Monday, August 29, 2011

Stories I like - 3: Indian Superstitions

There once lived a man named sidhu in a village. He was well learned in ancient medicine and used to treat the village people for ailments. He used to concoct his own medicines from locally available herbs. He had two disciples who were working under him as apprentices. He was very old. So soon the disciples were expected to take over his role.
Sidhu also had a pet cat with him. He used to keep the cat in a basket and close it whenever he was preparing the medicines when people came. The reason being that, one of the ingredients for preparing the medicine was milk and thus the cat used to sneak up and drink the milk kept for the procedure. So he started putting the cat in the basket. The disciples who had joined much later on did not know this but were just observing this.

Soon, Sidhu was long gone and so was the cat. The disciples took over his role. It was usual practice for the people coming in need of medicine to bring the ingredients as well.
Now a days, The disciples instruct the villagers who visit to bring a cat as well as a basket to cover it with!

Stories I like - 2: Indian elections

Bubbly was a first standard student. one evening he came to his mom and said, "Mom, please tell me the story of ramayana. My teacher has said that there will be a quiz tomorrow on it and whoever says the correct answer will win a prize" So Bubbly's mom sat him down and told him the story of ramayan.

The next evening, Bubbly came running to his mom as soon as he got down from the school van, hugged her and said that he has won the prize! Mom was so happy and she asked " so what question did the teacher ask?"
Bubbly said "He asked us "for how many years Ram was sent to forest?" I replied 8 years and won the prize! I'm so happy mommy. Thanks for telling me the story"

His mom was shocked. She had clearly mentioned to bubbly the previous evening the ram was sent to the forest for 14 years. But the kid had forgotten. But, how could the teacher mistake the figure? does the teacher really know about ramayan? questions were racing in her head. She decided to meet the teacher the next day.

Next day:
Mom: Sir, you have given prize to my son even though he said the wrong answer. whats this about? Do you not know that 14 years is the right answer? I think you have to brush up ramayan before telling it to the students.
Teacher: No no, Madam. I know ramayan like the back of my hand. But when i asked the question, among all the answers your son's answer of 8 years was the closest to 14 years. That is why I gave him the prize!

Mom: o_O !

Stories I like - 1: Indian elementary Education

Long long ago there lived a man in a village. His hobby was to grow parrots. He had a whole company of them. He was so fond of his birds. He did not cage them. The parrots were free to roam/fly about. Once he had to go on a visit to the next village in a month's time. He was concerned about his parrots. Some hunter might catch them in his absence. So what he did, every day he sat with the birds and said
 "we are intelligent. We'll not fly to a place where the hunter has set his trap. We'll not fly down and land on the trap net. We'll not feed on the bait grains he has kept. we'll not get caught". He kept on saying it every day and soon the parrots learnt to speak what he was telling them.
Happy, he left the village feeling sure no harm will come to his parrots. The very next day a hunter happened to notice the large company of parrots. Immediately he took out his net and set up the trap.

The parrots attracted by the bait started flying towards the trap. They were all saying "we are intelligent. We'll not fly to a place where the hunter has set his trap" and  they were saying "We'll not fly down and land on the trap net" as they flew down and landed on the trap. Then they started happily munching on the grains as they said " We'll not feed on the bait grains he has kept. we'll not get caught" and that's when the hunter wrapped up his net trapping all the parrots inside it. He was one happy man!

As the hunter left the scene with his rewards there were faint echoes of the words
"we are intelligent... we'll not get caught..."
"we are intelligent... we'll not get caught..."
"we are intelligent... we'll not get caught..."

Sunday, April 10, 2011

xx


           Women! I find Women very interesting. Not just because men are naturally programmed to find them interesting, there is something to them which demands the attention of my aquarian curiosity. Just one chromosome different in the cellular level and what a difference it ramifies into in the macroscopic scale! the way women think is totally, i mean totally different from how men think. Maybe that is why I find "women" an interesting subject to ponder upon. I have been trying to grasp and understand the woman psyche. Naturally the first subject of my study is my mom. Now, my parents are from a conservative rural background.  So from early on, i was aware of the social inequality and male chauvinism and stuff. In fact this early awareness is what has made me a feminist. Most guys find the term "feminist" uncomfortable because they think that the term has an effect on their sexuality. But, I know that I am man enough and I am not afraid to be tagged as a feminist.
               But my conventional bringing up and the environment i was in has poured in some of the chauvenism inside me too!. Its like my nature is something but I have realized something else is right and i try to stick to what is right. For eg, I feel that women should have active career and social life, but my girlfriend did find sometimes my behaviour to contradict that feeling. Its a war! A war between what is right and what i(currently) am! Since I am confronting it inside myself, i find it easy to fight the chauvinism outside me; around me
            For a major part of my life I have been exposed to women in the role of a mother. This has biased my views considerably which i came to realize recently during a discussion with one of my friends. I was debating that mother's day is also a day of celebration of women other than woman's day. My reason being that motherhood is nothing but womanhood expressed in its strongest and most beautiful form. But she told me that many women would take offence on my reason. It was a great shock to me! Why would any girl feel offended for associating her womanhood with motherhood? I thought rather she would feel proud... I couldnt initially believe it. But slowly I realized that it is a natural reaction. We  have been forcing women into motherhood in a way equivalent to slavery/slaughter that during this age of transformation where woman liberty is slowly being realized,  women actually feel repelled by motherhood. It is then, natural that they find my reason offensive.But soon after liberation is fully realized, women will cool down and start looking at motherhood differently. But that doesnt mean my reasoning is correct too. Motherhood is not  "the strongest" way in which womanhood can be expressed. Its just one of the many ways which a woman can put to use her womanhood. But as I have witnessed womanhood expressed only in the form of motherhood most of the time, i have come to a subconcsious conclusion that motherhood is "the strongest" form of womanhood. In the future, when liberation is complete and equilibrium  is achieved, my reasons will still be flawed but also women will take my reasons to be rather weird than offensive.

Until such a time comes, the war rages on...

Friday, April 8, 2011

cook book


             Recently i read a book titled blink. The author discusses about the subconscious and the decisons we make there without being consciously aware. It srtikes me because there were a couple of instances, when, i have personaly  realized that some thoughts  and opinions i had in my mind  was not out of conscious decisons but had been formed in a subconscious state and were slowly pushed up into my consciousness. Everytime, the realization came when someone asked me some question related to that opinion, like," why do u prefer this?"  or" whats the reason behind your view?"
              Thats when i realize that i'm consciously aware of my opinion but do not have any record of how i came about forming that opinion. Such questions take us by surprise. And many a times we try to cook up some answer and eventually we end up  believing that the cooked up reason is the real reason behind our opinion. For eg, in sports i dont prefer playing cricket, and when someone asks me why, i say its because, i dont go to sports ground often and when i do, i want to use the entire time spending my energy and working my muscles but in cricket, only two people are active in an instant and so i find it a waste of time. I know for sure that this is not the reason why i initially formed dislike towards the game.But i've used this cooked up reason so many times that i cannot find the actual reason. 
                   Extending this line of thought i came to realize another beautiful phenomenon. We form a theory or opinion or we read about something and ponder over it choosing our sides. Untill the instant we put such thoughts into words and write them down or tell it to someone, the entire thought process has some level of vagueness and abstractness. And in the process of telling it to someone, we realize that the thought has some gaps to fill or even sometimes it so happens that we evolve a better version of the thought or in some extreme cases we realize there is a flaw and arrive at an opinion entirely opposite to our initial thought  just by trying to put it in words! Now, why am i writing down all this? Because i am about to pen down some of my profound( this term is relative, confined to universal set of my thoughts alone) thoughts which i have rarely discussed with someone in my subsequent posts and any comment/debate on them are welcome. Infact I want you friends to share your views about those topics starting from this post which will help us in refining each others' ideas

Friday, February 25, 2011

kaaka suttadhu paati suttadha, paati suttadhu edha?

hello all, long time no see. things havent been the same since college got over. Job, targets, coffee, travelling, house-keeping and numerous other things which were never a part of my four years college life have kept me busy.
Right now I'm in the national capital of India. Its my last night here. Looking back, i'm getting reminded of einstein's quote "the only constant thing in the world is change".
Lotsa things have changed since my last post, for the better or worse Iam not sure of yet.
i have been travelling considerably adding four to five new states in my 'places visited' list. I have come to know more about India in the past five months than from years of geography&history in school. Let me share one interesting trivia regarding the same:
Along with me, four other fresh engineers were posted in delhi for training. The five of us are from five different states and speak five different languages. Myself from chennai speaking tamil, a kannad guy from bangalore, a telgu girl from hyderabad, a punjabi girl from ludhiana and a bengali guy from kolkata!
And the common language for communication is Hindi. All these days i hadnt grasped the depth of the sentence 'unity in diversity' up to until now.

Once the five of us wandered into a conversation about our kindergarden stories. Looks lik every state has its own syllabus even for lkg! Except for one story there was nothing in common among the five states.
And thats the story of "crow and the old lady". in the story, an old lady is cooking and selling some eatable under a tree. A crow from the tree steals a piece of the eatable when the old lady is distracted. As the story goes, the crow loses the food to a fox.
Notable thing is that, though the story is common in five states, what the old lady cooks is different in different states. In tamil nadu she makes hot vadas, in karnataka its bajji, in andhra its muruku, whereas its paneer in punjab and fried fish in bengal!

What a Nation!

Proud to have born in this land of diversities bonded by democracy.
Now this is miracle on daily basis!