Skip to main content

An archaeological expedition

The vacations are coming to an end. The vacation for education is the human civilizational equivalent of disappearing cities. The books have all been covered with layers of mud, forests and infested with dangerous animals - mostly amnesia inducing. But the schools are about to reopen. And those ancient cities need to be discovered. Again. Now.

The discovery is not easy though. The locals say that such cities never existed. The little ones deny that they were ever educated in the alphabet. In fact they are quite sure that certain alphabets do not exist in the Devanagari script. Satellite images clearly show the presence of lost cities under the earth, but the people around are not convinced. Old books have been produced, with their own writing to show that they were once educated in this language. However, a combination of amnesia and denial can do many things to civilization. And only the bravest of the brave archaeologists can delve deep into the mounds, brave the snakes and animals and dig out those forgotten artefacts of civilization.

Two alphabets which were reported missing have been found after much effort. There is still an attempt to deny that these alphabets never existed in the Devanagari script. These are the two alphabets that were needed. If alphabets can disappear, you can imagine that the grammar structure which held the language must have vanished altogether.

All in all, we are now ready for the great archaeological expedition. Armed with tools, we need to dig deep and discover those alphabets. Rebuild those grammar structure so that at some point in time, the edifices stand up to their erstwhile glory. (Pardon the euphemism, but there were no edifices - they were just fragile structures that needed a bit of a light breeze to topple them over.) But yes, we have begun. Two missing alphabets have been traced. The range of other discoveries will be known only as we undertake this perilous expedition.

The expedition to unearth the forgotten cities of Hindi. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...

And the unconference happened

 Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost. And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.  I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).  To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Ju...

Why does elearning exist?

 Elearning is one of those niches that does not deserve to exist. Yes, it was a novelty 20 years ago, but not now. It cannot exist. But somehow it does. Disclaimer: I used to head a content team once upon a time. And I used to ask those whom I hired - tell me the last thing you learnt from an e-learning. The answer is - pretty much nothing (and this is a good decade ago).  Why?  If you want to learn a recipe, you go to Youtube, or Reels or something like that. If you are terribly old fashioned - as in, you read - then you go to a website and read the recipe and make it.  Most other things you learn by doing or learning on the job or asking an expert.  If you have to learn something in depth, then there are other ways.  So, where does e-learning fit in all this? E-learning is one of those products that the customer hates, but has no choice, because someone has decided it is the best way. For instance, you have to learn a new CRM or some other product - you w...