A paradise called Munnar
Munnar has emerged as one of the most popular tourist spots in the country. The serene beauty of the place can enchant anyone to ecstasy. It makes you want to fall in love with god's glory as its been bestowed upon this piece of land lavishly.
THE WINDING aura atop the hills in Munnar is like a virtual detour to sheer delight. The fragrance in the air is bound to kindle the very last spark of fire in one’s romantic life. The greens, the falls, the woods, gushes and sprays and showers of occasional rain on the way are excellently engineered by nature to give the whole landscape a unique character of its own. No wonder this pristine tea caped township has become a hot-spot in the tourism map of the nation.
It is the tourism capital of god’s own country, and god’s glory is in its best here with enormous opportunities left open for all to devour nature and get delighted day in and day out. You find a calm and quite ambiance at all hotels, resorts and stay-ins that make Munnar the most sought after destination for honeymooners and couples of all age groups. It is virtually a cut off from the hustle and bustle of today’s life.
As you go up high, you get a feeling that you are getting closer to a domain where you are bound to enjoy something otherworldly, something which you have never felt before. Only when you come face to face with the hillocks , mounts and crevices, will you be able to understand what you have missed all your life. You would wish that you had lived here in all your life and could live here in all the lives to come by your way as well.
The little time you happen to have at hand at Munnar would look like manna served in a platter made up of a rare mix of divinity, delight and tranquility. This delicious dish of time has a rare feature that it would not grow old, you wouldn’t have any scars left on your skin.. You would remain contented to the core and the same feeling will add extra energy to your soul. You will drive down the hills like a feather that just got severed from the wings of a soaring dove. Falling and soaring, long to remain aloft for as long as possible. The whole experience will leave in you in a kind of honeymoon, an extremely private one-to-one encounter: One is Munnar and the other is you, who and what and wherever you are from. Nature welcomes you at HoneyMunnar.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
India needs to ink ‘present’ history
People are at their wit’s end. Power and politics make normal life of the common man miserable every passing day. The rich are getting richer and poor poorer. More and more people go to bed hungry and food security of the nation is threatened by myopic reform measures and hardhearted approach towards farmers and their pressing needs. And life goes on as usual with a lot of din and bustle and nowhere is a politician seen suffering from any sort of shortages. They are leaders and their deeds are recorded as history. That is the ‘most unkindest cut’ of all, the worst a nation could do to its future generation.
In this nation of millions and millions and millions, nothing great gets recorded or noticed, nor is anything getting abhorred either. Here everything goes. Look around and see for yourself how happy politicians and their henchmen are, how self sufficient they are when it comes to their positions and power sharing practices. They all have only one colour, the colour of power. They all have only one mission. It is election and its manipulations. Taking the nation forward is naturally done by the people who have the least say in what we call democratic participation. It is a kind of participation which means, one party or the other or a set of parties will come to rule the rest after every election.
How many elections have this nation seen so far? How many leaders worth the salt have passed by all these election processes? What has the proportion of their representation been? Are we going to have visionaries like Nehrus and Patels and Gandhis and Tilaks? Do we not have them around us? I strongly believe that we have plenty of such souls around us. Unfortunately, it is our nasty political order that keeps this nation undermined and underdeveloped. Cleansing is the need of the hour. Political cleansing. All other social, administrative and governmental evils will stop to exist if a few visionaries could be spotted from these millions and let the reins of the nation remain in their hands. Their deeds will have to be recorded as history. At present we have no history worth recording.
We do not need politics and politicians anymore. India needs true Indians. All these so called political leaders who claim to have their slots in the history of the nation need to be dumped in the bins or back burner of history, and thus redeem the nation from the clutches of corruption, red-tapism, nepotism and favouritism. These evils have done the nation enough damages, and these damages are their legacy. It is not history. We need to have a new history written by true Indians.
History need not be the record of actions that happened in the past. Rather history needs to be the record of the present. It is time our nation had some men and women of vision to ink its history as it happens day in and day out through their own words and their corresponding deeds. Power needs to be wrested from positions of all types, and positions of all types need to breathe in power to the populi. History is their words and deeds. India can hardly afford to have these ‘political brokers’ any longer.
In this nation of millions and millions and millions, nothing great gets recorded or noticed, nor is anything getting abhorred either. Here everything goes. Look around and see for yourself how happy politicians and their henchmen are, how self sufficient they are when it comes to their positions and power sharing practices. They all have only one colour, the colour of power. They all have only one mission. It is election and its manipulations. Taking the nation forward is naturally done by the people who have the least say in what we call democratic participation. It is a kind of participation which means, one party or the other or a set of parties will come to rule the rest after every election.
How many elections have this nation seen so far? How many leaders worth the salt have passed by all these election processes? What has the proportion of their representation been? Are we going to have visionaries like Nehrus and Patels and Gandhis and Tilaks? Do we not have them around us? I strongly believe that we have plenty of such souls around us. Unfortunately, it is our nasty political order that keeps this nation undermined and underdeveloped. Cleansing is the need of the hour. Political cleansing. All other social, administrative and governmental evils will stop to exist if a few visionaries could be spotted from these millions and let the reins of the nation remain in their hands. Their deeds will have to be recorded as history. At present we have no history worth recording.
We do not need politics and politicians anymore. India needs true Indians. All these so called political leaders who claim to have their slots in the history of the nation need to be dumped in the bins or back burner of history, and thus redeem the nation from the clutches of corruption, red-tapism, nepotism and favouritism. These evils have done the nation enough damages, and these damages are their legacy. It is not history. We need to have a new history written by true Indians.
History need not be the record of actions that happened in the past. Rather history needs to be the record of the present. It is time our nation had some men and women of vision to ink its history as it happens day in and day out through their own words and their corresponding deeds. Power needs to be wrested from positions of all types, and positions of all types need to breathe in power to the populi. History is their words and deeds. India can hardly afford to have these ‘political brokers’ any longer.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Why not make everyday a holiday!
IT’S AN ‘away-from-it-all experience’. It’s staying ‘far away from the maddening crowd’. Some say, “It’s staying cut off from the din and bustle of the pestering duties and killing responsibilities,” There is yet another school of holidayers who believe that holidaying is going to places and encountering excitements and differences. The attitude towards holidaying keeps on changing, and in this process, its very purpose looks hijacked by many external forces that come to play the moment one thinks of taking a break for a while.
How many people come home holidaying? How many people feel that they are in a holiday mood when they are actually undergoing the same? Do our personal concerns leave us the day we pack up and move out for a holiday trip? Lucky are those who have a kind of attitude to look at things from a distance and enjoy a sort of vicarious holidaying. This is not possible for many because most of us do not try to differentiate ourselves from the differences we are surrounded by. The fact is that we get merged with the ambience we live in so indistinguishably that we feel at times that the days are getting unattractive and it is time we had a break. What happens when we take a break? Virtually, nothing. We desperately try to redeem ourselves from the ruts we are in.
So long as that rut remains, there in us to invite us again into its very same old ways, things are not going to change. All the extravaganzas and exoticas, the holiday industry offers us are but, propaganda and they are as desperate as the holidayers themselves because their very business is nothing but a groove, and they keep telling you the same, and the same is falsely endorsed by all those who happen to fall prey to their temptations. Once you are in and have spent a sizeable chunk of money from your pocket, would you tell the rest of the world that the time you had had at a holiday stint was as boring as the very days you were running away from? No. The best way out is to learn to live life like a holiday stint.
In this cosmic dimension, the time we are ordained with is not so long, and the very same time is rapt in a rigorous material regime where we are tools and dyes that get used either by others or by some external agencies or forces. One among them is this holiday hawkers and their temptations. Again we fall prey to this mysterious spell of the unknown and we go on holidaying, doing nothing to alter our mindset. Our days offer us nothing to worry about or get bored of. It is we who make things worse. What difference does it make when we make our things worse and go for holidaying thinking that the latter is going to offset the former?
How many people come home holidaying? How many people feel that they are in a holiday mood when they are actually undergoing the same? Do our personal concerns leave us the day we pack up and move out for a holiday trip? Lucky are those who have a kind of attitude to look at things from a distance and enjoy a sort of vicarious holidaying. This is not possible for many because most of us do not try to differentiate ourselves from the differences we are surrounded by. The fact is that we get merged with the ambience we live in so indistinguishably that we feel at times that the days are getting unattractive and it is time we had a break. What happens when we take a break? Virtually, nothing. We desperately try to redeem ourselves from the ruts we are in.
So long as that rut remains, there in us to invite us again into its very same old ways, things are not going to change. All the extravaganzas and exoticas, the holiday industry offers us are but, propaganda and they are as desperate as the holidayers themselves because their very business is nothing but a groove, and they keep telling you the same, and the same is falsely endorsed by all those who happen to fall prey to their temptations. Once you are in and have spent a sizeable chunk of money from your pocket, would you tell the rest of the world that the time you had had at a holiday stint was as boring as the very days you were running away from? No. The best way out is to learn to live life like a holiday stint.
In this cosmic dimension, the time we are ordained with is not so long, and the very same time is rapt in a rigorous material regime where we are tools and dyes that get used either by others or by some external agencies or forces. One among them is this holiday hawkers and their temptations. Again we fall prey to this mysterious spell of the unknown and we go on holidaying, doing nothing to alter our mindset. Our days offer us nothing to worry about or get bored of. It is we who make things worse. What difference does it make when we make our things worse and go for holidaying thinking that the latter is going to offset the former?
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Kerala Hr. Secondary Education is going to dogs
Vaatupura A. Jayaprakash
Higher Secondary Examination paper valuations camps are working in full key all over Kerala, and the results are expected to be out in record time. This year, the Higher Secondary result is bound to find a permanent place in the Guinness book of world records for its historic pass out percentage. This result is going to be manipulated in such a way as to make all other education ministries that have gone past the present one not only incompetent but most student-unfriendly also.
Prior to the valuation camps, the teachers have been given strict instructions not to fail any student who has the least chance to get through the exam. The instructions are funny as well as “Babyish”. The teaching community is all frustrated with these instructions, and they complain that the very system of examination is a mere mockery and there is no use working hard or making a mark in the result table.
All those hard working students are going to be deeply frustrated for their futile efforts to have an edge over others. All are going to have their own edges and not many can claim any meritorious position when it comes to marks and their positioning in a higher education entry-platform where unfortunately it is not going to be the merit or marks that make the real difference but the bales of money the parents vie hard to pay out for a seat.
The government is doing everything possible to help out the management education system to have their field days once the results get out. The most student friendly education environment offered by the education Minister Mr. M. A. Baby gives the following instructions to the teachers who camp in all major cities to value papers.
Let us see a few instructions given to teachers:
· There should not be any attempt to fail a student if he/she has the least quality to win. Examination is to make students win.
· When it comes to English questions, forget about spelling, punctuation and grammar errors. Teachers have no idea what English is without these three.
· Even if the student writes the key word or one of the words that constitute the answer to a question, he/she should be respected with some marks.
· Complete or incomplete are the sentences, if there is an effort to write some nonsense, the teacher should need to be considerate. The aim is to make the candidate pass out.
· Instructions given to Physics teachers are really funny. If there were out-of-the syllabus questions, the candidate should get full marks.
· If the candidate has just written the question number, that is enough to get him or her full marks for that question.
· And for extreme cases, even if the teacher finds the candidate not writing the question number, the teacher should write the number to the out-of-syllabus question and give him/her full marks.
· And finally when the pass and fail proposition is like a cup and lip affair, the candidate should be given enough marks to get him through the exam.
· If the cut off mark (minimum marks to pass-out) is 20 and the candidate gets only 15, the teacher can make it 20 and declare the candidate ‘passed’. So go the instructions.
Where are these children going to end up in? Is this present ministry prepared to give seats for all these students for higher education? Is it wrong to suspect that there is a nexus between higher education institutions and the government?
We all know that the most literate state in the nation is a huge market for higher education institutions in the neighbouring states and this new ‘marking spree’ is offering greater market potentials for these institutions. When the controversy over management seat allocation and fee structure last year was raging in the state for months, these private institutions outside the state had made millions out of paid seats, and now keralite parents have already started biting their nails thinking of their wards plight after these once-in-a-life-time pass-out exercise. Where are they going accommodate all these future aspirants in?
The poor quality curriculum, insufficient academic infrastructure, dilapidated examination exercise and the ridiculous valuation instructions together take the Kerala higher education to dogs for sure. The coming generation is destined to be good for nothing, and the preset Kerala government will be carving a niche for itself for churning out the maximum number of good-for-nothings in a single go. Let them go out passed and the Party is there to get them employment by way of pasting posters, writing graffiti, staging dharnas, shouting slogans and getting beaten by the police of the coming ministries.
Tailpiece: In Kerala education system, things have come to such a pass that it is humanly impossible not to get through an examination. If you sit an exam, you will have to shoulder a ‘passed’ certificate. We cannot complain. Some of our institutions have the rarest reputation for issuing ‘passed’ certificates to those who haven’t written the exam at all. Sitting the exam itself is enough to make one pass out.
Exam fears and the resultant fevers are passé and it is going to be pass, pass, pass all the way from the first standard to 12th standard. After that it is all about engineers and MBAs and doctors and, at times, door-to-door and street-to-street salesmen trying to sell themselves for some pittance.
Higher Secondary Examination paper valuations camps are working in full key all over Kerala, and the results are expected to be out in record time. This year, the Higher Secondary result is bound to find a permanent place in the Guinness book of world records for its historic pass out percentage. This result is going to be manipulated in such a way as to make all other education ministries that have gone past the present one not only incompetent but most student-unfriendly also.
Prior to the valuation camps, the teachers have been given strict instructions not to fail any student who has the least chance to get through the exam. The instructions are funny as well as “Babyish”. The teaching community is all frustrated with these instructions, and they complain that the very system of examination is a mere mockery and there is no use working hard or making a mark in the result table.
All those hard working students are going to be deeply frustrated for their futile efforts to have an edge over others. All are going to have their own edges and not many can claim any meritorious position when it comes to marks and their positioning in a higher education entry-platform where unfortunately it is not going to be the merit or marks that make the real difference but the bales of money the parents vie hard to pay out for a seat.
The government is doing everything possible to help out the management education system to have their field days once the results get out. The most student friendly education environment offered by the education Minister Mr. M. A. Baby gives the following instructions to the teachers who camp in all major cities to value papers.
Let us see a few instructions given to teachers:
· There should not be any attempt to fail a student if he/she has the least quality to win. Examination is to make students win.
· When it comes to English questions, forget about spelling, punctuation and grammar errors. Teachers have no idea what English is without these three.
· Even if the student writes the key word or one of the words that constitute the answer to a question, he/she should be respected with some marks.
· Complete or incomplete are the sentences, if there is an effort to write some nonsense, the teacher should need to be considerate. The aim is to make the candidate pass out.
· Instructions given to Physics teachers are really funny. If there were out-of-the syllabus questions, the candidate should get full marks.
· If the candidate has just written the question number, that is enough to get him or her full marks for that question.
· And for extreme cases, even if the teacher finds the candidate not writing the question number, the teacher should write the number to the out-of-syllabus question and give him/her full marks.
· And finally when the pass and fail proposition is like a cup and lip affair, the candidate should be given enough marks to get him through the exam.
· If the cut off mark (minimum marks to pass-out) is 20 and the candidate gets only 15, the teacher can make it 20 and declare the candidate ‘passed’. So go the instructions.
Where are these children going to end up in? Is this present ministry prepared to give seats for all these students for higher education? Is it wrong to suspect that there is a nexus between higher education institutions and the government?
We all know that the most literate state in the nation is a huge market for higher education institutions in the neighbouring states and this new ‘marking spree’ is offering greater market potentials for these institutions. When the controversy over management seat allocation and fee structure last year was raging in the state for months, these private institutions outside the state had made millions out of paid seats, and now keralite parents have already started biting their nails thinking of their wards plight after these once-in-a-life-time pass-out exercise. Where are they going accommodate all these future aspirants in?
The poor quality curriculum, insufficient academic infrastructure, dilapidated examination exercise and the ridiculous valuation instructions together take the Kerala higher education to dogs for sure. The coming generation is destined to be good for nothing, and the preset Kerala government will be carving a niche for itself for churning out the maximum number of good-for-nothings in a single go. Let them go out passed and the Party is there to get them employment by way of pasting posters, writing graffiti, staging dharnas, shouting slogans and getting beaten by the police of the coming ministries.
Tailpiece: In Kerala education system, things have come to such a pass that it is humanly impossible not to get through an examination. If you sit an exam, you will have to shoulder a ‘passed’ certificate. We cannot complain. Some of our institutions have the rarest reputation for issuing ‘passed’ certificates to those who haven’t written the exam at all. Sitting the exam itself is enough to make one pass out.
Exam fears and the resultant fevers are passé and it is going to be pass, pass, pass all the way from the first standard to 12th standard. After that it is all about engineers and MBAs and doctors and, at times, door-to-door and street-to-street salesmen trying to sell themselves for some pittance.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
way back i am my friends
I was travelling pals. it has been a week since i had a post for you. i was in trivandrum and busy with some personal schores and i will be going away for while a couple of weeks too.
it has been raining over there and the life was pritty defficult. wishing you all a great week ahead, i bid you bye for a while. take care and live life to the full. yours jaypee
it has been raining over there and the life was pritty defficult. wishing you all a great week ahead, i bid you bye for a while. take care and live life to the full. yours jaypee
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