I just watched To Sir, with Love and the first thing to come in my mind was, "Why didn't I watch it all these years?"
Being a teacher myself, it was quite an enriching journey to watch Sidney Poitier win over the hearts of a bunch of hoodlums. The movie reminded me of my English teacher, more popular as Sir. When the scaly arms of this world wrap me up, it's his words that keep me sane. It's his wisdom, his guidance, his teachings that help me keep my chin up, head held high. All my life, I have grown up seeing men like my grandpa, my father and Sir. And now I know that it is never possible for me to idolize someone who is not even close to their stature.
The other day while talking to him over phone, Sir mentioned a raucous experience he had in his class. He had just finished reading aloud Guy de Maupassant’s famous 1884 short story, The Necklace. And few of the students laughed at it(he has also posted about this in his blog). Shocked, I asked, "Mane?" Sir replied, even he was shocked at their reaction. The students found the damnation of two lives funny! Unbelievable!
And if this doesn't shock you, I'm sure the following news will... Read on.
Today's news about the gruesome murder of a wife by a software engineer in Dehradun tops the inhumanity in man.
News report says:
"On December 13, 2010 the Pioneer reported that in a gruesome incident, a software engineer battered his wife to death with an iron object, chopped her body into eight to ten pieces and kept her body hidden in a freezer in Dehradun for two months. Rajesh Gulati, 38, kept updating his wife’s status on her social networking websites so that her Delhi-based family and others could not learn about her death until a week ago." Though 8 to 10 pieces is just an under statement, since 27 pieces of HALF her body were recovered.
What else is left to be done? If this is not inhuman, what is? It pains me to think that today's world is filled with such INHUMAN WRETCH OF MONSTERS! And to survive with sanity amongst people who are always trying to pull me down in the grimy and lackluster world, I must say I am thankful to those few people I am blessed with: the three venerable men of my life and last but certainly not the least, my mom!
Their words of wisdom and knowledge have always guided me to stand upright and abhorred me from doing anything for which I would lose my self-respect. It shivers me to think about the future of this world. Who knows what is in store for these people and for the generations to come!
9 comments:
Definitely one needs,we need,we all do,a teacher, a mentor teaching us humanity, morality,magnanimity and a whole lot of such other virtues making us complete,making a person a human in true sense.
here comes a string of instances : Mohamed Atta,the hijacker pilot of 9/11 was a graduate of Cairo University,a pass out architect of Hamburg-Harburg university
Osama-bin-Laden,terror personified,a quintessential terrorist studied economics and business administration at the management and economics school,Jeddah
last one,Maninder Sing Kohli,lately exculpated (courtesy the great Indian supreme court,it happens only in India) but undoubtedly involved in the infamous Noida case graduated from St. Stephen's college,Delhi
Humanity is completely different from education.Education is definitely necessary,so are these qualities,and equally.
The educated yet depraved people are actually human manque.
I once read an article about a NRI who was a wife-beater, torturing her over dowry.Her parents, having given their everything to ensure that their daughter's future is "secured", was left with nothing more to give as dowry.So the husband and his family murdered the girl, butchered her and refused to sent back even the corps to her family unless and until they cough up more money!!Such a great business proposition!!
Rashmi,
Thanks for your feedback.
Marriage had long been business and because people are more 'comfortable' feeling 'secure' about not standing up for their right and justice, they face all this.
What isn't a business today? Marriage, education, relationships- everything.
If at least one person stands up and fights, it's going to make a change for sure. But we spend all our lives thinking, "Who is going to take the initiative?"
I heard long back: Since you can't clean the whole world, wear your shoes. I would like to go beyond that and add to this saying that, even after we wear shoes, let's sweep the floor or ground we are standing on. If everyone takes this initiative, the world will be cleaner for sure. Coming back to what I had said earlier on, we need to do our bit instead of relying on others.
Chandreyi, We all are given the necessary input during our childhood. But we all know that the five fingers in our hand are never the same. And we are talking about human beings here!
Firstly, morality and humanity are certain things you can't teach. Yes, we do come across people we look up to and try to imbibe certain qualities we like in them. But after a certain age, it's the way we look at life, the way we think, the way we perceive. If morality could be taught, why do you think two sons of the same parents are poles apart in their characteristic features? Were they treated differently or were they given different education in life? The examples you have cited are some of the most specific cases. But what I wrote in my blogpost was of a wider world including young and old, student and employee, man and woman alike. It's about the sensitivity in man which is supposed to be inherrent and not imposed.
well,yeah I deviated a wee bit from the main topic you penned the article on,but didi,what does sweeping the place we're standing on mean??if these virtues can't be taught unless one imitates that on his own,how can we spread the 'goodness' around?? if there's indeed a way else than solely wearing our own shoes,if we're believed to be capable of doing something more than this,what's that??
The practice of mental and physical torments on women for dowry are existing o'er eons.We are severely against it..It's been banned thanks to various legislated acts,but it's still on..and so will be in future as well..
We can at the most do campaigns,can raise and crack our voices against it,can ask people to nix paying dowries,and that's all..at the and of the day the moral will be what you told,that the five fingers are never equal,neither are expected to be...
the problem is vast as the universe,deep as the black hole..
bitter but true it is that we're somewhere helpless before it..
(if I wrote anything wrong and snaggled up the main points,then I'm sorry :( )
Chandreyi, you don't need to be sorry. You just expressed your thoughts.
I would like to pen down certain things here in connection to the main point.
Of the two example situations I wrote, which one do you think has been 'taught' to do? Is any of them? Does any teacher or parent teach you to do so? I don't think. This is sheer insanity, in the strictest sense of the term. What I meant to put down in the post was that majority of the people have warped minds of which I can't think of a cure, unfortunately. It's a dead-loss situation now and shamefully deplorable.
To answer to your question, 'sweeping the place where we are standing on' means to keep our immediate environment clean (in all sense, I mean) and if that is a tough job, at least we can strive to make ourselves better human beings, and I mean 'human beings' with humane feelings. To your second query, I would like to answer that the first teaching of our life was to differentiate between 'right' and 'wrong' but regrettably we fail to do it even in our whole lifetime. I am talking about people who are grown-ups, so to say, and you can't possibly teach them things like: "Don't kill someone", "You shouldn't beat up your wife", "Never torture someone", etc.
So far torture on the women folk are concerned, I can vouch-say that there are countless men out there who are brutally persecuted by the opposite sex. In short, my point here is not to stand up for the rights of only women, but to highlight the necessity of compassion and sensitivity in human beings, men and women alike. A lout can be of any gender. I have no nepotism in this regard.
Bringing up is definitely one of the most important factors in developing a better frame of mind. And it depends on the kind of mentality the parents have. But that is not the only reason. Again it varies from person to person. Apart from association, a person needs to have that willingness to be a better human being. Sadly, some are too reluctant to care about anything else on earth!
A bit out of context,but I do not quite agree with your "about Me"line.Why do you say that? :-).I am sorry I had to put it here in this thread but could not find a "reply to" tab next to the thing in question.But this promises just as much tumult in a (or more) teacup(s).
Everyone has a different thought process of his/her own. I like this quote so I chose and may be because I believed in it.
This is human....because nowadays, humans are no worse than monsters; maybe, even put monsters to shame. Cruelty & butchery come naturally to us, and we laugh at words like "morality," "ethics" etc - labelling them as impractical. This is what the new age has done to us - in our death race to materialistic success, we have lost the virtues which are so essential for a beautiful life.
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