Robin Hood, Zorro, Superman, Spiderman, Ben, X-Men… the list goes on. There are numerous heroes. What are their motives? They fight for ‘The Greater Good’. They are the people’s heroes. They do good deeds, with the best interest of the public at heart, and we love them for that. They are our heroes, our leaders.

Sometimes, I feel life would be good with a bunch of superheroes, just round the corner, waiting to save us, from the evils of society. How wonderful it would be to know that our ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman’ will web-swing across cities, just to protect us from harm. How comforting it must be, to feel safe, because Superman and the rest of the ‘Justice League’ are watching over us and resisting any force that may endanger our lives.

What a sense a security, it must be to know that the ‘King of Thieves’, Robin Hood, is out there, along with his ‘Merry Yeomen’, fighting against evil and feeding those in need.

How nice it would be if Ben and the X-Men and all other unknown superheroes, were out there, fighting for the innocent and helpless, helping them and protecting them.

We all would have felt, at one point, that life was much better in movies. After all who doesn’t wish for a life of ‘Happily-Ever-After’? But life isn’t a movie or a cartoon. Dumbledore said, that “it does not do to dwell in dreams”. I say, it does not do to dwell in fantasies too. All they do is divert our minds from reality, making us wish for a life that doesn’t exist. That’s the bitter truth.

Silence – her new mantra. Eyes tightly shut, she remains, pretending to be oblivious. People look at her, wonder at her silence, enquire about her health. They display concern, not knowing the reason for her muteness. They prescribe remedies and proscribe isolation. All as a measure of uselessness. None could find out the reason, none could bring her back to her former self. All efforts were spent in vain. One fine day, a little girl came by and repeated the same questions. They told her. She thought for a while. She smiled. She opened the latch of the cage and out flew the silent parrot, never to be silenced or caged again.

Whilst reading Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books, something struck me as quite odd: none of the animals in the jungle could maintain eye contact with Mowgli, (man’s cub) for long. This was something I had never heard of before, so I decided to try it out for myself. I stared directly into a dog’s eyes and he broke contact shortly afterwards.

I wondered, maintaining eye contact was something that mankind had had trouble with for a long time. In a lot of poems (especially love poetry) we have witnessed the presence of this difficulty. Do animals share the same feeling?

Naturally, I was curious, so I sought the help of Google Search. I don’t know about wild animals but I discovered that it is dangerous to maintain eye contact with unknown dogs. (Thankfully, I experimented with my neighbour’s dog) Eye contact tends to trigger dogs into biting, which is why (researchers have proved) children get bitten by dogs.

While dogs consider it as provocation, mankind seems to think otherwise. From what I could find out, Japanese schools teach their students not to look at the teacher’s eyes. They are directed to look at the teacher’s Adam’s apple or tie knot during direct conversations. They consider looking directly into the eyes of a superior as a sign of disrespect. People of East Asia and Nigeria also consider it as a gesture of disrespect to look into the eyes of a superior.

The Western Culture, as always has a different view. There, a person who does not meet another’s eye is badly judged. Maintaining eye contact is more than we realize. People who have difficulty in meeting one’s eyes are likely to be affected by autistic disorders or social anxiety.

Apparently, studies aren’t confined to Engineering and Medicine, for the study of eye contact is referred to as ‘oculesics’. Research on eye contact reveals stunning results. It was definitely more than I anticipated.

It was one of those boring days in class, when I was too idle to recognize what the teacher was saying. There I was, in the second bench (quite unfortunately) trying hard to keep my eyes open. I was doing well and suddenly, my teacher’s voice caught my attention. He pointed out a mistake in the text book of Tamil Nadu Text Book Corporation, (I thought experts wrote those books, how terribly wrong I was!) and told us to “follow the text book” because “the text book is very important for 12 STD”.

I’ve never heard of such absurdity. What kind of system encourages the students to follow a wrong guide? Definitely not the great kind.

I don’t know which is worse, having teachers knowledgeable enough to identify mistakes in the text books or having completely ignorant people who call themselves teachers.

I am still mystified as to why I didn’t have the guts to stand and question my teacher regarding this, but it was later that I realized that teachers preach us on what they were taught. They are just instruments who encourage false teachings just for the sake of numbers.

I recently read Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone. I was happy to see that Ryan opposed the system but I still couldn’t believe that he had to get into IIT to realize its uselessness! It took me less than a month to realize that the system is nothing less than crap!