Real or Fake Essay?

This is a guest post by Nomad (my sister). Since she is on a break, she wrote this in an email to me and asked me to post it on my blog so that people can read her views on an email forward that many of us may have received some time in our inbox. She said :-

Forward this to people, so that eventually the creator of this joke will read my opinion. Or put in on blog.

So here it goes. Tell us your opinion and view point in the comments section!

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Sister and Me

A younger sister is someone to use as a guinea-pig in trying sledges and experimental go-carts. Someone to send on messages to Mum. But someone who needs you-who comes to you with bumped heads, grazed knees, tales of persecution. Someone who trusts you to defend her. Someone who thinks you know the answers to almost everything. -Pam Brown

Ghost Story and Bag of Bones

In 25 random things about me post, I mentioned that I have had a ghostly experience once. There was a huge demand by readers to know the  story. So here it goes :-

It was quite late at night and I was sleeping.  Suddenly I felt a chill and woke up. I felt someone’s presence in my room. I was too scared to move or open my eyes fully. With my eyes slightly open, I saw a little girl dancing near my bed. The chill had increased. I closed my eyes promptly and tried to go back to sleep (That is what I do when I am scared at times like a thunderstorm at night or a bad dream). I felt her come near my head and I thanked Mom  in my mind for pestering me to sleep inside the mosquito net. As I felt her coming closer, I tried harder to sleep and next thing I knew it was morning.

~~~~~~~~~~~End of Story~~~~~~~~~~~

Results of Quiz and Best Post

March 22 was International World Water Day and to celebrate the day and to spread awareness about water shortage and water conservation, I conducted a quiz in my last post. The response from readers was poor and only 6 people took the quiz. 😦

*Trumpets, bells, orchestra*

And the winner is :- Biju Mathews !!! *Applause*

He got 20 correct answers out of 22!! The runner up is Aathira who got 18 correct answers. Biju gets to display this wonderful badge [designed by Blogosphere’s official Badge Designer Chirag] on his blog’s sidebar.

Candid Camera and Creative Childhood

Nita tagged me in her post to publish a candid and not posed photograph which was taken about 10 years ago. This made me rummage through a lot of albums left untouched since years, to dig out such photographs. So here is a slide show of three such snaps at my different ages. Hope its eligible for the tag. First is the photo taken by my sister when I was explaining to her that there had been pumpkins here and there on our roof during the time she was in hostel. Rest are self explanatory snaps. Just move the mouse on the photo to read the caption.

Sibling Possessiveness and Poem Tag

Sibling rivalry is quite a common phenomena in many families. I have seen brother-sister duos fighting it out like anything or teasing excessively or two brothers not getting along well or two sisters fighting over stuff and being tattletales about each other to parents. Not to mention many squabbles regarding property and responsibility of old parents and general emotional indifference/detachment between siblings. I know some extreme cases of siblings in which the girl child faces discrimination and one in which the younger brother beats his elder sister like anything and parents do nothing to control. But I’m not here to discuss about reasons behind sibling rivalry or to suggest solutions. But a prologue is essential before my confession. I admit that I suffer from sibling possessiveness. My sister is quite elder to me and I have always been her baby sister. 🙂 And I don’t like any of my friends getting more attention from her than necessary (according to my limit). Right now my sister has this family over her place as guests and I get all grumpy seeing her cuddle and pamper their baby. Ahh!! well thats the way I am. 😀

Now RJ had tagged me to write a love poem with the mind of a 4th standard. So here it is.

A Teacher’s Reward

Come to think of it, I have always been a teacher. And had wanted to become one since childhood as seen in this diary entry at age of 10 years. [yes I know my handwriting is bad 🙂 ]

A teacher’s best reward is when a student goes out into the world and makes use of the knowledge gained and acknowledges the one who imparted it to him. As a child I used to teach all sorts of things to my first student…right from alphabets to dances of India [inspired by geography book] by pulling the student’s cheeks in different ways to explain difference between Kathakali and Yakshagana and of course practical demonstration by the teacher inspired from “Baje Sargam Har Taraf Se“!! I had subscribed to a children’s magazine TARGET and it had all sorts of tidbits in it..[Has any of you read it? loved the mag but it got converted to TEENS TODAY and then got discontinued] It had a travel section and in one issue it covered China. The author had given 7 Chinese sentences and their meanings…like Xia Xia (Thank you), Ni Hao Mar (How are you), Dui Puchi (Welcome) etc etc [I don’t remember the rest 4 sentences]. I took it upon my little shoulders to teach those as a foreign language to my student. I used to take oral tests to make the student memorize but as the student was more interested in pulling my frock and leg, I gave up.

Two days back, that student called up from France and said “I met some Chinese people today and when I talked to them in the sentences you had once taught me they were very happy with me. I called up to tell you that today your first student has achieved success”. I was so amused and so very happy!! It made my day!! [Of course I said this too “See how it proved useful and you were never serious about it”]

Thank you dear student for humouring me and for being a wonderful playmate.

The teacher Reema in specs and her first & best student Didi

*************
Miss Wormwood: Yes, Calvin? You have a question?
Calvin: Yeah, I was wondering if we could stop the lesson here and adjourn to the playground for the rest of the day.

Miss Wormwood: Of course not. Now then, let’s all turn to page 24 and…
Calvin: Miss Wormwood?
Miss Wormwood: Yes?
Calvin: How about just me then?

**************

P.S. Knowledge never goes waste.

[Image credited to schoolclipart.net]

The Lost Hobby

In our childhood we develop few hobbies that we stop pursuing as we grow older either due to disinterest or lack of time. Sometimes they even do not find place in our to-do list or back of our minds. Recently while reading a novel I was reminded of my hobby of Philately. Well it can’t be called much of a “hobby” as defined by Wikipedia. My Didi and later on me (who inherited the album when she got busy with studies) just collected for fun and on basis of country or design or theme. Our maternal uncle had gifted this stamp album to Didi and it is the reason behind this hobby. We collected stamps from envelopes in the traditional way, but mostly we bought packets either mixed or of some particular theme (Thanks Dad for spoiling us!!) During ragging in college, we had to introduce ourselves by giving name,place,branch and hobbies. I used to say Philately as hobby. Used to save me from dancing or singing!! I post a tribute in the memory of my oldest and life saver hobby.

The Album

It had pages dedicated to countries in alphabetical order with some information about them at the top…but some like Bangladesh were missing so I had to make entry for them. When there was no more space under India, we converted the less known and stamps unavailable countries’ pages to India.

India

Pakistan/Bangladesh

Japan/Korea

Bulgaria

This country Ajman had these small weird figurines on its stamps and these were available in plenty. God knows why! We had to see carefully so that we don’t paste any same stamp twice.

Ajman

Great Britain/Scotland

Mocambique

Russia

Romania

United States of America

Then there were thematic pages in the album both empty (for us to write) and specified.

Space

Birds

Animals

Sports

Reptiles

I miss the hobby but of course it was fun only when done with Didi. Once in childhood I was showing my album to a family friend’s son who nicked two stamps while I left the room awhile but soon I counted (Trust me to trust no one!) I caught him and threatened to tell his mom (who was a strict lady). He surrendered the booty. 😀 😀

Pseudo Birthdays

Today is my Didi’s pseudo birthday. A pseudo birthday is that birthday date Indian parents (mostly fathers’ idea) put as their child’s birth date instead of real one and which is a few months or years later date and in some rare cases it can be a few months previous date. The mentality behind this practice is that the child will get extra years at service which means extra money. It is also done in case of those children whose actual birth dates fall between school session like in October,November etc so that they get admission instead of wasting one year. Then there are some unlucky ones like my Dad. He was a naughty child and always playing outside. He caught the local school’s headmaster’s eye and the headmaster suggested my Grandpa to put him in school. When Grandpa said my son is not yet of the school going age, the headmaster said nothing to worry and promptly increased my Dad’s year of birth by 1 year and admitted him to school!!! Poor Dad. Maybe thats the reason he was influenced to change my Didi’s birth date by 6 months!! Not even a year! Its like done with a mind that wants to do it and also doesn’t. Then there are some like one of my colleagues whose parents made her birth date 25 July instead of using the actual 10 July because 25 July is their marriage anniversary!! Talk about saving expenses!!

But there are so many consequences of this silly practice!!! The repercussions range from mere explanations to dealing with red tape.

1. Those who have dual birth dates tend to hide this even from their closest friends because after all its illegal and to save themselves from Q&A session.

2. Poor fellows do not get to celebrate their actual birthday and people wish them on the pseudo birthdays for years whereas they are not feeling the joy. They even receive cards & gifts on the wrong day. (But that shouldn’t hurt right?)

3. People (having read Linda Goodman) may form false impression about their actual nature and traits as they appear to belong to a sun sign and may get themselves into trouble. Like people may mistake my Didi for a paradoxical, flirtatious, talkative, breezy Gemini whereas she is a reserved, intense, mature, stubborn Scorpio. Their friends even read out wrong daily horoscopes from newspaper for them. Some friends may even chart out horoscopes and come out with wrong predictions!!!!

4. I don’t want to sound biased or generic [Amit plz note 🙂 ] or accusing anyone, but decreasing the age used to be quite common in Biharis, UPites and MPites (don’t know about present situation).There are so many uncles who have become so old (You may decrease the age but you can’t stop/delay the aging process) but are still in service. And others make fun of them or may be jealous of them.

5. And then some get retired early or get sucked in the Education System early.

6. Last but not the least, the amount of running around and bribing it takes to make a duplicate birth certificate (because the original is submitted during admission to Class 1) showing the pseudo date and Ministry’s signature for Visa and Work Permits purposes especially for Europe; causes high blood pressure, sleepless nights and hypertension and you really regret the day you lied about the birth date.

So don’t do koi jhol jhaal
Mat chalo koi chaal
About the janm tithi or saal
Warna karna padega babu ko mala-maal
Tab jaake galegi aapki daal
Aisa hai jhooth ka jaal
Mat rakhna koi shikwa mere naal
Goodbye to aaalll

[I got carried away by the poetic/rap urge :D]

Anyway,Didi, your birthday today may be pseudo but my wishes are always heartfelt.
Happy Pseudo Birthday!!

P.S. Don’t worry guys…Mine is real i.e. 22nd June 😀

Edited to add: This poem is an original Rimu and subject to copyright laws.