The Full Moon

You may have only read it in stories but I have seen it - how hermits turn into wolf when the full moon appears. Just looking at most of my classmates you can never tell they could become a wolf in the class. Their side-parted hair, innocent eyes and decent outfits picture a humble saint in the form of university students.

But when our computer teacher enters the class, the same students who never spoke a word during the Physics lecture start howling and teasing her. True that her beauty added to her smile shines like the full moon in the dark night, but she, though being a lecturer, enjoys it when the boys go crazy and even teases them back.

The class? who cares about C Programming when we are enjoying the few perky moments we can have in this university. Most classes pass without even a mark on the blackboard. She comes to the class, shares some laugh, records the attendance and leaves the class, most students following her up to the entrance to the department. 

When I see her talking, it reminds me my past days as teaching assistant at Kathmandu Academy. I don't understand what she talks about: she often talks in Telugu, but the emotions, the closeness to students, the carefree moods resemble. The only difference here is that I had less course load there, those were the days I was taking revision classes after finishing the syllabus. If the students had questions to ask, we would discuss otherwise just talk about life, cricket, college application, etc.

However, in her case, neither has she completed teaching whole of the syllabus, nor do we understand what she is talking about. She does not seem to bother teaching us. Hence, the results of the last mid-exam were bad, the students who got 100% marks in both maths struggled to obtain 50% marks in C-Programming. Some of my friends and I had interest in learning programming but we can't study in the moonlight, can we?    

Kakinada Express

She is the fastest, yet so accurate, simply brilliant! The kingdom she drives through is rough and full of difficulties. But, she never diverges from her path nor lessens her speed, no matter what. Some experienced passengers enjoy her speed, most are sick of it.

This is our math class. Our math teacher has a sharp mind and sharper than that is her pride. She never waits for any students to complete the solution to her questions. She drives on with full pace, whistling time and again "chesaraaa, ChEsArA, (meaning 'completed?' in Telugu, however, she doesn't need an answer for this question)" and sometimes she whistles as "nexta methode". If you show any confusion or have a question, she will just come to your desk and write the solution in your notebook, nothing less, nothing more.

Why she does this? Maybe because she is an amateur teacher, her frequently using Telugu words (in a class where there are 20% international students) shows. Or maybe the majority of students, the Andhra people, know the contents already since it was in their grade 12 syllabus. But Hello Madam Express, there are new passengers, the Nepali & Srilankan, & Bangladeshi people. Please guide us properly through to the semester final!!

The Street

On my way to college, there is a street on my right hand side. I always pass a look through the street. It is a short street with around twelve to fifteen houses on either side. At the far end of the street, stands a colorful temple. There are open drains and in them pigs soaking the black water. But what makes the street different from the others is the life going on in the street. There is a shop at the opening of the street. It looks busy all the time, people of different ages hang around there smoking or just chatting. Then, there are the ladies, fat, dark-skinned ladies in sari hanging around the gates of some houses often talking to each other in pairs.

Sometimes, I see a large group of school-going children gathered at the entrance to the street. Three or four are big, all others are small, two or three of them ride bicycles, all others walk. The bigger children often talk rudely to the smaller ones. I don't understand what they are talking but their expressions show some form of ragging among them. Likewise, the dirt and folds of their dress tells me they are from lower class families. Do they belong to this street? The condition of the small houses in the street and the get-up of those children hint some connection. But the odds of such large group of similar-aged children belonging to the few houses is less.

These daily views in and around the street make me want to find out more about the street. I want to smell the air, feel the ground, know the topic of the women's daily talk. Is there a hostel in the street where all those children live? Today while returning from the college I will walk through the street - I think this everyday but I never do walk really. Maybe I am too busy with my schedule or maybe its too hot here to walk anywhere without business.

But yesterday on my way to college, I gather enough will and I entered the street. The women were busy with their household chores, the cows tied to the coconut trees sat with a mundane look moving their jaws up and down. The street was full of the foul smell from the drains. And I could feel the hard mud under my feet, soft near few small ditches. I was surprised to find a big house with a car, but the sweet chirping to bird immediately put me back to the state of ecstasy. The birds jumped on the branches of the coconut trees, taking a round flight and landing on another tree. After ages of living, I reached the Naga temple with a triumph. I am alive!!!

Diwali at Kakinada

This Deepawali was my first one away from home. And we had no specific program at the hostel. So I with three other friends decided to take a walk and check the flavour of Diwali at Kakinada.

The most exciting observation was the fireworks. Before we set off from the hostel, we could see wonderful fireworks in the evening sky. Hence, we decided to walk in the direction in which the most beautiful fireworks was seen. We encountered a continuous line of small red dynamite-like crackers. It spread around 12 metres on the road and when fire was set to one end, it took 4-5 minutes to reach the other end. The sound of the continuously blasting crackers was enjoyed by a lot of people in the streets and house-tops.

Then, our ears took us to a colony with a large house at the end. Two people in white shirt and black pant emerged out of the tall iron gate with a box in their hand. They opened the cubical box at the top and set fire at a corner. We had no idea what was in the box because it was an unusual shape for a fire cracker. In few seconds it started with a loud bang. There was a loud explosion... and another one... and more of them... The sound was really rocking. I only realized that I was missing the real scene when I saw the people gathered around looking up in the sky. The box was actually firing beautiful, colourful patterns into the sky. The children and the adults alike were cheering the crackers. Their cheering was only heard after the crackers were finished. The box fired 25 rounds into the sky. This was my best experience of a fire cracker in my life. The show was nothing less than the exploding crackers at the opening ceremony of Olympic Games.

Filled with joy and satisfaction, we were on our way back when we saw another unusual view. There was a war between the youths of two buildings facing each other across the road. They used rockets that travelled horizontally along the ground and threw red potato like explosive crackers. It was like the war between two countries! (hope nobody got injured or lost lives :P). I remember how scared we were while passing through that war-zone.

Minutes later, we were walking through slum area. I cannot forget what I saw then. People arranged matchsticks and set fire to those to make their front gates lighted. I was completely dumbfounded. I lacked courage to show them a happy face and greet a happy Diwali. Somewhere there are people who not only buy expensive crackers but also men to explode them, and somewhere people enjoy burning matchsticks. To this, my friend said, "This is India". But, I really appreciated their spirit, their enthusiasm, and at the least, their creativity too.

My next observation was about the houses. The houses were all decorated from top to bottom, front gate to back gate with lights like an Indian bride during her marriage. Some decorations were more bright and colourful than the others, but I can't pick any one or two absolute beauties. Most of them were equally pleasing. However, among the beautiful dressed houses were some gloomy houses. We logically guessed they might have been Christians owing to the considerable number of Christians in Kakinada. But, I wondered why they could not enjoy the festivals. I wanted to say to them "Hey, come on, light up. See how beautiful you city is today!"

   

Cloudland - my first flight

Some are like bits of cotton scattered here and there, some like melting ice creams, some still bold, like explosions in the sea.... Small clouds in between few large clouds remind me of war time, many soldiers marching on foot and few on elephants.

Below I could see large pieces of clouds with blue-green gaps between them. Seemed like the South Pole, the liquid water seen between the floating icebergs. The clouds at varied heights were like large and small icebergs sailing in the cold sea water. At a farther distance, there was a back cloud with some orange sunlight seeping through it which resembled a colony of penguins with the golden-orange King penguin in between.

Next moment, I was passing over a place covered by thick spider web like it were unvisited for hundreds of years. After some thought I collected that it was actually the distribution of river system in the Bengali Plains. The white colour reflected from the rivers some broad some narrow and all of different lengths gave an appearance of an old spider-net.  

When we were at a lesser height, the sunlight passing through the layer of clouds made light and dark patches on the ground. The lit areas were like being watched from the heaven above. The sharp boundaries of the lighted areas outlined a star-shaped window above my head. And the sunlight that spread upon my forehead gave me a magical experience - like I had achieved moksha.

When I again recaptured my senses, I could see a continuous bed of clouds, felt like a lawn where it was snowing for long. At some places the clouds rose above their level like a bush in the lawn. Sunlight fell on the lawn through a maple leaf shaped window. This is the cloud land - there are plane ice skating pools and large valleys, trees, so beautiful... but still uninhabited. If I were a bird I would make my home on that plot of land in front of the large bush.

When at greatest height, blue sky above, white clouds and blue green ground below but the horizon in the clouds always appeared so colourful - red, orange, golden tempting me to fly that far to reach the paradise. I was trying to reach nearer to it, but maybe it was travelling at the same velocity away from me. At last, I felt like I was reaching nearer to it, a moment of great achievement. But then, I realized the increasing gravity; I was heading back to the world I came from... 

Budding

This is how I discovered my interest in writing..

My father is a lover of classical Hindi songs. He often listens them on TV or on his mobile. This led me too to hear those songs. When I was small I used to enjoy the tune. 

Only lately I started to follow the lyrics. Some songs said "The flame says the boy - don't fall in love or you shall burn like me" (from the song 'pyar diwana hota hai' by Kishor Kumar; the original lines - samaa kahe parwane ko tu pare chala jaa meri tarah jal jayega tu yahan nahi aa) and there were others like "When there is a growing fire, rain calms it down; but when the rain itself sets the fire, who would control it" (from the song 'Chingari koi bhadke' also by Kishore Kumar; the original lines - chingaari koi bhadke, to saawan use bujhaye, saawan jo agan lagaaye, use kaun bujhaye?) I found great fascination to things like the flame speaking to a lover or the rain setting up fire. This inspired me to create something out of my mind. To write my feelings and imagination... here..
(worry not friends, these posts are not out of a broken heart... rather just a pastime :)

Motivation

Today I am going something that motivates me to study.

I hope you know Gautam Buddha, the enlightened one. When he was young, he wanted to find the cause of all pain and sufferings like ageing, illness and death. He believed that all the sufferings of life were rooted inside the man himself. So he set his goal to explore his inside, his mind through meditation. For this Gautam, the then crown prince of Lumbini, left his palace and his family, and turned to ascetic life in the lonliness of forests.

When he first sat down under a tree for meditation, he could not concentrate... Sometimes the sun was burning his skin, sometime the bugs were exploring his face, someday the weather was too cold. In this way, he could never carry-on with his meditation. So he thought he had enough of it and something needed to be done..

So what he did the next sunny day was that he sat all day in the hot sun. He continued this suffering until he stopped feeling the most extreme heat of the sunlight. Similarly, next day, he walked continuously through a bush full of thorns. He walked until he stopped feeling the sharp thorns. Likewise, he continued with sitting in the cold icy environment and several other 'exercises'. This was his preparation for his meditation.

Finally, when he sat next time for meditating, nothing could disturb him and he could concentrate for days and months alike. And we all know the end result - he got Enlightment. This story motivates me to study every boring or maybe difficult concepts in maths or chemistry with extreme devotion. If you give enough time to such topics you can understand its importance and start enjoying it.....

Wishing All The Best to you...