Pradeep is a big fan of activity based learning. His focus is more on aesthetics, which he believes is neglected in our education. Pradeep came in at 1120 hours. He landed up at the old school, as I had not shared the Google location with him. He wanted to do an activity with the kids, … Read more

Pankaj Jain did his fellow program at IIMA in the seventies – and has been in academics since then. He has been associated as faculty at IRMA and  visiting some western universities. I first heard of Pankaj through his fellow program batchmate, Ashok Pratap Arora, who has been my teacher at IIM Calcutta. Later on, … Read more

It is always a pleasure to chat up with Vidula. Aakash, my co trustee at Peepal Tree, Jammu, was visiting Pune. Took him to over to Garware Bal Bhavan for a chat with Vidula. We were promised half an hour of her time. We ended up staying on for 1.5 hours. We moved around the … Read more

Madhuri Gokhale grew up in a village in Ogalewadi, near Karad. She remembers that her first touch with English was when she was in 5th grade. She has been a teacher in a special school for 13 years. She works mostly with students with learning disorders. Most of these kids appear for NiOS exams. She … Read more

Prof DK Joshi and his wife visited the school in Sep 2018. We started by discussing the building design theme being good ventilation. I informed him about the sunlight through skylight problem. He felt that we can have two vertical curtains near the skylight, which will narrow down the lighted portion to a smaller area. We then went … Read more

As a kid Anindya (pronounced Anindo) Mukerji suffered from a degenerative disease. AM grew up in the industrial township of Burnpur, near Asansol, where his dad had got a job in the IISCO steel plant, after finishing an education from Presidency College, Calcutta. Doctors had given AM till 25 to live. He had been awarded … Read more

Ajay Kolhatkar represents a great combination of academics and industry. His academic background spans COEP, SIBM and IIT Bombay SoM. Though he has had a stint with Infosys at their Research and Development division, most of his working life has been spent in the Tata group. At Tatas, he has worked across companies like Tata … Read more

We started with a talk by Ashwini. She has spent 9 years as a counsellor in Kalmadi High School, Kothrud. We asked her to share her counselling experiences. Ashwini talked about a girl, who was in 7th standard when she first met Ashwini. The girl was an adopted kid, who had decided that she did … Read more

Sandeep started by telling us the difference between a counselor and a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist is a medical professional, who heals through medicines. He may have clinical psychologists attached. Counsellors are people who are students of applied psychology. They are not allowed to prescribe medicines. One of the common customers counselors have today are school … Read more