Ha!

To start with, here's the link to the post titled 'Bye bye time again'. It will help my current senior batch, who will be leaving in a few months' time. After you have read that post, don't forget to click on the link provided there!

More than one person asked, after reading the 'zen' story, 'Sir, a) do you really think that kind of passionate interest and devotion are possible?, and, b) is it possible in today's trivia-obsessed world, when anything you write can be forgotten as soon as another Katrina Kaif item number is released, or iPhone6 comes on the market?' My reply is, of course not. I was merely talking about two kinds of extreme. One type will gladly cut off an arm, another won't 'sacrifice' a Facebook account for Sir's sake, and yet would be offended if I laugh at their protestations of love and respect and devotion: they must be given 'reason' enough before they take such a 'drastic' step (but let it go on record that three people have already told me they have deleted their FB accounts after reading the last post, and I won't be surprised if a few others have done it without telling me).

I have decided I shall communicate much less directly with individuals than via these blogs. For one thing, individuals don't really matter much unless they make themselves valuable, but no sooner do I give them some leeway than they begin to take all sorts of liberties with me, and for another, the '200,000 plus page views' tells me something very reassuring: a lot of people are reading what I write, and some do let me know how they are being affected, in a way that gratifies me, so I don't need to bother about particular individuals anyway. Besides, I have said before that my blogs are extensions of my classroom. Those who come to my classrooms come basically to listen to me and learn from me, and perchance to remember and think about and be improved by what I have told them, not to give me the backchat they haven't earned the right, intellectually and emotionally, to try. I have noticed, and not with one person, that those who are only too eager to give me a piece of their mind (whatever passes for their minds) in personal conversations are far more circumspect about doing that on the blogs, to the extent that 'they can't think of what to say', even when I want them to. And maybe that suits me best. 

Also, some people raised the question of gratitude and ingratitude recently. No one of course will deliberately call himself 'ungrateful', but I sometimes think I have got more than my fair share, still. Look up this blogpost.

That's all for now. I shall write very soon again. Don't forget to look up the previous post: it's not grown stale. Language is everything.

P.S.: Looking at the map showing people currently reading, my curiosity is tickled again. I know who reads from Golden, Colorado, and from Kure, Japan, and from Auckland, New Zealand - but who is my reader in Calgary, Canada, in Nokia, Finland, in Mountain View, California, home of Google, and the 'unknown' in Nigeria? Why won't they ever tell me?!