DreamingAway

Who are the teachers? You can find so many people who hate a certain subject just because they hate the teacher who took that subject. This is where the internet is helping us a lot. We are getting access to top quality learning materials — written materials, images, animated tutorials, lectures and so on. In fact, school and college education are merely becoming a formality to obtain marks and grades. New generations might have an educational system far different from the one we had. Transition in any system is quite natural. Somasunda r am was our Tamil ‘sir’ in my high schooldays. He was very tall and always wore traditional white & white veshti shirt. His face reminded me of Kamarajar . He was one of my favourite teachers. I started liking Thirukkural because of him. And the reason? Strangely, I don’t find anything. Though he took classes for us three consecutive years and we had Kural in every year, he never mandated that everyone should have a liking for Thiru...

 I even wonder whether a new born feels his mother as a friend or truly as a mother. Do you agree friendship is independent of age? We met when we were in the 4th standard, and we were like enemies when we reached the 6th standard. We were in different class section every year. That was how they split the class, so that studious and not-so-studies students were split equally between sections. Our marks were compared in all the exams. Don’t you think comparison is one of the enemies of friendship? Friendship enjoys if the friends have some common interest. He went home for lunch, and I took lunch to school. I used to play run-and-catch during my lunchtime. He preferred to talk with others if he could come early after lunch. I used to play cricket, and he used to play football in the evenings. He took part in all school competitions, and I kept away from those. We never could find anything in common. Hence, we rarely spoke to each other. Which is getting stronger when two people are ...

 I never thought that the curd rice is also a good food choice for dogs. My mom usually gives curd rice when she finds nothing else is attractive for our pet dog. He leaves some food in the bowl occasionally, and my mom makes a small rice ball and pleads with him to eat, saying, “the last one, eat… eat.” Of course, he can never escape, and I know I would have also faced the same when I was a child. He can eat that extra food, even though he is not hungry. “One more rep… one more buddy” is a common phrase you hear if you go to the gym. Self-motivation can help a person to do one or two reps more. It becomes easy and fun when you have your exercise buddy. These additional reps help in training your muscles to do more. You can note that these extra reps also cause workout accidents as the tired muscles may fail to match the spirit of the motivated mind. Those who got the habit of watching multiple episodes of a series in a single go may find that they might have slept before the last ...

 They would have thought that I was a new visitor to the terrace, and they were right as I had no habit of spending time there. Doves and pigeons are actually a bunch of pleasant to watch birds, especially when the pack of them are on the floor and eating. I started giving them a bowl of rice to eat. After the initial few days, I noticed that the crows ate rice as well. I was annoyed a bit when the crows took the rice and pigeons had to stay away as they were afraid of crows. Anyway, that was not a serious problem as the crows didn’t take the whole rice. Hurrah! It was so relieving when I switched to wheat. Crows didn’t touch it at all. I wonder whether there can be anyone who doesn’t love seeing squirrels when they eat something with their rounded back and the question mark like arched tail. Yeah, when I introduced wheat to pigeons, I found that few squirrels joined them. Squirrels are afraid of pigeons, so they ate the wheat that scattered around, a little away from the pigeons. ...

Your mom used to read books, mostly novels. She is no longer an active reader. She is getting older, and she finds it hard to read books. Knowing your mom’s interest in novels, you started reading out loud from your book collection. She sits patiently and listens with so much enthusiasm. You usually pick sentimental and comedy movies for your mom and you watch it with her. She never likes the political or science movies. She doesn’t follow the thriller or mystery movies - that is because she won’t pay full attention to it, even a gate opening sound in a movie feels like your home gate sound to her. Your mom used to cook potato fry (with pepper), eggplant fry and green peas curry so regularly. These were her favourites in those days. She rarely makes these items in recent times, you think it could partially because you started avoiding these for some reason. You requested her to cook them once in a week so that she could enjoy her favourite foods again. There are moms who listen to yo...

Do you see love or hatred when I say that I love my country? Loving my country could mean that I am proud of its culture, or I appreciate the underlying values or the power it has, or the leaders it has produced, or I am just committed do things for my country. It could be a combination of these and many. The problem arises when something either from my country or from another country undermine and ridicule the thing that I hold close to my heart. My reaction to that could be a hatred, a revenge taking mentality or something that is not normal to me. You can check the history behind the monuments like Taj Mahal and Coral Castle. They are built in the name of love. Should the love be expressed in this way? Of course, this is just one way of it and not the only way. At times, madness and holiness are just a perception, and love is the reason for it. How much pain a mother can endure for her child? That is limitless. Can she also do some stupid acts out of love? And some brave acts? We he...

Doesn’t matter whether it is a plant or an infant or a building, it is always a joy to see the growing something every day. The joy multiplies if the thing we care has lost its normal and we are trying to set it right. After spending all of your efforts on an almost dead plant, you can imagine your joy on seeing the first leaf on it. She was less than a week old when we got her rescued from the bush. The first bird in our home that I remember was a green parrot(?). Initially, my dad fed her with the banana and gave water using ink fillers and she had survived those featherless days. Later, she was eating from our plates without any restriction and moving freely without any limits. She was with us for more than a year, with a few clipped wing feathers. She would spend most of her morning to evening time at the small guava tree we had. And would return to her cage in the evening. Is it cruel to keep birds in a cage? We see birds in the Zoo. Maybe, the size of the cage matters. Maybe, the...