Adoor Gopalakrishnan, a name synonymous with revolutionising not just Malayalam cinema, but Indian cinema, was born in Kerala’s Travancore on July 3, 1941. Gopalakrishnan is a Padma Shri, Padma Vibhushan awardee, a Dadasaheb Phalke recipient, 16 times winner of the National Award, 17 times winner of the Kerala State Film Awards, a recipient of Legion of Honour by the French government, and many more.
Here are five more things to learn about the contributions made by this pioneer of New Wave to cinema:
Adoor Gopalakrishnan is an alumnus of the Pune Film Institute (now known as the Film and Television Institute of India). He applied for the ‘screenplay writing and direction’ course in the year 1962.
The filmmaker’s growing passion for cinema urged him to start a film society. In the year 1966, the fifth ‘All India Writers’ Conference’ held in Kerala’s Alwaye gave him the perfect opportunity to establish a film society.
Koodiyattam is the oldest living theatre in the world (2000 years old). Gopalakrishnan fought hard to gain access to the inner sanctums of the koothambalam or the premises of Koodiyattam’s performance to ultimately make a three-hour long documentary on this art form.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan has experimented with sound and silence in his films in ways that were unthinkable. Gopalakrishnan writes a separate script for sound, he would record natural sounds from different sources, like the train tracks, chatter of young college goers, the pouring rain to be used in his films.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan is known to include animals and birds as characters in his films. Our friends from the wild are not the ones to be directed and this, Gopalakrishnan treats, as a creative challenge. In his film Elippathayam, rats play an important and parallel role to the protagonist and his family.
Fascinated by the facts? Read more about the legend of cinema in Gautaman Bhaskaran’s Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in Cinema.
Category: Specials
How to Get Unscared of Maths
By Aditi Singhal and Sudhir Singhal
During one of my recent 10-day summer workshop on maths, I asked the mother of a child studying in 5th standard to practice the times tables with her son at home. She replied,‘No, I don’t want to give stress to him in holidays too’. Herein lies the actual reason why both children and adults are so scared of mathematics. From the very beginning, we associate studies with stress, especially when we talk about maths.
On the first day of the workshop, that child was not very interested in doing maths sums and strongly believed he was not good at the subject. Over the course of the workshop, we did lots of activities, number games and worksheets, in which he actively participated. With each day, he showed increased interest, understanding and comfort in the subject. By the end, he was able to answer questions quickly and accurately, and most importantly, he started enjoying them. He said maths had never interested him earlier. And he wasn’t the only one. We had similar responses from other students and their parents. I requested parents to not associate studies with stress, and continue asking the kind of questions we had been asking to boost their confidence over the holidays and help them improve performance in school too.
Many parents wonder what magic we do on their kids when they come to us. But the fact is it all depends on what you think about your subject and how you present it to students, both children and adults. If a teacher introduces a concept by saying ‘today we are going to start a new topic and it is very difficult. You need to pay attention, otherwise they won’t understand’, those students who find maths difficult automatically switch off, thinking they won’t be able to understand today’s topic.And the students who like the subject also tend to get a little stressed,which is not an ideal mindset for establishing a solid foundation. Instead, if a topic is introduced by saying, ‘Today we are going to learn something very interesting, which I feel you all will enjoy doing,’ and some activity or storytelling accompanies it, then everyone can get involved.
During interaction with students and teachers over the years, we have realized that whether one fears maths or loves it depends on how well a person understands it. If someone scores well in maths, they start liking it. But if they give wrong answers, they develop a fear of the subject, believing that maths is difficult.
The main factors that contribute to this fear are:
- Clarity of concepts –When a concept is not clear, the child or adult makes mistakes repeatedly, losing confidence and eventually giving up.
- Lack of practice – If someone understands the concept but doesn’t practice it enough, then he/she is not going to retain it for a longer time. Through practice, one is able to understand the patterns involved in the procedure and develops strong pathways in brain which are required to accomplish a particular task.
- Wrong beliefs and messages – Every time a child hears a parent, older sibling, grandparent saying ‘Maths is very difficult’, it makes them think if their elders feared the subject, then it must indeed be very difficult to master, feeding their fear of the subject.
- Not able to relate it with daily life situations – Most students are unclear about the significance of the topics covered during their maths class. Often, they do not see a connection between the topics taught and real-world problems.
To remove the fear of maths, we need to shift our focus from remembering procedures or formulae to understanding them with proper reasoning. First of all, maths should not be treated as just a subject you need to study to get marks in exams. Rather, the emphasis should be on knowing the beauty and importance of maths in daily life. In the present education system, upto eight standard, maths curriculum is focused on calculation skills involving mainly long procedures and formulae. That’s why, with time, students start losing interest in it as they think calculations can easily be done using calculators and mobiles. The remedy for this is for school-level maths to be more related to day-to-day situations. The emphasis should be more on developing mathematical thinking and problem solving skills of a child rather than just working on calculations. Apart from teaching the procedures to solve a particular problem, understanding of why we are using that procedure should also be taught. In short, we need to add the why along with the how to solve a given task or problem.
Teachers and parents can achieve this by using the following strategies:
- Planning activities to relate the concepts with real-life situations –The most effective way to counter the fear of math is to relate it with everyday’s incidents. Shopping and planning for any event at home, such as a birthday party can be a good opportunity to learn maths concepts in a simple manner. During festivals, markets are flooded with lots of offers and discounts. Motivate the child to analyze the best deal for items you plan to buy.
- Asking open-ended questions – Generally maths questions have fixed answers, which restrict creativity. If we make use of open-ended questions then it gives children more freedom to think and helps enhance their thinking skills. For example, instead of asking ‘what is the perimeter of a rectangular room having length of 7m and breadth 5m’, the question could be ‘what can be the dimensions of the room if the perimeter of a room is 24m.’ Such questions will really change the way of thinking and thus learning.
- Using magic tricks based on maths concepts– Magic fascinates everyone, so including magic tricks directly and indirectly in teaching can make children understand concepts and also develop a sense of numbers. Our book How to Be a Mathemagician contains many such tips and magic tricks.
- Including recreational activities to make learning fun – Normally,students are asked to solve questions at the end of a chapter. As a result, children know which concept or procedure to apply as they know it must be related to the topic covered in the chapter. Repeatedly practicing this way not only makes learning boring but also doesn’t allow students to identify which concept should be applied to which problem when they are asked questions in exams. Hence, teachers and parents can plan fun-oriented activities that indirectly cover concepts. We got wonderful responses from teachers and students when we suggested a treasure hunt wherein participants needed to solve a series maths questions that would lead them to the treasure.
- Using visual maths – Mostly maths is taught in an abstract manner, with formulae using various symbols. Children whose learning styles match the teaching style of teacher are able to understand concepts better and faster, but students whose learning styles do not match can fail to understand clearly. But that doesn’t mean that they are not good at maths. If they are taught using various props or kits, they can achieve equivalent or better results.
- Seeing mistakes as opportunities to learn – When a child makes a mistake and is told ‘You are wrong’, he/she looses self-esteem, and with time, develops a fear of giving answers. Instead of telling them, ‘No, this is not the right answer’, ask them some different, encouraging questions, like:
- How did you arrive at this answer?
- Can you draw a representation?
- What do you see in your head?
- Can you explain?
- You and your neighbor have different answers, who is correct?
- Can you solve it in another way?
Such questions will motivate children to determine the right answer and understand their mistake. We should appreciate their efforts.
- Developing self-belief – One can overcome fear of the subject by believing maths is very easy and can be learnt in a fun way. If a child is told he/she has great potential, they will have the confidence to keep trying and learning.
- Making summer vacations fun with Maths games – Summer vacations are a good time to practice mental math strategies and times tables. When given a choice, rarely will a child choose to practice in a workbook over playing a game.You may play some math-oriented games to enjoy and indirectly practice maths concepts. One such game can be ‘MathsTambola’.It is similar to Tambola, but the important difference is that instead of calling a number directly, say 44, the caller may say‘11×4’,‘11×2×2’,‘88÷2’ or ‘35+9’.Playing such games will not only improve concentration and mental calculations, but is a lot of fun too for kids and adults alike.
At the same time, students can improve their maths skills by practicing the following strategies:
- Solve challenging puzzles, playing Sudoku, or playing chess. This will help exercise the brain and develop thinking skills.
- Practice maths regularly, doing at least 3 questions daily.
- Instead of using calculators, try to do calculations mentally.
- Don’t hesitate to ask questions.
- Use Vedic math to make your calculations fast and easy.
- Try to relate maths problem with day-to-day situations.
Maths is the only subject that can fascinate children and adults alike, and provide a lot of satisfaction and positive reinforcement when they solve that tough question or master a concept. So discard your fear of mathematics today and be prepared to be wowed.
Aditi Singhal is an international memory trainer, author, motivational speaker, counsellor and Vedic Math expert. Sudhir Singhal is a dynamic trainer, author, motivational speaker and counsellor. Both of them hold the Guinness World Record for conducting the largest mathematics class. Their latest book How to be a Mathemagician is meant for all age-groups students, teachers, and parents.
6 Themes of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ that We Need to be Mindful of
George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is perhaps the most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century, and here are a few important themes of the book that we need to be mindful of.
Totalitarianism: Total Control, Pure Power
The Party – the controller of the superstate – “seeks power entirely for its own sake.” As an official admits: “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”
Propaganda Machines
A well-organized and effective propaganda machine goes a long way in ensuring total control of the Party over the superstate and its residents. The regulation and dissemination of information involves “tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your choosing.”
The Thing Called Love
The totalitarian knows that to rule people he needs to quell all ways of achieving happiness and fulfilment. Therefore, love and sex, two of the most enriching human experiences, are killed and depersonalized.
Liberty and Censorship
The Ministry of Truth works tirelessly and meticulously to modify public archives and rewrite history. As a result, “the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
Language: Doublethink and Newspeak
The residents of the superstate are forced to communicate in Newspeak – the government’s invented language. It plays a pertinent role in the Party’s control over the masses.
Technology: All-seeing Telescreens and a Watchful Eye
The Party needs and develops top-notch technology to exercise ruthless control over the residents. Without telescreens, the Thought Police would fail in its objective of surveillance. And, of course, overseeing all of this is Big Brother.
Gripped by the themes above? Are you going to read or reread Nineteen Eighty-Four? Do tell us about other ominous themes of the book that all of us should be mindful of!
Art in the Time of Orthodoxy
By Faiqa Mansab
There is a saying in Punjabi: When you make friends with elephants, you should build bigger doors. I’ve always felt that’s an apt way of describing what being an artist means. Art is the elephant; and an artist must make space for the subsequent battles that their art lets into their life. Such battles are small at first: about time spent doing ‘better, more useful things’; then the battles are angrier, ‘you want to end up dead?’ Rubbing the orthodox demagogues, the wrong way isn’t safe in my country and I chose to write stories that are taboo, dangerous even, in the current scenario.
For orthodoxy and extremism to succeed—and they are conjoined twins—a single identity is imperative. Plurality weakens the declaration of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ necessary to the narrative of dogma and so plurality is being systematically shunned. When religion is constructed as the defining feature of a society, then any difference in opinion is perceived as a threat. The bid for a religious identity must be singular, and it must be patriarchal—much like the concept of nationalism. Such an ideology is based on binaries: one must hate in order to love. Extremism is a necessary tool to the fulfillment of nationalistic jargon and jingoism, even though both are in response to global power dynamics and socio-economic oppression.
The battle between organized religion and spiritualism is as old as religion itself. Art for me is a kind of spiritual expression. Doctrine commands that life must be lived with rules. An artist, by nature, flouts rules. Spiritualism suits me better than orthodox tenets, even if spiritualism is currently out of favor within the society and State I call home. This is precisely because conventional religious dogma suits the State. Orthodoxy means rules, rules mean control and control means power.
It isn’t a West versus Islam condition at all. Even a largely Muslim majority country like Pakistan is facing ethnic and sectarian issues because difference is not tolerated in any form at any level. Look at what is happening at Sufi shrines, the very cradle of love and tolerance is being targeted to reinforce orthodoxy.
Extremism around the world is fed by the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ psyche, spreading like a contagion; and it is not just xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic. Shia versus Sunni; liberal versus conservative, orthodox Muslim versus Sufi Muslim, neighbor versus neighbor—as if 1984’s Orwellian universe has become the new reality. These days one must have a single identity to be considered ‘true’ to one’s country, one’s race, one’s people. Not having a single identity makes one suspect. Plurality and hybridity are threats to be eliminated. Hence the witch hunt against seekers of truth—journalists and artists ongoing in Pakistan.
When society is divided between self-proclaimed self-righteous soldiers of God and ‘others’, then any deviation is open to interpretations of madness, of rebellion and sin. When ‘justice’ is meted out by mobs, and social media becomes a platform for shaming and blaming rather than a platform of freedom of speech, then extremism has already infected the socio-political fabric of society. It is already an unstable environment where conformist thinking has taken strong root and flowered into radicalism. These conditions bother me and in my stories, I’ve tried to depict this volatile and insecure place where law is open to interpretation by the highest bidder.
There is a lovely poem in Urdu by Dr. Khalid Javed Jan “Main Baghi Hoon”. It’s a beautiful poem about an artist, a person of principles, who is aware that he dares to do the right thing by speaking out against oppression. It’s one of my most favorite poems.
Man is a political animal. So is woman.
The worst off in this tussle, as in many other power struggles over the past centuries, are women. Their bodies are the site of struggle between conformist and liberal thinkers, and patriarchal wars are waged on their bodies. Should women be ‘allowed’ to wear the hijab? Should they be ‘allowed’ to wear burkinis? Should they be ‘allowed’ to wear bikinis? If perchance, it’s the body of an immigrant woman, then the right to speak about it, to dictate to it, to pass laws and judgment on it, increases manifold.
It began with Eve, who was not only an exile but also an immigrant. She came to a new world, leaving the familiar, her home—the Garden of Eden (‘Home’ is always the garden of Eden in memory and nostalgia) looking to build a new life with Adam on Earth. Immigration is ingrained in human psyche. It is a natural progression for some, a necessary act of survival for others.
There is another kind of immigration that the world finds problematic: the one between genders. Where do people of indeterminate gender, people who choose to change their sexual identity go? There is no country for queer people.
We can all agree that gender is a political declaration. My novel, This House of Clay and Water tells the stories of Bhanggi, Nida and Zoya, a hermaphrodite, a woman, and a child who are victims of their place, their society and culture, because of their genders and because they do not conform. Gender is still at the heart of power struggles in a lot of places in the world. And place, space, position is important in negotiating with power. Where one is from, and where one can go, are equally dynamic parameters of negotiation.
I often wonder, what art means. It is a roar against patriarchy for me, and it is a declaration of independence against conformity. Art reflects its times and the response of people to those times.
Samah Visaria on Millennials, Marriage and More
Samah Visaria is a marketing professional by qualification, but a storyteller by passion. She is a keen enthusiast of fashion, food, and films, and wants to trot around the world. She lives in Mumbai with her best friend who also happens to be her husband.
I grew up on a heavy diet of Hindi films – Bollywood of the 90’s and after. Love, romance and marriage were concepts I got well-acquainted with at a young age. On idle afternoons I would ransack my grandmother’s cupboard, rummage through her makeup, decorate myself like actresses and admire my dressing up skills. Playing bride (remember ghar ghar?) was my favourite game and I conducted my fictitious wedding every third day. There was no need for a boy in these enactments; he seemed to have a supporting role anyway. For the parts that he was needed I would do a double role or better still imagine him. So I alone was enough to conduct, participate in and be audience to my wedding. If only it was that simple in reality!
As a teenager I found the idea of marriage highly exciting. I was the quintessential Geet from Jab We Met – with an undying shauk for shaadi. I could spend days imagining my wedding, the jewellery, the makeup, THE CLOTHES! I could hardly wait to have a wedding. But did I want a marriage? Did I even know what marriage really meant beyond the shyness of a bride and machismo of a groom? Maybe not.
As the years went by my obsession with weddings only grew, but the idea of marriage made me wonder. It seemed a bit extreme, idealistic. If it worked it could be amazing, but what if it didn’t? Could I know the outcome before trying? After how many years would it become divorce-proof? There were no answers to my questions. There was only the hope of a crazy romance that would culminate into marriage and children and a happily ever after – the usual fare.
People would ask ‘Do you want to have an arranged marriage or love marriage?’ I found it a weird question. Movies had taught me that all the romance was in the former, but reality was proof that either is a gamble. Rationally speaking love marriage was a safer bet (a known enemy is better than an unknown friend). But was the choice really in my hands? Can anyone decide in advance what type of a marriage they will have? I don’t think so. If you fall in love you have a love marriage, if you don’t your marriage is arranged. The only constant factor is marriage.
India today is a phenomenally changed place from it used to be. The Millennials are constantly innovating. They are reinventing traditions if not omitting them completely. And this has landed us in being an absolutely confused generation. We want the virtuousness that surrounds tradition but we want to break stereotypes and bask in the glory of our bounded freedom. While a section of society is fighting for the dark skinned another is hiding behind filters. Everybody wants to support the imperfect but nobody can handle being imperfect.
Live-ins, same sex marriages, lifelong singlehood, unconventional marriages (I heard someone married a railway platform. What?????) are making the ‘love marriage v/s arranged marriage’ debacle redundant. Yes, it still holds a place, no doubt but there is major overlapping in territories landing either concept in the grey shade, the intersection between ‘love’ and ‘arranged’. I call this Arranged Love wherein parents support their child’s choice for a partner at the onset of a relationship so long as their criteria is met, and men and women are ready to marry someone of their parents’ choice so long as they feel they can fall in love with them first.
So while we are making efforts to move out of Blind Arranged Marriages (where you meet your partner for the second time on your wedding day), another phenomenon has made a grand entry into the market – The Wedding itself.
The Big Fat Indian Wedding is at its Fattest. While India at large was against love affairs at one point it is having a roaring affair with weddings today. With social media on its way to take over our world completely weddings are trending like never before. The marriage market is gutted with all sorts of vendors. A new career is born every wedding season. An article by Business Insider in 2016 stated that the wedding industry in India is valued at over Rs. 1,00,000 crore and is growing at almost 30% annually. On an average, a person spends one fifth of the wealth accumulated in a lifetime on a wedding ceremony.
The trend of Destination Weddings has a big hand in the evolution of weddings. Even before deciding who they will marry people now decide where they will marry. Having the perfect wedding has become more important than having the perfect marriage. Arranging a wedding is no less than a business deal. While dowry may be illegal there’s no stopping the recently modernized orthodox from calling middlemen with their wedding budget to find a party with a similar package to pay for the ceremonies. I know someone who knows someone whose parents talk in numbers when approaching parties for their daughter’s wedding (marriage).The rest is secondary information. The preliminary scanning is the wedding budget.
Wedding planners have flooded the market. Halls and venues need to be blocked 9 months to 1 year in advance because of the rush in peak season (November to February). Makeup artists give their dates like movie stars. Gone are the days when the photo lab around the corner was hired to shoot the people eating at your wedding. Professionals have given up full time jobs (and the financial security that comes with it) to become wedding photographers. They come with their own set of conditions and contracts and give you the footage in a Trailer + Movie format.
Personalisation is everything. The modern Indian has taken every tradition and given it a twist, made it personal. From wedding T-shirts to portrait mehendi, from extravagant cakes to intricate lehengas that tell the couple’s story, the flamboyant Indian is ready to pay obscene amounts to creative heads to get more creative. The wedding is not just an event anymore. For the period it is being planned it is treated as a separate entity, having its own name, app and website! At this rate it won’t be long before potential marriages don’t work out because the bride’s and groom’s names don’t form a witty enough hashtag!
It’s this rapid shift in society that I witnessed over the years that prompted me to write a story about a fat girl’s experience in a crazy, perfectly imperfect world. Ours has become a world in which finding love could take just one click. And despite the ease with which we can reach one another today and the constant existence of others in our lives (thanks to the internet) people constantly complain of loneliness. Finding true love and happiness could be as difficult as it seems easy.
I wanted to write a simple story, relevant to the generation of today; in sync with the way everything is around us. The idea of a fat girl’s brush with arranged marriage was something that resonated with my idea of a contemporary story. What must finding love be like for a person who does not conform to the Photoshop-savvy generation of society? How would a person who is sandwiched between the Shaadi.com and the Tinder varieties adapt to manage with both? In a time of acrylic nails and eyelash extensions how would stretch marks and pimples survive? These thoughts sowed the seed of a plot in my mind and eventually gave birth to Encounters of a Fat Bride.
Although the story is a light and breezy, comical read it has a strong message that tackles various underlying issues like dowry, arranged marriages, inequality, body shaming, social media pressure, social anxiety, social physique anxiety (the pressures placed on young men and women to portray an ideal physique).
A good-humoured and light-hearted tale based on a heavy subject, the book tries to capture what it’s like to be flawed in this day and age. It shows that our perception of flaws is flawed within itself. It exemplifies that we are unhappy with what we find because we are looking for the wrong things in the first place. It simplifies life.
Madhurima Pandey is twenty-five, single, and gradually coming to terms with the annoying ‘you’re next’ nudges from family and friends. But soon they realise that chances of finding a groom for her are slim, mainly because she’s not. At 93 kilos she knows she isn’t the ideal weight for marriage, even if her family believes she’s the ideal age.
Despite her reservations, a hunt begins, and so does a spree of rejections – until Harsh comes along. Madhu cannot believe that a boy with no obvious flaws has agreed to marry her. Low self-esteem makes her suspect he’s either impotent or homosexual, but she doesn’t turn down the proposal immediately. A negligible period of courtship and a hurried engagement follow. But does Madhu really find her happily ever after? Or are there more surprises in store?
Jovial, witty and unapologetically honest, Madhurima Pandey’s story of struggle and survival in the run-up to her D-day gives you a refreshingly new take on the big fat Indian wedding.
4 Books by Gita Mehta that Give You a Glimpse of the Real India
Writer Gita Mehta, born in Delhi but straddling her world between New York, London and the Indian capital writes four fascinating tales of India, going beyond the textbook definition of how we know it. Drawing largely from personal experiences and observations made not just from within the country, but as an outsider too, Mehta spins a masterful yarn of myths, legends, mysteries and shocking truths. Refreshingly irreverent, brilliantly candid, her four stories give a different slice each of the country we can only ever dream of knowing completely.
A River Sutra
Denouncing a life of unimaginable riches, a retired bureaucrat settles on the banks of river Narmada in search of solitude and peace. But little did he know that the mysteries of a young lover, an ascetic and a lovelorn woman were about to rock his boat as they unravelled on the banks of the holy waters.
Raj
Standing at the brink of a loveless marriage, motherhood and a freedom struggle that threatens her sovereignty, Raj is the journey of a royal Indian princess in the late nineteenth century – a journey taken through not only her soul, but also through her life’s biggest reality crumbling in front of her eyes.
Karma Cola
The mystical east, at the heart of which lies India, is the land of tigers and snake charmers, mysteries and the divine. It is where the West descends in search of spiritual answers. Amidst this heady cocktail, Gita Mehta busts a myth or two in her novel Karma Cola. From The Beatles to the stars of Hollywood who came to India on their spiritual quests, the novel sets off on a trail of half magic, mortal gurus and some ugly and bitter truths.
Snakes and Ladders
A land of paradoxes, India is a canvas of fascinating opposites that seamlessly blend to form the regular, the every day. From continuing to nurture the centuries-old caste system to fuelling the birth of the world’s largest cinema industry after Hollywood, Snakes and Ladders is an unapologetic zoom-in to an India at its most honest, most shocking.
Which story did you think comes closest to your idea of India?
6 Times Erich Segal Made Us Fall In Love With His Words
Professor, author, screenwriter, Erich Segal’s words were known for winning hearts. While he taught us about the beauty and magic of true love, he also articulated the pain of heartbreak and loss like no one else could. His books are time travelling machines, taking you on journeys into strangers’ lives, helping you figuring out your own.
On his birthday, here are six times he taught us about love, life and everything in between:
When he reminded us that true love cannot be lost.
When he defined the complications of life so easily.
The time we learnt that no one is perfect.
When he taught us the simple trick of true love.
When he perfectly captured the world around us in one simple sentence.
When he dared to show us the sad reality.
His words never fail to make us feel alive and fall in love, over and over again. If you haven’t yet read any of his books, just pick your favourite quote and start with that book! So, which magical world are you going to travel to today?
5 Things to be Hopeful for as an Indian
Anirudh Krishna in The Broken Ladder reveals the untapped talent, which if honed, can propel India in the league of developed nations. Additionally, Krishna also highlights instances where India has shown significant improvement.
Here are five examples that make one hopeful that the day isn’t far when India will become a global superpower:
Share of women entrants in business schools is substantially larger than what it used to be a generation earlier.
Glimmers of hope among the marginalized communities
An attempt to bridge the gap in terms of educational institutions
A commendable achievement for the nation since achieving independence
An improvement in the participation of people in decision-making process
Tell us the improvements you have seen in your part of the country in the last decade.
6 Times Everything Everything Warmed Our Hearts
Do you remember your first teenage love? Nicola Yoon’s debut novel Everything Everything is here to remind you of your first love, when anything seems possible and no problem is insurmountable. A gripping tale of love, relationships and world as we know it, Everything Everything has everything to make you laugh, cry and feel everything in between.
Here are six times the book warmed our hearts.
Oh! The feeling when your crush calls!
When Maddy’s clay astronaut is at a dining centre but can’t eat!
When mom cooks something you hate!
The disease at least one teenage girl has every 30 seconds.
The “Out of the World” feeling!
The sickness we don’t mind!
Taking you to the world of young innocent love that knows no bounds, Everything Everything will leave you with a warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart, wanting for more!
5 Times Anne Frank Showed Us How to Not Take Life for Granted
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is one of the most translated and read books across the world, and with good reason. 13-year-old Anne Frank witnessed holocaust first hand cooped up behind a book-shelf hiding a bunker, and still found hopeful words and the spirit to tell the tale.
Here are five times Anne Frank exemplified why we should strive to see the silver lining in the dark clouds.
“I’ve come to the shocking conclusion that I have only one long-sleeved dress and three cardigans to wear in the winter. Father’s given me permission to knit a white wool sweater; the yarn isn’t very pretty, but it’ll be warm, and that’s what counts. Some of our clothing was left with friends, but unfortunately we won’t be able to get to it until after the war. Provided it’s still there, of course.”
“I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I’m free, and yet I can’t let it show. Just imagine what would happen if all eight of us were to feel sorry for ourselves or walk around with the discontent clearly visible on our faces. Where would that get us?”
“Have you ever heard the term “hostages”? That’s the latest punishment for saboteurs. It’s the most horrible thing you can imagine. Leading citizens—innocent people—are taken prisoner to await their execution. If the Gestapo can’t find the saboteur, they simply grab five hostages and line them up against the wall. You read the announcements of their death in the paper, where they’re referred to as “fatal accidents.””
“Father, Mother and Margot still can’t get used to the chiming of the Westertoren clock, which tells us the time every quarter of an hour. Not me, I liked it from the start; it sounds so reassuring, especially at night. You no doubt want to hear what I think of being in hiding. Well, all I can say is that I don’t really know yet. I don’t think I’ll ever feel at home in this house, but that doesn’t mean I hate it. It’s more like being on vacation in some strange pension. Kind of an odd way to look at life in hiding, but that’s how things are.”
“After May 1940 the good times were few and far between: first there was the war, then the capitulation and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews. Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required to wear a yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use street-cars; Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their own; Jews were required to do their shopping between 3 and 5 P.M.; Jews were required to frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops and beauty parlors; Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M.; Jews were forbidden to attend theaters, movies or any other forms of entertainment; Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts, hockey fields or any other athletic fields; Jews were forbidden to go rowing; Jews were forbidden to take part in any athletic activity in public; Jews were forbidden to sit in their gardens or those of their friends after 8 P.M.; Jews were forbidden to visit Christians in their homes; Jews were required to attend Jewish schools, etc. “You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that, but life went on. Jacque always said to me, “I don’t dare do anything anymore, ‘cause I’m afraid it’s not allowed.””
These heartrending words taken from the diary of 13-year-old Anne Frank was first published in the year 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. The first entry made by Anne Frank was on 12 June 1942 and the last words were written on 1 August 1944, a period of two-years when the Franks were in hiding in Amsterdam.
Anne was determined to tell her story after a member of the Dutch government in exile announced in a radio broadcast from London that once the war ended, he would look for eye-witness accounts of the Dutch people’s horrifying plight in the Nazi regime. He specifically mentioned diary entries and letters as examples. Anne not only wrote her diary but also edited it simultaneously, tuning it to perfection for her readers.
So, here’s wishing the world’s most fearless 13-year-old a very happy birthday. May your words never rest in peace, Anne.
