Education & Profession

The purpose of education is not only to provide knowledge or skills to obtain a living & provide status. Even people without education can obtain wealth & status, for example, in the underworld. The purpose of education is to produce a cultured individual capable of appreciating the fine arts & sports.

In addition to a knowledge of the natural world & overview of the sciences & arts, one should also be a useful member of society. Unfortunately, this comprehensive view of education is completely forgotten in the mad rush for wealth & status. The most frequently asked questions in a Google search are the searched person's "networth" rather than his/her achievements. 

This perversion has become so normalised that one views even entertainment through the distorting, irrelevant & ultimately egregious prism of money. One is more interested in the money earned by the filmstar or cricketer rather than enjoying their artistry on the screen or cricket field. 

How harmful it is to become besotted by film stars or cricketers, who are after all only entertainers, was probably anticipated by Chanakya himself when he placed various restrictions on entertainers' stay & travel from place to place, whereas bars, gambling dens & places offering female society were allowed, albeit under government control.

Coming back to education & profession, every professional person is quite often not educated at all in the true sense of the word, even though he/she may have a string of letters after their name.

The Four Ways of Demonstrating Hindustani Instrumental Music

1. 
   The First way is by singing the swaras using the words of the Khayal (or fixed composition) like the famous "Bole re papihara" in the raga Miya ki Malhar.
2. The second way is by singing the sargam or the actual swaras (or musical notes) being intoned by the composition. Like "M P nDNS__ g__gMRS" in the example given above.
3. In instrumental music, say the Sitar, the right-hand index finger is used to pluck the string to produce the sound. The inward pluck is called "da" & the outward "ra". There are other variations like "diri" etc. A singer can intone the sitar right hand plucking syllables while singing the swaras of the composition.
4. Similarly, the strokes on the Tabla are also identified by "Da, Dhin, Ta, Na" etc. The composition can also be sung (in the swaras denoted for it) while intoning the tabla syllables mentioned above.

Education & addressing people

Education presupposes attending school & using the dictionary at some point to know the exact meaning of words. The dictionary meaning of uncle/aunt is a sibling of one's parent. Similarly grandfather/grandmother is a parent of one's parent.

But what is happening in India since the last 50 years or so, is that even unrelated people perceived as slightly older than oneself are addressed as uncle/aunt. Those with even a strand of grey hair are addressed grandfather/grandmother (or its regional equivalent.) This started in South India with the influx of Hindi speaking people from the north, who are more at home in Hindi than English.

The semantically correct way of addressing people, used in countries where English is the first language, is by their name, prefixed with Mr./Ms. If the name is not known, Sir/Madam may be used. Addressing elderly strangers as grandpa/grandma is considered as a doubly provocative insult, because they are not biologically related & one is drawing attention to their age, which is extremely bad manners.

In a famous example, Anne of Green Gables, an orphan, on her arrival, asks Marilla, a middle aged spinster, "Can I call you Aunt Marilla?" Marilla sternly replies "No, because I am not your aunt & I don't like people being called names that don't belong to them. Just call me Marilla."

It is only to be hoped that the so-called "educated(!)" Indians, start to use words strictly according to their meaning in the dictionary. Addressing people by a non existent biological relationship is an insult rather than an assumption of family ties.