A roller-coaster ride called school admission
Today, securing admission to any prestigious school is matter of life and death for parents. Holding hands of tiny-tots, the crowd can be easily spotted waiting outside the gates of learning, hoping to hop inside. Recently, I had been through the same rollercoaster ride to get my daughter registered for a course in Chandigarh. You guessed right, it was for a prestigious play school.
Barely a year and eight months old, she had to be tutored for a month to remember her name. If that was a Herculean task, identifying animals from a chart along with mimicking their distinctive sounds was not easy either. I was overenthusiastic and kept reminding her names of key places and persons and she repeated them in cute baby talk. Generally, play schools insist on an interaction with both parents and the child to gauge if we match up to their expectations.
Fair enough, my wife and I along with our young warrior braced ourselves for the fiercest battle so far. As we reached the school, we were greeted by the staff and offered a seat in the corridor. Our young warrior seemed happy, looking at the bright colours and swings. Along with other comrades, she attacked in no time. I was elated by her leadership quality and the way she was managing the troops.
Two teachers were given the responsibility to oversee the children and they tried hard, frowning and smiling simultaneously. We were given the green signal to enter the arena but it was difficult to pull our daughter away from the magnetic swings. As soon as we entered, our young warrior refused to fight, reminding me of the scene from BR Chopra’s
Mahabharata.
With courage and conviction, I awakened the Krishna inside me to remind Arjuna, who was by then rolling on the ground and burying her chances of getting selected. After much persuasion and promise, a Barbie doll and Choco Pie to be precise, Arjuna raised her bow and aimed.
But we were wrong in assessing the firepower of our opponents. They harboured the most advanced arsenal. They wasted all our Brahamastras in the warm-up match and asked my little Arjuna to identify shapes. When the opponent held up a triangle, I being a university teacher intervened and pointed out that the question was out of syllabus. The opponent politely reminded me of life’s race and Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest. She insisted that the school was preparing children to fight the world and had its reputation at stake.
After the interview, I looked at my little girl and asked her softly, “What do we do now?” I was hoping someone would come up and say a few kind words like: Life doesn’t end here; there’s always another chance and it’s just the beginning. Instead, my daughter held my hand and as I looked intently at her face, she said: “Taalo (Chalo) give me my Choco Pie.”
WHEN OUR YOUNG WARRIOR REFUSED TO FIGHT, WITH COURAGE AND CONVICTION, I AWAKENED THE KRISHNA INSIDE