Yen's Voice

  Yen All of us remember our teachers. The ones that stay on with us, reside in the inner folds of our conscious minds. Some stay because of the efforts they made, in getting academic content through to our lethargic brains. Math and science teachers perhaps fall into that category. One of them that I keep close, is the one who read out Shakespeare in Literature class and made the bard’s plays come to vivid life. My romanticism with Julius Caesar or Macbeth, Hamlet etc, is because I went home and dreamt about the class that day. Those who can make us dream, perhaps stay on…long inside our psyche. Traditional Gurus of classical arts are a different breed. In the old days, their students lived with them and turned out to become disciples. They not only carried forward the art but the tradition and history too, so important to keeping the spine of classical art forms strong, becoming a second nature to them. Today perhaps these descriptions are less understood or not desired in a tran...

Death of a Baby Yen I went back home today with a heavy heart. A baby who had just learnt to walk, was encouraged by her mother to run. Mum was overjoyed seeing her little one hop a few feet. And there was her sibling, who joined in. Soon the three had devised a game of musical chairs. It was great fun as the two little ones hopped onto the little chairs of a kindergarten, hopping on to the farthest; toppling over a few, while mum, overjoyed at their prowess, did a few chair vaults herself. It was a large space left closed for the weekend.   Monday morning brought angry and distraught faces as the cleaning staff discovered the mayhem of toppled chairs and out of place tables. It surely was those ‘marapattis’, they cursed. Thank God there was no droppings or stink from urine. Out on the terrace play area, they looked up and saw the two young ones curled out on the tarpaulin overhead. The previous day the mother too was there. Today she must be exhausted and yet proud and comf...