It was wise to read Wise and Otherwise :)

Title: Wise And Otherwise: A Salute To Life                                                                                          
Author: Sudha Murthy
Publisher: Penguin
Genre:  Life stories
Price-199
Madhu’s stars: 3.5/5

Wise and Otherwise was a book which i picked up looking at its title and then when i came to know it’s by Sudha Murthy, my interest in it deepened. Though i have not met her in personal life, when i read about her work and i developed a sort of respect towards her.

Wise and Otherwise is a collection of 50 really short stories in which Sudha Mam has brought about the various traits,colors of different individuals, has put on the table harsh and shocking realities of life.  Her language is very simple and the stories are about two-three pages at the max. Her stories are mostly her experiences with people she met during her social work, or professionally or may just her friends.

They are about how people just tried to take undue advantage of her dedication towards social work and expected her to donate money to come out of their silly problems, so much that in one of the incidents a lady threatens to end her life if Sudha does not help. Also there are a couple of heart touching tales where a father is left behind by his own son in an old age home, and the son then disguises himself to have found the old man on the road, and he also shamelessly turns up to get some money when his father dies. Such stories bring tears to your eyes.

The best part of these stories are they all have something to teach us. So it’s up to the reader if he really wants to takeaway a few of them.

About the Author: Sudha Murty   is an Indian social worker and author. Mrs. Murthy began her professional career as a computer scientist and engineer, currently she is the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation and member of public healthcare initiative of the Gates Foundation.^[1][2] In addition, she has established several orphanages, participated in rural development efforts, and supported the movement to provide all government schools in Karnataka with state-of-the-art computer and library facilities.^[3][4] Mrs. Murthy also teaches computer science and composes fiction

Kudos Sudha Mam.

Image Courtesy:Google.

About the Author:Wikipedia

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It was a fun day with my little friends -Many paper roses,a chocolate and Kolaveri :)

It was time again to visit my little friends from the school whom i visit mostly on all saturdays as a part of my company’s initiative. I was so happy to know that all these little angels(some were naughty monsters) remembered my name though i visited them after a long time due to school remaining close on account of Telengana bandh and exams.

The moment i reached i greeted them with a dialog i picked up from the movie “Stanley Ka Dabba” , a lovely movie, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”. Yes i had to explain for quite some time what it meant but they paid attention to what i said, and that is all that mattered, in between all this a little uniform clad girl reaches out to me with a paper rose very nicely made, and it was smelling of her love for me and innocence in her heart.

Since the principal was adamant that we teach something of their syllabus i thought of taking a simple topic, yet important “geometry”. I thought of teaching the different type of angles(acute,obtuse and right) and as per me gave a amazing definition, and they nicely repeated after me showcasing their skills of mugging stuff which is poured into them right from day1 at school. Then it was time for some exercise and to my surprise they could not answer a single question, it was then i realized that the teaching method had to be different. So i used 3 kids to show what is right, acute and obtuse angles and i had to use kids from both genders to make them properly understand. But i was satisfied when they answered questions right.

Ad-mist all this was a girl digging into her bag and after sometime brought me a lacto king chocolate :), this made my eyes moist, how many times do we offer anything to anyone for that matter and here i was almost a stranger to them, and on the other end a girl and boy were busy in their fight, huh!! if it was difficult to pull them apart but who can stop them.

Then it was time for another adventure, they all got busy talking amongst themselves when someone asked. “teacher you have Kolaveri song”, and i had it. And the moment i played it, all of them sung along with Dhanush, I must say Dhanush and Anirudh had really spelled magic with those words. It was amazing, the song was never so much fun before.

Then some ten kids bought paper roses for me and they all surrounded me and started teaching how to make one, i found it indeed difficult to make one.

It was the most beautiful start to my wonderful weekend.It somehow feels very good when we put a smile on others faces, sounds cliche but it is TRUE. 🙂

Lets help the “not so lucky ones” Please

I have always loved to teach, be it my classmates or friends or my siblings. But very recently, did i realize the true happiness one gets out of teaching, when i went to a government school called “Sarvodhaya vidyalaya” in in malkajgiri in Hyderabad. My companies runs a program to support many social causes,under which employees go to schools, orphanages to teach little children for a few hours in the weekends.  It is not mandatory and is done by some of them out of their interest. I jumped to take part in the program when i got to know about it. It was one of my best choices in life. I went to the school and was assigned the 5th standard. I was a bit scared initially thinking such noisy children would trouble me so much, but things turned out just the other way. I stepped into the class and they all(about 50) got up and greeted me with their sweet voices telling “gooooddddd mooorninnnggg madammmmmmm” hhehehhe, yes this is what they told me. I got very happy and i was all charged up. They asked me which subject text book i want and which subject i wanted to teach but this was not my way.  I asked each one of them one by one to step forward and introduce themselves to the class and me. I taught them the right way and gestures of giving ones introduction so that they would be able to put it use someday in their lives. That day ended that way and i decided from next time il be prepared and impart them all the required skills. So the next time i taught BODMAS, next time it was application of physics in real life, next was drawing and painting.. and it went on. I have ended up being one of their favorite teachers, and i am really proud of this position.

It gives a lot of pleasure, and I am sure a lot of reading this blog of mine many of you are relating to me. So buck up and reach out to the nearest government school and give happiness and get true love in return. After all they are all like you and me, but just a little less lucky.