Why did she commit suicide? That beautiful, bright,bubbly, quick to smile young woman, who was my student fifteen years ago; A last bencher, who was nevertheless attentive and respectful in a real way, that, over a period of time, her memory remained sharply etched in my mind, many years after she left the school, till she found me on facebook; and spoke to me at length about her teaching experience, and made me feel so proud and important?
What are we teaching our young people that a young woman with a son she adores, a job she enjoys and a life she flaunts about, constantly uploading posts on family trips abroad, trips to her hometown, weddings she attended, her new skates, her son's spelling bee, should all of a sudden feel she cannot face the world anymore?
Whatever be her reason for suicide, on our part, we adults are making a big mistake by making our young ones believe that life is a bed of roses.And that we should have perfect lives! We don't fight unpleasant realities and hedge around them, pretend that terrible things such as child prostitution, kidnapping and murder for organs, embryo harvesting, political murders, caste based carnages do not happen. We do not let our children work, and turn them into pampered pigs, who never realize that happiness has to be earned and can elude the best among us.
That life goes on no matter what you do and don't do and no matter who lives and who dies.
If you wanted to shatter someone's peace of mind..you sure did it, my dear....but if you had survived whatever shame was swallowing you, you would have got a lot more, and given a lot more too..Are you  resting in peace????

I remember how I lacked  career focus and didn't really care if I had a job or not, in my twenties.. I once quarreled with top  management loudly and rudely, and walked out on my job. I couldn't stand there when someone was shouting, "Get out!", could I? 

Momentous though that sounds, it was not earthshaking or shocking to me. I came home, went on about my work and at around two thirty switched on the T.V and started watching "Basic Instinct:" with rapt fascination. My dear friend Bhooma came over and tried to rehash the day's drama with me.I just nodded and tried to look serious every time she made a comment.But all I was thinking about was...Who dunnit?? How is the film going to end? 

Finally I could take it no longer. I told Bhooma." Listen. I want to see  how this film ends. Please let's talk later" But my assertion proved to be an effort that went in vain. Because of a Power Cut. No words can describe how disappointed I felt.But Bhooma started chastising me.."Here I am, rushing down to your place to console you and tell you not to worry...and look at you!" And we giggled so much over that.

Actually, I never got to watch the end. I am jobless today. May be I can catch up!!!

We need people and relationships, and yet can't tolerate many of the first and don't feel satisfied with most of the latter. We know the importance of relationships but fail to invest in them. Most people who claim to be in relationships just seem to be playing nasty games with each other.Why do people keep trashing their own lives?
A young woman aborted her foetus, because she had been selected to join the team taking a trip abroad for official work.She had not informed her husband, parents or any one of it.The doctor who did the abortion spoke about it to another woman from the same office. News spread fast and she was terminated from service. People in her office believed she had committed a murder.When her husband came to know of this, he filed for divorce, and got it too.
While everyone I discussed this with in and outside my class believed that the woman had to be fired, some questions keep popping up my mind.
1. Why did the doctor let the girl abort the child, if she did not think it was the right thing to do?
2. Why does no one think the doctor did something wrong in aborting the child?
3. Why did the doctor not inform her family, but told someone from the office?

Wonder where the girl is now?

limericks in class

Here's a limerick I wrote with a ten year old student from my online class

There was once a young boy called Sam

Who was allergic to ham

He checked his sandwich everyday

 Although his mom wouldn't give it anyway

She always made them with jam

Cool huh???

An energetic young girl named Molly

Tried to do a rolly polly

She did it in the end

Her body she had to mend

So it wasn't that jolly

Not bad!!!

Marching on...
March was a month of changes. Relocation to a metro from a small town had me adapting in no time, because at heart I am a metro person, being born and educated in one, before I began my career in a small town.
After a short trip to the fascinating pink city, which is not pink at all, I quickly found myself, in a week, three jobs; two online and one offline; enough to sustain me through my stay here not just monetarily, but spiritually
 too.
The spiritually uplifting part is working with students and making them work. Two of my jobs are related to that. But I have also found a job that is downright immoral.Did not realize it at first because the website just said it was offering me writing assignments  for so many dollars. I took their grammar test; scored full that...took a number of tests on research methodologies and scored a bit less than 75%; was asked to send in an essay of two fifty words on a topic given to me.
Well I got selected and was working on different topics like novels, plays and newspaper articles,w hen it suddenly dawned on me that I was doing student assignments for a price. From one angle  it looked like this. After teaching just language for years and years, I was actually getting deeply involved with literature;  reading whole plays of Shakespeare, and acclaimed novels barely discussed in Indian colleges and brilliant works of lesser known eighteenth century and nineteenth century women play wrights...and the hard truth was that I was  making a mockery of a sincere teacher's attempts to make his or her students work.

I so love the job. No Indian college is going to pay me a decent salary to teach literature. I spend two to six hours a day soaking in literature, my first love. But when I read detailed teacher's descriptions of how exactly  he wants the essay, what aspects she wants discussed (that's how I realized that it was ghost writing, that too for students) I feel like such a cad.Am addicted to this website, and am online here all the time.I don't think I will stop doing this immoral job, till I think of something else to do. That's how selfish I turned out to be in this matter.

How we react to art, shows how we change, grow and mature over the years. I was watching an old black and white classic maya bazaar; the memorable scene in which the royals open the magic box which shows them what they love the most. I saw the Queen of Balarama open the box. Her eyes grew wide with greed as jewels and gold coins  appeared inside the box. I smiled, thinking how she was so much like some of my friends.
Then I remembered the moment,. I had watched this scene as a kid. I distinctly recollect being terrified by the expression of greed on this Queen's face, when I watched it that time. I had feared evil, as a kid. Now I was just amused and on top of that had a psychological explanation for all things negative.
I also look back at how my reaction to Archie comics changed over the years. When I was a kid, I had thought of them as "annas" (elder brothers) and akkas (elder sisters.) As a young woman, they had been, "those teenagers' to me and as I grew older they just shrunk from 'high school kids' to 'those kids'. 

Please remember..Women are human beings first...

To those who say "All men are the same."

and to those who say "All women are the same."

I only want to say, "All men and all women are the same."

We were unicellular organisms that got divided into male and female, for conveniently sharing the tasks of protecting the newborns, while providing for them at the same time.

Violation of  woman's rights is nothing but the violation of human rights