Monday 11 July 2011

Four Women

She sat staring at the mirror, wearing the silver necklace and the pearl ear rings.
Those were his gifts on the previous anniversaries.
The next day he will bring her another.....
Probably his last, parting gift.....
....before going away....migrating to greener pastures.

"What she had given in return?
Definitely nothing worth keeping for long."
She felt a little restless at the thought.
Her meagre income was never sufficient.....
... to run the family of four with her widowed mother.

The bus was moving at a leisurely pace, along the Saturday evening traffic. It came to halt at another suburban stop not far from her house. The lone commuter awaiting there bowed in front of the driver and made some request. Once inside the bus, she flashed a smile and proceeded to sing a song, in a heavily accented tone.

Passengers were not interested, some looked out through the windows..one woman kept talking on her phone....some elderly ladies were heard whispering that "she's a foreigner, out to make some quick money"....

Having finished, she proceeded to collect the donations...."for the shelter for the grandpas and grandmas back home"....she got nothing from the women in the bus...and finally came to the lonely alien on the back row....In her halting English she made a humble request...."even coins will do" she pleaded, still smiling.....He took out some notes from his lean purse and deposited them on her empty basket....

She thanked him again and again...and kept flashing the smile whenever he looked at her....and also when she got out of the bus and said a loud good bye with a bow...

None of it was of interest to her...she was lost in thoughts, the eyes fixed somewhere out in the distant horizon.....

The elder girl was walking silently beside her mom. But the younger boy was so adamant. And he pulled his mom back....... with all the might of a three year old. The lady allowed herself to be dragged back....... along the zebra lines.

These moms!! They are so proud of their sons!!
The son had put his foot down...... you should not cross the road when the sign flashes red. And the mom had to agree, with an embarrassed smile.

Across the road there was a huge hoarding....in support of the lady on top of the crane no. 85.

She had been up there since the last winter....and through the typhoon and a torrid summer....almost into the autumn and then possibly into another winter...she is there for the workers, and she will not come down until the workers are reinstated.

"It's very unfair: just after announcing the mass lay-offs for the workers, the company awarded huge allocations of stock dividends and wage increases for senior management."

Who cares?!! Just keep moving with the bus....

Last rays of the sun were slowly fading.
And bus had come to a halt at a deserted stop in a neon-lit neighborhood.

She got down and looked around....
From among the bright neon lights, she picked out her destination....and walked towards the door, without looking up or around.

....her first tentative steps....

.......towards the oldest of the professions.......

Saturday 11 June 2011

The Wind Blows

The wind blows....
on the way back from work
Through the empty landscape into the sorrowful heart
The futile wishes scatter in the wind and fade away
The tears do not drop

It’s the sky that weeps....
as the cold raindrops fall in the dark streets
The world is not the same
The time is still flowing.....

And I alone do not change.......

The tiny drops of blood forms a whirlpool,
and dances with water down the drain.

The wind blows.....
In the searing cold, turning the mind to times past
To the sleepless nights.... precious memories

The world is the same as yesterday
And the time is still flowing......

And I alone changed like this.....
.....with only the memories to cherish

The wind blows....
The teardrops do fall....
and scatter within.

Inspired by Lee So-ra's
바람이 분다 (The wind blows)

Sunday 15 May 2011

Jottings on Teaching

Posted on a special demand by Anoop N

Today is the Teacher's Day here in Korea. Of course, the country has moved away from the rigid Confucian Doctrines like; "Do not even step on the shadows of your teachers".
Yet, the traces do remain here and there :)

Sometime back I received a request from a student of mine to post here, an article I had written for the college magazine. I told him that it's difficult since I kept no copy of the manuscript. Without much delay I received an e-mail from him;

A Small Gift for my Beloved Master

Respected Sir,

Kindly find the attached document. It is one in my collection which I cherish the most and that is why I have carried that even to Delhi. The attached article which You wrote for our college magazine in 2006 .... Yesterday I .. read Your article once more. ..... I have scanned a copy and thought that it will be better to mail that to You. Recently I had a real life experience to grasp what it costs to be a teacher. That I may share with You some day ......

On his request I am publishing the entire article here, with only minor proof corrections.

Jottings on Teaching

(This article is intended for my students who may wish to take up teaching as a profession, not for my eminent and enlightened colleagues.)

“Om, Sahanavavatu; Saha nau bhunaktu;
Saha viryam karavavahai;
Tejaswinavadhitamastu;
Ma vidvishavahai.
Om shantih, shantih, shantih.”

May He protect us both. May He nourish us both.
May we both work together with great energy.
May our study be thorough and fruitful.
May we never hate each other.
Om Peace! Peace! Peace!

This prayer is recited by the teacher and the disciple before proceeding to learn the wisdom of the Upanishads. It is a reflection on our ancient tradition in teacher-student relationship. The teacher and the disciple pray to the Almighty to enable them to work with devotion and mutual cooperation to understand and attain the knowledge contained in the texts. They seek His blessings in making the study fruitful and in preventing any sort of mutual hatred between the preceptor and the disciple. Finally the peace invocation is repeated thrice to ward off the three kinds of obstacles to learning; adhyatmika (bodily), adhibhautika (terrestrial) and adhidaivika (heavenly).

The prayer reminds us about the importance of team work involving the teacher and the student in the search for knowledge. Teaching is not merely face to face communication. It also involves 'looking outwards together, in the same direction', the teacher guiding the vision of the students, improving his own in the process.

Many youngsters are reluctant to take up teaching as a profession because of the lower monetary benefits involved. The wealth of a teacher is measured in terms of the richness, the variety and the intellectual range of his students. And the wealthiest is that teacher whom each one of his students has surpassed in professional and personal life.

“Genius and obedience are incompatible”, said Sigmund Freud. Some teachers do not allow their students to be stubborn and unruly and expect them to be obedient lambs. They try to implant a meek submissiveness and a weak will on their students. This will nip in the bud, their independent creativity and free thinking. Is that what we want for our future generations? A search for something new is motivated by a refusal to follow the existing pattern because the searcher is not satisfied with it. Dissatisfaction and disobedience are inherent features of individuals who searches for and creates something new, not only in science, engineering or technology but also in art, literature and philosophy.

The great Russian academician and Nobel prize winner Pyotor L Kapitza shot off a strongly worded letter to the supreme leader of the then Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev on the freedom to disobey. He wrote, among other things, the following;

“The basic stimulus for any creation is the discontent with the existing situation. An inventor is discontented with the existing processes and invents his own; a scientist is discontented with the existing theories and searches for more perfect ones. And deeply discontented individuals are restless people, who by the virtue of their characters, do not happen to be obedient lambs.” Khrushchev, who was onto curtailing academic freedom, got the message and backed off.

A good teacher should understand how it hurts a student’s pride if he/she receives undeserved disapproval and disapprobation for his/her ideas. On the contrary, if the student feels that the teacher notices his good qualities, he will try his best to live up to the standard expected of him and strives to do even better. Don’t you think that all young people have something good in them irrespective of their academic abilities? No teacher can instill goodness in the soul of a student if the youngster himself is not making the effort. And it can be triggered only in a friendly atmosphere, where approval comes before censure and the teacher sees what is good in every student. A teacher’s success, to a large extent, lies in inspiring these moral efforts in a young person. They must implant the feeling of self respect and pride in their students and be their comrades in overcoming their difficulties. They are duty bound to prepare their students to stand up for themselves in any trying situation.

The teachers should never discriminate between their students on the basis of caste, faith, political beliefs or even academic performance. But they should spot, recognize and improve upon the individual qualities and innate abilities of their disciples. Even brilliant young minds need proper guidance and motivation for realizing their full potential.

Great Mathematician, G. H. Hardy had mentioned that the most ‘romantic’ incident in his illustrious academic life was the discovery of a young genius from a distant land and helping him find his rightful place among the pantheon of greats. But for Prof. Hardy, Srinivas Ramanujan might have been lost to the world. In spite of his towering stature among the academicians and intellectuals of the day, Bertrand Russell had no qualms whatsoever in risking his own philosophical development and introducing a troubled and temperamental freshman, Ludwig Wittgenstein as having one of the most brilliant minds of his generation. Although he was already a well established and reputed coach, Ramakant Achrekar’s place in history changed colours when a little boy walked into his cricket clinic holding a bat almost as long as himself. Achrekar became a ‘Dronacharya’ as the little boy grew into the ‘Little Master’ under his tutelage. But I personally feel that it was highly inappropriate for our socialist republic to name its highest national award for coaches after a teacher who had destroyed the career of one of the greatest archers of our mythology by exploiting his almost fanatical devotion to his master. When a teacher shows such a bias on the basis of the so called nobility of birth, it betrays an intellectual inferiority on his part. It is unfortunate if such persons continue to enter the noble profession of teaching. They will be a major stumbling block in the progress of all mankind, holding back the thought process of the young generation by decades, or even centuries.

The points discussed may seem ‘utopian’ to some and are open for debate. Neither I claim to be a perfect practitioner of all that I preached, nor am I an advocate for the spare the rod crowd. The students must be properly reprimanded wherever the need arose. The biggest compliment I have received so far in my humble academic career was gifted by a poor boy hailing from a remote village whose answer sheets I had torn off for letting his friend copy from it during an examination. He later wrote in the student evaluation form that I was ‘God’s gift’ for him and his class mates!

Now, that was a huge ‘check mate’ for a strong headed teacher.

So, beware, aspiring young teachers......
Appearances can be deceptive. Your students can stun you......
....... with their moral superiority!!

Personal Note: Kindly excuse, if you felt the tone and tenor to be offensive. It was made during a difficult time at the institution, series of personal setbacks, casteist insults from colleagues and regular run-ins with superiors. And that makes it doubly pleasing, for the piece to have found its way back to me in this style. I consider myself extremely lucky, for having received the opportunity to spend a few hours between the blackboard and the students like Anoop.

Saturday 2 April 2011

One in a Billion

I got up in time as usual.
And tried to pretend that it was just another Saturday morning.
For nearly three years, I have been wearing the blue-to work.
But today I took special care.....
..... to pick out my freshest blues from the wardrobe.

For the first time in years, I took extra care in dressing myself up.
And spent a while longer in front of the mirror.....
.....picking out those naughty little whites, peeping out of my face.

Instead of the usual starving Saturdays,
I packed a bag full of snacks.... for a long night at the desk.

The missing spring was suddenly back in my steps,
as I walked to work dressed in my brightest blues.

Throughout my life, I stayed out of the crowd,
but tonight I know for sure that......
in spite of being alone and away......
....I shall also be one in a billion :)

Saturday 26 March 2011

The Death

Death, the ultimate reality..... the only truth....

The most heroic could be the death in combat;
the most ordinary is to die in old age;
the most depressing is to die of a disease;
the most unfortunate is to perish in an accident and
and the most fortunate is to die on one's own terms.

It was just another death, made a bit more painful by the fact that the deceased had been fighting the losing battle for over an year, since the industrial accident that broke his ribs and damaged the lungs. We had left the office late and arrived at the hospital well past the usual the dinner time. On arrival, we were led to the special funeral hall in the hospital. There was a shop selling funeral accessories on the way down to the cellar floor.

We entered the 'funeral room'. The cries of the grieving relatives, male and female, grew louder on seeing us. All of them were in black robes; women wearing the traditional clothes, while the men had western suits. A large portrait of the deceased was placed centrally on the multi tier in the middle of an array of chrysanthemums, candles and incense sticks. One can either choose some chrysanthemums and put them in front of the portrait of the deceased or light one of the incense sticks.....My colleague lit some sticks and then bowed in front of the photograph of the deceased person for two and a half times. He then proceeded for another traditional bow with the grieving relatives for one and a half times....I had watched the whole ceremony closely, and made an attempt at replicating the whole procedure. And I was successful at bending my knees!

The Boss was already there accompanied by his entourage. He was speaking loudly, on the Japanese Tsunami, its effects on the global economy, and on the Korean industry, serving soju to the attentive listeners in between, to keep then interested in the conversation.
It was strange!! To come to a funeral home and discuss aloud, cracking jokes and laughing. I was told that it was the Korean way, to relieve the pain of the relatives and bring them back to worldly affairs and enable them to move on.

But the cries were only growing louder, audible above the din; the pain of parting forever, refusing to die down.

And then suddenly, it all stopped!

The women who were grieving aloud were running here and there....washing cleaning up something, cleaning up themselves....

.......An elderly gentleman was being helped away to the wash room......

It took a sombre elder who wouldn't remain sober to restore normalcy among the grief struck.

And the life rolls on....

till the turn arrives....

Monday 14 February 2011

The Fourteen for the Fourteenth

Sometime back I was asked to make a certain list of literary works. There may not be a more appropriate date to post my list. There is no man without bias. My list is biased too. And as someone wrote somewhere; it’s not for the happy souls alone, it’s also for the bitter hearts who hate all those happy souls.

As a restless ten year old; how one wished to be up and away?
Far from the hustle and bustle on the ground and to be Up in the Tree

“The secret of their being up in the tree had continued for almost two years now. Where the thick trunk branched out near the top, the two could sit comfortably. Michiko, straddling one branch, leaned back against another. There were days when little birds came and days when the wind sang through the pine needles. Although they weren’t that high off the ground, these two little lovers felt as if they were in a completely different world, far away from the earth.”
14. Kawabata Yasunari, the ultimate Zen master of the unrequited lovers

An accidental brush with the War and Peace at an unacceptably young age might leave one with all the ‘wrong’ notions;

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly…..Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
13. Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, the literary titan of the multiple master pieces

The conscious search that follows could bring in Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet,
“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs, Being purged, the fire in lovers’ eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it? A madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet.”
12. William Shakespeare, the wizard of verse and prose

It’s when one ceases to be so young, but not old enough to be counted among the adults that one gets all the idealistic ideas and encounter the uncertainties of First Love

“I had ceased to be simply a young boy; I was someone in love.”
11. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, one of the greatest artists in depicting complex young minds

Around the same time the naughty thoughts may creep into one's mind instigated by Cyrano de Bergerac

“A kiss, when all is said, what is it? An oath that's ratified, a sealed promise, A heart's avowal claiming confirmation, A rose-dot on the ‘I’ of ‘adoration’; A secret that to mouth, not ear, is whispered…”
10. Edmond Eugene Alexis Rostand, the man who gave young men the 'panache'

And then The Kiss finally arrives!!

“When he went back into the drawing-room his heart was beating and his hands were trembling so noticeably that he made haste to hide them behind his back... he gave himself up entirely to the new sensation which he had never experienced before in his life. Something strange was happening to him.. His neck, round which soft, fragrant arms had so lately been clasped, seemed to him to be anointed with oil; on his left cheek near his moustache where the unknown had kissed him there was a faint chilly tingling sensation as from peppermint drops, and the more he rubbed the place the more distinct was the chilly sensation; all over, from head to foot, he was full of a strange new feeling which grew stronger and stronger... He wanted to dance, to talk, to run into the garden, to laugh aloud…He quite forgot that he was round-shouldered and uninteresting, that he had lynx-like whiskers and an "undistinguished appearance"”
09. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, the artist who tossed the questions around in a stream of consciousness

And then one day with another book, one may come of age and imagine how it will be to be in love with a girl like, say Jane Eyre?

“I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission.”
08. Charlotte Bronte, the eldest of the Brontes

..and it refuses to die down, no matter what the surrounding. It’s like to be in Love in the Time of Cholera

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
07. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Marquess of the Magical Realism

… then comes the period of Great Expectations about love and life:

“According to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always true. The unqualified truth is that, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection”
06. Charles John Huffam Dickens, the Boz of the English novel

One can not go on like that forever as if on a Blind man's Holiday!

“Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love, the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion.”
05. O. Henry aka William Sydney Porter, the writer with the Gift of the Magi

And then one is brought back into the realities, to be face to face with one's shadow and empathize with the Hunchback of Notredam:

Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being......Oh! love!... That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.
04. Victor-Marie Hugo, the author of the greatest novel ever written!

… then comes the nightmares......with The Pearl as a child and East of Eden as an adult!!

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.”
03. John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr., for making one believe in the perfectibility of man

And may The Sorrows of Young Werther remain his alone......for

“I have been more than once intoxicated, my passions have always bordered on extravagance: I am not ashamed to confess it; for I have learned, by my own experience, that all extraordinary men, who have accomplished great and astonishing actions, have ever been decried by the world as drunken or insane.”
02. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the genius who also wrote novels

Finally signing off with the White Nights on the White Day with apologies for the vices...

“For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!”
01. Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, the embittered voice of the 'underground man'

Thursday 20 January 2011

Flashback to a Photo Shootout :)

The Smiles From My Shelf [9]

Winter is the time when the woes from the wilderness return with a vengeance to haul one back into melancholy moods. There is nothing better than a fresh look at the fond memories from the past to keep one floating above it all. Those who had already seen this, kindly excuse.....

There is nothing more cheerful to offer as a first post this new year :)

Anyang :)

Anya...!! What?!!!

What are you upto?!!

Hey...you.....taking my picture?!!

No, no...don't...

shsho!!

Iyalekkondu thottu!!
(I'm fed up with this guy!!)

Ini endu cheyyum?!!
(What to do now?!!)

aah! pose cheythekkam ;)
(ok then, let me pose for the camera)

Hey..you...

....here I am ...

Kimchee :)