Boys And Girls Can Never Be Friends

I grew up with two sisters – one elder and one younger. We had neighbours who have 4 children – 3 girls and 1 boy. I grew up with 2 of the girls who were closer to our age. My early years were filled with games and activities that the 5 of us did together. Hence, I didn’t recognize the difference between boys and girls until I joined school.

My first awkward experience around a girl was in my 4^th grade. I used to sit on the first bench sharing it with another girl. I have heard a story from my parents about how she kissed me on my cheek once. I was made fun off and embarrassed by my parents, teachers and friends. I don’t think I understood what the big deal was about.

In my 5^th grade, I used to sometimes participate in games with girls during lunch break and my boy friends used to laugh at me and make fun of me. Having grown up around girls, I didn’t understand what the fuss was about but definitely felt awkward and soon I stopped playing with them.

In my 7^th grade, I used to share my seat with another girl. Adolescence was setting in so while there was awkwardness, we soon overcame it and became good friends. Our 7^th grade class teacher was very special and encouraged both genders to sit together and interact. However, my class mates thought that was weird. Soon enough, there were rumours abound about us liking each other.  When she left school (her father was transferred to another city), I remember I cried and I missed her around for a long time. I have fond memories of how we used to compete to finish an algebra problem first.

During 7^th to 10^th grade, as full blown adolescence hit all of us, equations of friendships changed rapidly. We became more conscious of each other’s presence. While some of us explored, most of us were too shy and scared to explore. My parents made it abundantly clear that every girl in my class was my sister. During school assemblies, our principal made it a point to state that every boy and girl in your school was your brother and sister. Most giggled and some like me believed it to be true. During Raksha Bandhan (a local Indian festival where a sister ties a band on her brother’s wrist and a brother promises to protect and care for her), my hands would be filled with bands from my classmates.

It was during one of my co-curricular activities, I met my best friend for life. While we don’t stay in touch often now, we both share very special memories of our time together in school. She was possibly the first girl that I became truly close to. After our classes, I would often walk her to the bus stop and wait until she got her bus. I would then cycle home. Sometimes, we would stand by the bus stop and talk for hours – sharing our life stories, our dreams and our aspirations. It was one of my most special times. We had been to each other’s homes and while parents were suspicious, the stamp of approval came when we declared we were brother-sister. I don’t think we cared much as long we could be friends. Best friends. I am glad we still are. There were rumours. We were conscious. Concerned. Felt awkward at time. But, the relationship felt right.

Once, in my 10^th grade, our class was punished for missing our PE (Physical Education) class and we were made to write an imposition – “I will not miss PE class” 500 times. What a wasted punishment. Anyway, we did it. The next day when submitting my imposition, another teacher said it out loud, “Give him an additional 500 times imposition; I have seen him talking to and hanging out with girls!” I lost it and ran away sobbing uncontrollably in front of the whole school. I was a spectacle in front of the whole school and was called a sissy by many. Embarrassment galore. I was called into the Principal’s office, who was a lovely lady, but made it very clear, “I hear you hang out and talk to girls after school hours. You have been seen hanging out with a girl at the bus stop. We don’t allow such behavior in our school and I expect you to stop immediately. You are spoiling the reputation of the school. Being the School Captain, it is unbecoming of you.”

Luckily, I must say, at that time, she didn’t call and complain to my parents. I was an embarrassment in front of the whole school and felt deeply hurt and ashamed for no fault of mine.

I am glad that incident didn’t affect our friendship and we are the best of friends even today. I can’t even imagine the shame and embarrassment my friend must have gone through.

For years since then, I have struggled to build healthy relationships with the opposite gender. My early relationships with girls were fraught with guilt and shame. My view of myself, when I looked at women or felt attracted to them, always left me guilty and shameful. I never knew when my sisters got their first period, where the pads might have mysteriously disappeared and why on certain days during the month, my sisters missed school. I can’t even imagine the guilt and shame they might have grown up with.

Yet, at a certain age, I was expected to get married to a girl, make love to her, understand her, build a lifelong relationship with her and spend the rest of my life with her. I was expected to be able to communicate with this person, share a home with her and make her my best friend. I also have many colleagues at work who are women and I am expected to communicate and have a healthy working relationship with them. At this point, I have a woman as a colleague (in this case also my wife) who shares my vision and we are building an organization together. 

All of my life, I have heard messages to stay away from girls and then suddenly I am expected to work in the most important team of my life with a woman, and navigate life’s complex changes with a wife.

Am I missing something here? Do we see the irony of it?

The problem is deeply entrenched in the way we are bringing up children – be it parents or teachers. In our work at Dream a Dream, we come across young people every day (men and women) growing up in a gender insensitive environment. Young men saying they will beat up their wives because they have seen their fathers and uncles do it. Young women accepting violence from men because they have been taught to accept and endure.

“My parents want me to get married at 16. What can I do Uncle? They know best.”

“Women are all like this only. They want money and gifts and then they leave you and go.”

Judgments and impressions that are formed through hearsay and being exposed to a highly stereotypical media.

Growing up in a gender imbalanced world and then expecting to have a healthy relationship with the opposite gender is crazy. Today, I struggle to understand my wife, her views and opinions, her feelings and her needs and she struggles to understand mine. We often talk and wonder about how we are brought up in an environment where we hardly communicate with the opposite gender and are yet expected to magically resolve all our conflicts as adults. While we are still committed to work through this paradox, how many couples out there are stuck in unhappy marriages or walk out of them, because they don’t have the skills to deal with each other?

Creating healthy environments in schools for children of different genders to talk, share, interact and play together could solve the challenges they face in relationships as adults. Creating spaces and conversations that foster healthy relationships, empathy for each other, respect and dignity will help build healthy adult relationships. Dispelling stereotypes, guilt and shame around love, sex and friendships between genders will help build a positive self-identify and responsible behavior.

I know it’s taken me years to heal the scars left from those early gender experiences filled with guilt and shame and I wish we would stop perpetuating these experiences amongst children today.

I can still hear my mother telling me during one of our school picnics, “Stay away from women, smoking and alcohol!” I know she meant well but it really made it think of women as evil. I am grateful that deep down I didn’t believe it since my mother, being a woman, is an angel and I have found a best friend for life in my wife. 

My biggest Life Lesson came during lunch-break at School

I spent 13 years in School. These included countless hours inside the classroom learning physics, chemistry, history and mathematics. I loved most of the subjects. 

I memorized dates in History but was fascinated by stories of warriors and kings when they came alive.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was easy to remember from the comic book than the text book as I saw the illustrations and imagined a world from a bygone era.

I practiced algorithms and theorems and a few odd compounds in Chemistry but loved most when we mixed compounds in the lab and watched magic happen.

I spent days pouring over geography trying to understand the formation of clouds and volcanoes. I dreamt of being David Livingstone and discovering a new world on Earth like he discovered the Congo basin.

I loved Computers primarily because I had a huge crush on my teacher and I so wanted to impress her.

I loved Algebra because I was challenged by a girl and it was good fun to sometimes beat her. Though, I have never understood why we learnt Algebra.

I hated Physics primarily because the teacher could not care to explain.

I didn't much care for Hindi because the teacher spent most the class session telling us stories from his life rather than teaching. So on and so forth.

Yet, all I was expected to do was memorize and regurgitate it back during examinations. The hundreds of hours inside the classroom didn't give me a single life lesson that is worth remembering. My biggest life lesson came during our lunch break at School in my 6th grade.

Every lunch break, after gobbling up our lunch, we used to form two teams and race around our colonial styled school building in a relay format. 5-6 people in a team exchanging batons after completing a full school circle. Darting between scores of students, who were playing, running, jumping around, it was our own little Olympics. This particular year, our team was in shambles. We were consistently losing every single day of the school year and our hopes were grim. We tried making team changes but nothing seemed to click. One fine afternoon, we finished lunch and gathered around for a daily race. Something was different that day. I felt a sense of calm and in a moment of consciousness, I said to myself, “we will win today!”

The race began and with each exchange of baton the other team was expanding their lead. The fastest runners from each team were reserved for the last. The last person in my friend’s team got the baton and he raced away feeling confident of winning yet another race. I received the baton just as my opponent was making his first turn. I closed my eyes for a split second and repeated, “We will win today!”

When I opened my eyes, everyone around me turned into a blur – children jumping around, playing, walking – everyone just disappeared. I saw only my opponent as he was making the turn. I ran. I ran with a sense of calm confidence. I felt my feet flying just inches above the ground. At the third turn, I overtook my opponent. I saw from the corner my eye; he had frozen in his tracks. I knew we had won not just the race but every race thereafter. We won and I knew it.

Whenever I think back at my school days, this memory is the most vivid. For years, I didn’t understand why I remembered this incident so vividly. It always comes alive like it happened yesterday. Now, I know. My body, my mind and my soul remembers this incident because it is my biggest life lesson.

It gave me my self-belief. The belief that I can make Impossible POSSIBLE!

Every time I am down in the dumps, pushed to a corner, when things seem impossible, this single experience gives me the strength and resilience to fight back, to pull myself up, to rise above and to come alive again. An experience from an inane activity that happened during lunch break at school.

I believe we all have these moments from our childhood. If we look around, our children’s lives are rich with powerful learning moments that fundamentally shape them, transform them, and give them a sense of their identity. Our children are curious and hungry to learn, discover, make sense of this world. The constant questions, the insatiable hunger to know, the Whys - these are all indicators of life's longing for itself. 

It's time schools are transformed to be nurturing environments for such powerful moments not just at lunch break but also within the classroom. 

It's time we recognize that children are dropping out of the school system because they are not feeling engaged, challenged and inspired. They are not getting their powerful learning moments that will nurture them and help them discover who they are.

It's time we accept that if we want to save this planet, we need to invest in creating experiences of empathy, love, caring and self-belief in our children.

If we can't change then maybe we just need to have longer lunch breaks so the universe can nurture its children, inspite of us. Just like Kahlil Gibran’s memorable words…

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”

Do Academic Outcomes Lead to Better Life Outcomes?

When I was in school, I was told by almost all my teachers and parents that I need to study and get good grades. I listened to them because I believed them. All through my growing up years - studying, memorizing and repeating it during examinations became my sole aim. I got good results too. I was in the top 5 in my class all through school and I took pride in that. I felt special and different. I was made to believe I was above the rest who would struggle with their studies and grades. I was made to believe I will have better life outcomes because I am good at my academics.

I was discouraged from Sports or any of my other interests. I let go of sports in my 7th grade even though I was one of the fastest athletes in my class and passionate about running. My teachers told to me to spend every free hour studying. I was even assigned to labeled slow students whom I had to teach during our breaks. It is a surprise I managed to stay committed to National Cadet Corps and Karate during those last few years of school when studying was everything. It almost defined if you would be successful in life. "Do you want to be a dud like x?", "Do you want to be failure like y?". These threats worked wonders and many of us studied and forced ourselves to get good grades because we believed our parents and teachers that good academic outcomes would lead to better life outcomes?

Its been 21 years since I left school, with flying colours, ofcourse. I have been in touch with quite a few of my friends from school and many others I know of. The startling revelation has been that nearly all of us, irrespective of our grades, are doing well in our lives. Software engineers, bankers, accountants, architects, doctors, counselors, artists, army personnel, teachers, merchant navy, consultants, pastor and even an odd social worker like me. Are the top graders doing better than the rest? Not the least bit. Are the low performers struggling with life? Not the least bit. Infact, I reckon that if I track down each of my classmates from my batch of 1994, I bet each one of them will be doing reasonably well with life.

Let me also mention that we were not an elite school from any sense of imagination. Our school was as diverse as they come. Daily wage workers, contract labourers, government service professionals, private service professionals and businessmen.

We also didn't get the best education. With 60-70 students in a class and a focus only on academic outcomes, it was not that our teachers focused on each student and managed to build in them a sense of belief and confidence. I remember many of my classmates who began to fall by the wayside in their academics were looked down upon by teachers and peers. Infact, I was discouraged from being friends with some of them because teachers felt that I lose my academic focus under their influence. Seating in classrooms was organized based on academic scores too.

How then, I wonder that all of us had better life outcomes? Maybe, just maybe, there is no correlation between academic outcomes and life outcomes? Are we even willing to challenge this assumption at a time when academic outcomes are increasingly critical in a highly competitive educational environment? In an environment where the government boasts of 100% enrollment in schools and wants each kid to master languages, sciences and mathematics, could we possibly be looking at the problem all wrong? In an environment, where funders believe when more kids stay in school, study well, graduate, go to college, graduate and get a job - are we possibly missing a critical point?  Are we pushing for better and better academic outcomes when that is no strong indicator that it results in better life outcomes?

In my work today. at Dream a Dream, we are working with some of the most vulnerable young people whose academic outcomes are not nearly close to even being average. Over the last 16 years, I have seen school dropouts, poor academic performers, the labeled "duds" and "slow learners" be the most intelligent, sensitive, smart and empathetic individuals and achieve remarkable life outcomes inspite of very poor learning outcomes.

Are we looking at learning all wrong? Are we stuck to an age old system that has long become redundant in the face of a fast changing world? Are we holding onto a system that is the last bastion of a key differentiator between success and failure in a class driven society?

Are we too rigid as a society to change a system that is clearly not working? Stopped working over 2 decades ago if my class is an indicator.

I wonder. 

Lakshmi - A Tribute

My earliest memory of her is probably when I was very young and I have a faint memory of seeing her outside her one room house in Nagarthpet. It was a Bangalore where the walls between the rich, middle class and the poor merged seamlessly and we all lived together with respect and dignity.

Lakshmi has been with our family from my earliest memories, followed by her two daughters who also worked in our family and then moved on to setup their own families. Not Lakshmi, we became family for her as she lived the rest of her life in our granny's home.

My impressions of her have formed from the stories I have heard my family speak, sometimes in hushed tones and sometimes in English for she knew none of it. "She has gone made since her husband died." "She has been with us from even before you were born." "She is hiding gold and jewelry in her massive trunk." "She has a lot of money stashed away somewhere." "She is like a second mother to you." "Don't laugh at her when she is talking to the air. She is an elder." "Who else will take care of her, if not us. We are her family."

As I grew up, in this large household of cousins, uncles and aunts, Lakshmi was a constant at Granny's place. She had learnt the language and often I would wonder how this visibly South Indian woman could speak such good Sindhi. She would help with household work while talking to herself or an invisible friend all day long. We laughed and giggled and troubled her for her idiosyncracies. We secretly called her mad and sometimes were scared of her when she shouted and verbally abused this invisible friend.

As I got older, she became invisible to me. I was too busy to notice or acknowledge her presence. Granny moved on, Lakshmi (sometimes called Rathnamma, as mother of Rathna - her eldest daughter) stayed on with our youngest Uncle and his family. I didn't realize when she became a family member, a grand mother to my younger cousins. She was treated with love, care and dignity and as she aged, she was well taken care of and tended to by the family.

When she came home, we would ask how she was and treat her like family. It seemed natural that his woman who had come as a domestic help into our large family had become a member of the family.

The one thing she was fond of was chewing betel nut wrapped in a betel leaf. Mom would always remember to get a pack for her when she went grocery shopping. The other thing she loved collecting were coins. Always asking for coins!

I remember once, a European friend had come home for lunch and we jokingly told her she was my wife. The first question, Lakshmi asked is if the girl can cook a meal for me. She would then fuss over why I could not find a good Indian wife and then she slowly warmed up to my friend. She was happiest when she found out I was getting married and that too, to an Indian bride. She asked for new clothes and wore them with great pride. I remember feeling the urge to seek her blessings and feeling proud to see her happy.

Yet, in my busyness of life, she was more invisible then visible. I would hear faint murmurs of her failing health and forget about it when I got distracted with everything else unimportant in life. On May 11th 2015, Lakshmi moved onto her heavenly abode. She died on her way to the hospital and our family decided to cremate her right away. She was largely invisible in my life and moved on in her own invisible quiet way. A sadness I am yet to overcome. Her true family - My uncle, aunt and his daughters were beside her.

I miss you, Lakshmi. The talkative one. The one with the invisible friend. The one who adopted us as family and became a mother and grand-mother to us. The silent one who saw all, observed all and loved all in your own special way.

Thank you for giving our family the gift of your life. Thank you for taking care of us as children and adults. For ever in gratitude.

A Memory, A Legacy Lives On - GM Row

It must have been the year 1998, nearly 17 years ago when I first met him. Mr. GM Row had Sharp, piercing eyes like he saw all the way into your heart and yet his eyes had kindness in them. He was on the Local Board of Advisors of AIESEC in Bangalore and brought a no-nonsense yet emphatic approach to engaging with us, young college students trying to take our first, uncertain steps into an adult world.

In 1999, when I applied for an International Student Exchange Programme through AIESEC, he was on my interview panel. My first ever interview in life and I was nervous. I distinctly remember he asked me to define Statistics. I went blank. My score of 94 in Statistics didn’t mean anything if I could not even define the subject. He must have seen something else in me. I passed the interview.

This was how I was first introduced to Mr. GM Row. I knew then that I will find a way to connect with this wonderful gentleman again and make him an important part of my life journey. He did go on to become a very dear friend, advisor and role-model for me in the years to come.

In 2002, when I embarked on my social entrepreneurial career, I attended a conference organized by Rotary and Bangalore Cares. Mr. Row was conducting a session on Fundraising and it is still one of the best sessions I have attended. In his unique style, he spoke about two fundamental rules – You need to ask and you need to say ‘thank you’. They became my core tenets. He shared a personal story of how he had sent hundreds of hand-written inland letters (those blue postal letters from another era) asking for donations from family and friends and successfully raised money for a cancer charity. The power of reaching out and asking for money without hesitation or embarrassment is what I learnt from him. For me, he continues to be one of the finest fundraisers that ever lived. The foundation of passionate fundraising came from that session and he became a role model.

Many years later, I had the privilege to work directly with him and my other role model Murray Culshaw when they invited me to join the Board of Bangalore Cares (now India Cares Foundation). Mr. Row and Mr. Culshaw are legends in the voluntary sector for their hardwork, commitment and support to several hundred charities and causes and I could let go of the opportunity to work with and learn from the best in the sector.

Working with Mr. Row gave me the rare opportunity to get to know him intimately. The various Board Meetings at his home, his sharp insights, his remarkable integrity and his unflinching commitment to transparency were traits I learnt from him. He also became a close friend and committed supporter of Dream A Dream. Every year, a letter, hand-written by him will come to my office with a donation to Dream A Dream and words of sincere encouragement. I cherish those letters.

Over the last few years, his health was failing him but not his spirit. He made sure he passed on the mantle of India Cares Foundation with a thorough transition. He continued to associate himself with multiple causes and raised tremendous amounts of money through the TCS 10K Run, infact, even being amongst the top 3 individual fundraiser in multiple years.

In April 2015, this amazing man, left us. He has left behind a rich legacy. A legacy of a stalwart in the sector, who has mentored and built many a social entrepreneur like me, helped us imbibe values of sincerity, honesty, commitment, integrity and a never-give-up spirit. They say people come into our lives for a reason; Mr. Row came into my life as a teacher, a mentor and a role-model par excellence.

Mr. Row, you have moved on and your legacy, values and generosity will live on in the hearts of people like me. You were truly a gentleman belonging to an age of grace, chivalry and integrity. I am eternally grateful to you for filling my life with your values and teaching me to live my life with utmost integrity and responsibility. You are missed and hope you know, wherever you are, you will always have a special place in my heart. Thank you.