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...
18 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more