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Showing posts from January, 2012

Everything Else Is Rubble

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The administrative office in front of the main building. In this age of endless information, I sometimes pause and realize something strange. I am drowning in information, but starving for memories. Every day, my mind absorbs hundreds of headlines, messages, videos, opinions, and notifications. Most of them vanish without a trace. Yet when I stop for a moment, memories from forty years ago return with astonishing clarity. Today, for some reason, my thoughts wandered back to my school and its teachers. I remember my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Carol at Little Angels. She was Anglo-Indian, impeccably dressed, and absolutely determined that every letter I wrote should sit neatly within the four lines of my notebook. Not touching the ceiling. Not falling through the floor. Perfectly contained. I don't remember what I had for lunch three days ago. But I remember those four lines. My first-grade teacher, Ms. Alice at BP Indian Public School, was...

New year resolutions

The first time my fifth or sixth grade school teacher asked me about my new year resolutions, I looked at her with a blank expression.  I had no idea what that meant.  And, I would have had no further idea for years to come if, I repeat, if she had not asked us to come up with essays on the topic.  That was also the year I was introduced to the concept of writing your own essays.  Till then, it was about cramming a few sentences in your head and spitting it out verbatim in the exam papers. I asked a few blokes around me as to what resolutions meant.  All of them were as intelligent as I was, save for a few exceptions.  These guys were writing as if their whole lives were about to be shaped by this composition. They formed a kind of protective enclosure, with notebooks and text books surrounding the sheet on which they were writing, on three sides.  The fortress had an opening only for the pen or pencil to find its way through the gap.  And the...