Dree

The land of the first sun, the land of the clouds and the land of the Zos are all parts of the eight sisters that demarcate the North-Eastern States of India. Not many Indians are aware of the custom, tradition and the people that inhabit these eight states. One of the languages of India is Tenyidie, that is spoken in Nagaland, is fiction to many eyes and ears. The eight states house myriad of things to be explored and enjoyed.

The folktales from the North-eastern states convey a lot about life and the understanding of people of life. Folk tales from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland and Meghalaya reveal so much about the people's understanding of their place of living, nature that shapes their lives and a holistic understanding of life. For the people of the North-eastern states the Sun is female and the Moon is male. The Sun is the first daughter to have been born to the mother earth and her husband the God of creation. The Moon happens to be the only son to the couple, so a pampered and prodigal progeny. The Sun and the Moon give light to the earth and so often the Moon acts truant and is not being reprimanded for his dereliction as he is the only male offspring. In an another tale, two brothers who dwell in heaven create everything on the earth. They have summoned all the winds to bring soil from various places and which has resulted in soils of different hues and texture.

In an another story, the people of the earth want to fight the two lights that have been created by Gods to give illumination on the earth. They approach a frog Ettung Tiklung and who with great valor reaches the sky and kills the husband light, thus leaving the wife, the Sun, in great sorrow and solitude. She confines herself into the citadel of hers in mourning, depriving the earth of light. The people of the earth then approach the cock to bring her out of her cocoon. It crows many a time until its crown turns red-chilly-red to no avail and returns in dismay and generates the cause of the tremendous gap between cock's crow and sun's rising. They then approach the Ullu monkey, that in its greatest vanity yells into the ear of the wife-sun and disturbs the rhythm of hers. Startling greatly, she trembles bringing in earthquake and destroying the path for the Ullu monkeys to return. As a result the Ullu monkeys have been confined to a particular territory of Arunachal Pradesh. After much effort peace has been restored by a crow and as a result the sun has removed her veil to give light. The killer of her husband Ettung Tiklung hider itself in bamboos all morning and comes out only at night. It is still believed that the spotting of frogs in the morning will knell the other light as he is a great warrior.

Dree is a popular festival in the North-eastern states, especially in Arunachal Pradesh of the Apa Tani tribes. There is a folk tale that tells the origin of the festival. Dree is celebrated to welcome the grains that have been reaped and so an agricultural fest. Once upon a time there lived an ancestral man called Abatoni. He was a great hunter and often went on expeditions into the jungle with his dog. On one such trip, the mutt left him and veered off the course to reach a huge tree, that had never before been noticed by Abatoni. It was a tall tree and had golden colour fruits on its branches. The hunter wanted to pluck the fruit and as it was quite high above him and the trunk was tender, he was unable to pluck them. The intelligent Abatoni wanted to wait since the ripened fruit not bearing the weight would bend itself and then he would pluck the fruit and examine its grains. As he waited there for a week, the branch with the paddy bent and as he was about pluck, there blew a strong breeze and carried it afar and made it fall in water. He plunged in the river and searched everywhere. It turned out to be a fruitless endeavour. Depressed, he made his homeward journey and found two fishermen discussing their catch. As he neared them, he found the fruit in their net. He took the fruit with him and examined it thoroughly and started cultivating paddy. He gave up hunting and started feeding on the vegetation. According to the Apa Tanis that is how the earth got paddy and rice.

What is Love?

What is Love?

Love is submitting.

Love is the cause of love.

Love is understanding.

Love is a kind of music

Love and the Gentle Heart are identical.

Love is the poetry of sorrow.

Love is the tender soul looking in the mirror.

Love is evanescent.

Love is never having to say you are sorry.

Love is a process of crystalisation.

Love is giving.

Love is sharing a stick of gum.

You can never tell about love. Love is an empty word.

Love is being reunited with god.

Love is bitter.

Love is encountering the angel.

Love is a vale of tears.

Love is waiting for the phone to ring.

Love is the whole world.

Love is holding hands in the movie theatre.

Love is intoxicating.

Love is a monster.

Love is blind.

Love is listening to your heart.

Love is a sacred silence.

Love is the subject of songs.

Love is good for the skin.

Love is the urgency to hold fast to another and to be together in the same place.


- Orhan Pamuk - Turkish Writer and Nobel Laureate

Mystical Books

India is a land of mystic things. The image of India being a land of god-men and mysticism is a constant representation made in all writings and references throughout the Europe and the Americas. There are so many westerners who would love to immerse themselves in knowing about these psychic healers and sannyasis. Paul Brunton, a Briton travelled a lot in both Egypt and India wrote extensively about his personal experiences of meeting several of dervishes and tantriks in his books. He had made Mysore as his home and had several staying stints in his house there. R K Narayan, a popular writer from India in English, discusses in his autobiography, 'My Days', of meeting Paul Brunton and spending many an evening with him discussing metaphysics and psychic beliefs. Narayan also shares some of his experiences, in the same book, of visiting a friend's house in Madras and trying to establish a contact with the spirit of his departed wife.

'An Autobiography of a Yogi' of Paramahamsa Yogananda, a saint who lived many years in the US, is a special book as it was written by a Yogi about his own life. The book is full of several unbelievable incidents beginning with the early life of Mukunda Lal Ghosh, the name given by parents to Yogananda. His guru or teacher is Lahiri Mahasai, who is a disciple of Mahavatar Baba. Once Mukunda's father, a railway chief employee, refused to permit one of his workers to go on leave even after the employee describing the purpose of his visit, that was to go and worship Lahiri Mahasai. On that day, as Mukunda's father was returning home from work, Maharaj Lahiri Mahasai made an appearance before him as spirit and told him to allow his disciple to visit him. The father not only did allow the employee to go but also went there in person with his wife to become the Maharaja's disciple.

In another incident from the same story, the boy Mukunda was narrated an incident by a police officer who went into the forest in search of a convict. He jostled a young man but the young man refused to oblige his command and went ahead on his course without heeding. Being angered by the act, the police officer attacked the man with an axe and severed the arm of the man. The man stood nonchalant as blood was dripping heavily. He told the police officer that he was not a convict and on another occasion the police officer saw him with the severed arm being attached to his torso.

In his recent book, Robin Sharma discusses the life of a popular American lawyer who swoons in the chamber of a court of law as he is arguing an important case. "The Monk who sold his Ferrari" narrates the story of Julian through his assistant. Julian, the busy lawyer has to abandon his practice as he has to heed to the advice of cardiologists as his system does require a lot of slackness and rest. He looks so old beyond his age. After a short period of hospitalisation, he is discharged and his whereabouts are not known. All of a sudden a young man makes his appearence in the office of the narrator who has now become a popular barrister. The narrator is irritated with the unannounced arrival of the man that greatly disturbs his regular schedule. The visitor insists on being let in and wins in his insistence. The narrator is shocked to know that the person is Julian, the emaciated, dreary lawyer whose whereabouts are not known for sometime. Julian is youngish and energetic with great vigour and relates everything to his stay with sannyasis in the Himalayas in India.

What is given here is only a small potpourri of the unexplored territories of knowledge in India. A tuned up mind may explore more and surprise everyone with startling discovery.

To Ricky with Love

Dear Ricky,

I came across your jotting of your life experiences as a teacher only a couple of days ago, though i heard about your book sometime ago. Though i do not remember where and in what context, the title stuck in my memory and some friend of mine spoke high of the book with that title; "To Sir with Love". The moment i browsed the book i had a tremendous urge to buy it. I do not know for sure that the urge is because of the fact that i am also a teacher. As a college teacher, as part of the ritual, i have to attend an orientation programme. Industries consider 'orientation' an essential anathema to put their employees through. Of late, education has also become an industry to bring in the programme of orientation to attune new teachers to the ecstasy of teaching.

The fact that startled me is that one can become a committed teacher after having taken up the job of teaching accidentally. Your description of your journey to the Greenslade school at the outset of the novel is very gripping. The attitude of the charwomen who travel on the same bus in which you are the only other male apart from the conductor and a Negro too, is as if you did not even exist. Their casual talk about things that are taboo to be discussed openly, in the presence of a male, conveys their ideology of the presence of an alien figure. However, one of the charwomen does not mind sharing a seat with you. As you are about to get down at Aldgate, a white woman does not want to sit with you and the conductor is about to chivvy her for keep standing when it is not allowed. In there, you really come to the rescue of the white woman even if she imputes you to the practice of equality. What seems to be a big slight on the bus happens to be an ordinary incident in your life as you narrate your struggle to find a job for your living after being demobilised from the RAF. I have never personally experienced the kind of grief that you have experienced on the day when you have been turned down the job of a technical engineer even if you possess all the required features. Your stint in the Aruba oil company and the expertise you have gained in the US and South America must get you a fine job. The ease that you have exuded on the day of the interview when you are put through the grill of questions must have promised you the great expectation of getting through the process of selection. As the interviewer rises to congratulate you and gives out the reason for not selecting you, oh! God, i do not know how you have taken it. You yourself states that you have come to see the complexion that has been with you ever since you were born only then.

Teaching becomes last of your options for survival as you are not a qualified teacher. The scene with a white man, a stranger, in a park, is, if you are a theist, surely God given. The old white gentleman not only gives courage but also attunes the aberration that your mind has gone into after continuous defeats. The image of the boy who welcomes you with the stub of a cigarette between his thumb and fore finger into school would have given a preamble to the kind of pupils that you are going to teach. The wake of the second world war is seen in the behavioral patterns of children. The squalid and dingy places of living have made them unclean and losing their morality. The hostility of children of the class that you take over is not because they intentionally want to be brutal but to alleviate the stress that they have been put through both at home and outside. The efforts taken by you to tame them and your interests in finding out from where they hail are necessary parts of a teacher. Your stint in psychology books provides with no clue of children of your school as they are a 'class apart'.

Your efforts to instill mannerism in them through making them realise that they too are grown-ups and they will be treated as ones if they behave in a way to get accolades from the outside society is a genuine effort to be honed in every teacher. your interests in finding out the functioning of the Juvenile court and law in general when one of your boys has been arrested for stabbing another boy unintentionally shows your earnestness in doing something to uplift your students. The best gift that you have received in your life is definitely not from Gillian, your love, but is from your students when they have presented a bouquet, a collection which is assorted in a sense that the flowers have been plucked from the places of their living and the premises of the school. The gift to be ingrained in yourself is the final gift of all the signatures of the children of your class neatly covered in a parcel with an inscription "To sir, with love". You have been successful in weeding off the 'skin-deep' race and caste feelings when they have obliged you in placing the wreath that they have bought from their kitty on the body of the mother of their classmate of mixed origin.

You are indeed a real teacher with the demure of a teacher. I salute you.

Bye. With Love. A teacher trying to be in your shoes.


PS: visit the following link to view the trailer of "To Sir with Love". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucnq_hPhdDI