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..."

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...

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

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!

void by failure final chapter

after a long gap, here's the final chapter of jack's "petventures".

      Jack is now 15 studying 10th standard which is a critical stage in school life cos you gotta compete in a state level annual exam. everything was going busy until one fine sunday while they were having their breakfast, jack heard some animal sound coming out of the spare bedroom. he went inside the room. there was nothing strange visible. but then again a scratching sound from under the bed. there were many packages stacked under the bed which is usual if you're a family moving from time to time. when he moved some stuff to the side, he found two cute kittens! just hours old! haven even opened their eyes! both had white fur! one had black patches and the other kitten had red patches.

       jack thought the mother cat will come n take the kittens away havin realized that its hideaway was exposed. but the mother cart never came. next day, the kittens started "mewing" out of  hunger n jack couldnt stand it any more. he took out the plywood box which he made for the school science exhibition spread some news paper over and kept the kittens in it. then  he kept a bowl of milk inside. but the kittens were too young to understand they've to drink out of the bowl. so he taught them how to. they were very clumsy. so jack made a feeding bottle out of an old lubricant oil can and fed the kittens.

        
            he was very happy and enthusiastic in taking care of the kittens. days passed by. the mother never returned. as soon as jack returns from school he would go play with the kittens. the red kitten was very active and adventurous and the black one was a little introvert type;) jack's mom would tease jack saying that the red one was his sister and the black one was jack. to some extent it was true. there was some amount of sluggishness associated with jack but not out of laziness but out of patience and serenity. everything was going well n good until his mom raised the question as to how long is jack going to keep the kittens. he wanted to keep them forever but he knew that he was already distracted by the kittens from his studies n also that it was difficult to take care of them cos they urinate every hour and the entire room smells of urine and milk. 

      
            he made a difficult decision. to "let the cat out of the bag" uhmm out of the plywood box in this case. he took them out to the backyard and released them. he very well knew about the wilderness and instincts of  cats and was sure that they will survive on their own. two days passed by. the kittens had strayed to the nearby colony houses and the kids living there had made the kittens their pet. jack could see the kids playing with the kittens from his window. he felt rather happy for the kittens to have found a home, than feeling bad

      
           after about a month, jack's mom told him that one of the kittens died! the red kitten. a stray dog killed it! jack cant remember how he felt on hearing the news cos its been so long, almost 7 years. the black kitten was safe. jack had some small happiness in the corner of his heart that the black kitten was safe cos of its characteristics similar to himself, which his mom used to tease about.

      
            later, one evening jack was alone in his home, watching tv. his mom had gone out for some chore, his sister had not returned from college yet. he saw that a cat jumped into the bedroom through the open window. jack made loud noise to scare away the cat but it didnt budge. he went slowly near the cat.To his surprise it was the black kitten he took care of!!! the cat seemed to have recognised him and so did not run away like the other cats which sneak into the house for milk. but as he went closer he observed that the kitten's fur has withered in many areas and he was bald in many spots. it looked like he had some skin disorder. he looked very ugly, not like the small cute kitten jack had been with. jack just stood by the window and stared at the kitten. the kitten also looked at jack. jack felt that the kitten was trying to talk to him. few seconds passed with no one moving. jack then tried to make the kitten go out the window. the kitten was now actually almost a cat now, he had grown. the kitten found it difficult to climb to the window. jack helped him out the window. the kitten stood outside the window looking at jack for a while and then it walked away. jack also returned to the tv room.

      
           the next day when jack came home from school, his mom informed him that the neighbors told her that  the other kitten also died. it was sick for about a week and finally died today, she said. Alas, the kitten had paid one last visit to the place which was its home and to the person who was its parent. Jack now understood what the kitten was trying to tell him the day before!

              and that brings us to the end of jack's journey to find a pet.