We don't need no education

He's scored a 100! Once associated with cricketers scoring a century, this jubilation is now heard rather frequently between the months of April and May when Board exam results are declared.

For the last decade or so, racking up 100 in sundry papers is no big deal. I’m not talking about science and math here. Today students of Humanities are not too far behind in the rat race. Full marks in Sociology; 100 out of 100 in English! How is that even possible?

This time of year, Facebook walls are plastered with congratulatory messages as beaming parents of 100-percenters wax eloquent about their child's achievements. Some even wave the evidence in the face of every doubting Thomas: a photo of the marksheet, no less.

But where do all these marksheets lead? Not jobs, surely, going by the number of unemployed youth in the country as of February 2018: a whopping 31 million. Now read that against the number of jobs created: 600,000.

So what exactly is the message that we are sending out to these kids? And what is it that they are learning? While some social science books advise couples "to adopt a male child to add meaning to their lives", a national textbook tells 11-year-olds that people who eat meat "easily cheat, tell lies, forget promises, are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes". A textbook for 15-year-olds in Chhattisgarh states that unemployment levels started rising post independence because women began working. Last I checked we were in the twenty-first century, poised to become the citizens of a superpower. Did the guys who’re prescribing these “textbooks” not get the memo?

I understand that it's a parent’s responsibility to encourage their wards and praise their achievements, and I don't mean to burst the bubble that they've built around themselves (or maybe I do), but is such education something to be proud of? If this is what the curriculum consists of, then is it time to say, We don't need no education?

What's in a name? Apparently, a lot

Tshering Phintso Denzongpa: the name’s quite a mouthful, eh? And if you are on your way to make it big in Bollywood, you wouldn’t want a name that would blow your chances for an audition because somebody couldn’t pronounce it. So why not pick something like Danny? Easy on the tongue and you don’t even need to go through the ordeal of having to decode your name. Hence the transition from Tshering Phintso Denzongpa to Danny Denzongpa was necessary. Also, if Yusuf Khan can be Dilip Kuamr, Balbirraj Kapoor can be Shashi Kapoor, Balraj Dutt can be Sunil Dutt, Shamsher Raj Kapoor can be Shammi Kapoor, you can say it was a trend of sorts.The name game’s a tough nut to crack and it’s sometimes very exasperating, especially when you are ordering food over the phone. A simple name (well simple for me, but Greek to them) is mispronounced and misspelt so many times, that now I’ve stopped giving out my name while ordering food, I use my colleague’s instead. I particularly remember one episode in a temple in Orissa, where an emissary of God thought that he’d be our best bet for a go-between us and God. But before he put forth our application to God, he needed our names, for identification purposes. Well, God needed to know for sure who the prayers were coming from! Having done the needful, we folded our hands in pure devotion. He uttered some mumbo jumbo, which was followed by each of our names, and then we heard ‘STADIUM’. Yes, he thought PEDEN was STADIUM. Some lucky stadium that must be to have had all my wishes answered! At work, my colleagues are always making sure that they get the correct pronunciation of my name and the ones who get it right on the first day itself have this triumphant look on their faces. But then the times they are a-changing and Bob Dylan has nothing to do with it. How? Why? When? We started with the name Tenzing in commercials, then we had a Tashi, the Tibetan druglord of Kaminey, played by Tenzin Nima. But then the baap of them all is 3 Idiots, where we have a protagonist called Phunshuk Wangdu, so what if their Wangdu sounds very much like Kishore Kumar’s ‘bangdu’ in Padosan. With Aamir Khan as the emissary, all izz well, never mind if he turned down the appeal to boycott the Olympic torch. With Hindi films being the torchbearer of change in society, this is one change that we’d love to witness. And if any producer, director needs any ideas on names for their next heroine, how would Peden be for starters? Now, didn’t a certain bard ask, “What’s in a name?” Apparently, a lot, Mr William!

'Chinks' in armour?

‘Aye chinki’…Once the cause of many a tu-tu main-main on the roads, this form of address hardly evinces a reaction from me these days. Let’s just say I have developed a thick skin. How thick you may ask? Thick enough for me to ignore a man’s advances as he undresses me with his looks and winks, asking, “Wanna have some fun?” May sound filmi to many, but I have encountered this so many times, that I beg to think differently. If you can’t beat them or join them, you should just ignore them. After all, didn’t someone say ignorance is bliss? When people ask me, “Where are you from?” My answer is immediately followed by another question, Where is this Darjeeling?” The smarter ones look puzzled for some time until they discover that Darjeeling is somewhere in Nepal or Bhutan. Some others would happily club us all as “Northeasterns”, never mind if you come from Darjeeling, Sikkim, Assam, Manipur or Nagaland. People love to put us all under one umbrella that labels us as an ‘advanced’ race. And by advanced, I don’t mean the Indus Valley Civilisation kind. If you are a ‘chinki’, anything goes. You are so ‘modern’ that you don’t mind smoking, drinking, having casual sexual encounters, getting felt up in the bus... ‘Hey, it’s inherent in your culture, right?’ I was aware of this perception that people in the cities had of us, even before I stepped out of the Hills. I remember how Pratichee, from the girl band, Viva, voiced her disappointment while looking at some of the band’s photographs. She exclaimed on national television: “Chee, I look like a chinki!” Okay, so a chee normally precedes the word chinki! We cry hoarse when we face racial abuse in a foreign land but then turn a blind eye to the events back home. After all, bade bade deshon main aisi choti choti baatein to hoti rehti hai! People arugue why crimes against Manipuris, Nagas and Assamese are singled out as incidents of racial violence when the country abounds with crimes of such nature. But perhaps, if the Naga girl hadn’t been perceived as easy going, her otherwise reticent IIT scholar neighbour, who was found guilty of murdering her, would have continued to lead a repressed life the way that he had been doing so far. Incidents such as these make many retrace their steps from ‘big bad Delhi’. However, thanks to reality shows, the awareness is coming in, and people are suddenly waking up to our presence. So, while MTV Rock On mentions Karma Tenpo, a Tenzing finds mention in the Virgin Mobile ad. Thank God for it, else the way China has been going around claiming Tawang to be theirs, it’s just a matter of time before they stake a claim to Darjeeling, Sikkim and the rest of the Northeast. But given the fact that many of my fellow Indians do not even know that these places come under the Indian flag, they would not miss much, now, would they?