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- N. Raghuraman’s Column Is The ‘2 Minute Noodles’ Incentive Necessary For Children?
23 hours ago
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N. Raghuraman, Management Guru
‘Teachers can never teach. The students themselves have to learn. It is the responsibility of the students to motivate the teachers to teach. I learned from my seniors that knowledge is like a fast flowing river. This river of knowledge keeps flowing from the teacher, mentor or guru. It depends on the students how much water they are able to collect from that river – a cup, a bucket or a truckload?
Whenever I did riyaaz in my room, I always wanted to attract his attention. (Here he is referring to his father) And he would pay attention to me only when I would distort the lesson taught to me and play it in a different way. Whenever I did this, my father would say ‘Hmmmm’ in an approving tone from outside on my attempt.
And then he would suddenly come and stand at the door and ask to play another beat. His words would inspire me as he would guide me to experiment in more ways than criticizing my efforts or giving any recognition to them. I got this inspiration from my father.
Late Ustad Zakir Hussain Sahab was talking about his father Ustad Allah Rakha in one of his old interviews. These lessons from a teacher (read guru) standing at the door and teaching taal with a paper in one hand and the fingers of the other hand not only helped Zakir Hussain carry forward his father’s legacy, but also He took tabla playing to heights where it had never been before.
His father cum guru wanted Zakir to take classical music to a wider audience and make it accessible to all, mesmerizing them and connecting the music with a feeling of divinity. And that is exactly what Ustad Zakir Hussain did, who departed from this world on 16 December 2024, leaving his tabla orphan. Whenever I talk to anyone in the family about my father, I remember that interview of Zakir Hussain ji. When I got my first salary and brought that packet home, my heart was dancing inside me thinking that my father would hug me and appreciate me for reaching this point. But the opposite happened. He did not even look up from his newspaper.
Just said ‘good’ and then said give it to your mother and ask her to keep it in the puja room. You go to the bathroom, wash your hands and feet and pray to God. After six months of salary, one day the father said, ‘I am happy to see you becoming responsible, you completed the probation period of six months without taking any leave and now you have become permanent. Now remember that you will have to help me in giving a good education to your younger sister and marrying her off at a good place. Those words weren’t just music to my ears. Rather, he inspired me to be financially prudent in life.
Even after his departure, I still live his habit of pausing for a while to be happy. In their research in 1970, Mitchell and Ebsen said that “the habit of delaying gratification is the ability to let go of immediate benefits for long-term benefits.” Typically, latency gratification is measured in tasks in which a person sacrifices a small immediate incentive (2 minute noodles) for a larger future reward (read life).
The bottom line is that In a world of instant gratification, if you want to see your children excel in any field, then take a pause and sow the seeds of the habit of being satisfied. This could be a parenting tip from Ustad Zakir Hussain Sahab.