What is the ultimate unfreedom of the serf?
When a human being is solely identified by the job he does. When his individuality is not even taken into consideration, which is apparent by the refusal to call them by their real names
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Distance
It’s a quantitative measure of how far we are apart
For each of us has to play one’s own part
Is it limited to this world? This life?
In a world that’s torn with strife
Does it make one think about the other?
Or completely forget one another?
Really why does it seem longer?
When it is actually much shorter
Perchance we make it out to be,
More dramatic than it should be
For each of us has to play one’s own part
Is it limited to this world? This life?
In a world that’s torn with strife
Does it make one think about the other?
Or completely forget one another?
Really why does it seem longer?
When it is actually much shorter
Perchance we make it out to be,
More dramatic than it should be
Strength of Character
I did my entire schooling in a girls-only convent school. My parents’ friends’ daughter was also in the same class. Sunita and I thus thrown in together mentally urged on by our parents to be best friends. We sat together in our identical blue pinafores, exchanged pencils and swapped lunches. I was in best-friend heaven. Sunita was a studious mild even-tempered girl, while I was notorious among the teachers for my sudden-flare ups and misplaced sense of righteousness.
Sunita did valiantly try to put with me, but the she was after all a small girl and no sage. Sunita found me too impulsive, impassioned and something of a pain. Once she found out that her parents echoed her thoughts, she punctiliously removed herself from my company. I wish I could say that she slowly distanced herself, but it was not so. This sudden alteration of my social dynamics threw me off my kilter. I was bewildered and confused. It hurt to see her methodically immerse herself into a group of girls, whom her mother thought were excellent examples for her to emulate.
The world around me changed so fast that. It always felt like I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. My life was a never-ending vacuum of wrongs. Every day was a bad day. My academics never great to begin with, hit an all-time low and it worried my parents. I wish I could fall back into a cliché and could say that at this point, there came an understanding class teacher who changed the course of my life, but there wasn’t. To make matters worse, the one that there was, was the bane of my existence.
My teachers didn’t waste any time typecasting me into the spoilt-lazy-wild schoolgirl slot, especially my class teacher, Ms. P who seemed not to like me very much. Most of the time in her 5th grade classroom, I spent either pointedly ignored by her or being given razor sharp glares. It didn’t bother me much, as I was pretty used to it by this time, but somewhere in the back of mind, there was looming feeling of dread, like something unpleasant was about to happen and it did.
As much as I disliked my school, I loved my school grounds, especially during the rains, when it would be peppered with deep delicious puddles, so much fun to splash around in. I would wait for the afternoon recess bell to go out and get my feet into these puddles. On one such rainy afternoon, after a particularly trying math hour, I stepped out into these puddles with welcome relief. After a nice feet-wetting session, I went back to find out that I was asked to meet ‘the class teacher in the staff room’. I went a heaviness in my heart, throat paralyzed with fear.
“You splashed mud on your classmate’s skirt on purpose”
She greeted with that statement and icy glare to match her tone.
“Ma’am, I didn’t...” I spluttered
To cut the long story short, it seemed that one of my classmates, her favorite, was walking near as I was splashing around merrily and was dotted with mud that I was unwittingly spattering about. She made me stand there cringing and watched me with measuring gaze. I don’t remember how long I stood, it seemed like I was there forever. I mustered all my courage and looked at her directly in the face. She looked like a wax statue to me, so still except for the vein that was pulsing at her temple. I looked at her eyes, measuring me and condemning me and strangely hypnotizing in their blackness…it felt bizarre, it felt like I was watching myself from somewhere else. Suddenly stood up and gestured for me accompany her. I did so, my head ringing with fear. On reaching the classroom, she pulled me to front of it, amidst all my curious classmates, some wary, some cackling and made the announcement that I will never forget in my life.
“ Roopa Culas ( heavy stress on the last syllable), you have been a shame to this institution, a shame to me and I am pretty sure, a shame to your parents as well. What you did this afternoon, just shows how much of a nuisance and trouble you are to me and your classmates. Well… I am going to give you ample time to reflect how bad you have been and how you can try to better yourself, until then no one in this class will speak to you, walk with you or even look at you. You will sit all by yourself in the last bench until you realize your mistake.”
She said this with all the gravity of a feared oracle. Her words were uncontested and her hate for me, blatant. This was accompanied by an astonished silence and then a few cackles of approval.
I sat there, in my dark lonely corner, with my head held high, as if I didn’t care, for a day, then two and on the third day I broke, laid my head on the desk and sobbed. Nobody dared come near me, I knew and I it did not surprise me. I was a shame and a nuisance. Why would anyone want to talk to me? I sat there for a with my lowered head, hating myself, wanting to fling myself out of the room and running all the way home without stopping. But I knew that wasn’t even an option.
A week passed in a haze of misery and confusion. I really was confused; I didn’t know what to do. Something about the way, the quiet maliciously confident way, which the teacher did this, made me think that I wouldn’t want to take this home. So I kept quiet.
On the 7th day, a Tuesday, I remember so vividly, I opened my lunch box when I heard a tentative “ Can I join you”, I thought I imagined it at first and then I saw a lunch box in front of me, I looked up to see a girl in my class, whom I hardly even knew. She was delicately built, average in studies, silent and more or less invisible. She smiled shyly and opened her lunch box. I stared at her, speechless.
“Won’t Miss P (our class teacher) know?” I asked her in amazement; half-expecting her to suddenly come to her senses and run away.
“I don’t know and I am not thinking about her. You just cannot eat alone every day you know” She said quietly but firmly.
That’s when the real meaning of something that my Dad had been talking about came to me; Strength of Character. It came to me in a sudden rush of realization, that’s what you call it, when someone, as small and young as my classmate, stands up to what she thinks is right. Whether it was risking a terrifying teacher’s wrath or the condemnation of the other girls, she just sat next to me because she didn’t want another human being to suffer alone.
I will never forget her till the day I die.
Sunita did valiantly try to put with me, but the she was after all a small girl and no sage. Sunita found me too impulsive, impassioned and something of a pain. Once she found out that her parents echoed her thoughts, she punctiliously removed herself from my company. I wish I could say that she slowly distanced herself, but it was not so. This sudden alteration of my social dynamics threw me off my kilter. I was bewildered and confused. It hurt to see her methodically immerse herself into a group of girls, whom her mother thought were excellent examples for her to emulate.
The world around me changed so fast that. It always felt like I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. My life was a never-ending vacuum of wrongs. Every day was a bad day. My academics never great to begin with, hit an all-time low and it worried my parents. I wish I could fall back into a cliché and could say that at this point, there came an understanding class teacher who changed the course of my life, but there wasn’t. To make matters worse, the one that there was, was the bane of my existence.
My teachers didn’t waste any time typecasting me into the spoilt-lazy-wild schoolgirl slot, especially my class teacher, Ms. P who seemed not to like me very much. Most of the time in her 5th grade classroom, I spent either pointedly ignored by her or being given razor sharp glares. It didn’t bother me much, as I was pretty used to it by this time, but somewhere in the back of mind, there was looming feeling of dread, like something unpleasant was about to happen and it did.
As much as I disliked my school, I loved my school grounds, especially during the rains, when it would be peppered with deep delicious puddles, so much fun to splash around in. I would wait for the afternoon recess bell to go out and get my feet into these puddles. On one such rainy afternoon, after a particularly trying math hour, I stepped out into these puddles with welcome relief. After a nice feet-wetting session, I went back to find out that I was asked to meet ‘the class teacher in the staff room’. I went a heaviness in my heart, throat paralyzed with fear.
“You splashed mud on your classmate’s skirt on purpose”
She greeted with that statement and icy glare to match her tone.
“Ma’am, I didn’t...” I spluttered
To cut the long story short, it seemed that one of my classmates, her favorite, was walking near as I was splashing around merrily and was dotted with mud that I was unwittingly spattering about. She made me stand there cringing and watched me with measuring gaze. I don’t remember how long I stood, it seemed like I was there forever. I mustered all my courage and looked at her directly in the face. She looked like a wax statue to me, so still except for the vein that was pulsing at her temple. I looked at her eyes, measuring me and condemning me and strangely hypnotizing in their blackness…it felt bizarre, it felt like I was watching myself from somewhere else. Suddenly stood up and gestured for me accompany her. I did so, my head ringing with fear. On reaching the classroom, she pulled me to front of it, amidst all my curious classmates, some wary, some cackling and made the announcement that I will never forget in my life.
“ Roopa Culas ( heavy stress on the last syllable), you have been a shame to this institution, a shame to me and I am pretty sure, a shame to your parents as well. What you did this afternoon, just shows how much of a nuisance and trouble you are to me and your classmates. Well… I am going to give you ample time to reflect how bad you have been and how you can try to better yourself, until then no one in this class will speak to you, walk with you or even look at you. You will sit all by yourself in the last bench until you realize your mistake.”
She said this with all the gravity of a feared oracle. Her words were uncontested and her hate for me, blatant. This was accompanied by an astonished silence and then a few cackles of approval.
I sat there, in my dark lonely corner, with my head held high, as if I didn’t care, for a day, then two and on the third day I broke, laid my head on the desk and sobbed. Nobody dared come near me, I knew and I it did not surprise me. I was a shame and a nuisance. Why would anyone want to talk to me? I sat there for a with my lowered head, hating myself, wanting to fling myself out of the room and running all the way home without stopping. But I knew that wasn’t even an option.
A week passed in a haze of misery and confusion. I really was confused; I didn’t know what to do. Something about the way, the quiet maliciously confident way, which the teacher did this, made me think that I wouldn’t want to take this home. So I kept quiet.
On the 7th day, a Tuesday, I remember so vividly, I opened my lunch box when I heard a tentative “ Can I join you”, I thought I imagined it at first and then I saw a lunch box in front of me, I looked up to see a girl in my class, whom I hardly even knew. She was delicately built, average in studies, silent and more or less invisible. She smiled shyly and opened her lunch box. I stared at her, speechless.
“Won’t Miss P (our class teacher) know?” I asked her in amazement; half-expecting her to suddenly come to her senses and run away.
“I don’t know and I am not thinking about her. You just cannot eat alone every day you know” She said quietly but firmly.
That’s when the real meaning of something that my Dad had been talking about came to me; Strength of Character. It came to me in a sudden rush of realization, that’s what you call it, when someone, as small and young as my classmate, stands up to what she thinks is right. Whether it was risking a terrifying teacher’s wrath or the condemnation of the other girls, she just sat next to me because she didn’t want another human being to suffer alone.
I will never forget her till the day I die.
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