This Cult of Christmas

 

What have we achieved? 

Electric Lights to hide our darkness.

 What have we focused on? 

Fire to keep our cold hearts warm.

 What are we discussing about? 

Recipes for the perfect Christmas dinner.

 What keeps us happy? 

Gatherings better with boozing?, new clothes,

meeting the ones we love and avoiding the ones who disgust us. 

 What are we praying for? 

Money for a better year ahead.

  What is our definition of blessing? 

Getting expensive gifts.

What have we got by defining a hedonistic life.

Christmas is the day like any other day to thank God the Father for sending His only Begotten Son to save us. 

BEYOND CHALK AND BLACKBOARD

 

While looking for solutions to give uninterrupted online classes, we hope the school authority will not forget to renovate the girls’ toilet,

While debating on the New Education Policy, we hope the issue of bully, the importance of having a school counsellor will be in the menu of the school,

While giving importance to career counseling, we hope talks on sex education, teen pregnancy, porn and drug addiction will not escape from the window,

While bringing out dress and manner codes for the students, we hope the crime of ‘Rape!” is not taken lightly putting on dos and don’ts only for the female students.

While organizing religious retreat events, we hope ethics, morality and law are discussed simultaneously.

While highlighting the syllabus, we hope the future importance of that ‘very topic’ is let known to the students. 

Lastly, irrespective of whether 'excess teachers' in Nagaland is a myth or reality, this state deserve teachers who teaches because they have passion for it and not just because they have had not other career options. 

There is much and many more but the charcha is beyond chalk and blackboard…

 

 

Pankaj Gupta & Hema Chaudhary: The Two Guests or Cases

Pankaj Gupta wanted to be the next Julian Assange, he failed.

Hema Chaudhary wanted to be the next Erin Brockovich, she failed miserably.

                                      But the point is both of them are now arrested. 

Pankaj Gupta: We, the Nagas are skeptical about our politicians. When we say ‘corruption’ the shinning experienced faces of our politicians come to our mind. Questioning the motives, plans, policies and its implementations of/carried out by our legislators is one thing and blatantly attacking them is another thing. But most importantly, Gupta should have checked the timing and the issue. If it was next year then it would have got higher acceptance as it would have been more of a review, review as we know is an assessment of something which has already been done.  We have all passed the stage of Magical Thinking, hence, let facts and figures do the talking and when we say, facts and figures let’s focus on the no manipulated version.  

The Takeaway: Bragging about one's academic and career credentials is not a crime, and it is not bragging if it is true. LinkedIn says it all. However, in Gupta’s case presenting his over glorified curriculum vitae proved to be the Achilles Heel. How? Some people got curious after hearing how a great achiever he was= those curious people searched about/on him online and offline=the truth was out there.

Hema Chaudhary: There are certain ways of conveying our feelings, thoughts and arguments. Yelling, shouting and abusing are not the ways, that’s for sure. What I could see was an activist who was emotionally charged and wanted to show to the world her/his love for dogs (specifically) but in doing so she/he came out as an upgraded dramatic version of our parliamentarians. At the end of the day, she/ he got what she/ he deserved legally! I am happy, there were groups of people with logical comments trying to teach her/him the civilized way but some attractive bunch of people were downright disgusting, mocking her/his sexuality. Come on, it does not matter which gender she/he identifies with, it’s what she/he said about Nagaland that matters, agree?

The Takeaway: On the ban on the trading of dogs and the sale of both ‘cooked and uncooked’ dog-meat Article 371 (A) went cold but when it was about 33% reservation of women in Nagaland’s urban local bodies this very Article became lava.