It’s
early winter, quite the nicest time of the year for me. Mercifully there are
very few anxieties and pressing problems bugging me at the moment, and I am
more delighted than I can say that my normal at-home classes have slowly got
going again, so I have been luxuriating – hence the long delay between posts.
Also
watching a lot of movies and TV shows. I actually like Young Sheldon more than The
Big Bang Theory, believe it or not. (Oh, did you know that they mention
Byomkesh Bakshi in episode 18, season 7 of TBBT? Made me feel good. Maybe
Indian culture is really beginning to go places at long last). Newton made me wonder that there are
weirdos like that in this country, too – people who make a crazy fetish of
taking work and punctuality and personal responsibility seriously, I have seen a few such in real life – maybe that’s
one of the few things that make us go on ticking! At a young pupil’s insistence
I tried to watch The Haunting of Hill
House, but gave it up quickly: ghost stories usually only make me yawn, and
that combined with dysfunctional, cantankerous families is more than I can
take. The Bureau of Magical Things is
OK, but I am actually keenly waiting for the next movie after The Crimes of Grindelwald). The Crown has brought in a new series,
but the next few episodes are going to be about the whole sordid Diana saga, so
I think I’ll break a habit and go over to the next season straightaway. I
watched Bettany Hughes presenting Geniuses
of the Ancient World (Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha) and Geniuses of the Modern World (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud)
one after the other, but one-hour capsules on titans like them couldn’t really
teach me much beyond what I already knew. I guess, though, that in these Dark
Ages a lot of people, especially those below thirty, might find them both
interesting and instructive…
I
have promised myself that I won’t write anything more connected with the
so-called pandemic until the crisis has become history, so I won’t, but just
one thought: is the whole species going to withdraw once again into hibernation
mode if another virus begins to spread far and wide just two or five years down
the line?
Diwali
night is usually fun night at my house, with a lot of current and ex students
visiting. But it was rather dull and depressing this time round without any
fireworks. Ah, well…
A
visiting old boy showed me the words of blessing and advice that I had
scribbled in his notebook on the last day in school, twenty years ago. It made
me proud to think that I wouldn’t have to change a word in it, and that he said
he wished he had listened more attentively then.
To
current pupils especially, do look up the posts under the tabs headed Books and Movies and Travels. To older readers, I’d strongly
recommend those under Education.
Bye for now. Maybe I’ll post something again soon.
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