Skip to main content

To change or not to change

The cover of a project paper by Athena, my student


Charles Darwin [1809-82] was a mediocre student at school. His father was a successful and wealthy country doctor who had high hopes for his son. But Charles seemed determined to shatter his father’s dreams. Books and theories did not charm him. He loved the outdoors. He was fascinated by rare beetles, flowers and birds. He watched them for hours and made notes. His father was not at all amused by all that. “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching,” the father scolded the young boy and predicted in no uncertain terms, “You will be a disgrace to yourself and your family.”

The father was not going to let the son become such a disgrace, however. He packed him off to a medical school in Edinburgh to study medicine. But Charles soon dropped out. Then the father sent him to study for a degree in Cambridge so that the young man could become a parson. A parson is a respectable member of the society and could easily earn a good income too. Moreover, he would have enough and more leisure to collect beetles and watch birds.

At Cambridge, Charles loved to study botany. Soon he became a friend of Professor Henslow of the botany department.

It is Prof Henslow who recommended Charles Darwin for a job on the HMS Beagle, a ship that was on a several-year long research tour, a journey that would take almost 5 years. The job offered to Charles was an unpaid one: as a ‘naturalist’ who would be collecting life and mineral specimens.

Charles hesitated. He didn’t think he would be at home in the sea and that too for such a long period. His father objected vehemently too. The vehemence of the objection aroused the young man’s self-respect. He decided that he should liberate himself from his domineering father. He said yes to the unpaid job on the HMS Beagle and embarked upon a voyage that would last nearly five years.

The voyage took him to many countries and forests. Charles was amazed by the variety of life forms he watched in those strange lands of Brazil and Argentina. He observed the birds and the animals and the plants. And fossils. How did some species become mere fossils? How did they become extinct, in other words? By the time the Beagle returned home, Charles Darwin had become a scientist with a radical theory.

Survival is a struggle in which many lose out. The fittest survive. It is indeed a harsh world. Even the giant mastodon will have to surrender in that struggle called survival. Adapt and evolve. Even mutation becomes inevitable sometimes. Intelligence is another name for your efficiency at doing the things needed for your survival.

The young man who had found Shakespeare “intolerably dull and nauseating” became a scientist with a radical survival theory. Probably, he had not encountered Shakespeare’s Hamlet who wondered aloud: “To be or not to be – that is the question.”

Athena Baby Sabu

When my student of grade 11, Athena Baby Sabu, chose to do her English project on Charles Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, I didn’t know what had motivated her. But I loved the project. Particularly the artistic elegance of its presentation. The urge to bring her work to a wider audience became irresistible for me. Athena ends her project with a very significant quote from Darwin: “It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one most adaptable to change.” To change or not to change – that is the real question. Especially in our hard times now.

Let me conclude this with a few pages from Athena’s project work. All the illustrations are her own art.

 

I found this Table of Contents ingenious



PS. I had brought in this same space another project work of this same student two years ago, when she was a student of my wife.

 

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    Stunning work! Do pass my admiration to Athena. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! Really wonderful Athena! Tom you are lucky to have her as your student. Her work is of the highest calibre.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cant help marveling at the creativity of your student.. Do convey my appreciation to her.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow... amazing work... Loved the illustrations that you have shared... Athena is really talented...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Absolutely stunning... and yes letting one's passion grow worked for Darwin and it sure will for your student too. These things drives me back home, really wish to be in your class once again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 😊 Nice to hear that. Covid has altered student behavior drastically. Class is big bore now with masked students sitting indifferent...

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Are human systems repressive?

Salma I had never heard of Salma until she was sent to the Rajya Sabha as a Member of the Parliament by Tamil Nadu a couple of weeks back and a Malayalam weekly featured her on the cover with an interview. Salma’s story made me think on the nature of certain human systems and organisations including religion. Salma was born Rajathi Samsudeen. Marriage made her Rukiya, because her husband’s family didn’t think of Rajathi as a Muslim name. Salma is the pseudonym she chose as a writer. Salma’s life was always controlled by one system or another. Her religion and its ruthlessly patriarchal conventions determined the crests and troughs of her life’s waves. Her schooling ended the day she chose to watch a movie with a friend, another girl whose education was stopped too. They were in class 9. When Rajathi protested that her cousin, a boy, was also watching the same movie at the same time in the same cinema hall, her mother’s answer was, “He’s a boy; boys can do anything.” Rajathi was...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Modi’s Art of Censorship

One of the infinite ironies about Narendra Modi’s India is its flagrant censorship while claiming to be the most tolerant civilisation. A Guardian report today informs us that Arundhati Roy’s 2020 book, Azadi , is banned in Kashmir for promoting a “false narrative and secessionism.” Being a fan of Ms Roy’s rebellious spirit, I buy her books as they are published. I had reviewed this book ( Azadi ) back in 2020 when it was published. The Congress government that ruled India for a very long period, before Modi’s rhetoric mesmerised the Indian electorate, was highly flawed. Corruption ran in its every single vein. Yet it was far better than what Modi brought in its place. The glaring hypocrisy of the Congress was a glue that held India together, Ms Roy says in this censored book of hers. What she means to say is that though secularism was not practised sincerely or consistently the pretence of it acted as a binding force that maintained a kind of social and political equilibrium. T...