Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Patricia

Its not that i had to wait to learn french to come across this name to remember my school friend Patricia, patsy as we all called her. I have written a few posts about some special people who mean something to me. this one is dedicated to her.
She is a person i ve been searching for years like i searched for Prithvi and Sriram and ultimately found them on social networking sites.
Patsy was a dusky girl compelled to be silent throughout the class. For some strangely usual and common incident that happened in kindergarten, nobody spoke to her. nobody went close to her. there was one time when we boycotted the teacher for having touched her.
There are so many rude and cruel things we did to patsy, there were many times she cried for the indifference shown towards her. and sometimes she would just accept it and keep moving. She was actually a sweet girl who did not deserve this and left school somewhere in class 3, and never turned towards this side since. and i really hope her life elsewhere should have been good. Although her sister did study in the same school for long, none of us bothered to check why patsy left school.
But she was at no fault for what happened to her. By the time i came to class 9, i realized how bad she should have felt when she was actually innocent and what all of us did was inhuman.
I ve heard such stories from many people of boycotting some student in the class, and the whole class turns against that student. It apparently IS normal, but i feel i ve grown out of it, and everyone of us would have too.
I hope that patsy would read this post someday and come down to meet me, and when she does, i will give her a big hug and make up for all that happened in school.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Individuality Of A Teacher

I was talking to a friend of mine about my social networking on facebook, and she asked me how on earth i could be comfortable with so many teachers, and professors on my list, and would i be as comfortable to have my student in my list.
I have not had any problem with any of them on my list, because they are the people who know me precisely as to what i am. if i talk something crazy, they d let me be crazy as long as i keep it on my own wall, and i would let them be what they are and would not mind them being crazy even in my wall, as long as they are friends and not trying to give me lessons of any sort on that website.
Having said that, i would surely not let any of my students be on my list, for the simple reason that i have an identity defined by them which is absolutely irrelevant. i mean why should my STUDENT define how i am supposed to be and what i should be doing, and comment or look at me as in "oh is it you?". Well, every teacher is in his/her serious best in a class. yes i crack jokes at times to give them a small break from seriousness, and do my best to be innovative. but that is my profession as of now, and i m sure to be as serious as possible to do justice for the money i get out of it.
Once i m out of the hall, i am just the same person as anyone else, open to ideas and suggestions, waiting for challenges, and happy to be crazy wherever possible. this is something natural in any person let alone a teaching member. and believe me this is something hard for a student to accept until s/he becomes one. i have no problem going along with my students or my mom's but i stopped that since i went with them to a beach where they looked at me "oh my god! in class you never looked like a person who would be interested in these things" i mean why should i keep expressing what i like/dislike to my students when i m being professional at my work? But it also gets very difficult to try to run back home or somewhere else when you have been captured!
I always hate it when my mom's students meet us when we are outdoors just to spend time with each other, and people take her away to have a small counseling session with her, and the entire charm of being together on an evening is lost. And something even more embarrassing, i was in inter college getting my chemistry doubts clarified from one lecturer when a senior came up to him and took the friendship he shared with the students for granted by asking him "sir how was the mirchi bajji that you had in that particular street on that day?" he was so embarrassed and couldn't even shoe that her away. many such instances have happened when me and my mom went out to have street food. To avoid that, once, we went to a restaurant really far with a hope that none of our students would make it there and we could talk and dine together for sometime. We found a big battalion of students who pulled us into their group.
I m not against it. but there are times when one wants to be alone, or just be with the family. at these times, the friendship that a teacher shares with the student is totally taken for granted.
i have a professor from college who was from the science department (the only science teaching member i am actually comfortable with)who is comfortable enough with me to accompany me to movies or for an ice cream. when i am out, i treat her as a normal person without expecting her to be the way she is in class.
EVERY other teaching member who is close to me, and with whom i always stay in touch with are language teachers right from school. i know the right time to call them, and i also know how to behave when i see them in public.
It is indeed the right way to respect your teacher by greeting them in public. but do not compel them to share that comfort level with you always.. they have a life, and you get yours.
Having said that, a teacher always knows his/her conduct of behavior and responsibility when it comes to this profession.
Respect the individuality of a teacher! let him/her be the way s/he wants to be when his/her momentary purpose is not to impart education of any sort to you.

Sidharth Narayan

Indeed it has been a very long time since i wrote anything here. Although a lot of my writing is now stored in hard copies, which i prefer nowadays for some stupidly romantic antique reasons, i am happy enough to be writing here again.
i wanted to write today about an old school friend of mine till i came across this video on facebook.
Sidharth Narayan: a really good looking and charming actor and a person whom i wished was my family member.
when i first liked him, it was mainly for his looks, and secondarily for his acting which one would have accepted for his looks.
Then i started hating him when i realized that he was divorced. the news that came was rather put like this "he divorced his wife for Soha Ali Khan who eventually dumped him" i never watched his movies with the same enthusiasm. even today, i dont have a good opinion about people who get divorced for absolutely silly reasons forgetting the commitment they make towards each other when they actually decide to get married.
Recently, when i came across some movie of his, i was not very uncomfortable as i was watching it as a critic without any expectations from sidharth as a person, but expectations from him as a potential actor. thats how i watch movies nowadays. i have no interest in watching movies for timepass. i would like to know something from it, or i would want a real good entertainment and movies that have scenes and clippings from English, French, Spanish, Italian and all the other possible languages repeated exactly the same annoy me to the core. it looks as though Indian cinema has lost its individuality. (Nowadays i m writing a lot about individuality.) Those copied jokes, or fight scenes or sentimental/emotional scenes do not entertain me even a tiny rodent's a***e. In indian movies, the current ones to be more specific, you would only find love stories, may be about 1% would have something to about changing the pathetic state of the country or something of that sort, but the same movie would have irrelevant scenes of comedy, dance, and mushy romantic scenes. or the other movies with the title claiming to deliver such messages, would have the latter in them.
Well, this post is mainly to talk about individuality in terms of sidharth than indian cinema.

here is a link of the video that really impressed me and i got over the hatred i had for him.
I no longer hate him, but neither do i love him as crazy as i did in my adolosense. i am just open. it doesnt matter if he is divorced or he dumped his wife or if he is even chasing some other woman.... because i am surely not going to marry him and live a whole life with him for me to judge him on any criteria.
So here goes my opinion about him now
Sidharth Narayan- a socially responsible versatile actor.
(if you try to derive some pun out of this line, you may surely go ahead.. but i did not mean it though)
Hope you like the video, and let people be what they are and sidharth here for this conversation.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1615590399207&oid=150562408316479