Of Questions and Answers

Today, we were out in the morning doing some errands for home and Raghav was with me. Very few kids his age, would have been out on the road at that time of day! Most would be at school! On the way back, we stopped by at his Patti's house and their neighbour was asking him why he had not gone to school, whether it was a holiday and so on......Raghav just decided not to answer. He smiled and walked away. We had discussed this earlier.....what to do when someone asks which school he went to - and to answer that he was being "homeschooled". Later in the car, I was asking him why he chose to remain silent and he said "amma, they will not understand if I say homeschool!" so then, we discussed more about how to explain that term to other people.

Well, that is a simple, everyday question that every other person would ask a kid - "which school do you go to?". But to think that today, that question doesn't have a simple answer, because there are so many more options available....and options and answers perhaps just make it more convenient for people to attach labels to kids or people and create their own opinions! I did feel a bit marginalised today, but not he! He was so matter-of-fact about it and handled the situation with so much ease and diplomacy.....I thought of people and what they would think, but not he.

This is the first step I guess in this journey which does not have a road-map. We are going wherever we want to go and wherever it takes us.....living in the moment and enjoying it....and to do that I think you need a lot of courage, which Raghav showed that he had today!

Thatha and Raghav go into Space

One day Raghav and Thatha called the Magic Carpet. They got onto the magic carpet with some food and some yummy, “rummy” snacks. Then they told the magic carpet – “You go into space! Aam…..eeem….oom…..go into space and shoot off! When we reach space we will all build a space station and then we can live there for 100 weeks!”
They went to the shop and got two rocket boosters for the carpet to shoot off. Then they got onto the magic carpet, wore their astronaut suits and shot off into space. They saw clouds, the sun and the moon on the way. They did not see other planets as they went another way. It was very dark in space, but they saw lots of light. The light came from all the stars.
Then they reached the moon. There they built a space station and lived there. They did lots of work at the space station. When they were hungry, they took the dry and wet food like icecream and snacks, added a little water and ate them.
They stretched their hands out and jumped and walked on the moon. They were very happy.
Then, they did not want to live there anymore. So, they came back to the earth on their magic carpet.

Bring on the revolution - a must-see video!

I just love this man and the way he puts
things across with his subtle sense of humour......"human communities
depend upon diversity of talents......not a singular conception of
ability......education doesn't feed people's passions and spirit....a 3
year old is not half a 6 year old!...".....and many more wonderful comments and thoughts.......hey friends do make time to see this video!

http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html