Workers digging earth find gold coins in Pune

Pune: They literally struck gold but the discovery put them behind bars. While digging the earth for construction of a swimming tank being built by the Pune civic body in the city, three workers halted work as their instrument hit a metal vessel , deputy commissioner of police Anil Kumbhare told reporters on Saturday.

T h e y took it aside and found the jar full of gold coins. According to the police, the site from where the gold was spotted was in the vicinity of the relics of the historical Shanwarwada, the palace of Peshwa rulers of the 18th century.

The workers who tried to sell the historic coins to a goldsmith in Khadki area were arrested along with the shop owner on Friday evening, Kumbhare said. The gold coins numbering 847 and weighing over 3 kg are embossed with words in Persian dating back to 1551-1592, police said. AGENCIES

‘I am addicted to my passion for teaching’

60-Year-Old Lily Sawant Gives Lessons in Maths, English And Moral Science As A Volunteer

Ketan Tanna I TNN

The best way to describe 60-year-old Lily Sawant is that she is a serial volunteer. For the last 38 years, Sawant has been teaching students in Delhi, Aurangabad and Mumbai. When asked why she didn’t opt for teaching as a profession, she giggles. “I am addicted to teaching and not to money.

Mana lagli chand, Govind Govind,” she says, quoting a Tukaram abhang, which translates as, “I got addicted to my passion for teaching.” It all began in 1972, when she joined her research scholar husband at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “During the holidays, especially in the afternoons, many teachers would take a nap and their children would play in the hot sun. One day, I decided that I should make them utilise their time constructively. I had graduated in chemistry and was very fond of maths. So, I devised puzzles and stories to teach them maths and even English,” she says.

When her husband got a job in Aurangabad University, she continued to teach in that town. In 1984, there was a drought in Aurangabad and other parts of Marathwada. The armed forces had advertised for entry-level posts and hundreds of youngsters from peasant families wanted to get in. To do so, they needed to pass an entrance exam and English was compulsory. Sawant was contacted by a colonel who asked if she could help. “All my boys passed. It was a cent per cent result,” she says proudly. “They came to me with a box of pedas and told me that whichever part of the world they ended up in, they would never forget me.”

Sawant moved to Mumbai with her husband in 1988. For the last 10 years, she has been teaching her favourite subjects—mathematics, English and moral science—as a volunteer in different schools. In 1995, when she was teaching science to students at a municipal school, she had to use a projector for a slide display. Her mind started ticking and she wondered how the visually impaired learned their lessons. Curiosity took her to Vikas Shorewalla, a visually challenged person from Charni Road, who taught her the basics of Braille.

A few months later, someone told her that children from a home for the blind were looking for a maths teacher for their board exam. The hitch was that though Sawant had learnt basic Braille, she didn’t know maths Braille, which had its own rules. But she started learning it and taught not only the students of that batch but four other batches as well. “My entire batch passed with good marks. When some of them got jobs, they came to me with gifts. That’s my reward. I don’t need money or a proper job to get satisfaction. Helping people grow and do well in life has its own joy,” she says.

For four years, Sawant has been teaching underprivileged children at the Baljivan Trust in Santa Cruz. She teaches them maths and science in Marathi, English and Hindi. She also trains students in disaster management.

Now that she is 60 and getting on, does she plan to take a break? “Not at all,”she retorts, aghast at the very thought. “I like to teach and I like to talk. If I don’t do both, I will go mad.”
(Lily Sawant can be contacted on 022-26670213)

ON A MISSION: For four years, Sawant has been teaching deprived children at Baljivan Trust in Santa Cruz

‘It changes your perspective’

At 22, when most are raring for a corporate career, Amit Mistry joined the Teach for America initiative. “I wanted to do something service-oriented before starting my career.” His choice was made easier by his stint as a teaching assistant during his undergraduate chemical engineering studies. “And I also enjoyed volunteering with kids,” says Amit, now 30, and working with a Democrat Congressman on various health and education issues.

The BS in chemical engineering from Rice University taught high school chemistry, physical science and algebra for two years in New Orleans. An experience that was not without its initial hiccups, challenges and as it is with any clear-minded and noble endeavour—the inevitable rewards. “It was extremely difficult to go from being a student at my university to being in charge of my own classroom.”

But Amit managed well enough. In the two years, he realised that to make science appealing to kids, designing lessons and assignments and, all the while, maintaining discipline were anything but child’s play. Once he got into the groove, though, Amit found himself enjoying the time. “I felt especially rewarded after a good lesson, when I felt students left my classroom learning something new or being able to do something they couldn't do before.”

But education is also about shared memories and character building. Amit recalls organising a Saturday cleanup, where many of his students helped clean the campus and repaint the gazebo. “I also remember sharing quite a few laughs with students. One of my chemistry students proclaimed during a lecture, ‘May the phosphorus be with you, Mr Mistry’. And I remember a student interrupting an exam when he noticed my name was in the word ‘chemistry’.”

Clearly, says Amit, he is a better communicator today because of the experience. “I also have a better perspective on many problems affecting under-served communities in the US.”

The young teacher moved on to do a PhD in bioengineering from Rice University and also obtained a teaching certificate from the State of Louisiana. He then worked at Research!America on various science policy and advocacy issues. Recently, in September, Amit began a Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship sponsored by the Materials Research Society and the Optical Society of America. For the fellowship, Amit works for Congressman Edward J Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, on various health and education issues.

Helping them take the walk of life

Kumar Sambhav I TNN

Mumbai: Meera Devi is patiently sitting with her 12-yearold son on her lap in a corner of a hall, overflowing with more than 400 children and their parents, at Bandra’s Lilavati Hospital. With every bite of lunch she feeds him with her hands, the Worli resident nurtures a dream to see his son break into a walk.

In the same hall, Kalyan resident Anand Kadam is pushing a wheelchair with his twin daughters sitting on it. Besides the timing of their birth, nine-year-olds Komal and Kajal have another thing in common: they cannot walk due to a knee disorder.

Like Mukesh, Komal and Kajal, more than 500 children with varying degrees of disability thronged the free children’s orthopaedic corrective surgery camp organised at Lilavati Hospital on Saturday.

Meera believes the camp will help his son, who suffers from cerebral palsy and has not been able to walk since his birth, lead a pain-free life. “We want to send him to school. Right now, he can’t even stand on his own. We hope this camp helps him,’’ said Mukesh’s father Mohan Lal.

Kadam said it was an opportunity for him to give his daughter “expert treatment’’ that was affordable. “This camp is for a noble cause. I really believe it will change the lives of many children,’’ he added.

The camp was organised and funded by Child Foundation, an NGO set up by paediatric orthopaedic surgeon Ashok Johari. It promises to not only take care of the immediate operation, plasters or botulumin (botox) shots, but also of follow-up visits for up to a year, that too, free of cost.

At least 50 doctors from all over India were deployed for check-ups and surgeries at the camp. “The surgeries will start from Saturday night and continue till Sunday. The operations will also be conducted on the 15th and 16th of this month,’’ said Dr Johari.

It is estimated that 5% of children in India suffer from some physical handicap, their numbers adding up to almost 20 million. Dr Johari said with his small efforts, he wants to bring a change in the lives of such children.

“Our main objective is to spread awareness about orthopaedic diseases. There are many deformities that can be fully cured if they are treated at the right time. But in many cases, even doctors are not aware and deny the treatment. Those deformities take severe shape with time,’’ he added.

“Child Foundation aims to raise awareness on how to help such children . We want to offer a platform for various philanthropic organisations,’’ says Ashiana Dhillon, a trustee of the foundation.

GOOD DEED: A free children’s orthopaedic corrective surgery camp was held at Bandra’s Lilavati Hospital on Saturday.

Becoming a leader IN THE CLASSROOM OF LIFE

Akanksha founder Shaheen Mistri describes her 20-year-long journey from teaching a group of kids in a small shanty in Mumbai to the Teach For India movement

When I was 18, I walked into a slum and started teaching. I had spent my life outside of India, graduating from a small, elite girl's private school in upmarket Greenwich, Connecticut, in the US. Back in India, curious, I walked into a Mumbai slum and was confronted by the deep inequity of a world where some kids attended top-notch academies while others just didn’t go to school at all.

Entering the slum on that first day, I was prepared to feel disturbed, sad, and angry. I wasn’t prepared for the bright eyes filled with untapped potential. Within a few days, without language, coming from a very different world, I found a base in a little home and started teaching.

Those days stay vivid in my mind; sitting on the floor of a 10 foot loft in Shakeel’s shanty with a growing group of kids of all ages around me. So many memories—cutting out alphabet ladders to teach three year-old Sameena, who is now in Sophia College; seeing a young girl on fire and rushing her to the hospital; looking for space to teach in a school and getting turned away by a nun who felt that her students would get diseases from our children—the idea is good, she said, but “revolutionary”.

And then, after 20 schools said no, finding our first classrooms in the Holy Name School. My days were immersed in thinking about children—trying to understand who they were, making sense of the communities that they lived in, discovering the deep prejudices that exist in society against them, trying to learn ways to make them engage in learning.

For the next 18 years, we built an organization, Akanksha, “aspiration”, that grew out of those days of teaching. Akanksha’s deep belief that every child has immense potential has created opportunities for thousands of less privileged children. And from our teachers, and from our children, I have learned my most significant life lessons. Take Rajshree, whose unshakeable belief in Sumeet through a decade of work where he tried to commit suicide several times, juggling huge home problems with repeated attempts to pass the SSC who today embarks on a journey to run his own NGO and has been nominated as MTV’s youth icon. Or Niki, who has rented a tiny home in the slum which is an after-school center for extra help. Or Nahida, one of our Akanksha alumni, who today teaches three year olds through song and dance. Or Anjali, whose kids after being relocated two hours away still commute to come to her class.

Often when I have thought I understood something, the Akanksha children have taught me that I really hadn’t. I don’t think I understood what it means to persevere until I saw a 17 year old Akanksha child get sexually abused in her home, have a baby, give it up for adoption, and come back to school. I don’t think I understood courage until I saw an Akanksha teenage boy stand up in a group of kids and parents and break down saying to his mother how much he loved her and had never told her that. I don’t think I understood what it meant to give until our student Latif passed away a few months ago; his grandfather told me that he had given him Rs 14,000—all his savings—to go to a private hospital. Latif quietly put it back, going instead to a government hospital.

From countless teachers and children I have seen how what matters the most is connecting, caring, believing in another person.

And then, a couple of years ago, I began to feel increasingly overwhelmed. As the stories of success with children increased, so did the realization that real change needs to be systemic; that quality needs to be scaled to reach every child. On one hand was this grave, overwhelming inequity and on the other was a huge dearth of talented minds addressing the issue.

The idea of Teach For India began through a conversation with Anand Shah, a friend and thought partner, who spoke about his vision for a domestic service program in India that got young Indians engaged in changing the country. A small group of us from Indicorps, The Piramal Foundation and Akanksha started talking about what a “Teach For India” would be.

Through that time, four Teach For America alumni came through Akanksha. I was struck by their mission, by their deep commitment to end inequity. These young people—some of the brightest—had chosen to spend two years in incredibly challenging classrooms.

A few months later, I met Wendy Kopp at the Teach For America office in New York. We talked about children and India and inequity and I left asking her to come to India. Intrigued by the possibility of some form of Teach For America’s idea working elsewhere, Wendy spent a few days in India-in schools, on campuses, with business and education leaders.

Wendy left and our discussions intensified. We worked closely with McKinsey and Co to e x a m i n e the feasibility of Teach For India in a context so vastly different from the U.S. At the end of the three month long study, we were convinced that Teach For India was not only possible, but critical.

The challenges of building the Teach For India movement are immense. The idea seems preposterous to many. Why would the best minds in the country teach? How can a force of a few thousand idealist, untrained young people bridge the stark achievement gap in our struggling schools? Why would corporate India (especially in the current financial crisis) encourage their best talent to go for two years? Teach For India will answer these questions with action. Already, applications are pouring in. Already, the most visionary companies are signing up. And we know that our first hundred Fellows, trained and supported, will define a new way of teaching, a new way of learning, a new way of being.

So, Teach For India now seems the right thing to do. For TFI’s fellows, this is a chance to study leadership in a classroom of life. For TFI’s students, this is a chance for them to bridge their staggering achievement gap, feel cared and valued and experience meaningful learning. And as the movement gains momentum and grows across the country, we will move closer to our vision that one day, every child across India will attain an excellent education.

Chandrayaan in lunar orbit, mission a success

Srinivas Laxman | TNN

Mumbai: It was a champagne moment. At exactly 5.04 pm (IST), Chandrayaan-I was inserted into the lunar orbit, a heart-stopping manoeuvre that marks the success of India’s first moon mission.

Toasting the event, K Kasturirangan, who had kicked off the mission, said, “This is undoubtedly a great moment for India because nearly 50% of the moon missions of other countries have not been successful.’’ India has now entered the exclusive moon club that has as its members only the US, the former Soviet Union, Japan, China and the European Space Agency.

Cock-a-hoop scientists said that after the successful Pokhran nuclear tests of May 1998, Saturday’s achievement marked another great Indian scientific accomplishment. This is the first time that an Indian satellite has left the grip of the Earth’s gravitional force.

“We have done it. We have done it for the country. All the systems are working well. During the last 20 minutes, everyone’s hearts had stood still. Our boys have done it very well,’’ Isro chief Madhavan Nair said on Saturday evening.

Kasturirangan explained that the LOI was a nail-biting moment because two moving objects—the moon and Chandrayaan—had to rendezvous successfully. The insertion had to be done at a precise point when the gravity of the moon and that of the earth cancelled each other.

Moon impact probe to detach on Nov 15

According to Isro officials, Chandrayaan’s liquid engine was fired for 817 seconds when the spacecraft passed at a distance of about 500 km from the moon to reduce its velocity and enable the lunar gravity to capture it and take it around the moon. Chandrayaan’s speed was reduced 366 metres per second when it flew into the moon’s orbit.

The spacecraft is now orbiting the moon in a elliptical orbit that passes over the polar region of the moon. The nearest point of this orbit (periselene) lies at a distance of about 504 km from the moon’s surface while the farthest point (aposelene) is 7,502 km. Chandrayaan would take about 11 hours to go around the moon in this orbit. M Annadurai, project director, said during the next few days, the altitude of the spacecraft will be gradually reduced and brought to a circular orbit only 100 km from the moon.

Isro officials said nearly 150 scientists and engineers had gathered in the mission control room right from the afternoon. “They were nervous. A second after 5.04 pm, when Chandrayaan signalled that it had entered the moon orbit, the team broke into applause, hugging and embracing each other and exchanging congratulatory handshakes,’’ an official said. The next exciting prospect is the launch of the 29-kg Moon Impact Probe which will crashland on the lunar polar region with the Tricolour on November 15. TNN