I find that so may writers seem to have a compulsion to write long, complex, layered work. So many new books are thick paperbacks, full of things happening on every page.Oranges in No Man's Land is not like that. Not at all.Elizabeth Laird manages to write a beautiful, heart-warming story in the course of just about a hundred pages of large print. The setting and characters are just so powerful that the story becomes not a book, but a moment in time. It's an eternal, timeless moment, captured by language.I know nothing about the history of Lebanon. I know nothing about the 'Green Line' or what that meant, but I agree with the critic who says that Laird's Oranges in No Man's Land is 'A tribute to the human spirit'.Ten-year-old Ayesha lives in Beirut, ravaged by civil war. Between the two parts of the city is no man's land, and only military men dare go there. But Ayesha's … [Read more...]
Book-Reading at Crossword, Mulund!
Blue Shoes and Happiness
A colleague of mine saw me reading the book and commented on how it looked like a children's book.Many people don't know yet that I spend more time reading children's books than anything else - and am not ashamed of it.This one was delightful, as Alexander McCall Smith usually is. It's the kind of book you can read slowly, knowing that it will not run away. You know that you won't forget crucial details that contribute to the plot. You know that the focus of the story is not the plot, but life itself. You know that ideas and thoughts will un-self-consciously find their way into description and dialogue. The name itself brings that sweet smile and says, "Hey, that's a book I want to read!"I took my own time to read it, chuckling at traditionally-built women, women who dream about shoes and men who dream about cars and garages. I remembered, once again, the fact that cliches are … [Read more...]
Travel Records
My sister and I looked around.Things seemed perfect.It was a beautiful morning. It was not raining. Shops were just opening; restaurant-workers were setting their chairs and umbrellas.In the middle of a square, we looked around for the perfect spot.We sat on our haunches and put our arms around each other. People on their way to work threw puzzled looks at us. We giggled.We weren't looking at our backpacks, so we threw an arm around them, just in case. Passers-by frowned. Some even stopped to look. We laughed out loud.We were in a public place, sitting awkwardly and uncomfortably in the middle of nowhere, hugging our bags and laughing delightedly. We were foreigners - very obviously so. I think some people were even getting bold enough to come and talk to us. We continued to laugh, holding each other tighter.The self-timed camera carefully positioned on a chair in front of us … [Read more...]
A Doll’s House
I cannot believe that Ibsen changed the end of the end of A Doll's House for its production in Germany! What happened to [t]hat slammed door [that] reverberated across the roof of the world? Ibsen agreed to make Nora go back to her children? Shocking!Almost as bad as Shaw making Eliza go to Mr. Higgins at the end of My Fair Lady, thereby changing the end of Pygmalion. But then, Shaw did not believe that he was giving the movie-watching public a happy ending. What kind of happy conclusion had a young girl going back to a cynical, selfish, middle-aged man?I remember how much of an impact A Doll's House made on me the first time I read it. For me, it was far more potent than An Enemy of the People, the text we had to study. It made me think about women, family, mother, role-playing.... I later read a beautiful tongue-in-cheek piece about how linking the woman … [Read more...]
Unit Plans
There's nothing, absolutely nothing, like teaching. You can be so joyously idealistic in everything you choose to teach!Planning my units on narrative and imaginative writing, and descriptive writing was almost as inspiring as writing itself. Well, not really, but you know...I made a whole plan on how to introduce the idea of story-writing. The effective opening. The appropriate ending. Dialogue, atmosphere, character, setting. For each, I mentioned resource material that I will use in class - pieces of music, video clips, extracts from stories and plays... Even pieces of cloth and chocolate. Because inspiration truly comes from anywhere. (And I'm not just being mean to students who have no desire to write - it's part of their course to explore abstract inspiration!) I planned classroom activities - group activities where the students begin with the same sentences and seek to explore … [Read more...]
Picnic!
I insist that the way I left school in the morning set my mood. People (read 'teachers and students') hate duty that takes them out of school into the hot sunshine. I exclaimed, "Picnic!" Other teachers laughed at me. I replied, "In the afternoon, I can complain; now at least, I'll go happy!"But even now, I'm not complaining. I went with a group of girls that was reasonably cheerful, willing to work and complained just a little. We were at a sericulture unit, learning about mulberry, lac and azolla. I found a mulberry leaf far bigger than my whole hand! I learned that azolla (which existed only in geography text books for me) can cause a cow to produce 1.5 times the regular amount of milk!We cut, pruned and planted. We dug, sieved the mud and laid the azolla beds. And I ate a one-rupee pepsicola.We played dumb charades and antakshari. What a lovely picnic it was! … [Read more...]
Board Exam
Ought I to be nervous? Concerned? Stressed?My students are writing their board exams. I wished them luck, gave them a pep talk and some last minute 'tips'.One student asked me for a vocabulary list he can use. I wanted to tell him 'a', 'an', 'the'. Instead, I told him not to use 'hi-fi' language. They laughed because I once ranted about how inappropriate the term 'hi-fi' is.Another student wanted to write the words 'discursive' and 'argumentative' on a piece of paper and take it into the exam hall. Another student succinctly said, "Arre! That will be on your question paper only! What you're writing?" Essentially, his point, as I understood it was that if he wanted to cheat, he should do something useful. The point was taken and understood.A student wrote an essay for me yesterday and left it on my desk with a note. The essay was Tron Legacy rewritten.Students don't seem to … [Read more...]
Miss Julie
Outstanding.To create passion like this and alternate between expressed passion and subdued passion is incredible.Miss Julie - headstrong and confused - wavering between strength and weakness - is a work of art. You hate her and admire her. Above all, you pity her. Or maybe not above all. There's no 'above all'. It's impossible to have a single emotion after a play as powerful as this one. A range of emotions rises and falls, leaving you almost breathless.Then, there's Jean - another work of art. Power-hungry, ambitious, practical. When I think about it, a character like that ought to be unbelievable. Yet, he's not. He's wholly believable, wholly despicable - and wholly worthy of hateful admiration.Christine - I wish I knew her. I wish she could just look at me with her grey eyes and hold my hand. Because then, the world could, perhaps, be good. … [Read more...]
Trams in Kolkata
The first time I went to Kolkata, I also went to Darjeeling. I was much younger then, and I was really just visiting my father's city, the place he grew up. We went in a tram, of course, and in Darjeeling, we took a ride in a toy train. Everyone talks about how picturesque that is, something tourists must do in Darjeeling. Returning to Kolkata, I confessed that the tram ride was much more thrilling than the toy train. My father joyfully took us on another tram ride.And so, when friends visited me in Kolkata, I insisted that they take a tram. Not to reach a destination (a certain detachment from the world is essential if you are taking a tram to get somewhere), but for the experience of it.A very dear friend of mine was, as always, the most expressive about the experience. "It's not possible," she said. "What?" "How can a tram go in one direction and all the traffic in the … [Read more...]