Of This and That

What's it with this grace marking system that CBSE and possibly other boards follow? There was a decision taken by the board recently about no longer giving grace marks. While on the face of it this is a good decision, as it means students will really get marks as per what they have answered in the exam and not get extra marks, which helps boost their results, but was it really so?  Delhi High Court has ruled against it  and for all the valid reasons. However this raises a few questions in my mind.  While this ruling helps the students this year, which as fair enough as that it was they were expecting when they had appeared for the exams, but with the results to be announced only in a couple of days, it would be only logical to assume that most of the checking would be already over and the Board would mostly be in the process of creating the final mark list and report cards. How can it now revisit all the lakhs of papers to add grace marks where applicable, as p...

After almost an year’s break from any travels, to allow my daughter to fully concentrate on her class X, we finally decided to get out of the routine and go spend a few days at some resort. Since the decision was taken at a time when summer vacations of kids had already started, getting a booking at any place, on the weekend, at a short notice was impossible. Also, given the summer heat and lack of water at our home, due to water cut by the society, we wanted to go to a place with enough water. So, we narrowed on Jal Srushti Island Resort  and booked for a 2-night package on weekdays. I had heard good things about the resort and a very good trip advisor rating convinced us to try this place out. We were a bit skeptical of how much water will be there, given that it was peak summer and rains had not yet graced the city, but our doubts were ill placed. Well, to start with, the booking for the place is typically managed via their own site and you need to typically pay about ...

For many years I am doing most of my banking with ICICI and have hardly visited the branch in the last decade or so. Almost all the banking needs are managed online or via the relationship manager. I do have to have to visit SBI once a year to deposit some money in my PPF account. While this is just a once a year task, I was still not keen on making even this 1 day visit to SBI and hence thought to transfer the PPF account to ICICI, which is also a government recognized back to hold PPF accounts.  After multiple attempts, but something or other kept coming up, I finally managed to visit the SBI bank one fine Saturday morning. This was the fist mistake. The bank gets unduly crowded on weekends. I reached the bank by 10.15 am or so.  As I entered the bank, there was a queue with about 5-6 people standing at the "May I Help You" counter. Knowing that this will take a while, I approached the security guard, who is seen more within the bank and less at the entrance gate. He t...