Edible Shoots

You are your words. Make the most of them.            So proclaims the cover jacket of American Heritage Dictionary of English Language (AHD). And it won’t take much time to prove it as we start our journey along. We need words for anything and there is a word for everything. Our task is to avail the exact one at the most demanding times. AHD is the name we can trust for that.       I owned one only recently. Actually, I was persuaded by my colleague Prof. Gulam Hussain Habeeb to buy one and I gain in gratitude as I keep using it. I hold that Bengali writer in high respect for he translated Five Hundred Years of Solitude to Bengali. To tell you what I feel after I began to use it is amazing. I really fell in love with. As I come home exhausted after a long session in the evening, I find it handy and allow myself wander through its pages. I get to know so many things with pictures that I see around for years bu...

If I can still take Aristotle seriously for his “well begun is half done” precept, I don’t have to read anything more for the next six months but to reflect on my New Year pick Teaching Literature by Elaine Showalter. A New Year eve with the words of a brilliant teacher and  a few days we hanged around were life enhancing. I know her from my BA final year. She took us the other day to the wilderness. And now to the labyrinthine world of teaching and teaching literature in higher education in particular. She penned it drawing on her 40 years of teaching around the world and we get it in 176 pages. As I finished reading the book, I felt I should have read it the day I somewhat answered the question: What I want to do with my life?. If I had by any chance, me and my teaching would never have been the same. I think many of my friends read it years back for I read some of them quote her often. Four years ago, one of my close friends joined a unive...

Arab students are usually frank in their behavior. On the other day, I insisted one to keep his mobile switched off. He said that his mother would be upset to see him unavailable as she would try. I love to see it as frankness.  If they love you, they will find a way to say it. Most of them are quite verbal about it. I often hear them talking pleasing things to me. But I never take it seriously and prefer to see it as flattery expecting a favor from my side soon. But here is a strange way a student of mine chose to do it.  Despite instruction to submit  assignments in A4 sheet, this medical student did it in a book with a prong snap buttoned leather flap. Maybe, he was afraid of falling something off . As this semester is to be over, obviously busy clearing all the works in pending on my desk. I was thumbing through the pages to double check if I haven’t marked this one yet or not. My fingers and eyes could only marvel at this piece of poetry… a whi...

         Traditionally, we teachers are allergic to the multitasking from the students' side. But at times we need to take a closer look into what they are really doing. It was my professor, Dr Janaky Sreedharan who ignited my curiosity about this classroom phenomenon in one of digressions that are more interesting than her lectures on literary theory and criticism. I remember her words that " some draw fairly good pictures as they try to listen to a talk or lecture" I often wondered, apparently , some may draw or scribble something while trying to focus but it would hardly turn out to be a fair one. Anyhow, I have never forgotten that piece of insight and kept observing my students ever since.   One of my students is listening with his pen as I was busy giving instruction on reading skill in an ESP classroom.      Having taught around 4000 students  from India, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen for n...

     I regret many times I criticized my mother for the dishes she served.The list of reasons goes like- too hot and spicy,same dish for today also, not ready yet, no sugar, smell fishy or cockroach(our kitchen was cockroach ridden and we didn't have airtight storage or refrigerator on those good old days) and even taste spoiled if reheated.Now I realize the effort that goes into making food and the fact that she did the dishes,washed my cloths and made my bed all alone for not I paid her but out of pure selfless love.My wife is lucky for we started living together after this realization.      Recently I was thinking that no other job but  cooking requires the vigilant service of our all five senses.As we proceed , we need to touch to see the texture and consistency, look to see the color change, wait for the aromatic smell , sharpen our ears for a number of sounds like that of boiling , breaking, whistling,crispy-bake and we need t...

       This is one of the books  I revisit every now and then for it changed the way I live my life today.Despite the fact that it was on our reading list for post graduation,I never found myself reading it in original. It was one of my crazy classmates during my BEd, Yasoda that is what I preferred to call her for it seemed to me she was the wife of Lord Buddha in her earlier birth,made me read it.Here I have got it to let you  take a puff.... “Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’  Which of us was right, boss?”   Nikos Kazantzakis ,  Zorba the Greek “Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and *look* fo...

         This beautiful piece  of a moment  was shot by my friend Dr. Ajmal as we were on an outing near Rock Garden, Aseer National Park, in the southern province of Saudi Arabia.The poeple over here still rear flocks of sheep for a living. Before the petrolium based economic boom...it was their sole source of job, income and food.And they wont seem to be in favor of letting their tradition die......       It is one of the oldest professions since the time of Adam and all the prophets,especially of Semitic religions, had been shepherds at least for a while in their life.