The Story Of Watermelons By Manohar Parrikar

I am from the village of Parra in Goa, hence we are called Parrikars. 

My village is famous for its watermelons. 

When I was a child, the farmers would organise a watermelon-eating contest at the end of the harvest season in May. 

All the kids would be invited to eat as many watermelons as they wanted. 

Years later, I went to IIT Mumbai to study engineering. I went back to my village after 6.5 years. 

I went to the market looking for watermelons. They were all gone. The ones that were there were so small. 

I went to see the farmer who hosted the watermelon-eating contest. His son had taken over. He would host the contest but there was a difference. 

When the older farmer gave us watermelons to eat he would ask us to spit out the seeds into a bowl. We were told not to bite into the seeds. He was collecting the seeds for his next crop. We were unpaid child labourers, actually. 

He kept his best watermelons for the contest and he got the best seeds which would yield even bigger watermelons the next year. 

His son, when he took over, realised that the larger watermelons would fetch more money in the market so he sold the larger ones and kept the smaller ones for the contest. 

The next year, the watermelons were smaller, the year later even small. 

In watermelons the generation is one year. In seven years, Parra's best watermelons were finished. In humans, generations change after 25 years. 

It will take us 200 years to figure what we were doing wrong while educating our children.

Lipstick in School

A certain private school was faced with a unique problem, where a number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick.

They would apply it in the bathroom, which was fine. But after that they would press their lips on the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night the maintenance janitor would remove them, and the next day the girls would put them back.

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done.

She called all girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance janitor. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night.

To demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance janitor to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled mop, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. 

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers . . .  and then there are educators..!!