As most of you know, Kym moved to Mumbai in May last year, switching from homeschooling to formal schooling in a fancy international school for her fifth grade, only for all of us to realise, more or less at the same time, that such schooling does not suit her personality or style of learning.
Baba Bear and Baby Bear
So, last month, she returned to Pune. We have now reinstated our homeschooling schedule, beginning with a 0430H reveille, a bracing run (and cycling), some freehand exercises in the society gym, all preceded and followed by vigorous stretching and meditation in the early morning before Mr Sun appears. This is followed by a hearty protein-rich breakfast, four hours of tutoring before lunch, a nap, and then an hour each of chess, mathematics (a subject we strangely love, given Baba Bear’s generally antagonistic past with it), Hindi/Marathi reading (which we dislike), and English reading (which we cannot get enough of).
With Baba and Aaji!
While almost all of this was happening, the four hours of tutoring were not, as we were on the lookout for private tuition teachers. This is a painstaking task requiring patience and luck. It involved activating our network, conducting scores of interviews, filtering CVs, and finalising the ones we liked. In this, Misbahji, not just because she is the LOTH (Lady of the House) or half the adult population here (if you count me as one), but also due to her training and experience as a teacher, took the lead in finding and interviewing the teachers, finalising the syllabus and timetable, and generally preparing the little one for ‘school’. I suspect she and Maryam were as excited, if not more, about Kym’s homeschooling than Kym herself.
All of this came to fruition today with the first class, mathematics of course, conducted by our new tutor, Ms Falguni (who, unfortunately, met with a minor accident on her way here).
The family with Kym’s Mathematics & Science teacher, Falguni
With her Mathematics & Science teacher, Falguni
We have been looking forward to this (the start of the new academic year, not the accident) for about two weeks. Preparations included, amongst other things, buying more stationery than Mr Baba believed Venus Stores stocked, acquiring books (mostly used ones from senior students), cleaning our room (and quarrelling with our lovely roommate Maryam about which half of the wardrobe, study table, bed, and shelves were ours), finishing our vacation activities (thank you, Mamma and Masi, for the Leh trip), scheduling, printing, and distributing our calendar, packing, unpacking, and packing again, all in an atmosphere of joyous anxiety that proved infectious.
Yesterday, once all the shopping was done, Aaji had a brilliant idea: why not get Kym a uniform? It would make her more aware of the seriousness of her tuition, help her appear more professional, and make her feel powerful. This was not a new thought in our family. Kym’s Ajoba, my father, Capt Anil Gadgil, who trained over 650 pilots in the twelve years he ran Jeet Aerospace, included the following in his ‘Joining Instructions for Trainee Pilots’:
“…The idea is to be prepared, not just for the training, but to learn and be an ‘aware crew’: smart, confident, and above all, professional. Please LOOK and BEHAVE like a professional and a gentleman/lady aviator/aviatrix. This is going to be a life-long pursuit. Your uniform not only fills you with confidence and reflects in your gait, posture, and language, but also projects a professional aura, giving comfort to your passengers that you know what you are doing and may be relied upon to reach them safely at their destinations without incident. Recognise this, and practise it in your life. You do not transform into someone else when you step into your cockpit. What you are outside the aircraft is what you will be inside. Taking care of yourself, including your dress, whether or not you are on duty, will automatically transfer into your work as the pilot of a flying machine carrying hundreds of souls who depend on you to be proficient in your task. It is important that you look the part too. Remember that your machine and equipment are not just the aircraft and its various switches and panels, but your own mind and body. These are equally, if not more, important to keep in shape and to demonstrate as such to people looking at (and up to) you.”
French braid that Misbah tied!
And so, Kymaia got her uniform, a crisply ironed white shirt and a blue-black divided (tennis?) pleated skirt (‘Skorts’, I was corrected in an exasperated tone by the little one when she read this), paired with white shoes and socks. Only a scarf (which shall be acquired this week) is missing. I think she looks terrific, especially with her French braid (‘Not plait, silly Mr Baba, a fishtail, a braid’), made meticulously by Misbah. Her Ajoba would have been proud.
