Story 1- How Seethathali creeper got it's name

This is the story that Parvathy's grandfather told her about how a creeper, Seethathali got it's name.
Parvathy's ancestral home is in Cheppad, Kerala. This was the first story that came to her mind after I asked her to narrate one for me.

Sita or Seetha was the wife of Rama, king of Ayodha in the epic Ramayana.
A thali is a chain that married women wear. It's worn in various parts of the country in different forms, and has different names.

The first audio is in Malayalam, the second is the translated version.
Do give it a minute to load :)



Audio recording and upload >>
Online recording software >>

Story Telling

Greetings!

A couple of years ago, I started wondering about story telling traditions. Specifically oral story telling traditions. As a child, my mom would tell me stories every night, my favorites being tales of Akbar and Birbal and Shivaji Maharaj. There was also stories that she used to make up for me. What I then decided to do was find out how many of my friends from Kerala, South India had their parents or grandparents tell them stories when they were little. Also, from those who did say that they heard stories I requested them each to narrate the tale in the language they heard it. This is going to be my new project and I will upload the stories in their voice (once I figure out how exactly to), along with the translated versions (both audio and text).

A surprise that awaited me was that quite a few of my friends had never heard stories when they were younger. What I plan to do later on is collect more information and stories and figure out if this is the same case all across India, and if there is a trend in age groups which have positive and negative replies.

But before that, look out for the next post, the first story! :)

Majuli IN the Brahmaputra

Our guest writer is back, this time with an experience from her trip to Assam :)

The ride to Nematighat near Jorhat was uneventful. The birds were just waking up and a few clearing their throats in the freezing cold. We reached the jetty at around 7 am to discover that our passage was not booked as promised and we had to wait for an hour for the next ferry.

The double decker ferry piles people on the lower deck and cars, jeeps, cycles, goats and cows on the upper deck. There are no barricades on the upper deck and the vehicles are held in place with big stones. Since we were advised to take our rented cab across to the island I kept asking the driver if he was sure ours wouldn’t roll off.

The lower deck was crammed with loads of people and had only one inflated tyre to serve as a life boat. The ride takes about 50 minutes and all along one sees various water birds swooping on the water and fishing. While the birds are busy finding fish the people on the boat are trying their best to draw personal information out of you.

On the banks of the Brahmaputra where we touched Majuli was a makeshift toilet and a tea house.

As soon as we docked many of the people who had gathered on the banks ululated loudly and were joined by some of the ladies from the boat. I was sure it was some ‘Made it to Majuli safe’ ritual but No! As I discovered later they were a marriage party and sounds were a part of the ceremony.

The island of Majuli is referred to as the seat of Vaishnavite culture and there are different Vasihnavite monasteries on the island. We visited one where the monks were reading the scriptures in the faint light that entered the vast halls. Oil lamps were burning here and there. There was no idol in what looked like the sanctum sanctorum but there was a temple of goddess Saraswati outside. The architecture was completely unique and the whole structure with massive pillars was built from local wood.

I was repeatedly told that there were bigger and better monasteries and also a museum but due to lack of time made my way to the ‘Misin’ village. All the houses in this village are on stilts and villagers house their hand-loom, boat, cycle, fishing nets etc. under the house. The houses were made of what looked like mats. Most houses had a balcony of sorts and in some of these one could see pots with fermenting and frothing rice beer.

As I understand it, during the rains the Brahmaputra is in spate and then Majuli is under water. The villagers have to camp on the streets which are elevated as compared to the rest of the island. After the rains they rebuild their homes in the original locations.

As all this had made us hungry we walked to the island restaurant. The wash-
room hadn’t been washed for ages and we took it upon ourselves to clean it up. In the process we lost our appetites. On the way back to the jetty we saw some magnificent birds which were too far away to identify but I suppose were some form of storks. We rushed to catch the last ferry out.

A few days later I woke up to newspaper headlines about a four-wheeler slipping off the ferry to Majuli and sinking to the depths of the Brahmaputra. The driver escaped and swam to the surface. So not all of my concern was misplaced.

After the rains

I used to think my favorite time was when it rained. Today proved me wrong. I realized it is just after it stops raining. The mist clears, but the clouds are still there. Omniscient, dark, forbidding. The sun wages a constant battle with them, winning one minute, losing the next. It’s quiet…till the birds come out. Then the air fills with their songs and caws. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the river rushing past too. She’s filled today, and no longer lazily crawls. A flock of migratory birds fly to the distant hill, a stark white against the dull grey and blue. You can see the puddles on the half flooded road. Past it, there are various shades of green. Grass, coconut trees, trees I cannot identify, they’re all there. Every now and then a building pops up, in garish colors disturbing the greenery. The hills are covered in green too, but they don’t seem warm. They’re much like the clouds. Forbidding. Every time the sun wins, and pops out of the clouds to stare over nature’s creations majestically, the greens become brighter, welcoming their friend. It’s a short victory. The clouds engulf it again, and the rain begins once again. By the time it stops, it’s early evening. My river, like I call her seems to be rising by the minute. She’s having a small battle of her own with the cement embankments that try to curb her. The sun seems to have wearily gone off, calling off the battle for the day. There seems to be an uneasy truce.
And I sit there, with a book, waiting for the next battle to begin.

Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets

I'm just about done with this wonderful course on archaeology on Coursera, and as one of my assignments I was asked to be creative around the title. In a panic induced state caused because till about half an hour before the assignment was due I had no idea what to do, I created the poem below. And it turned out quite good, even if I say so myself :D

Archaeology is my passion
Yet I'm struggling with this submission
To put these past weeks into words
Is something that can be done well by nerds

Secrets to the uninformed mind
One needs to join this course
To find others of the same kind
I did so, and now these secrets are mine

Big terms like archaeological reconnaissance
Made no sense once upon a time
But now I know these and many more
It's very difficult to find a rhyme

I watched videos
And learnt about techniques 
To dig, to study the past
Many of them left me aghast

I made chapatis for an assignment
And visited Mahabalipuram
About Pattanam I wrote
And about the voyage of a boat

About archaeology 
I'll learn much more soon
Thinking of it I'm over the moon
Finding out these secrets with Sue Alcock
Was a wonderful boon.

Mother Earth’s premonition

Hello! Yes it's been a long time. Apologies. Exams and such. But I have something very special. We have a post from a guest blogger, who goes by the name of Shuffles. This poem is an Earth Day special.
Also check out Shuffles's blog- http://foodologue.blogspot.in/
Aaand here comes the poem!!

Sita, the daughter of the Earth says,
“Happy Birthday dear Mamma
Its Earth Day today,
And to celebrate,
You need to go
To a holistic spa
Or degenerate!
You seem to have some rash
And stench- caused sniffles
And alongside the mountainous folds and vales
You are so proud of,
Some man made hill ranges
Baffle!”

Mother Earth says,
“I know, I know, I am hurting!
Tyres and plastics,
Clothes and nasty- icks,
Effluents released so caustic
I really fail to understand
how a race so intelligent
can create more trash than
than the rest of animal population!”

“Massages and therapies,
Soaps and spas,
won’t do me any good,
as long as people
throw away food!
Trash is not segregated
Vile elements not eliminated

The demons of Waste
They need to be slain!
Before the noir haze
victims on Earth claims!”

“As for my bruises:
No spa can clean them,
No doctor can heal them.
Go Sita, go
Go and tell them,
If they value the ground they walk on
Then think twice before they throw;
For what is mercilessly discarded
Is what turns around to bite them!”

The Harry Potter Conspiracy

In the morning on the bus my junior told us that Prince Charles is the 8th cousin of Ralph Fiennes, the actor who played Lord Voldemort. What follows is an example of how my brain works. Charles was married to Diana. Diana was said to be killed in a car crash. The Dursleys told Harry that so were Lily and James Potter. Diana's son-Prince Harry. His brother, Prince William married Kate Middleton who is not of royal blood hence a "muggleborn". Yes,she is Hermione!!! Oh and what's her son's name? Prince George!

MIND=BLOWN

 This continued for some time. We also came up with the theory that Diana's sister, not having married into a royal family would be Petunia. The discussion ended with us deciding that Buckingham Palace was actually No 12 Grimmauld Place, and J.K. Rowling is actually professorSybil Trelawney, because she predicted the future. That explains what she was doing at the cafe when writing Harry Potter, she was trying to figure out what the tea leaves were saying!

Hope you enjoyed reading this :D
Have a fun weekend!

Teaching kindness- the second grade way

I realized that I complain way too often about what all goes wrong, especially where school is concerned. So I thought, why not share something that cheered me up immensely. Now you must be wondering, what on Earth can cheer an unwilling student up. Let me add this: it was on a Monday morning, and the entire school was smiling, with not one yawn noticed anywhere.

It was a Monday morning. I was tired (yes at 6 a.m. after getting 8 hours of sleep I was tired), and didn't want to go to school. The bus was late. Another bus had broken down and all the people on that bus squeezed onto ours and we were on our way once more. By the time we'd reached, the assembly had started. All I could hear was slow music playing. I walked up to Jai and asked him what was going on. He said "Random acts of kindness. Watch."

And I did. I watched a little girl walk up to one of the seniors and hand her a piece of paper. I watched another give her big sister a sash. Mark ran up to our transport-in-charge with a letter of thanks. Shruthi gave our Vice Principal the cutest hug ever. Grade 12 got a big card from the entire Grade 2. Two of us got balloons. The 'chechi' who takes care of the kids got a card as well. One boy got a flag, another gave his mom a photo of both of them together.

These are but a few examples of what the kids did. And thanks to them we kept smiling the entire day. I keep thinking, one random act of kindness can cheer up someone so much, why don't we all do it? You know once in a while, share chocolates for no reason...buy your friends' food...do something to make someone smile. Because there is nothing better than knowing that you made someone smile.

Back in class, I walked over to the display board to see our timetable. And I saw a box of Tic-Tac. The little ones had not forgotten even a single person. They'd given the box to our lab assistant with a little 'thank-you' note :)

Keep smiling. Keep making others smile.

Finding happiness

I love this photo. It's one I clicked recently and I love it for a lot of reasons. I love it for the light, which by the way came from a paper lantern (see below). I love it because at that moment I was surrounded by children working on lighting and letting go of their paper lanterns with so much concentration that their teachers would have been wistfully staring wondering where this side of the kids is in a classroom. But mostly I love it for the expression on the child's face. 

Last year a newspaper article urged us to write in about what a child loses as he or she grows up. I was among a lot who wrote in. I said the saddest thing that happens to one as they grow up is that they lose the sense of wonder. As you grow, I feel it even among my peers now, you have this "been there, done that, seen that, nothing new can happen" attitude. One memory which sticks to my mind is of when I was in Grade   8 and we had gone to a planetarium. Because it was a school trip, we got to stay on after closing hours and use the telescopes. I remember standing on the terrace and pointing out a plane's twinkling lights excitedly to my classmates. A classmate's retort to this was a mocking laugh and the words "Have you never seen a plane before?!"

This expression was one filled with such wonder, and just a tinge of apprehension as he wondered if the lantern is actually going to rise. And as soon as the lanterns rose above us, and made their way across the sky as if making their way towards the moon, a huge cheer rose. There were smiles and whoops of joy all around, and kids running up to me saying "Look at those lanterns go!! May I please click a photo with your camera??"

Once in a while, you need such a boost. You need to surround yourself by people who find joy in the littlest things. That evening will remain a very sweet memory for me, because after a long time I saw wonder, joy, and a strange sense of satisfaction surrounding me. We often tell people we teach these children. We couldn't be more wrong. It's these children, in their own special ways who teach us something, every single time we meet them. 

Happy New Year!

Just a quick post to wish all of you a very happy new year! It's been a hectic start to the new year with falling ill, my laptop crashing and getting into trouble as soon as classes started again. Hope you had a better start :D

Once again, Happy New Year folks!

Things teachers do that make no sense

Last week we had an episode. My regulation shoes tore. I couldn’t get new ones, because classes ended late that day (for a reason which didn’t affect seniors at all) and I got home pretty late. So I wore the only other pair of black shoes I had, which just happened to be sports shoes with pink laces. The trouble started in the morning.
Teacher: You can’t wear these shoes today!! Not today of all the days! We have to get the authorization today! How could you?!
*To a senior teacher*
Look at her shoes! I told her to get them fixed.
Me (lame attempt to defend myself): I did try. They tore again. You can ask any of my classmates. I had to borrow shoes yesterday because I couldn’t walk around in those.
Senior teacher: See, we can wear whatever funny costumes we want on other days, but today is important. You can’t do this today.
Me: Ma’am, I had no choice. What was I supposed to do??
Senior teacher: Find shoes now. We have to get the authorization.

I honestly fail to understand how my shoes were the reason for us to get or not get authorization. Why on earth would someone be staring at my shoes and deciding, “Hey people here wear shoes with pink laces. This place isn’t good enough to get authorized by us.”
After many hours which included constantly being told what I was doing was wrong, that I better get “proper” shoes, trying to exchange laces with a classmate and being told “Now both of you look peculiar,” and running around, I finally got the so needed “proper” shoes. For nothing. No one on the authorization team came to talk with me, much less stare (with expected distaste) at my shoes.
And “funny costumes”?? Madame, I wear what I wear because I’m told to. I have no interest in wearing what I have to. You all are the ones who decided on the “funny costume” in the first place.

The week before, my mentor comes to me and tells me that I should go talk to her more often and I never do that. Why I have been assigned a mentor who doesn’t teach me anything is something I can’t figure out. She asks me if she should write something negative about me in my report. I shrug and reply “Sure.”
That seems to fluster her so she covers it with irritation.
“You don’t mind whatever I write in your report?!”
“No Ma’am, you can go right ahead.”
People nowadays! They even have problems with honest sincerity.

The most recent! We have term exams coming up. And we decided to make a revision timetable for Biology. 4 lessons, 4 days. Then the teacher says, “So on Friday, I’ll consolidate all this and give you a test.”
Why? Why would you give us a test, when we have a (let me make this clear) TERM EXAM the following Monday?

Either there is something wrong with all of them, or with me. I really can’t figure it out. There is a longer list of things teachers do that don’t make sense to me that I’ll put up soon. I wish I could tell them that words hurt more than they understand. I wish I could tell them that I’m tired of getting yelled at every single day. I’ve come to expect it. But I fear they won’t listen. And I fear even if they do listen, they won’t understand.

Goodbye

What happens when you love someone

And then you have to leave

Your heart with anguish heaves

And you feel yourself come undone

What happens when you walk away

And he will not be there on a rainy day

When you both know you can't stay

And without him things always go astray

What happens when it finally hits you

And you trudge alone down the lonely lane

Your love stands the test true

Of time and distance, yet again

I know what happens when hope fades

And numbness engulfs me

Tears and pain, like a waterfall cascade

And you feel cold, colder than the deepest sea

Untitled

This is a poem I'd written a while ago when trees were burnt down near my house. I'd recently read 'The trees are down' by Charlotte Mew, and I guess the two together are what inspired this poem

The air fills with death
Your last sound, a crackle
An unfair fight with demons
With blazing hands of red

The air fills with white
The colour of purity
The colour of death
And you are both

Is it an honour
Or a pity instead
That death for you
Is unlike the human?

You will not be buried
Nor cremated with anguish
Nor ashes floated in holy water
But swept by the wind instead

You give them life
And they, you, death
Yet useless you die
In an unfair death

The Lie

I’d write you a song
To tell you how I feel
But why waste the words
When you already know
And everything that I
And nothing that you
Will say is true

We would talk about us
And I would tell you that
I love you,
You would say the same
But everything that I
And nothing that you
Say is true

I’d remind you of
The promises we had made
The ones we had promised
Not to break
But everything that I
And nothing that you
Said was true

And even as you read this
With a grimace on your face
I know that
Everything that I
And nothing that you
Felt was true

The lost heart

Sick and tired
She rests under the stars
Tears spent
She has no more

Her eyes open
And she breathes deep
A vow
She'll hurt no more

She loves him
Hopes he does too
Leave him
That she'll never do

Hugs and kisses
She does not need
It's love
For which she pleads

Impossible he says
Breaks her even more
Stay strong
That's now her goal

She cannot speak
But she does write
To convey
What she feels right

One more time
She tries to plead
And will
Till he sees
That they are meant to be
That she will not leave

Wake up...it's time

Why do you give up hope, when there is much left in the world of men? Why do you only see battles raging between the government and people? Why do you think it's the end of humanity because a man gunned down children? Because a woman was raped?

We insult our species by even considering these acts to be human, therefore symbolizing the "end" of humanity. And how dare you eve say they behave like animals, and highly insult animals? Maybe the Mayans were right. Maybe the world  might end in 5 minutes. But the world will not end because of 7 people.

No. The world, when it does, will end because of the 7 billion people on planet Earth. 6 men raped an innocent woman. 1 shot innocent children down. What are we, the remaining 6999999993, doing? Posting pictures on Facebook about how we want men castrated. 

Why do you not see that a young woman risked her life to save the lives of her students? Why do you not see the millions of people wanting to help, but not knowing how to?

Stop saying what you want done to those b******s. Start thinking about how you'll ensure that no man thinks that way, forget does. Because no amount of regret,  marching, shouting, protesting is going to help the families of those innocent children gunned down, or the innocent woman. Instead what they would appreciate that no one else went through the same ordeal.

 

Pandora did not just let evil out into the world, she also let out hope. Hope that keeps the world running. The same way, humans do not just let out sick deeds, and torture. They also let good shine out. Don't let the world fool you. Keep believing.