P. G.
Wodehouse once wrote that in order to be happy all a man needs is a Pekinese
dog, a swimming pool at home, and loved
ones far away. Can any cynic beat that? It bears reminding ourselves what
Aristotle really said was that children and teenagers apart (merely because
they cannot feed themselves, nothing more), man is not a ‘social’- but a political animal, who invariably bickers
and fights and even kills whenever he is caught up in large groups, and has
discovered politics as a safety valve to avoid constant and large scale killing of
his fellow men, simply because he can’t put up with them for very long. Otherwise,
he depends on circuses of one sort or another to keep him forgetful of his
plight, whether they be weddings or shopping malls or cricket and football or
casinos or drunken orgies…but those of course, serve only men who do not think.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
Orangs and iPads
The right gadget has at last found the right kind of user: see this newspaper editorial.
Monday, May 7, 2012
The trouble with names
I
have heard of legendary teachers who can match names and faces of old boys
almost instantaneously, decades after they last met, and while I marvel at such
tremendous feats of memory, I don’t really pity myself for not being able to do
as well. For one thing, as I tell my current pupils in class, only the very
good and the very naughty leave any strong impressions at all; the rest, unless
they make an effort to keep in touch, are quickly forgotten. There’s a broom in
my mind that does the sweeping out automatically, every season. Didn't somebody say you have to keep forgetting in order to keep learning?
For
another, people don’t help matters by sending children with the same names to
my classes again and again. I have long lost count of all the Subhadips,
Sayans, Arnabs, Ayans, Joydeeps, Anirbans, Arghyas and Abhirups I have dealt
with, and likewise with the Ankitas, Ananyas, Anweshas, Sushmitas, Shreyas,
Sagarikas and Gargis. It helps if they have uncommon names, so I don’t easily
forget the Jayastus and Jias and Brahmis and Diptokirtis, Dibyanjanas,
Sponditas and Koussis – though some of these have been entirely forgettable or
worse except for their names…
I
wish they’d make a law that in every municipality, only one newborn child will
be allowed to be named Ananya in any one year (to think it means ‘unique’,
too!). At least, they could ring me up saying ‘Sir, I am Ananya of the 1991
batch’: that might help to ring a faint bell.
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