A Reading of Joyce Cary's Growing Up by First Year Students

Apoorva Srivastava, Chandani Jain, Apurva Agrawal and Devanshi Tiwari's presentation was the best classroom presentation (CS-AB). Here, we produce the full text and invite comments from all B.Tech students. To know more about Cary go to his son composer Tristram Cary's page http://users.senet.com.au/~trisc/JCBiog.html and

ww.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Cary.

This is a presentation on ‘Growing Up’ by Joyce Cary.

We are presenting the outlook of father, a preteen kid, a teenager and the decision maker- the society.

The situation is seen through their respective eyes.

TEENAGERS AT PRESENT by Apoorva Srivastava

Jenny and Kate have just entered the teen age. According to me, children can turn out wild only when they are not taken care of very well. Here is this family, the parents hardly gave any time to their children, mother remains busy handling the social responsibilities and father remains busy with office, he spends long time out of town. They hardly ever took out time to sit with their children to point out their mistakes and judge their development due to which they turned out to be complete freaks. They failed to teach their kids about discipline and cleanliness.

Now the girls are not so intimately involved with their father as they were earlier, they are into their own world. Maybe these are the changes involved when someone enters the teenage.

But they have grown up, they have become practical and are also worried if their father is hurt, at the same time arranging for his ointment. The two sisters are very much concerned about each other.

All this shows that they have crossed that age where family is the only world. Now they have grown up to realize that there is more than just a family.

Now have a look at the same kids two year back……

THE PRETEEN KIDS by Chandani Jain

The kids before two years adored their father and mother. They had no grudges against their father. They totally depended on them for everything. They expected an emotional support from them. For them, their parents were the world.

They used to plan surprises very enthusiastically. One fine day, when their father returned home after being away for a long time, they planned a welcome surprise for him but as their secret was discovered, they were disappointed and felt humiliated.

So we see there is a lot of transformations from preteen to teen. The contrast between their ages is quite clear.


THE FATHER’S VIEW by Apurva Agrawal

Mr. Robert Quick, the father of the little kids, Jenny and Kate, really loved his daughters. He is the sole bread earner of the family and thus stays busy with his work but he takes out time for his family, his children since they are his responsibility and he loves them. He wanted his children to grow up as independent and wise young individuals, therefore, he gave them full freedom. He greeted them cheerfully even when he was tired and so he expected the same from them. He cared for his daughters and loved their pet too.

He had been away from home because of work and during this time he had missed his family terribly. He was eager to be with his daughters again. But he notices that the scenario has changed, his daughters have changed. They used to be innocent but now they have become wild and ruthless. Seeing the behavior changed of his daughters, he gets sad and shocked. When his daughters call him names and their bitch bites him, he gets afraid of their actions. H e Is feeling like a stranger, as if, he has just started knowing them. He feels lonely since his wife stays busy socializing and is daughters have abandoned him. At last he decides to go for a pool game but again he is in for a surprise from Jenny who is worried for his injury. He learns he has to grow up and change with them as they have changed while growing up.

Conclusion by Devanshi Tiwari

SO here we heard the story of ‘Growing Up’ through a father’s heart full of love for his daughters but definitely jammed by confusions at behavior of growing teens. A teen’s frustration at the flowing hormones and hopeless elders. The decisive eye of society, commenting on girls.

Its quite vivid from condition of the garden that in the Quick’s household, children were the conquerors. It was designed rather groomed for their taste.

They have a devoted mom and a loving father. They too love their parents but situation becomes complicated as they grow into their teenage. They dislike being questioned or instructed and generally overreact to situations. They have swings in mood from loving child to aggressive heroines to responsible daughters.

The chapter simply teaches us that even parents need to grow up with their growing kids. They have to adjust to their growing needs and swinging moods.

It should not be true: In Memory of Anil J.B.

It was an unbearably sad morning; many of us walking into the campus had no idea what awaited us. And for many others, who knew since last evening itself, it was a morning they didn't want to unfold. As we waited at the main entrance, we still secretly hoped that he'd jump of what was just another bed and not the final one, and say, "bhai aap sab yahan kyon khade hain?" Instead, it was a confirmation. An undeniable confirmation that Assistant Professor Mr. Anil J.B. is no more, that we won't see him again, that never again will he fill our lives with the joy and wit that came so natural to him. He, along with two other persons, didn't survive a road accident when their motorbike was hit by a Bolero on Sikar Road, National Highway 11, very close to the campus he loved so intimately.


His tragic departure leaves M.B.M. Engineering College, Jodhpur and MNIT, Jaipur in mourning from where he had graduated into a fine teacher and human being. In his address, Prof. SS Sarkar, Dean-FET, described him as 'a hardworking and brilliant' faculty'. Students, among whom he was immensely popular, are holding condolence offering from 1.30 p.m. in the quadrangle opposite library. The students' notice remembers him as 'our mentor and guide'.


Born on Oct. 10, 1972, he belonged to Jodhpur and came to join MITS in December, 2004. He is survived by his wife, a kid and parents.

We pray for the salvation of his departed soul and may God give his family the strength to survive this inconsolable grief and shock. Amen!

To pay tribute to him on this site, click 'comments' below.

Globalization and India's Poor: No Trickling Down by Amrita Sharma

True to what she wrote to us: 'I'm game for writing on any topic', Amrita Sharma is here again; this time on globalization and the poor in India, inspired by a classroom discussion.



Globalization is the new buzzword that has taken the people of thenation by storm lately. The nation has received unending applause forseeing unforeseen heights in international trade and economy. One cancertainly say that these are the heydays of Indian economy when internationaltrade is flourishing like never before. To top it off, the developingeconomy has fascinated the whole of world, and countries have began tosee India as a lucrative destination for setting up their overseastrade.

But while a part of the nation is busy bragging on thissuccess, there exists another chunk of population of India which isstill alienated to the term ‘globalization’. This chunk consists of thepoor living in the villages and even those living in the slums ofdifferent metropolitans and the so-called 'mini-metropolitans' of India. It’s not just the awareness of globalization that is lacking amongthe poor but matter-of-factly the effect of globalization also has nottouched the poor who are still striving to make both ends meet and arestarving for the very basic needs of life. Advocates of globalizationhave to say that economic growth of the country has increased thestandard of living of the people and the BPO industry has providedemployment for the middle class people who are now finding opportunitieseven in the global market place. Definitely, the middle class has shiftedto a better way of life but the poor is still sobbing.

Affordable healthcare facilities for children and women belonging to the lesserprivileged class is still a distant dream. The campaign taken up by thegovernment for setting up of at least one school in every village ofthe country which will also provide one meal a day, has still got a longway to go. Laws for checking child labor needs to get sterner. Agrarian policies that can help agriculture to look up in region with fertile land are craving for government's support. How can the government be so oblivious of the state of agriculture in India which is compelling farmers to commit suicide? Has globalization taken such a toll that the government needs to be reminded that a major part of the revenue of the nation still comes through agriculture?

The solution to this predicament does exist.

It’s high time the government got serious and took some giant strides for the uplifting of the poor while accentuating its economic development. The government can implement national development policies to reduce poverty while taking care of its international commitments and agreements. The middle class benefiting from globalization also has a role to play. By not being repulsive to protests for the rights of poor and (India being a democracy) by pressing upon the government for implementation of poverty reduction policies in tandem with economic growth policies ,the middle class can be pivotal in helping the poor to mollify and letting them benefit from the success of globalization.


The bottom line is: a nation cannot aim to prosper when a major chunk of its population is struggling for nothing more than a simple livelihood.

Rahul Soni Profiles Nobel Prize Winner in Literature

Poet and fiction writer Rahul Soni, 28, is the first guest author on Free Speech. Besides his research on Franz Kafka, he has published poems and short stories and has edited some online magazines. He came to live in India when Iraq invaded the country of his childhood in 1990. To read him more, visit www.phingerphood.wordpress.com.

Staving off stiff competition from Japan’s Haruki Murakami and, perennial contender, U.S.A.’s Philip Roth, Doris Lessing was declared the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. In the process she became only the 11th woman to win the prize and, at just a few days short of her 88th birthday, the oldest.

Doris Lessing, nee May Taylor, was born in Iran in 1919 and brought up in Zimbabwe, where her father owned a farm. In 1949, after two failed marriages, she left Africa and moved to London to try her hand at writing.

She is now widely regarded as one of the most important post-war writers in English. Her novels, short stories and essays have focused on a wide range of 20th century issues and concerns, from the politics of race that she confronted in her early novels set in Africa, to the politics of gender which lead to her adoption by the feminist movement, to the role of the family and the individual in society, explored in her space fiction of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

During a career extending more than half a century, she has published some 50 novels, short-story collections and memoirs, either under her own name or the pseudonym, Jane Somers.

Her 1950 debut, “The Grass is Singing” - which examines the relationship between a white farmer’s wife and her black servant - was an instant bestseller. The book broke new ground, both in terms of its outlining of an interracial relationship and in the sheer detail given to the characters’ internal lives.

This was followed by the “Children of Violence” series comprising “Martha Quest” (1952), “A Proper Marriage” (1954), “A Ripple from the Storm” (1958), “Landlocked” (1965) and “The Four-Gated City” (1969). It describes Martha Quest’s awakening to greater awareness on every level and was pioneering in its depiction of the mind and circumstances of the emancipated woman. The series, which is somewhat autobiographical, has been described as Lessing’s most substantial work. With these books Lessing created a modern equivalent of the bildungsroman of women writers of the 19th century.

Her real break-through, though, came with “The Golden Notebook” in 1962 (read excerpt here). The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th century view of the male-female relationship. It used a complex narrative technique to reveal how political and emotion conflicts are intertwined. Notably, Lessing herself does not agree with its status as a feminist classic. She would go on to write that its theme of mental breakdowns as a means of healing and freeing one’s self from illusions had been overlooked by critics. Lessing did not like the idea of being pigeon-holed as a feminist author. When asked why, she replied:

“I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women’s movement... Whatever type of behavior women are coming up with, it’s claimed as a victory for feminism - doesn’t matter how bad it is. We don’t seem to go in very much for self-criticism...

“... What the feminists want of me is something they haven’t examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, ‘Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.’ Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I’ve come with great regret to this conclusion.”

When asked about which of her books she considers most important, Lessing chose the “Canopus in Argos” series. These books show, from many different perspectives, an advanced society’s efforts at forced evolution. The Canopus series is a blend of science-fiction and Sufi concepts.

Besides these books, she was short-listed for the Booker prize 3 times: in 1971 for “Briefing for a Descent into Hell”, in 1981 for “The Sirian Experiments” and in 1985 for “The Good Terrorist”.

In the citation for the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, Lessing was described by the Swedish Academy as “that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny”.

Nevertheless, her selection has not been without controversy. The American literary critic Harold Bloom called the academy’s decision “pure political correctness. Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable… fourth-rate science fiction.”

Her latest work, The Cleft, is a sci-fi novel which imagines what happens to a mythical all-female world when men are introduced.

The Newly "Wedded" Couple: Language and Mathematics?

Harvard scientists predict the future of the past tense

If you thought that languages and mathematics had nothing to offer to each other, its time for some very serious rethinking. A group of Harvard scientists has applied mathematics to explain the extinction cycle of irregular verbs in English. According to these mathematicians, 'who have invoked evolutionary principles to study our language over the past 1,200 years, from "Beowulf" to "Canterbury Tales" to "Harry Potter","verbs evolve and homogenize at a rate inversely proportional to their prevalence in the English language." Written by Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics's Erez Lieberman, Jean-Baptiste Michel, and colleagues, this paper has appeared in the journal Nature this week. To know more about this breakthrough, click http://www.sciencecodex.com/harvard_scientists_predict_the_future_of_the_past_tense

Placement Module in English Language (PMEL) Classes for III rd Yr. Commence from Oct 03!

As a major step towards meeting the placement goals, the PMEL classes for the III year students gets underway from Oct 03. These will be mandatory classes. Every batch of 30 will have four hours of interaction every week and it will involve interview-specific skills' training, discussions, talk shows and drama houses. A brand new study material is reportedly ready and will have texts from Shakespeare to Stephen Hawking in areas as diverse from poetry to science fiction. Time table could be found on the NBs and the important thing is: failing 80% attendance in these classes, one'll not be allowed to appear in the placement interviews.

The PMEL schedule for the IVth year students is likely to be out by the weekend. For further details contact the writer of this post or Ms. Alpana Gupata or Mr. S. Sinha, the TPO.

Amrita Sharma Hits T20 Out ??

Amrita Sharma's back again and this time she hits hard the new avatar of entertainment-cricket T20. We post her write-up to initiate a new theme: Is T20 killing the 'game'? As always, the ideas expressed are writer's and the blog/editor's agreement or disagreement is not intended or implied. The author can be reached at sharamaamrita1986@sify.com.

Fast,Furious and Entertaining.The adjectives most aptly describe this new version of cricket.It reflects the dawn of an all or new era of the sport.Its not just cricket but spiced up cricket.With ingredients of glitz ,glamour and speed the T20 has grabbed eyeballs of millions or more fans world over,who initially used to find it dificult to remain glued to the couches for a day or even more.This new guise of cricket is also more suited to the temprament of the generation which is unaware of the word 'patience' and wants everything in an instant.And so why not instant cricket??

And then came the latest hit.The first ever T20world cup that sped past in some seemingly fleeting moments leaving the Indian fans rejunavated with the astounding victory of the Indian team.It gave the younger lot still more reasons to celebrate as the winning trophy was bagged by the Indian team which mostly consisted of younger battalions transcending all expectations.With such affirmitive evidences to its credentials how could the T20 not have been a grand success?

But even in the midst of such unrelenting jubiliations, can we dare to accept some hard facts.That the T20 is not simply impeccable in its present state with frivolous stunts like 'free hit'which no way is worth deciding a winner between two teams which isequipped with fortified sportsman.That it is less about playing cricketand more about winning a cricket match or it is more about professionalism and lucre than quintessential cricket.Moreover it also requires a different set of players with a different temprament(fast,furious kind).

The point to be brought home isthat the T20 cannot be a substitute to test cricket or an ODI and thatthe mainstream cricket will never lose its sheen even in front of thisflashy new incarnation.

But since the festivity is still on anddoes not seem to ebb too soon,we can certainly say that this buddingform of cricket has sure got a long way to go!!