Some parents say: from your roots don’t go astray
Education in the mother-tongue is the need of the day…
Other parents say: let our children have our way
Education in English will ensure an apt global pay…
But heed the children and what they have to say
Surely they would rather learn only the fun way!
A real mess is served in the education tray…
where the nut gets screwed and the gut gives way!
The syllabus is a maze real knotty, and hey…
Queries are termed naughty in the class bay!
Self-esteem is eclipsed in the mind where it held sway…
As irrelevant leads to irreverence with every passing day!
What’s the point of learning Geography, if on eclipse day
… parent and teacher retire to the dark superstition bay?
What’s the point of testing data from the Science tray…
…if the permission to experiment is stalled by a ‘nay’?
The wonderful world of mathematics goes regularly astray…
the mechanical obscures the elementary, every single way!
Dates and details get hammered into a mind turning clay,
as History lessons defeat the message in the factual fray!
Not just black on white, prose or verse is really about grey
… unbridled is imagination, but education narrows the way!
Why the compulsion to learn by rote without going astray?
Theatre-fun would be better for the Bard to seize the day!
Learning is directly proportional to the fun, they say…
Yet book is thrust in the hand that must play with clay!
‘Leave the kids alone’ sang Pink Floyd on another day
Languages are the drapes for expression, just another way
What use is the nut when the gut gives way?
What use is a label with learning far away?
The language is second to what the syllabus has to say
Education must empower the nut without the gut giving way!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
23 March 2011
Words wander away when departs a little son of a dear friend… from the old college days a poem resonates with questions that arise when a life dies young…
WHY?
Why death?
Why life?
The sun sets to rise again,
Does Life die to live again?
If it does, why death?
If not, why life?
- Pravin Sabnis (1989)
Trees smile and chase the gloom
Spring is here to spread the cheer
Shed your inhibitions, have no fear!
Here’s the flavoured milk, say cheers
For the veterans, open the bhang & beers
The fire’s going down, bring more wood
There it lies where once the tree stood
A full moon looks on as winds stoke embers,
in the season of spring, trees get dismembered
Wood chars, so does the plastic trash
flowers singe smearing earth with ash.
Next we get to spray the colours everywhere
Made from mud, paint and chemicals not very rare
But don’t you mind the itch and the stains
It won’t happen till spring comes again!
- 3 March 2007
It would be better for bad thoughts to burn
Instead of screaming abuses around the fiery urn…
It would be better to celebrate the colours of life
And a resolve to shun discrimination and unjust strife!
- 1 March 2010
- Pravin K. Sabnis
