A Phonetic Pilgrimage

This first Phonetic Pilgrimage was a transect of the Hindi Belt from Dharmshala to Patna with side trips to Dehradun and Pune, with ~3 hour train trips between.

Delhi

Villa 33 was nice ; the owner himself is your host in this grand and artistic home/hotel. Coffee in the neighborhood; across the street from a park of both pompous retirees and humble friends.

Delhi is enormous. How do I know? I got lost on the metro. That is not possible in Seattle!

IIT Delhi, I met my much admired friend Hariprasad at the security gate. His best friends arrived one every hour for 3-4 hours, what a delight to talk phonetics with these intense eager brilliant young graduate students. They made me promise to give a zoom lecture on vowel acoustics (Chapter 2, Veatch 1991), and I asked if they would please make a speech recognizer to carry out phonetic transcription in unknown languages. That needs careful scoping to be achieveable, but an interesting project only now approachable since AI & machine learning CS folks are in conversation with real phoneticians / linguists with good ears. The computer scientist, I guessed he was from Kashmir on the third guess; fun! And the Kashmiri said it: Hariprasad is not just the smartest of grad students but wise and humble as well.

In the same large block near Hauz Khas I crossed back from IIT Delhi to NCERT and met both the DCERT's PA and other staff, she took in the instrument and got me five minutes with his excellency, who seemed busy even overwhelmed, and asked me for a project proposal letter (that was Friday, then on Monday back from DehraDun already his security folks wouldn't let me deliver it to the office. I do take No for an answer!).

The key learning from NCERT was, I have to actually barge in, and physically put the instrument down in front of the officer, no matter how high in status, and start talking phonetics. This is the phonetic script, 1 sound 1 letter means trust unlike English-spelled lies and betrayals like in my own name, pictures make the difference, here's voiceless, voiced, out-breathing [h], mouth open [a], brackets, [haha] in 90 seconds, easy literacy on a reality-based foundation for all whether for English or any language; satyam eva jayate; dictionary pronunciations; the goal of making master teachers in a recursive, cascade, or chain model to remove the horror of illiteracy from the planet.

Good for English and Sanskrit; teachers without can hardly know, describe, or clearly refer to the actual sounds (consider th, sh, respectively)

With pictures no longer for scientists only but everyone a) with a mouth, b) old enough to watch and understand cartoons and c) not too blind to see.

For virality the repeating unit is the Master Teacher, so let's put it in a position of strength and make that possible: for English teachers in a Training of Teachers module, enabling English teachers to teach English properly, to explain English (or other) dictionaries' pronunciations.

In under five minutes, sometimes within seconds these education-system leaders consistently classify this as a beneficial project; and hook me right up. In minutes comes the appropriate institutional lead: head of department for Teacher Training, head of English teaching, a technical point of contact. Or out I go straight to a classroom where the schedule has been suddenly modified, to teach 60-120 students hungry for phonetics (to their surprise).

But! When I don't stick it in front of their nose and start explaining [h], [a], brackets, [haha], easy learning, etc., then the tippy-top officer is naturally confused, possibly overwhelmed, as anyone would be, by my wall of hieroglyphics, this teaching instrument, admittedly a whole curriculum. He reacts professionally and protectively with the standard pushback, give us a proposal. It will be evaluated after months in a meeting evaluating 50 proposals, so we have done our job now, right? So I learned that lesson and acted correctly thereafter.

Dehradun

3 days with Pratibha Naithani and Rakesh Jugran and Rajiv Pandhri and with Sonita and the Garhwali ladies. Sonita was one of the Garhwali ladies, brought in from the nearby fields and bastis by Pratibha's morning recruiting walk. Sonita was extra serious, listened to all my blather but she especially focussed on actively using pen and paper to first draw a smiley face 5x, and then wrote all her vowels and a few of her consonants and after 90 minutes (which included lunch!), she recognized her name from the letters s o n i t a. Her eyes sparkled. Everyone understood it had clicked, and was amazed. I felt my tear ducts open. 90 minutes. Proof.

Okay it's one of 23 ladies, some of it was surely her own determination and character and intelligence, and yes it's just one milestone of learning, it's not everyone, every level, in the usual larger-group way of things. But as an indicator what could be more significant, more accelerated, than 90 minutes from smiley face to name recognition. This door is opening. The light is shining in.

Next day at DIET Dehradun, the class was 65-70 students, even with the microphone boost they had a hard time to hear me in the back because of the fans. Acoustics of lecture hall environment are important. In future I must limit the group to AC rooms or 30 students. I came off the podium, stood close, cranked the microphone speaker, worked it. Pretty sure the front folks got it. And that the rear folks wanted more. The DIET staff gave me their phone numbers, all 65, so I will add them to a group to discuss and develop this.

At Pandhri-ji's GUPS school (Government Upper Primary School) I met for lunch with science teacher Sarita Aswal and history teacher Pradeep Kumar, and met the inspired and enthusiastic interns Anjali Thaapa, Sudhaanshu Thaapa, and Smita Aswal. I had a happy hour with each of two classes including ages 11-12-13-14 and 7-8-9-10. The younger group understood about as well as the older ones, though a tiny girl in the back alone in her row who may have been a 7-year-old; I gave her a little extra explanation and repetition to catch up at one point. In an hour I get through the idea, the purposes, the glottal three, and all the vowels and 1/3 of the consonants, namely the place X action model and the 5 places demonstrated with all the nasals after the nasality proof, and cursory review of stops fricatives approximants, but always theta/eth, ph/f/v/w, and s/sh/Sh, and usually [schwar] and [velarized(dark) l]. Which gives them the Sanskrit base of Devanagari as well as English (in its contrasts with Hindi). Oh it is a love fest. Teaching phonetics is SO FUN! And so EMPOWERING! Everyone is delighted to know about retroflex-l in Marathi, and they laugh at having to actually, visibly, stick out their tongue for theta. In the end I remind them how illiterate people can read every sign as saying Stop, Go Away, You are Not Included, and how they cannot send or receive messages, read signs directions or maps to go anywhere, or do written transactions in buying or selling so as to own or profit from anything, without literacy. So then I authorize them to teach what they know to their parents and any illiterates they encounter, and let's work together so illiteracy may be no longer in this world.

Delhi again

My intrepid travel companion, Pratibha's recent college-grad (English lit) #1 son, Vatsal "Misti" Naithani was with me from Dehradun to Patna. He watched over my every step and saved me many a trip-and-fall, and patiently listened to all my repetitions of evolving ideas and slightly-modified teaching pathways, always had great contributions and much to teach me.

Mobi (Dad) Naithani made sure we got the (comfy, maintained) government bus ticket Dehradun-Delhi, but when it pulled out 30 minutes early I was still shaking my hands from the washroom, and we had to run toward the bus station exit gate to catch up. So exciting! Only the first Vatsal rescue.

In Delhi we arrived at the Kashmiri Gate for a day of three errands. First to NCERT to give our requested proposal to DCERT; somehow the security staff definitely refused entry to deliver what the DCERT himself had requested 3 days earlier. This confirmed my learning, that I had failed to approach him properly. Perhaps I may have a second chance some day.

Second to Kirti Nagar to get a sample made of my cushioned Siddhasana seat. Misti please sell it for me in Rishikesh!

Third, the RSS headquarters. At the door they rejected us. At the office they rejected us. By phone they rejected us. A very nice orange-clad professor standing out front was nice to talk to; I wish I had recognized him as a Sanskrit professor, an automatic ally, but that came as he turned away to go. Now the RSS is the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh, the National Self-service Organization. It's about independence, and going our own way. These folks ought to be our allies. Narendra Modi Ji himself, the PM, is an RSS guy from his youth. Who doesn't support people being proud of themselves, of an ancient history and vibrant intellectual and spiritual tradition, and therefore Hindus being proud is great. And, Who in this world does NOT go their own way? Nobody; we are an independent minded species. So in principle I am in favor of the RSS. My idea is, let's turn the RSS into a phonetics-teaching organization. If they want national self-service then phonetics is the way! Why do I say so? First because nation-wide outreach to every village and town is within scope of the RSS; they can actually be the solution at the national level for beyond-school students who want to learn to read somehow. But second, because "Satyam Eva Jayate" (Truth Always Wins), and the sounds of language really, truly, actually, factually, are made with the mouth and its positions and actions shown in these diagrams. Phonetics is the truth basis of spoken language. On the nationalist angle, IPA could be considered as the Latin alphabet modified and redefined in the direction of Hindi / Sanskrit / Devanagari. If one wants a Devanagari-ish Latin, it is IPA, because Devanagari is (mostly) phonetic.

But the RSS will have to wait for another day; they clearly didn't want us today, and No is a Good Answer! My agenda remains; perhaps, if some day we (deserve to) meet Modi.

Back to Kashmiri gate, by this time night has fallen, and we go onto the overnighter to Dharamshala, saving on hotels by sleeping 10 hours on a bus.

Dharmshala

Home of Dalai Lama and a Tibetan community. Fresh off the bus at 7am we climbed up to a pleasant modern coffee shop to recharge phones use the washroom, and have breakfast. So nice!

Sitting there were a couple of Westerners, first and last I talked to this whole trip. Backpackers Chloe and Seth <???> are young urban professionals, a pediatric ICU nurse (!!) and water resources scientist, just married, from Colorado, quit their jobs a few days ago for a vast Asian Journey of six months through every country, rented a motorcycle to clear the hump near Leh or Ladakh, loved the people there, and came to Dharmshala for some kind of Buddhist retreat tomorrow. Now we are four fast friends, and Chloe taught me to reach out to the Rotary Club to find benefactors like her father, and I think was inspired by the literacy project to think of impactful work, which has not only direct impact but downstream recursive impacts. They were so happy and young and idealistic, and they reminded me of my parents, just married yuppies who went to Asia for a 10-year deep dive version of the same trip, and it made me happy to see their goodness. Blessings upon you Chloe and Seth!

And thank you for hooking us up with the Eco Hostel, up in the clouds, where a nice young couple is making an honest living out of a small hotel and restaurant, favored by backpackers. Dharmshala is basically on a slightly slanted Himalayan cliff, for miles and miles up the hill. I mean, there there are trees (deodars) and there were SOME people living there before Nehru offered Dalai Lama to settle his people there, but it is a largely Tibetan town, and the temples and attractions certainly come from the Tibetan spiritual nugget around which circumambulate the nuns, monks, abbots, teachers, students, visitors, tourists, servers, taxi-drivers and bookstore-wallas who have been drawn to it. The feeling is definitely much calmer than the mad dash of Delhi; indeed, to me it seemed much like Sarnath and Bodh Gaya where Buddhism holds the calm feeling of public spaces (mostly).

Checked in, Misti and I drove winding, curving, cliffhanging miles back down the hill toward one of the centers of Dharmshala, and immediately dropped onto the curb of the Dalai Lama temple. So today 2026, his Holiness is 91 years old, not receiving visitors, but his personal representative is out front meeting drop-ins like ourselves. She had been watching me approach every family (matriarch first!) and solitary person, with my self-amazed friendliness (escaped from the solitude of Seattle's capitalist individualism), with my missionary zeal for literacy. Realizing we might want to talk to her, we went to the slightly barricaded front yard with the rolling gate over which we attract her attention and actually talk, slightly as though at the Indo-Pak border, across the boundary. I was delighted to be informed that his Holiness is IN, which we had never confirmed. "Let's just get on this 20 hours bus roundtrip and maybe he will be there." With such confident innocence, or lucky stupidity, we were rewarded by some divinity. A short explanation later, Miss <???> said on her own recognizance to go back to that Punjabi family who she thought might need us. Connecting beyond the matriarch now to, probably, her #1 son, soon I was on my knees with the little Punjabi girls to show them [haha], and soon #1 <???> was scheming to get us to stop in Jalandhar to chat with his local illiterate ladies for the full tutorial, and explaining how Sikhs have an idealistic projects culture so let's do it. Timings didn't align this time but hope remains to return eventually. I wonder if SCERT-Punjab is in Jalandhar. The Personal Representative, watching out from the front door of the HH's Actual Residence, having taken the Instrument in as we asked her to give it to the Dalai Lama himself, soon seemed to have been watching and explaining this slightly surprising drama to his Holiness, and brought us out a whole bag of gifts, prasad to enjoy in the eating, holy water to drink, a red thread for each of us to wear around neck or wrist. I would like to think that our Dalai Lama himself saw the instrument, since she received it knowing our intention to show and explain it to him, understanding how it works, and that he wanted to give us and our project his blessing and support.

Misti said (something like): "Tom, you told me you wanted to go off on this wild jaunt to Dharmshala to see the Dalai Lama and get his blessing on the Phonetics Pilgrimage, and I thought that was probably quite unrealistic, but here we are at his front door recieving his gifts of blessing after giving and explaining it to his representative. Flying colors, Tom."

After our tourist walk in the area, after the bookstore-walla who really got it and said he would give it to the needy himself, after the bored patients waiting in a medical stall, two of whom looked like good candidates and took it appreciately, it was time for coffee and lunch. There's a nice modern shop in front of the Dalai Lama temple, frequented by, it seems, monks, nuns, and westerners. I cannot stop meeting people, hence a short chat with 4 young nuns, then a long chat with a very thoughtful 75-year-old nun, quite academic, I was pulled behind by Misti who was pulled behind by <???> a middle-aged full-on Tibetan monk, who overhearing our conversation wanted in. <???> is himself fully illiterate, can you imagine that a Tibetan monk could be illiterate? After [haha] the lights went on. He said "Itna aasaani hae?!?!": "Its THAT easy?!" Misti clicked some pictures of his radiant smile. This is the thing.

My lesson, drawn much later on this and other observations, is the sharp boundary of recognition. When recognition occurs, it occurs at a sort of instant, the light dawns, the clicking together of elements forms a simpler understoodness. The mind knows the evidence that it is doing the knowing of, and knows the new clicked sense putting it together, and knows that it knows.

At a possibly later moment if the click was initially weak and uncertain, there is a confidence-creation event too, so you throw off the uncertainty flag that hangs over the whole thali plate of stuff in front of you, and now you feel you know in the sense that you can use it without flagging it with uncertainty, without stacking a questioningness on top of any occurrence of the idea. I might know, but I'm really not sure I know so okay, I'll pull all this up and contemplate if it makes sense itself or makes sense with everything else too, in increasingly tragic hope that it might, but I know I don't really quite know just yet.

The whole click event is not without internal subjective experience, it is not without logic and abstraction and reference at different layers. [h] and [a] as independent glyphs, as graspably-different sounds (with also in their different subjective colors or bases), as drawn-phonetic-feature-combinations, all understood separately by eyes ears and mind; h and a sequenced on the page, ha and then haha as their joint being, as a pronounceable unit. My point is this occurs in a sort of click event. We talk about slowly slowly the osmotic-absorption learner will somehow assimilate it gradually and more and more until finally they will learn stuff. I deny this, this is unit-wise false, though a mountain of clicks may accumulate to a general assimilation of knowledge and competence. Each event when you understand, you understand. Before, you don't, after, you do, and if it takes too long then you get confused by everything around it instead of just the simple essence of it:

[h a] = [ha]

So we need to focus especially on making every step exactly that simple, then every student will go click click click and up the mountain of knowledge we go, even to the temple of Dalai Lama in Dharmshala, even to the coffee house with <???>. It's a real job with job security because one click does not make the next click so entirely obvious, though one does build on another. My OCD contemplation keeps looking, What is the easy path?

Delhi 2nd return

Overnight bus back. Past Jalandhar feeling bad about crossed timing with <???>. Through Chandigarh, not stopping, a giant grid of dark avenues, Kapaahi brother isn't there any more, so I can't miss him.

I'm in a Food Court in Hoshiarpur, presently. Mango ice cream is actually available, yum; but I haven't encountered the holy grail of mango water buffalo ice cream yet. Ayush (health) sitting by me, a kid from the mountains on vacation from work in Dubai, loves it there; hotelier. Another hotel.

Now in Delhi, Hotel Piorko full at 7am. Our honest Panjabi driver drove us down the road to another, his favorite (or best paying) (also full) then dragged the luggage down the street to Natraj where $30 gets two twin beds and a hot shower, 24 hours to check out. Great.

Plans now:

I found the chhole bhatura place first thing, pigged out on the best street food of Delhi, Misti found it later.

Kirti Nagar and the chairs, no sample having appeared the first time, on the 2nd round there was one. Several complaints were written down: rolled around a cylinder and glued on a central support, the width to length had become narrow; the foam pieces were 3/4" not 1" so slope with the same topographic layer outlines was flatter than expected. Registered change requests, another deposit, I'll be back on 10/8 for an improved sample to approve, we may hope.

Time to roll.

Etawah

Train Delhi to Etawah was very comfortable on the Shatabdi Express, the famous fast train, nice 220V power receptable on the high wall at window level, and recharged everything nicely.

Etawah is a locally prominent town with some government offices like the regional government agriculture school or the DIET, in a town of 1/4 million the outskirts are not too far. We rolled our rolly suitcases around to discover various hotel limitations, one said they won't rent to foreigners. Wow am I that bad as a foreigner you won't rent to me? Apparently. It turns out there's a systematic issue, more later; unlicensed hotels are overlooked by the police, but its harder to overlook cases involving foreigners, so the market gets weird like this.

Finally we found the Krishna Hotel, well away from the railstation corruption. They gave us new rooms, front window on the street. We could have been their first customers. They accepted this foreigner, gave us coffee, introduced the owner. Pratibha's friends came with gifts after the day, Nitu Purvaar and her fabulous daughter Tejaswani Gupta, we got the Iskcon view of oneness, and I really appreciated the Bhagavad Gita gift, which must be letter accurate in Devanagari and Romanization. Krishna Krishna.

In Etawah then we went to the BSA and immediately met Govind and Shashank, two amazing clear-minded teachers. Shashank said he was a mathematician, said he understood it and the implications fully and would send data with pre- and post-test results and try to help and to spread it. He is my #1 find on this trip, I am dying over losing their contact information page.

Ram Janam Singh was the admin topper at the BSA and he also very quickly understood and grabbed us and put us on the autorickshaw to the DIET and made them run a class for us. Maybe a real teacher got a substitute for 90 minutes.

I tried Hindi a lot, 70% maybe, but it was much supported by Misti who gave inter-turn translation. If I lost momentum, Ram Janam stepped up and gave most amazing stories and scenarios to make anyone want to learn phonetics better. I too had them laughing often. RJS got us in not one but TWO newspapers. <??? img???>

Short version: In Etawah I walked in unannounced to the BSA (Basic Shikshan Adhikaari, Basic-level schools office), met Shashank and another teacher in the entrance. Shashank is so on board he is ready to do experiments, pre test, intervention, post-test, stats, publication. Standing beside was the curious, immediately locked-in, and great, Ram Janm Singh, the officer in charge of bringing progress in the school system, who put us directly into an autorickshaw and led the way on his scooter to the Etawah DIET, immediately standing me in front of a class of 120 students and in the end putting a garland of flowers over my head and getting a write-up in two newspapers with pictures. With Misti's excellent help it was a great one-hour introduction program.

Now Gayatri Verma in the pictures is the principal at DIET Etawah. Enthused, already a phonologist, my strongest advocate. She offered her connections in Lucknow; so, next, Lucknow.

Lucknow

Second leg of the Shatabdi Express left at 9:40, tight on time but a sweet train ride, I do like a 3 hour express ride. Somewhere before Etawah the Delhi desert, which at this season just after monsoon isn't very desertlike, had become capable of rice-growing, endless miles of fields with standing water. Waiters come with price-included-in-ticket food, snacks and meal. Arriving Lucknow at 1:10 we are in a different world, state capital, bigger and busier than Itavah: 90 minutes hikeabout to get a traveler's room for luggage and sponge-bath. So Hot! 2:30 ish we got an Uber to the DIET 30 minutes away. At 3pm we meet Dr. Vinita Tiwari(?), again our explanation, she classified us into a) harmless b) well-intentioned, c) helpful, d) made sense and is in scope for an intervention for her students, but e) needs the big boss's approval anyway. We follow her to the office of Principal Manoj Kumar Giri, such a gentleman, exuding thoughtfulness, consideration and a powerful presence. I had learnt my lesson from DCERT and immediately pushed the instrument in front of him and launched into explanation of its phonetic features and benefits. He didn't need long to be comfortable with sending us away with Tiwari-ji to give an hour to a class of D.El.Ed students, girls on left, boys on right, all around 22 years old, Misti passed out the papers and guesses the class was between 75-95.

This lecture was fun and punchy and great. I said I will try English but to laughter I kept slipping back into Hindi. They strongly encouraged me to speak in English so finally I did with a few interpolations of Hindi. I'm getting better at this talk, what can be done in an hour.

Misti, observing the students, saw them discussing and asking each other questions, and fingers pointing to the table cells, and smiling and enjoying and wheels turning behind their eyes.

At the end I said will you help me, will you get rid of illiteracy from the world with me, will you join the instagram and tell us every defect and ask all questions so everyone will have answers later. Cheers and clapping again: enthusiasm.

Boom, time to go, taxi back to the retiring room, train to Varanasi; the same stop as Sarnath.

---

Sarnath

Sarnath was on the Vande Bharat, since that Shatabdi ended in Lucknow. Sarnath, was it so fast? No hotel registers in memory! Hmm, the Hotel Prince Dimond? Was that Sarnath? I think so since we arrived late, and a long drive to get to it. In the morning we went again to the local DIET, and confidently walked right in, like usual. Says the Poet (Homer): an honest boldness ever meets with friends. Smiles and science together do too, say I.

Here is a sparkling DIET principal, Umesh Kumar Shukl. Mrs. <???> found us, brought us to the head of school; he listened and sent us right to the classroom, saying he wished he could join the class and learn it all with us. In the end I asked, has he the heart of a teacher? It seemed so, and so he said.

After an hour's lecture we came back for a debrief; he learned we were immediately ready for more; he sent us back for another 2.5 hours with those students. Now that is nice. A much deeper introduction. At this point I have some slight basis to say, 5 hours might be the right length for students to capture the ideas, the features, all the sounds with their letters, practice writing them, practice writing some word of English or Tamil, and be able to teach. Great.

We are sent back over construction debris (do I confuse cities?) to the lecture hall in back, full of students, with three young men up on the podium, who may have been getting a lecture organized. Happiness, that this foreigner will take our class hour. I keep (thinking I'm) getting better. Three glottal states of silence, voice, aspiration; [] as trust and science; schwa as go-to-sleep and wake-up vowels without other action. ...

I tried out the cascading teacher model within the class in Sarnath. 120 students, groups of 10, each to send a representative up. Chaos, it took too long but future will be better. Write the places of articulation, go back and get everyone to write them and send another representative. Second representative on the podium desk with me, write the actions ("manners of articulation"), go back and get everyone to write them. In this way everyone will or might teach everyone, and both see and experience the recursive fan-out capability to solve the 70-crore illiterate people problem. Misti's objection of chaos was correct; I am amazed how two rounds ate up the 2.5 hours. Pure, valid, excellent, but process-forking questioning did it. Of course I'm celebrating because those interactions yielded click after click of captured knowledge. But next time I'll anticipate distractions better (since I've focussed my thinking on the teaching-curriculum's positive statements; I need more the questions/objections tree) so as more quickly to say, We will get to that later. Maybe it should trigger an audible alarm so that many tasks can be touched in an hour.

The benefits of this approach of cascading representatives for internal group teaching include: even with only 2 rounds, many more got an active role, to teach not just be a passive student; tasks are more concrete; everyone feels personal responsibility since they have to carry the truth back to their group. I hope the energy is infectious.

For me the new lesson is: I really love a smaller group of 5-10. Interaction really beats lecture.

This is a practical and immediate way to generate intense continuous active questioning out of a classroom of (otherwise and traditionally silent) Indian students. Wonderful! (Because only with active questioning does learning truly lock in; the click of discovered learning cannot happen until corners become clear and comfort and confidence land.)

At a certain point the kids (the boys) did get a lecture on not squirming to go early from one of the faculty in attendance. But still it was time to go eventually, and Misti and me walked out heads high.

Boom, suddenly tourists, we found that DIET Sarnath is 500 yards walk from the Sarnath museum, with the Ashokan Pillar's Four-Lion Capital itself. To get change to buy the ticket we bought a peeled split cucumber from a squatting vendor with an iron-age black knife. Misti ate half and pushed the rest in a green leaf into my hand; I ate it - to my regret! But the Sarnath museum has some great things in it; very satisfying. Those lions, even their mane ruffles are SHINY. How did they get shiny out of SANDSTONE!

Patna

Afterward we had to hurry on to Patna and get Misti on the plane home. Train, taxi to airport, drop Misti, a sad goodbye. What a trip we had together, a Phonetics Yatra!

Then instead of following the pattern of visiting DIETs in Patna, I went first to the DEO, who took me straight to SCERT, the State Council, skip the DIET. ... 70 Science teachers, Dr. Shazia Fatma with so much enthusiasm for phonetics, the idea of the ToT, an institutional path opens for the Master Teacher cascading growth.

It turned out wheels were turning in the background. My dear Dehradun hostess, Pratibha Naithani with her all-India network happens to be buddies with Dhruv Narayan Gupta, author and poet, IAS in the police service, retired, in the background had been preparing the ground. Pratibha had talked to him at some length, apparently, with encouragements and I guess this is getting to be a good story. How did she give me her son, to gad about India with me? It is a sincere relationship.

So Dhruv-ji happens to have a former subordinate Yogesh Kumar who is now DEO at Patna. This District Education Officer if I have it right, like Dhruv, is IAS: Indian Administrative Service; I have met three or four now, all so handsome, tall, soft-spoken, super clear-minded, actually brilliant, temperamentally calm-and-rational, somewhat introverted, deciders, not to forget benevolent in intention, if I may presume to generalize: INTJ, Masterminds in the Myers Briggs sense; perfect selections of a process of which Confucius would be proud, and perfect to gently guide and rule a giant country full of chaos. I'm SO impressed: IAS really, really wins.

So instead of the BSA as in Etawah, with operational jurisdiction over their public school systems in the area, the corresponding office in Patna to the BSA is the DEO. I thought I had walked in unannounced; the office gatekeepers a bit impatient with this unexpected visitor, were not unexpected. They made me write name and purpose, taking the note and the instrument in. Few seconds passed; suddenly they rushed back to bring me in.

By now my purpose is honed from general promulgation to specifically Master Teacher creation. The Master Teacher to Master Teacher link is the replicating viral unit of a cascade throughout the world, and that has emerged as truly my primary job. What do I want? Help to make a program for making Master Teachers from Master Teachers.

In the room, Yogesh Kumar took about 2 minutes to get the idea and said, Great, let's do it, let's go. He led me directly downstairs to the car in parking spot #1. Flags waving, driver and fixer in front and me and DEO in the back seat, we drove straight to SCERT, sirens not excluded. There Yogesh Kumar introduced me to the Deputy Director of SCERT Dr. Sanjay Kumar, and explained our purpose. Hardly minutes later, chai-wai still underway, when HOD TT (Head of Department of Teacher Training) Dr. Shazia swept in and put us in hand.

Yes we can have the science teachers, though the English teachers would be better. Soon I was in a big-screen classroom, 70 grown adults, imagine all the science teachers you ever had in one room together. Patient, curious and ready, there for a few days for a periodic SCERT in-service teaching event, they discovered they were ready to learn Phonetics! What could be more fun! Nothing - really, I'm telling you!

I'm getting better and better at this presentation. A big-screen monitor/writing board, now, I've used one 2-3 times and I can find the eraser and also write. I learned to focus more on the hard contents of IPA: aiming at getting each sound said and heard and checked, we do letter names vs sound; phonetic terminology; fast through the easy ones for Hindi speakers, slow through the difficult contrasts into Sanskrit or English. Those are fun for all, especially the fricatives. But Hindi speakers cross eyes with their [v,w] category, I have to say my name is not Tom Weatch, and in future use Praseetha's [wwwwwwwwVow], and commend reliance on the drawings for the differences. Surprisingly when I simply give them [schwar] as voiced retroflex approximant, with lip-rounding as optional hint, it comes out almost always quite passable, though in this case because schwar is innately so difficult I have to question retention.

In the end, the excitement was really palpable.

Back at Deputy Director's office, Fatma-ji says: "This clearly calls for a ToT." (What's a ToT? a Training of Teachers module. In Pune I found out that 10 hours is the minimum credit for such things. Yes we can do IPA in 10 hours. Heck yeah. Yes this is our work to create and teach Master Teachers, surely best via a well-structured ToT Module.) "That was a great class, and fun, but you do need some structure," she says smiling. On later outreach she modified concept from a ToT for Phonetics to a ToT for English generally. I'm not against that because IPA plus five minutes gives you English generally.

teachers.php asserts a 3-step process for acquiring English:

1) IPA as foundation: phonetic skills and recognition, students can hear them make them read them write the list.

2) Upon recognizing the sound-letter map complexity, we can immediately accept that guessing is wild, though temporarily necessary; so it demands persistent search for and capture of correct models to upgrade our normally-bad guesses. If people aren't using that word around you, then you should cultivate reading the dictionary for the pronunciation.

3) Last, IPA does give a not-useless guess for English unknown words, but then continue listening for a pronunciation model to capture the correctly useable form via single-exposure-learning, so that you will know for a lifetime the Three Level Sign, of Meaning, Spelling, Pronunciation. In short, just learn, keep learning, from what crosses your path, more knowledge and more words together forever. For some acceleration use tomveatch.com/uotd which keeps the pronunciation as well as word analysis up front as you read.

Patna done, Misti returned by plane to Dehradun, I become a piece of luggage for a couple of days, lugged about to Nalanda, Bodh Gaya, Rajgiri, back to Patna Airport, then to the tech hub Pune.

Pune

Most generously Anand Thoraat the great big brother of my Siddha Yoga guru-brother and long-time friend Abhjit Thoraat, through Praseetha <???> sent a driver to pick me up and conduct me along from Patna after Patna Museum, to

• Nalanda, was for 700 years the key university in Asia. Attacked and destroyed by Khelji, a Muslim invader of ~1200AD; its libraries burned for six months. Nagarjuna was there. Nalanda's influence lit or increased the fire of education in East Asia.

• Rajgir (a line of villages at the foot of a sharp ridge emerging from gangetic plain, tracked by a road, no signs (except on one temple Shrii Jaankaari Maa Mandir (in Devanagari) !! get that into your mind!).

• In a sweet hotel pool (Ashoka Tathagata Hotel, Rajgiri) I made Sri Lankan friends, more blessings and connections, the wife said she will try to make connections for me in Sri Lanka. That cracks the egg, we will be international in scope.

• Bodh Gaya (triple-circumambulation of 80-foot Japanese Buddha statue, tears and wisdom, in the deergha danDam namaskar: depersonalization, finding my deep attachments of personality leaving through the tears).

• (new, reborn) Nalanda University (fenced, huge, underway; Rishav met me at the entrance, student there, Gaya police and politician's son Rishav wants to help and make this a Nalanda project, great, why not?!) Anand's company is doing the interior of the Nalanda Library, a contract with history; remember the millions of volumes and the 6 months of burning.

• next morning drive to Patna Airport, fly to Pune, then

• Sunday to Alandi with Shobhana Nair, Abhi's friend and our Siddha Yoga guru-sister, and Chaitanya from Shandar, to the river and town and the 2 hour line in the Alandi temple to reach the living samadhi of the boy-genius Saint Jnaneshwar. Even in Jnaneshwar's darshan line, curiosities grew to friendly smiles, as a two-hour wait evaporated effortlessly in meaningful conversation with Chaitanya and Shobhana. Maybe that's the secret of pilgrimage. Jnaneshwar's genius, intellectual and spiritual, seemed vibrating in the walls, and gave me a sense of personal affirmation.

• Monday a 6 hours day at St Crispins Orphanage for Girls with director (introduction), 10 teachers (phonetics class) and 30 12-14 y.o. girls (OFNR) who were very patient with my Hindi struggles, but seemed glad to learn the Non-violent communication model of Marshall Rosenberg, summarized as OFNR: Observations, Feelings, Need, Request. Good for angry folks, like all of us.

• Tuesday then a day of tours of the Thorat family businesses; 200 staff. They want blessings; I have such feeling of blessing to give on this trip, from Buddha, Jnaneshwar, the experience of so many days of intense seva, so much effort put forth but then equal and positive response recieved, I am SO brimming with gratitude and blessings. Easy.

• Wednesday, my last day, Anand and I had a wild hair to repeat the Patna miracle, and drove over to the nearby offices of SCERT-Maharashtra, where we wandered until detecting the curiosity of Senior Lecturer in Marathi, Dattatreya Thite. He extracted our story and got us in the room with the deputy director, here it is <???>. I snuck into the English Section and met the amazing Pallavi <???>, SO hungry for phonetics, who threw out the opinion, remarkable and outrageous (and true! in my opinion), that the best thing we can do for kids is teach the IPA. I agree, though I should say it is more obvious than proven. She deserves all credit for this independent, brilliant, and revolutionary assertion, and I want her to lead this.

After they dragged me away from Pallavi and back with Dep Dir SCERT I was encouraged to make the also outrageous but obvious statement that this literacy method should be age restricted to above age 2-1/2 to below, say, 115 because when does a child begin to find cartoons understandable (and this can be considered cartoonized phonetics, a cartoon view of the face and head which they already know about from self-perception in addition to their huge expertise as native speakers. How will they not understand maximum-slow-motion cartoons: line drawings?).

Anand was my companion most of this trip, though Shobhana Nair also came a few times and Chaitanya and Yuvraj from the office.

Through Anand I am connected to Kishore Raje Nimbalkar IAS with door opening at SCERT and Sangram Gaikwad IAS with great experiment suggestions; to Subhash Lomte and Subhash Warey secretary and president of SMJ trust. Nimbalkar blessed it and sent us to SCERT, though the heads were not there temporarily. Gaikwad dove deep. He asked, Why not devanagari? (answer here), and You need to test and prove this, and you need to test retention. Yes! As soon as we have experimenters and permission!

Later Anand took me to the SMJ, a trust for the socialists here in Pune. Gotta love a proud idealist, in this world of jaded pragmatists. I met their famous Secretary, Subhash Lomte, who invited me next day to talk with the strikers at the unorganized loader's protest, where someone put the microphone in my hand and I brought the fire-breathing socialists to understand that Phonetics will give literacy to the illiterate such as these loaders which will spread through the world and save those poor ones with no location, no messages, no transactions; nothing is theirs and nothing to be learned. Cheers and clapping afterwards. Two guys self-selected and came up after to connect for the long term. Maybe Anand will persuade the Socialist Trust to take up literacy as a project, maybe Vilas will be a leader in it. Maybe the SCERT's Training of Teachers module will be exportable and repeatable and we can train a generation of socialist activists as Master Teachers of literacy to take it to the villages and remote regions and solve this on the ground even outside of the schools. We shall see, but methinks things are clicking.

Delhi Last

A final day in Delhi. A "garden view" hotel with a view of a stucco wall 3' away. Traffic 60 minutes from south edge of airport to airport. Getting lost on the subway. Back to Kirti Nagar behind the fire station, the next Siddhasana sample is worse than the previous, I guess they wanted to reproduce the earlier one. Another round via remote.

The afternoon took me to SCERT Delhi, Mukesh Yadav, a jolly kind fellow, in the building there 30 years and as Joint Director for a long long time. Immediately says, We will help you. Send a proposal and come in mid-January. His wife is another high official, comes in and says everything he had just said before he got there, including Let's have Lunch!

I don't know what to do with myself when every institution of three major states of India are standing ready to help. How can we help you? Help me make Master Teachers, the viral replicating unit, who can make new Master Teachers, of IPA. We will help you.

After lunch I wandered, wandered through Nizamuddin, the Muslim neighborhood where pilgrims walked in crowds. Failed to find Gita Press. Rode an bicycle rickshaw to the subway, did I say I got lost in the subway? A few hours later I came out at Aerocity, sort of close to the hotel. Then an interesting meal.

I am feeling my oats so in the empty restaurant I said Can I eat with you? Anu is a super polished Delhi businessman. He couldn't understand what I'm doing when there's no profit in it. Yes I see but there's no profit in it, how is this going to lead to money? We talked about Benefax. No objection but i didn't quite click. His objection to IPA First is, everyone in India has smart phones. By hook or by crook they get functional on them fast. Noone has the problem you are fixing, Tom.

Well, it's true that smart phones are helpful. I want my app on all the smart phones so as to make them explicitly helpful; and learned with Anand's help this trip that AirTel and Jio, two main cell phone providers in India, don't control the handset home pages, that's the handset manufacturers, Google and Huawei and Apple and the rest. Is Wikipedia wrong about 770M illiterates in the world? Do you really believe the government-reported 2024-2025 step-change in Uttarakhand went from 85% literacy to 98% literacy? When has 15% gone to 2% in one year. When the random airport taxi driver holds it, studies it carefully, for several seconds, upside down? When the Garwali lady studies fiercely and reads her name after 90 minutes? I think there is plenty of scope for work to be done. Drive the Rajgir road, notice the entire lack of signs in the villages, why: because noone reads. So we will get there, inshallah, but we are not there yet.

And now I sit on JAL 068 Tokyo to Seattle, typing furiously on the last leg home. Let me not forget.

Learnings

Schwa is natural upon going to sleep or upon awakening.

Teach by contrast not in isolation: [uiuiuiui], [u o openo]*. [i e aesh]*, [vf]*, [f theta s sh Sh]*

i = lips-back, tongue-forward
u = lips-forward,tongue-back

Advanced: add I, Epsilon, Upsilon, Wedge, a vs opena.

Distinguish (un)known-to-native-speaker contrasts. (unknown: much work, low probability of success) (known: trivially easy). Set learner expectations with the unknown ones: takes much practice, so learn but return, and use the features.

The Dictionary is the lever of power for English medium; IPA is the script of dictionary pronunciations.

English contrastive phonetics from Hindi is 6 fricatives, schwar, velarized-l, v/w (my name.. wwwwwwwwwwwVow! as example of collapse, f/ph: phool example of how to be a phool. "all-clear"

HEY! If (il-)literacy is a driving factor in social structure maybe literacy controls anti-intellectualism in the USA. Why wouldn't the 66% of Basic and Lower literate adults and all simply hate the literate world after it has ground their nose through years of sound-it-out pointlessness and proving to them that not only do they definitely not know but they will never be able to learn. This is the experience of illiteracy in America, highly school-mediated, systematic, many decades unchanging; why wouldn't they hate the intellectuals?!