- Nighat Gandhi
Image credit Guardian
Let’s compare 2 case scenarios. Bothare older women with challenging life situations:
1. A retired University professor in her 60s with a comfortable pension, unmarried, living alone, owns her home, has poor vision and other health problems, has access to reliable health care services, has few friends and relatives.
Mental Health Challenges: loneliness, depression, anxiety, limited mobility, by poor health, limited opportunities for travel and recreation.
2. A homeless woman in her 60s, widowed, homeless, has worked previously as domestic worker, has primary school education, is hard of hearing, has impaired vision, has a married daughter but son-in-law doesn’t let her live with them.
Mental Health Challenges: loneliness, depression, financial anxiety, restlessness, poor emotional stability, lack of income, no housing, poor hearing and vision, no friends, no access to medical care, no opportunity for travel or recreation.
Whose shoes would you rather be in? The retired professor’s or the homeless widow’s? Or neither?
“History teaches, but has no pupils,”
- Antonio Gramsci 1
J’admire
.....
An innocent question
sometimes comes up with very troubling answer(s).
J’admire( I
admire)... a simple exercise given to students to know from them whom they
appreciate as a great historical figure or a hero, became a great learning
experience for a teacher who taught French at a private school.
Writer and Journalist
Dileep D’souza, who has authored many books, and writes on social-political
causes shared the experience of his wife who posed the said question before
them during a discussion. What she was expecting that they would mention Gandhi
or Bhagat Singh or other luminaries of India’s struggle for freedom and
progress but none of her predictions came true. There was a lone student whose
choice was Mahatma Gandhi but nine out of 25 students in her class admired
Hitler as hero or as a great historical figure.
Explaining his choice
the 10 th grader talked of Hitler’s ‘fantastic oratory’, how he loved his
country, how he was a ‘great patriot’ and how he helped restore ‘a sense of
pride’ to Germany which it had lost after the defeat in the first world war. He
had not much sympathy for the millions he slaughtered, his response to it
seemed to rationalise it, that ‘some of them were traitors’. 2
There are n number of reports which tell you that this particular school is no exception.
- अंजलि सिन्हा
भारतीय क्रिकेट टीम के कप्तान विराट कोहली द्वारा आस्ट्रेलिया के साथ क्रिकेट श्रृंखला के दौरान उठाए एक अलग कदम से एक कम चर्चित मुददा सूर्खियों में आया है। मालूम हो कि उनकी पत्नी - सिनेतारिका अनुष्का शर्मा जो इन दिनों गर्भवती हैं - उनके लिए उन्होंने पितृत्व अवकाश की मांग की तथा इसे इस श्रृंखला के दौरान स्वीकारा भी गया है।
