sit and pay attention. Children naturally start fidgeting in order to get the movement their body so desperately needs and is not getting enough of to “turn their brain on.” What happens when the children start fidgeting? We ask them to sit still and pay attention; therefore, their brain goes back to “sleep.”

This lack of movement and having to sit through the day effects grown up children as well. A UK teacher attended classes being taken by two students in class 10 and 12. She found out how tiresome it was to sit around only absorbing the classes. (Original article here, parts of article posted here:

I could not believe how tired I was after the first day. I literally sat down the entire day, except for walking to and from classes. We forget as teachers, because we are on our feet a lot – in front of the board, pacing as we speak, circling around the room to check on student work, sitting, standing, kneeling down to chat with a student as she works through a difficult problem…we move a lot.

But students move almost never. And never is exhausting. In every class for four long blocks, the expectation was for us to come in, take our seats, and sit down for the duration of the time. By the end of the day, I could not stop yawning and I was desperate to move or stretch. I couldn’t believe how alert my host student was, because it took a lot of conscious effort for me not to get up and start doing jumping jacks in the middle of Science just to keep my mind and body from slipping into oblivion after so many hours of sitting passively.
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In addition, there was a good deal of sarcasm and snark directed at students and I recognized, uncomfortably, how much I myself have engaged in this kind of communication. I would become near apoplectic last year whenever a very challenging class of mine would take a test, and without fail, several students in a row would ask the same question about the test. Each time I would stop the class and address it so everyone could hear it. Nevertheless, a few minutes later a student who had clearly been working his way through the test and not attentive to my announcement would ask the same question again. A few students would laugh along as I made a big show of rolling my eyes and drily stating, “OK, once again, let me explain…”

Of course it feels ridiculous to have to explain the same thing five times, but suddenly, when I was the one taking the tests, I was stressed. I was anxious. I had questions. And if the person teaching answered those questions by rolling their eyes at me, I would never want to ask another question again. I feel a great deal more empathy for students after shadowing, and I realize that sarcasm, impatience, and annoyance are a way of creating a barrier between me and them. They do not help learning.

Ah yes, there is this nice Ted Video from Ken Robinson about how education kills creativity. Link to article here, excerpts from his talk below:

But something strikes you when you move to America and when you travel around the world: Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one. Doesn’t matter where you go. You’d think it would be otherwise, but it isn’t. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on Earth. And in pretty much every system too, there’s a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they’re allowed to, we all do. We all have bodies, don’t we?

…….

Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there’s a reason. The whole system was invented — around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don’t do music, you’re not going to be a musician; don’t do art, you won’t be an artist. Benign advice — now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution. And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.

…….
When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn’t have a job it’s because you didn’t want one. And I didn’t want one, frankly. (Laughter) But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It’s a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.
…….

It’s really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people have never heard of; she’s called Gillian Lynne — have you heard of her? Some have. She’s a choreographer and everybody knows her work. She did “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera.” She’s wonderful. I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet in England, as you can see. Anyway, Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said, “Gillian, how’d you get to be a dancer?” And she said it was interesting; when she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the ’30s, wrote to her parents and said, “We think Gillian has a learning disorder.” She couldn’t concentrate; she was fidgeting. I think now they’d say she had ADHD. Wouldn’t you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn’t been invented at this point.
…….

Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school. And at the end of it — because she was disturbing people; her homework was always late; and so on, little kid of eight — in the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, “Gillian, I’ve listened to all these things that your mother’s told me, and I need to speak to her privately.” He said, “Wait here. We’ll be back; we won’t be very long,” and they went and left her. But as they went out the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out the room, he said to her mother, “Just stand and watch her.” And the minute they left the room, she said, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, “Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick; she’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”
…….

She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School; she became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company — the Gillian Lynne Dance Company — met Andrew Lloyd Weber. She’s been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history; she’s given pleasure to millions; and she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

Death by Plastic

Imagine someone were to feed you small doses of plastic with your daily lunch. And then, over a period of a few months, you suffer from a dull ache in the stomach. The sensation grows into an agonizing pain. One day, you are unable to bear it any longer, and settle down in a quite corner, awaiting for death to relieve you of the suffering. The buffalo you see in the pictures below went through the same phenomenon.

Buffalo dead by the roadside, plastic in its stomach. Not far from Aparna Sarovar near Gachibowli, Hyderabad

Buffalo with plastic in its belly

The head of a fully grown Buffalo, killed by the plastic in its belly.

On my daily commute yesterday (4th Sept), I took a detour to ride through some of the back alleys near Aparna Sarovar. I rode past the empty HUDA layouts of Nanakramguda, past a spacious temple that was rendering a recorded Sri Suktam. Crossing a pack of dogs, I came upon a large mass of plastic by the roadside. At first sight, this would have been your friendly roadside dump; A product of the many colonies that want the convenience of a plastic lifestyle, but do not want the nuisance of its disposal. But there was a different stench coming from this pile, and the plastic was too tightly wrapped for a roadside dump. When I saw the characteristic placement of the pile, the series of ribs, and the smell of rotting flesh, I realized that this pile was different. The horns told me that it was a Buffalo, and the size of the pile meant that it had a very painful death. Going by the size, the plastic could have been easily about 40-50 kilos. And given that there was almost no skin or flesh on the bones, the death happened at least a couple of months ago.

I had known this for a very long time that Plastic kills animals (See these links: Harmful Effect of Plastic in Animals, you tube video, Plastic Bags & Animals: Making the Wild Safe for Wildlife, Pacific Ocean trash patch mystery: How many fish eat plastic?). Even sea fish, and wildlife are affected by eating trash. The toxins in plastic ultimately make it into our food chain as well. But for the first time, I was seeing the carcass of an animal that died of acute plastic poisoning. A few months ago, had vehemently asked my family to be completely plastic free. I could not get my family to comply fully, but made some partial progress. I should try harder.

Johnny be a good boy….

Johhny be a good boy, and drink your milk.

Johhny be a good boy, and grow to be strong.

Johhny learn that your alphabets are ABC,

Johhny don’t say A and C….

Johhny be a good boy and say thank you.

Johhny be a good boy and say sorry.

Johhny those toys do not belong to you,

Johhny don’t…….

I found the above lines as part of a rant written some years ago in my diary. The rant was about how children are being straight jacketed. I am not sure if the above lines were written by me, or if I took them from somewhere.