Don Rumsfeld

 He died on 1 July 2021.

Funnily enough, he was in my thoughts for the last two months. Reason: I was going through Rumsfeld rules - his famous book of pithy one-liners. It made a lot of sense.

Rumsfeld as twice Chief of Pentagon, was as powerful as McNamara.

He had a habit of editing and reediting his writings continuously. This exasperated his staff no end. On the basis of that and some other irritants, a journalist asked Joyce, his wife, "How do you go along with him?"

Without batting an eyelid, she said," He travels a lot."!!

Delving into the past

 Amma wanted a new notebook. I remembered an old one of mine in which I had made my notes in the last years of teaching. I had abandoned my large files by then. A realization had sunk in that no research and accessing newer and more books were necessary given the low IQ and pathetic application by students.

I thought I had just scribbled some points in short in the long notebook and it was mostly empty. The blank pages would be useful now. So I took out the book with flourish and had a look before handing it over.

I was in for a surprise. The book had notes for two subjects - one from the beginning and the other from the end and some middle pages were blank.

Instead of scribbled notes, I found a printout of the latest syllabus glued on the first page. There were some newspaper clippings, also neatly glued. There were some old, large print advertisements which I had used to show a simple way of analyzing them to the students. One slip of paper had a small exercise of match the pairs. There was a very old Forum of Free Enterprise booklet about the ideal corporate HR policy.

I was thrilled! I remembered those moments of preparation and also the classroom time. Students had found them meaningful. I remain a great believer in assignments and classroom work for students.

I found it difficult to part with those papers. But I had to. The past is not coming back nor will classroom teaching as I practiced it remain there. Still, I had made sincere efforts and their evidence was gratifying.

The way we work

Mindset, the new psychology of success by Carol Dweck, 2006

It is often seen that bright students in school lose their early spark and lead ordinary life while others with average ability in early life become real achievers later. Why does this happen?

According to Dweck, an American psychologist, the reason is mindset. She distinguishes between fixed and growth mindset and says that the former is governed by the desire to look smart while the latter desires to learn. The progress of the two [VJ1]  is as follows.

Attribute	Fixed mindset	Growth mindset
Challenges	Avoided	Embraced
Obstacles	Give up in the face of obstacles	Persist in spite of setbacks
Effort	See it as fruitless	Path to mastery
Criticism	Ignore useful negative feedback	Learn from criticism
Success of others	Found threatening	Source of lessons and inspiration
Result	Reach an early plateau and achieve less than potential. Deterministic view of world.	Reach ever higher levels of achievement. Experience greater sense of free will.

 

I pondered over this. Applied to some puzzles around me and now they are no puzzles. I feel I have gained an important insight with the above.

---

 [VJ1] 

What ho!

 Put the lock down period to some use by writing Empire - a novel on the life of memsahibs in India in the late 19th century. The style of writing is old; developments are few but characters' responses are covered in greater detail. Hackneyed plot of 3 friends travelling to India on a liner. Mixed facts and fiction. Enjoyed myself writing it.

Published it on Amazon KDP -Kindle direct publishing - as both an e-book and a paperback.

How to bring it before people? I have stopped short of running a promotion campaign on Amazon.

Thought I'd recommend it to Arlington Heights Memorial Library and British Library whose collection I access regularly.

AHML used a subterfuge: "We acquire only books of local members with an active library card." Their collection has all the established authors.

From my account of British library, I tried to put in a new purchase request. It did not get forwarded. So I sought a clarification. "Only UK authors." I was told.

The animosity baffled me. I was not trying to influence their purchase decision in any way.

So self-published books on KDP are not taken seriously. For all the democratization of publishing ushered in by Amazon, old prejudices die hard.

Back after a long time

 Thought of copy-pasting all the entries in the blog. My brother had suggested a program for converting the blog into a word document but I could not manage it.

Copy-pasting has taken a long time. Once I learnt that I had to place the mouse on selected blog matter and make a right click on the top most right point of the mouse for copying it, work went fast but before that I had struggled over the issue for 3 or 4 days.

There are 71 posts in all and less than 10 comments. Most of the posts are about new books, movies and some college activities - the sum of my life since 2012.

However, the entries made me feel nice. I felt connected with those moments on the basis of which I wrote the entries.

I had spent some time in designing and beautifying my blog. I used to change the pictures and the layout regularly. That portion could not be copied.

Still, it will be worthwhile going through all the entries, making minor corrections to avoid duplication and prepare a print-out. I will like to dip into it as and when I fancy it.

And of course, I have rediscovered my blog after nearly a year. I will have to visit it regularly.

Marathi biopic

 Watched Dr. Kashinath Ghanekar -a movie - recently on Netflix.

It is two and half hours long. So had to watch it in three parts.

Liked the first watch very much and then it was a downward journey.

Ghanekar was a superstar of Marathi theatre. He starred in Vasant Kanetkar's melodramas with flowery language and two plays by the duo: Ashrunchi zali fule and Ithe oshalala mrutyu  were very popular. Ghanekar acted in Marathi films too and they drew large crowds.

Ghanekar was a dentist by profession but his first love was acting and in the movie it is shown that he had to struggle hard to enter the field of acting. Once he started, he rose rapidly and became a celebrity. He could not sustain acting after that and fell prey to fame and substance abuse. Love of two wives could not support him.

The movie makes out that Ghanekar had a burning desire to win the approval of his father but he could not succeed. The movie also posits a rivalry between Ghanekar and Dr. Shriram Lagoo. It needs to be checked if these posits had any base in reality.

The movie is absorbing for its creation of the atmosphere on Marathi stage and movies in 1960s and 1970s. It has got very good actors to play the roles of Bhalji Pendharkar, Sulochana, Vasant Kanitkar and Prabhakar Panshikar. Full marks to the actors and their make-up men playing these roles.

Subodh Bhave, Nandita Patkar and Vaidehi Parashrami have done a good job. Patkar in fact, does justice to every acting assignment and has now become a sure fire performer.

The movie is good in showing Ghanekar's struggle and his landing a role in Ashrunchi zali fule. After that it loses steam and does not show why Ghanekar went to pieces. It simply shows that he could not do without fan adoration. It does not probe further.

A viewer is left dissatisfied in the end. However, the depiction of the period and the tragedy are disturbing.

Deep impact

 Tomorrow by Elisabeth Russell Taylor, 1991,e-edition 2018, Daunt Books, London, ISBN 978-1-911547-13-6

It is a remarkable book.

It is about a Jewish survivor of the holocaust. She was a young lady about to marry her sweetheart when Nazis reach her and her family. She is a member of a highly cultured, rich family which identifies with German culture rather than Jewish one. The family spends summer holidays on a small island near Denmark every year. In 1939, the rest of the family goes ahead to Europe while she and Daniel, her beau stay back on the island to complete their write-up with photographs of the island which they want to submit for publication. They are isolated and feel that the current trouble would not reach them. They are in lover's cocoon.

Their family sends SOS and asks them to return immediately. They do so and are caught. She is expecting. The lady loses her lover and family. She is sent to a brothel and a Nazi officer bangs her seven month old son against a wall "to teach you Jews a lesson". She survives, comes to London and spends her days as a maid servant with a titled family. However, each year she spends one week at the Danish island.

She keeps to herself continuously trying to come to terms with what has happened.

A colonel and his wife who has a mental age of a child are other regular visitors to the hotel where she stays. The colonel watches her and recognizes her powerful, beautiful mind. He pursues her and she rebuffs him.

She has given up hope and yet she keeps these annual visits because that was the pact with Daniel.

On the last day of her trip, there is a musical programme by a musician from South America. He has come with his young, beautiful wife. He is of course, Daniel. The protagonist listens to him and afterwards kills herself.

Old-timed style of writing. Details are presented slowly and so the beginning is boring but there is enough to make the reader persevere. Then the story proceeds quickly and ends even more quickly, leaving the reader disturbed.

What atrocities must have taken place during World War II!