The Lebanese Goat

The Lebanese Goat

A stray incident, a facial expression, the note of a song - sometimes they creep into your mind and keep coming back to you as recurring images long after the moment is over. Sometimes they are troubling; sometimes they make you feel nice; mostly they just stand there demanding your attention like my dog who cannot express what he wants but will keep coming back to me until I have guessed his need and attended to it. Well, there is this short story by a Lebanese author which I read about a month ago which has been doing this to me. I have not...

Blog blah

Blog blah

Hiphopgmom tagged me with the followingquestionnaire:1.Are you happy/satisfied with your blog with its content and look?Does your family know about your blog?I do not have the technical expertise to change the look of my blog as much as I would like to. So I do not have much choice except be happy that it allows me to do this much.As for content, I would certainly like to do better.Some of my family know about it – others don’t because they are not interested.2.Do you feel embarrassed to let your friends know about your blog or you just consider...

pigmentation issue

pigmentation issue

Today a friend told us how her daughter was taunted by some of the kids in her schoolbus for her dark skin. The 10 year old seems to have taken it rather badly and my friend is totally clueless on how to make her see that the colour of one's skin does not matter. How do you make a 10 year old understand that it is what is inside of you which matters? How do you make her see that your looks are inherited and most of all how do you make her understand that to a caucasian , even her fair friends would seem "dark skinned"? My friend does not want to...

Dilution of drama in real life

Dilution of drama in real life

About a year ago, I remember watching an old Tamil classic film on Video with Shivaji Ganesan in the lead with a group of teenagers. It was a heavy emotional drama but every time the hero would be at his finest in the portrayal of some deep sadness or affection or love, the youngsters would go into peals of laughter and comment on the excessive dramatisation of quotidien emotions. I remember seeing the same film when I was about their age and it all seemed so appropriate at that time. We believed nobody else could express emotions as naturally...

To all teachers

To all teachers

"For everyone of us that succeeds, it's because there's somebody there to show you the way out. The light doesn't always necessarily have to be in your family; for me it was teachers and school." (Oprah Winfrey)I suppose this is true for a lot of us in the 40s and 50s where teachers played a major role in shaping our values and inspiring us. They took their job very seriously be it in preparing for the classes or in helping a laggard get over her/his learning troubles or in guiding us when we needed it. I went to a school where a lot of poor and...