Skip to main content

The gentle kiss of Appreciation

Maggie and I with a student - all smiles


I am a loyal critic of Modi. Hence those people who don’t know me personally tend to see me as a disgruntled citizen, a grumpy old man always finding fault with his government. Those who know me personally will laugh merrily at that virtual image of mine. Especially my students.

I am a merry person in the classroom. A friend more than a teacher. I smile most of the time. I laugh whenever there is an opportunity. I encourage my students to create occasions for smiles and laughs. I appreciate even the smallest achievements of theirs in the most generous terms possible so much so once a student asked me why I think everything they do is “very good” or “excellent”. I answered her with the wisdom borrowed from Marcus Aurelius that I wanted them to look at the stars so that one day they would be running with them.

Appreciation is a miracle-worker especially with youngsters. How many thousands of times have I seen faces blossoming like fragrant flowers merely because I said something like ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’? Appreciation does far more than that. It makes the student strive for greater achievements the next time and still greater the next time. I keep getting better and better results as time moves. I keep seeing miracles unfolding. All because I say ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’ or their equivalents when required.

It was Lewis Carroll who imagined the snow as a lover of the trees and fields. The snow kisses them gently. And then it covers them up snug with a white quilt. Does it tell them, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again’? Does it tell them in soothing words that they need this rest?

Appreciation is something like that. A gentle kiss, a snug cover, the caress of a whisper.

Let me return from this poetry to the prose that I began with. I would like to appreciate my government too. I am not a grumpy old man inspecting the sewers of my country. I would love to say ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’ to my Prime Minister too. Give me a chance, please.

PS. Prompted by Indispire Edition 415: Can you share unselfishly, genuine appreciation of someone's accomplishment? #firgun

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJuly 19, 2022 at 10:34 PM

    Hari OM
    Bravo! &*> YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. rupam sarmaJuly 20, 2022 at 10:09 AM

    So nice :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sujatha SathyaJuly 20, 2022 at 10:09 AM

    the snow analogy was so evocative

    ReplyDelete
  4. magiceyeJuly 20, 2022 at 10:51 AM

    Haha... well...

    ReplyDelete
  5. ArtiJuly 24, 2022 at 1:39 PM

    A beautiful post that's put a warm smile in me. So glad to read that you are the way you are with your students. I'm a firm believer of the 'art of appreciation.' Even as a ripe old adult, I respond better to 'very good' than 'could've done better;)'.
    I especially like your appeal to the Govt. Made me smile even more widely.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...
8 comments
Read more

Joys of Onam and a reflection

Suppose that the whole universe were to be saved and made perfect and happy forever on just one condition: one single soul must suffer, alone, eternally. Would this be acceptable? Philosopher William James asked that in his 1891 book, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . Please think about it once again and answer the question for yourself. You, as well as others, are going to live a life without a tinge of sorrow. Joyful existence. Life in Paradise. The only condition is that one person will take up all the sorrows of the universe on him-/herself and suffer – alone, eternally. What do you say? James’s answer is a firm no . “Not even a god would be justified in setting up such a scheme,” James asserted, knowing too well how the Bible justified a positive answer to his question. “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, so that the nation can be saved” [John 11:50]. Jesus was that one man in the Biblical vision of redemption. I was reading a Malayalam period...
14 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more