Speakin Out

I had my lowest 10th grade marks for Geography...and am pretty bad at it! It is tough for me to relate east, west, north and south. It is tough for me to connect routes. It is even tougher for me to read maps! It gets even tougher for me, when people say that geographies are connected to the goodness in people! People in "Gods Own Country" make a very generic statement, the moment you know that a person is from South Kerala - OH!!! He must be crooked, he will be bad, he will cheat you! Speak to a person from South Kerala - he says "Wow! The person is from the North - then he must be good". He neither admits the argument, but just becomes diplomatic! Somewhere, somehow, someone has carved it on stone. As you travel from Kasargod to Trivandrum, people get worse!!! Your character is decided by the way you are! Your character is decided by the way you are brought up, your character is decided by the group of people around you, by the quality of education you get - eithe...

I started this blog on a vijayadasami day. Vijayadasami is celebrated all across India in different ways, different reasons. While to the external world it is "Victory of Good over Evil" and the most common thing that happens in India is celebrations to commemorate the victory of Lord Rama over Ravana, Keralites celebrate it a a little differently. The durgapooja in North India converts to Saraswathi Pooja in Kerala. Here, many kids officially start their learning during this day. "Ezhuthiniruthal" or "Ezhuthinu veppu" or "Vidyarambham" as it is called, is supposed to happen between the 2nd and 3rd birthday of the child. This auspicious event generally used to happen inside temples. Now like many other rituals, it got blended more with culture than with spirituality and spread towards the outside world. Nowadays, many social, cultural institutions take this up as an activity in their calendar and offer it to invite many new kids to the world of w...

I always believe that I'm a person who is very empathetic. Empathy is a quality - I would not call it a feeling! To me, it occurs that this is one thing that can take you a long way and bring in lot of good relationships to your life. Now that I started blogging and apparently this happened to be the first thought that came to my mind, I just cheked the net to find out what exactly that means. Wiki says - Empathy, which literally translates as 'in feeling', is the capability to share and understand another's emotions and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes". Empathy thus is not just understanding people, but being able to think on their behalf and act accordingly. It takes time to reach this level in your relationships, but once you reach there, your relationships tend to be stronger. I'm not sure if it can be cultivated in one's mind on purpose, but a concious effort can always be made to put yo...