THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

Image Courtesy: www.historytoday.com What does Freedom mean? We are gathered on this Monday, 15 August 2016 to celebrate the political freedom India earned from the British Empire. What does this notion of political freedom mean to the present generation of Indian citizens? The scars of the freedom movement and the partition that came after the attainment of the epic resolution are no longer the priority for the younger minds. As a teacher, over the six years that I spent with the young Indian citizen infused me with an understanding that underscores the indifference they experience towards the colonial past. I mean, all of it is a good story. Having physical and close-psychological encounter with the colonial rule is the only way to experience that fact as such. No representation, verbal, visual or auditory is enough to put the person through whatever transpired in those two hundred years of slavery. In fact, in India, slavery under colonial rule must be differently defined, ...

Image Courtesy: Penguin “…and I know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart” (111). __ Ruskin Bond The Commentator says; When it’s about love, some believe it’s natural to make mistakes. The truth is ‘mistakes’ and ‘love’ do not coexist. Mistakes are not love. Love is not a mistake. Before the book review, let me recount to you a love story flew by my life a couple of months back. As some of you know, I love blogging. As some others of you are well aware, more than blogging, I love the experience of writing. Blog or my other publishing ventures, this love for writing is at the core of it all. A couple of months before, I had thought of writing a review of the book Delhi is Not Far by Ruskin Bond, author of The Lamp is Lit . Opening a word document, I wrote the title of the book with the author’s name as a ‘clever’ appendage. Then I kept it to gather some inspiration and relevance. Then I forgot. To be more precise, I pushed the priority to love to ...

The Commentator says; The calamity of today’s higher education in English literature in India is the blind tailing of western canons. This bias has incurred serious damage to the products of such a handicapped academia: the students. Major English writers in India are sidelined for the shameless inclusion of those whose Indian-ness could only be proved after referring to a dozen researched articles. Five years back, I used to teach R K Narayan in the MA English classroom, his novel The Guide . I read it as a maters’ student too. Now, a few years later, this author’s name appears only as a passing reference in the history of Indian English Literature. Sad— sad for the whole generation of students. R K Narayan’s short stories are often prescribed for students in lower grades as if they are not worthy of the perusal of university students. My Days is R K Narayan’s autobiography. This book deserves to be in the reading-list of any serious scholar of literature. Unlike ma...

The Commentator says; A Flight of Pigeons is a short novel says the publisher in one of those unqualified statements in the blurb. This book, in truth, could easily qualify for a novella. The Old Man and the Sea is a novella; a long story that is not a short story in its scope. A Flight of Pigeons also gives off a similar vibration. Author Ruskin Bond carefully constructs the historical tale of Ruth Labadoor and her family’s escapades during the massacre that took place during the first war of Indian Independence in 1857. Ruskin Bond is charming with his simple and lucid narrative style. Ruth’s family, although Christian, has Muslim roots. The Commentator feels that this may be unheard of in the West, a church-going family with Muslim relatives. It is also unheard of in the Indian subcontinent, where a Muslim family could never be related with a church-going Christian family. The story is set in Shahjahanpur, a small town.  There is a sense of relevance in this the...

The Commentator says;   If you read teachers, I mean, not the profession or system of teaching, but the individual human being who performs the roles of the teacher, you'll find it very awkward and boring. They are just as human as any other person sitting next to them in the local bus or train. The game changes when they are brought within a classroom environment. Like a piranha in a tropical lake, they suddenly attain an unprecedented ferocity, both in their dealing with students as well as any other realm of intellectual activity. Perhaps the only form understanding of cognitive psychology is that which deals with students or in general, the learner. What about the teacher? The commentator wonders if there exists a branch of psychology that deals with the teacher and his mind. Investigating the faculty hideouts, places innocently termed as faculty rooms, one may locate the fact that many of the ferocious piranhas in classrooms are actually silent guinea pigs. Like all...