What You Laughing At???

It was thanks to my friend Gowri that I was reminded of this. So I would like to Thank her for her love, support, guidance, comical insults, being a platypus and being a Drunk Don when we were in dire need for one. So thank you Gowri for all of the above!

Coming to the point. Text books!

They can either make a Student or break a student or make an Awesome Bon fire around which I can do the Rain Dance or make the Rain Gods point and laugh and not grant me rain.

Text books have always been a bane to a student except on the eve of the exam. But it is partly because of the text book that our creativity is given a kick in the butt and arrested for giving us a little fun and happiness in the dreary lives of being a student. The text book does not allow us to think... it clips our wings in terms of imagination! but has always provided us with the most beautiful and dreamy sleep.

Now when you get those emails titled as 'funny answers' and the like, we point and laugh at the wrongness behind the answers and one definitely knows that the person who has supplied the paper with such answers has never even looked at a text book let alone opened and read it. But as criticising has been the way of life and is a quality that comes along with being human, have we ever appreciated those answers!? Seen the creativity and originality behind it or even the ingenuity and creativity behind it instead of ridiculing and finding the flaws behind the answers?!

I feel these people should be applauded! 'Cause these people actually think! They think laterally, out of the box, keeping their creativity alive and buzzing and in the process never letting the child in them die. How many of us would have actually answered that 'x' is here with an arrow pointing to the location of 'x' in the figure to the question find 'x'????? How many of us would have thought of it that way?? We find 'x' in a certain way, 'cause we've been instructed (more like threatened) to do so in that specific manner!

While these guys actually think and apply their minds during an exam *which is the sole purpose of education* to find a solution, we follow a book that gives us step by step instructions of what to do and how. Basically we mug, puke all the contents during an exam and well since we (usually) don't again eat what we regurgitate, we completely forget everything and the point of 'learning' something is lost to an extent where you read the same thing the following week and you'd never know that you've actually read it! Whereas these guys will remember exactly what they've written 'cause they came up with the answers themselves!

So all I'm trying to say is that, I've completely forgotten why I thanked Gowri in the beginning and that our concept of educating ourselves is wrong! Our future is not written in a text book and neither is a step by step instruction manual on how to live every minute of our lives.

Next time you see an answer that seems insanely wrong and out of place and at the same time superbly funny and yet in some random unconnected way connected to the question given, stop and think would you have been able to sum up the guts to write something you thought of all by yourself, would you have had the presence of mind to think of it that unconventional, un-textbook-y way??

And if you can't, then stop laughing, and if you're in a stupid mood to laugh then go in front of a mirror, point at it and laugh.

Because if you thought that you could think like that, you would not be laughing at it, you'd be marveling at the craftsmanship of such an amazing answer.

Childhood Inhibitions

It's funny how they say that you grow out of things that used to creep you out. Just give it time.

My question is really, do you???

I started to ponder over this, when I realised I'm not super comfortable in the dark when I'm alone, except when I'm knocked out cold. Well it's a belief that one grows out of kiddy inhibitions. And I don't believe it!

My inhibitions date back to the mid 1990's, when I was a little girl. The adults generally scared the crap out of kids just to make sure the little brats don't get out of hand. Well, I was a brat, and my parents believed in treating all brats equally. So I, too was subjected to inhumane 'scaring the crap out of kids' treatment. Gone were the days of partiality, I say.

The conventional 'Boogieman's gonna get you' worked wonders with me. And as I aged from a 4 year old to that of 5, the dark descriptions grew worse.

Slowly the concept of Ghosts eerily crept in as well. Yep, those evil fiends didn't spare anything. The haunted stories oozed out, with an abandoned house that was all dark and the friendly neighbourhood cemetery, surrounded by the dying trees with dried leaves that rustled in the dead of the night, the wind howling breaking the silence and calling out to the dead.

Thats all I needed. I have a pretty wild imagination. All one has to do is set the foundation and there you have a tormented girl whose too chicken to get out of bed in the middle of the night to take a pee!

And even worse is when I have to go from one room to another, crossing the creepy dark corridor. I can't even keep my eyes closed and do that cos when I tried that, I slammed into the wall and missed the entrance by just that much! And I looked like Rudolf in pain for about a week or so.

Then comes that age where you want to watch these horror/ thriller flicks cos you want to go with the flow but something inside goes against that idea. In my case, I was just stupid for not listening to that vibe. I think we went for this movie 'Deep Blue Sea'. Took the night show and saw it on big screen. Little girl watching Big Sharks devour people as soon as they touched any surface even close to water, does not give the best sense of security. Not only did I not sleep for many nights to come, I didn't enter a swimming pool for a long long time. And at that time, by swimming pool I mean drowning in a tiled container with a depth of 2 feet.

I thought I was totally over my little phobia with water and sharks. But all that changed when I went on vacation to Tioman Islands not too long ago. We went snorkeling and the water was absolutely beautiful. It was an infinite expanse of blue, blue and more blue with fish of such brilliance just surrounding you. I couldn't help but feel like Ariel from The Little Mermaid *sheepish grin*.

That was all lovely until I was pushed by the tide into a rather isolated portion of the island. All of a sudden I felt silence like I was the only living soul on earth and when I looked straight into the water I couldn't help feel that something big and bad was heading my way and with absolute silence under the water surface there was nothing to distract me from that train of thought. I felt some of my worst nightmares being resurrected from the burial ground of dead dreams!

GAH! That just sent shivers down my spine.

So, I really doubt that our childhood inhibitions and scares really do die away or whether they're just repressed to such an extent that you seem to believe you've overcome them, only to find them just waiting for your most vulnerable moment to strike; lurking in the darkest crevices of your mind waiting...