'Loved ones far away'

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.

Gems of howlers

This one again is for those who can relish humour in Bengali. A retired schoolmaster is reminiscing over the gems of howlers he had collected over a long career. click and zoom on the print...

Orangs and iPads

The right gadget has at last found the right kind of user: see this newspaper editorial.

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.