Galaxian's World: Destination Fatehpur (iWander by Aakanksha)

Galaxian's blog has some confident, interesting writing and we are glad she has allowed us to reproduce her Fatehpur travelogue.

Staying away from a city (read as a source of interesting entertainment) usually creates an exigency of freaking out completely, so one needs to search out for places you could hang around. Even the big Internet world has its virtual limitations .I had already cut off ‘nearby cha-cha’s & bua’s places’ long back (no offences..!!) as it eventually increases the ‘i-wanna-g0-home’ craving in me, fact & very true. So when Shilpi suggested visiting some “actual Rajasthan” around us, I agreed the very moment.

Instant assignments, surprise quizzes, unpredictable happenings have really increased our quickie planning power well. So all dressed & packed 4 of us put on our tourist’s shoes all the way to interior rural Rajasthan-Fatehpur , mind you not the famous Fatehpur-Sikri of UP .

Fatehpur happened to be a beauteous small town of exquisite havelis (the royal big houses of rich merchants dating back to even the silk route).Some of them even being renovated by a French group we could meet .The grand bawri’s though quite abandoned quite like the ones shown in movies & of course we couldn’t spot much of ghosts around as the tales go. Camels, vivid local colors & most of all the hospitality of people around completed our package thus creating another great memory.

My Latest Date With Art: A New Feature

(Photo: Shilparamam, Hyderabad by GK)

Have you seen a movie recently, or read a book or gazed at a painting or a photograph? If yes, share it with all - your latest date/encounter with art. No word limits, photographs and pictures most welcome and no deadlines! No pressure - write as you wish and when you wish.

Dr. Rashmi Gaur Delivers a Talk on Februray 23

Dr. Rashmi Gaur of Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-Roorkee will deliver a talk on Technical Communication Skills on 23.2.2008.

Time: 3.30 p.m.
Venue: New FET Building

Freespeech advises not to miss. Be there in time.

To know more about Dr. Gaur and her work, click here.

Amrita Writes on Writing: Did She Forget the Wastebasket?

Writing about ‘writing’!! Funny as it may sound, but let me share (or write?) a few thoughts about 'writing' and the ‘writer’ who finds the wastebasket ,his best friend! Finally….I realized that this unbeatable tool deployed (or should I say ‘exploited’?) to vent off the wildest of imagination, ideas, emotions and expressions needs a better acknowledgment. Why don’t our dear writers ever end up writing about ‘writing’ itself?? Writing about stuffs ranging from worth raking up issues to the so-called social taboos find hard escaping the gaze of a sensitive writer….nonetheless the art of writing still doesn not lure that frequently. Fine….but since the idea did (ultimately) visit my mind, judiciously I shall not not let it ebb with the thousands other frivilous ones.

What gives writing an edge over speaking or any other form of expression ?? Well, this inexperienced little brain is naïve about any hard core theories…. but then, let me try answering…The best part about writing is ,it always succeeds in giving the writer a chance to make his/her point at least once!Isn’t writing like speaking uninterrupted?? I mean, how often do we find people who want to listen to our bla-bla?? Isn’t it always so, that any offbeat issue that we want to be considered, is mercilessly belittled? I must not be mistaken for accusing the listeners. Its just that we don’t have the option of deciding the congruent listeners and what follows is that we prefer to remain dumb and keep things to our inner being .But according to Carlos Fuentes ,writing is a struggle against silence. And here’s where the writer wins. Everything that is on his mind is also in black and white. What more?? He never fails winning over a chunk of fascinated lot who are ever willing to give ears to him. There definitely exists another race of those who don’t miss on lambasting a writer’s view, but only after going through the inscription once!! And who cares afterall, because by then the author has already made his point. Moreover, if at all ,there is an ‘anti-view’ the confrontation also proceeds in a the much likeable , decent non-violent and the ‘holding-no-hard-feelings’ way ,that is, through writing.

Shakespear called ‘mercy’ ‘doubly-blessed’(for blessing the one who shows mercy as well as the one who receives it.) . Isn't the art of writing a similar thing? For, writing entertains those who do it and also those who read it! It certainly is a doubly-blessed art. And adding yet another feather to its cap, it can also be considered as an antidote to every ailment with the immense diversity of the product of the art that is available. We have all kinds of writers whose works can be rightly described as ‘a heart-warmer’, ‘a mood-chiller’, ‘a wound-healer’, ‘a true-guide’ ,‘a support-in-times-of-strife’, ‘a worthy-companion’….and what not? Man aspired to capture the images of certain moments in life,so that ,they last not just for a split second ,but a lifetime.Technologists breathed life to this dream by inventing cameras. So why would the writer lag behind in lending a helping hand when man endeavoured to make some invaluable thoughts tangible and immortal. Well said, that writing is not apart from living.Writing is a kind of double living.The writer experiences everything twice.Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. The act of putting the pen on paper briefly pauses the reflections and makes us more familiar with life itself!!

Finally, Stills from the Show: Hamlet Meets Macbeth

Tare Zameen Par: All is Never Lost by Sandhya

(For Sandy and Lucy)

Mind is its own place
But
Some hells/heavens are far too real to be mere perceptions


Last evening I watched T.Z.P. with M. M’s friends had already seen the film. They did not find it much good , I did. Were they wrong? I don’t know but I think I am not. T.Z.P. is very good.

I was reminded of the days when I was made to feel very low because I was not found as smart as the girls around were taken to be. But it also reminded me that I was never very unhappy for not being ‘this’ or ‘that’ much smart. I’d be sad only when I did not make my papa happy with my achievements or, under-achievements. Ishaan (Darsheel) in the movie is lucky to have a teacher telling him that it was not important to be a racing horse but to do what he loved most. Was I unlucky, then? In a way, yes, but,in many other ways, no. Lets come back to it later, first the film itself.

T.Z.P. is issue-based, problem-solving, a bit charisma-seeking, occasionally preachy, frequently imbalanced and yet profoundly touching. It has no great messages (thats one of the good things). It just reminds that there are always children who’d simply love and enjoy not doing the fruitful and the result-oriented. They might love to watch young birdies in their nest or the train of ants carrying food or a bee struggling out of water or the little kitten trying to climb the tree and falling every time or a rainbow in the little water supplies meandring in the backyard-garden. Ishaan doesn’t do most of these things, except the first one. I did all of them. But he does hundred other similar things. I should not forget though that there is also a BIG difference between two of us. He is a dyslexic kid. And one more difference, a BIGGER one: Ishaan paints what he likes. I drew and painted what would fetch appreciation of my papa=what was in the syllabus. In that sense, I am still a bit of my former self. Now, I either don’t paint or don’t know what to paint?

He doesn’t ‘want’ to paint, it comes from within as his only communication with the world. I have developed a thousand other silly ways of communicating with the world. I still ‘want’ to paint. I type ‘want’and the word starts playing…has it become a want?

But lets not be swayed by the heavy pathos or nostalgia of an unlived past. As I said earlier, T.Z.P. also reminded that I wasn’t very unhappy not being this/that smart; I wasn’t very unhappy not painting! Yes! Its in retrospect, after studying and competing for so long that I have started missing it ; after finding my thousand silly ways I have started missing one way that I didn’t tread.

But there was music too. More than painting and much closer. And there were animals! The lost dogs of my childhood - Sandy and Lucy, the rabbits, the parrots, and the paradise itself – ‘raj vihar’. My childhood was torn into two me-s, the papa-side me and the mumma-side me. Papa side - all very punctuated, and year long, round the clock, round the calendar, round the school sessions. mumma side – irregular, wild, and holidayish and,alas, brief. I grew on my papa-side and I un-grew on mumma-side. I learned at home/school and I unlearned at a ‘vihar’. But papa-side took over! Or did it really? I would be into one course and out of another. I’d quickly master a subject only to forget it happily and even quicker. I would have an ‘enviable’ score sheet which would make everybody, papa first and most of all, proud of me but not me; it would leave me more empty and dry inside. And again, lets not be swayed by this increasingly heavier pathos. I found thousand, ‘other’, ‘silly’ ways and I love(d) many of them! (I love teaching and I love being effective as a teacher. I am ready to learn, even study, more of this art.)

I ended up studying four languages, literature, computer programming, journalism and mass communication, interior decoration, foreign trade, economics and am also a proud management drop-out - my MBA lasted one month and a few happier days (it was like Ishaan’s boarding school, just that I was 20 then). Two masters, one bachelors (just one!), one diploma, four certificate courses and a presently pursuing doctoral (the tail of the devil, if hopefully it’s the tail finally). And I must say there were odd times when I enjoyed doing some of these things. And more than that, through all these, I intensified my love of all that I couldn’t or didn’t do. I am grateful to all my academics for mostly remaining the exact opposite of what I missed. Had it been equally or at least compensatorily exciting and luring, I’d have forgotten all that was behind.

But what now? Is all that lost forever? All my long years have surely made me more understanding of what I am made of or not made of. Or am I still not very sure? Maybe, may be not. What is sure is : I am definitely not what my profile says I am.