When the shadow lengthens

When the shadow lengthens in front of me, I know that there is light behind me. The longer the shadow, the farther the source of light. Perhaps I need to pause a while or even walk back a little so that the light draws nearer.

Perhaps there is no going back. It’s a one way traffic, isn’t it? The shadow will only grow longer. We are but dust and shadow, as Horace declared. What is needed is a discovery of the beauty of the shadow.

Shadows on the Way
[Bhatti Mines, Delhi]

Not all the ways are smooth,
All shadows are not balmy
[Bhatti village, Delhi]

No shadows: blissful life?
[Najafgarh, Delhi]

An indelible shadow
[Erstwhile Sawan School, Delhi]

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The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below. Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

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Country without a national language

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Diwali, Gifts, and Promises

Diwali gifts for me! This is the first time in my 52 years of existence that I received so many gifts in the name of Diwali. In Kerala, where I was born and brought up, Diwali was not celebrated at all in those days, the days of my childhood. Even now the festival is not celebrated in the villages of Kerala as I found out from my friends there. It is celebrated in the cities (and some villages) where people from North Indian states live. When I settled down in Delhi in 2001 Diwali was a shock to me. I was sitting in the balcony of a relative of mine who resided in Sadiq Nagar. I was amazed to see the fireworks that lit up the city sky and polluted the entire atmosphere in the city. There was a medical store nearby from which I could buy Otrivin nasal drops to open up those little holes in my nose (which have been examined by many physicians and given up as, perhaps, a hopeless case) which were blocked because of the Diwali smoke. The festivals of North India

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so

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