Hey Mr. Principal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s that time of the year again! Board examinations! Every student is burning the midnight oil, cramming in facts that they never learnt before, and the adrenalin is pumping really high. They are told that this phase can make or break their lives.

Generally the 12^th standard board examination is the real test of fire as the marks acquired in the exam determines one’s admission into the course of his/her dreams. The 10^th standard examination which was introduced to give the students a feel of a public exam has become more important these days. Schools set the marks acquired in the 10^th standard examinations as a bench mark for giving their students the science/commerce / humanities streams. If you don’t get the required marks you wouldn’t be given the stream of your choice. This leaves many students in a dilemma. They could stay in the same school and pursue a course which they don’t like or change schools to follow their dreams.

The school is considered a second home and the teachers our second mothers. It is here that each individual learns his first lessons in life and makes impressions that last forever. It is here we make our first friends in life. Every student shares a bond with his/her school.  It is unfair when schools refuse to give you the course of your choice only because you got a few marks lesser than what is required.  It is even more unfair, when schools admit new students and ask those who have been with the school since Kindergarten to leave. The 2 digit number called “marks” is all that matters to them.

They don’t care about the trauma a 15 yr old student undergoes. The pain of parting from friends and teachers who have been with you during the formative years is difficult to overcome, and it is even worse when you are made to feel like a loser for not having secured the required marks. The system fails to provide you with enough information about the various streams. Students must be provided with more information about the various options available to them and asked to make their choices. It is often considered shameful to pursue any course without a science and mathematics base. All of us have this wrong notion that only those with weak fundamentals would take up the humanities or pure science groups. In the race for the IIT’s and NIT’s we fail to explore new avenues .We fail to understand that there is no Nobel prize for engineering or Business. Schools fail to understand that the marks obtained in the board examinations never judge a student’s aptitude or interest in a particular subject.  They only judge the student’s ability to cram in facts.

It is sad to see that our schools are making their students mere mark churning machines. A system of testing that can judge both the student’s interest and aptitude must be adopted by schools. This would bring out the best talent in each student. The rat race for the IIT’s and NIT’s has made creativity and innovation take a back seat. Schools should focus on making their students well rounded persons with a sense of social responsibility and not mere mark-churners.

Dear Mr. God!!

It was a hard day.I wanted to be in solitude for a while. So, I took a stroll to the nearby park and sat on a bench there. I was immersed in thoughts when I found this notebook beside me. curiously I opened it and flipped through the pages to read the following, I could relate to it so well.

"Dear Mr God!!

Hello, I really don't know where you exist or in what form you exist? They say you are in people's hearts. I searched hard couldn't find you in mine. But I certainly believe, you do exist. God today has been the worst day of my life in ages. I haven't spoken to anyone or even smiled a bit. Well even you didn't help me out today. Coming to the point I just realized something. You are even more confused than I am.

You created the world. Thats something worth appreciating. You really did a very good job. The mountains,oceans,rain ,snowfall,the breeze, the snow fall everything is amazing. You do have some great engineering sense. And you have crafted the interiors of the world in a brilliant way. Hats off to you for that.

You know where u really goofed up. It was when you created man and a woman. I guess you created them by mistake or something, but why the hell did you make them love? Now don't gimme this crap that you didn't create love and that it was just an outcome. You are bloody well responsible for it. With this damn thing called love came an entire package of baddies- hate, envy,jealousy,revenge. And you have the cheek to say love is simple. Love is so complicated and damn you for creating it. And guess what?? No one can live without it. We can live without food but not without love.

This damn love is creating hell for me. It really hurts God. It aches inside me. I wanna cry aloud but no one is listening. You made a mistake god. Love is very painful. Why did you create it. Did you wanna watch a 24X7 soap from the skies by creating this damn thing called Love? You are sadistic!!!

yours sincerely,

Man

PS: Come down from where ever you stay and answer me you SOB. Otherwise I'll come to heaven someday, catch your collar and make you answer me.

The frustrations are truly amalgamated.

Sarkar Raj: Not worthwhile at all

The audiences are not retarded. This is the message, I would like to give the director Ram Gopal Verma (RGV) for his recent venture, Sarkar Raj. For the hype and hysteria surrounding it, Sarkar Raj turns out to be just a shade better than the worst film of his lifetime AAG.

Featuring bollywood's star family - Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, this movie terribly fails to live up to its expectations. This would teach a good lesson for this entire family of vetran actors to chose better scripts in the future.

The story begins with the tag line POWER CANNOT BE GIVEN . IT HAS TO BE TAKEN.
Subash Nagre(Amitabh bachan) a retired Don, is a happy man who is proud of his son shankar nagre(Abhishek Bachan) taking over his place. With an extremely slow pace of delivering dialogues he tells his people outside is house, about how his has accomplished more than what he had done in his entire life time. The usual scenes of him waving slowly at the public with his Rudraksh tied up over his hands and the background score of govindaaaaaaaaaa is quite stereotyped. With soaring temperatures it is quite surprising to see Amitabh looking quite comfortable in a long black kurta and black Dhoti. Sometimes he covers this attire with a white shawl too.

Now to bring some pace into the movie RGV brings in Anita (Aishwarya rai) a bold and brash business woman , CEO of Shepperd power plant who approaches Sarkar with a proposal to build a huge power plant in Maharashtra. Shankar percieves the good it would do for the state and convinces his father who never agrees to it in the beginning.
The plot takes a twist here, and there are many people scheming against the Sarkars and and in the bargain Shankar looses his wife. RGV fails to bring out the emotions from Abhishek as he just has a blank expression on his face after his wife's death. He doesn't emote well even when she tells him that she is pregnant.

Shankar and Anita go to every village and explain to the villagers about the benifits of the plant. RGV shows their car which follows a string of motorbikes with the huge yellow flags again and again which makes the pace of the film even slower.

There are many plotting against the Sarkars and aim at Shankar's life. The scene showing Shankar being shot is extremely slow. The junior Sarkar who is more witty and smart than the Sarkar himself, doesn't have the presence of mind to lie flat of the floor during an attack. The story after this is how the Sarkar finds out who plotted against him and kills them. Being quite a straightforward don I wonder how he gets the money to have about fifty gunned men with machine guns in their hands. The film ends with a big surprise and a emergence of a new Sarkar.

On the whole the movie is extremely slow paced, without being gripping at all, it demands a better screenplay and cinematography and definitely better music. The actors havent been used well.Every scene needs a proper finishing touch. Govindaaaaaaaaaaaaa .... I guess RGV was hinting that your money was gooovinda. For someone who loves Ash and Abhi this is definitely not the movie to watch. A very poor performance by RGV.

Man proposes God disposes

As a child i used to crave for those small, wonderful, colourful tofees which came in seven vibrant colors of the rainbow. Popins they called it. This small toffee was very predominant during my times. Every child used to have Popins in their break boxes and I used to long for them, look at them with so much desperation. My very caring mother never used to buy them for me as she thought those colours would not do me good.

With my mouth watering I used to look at those children eating popins,by which time the insipid marie biscuits in my hands would have become as soft as petals. Now I dont have to depend on anyone to buy me anything ,but poppins arent available in the market anymore.
I could just relate to the famous quote " Man proposes ,God disposes".

Later as I grew up the walkie talkie toy was a craze. This time god didn't deny me the toy, but played an evil trick. A huge wind blew and with that the doll fell down from the table and broke into pieces and breaking my heart too. I felt my best friend had died. I performed a decent funeral for the doll and got over with the grief.

As time passed I got over with the fascination for dolls and developed a new interest with animals.One day when I was in class 5 I found 2 abandoned squirrels in the garden of my house. They were small , cute and soft and I developed an instantaneous affection towards them. They grew up with me for 20 whole days. I used to feed them with milk from the ink filler and protect them from the savaging enemies like the crows and the cats.

But one fine day, as I was playing with them by holding them in my arms I heard a big squirrel from the tree top screeching monotonously by looking at the baby squirrels in my hand. So I decided to return the squirrels back to their mother. I left them on the bark of the tree and the baby squirrel climbed up to its mother. It was a sight to watch. The mother held the squirrel in her mouth and advanced towards her nest. Like all stories this one doesnt have an end
happy ending. Suddenly the mother lost her grip and out fell the baby on to the ground and became a prey to a cat that was lurking around.
God we were all so happy for a moment and u snatched it all away from us. From me, the mother squirrel and others.

As time sailed through I began looking at things from different perspectives and stopped blaming GOD until yesterday. Yesterday at the middle of the night I had a sudden craving for potato chips. I hadn't eaten them in a long time now considering the fact that they are too fattening. I had discovered a fat free way of making lip-smacking potato chips in the microwave. I sliced them and placed them in the microwave and considering it would take atleast 4 minutes I went to attend natures call and was talking to a good friend of mine. The microwave beeped after 4 minutes and with my mouth watering I opened the microwave. Damn its was all burnt. Thanks to the voltage fluctuation. And what made it worse was it was the last potato in the bag.

GOD YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO BE SO MEAN!!!!!!!!!!

The MISSing factor

On this boring Sunday afternoon, as I was flipping through the channels, I suddenly came across this beauty pageant show held at Chennai. It was a search for the girl who was to be Miss Chennai. There were models queuing up for the initial tests.

What I could make out was that they had to be minimum of 5ft 6inches tall, 34'-24'-34' in size, have a clear skin and be able to speak in English. I must admit all of them were drop dead gorgeous.

Many got eliminated during the initial tests. Those who got selected, were trained on how to walk, how to talk , how to carry themselves about and many other things.

When it came to the D day all of them were called and asked to introduce themselves. The whole show went off in a very organised manner and it was very pleasing to see so many beautiful women walk the ramp. Finally three were chosen as winners. One was Miss chennai and the other two were the runner-ups.

Then I realised something. Most of the girls who were to be called Miss Chennai didn't even know how to speak Tamil or have any idea about Madras(It sounds better doesn't it?).

In a state which makes it compulsory for every child to study Tamil at school, bans films with English titles and fights for Tamil to be the national language, relaxes its rules when it comes to its beauty representatives.

The entire ideology of Tamil and Tamizhan is confusing . Isn't it?
Any way tamizh thai vazhga.....

Reminiscences

Its been so long since i revisited this special place once again. It felt like visiting a dilapidated house a displaced clock showing the wrong time,google ads which dont pay me, it was literally in shambles.
They were the links to the blogs of few fellow bloggers who atleast were more active than me.It reminded me of both good and bad things in life. I did start off as a very enthusiastic blogger and always wanted to spend my time in this little world that gave me tremendous happiness. Here i could do what I love doing - expressing my thoughts without any hindrances. My computer never argues with me it just listens . But doesn't appreciate me at the same time. It gave me a sense of pride , satisfaction, happiness and what not.
I want to visit this world more often and revamp this little space of mine. Hello dear reader. Await the new beginning.

confessions (part 2)

With all enthusiasm and excietment I approached the teacher incharge of the play, for my role. I always managed to score well in Hindi and the Hindi teacher was my favourite. She asked me to sit quietly in the corner of the room, where everyone belonging to the hindi play had assembled. I was filled with excietment and started imagining all sorts of things. Maybe I had a very important role to play and thats why she asked me to sit in a corner. Maybe I'd do my part so well that even the chief guest for the day would come and garland me.
I was sitting in the corner for one whole scene and didnt quite understand what was going on.
Finally after one whole rehersal I figured out my role. I was sure in a crucial scene that was the most dramatic part in the play. It was the scene that changed Siddhartha into Buddha. But neither my role was crucial nor did I have any dialogues to speak. My role was to cry for a Dead body. The whole thing came upon me like a ton of bricks. I wanted to disappear somewhere deep under the earth below me. I was so ashamed of myself. My role. How would I tell my parents that I had no dialogues to deliver when two of my best friends had major roles.

With huge tears rolling down my cheeks, I went home, quietly went to my crying hide out and cried for an hour or two. The crying hide out was my bathroom. Whenever I was in this huge state of depression I went there to vent out my feelings to the huge mirror there, and I would feel better. I felt much better because I wasnt assigned the role of the dead body itself.
Finally, I decided that I would not tell my parents anything about the annual day or the play.
I would do my role and run away from the scene before anyone saw me or asked me anything.

The grand day arrived and all my friends who had the roles like that of the princess were getting decked up with so much care no one bothered about this lonely mourner. I was wrapping myself around this old sari of my mother's which I sneaked out from the cupboard. While everyone ws busy rehersing their dialogues I was busy popping the free cakes the management had provided for the participants.

When I was on stage I tried to cover my face with the saree so that none saw me. Finally they introduced all the participants and introduce me as the mourner I wanted to do simply run away.

Today, when I think back I feel stupid rather than embarassed. It is every small role that makes big plays happen. So what if one did not have dialogues? So what if one did not get decked up? Every role was important. I have realised this.
But still the teacher's havent and every mourner feels the same way as I did.