The One With The Day Care

So we received the following mail from a certain Ms. Soma Paul. It took me 4 days to prepare myself mentally to comment on it.

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Good News!!! There is a concrete plan to start a daycare at the institute shortly. A supervisor/teacher and one attendant have been identified. Your support and suggestion is welcome. We have listed the immediate requirements for the daycare and also some of the things that people have come forwarded and contributed. We request you to have a look at the list of requirements and let us know if there is anything that you can immediately contribute (things that are left over in your office or house). This will help us reduce our initial capital costs. Please mail us by this Saturday, so that we can plan accordingly.

One time requirement


1. wooden cupboards, 4 shelf with door ~V 4

2. Cubby hole (like mail boxes) ~V 16 cubbies

3. Low table,1 foot from the floor, 6ft x 4 ft - 1

4. Jute mat/ or any floor mat ~V 6

5. Sleep mat, like yoga mat - 8

6. pencil & crayon bowls ~V 4

7. low chairs or stools ~V 10

8. picture frames ~V 10

9. Book shelf, 2 rack ~V 2

10. Garbage bins ~V 2

11. 90 liter small fridge

12. Toys ~V like building blocks, kitchen sets, puzzles etc.

13. Games ~V carrom, Chinese checkers, chess, rolling pins/ball

14. One wall clock

15. First Aid box



Operational needs:

1. Towels

2. Paper tissues

3. Soap

4. Garbage bags

5. Broom & mop

6. Mosquito repellent

7. Bandages, dettol, cotton etc.,



Contributions made to date:


a. Soma - Fridge

b. Nagamani - books cupboard

c. Jawahar - Crayons

d. Kavita - Floor mats(8),toys/games, books, pictures (a few)

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So here I go,


First of all, What The Bloody Fuck was that? Why in the name of the Holy Mother of God (@schweini :P) does IIIT need a day care? My best guess is that it is for the faculty's and administrative staff's children. It could also be targeted at PhD students with kids. But why? AFAIK, the idea of day care was conceived in the West because it almost always required (still does) that both parents work due to which the kids were left unattended. I would never approve of it though, under any circumstances. But what surprised me the most was that a college like IIIT - Oh I am sorry, what I meant to say was - a college under the dictatorship of a member of The Brethren of Jeevan Vidya, namely IIIT, was adopting a Western non-technical idea.

Here is a short, incomplete list of things that are shunned at IIIT,

1. Eating food outside college.
   
2. Eating spicy food, even if it is inside the college.
3. Doing anything that would lead to points (1) , (2) , (4) and of course (3). We open source people are too fond of recursive statements and names. :P
   
4. Sleeping late in the night.

To sum it all up, we are expected to behave like deterministic machines (and I happen to work in the field of Autonomous Multi Agent Systems, the irony!).

Also, there was a questionnaire given to students at the time of the admission (the link to which I do not have at the moment) which STRONGLY discouraged people who,

1. were interested in making a living after college.
2. wanted to lead a comfortable life.
   
3. wanted to have a good time during the 4 (+2, 3, ... N for those hardcore researchers) years they spent in the college. The batches can broadly be classified into 3 groups,

(i) batches before X, which left the college in a sad mood (they actually felt the college-student bond break).
(ii) the batch X, which left the college in a "tis the season to be jolly" mood.
(iii) batches after X, which will umm... run of out the college holding for their dear lives.

In my opinion, X = 2004 :)

Now anyone who really knows what JV/HV/HP/whatever is all about (basically a IIITian WITH a life), might be cursing me for makeing him/her read these stupid facts all over again.

My sincere apologies!

I just did not know any other way to put it. The one and only question that I want to ask through this post is, Are we so busy with our research and jobs that we cannot take care of our children? Especially when we are being "brainwashed" into living like "cultured/sensible" people (according to Their definition at least!), are we not being hypocratic here?