Tag: looking back

Life and Death

Yesterday dawned bright.

It was Nelson Mandela’s 95th birth anniversary. The entire world celebrated his birthday while he was in hospital, making a speedy recovery. It was good news. He is an icon of hope and an inspiration to me and a lot of other youngsters.

Who wouldn’t appreciate and admire a man who refused six offers of freedom from prison life, for the good of his fellow country men? Thirty seven years in a 2m *2.5m cell and hard work in a lime quarry, no wonder the whole world looks up to him!

I once came across a famous quote from his autobiography, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’,

“In South Africa, it is hard for a man to ignore the needs of the people, even at the expense of his own family”.

(Read the whole chapter here)

This was something that moved me a lot. Those words weren’t merely a combination of letters; it was his life, and to take it all and still rebel! Just the mention of his name brings a fond smile on many faces. That’s how much change he has inflicted in us all. I witnessed how much people appreciated him when he made his public appearance in the closing ceremony of the FIFA World Cup held in South Africa back in 2010.

Nelson Mandela

Musing on this, I spend the rest of yesterday, until I heard a bad news. Vaali, the great Tamil poet and lyricist died at the age of 81. The news came as an absolute shock. He was the only poet to have penned lyrics for four generations of actors. Over 15000 great songs he wrote and movies in which he worked are yet to be released.

His death struck me unlike any other deaths. I never realized how much I appreciated him until I heard that he had stopped breathing. I had never thought of a poet like him growing old; I always felt like he would be around forever, penning introduction songs for actors yet to arrive.

In everyone’s personal favourite songs, (whatever the genre, situation and period) will be a majority of Vaali’s words. We may not realize it, but it is so. That was his specialty.

Vaali_1000

It indeed ended a sad day.

Piggy business

I’ve used this blog to record a lot of my everyday rants, the common one being the incredible standards of education in India, particularly the South. Nowadays, in India, education is spelled M-O-N-E-Y and lots of it too. Having successfully broken through the hectic school life, I’ve had first hand experience when it comes to admission for higher education. And I have only one thing to say.

Bloody flock of sheep.

I was totally appalled by the way people rush to settle their children into a college; it’s almost as if they want to get rid of their kids for a few years. Parents make pathetic efforts to enroll their children in colleges, and I must say how amused I was to look at the look of desperation on the faces of anxious parents. How silly of them!

Unless I’m mistaken, (and I’m quite sure I’m not) a degree is not a necessity. I feel that the ones who heavily advertise and promote the concept of the necessity of a yellow robe are the representatives of leading educational institutions. Those preachings are now the talk of the town; our people are not the most difficult to convince. (we witness it during every other election) Isn’t it evident that these institutions are just mercenary, and not at all interested in the empowerment of youth as they claim?

I believe that a student should do a degree only if he/she has an interest and curiosity to do it, and not for the sake of a written attestation. Isn’t it better to spend one’s life in something he knows he’d enjoy, rather than whiling away precious years in a course that parents force them into? Oh, yes it is.

And about the sheep story, it’s a pity that folks feel convention is safe, despite watching conventions turn into absurdity. They say change alone is permanent but refuse to put it into action. Sad.

This convention doesn’t seem to be confined to education alone, rather, people stick to a step by step procedure throughout their lives and are scared to break free of their shackles for fear of what society would say. Society has it’s own say in everything we do and most people are too concerned about it than themselves. The same goes when it comes to marriages. I really don’t know who framed the real age limit for an unmarried life, because a lot of people can’t bear to see a twenty+ year old girl at home; everyone from relatives to friends begin to bombard the parents with questions and even matrimonial offers, as if life is an arrangement. Society doesn’t allow girls to even enjoy their lives. Boys are more pitiable; just when they realize the joy of freedom they’re persuaded into marriage. It disgusts me that people can’t keep their noses out of others’ lives.

People have been brainwashed so much that they now believe that conventional college life is the only option. That’s the sad part, they are sincere in their belief. Even reputed companies don’t care much about their employees’ talent, rather what interests them is the number of years their employees have spent under a college roof, the more popular the roof is, the better. Education which once led to knowledge, has now become a doorway between money. You can spend loads of money and learn how to retrieve your money and earn more. Where’s the possibility for genuine knowledge?

Of late, it’s quite common to hear parents complaining how much of a business education has become, but despite all complaints, they still tend to spend (at least by means of loan) on colleges. Ask them why and they’ll say, “better safe than sorry.” As far as I know, not even the world’s greatest scientist can guarantee a safe night’s sleep. Then why waste time caring about the certainly uncertain? (stole that from my brother!) ;)

It’s not just commoners who are to be blamed, listening to the authorities of those money-machines, anyone would be tempted to enroll immediately, and what’s worse; to pay a major part of the fees. They use such polished language that it’s difficult to see through it. To be point blank, it seemed to me like addressing a group of pigs before a mass slaughter.

Well, after all of this, I’ve decided that if I do a degree I would never trouble myself with my results, I am interested in nothing more than my passion. I’ve decided to break my shackles. No matter how difficult the consequences of my choices are, I believe I can face it as long as the decisions are mine.

These kids nowadays…

I have met a lot of adults who complain about the young generation. Most people find it difficult to accept that life on earth — from being easy — has now become challenging. Nowadays, mere survival requires enormous effort.

Irresponsible, forgetful, careless, jealous, greedy, inane, insane. These adjectives, we hear almost everyday from parents of teenagers. From their point of view, their teenage children are useless and can’t do anything right. Parents nowadays accuse teenagers of whiling away their time in front of television watching useless programs or surfing the internet, killing time.

There’s something they need to understand though. The period between 10-20 years is the most difficult part of a modern child’s life. Difficult, not only to the child but also to those around him/her. That is the age a child begins to look at himself/herself as an individual. That’s when a sense of self-importance arises. We feel the transition from a child to a person in society. That’s when we desperately try to break through the chains of childhood that our parents and society had restrained us in.

It’s like taking the first step out into the world after a lifetime in prison. Everything and everyone seems strange. It feels like a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon. As a child, we’d have thought everyone we met were good and everyone was a part of a larger family. It’s during those pre-teen years that we figure out that our childhood fancies, were indeed fancies and everything we thought we knew of the world was wrong. It’s when we meet the jealous, the ruthless; the deceiving, and the unfriendly that we realize how wrong we had been all along. It’s hard to accept.

It feels like forcibly being thrust into a group of snarling and unfriendly wild dogs. Suddenly the picture of the ‘beautiful world’ starts to crumble. We see the world for what it really is.

In days of yore, children were either forced into adulthood before they could come out of their cocoon or our society wasn’t as bad and corrupted as it is now. There wasn’t much difference between the family children knew and the society they would soon get to know.

Now, however, things have changed. It’s like balancing two worlds that are in complete contrast with one another. The change, in itself, is a hard-to-bear reality. That causes depression. And to add to the helplessness, the usual duties of school and homework come in harder than ever before.

That’s the age we feel a sudden urge to experiment on relationships; that’s when we learn to make friends of strangers. Making friends with others who feel as insecure as us is easier said than done, we find it difficult to trust anyone; we view even family with a doubtful eye. Inexplicable emotions run amok in our minds and we won’t feel confident enough to confide in anyone.

Bottled up insecurity, frustration, fear and emotions threaten to break out as depression. When they do break out, they result in desperate mood swings. That’s when the rest of the world calls us ‘irresponsible’ and ‘incapable of doing anything right’. These accusations make us feel as if something is indeed wrong with us.

Naturally, we look up to our family for help. Parents are the only ones we trust and if they have problems of their own, that would be a huge let down for us. Of course, there are some families who make efforts to try and understand.

We find it nearly impossible to rest. To overcome the chaos within us, we look for alternatives. And, with some help sometimes, we do find them in drugs.

Most teenagers who do drugs only do it to relieve themselves of the stress of the outside world and try to rest. I am not justifying the use of drugs, but merely stating that they honestly believe that drugs can help them clean up their scattered emotions. Those who escape the claws of drugs turn to the option of suicide to escape the harsh realities of life. It’s only a moment’s foolhardiness and luckily, some come out of it as coming out of a reverie.

Me saying all these might sound odd because I talk for teenagers in general. Of all things I’ve said, I have felt almost everything myself and I am pretty sure other teenagers feel it too. I realized I wasn’t alone when I read Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Letters. Reading letters from fellow teenagers around the globe, inspired me to muse on my teenage life, and this is what I came up with.

A bunch of idiots, we are


We’re leaving school shortly, and looking back, I see a bunch of idiotic teenage friends.

There I was, sitting alone in class, looking at my lazy classmates. My class, a crowd of 61 students, each different in her own goofy way. Our class hosts a mini பாரதவிலாஸ். It’s a blend of many States (and a pretty good one too!).

There was a gang of North Indians, chatting away in never-understandable Hindi, and then the Andhra representatives who would suddenly speak in Telugu ( I just hate it when they do it. Feel as if something’s wrong with me), and the Tamil students (we are the minority, surprisingly) who find it quite hard to cope up with the sudden language changes.

There was a set of nerds, discussing the previous exam (those people will never learn. I mean, what’s the point in crying over spilt beans?). There was the poor class leader, trying her best to silence the class (failing miserably, as always). There were a whole lot of others, idly chatting by in any language other than English (we never had much regard for the rules, especially the NO-VERNACULAR-LANGUAGE rule).

Staring at the mad and frenzied batch of +2 students, I was reminded of my first day at school. On seeing the place, which was supposed to be my classroom and the people who were to be my classmates, I was quite painfully reminded of the local parliament. Everything was just a blur of colours. Now of course, I am a part of this stupid and crazy group of girls. It’s amazing how much can happen within a year.

Last year, we were highly timid and preferred to keep to ourselves. Now of course, everyone  has broken out of her shell. We are all now one big family-the fact that we still have a loads of misunderstandings is secondary-but that does not keep us from sticking with each other. We might not be the of best friends, no, there is too much bitterness there, but we are always there for each other and we don’t let each other down. This, I realized when we were on our school tour. Our class was united as one and it was a great sight to watch. That’s the basic element of a family, right?

These two years of school life has been the wildest experience of our lives. All of us will leave school as people who have changed a lot over a really short span of time. Some of us have become more serious about life while the better rest have learnt to live every moment, regardless of the challenges life is about to impose on us.

After all, life, is for living collectively.

A bunch of idiots, we are