In a New Dehli slum, a teacher holds classes under a bridge.

Rajesh Sharma is not a teacher by trade or licensing. He is a small grocery store owner in New Dehli who saw the poverty in the slums in town and decided to try and change it in any way he could.




He now has volunteer teachers lend a hand. As Umar Imam, one of the local volunteers, once told The Weekend Leader, "It gives immense me satisfaction to teach these kids. Initially, I devoted 2 hours in 3 days, but now I stretched it to 4 hours daily."

And as for Rajesh Sharma?

After his day is done teaching the children, he often can be found at his grocery store until 10pm, before doing it all over again tomorrow.

Singapore's migrant workers and the poetry competition they compete in each year.

While among the world's wealthiest, the citizens of Singapore have very little to do with the day-to-day operations that keep their small city-state bustling and operating as amongst the world's most efficient.

Indeed, nearly one-fifth of Singapore's unofficial population is made up of foreign domestic laborers, mainly from Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines.

Singapore: Largely not made by Singaporeans.

I say unofficial because Singapore has a long history of not counting the over one million workers who stay on long-term work visas as members of the population. Saying these individuals are second class citizens would be a compliment, as they are largely ignored, shunned, or abused by the locals as a means of cheap labor. Females are required to live with their employer, often with abusive conditions, while males live in cramped, slum-like dorms spread throughout the city, or in "nice" dorms in remote areas that some say is a form of apartheid.

While they may come from economically struggling countries, these maids and construction workers and garbage collectors and hotel cleaners were often once engineers, doctors, lawyers, educators, and writers back in their native land, now forced to work for menial wages to send back home to support their family.

The physically harsh and emotionally draining conditions don't stop Singapore's migrant workers from channeling their creative spirit into poetry. As Australia's ABC News details, the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition is now in its third year, with a large number of submissions that now needs to be whittled down to 17 finalists, for which an evening is reserved by organizers at the National Gallery, and those finalists read their poems to raptured crowds.

Ramaswamy Madhavan, a site engineer at construction sites throughout Singapore, told ABC that such events and writing competition brighten the workers' spirits. "It gives us more energy to write."

And maybe more energy to survive, to live, to thrive.

Maine governor walks off stage mid-speech after students hold up sign criticizing him.

Come check out the comedic
stylings of Gov. LePage!

From the Thin Skin Department comes the state of Maine's governor, Paul LePage. Let's welcome him to the stage! Come up here, Gov. LePage!!

[[[crickets]]]
[[[no governor]]]

Gov. LePage! Welcome to the stage! Let's hear it!

[[[yawns]]]
[[[no governor]]]

Governor?






The sad part is that this was generally the case the other day as governor and all-around wannabe rejected comedian, Paul LePage, stormed off the stage at the dedication of the Theodora J. Kalikow Education Center and called two students "idiots" after the duo held signs up that said "LePage: Maine’s Shame." That's about as hot a take as you'll get in Maine, where the protests are as scorching as the weather.

Why were the students unhappy? Maybe because any time Gov. LePage gets in front of a microphone he has something offensive to say. Take this past weekend, when he decided to randomly alert people that he thinks speaking with Indians requires an interpreter and Bulgarians are hard to understand.

"It's hard to hear what they're saying," LePage said over the weekend. "Have you ever tried to say, 'What's the special today?' to somebody from Bulgaria?"

Rim-shot!! Try the veal!

Maybe the students were Bulgarian though? They might have just been answering what the special was.

Government textbooks in India are full of errors, high comedy, racism.

It hasn't been a good couple of years for the India state board textbook system. A myriad of errors were shown to exist in last year's textbooks, which Indian officials promised would be fixed by this year's publication.

Yeah, but...no. This year's textbooks show many of the same errors as last year's textbooks (like sections of India missing on maps, among other delights), and include a variety of new mistakes.

Besides a slew of serious spelling snafus, the errors in this year's newly re-published edition include:

1.)  Referring to Alexander the Great as 'Alexandria.'
2.)  Detailing the Worli River--a river that doesn't actually exist.
3.)  African citizens referred to as 'Negroes.'
4.)  Malad and Vasai Creeks, which connect Mumbai to the Indian Ocean, appearing on land.

Shobha Ramana, a local history teacher, explained the plight further to Mid-Day that "even the history textbooks have so many grammatical and factual errors." The problems aren't just factual, Ramana says. "Many chapters are not structured well," she said, "and the entire essence of history has gone for a toss in these textbooks."

Well, Alexander the Great's gender certainly has certainly gone for a toss, that much we know.

Penguin books agrees to recall book in India, destroy all copies.

Hindu nationalist group Shiksha Bachao Andolan filed a suit in India in 2011 against scholar Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus: An Alternative History, claiming the book inaccurately represented the religion, and did so with largely overt sexual tones. This, the group argued, violated the Indian penal code that bans "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs."

After deliberations, Penguin has come to an agreement with the nationalist group, agreeing to withdraw and destroy any remaining copies of the book. This comes on the heels of other publishers in the country removing "offensive" texts, such as Bloomsbury removing The Descent of Air India last month.

And, thus, India has suddenly become the Alabama of Asia.

India school holds record for most students. 39,437, to be exact.

The newest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records claims City Montessori School in Lucknow, the capital city of India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh, as the biggest in the world, The school also has 2,500 teachers and over 1,000 classrooms spread out over a campus which fosters to children from ages 3 to 17, all of whom wear uniforms. While a bit cramped, classes average around 45 students, which isn't that terrible when put into context.

And by context I mean it's better than being taught in Texas, so they have that going for themselves.




photo: Getty/AFP

Fashionable Words: Hullabaloo

[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]

Word:
Hullabaloo

Definition:   noun
1. A clamorous noise or disturbance.

2. An uproar, a fuss.

Origin:
Depends how you want to define your origins.

The Oxford English Dictionary claims hallabaloo as a word solely originating in England, most likely around 1762--and they'll create a hullabaloo if you disagree with them. The OED claims it's an interjection of hallo and the Scottish baloo (meaning lullaby).

If a word for lullaby doesn't make much sense for a hullabaloo, well, Wiktionary sides with you. Instead they claim the term was potentially introduced to England around this same time period from India (hooray, imperialism!) from the word hullabol, which is an Indian English descriptive term for noisy public demonstrations.

Either way, the word derives from Mother England's love to invade the world, be it Scotland or India.

Most obscure Urbandictionary.com definitions for hullabaloo:
2. The first word of the phrase "hullabaloo caneck caneck" which is the start of the Texas A&M University War Hymn; represents the sound a cannon ball makes as it rolls down the barrel of the cannon while being loaded.

7. A word that has deep origins within the state of Rl. This word is used by a lot of famous swimmers, including Olympian Michael Phelps. The maximum usage of this word is once every six months. If you use this word more than once every six months, extreme screeching and sudden outbursts of high pitched noises have been reported.

Used in a sentence:
1. With all of the hullabaloo, it was hard to recognize that actual legislation was passed.

2. Ramon's announcement that he was pregnant caused quite a hullabaloo.

Word Awesomeness Scale (1 to 5):
Three. You need to be a part of the hullabaloo before you use hullabaloo.

The world's last handwritten newspaper. (Sounds kind of ominous put like that.)

Gawker has a story about a little newspaper (only four broadsheet pages) in India that is not only the world's oldest Urdu-language newspaper, but it's also the last remaining hand-written newspaper thought to exist in the world. In other words, it's a handwritten Boston Globe, with a larger readership probably, too.

The Musalman is the newspaper's name. It has reporters throughout India who report via phone or fax. Four gentlemen, named katibs, who are ancient practitioners of a form of calligraphy, hand-write out the news reports on the four sheets. The front page is mainly national and international news, the middle two pages belong to local happenings, and the final page is all about sports. I can only assume it's wall-to-wall coverage of cricket matches.

According to the story, the editing position at the paper passes down from father to son. Kind of like the British monarchy, circa 1550, minus that whole religious brouhaha. All modern editors at The Musalman admit there's no logical reason they don't use computers to create the paper--they just don't.

It's cute when traditions continue like this. Antiquated things are charming. Makes me want to wear a shawl, get in a rocking chair by a fire, and bang my cane.