2010

another footprint in the shore of life…. 2010
so many things passed by
happiness, joy, sorrow, love, achievements
some are going to stay forever
like the shells we pick up and bring home
some will lie there in the shore
waiting to be washed away.

It was a beautiful year for me, I hope it was same for you too. Its been a blessing to know you all, hope to stay in your hearts, and if possible life for the years to come.

You all will find me here:

poems:
http://mydomainpvt.wordpress.com

stories:
http://magicthought.wordpress.com

novel, long stories, musings etc:
http://mycybernovels.wordpress.com

some dreams, some awards, some poems:
http://window2mysoul.wordpress.com

Ragging

Well, let me state in the very beginning- I am anti- ragging. I don’t see any rhyme or reason behind harassing newcomers, no matter to which sphere of life they are entering.

This ugly practice should be stopped. In a very few cases it is mild but in most cases it takes an ugly form. So may be the school and colleges should just ban it. Firmly and finally.

Parents send their children to school to study. Not to be sent back crippled, dead or psychologically shattered.

In schools of west Bengal there is a way of receiving fresh students and bidding goodbye to old ones. This is done under the guidance and presence of teachers. If mixing with fresher is so important the same thing can be applied to colleges too. After all, no matter how busy the professors are they can manage a day for a function.

Luckily the college in which I studied had ragging banned. So we breathed quite easily through out our first year. Not all colleges are that sensible.

In the name of ragging these days (or in old days too) it appears that some students satisfy their ugly bullying urges, why do the authorities let it happen?

If dress code and other codes can be applied in colleges then ragging can be stopped too. I think it should be. It must be.

Corporal punishment

Students and teachers- a relationship as old as human civilization. It is an essential part of it till date. May be in future computers and other things will replace them but not now.

When a student is wounded by a teacher sometimes the teacher is cruel and sometimes the teacher is driven to cruelty. Its easy to say that a teacher should control him or herself but I have seen that one kid can drive the whole home crazy, so, what about the man who has to teach such 30 kids per period x at least five periods a day?

Being a teacher is not that easy. But hitting children is simply not the solution. May be the teachers and the parents should have a clear cut talk. They should give some strict guidelines about what the kid should not do in the school, and if he is caught doing that nth time he should be transferred.

The wealthier schools can opt for cameras in class room. The poorer schools can simply elect class monitors and give them the protection and power to control the class.

I have been a class monitor once, my class teacher and another teacher stood behind me like rock, as a result girls seven or eight years older than me listened to me and stayed silent when there was an off period.

I personally am dead against hitting a kid, but whenever I read this type of news I wonder if the teacher was cruel or was driven simply crazy by kids.

If parents and teachers work in harmony, like ours did, I think these things will be a past.

When I was a child I knew one thing, if I go home sobbing that teacher has spanked me the first question I will hear is, “What did you do?”

My parents always gave the teacher “benefit of doubt”. That taught me obedience and adjustment.

Scorching summer

Well, we should have anticipated it, when we were blessed by chilling winter this year (that is 2009-10) that a scorching summer might be looming for us in the horizon.

I relished the winter to the core, which a lot of Kolkata people did not, they were frozen. I wonder how are they reacting to this terrible heat. I guess not much because almost every house in Kolkata uses air-conditioners these days. So they just utilize that thing to relax their scorched bodies.

Me and pixie are spending semi sleepless nights these days. Its fun to watch her, sometimes looking at me from her bed, or sprawling on the floor all exhausted. I too in my turn sometimes see her sleeping with an exasperated expression. We both finally retire with the cool of dawn seeping in.

Is a torrential rain-cladded monsoon waiting for us in the horizon?

Even the thought makes me shiver with fear.

Last night I kept pixie up all night, till four thirty in the morning. Poor baby was at her wit’s end. She was visibly relieved when I retired.