30 September 2025

Shameful display of racism

The news that Mahatma Gandhiji's statue in London got vandalised displays obvious anti-Indian feelings.

Any sane person knows that racism is shameful. Having worked in India, my native country and six countries, I have found people to be gentle except on two occassions.

When I was working as a Physics Teacher in a Government Senior Secondary School in Southern Africa, I had a colleague named Jo McCormack. She was from Yorkshire, UK, and was Agriculture Teacher in the school. She was well known for her nasty remarks on how Indians pronounced English words 'badly'. At one point of time, I had to let her know that we Indians don't pronounce 'bus'  with the 'u' sound as in 'bush' or 'book' or prounounce 'lunch' with the 'u' sound as in 'bush'. After this, she stopped her nonsensical habit. By God's Grace, I was considered to be excellent in both spoken and written English. 

On another occassion, I was at the customs clearance  at the end of a flight from Johannesburg,  at Chennai International airport. The customs officer entertained a Tamizh guy who spoke with American accent, standing behind me at the queue, thereby ignoring me. I told him that what he did was wrong. He didn't accept what I said. Our conversation was in Tamil. Immediately I changed my language and began speaking to him in standard British English. Now the customs officer apologised and looked attended to me.



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About Me

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Chennai, Tamilnadu, India
I am a retired K-12 Education Management Professional. I have worked at different levels in K-12 school systems, textbook publishing, elearning and Education NGOs. I have held memberships in The Association for Science Education (UK), American Association of Physics Teachers and The Malaysian Institute of Physics. I hold a 1st class B Sc Degree in Physics followed by B Ed [English and Physical Science] and M A [Childcare and Education] degrees. My published works include 59 articles in teacher development magazines in India and the US and a book entitled `Creative Classrooms and Child Friendly Schools' (listed in Amazon). This book is almost an anecdotal account of my professional experience in six countries (including Cambodia where I worked as Technical Adviser to the Ministry of Education, Youth And Sports). I served as mentor in the Certificate of Teaching Mastery Program offered by Teachers Without Borders.