Sunday, June 27, 2010

Casuality--story

Thomas Mash and peon Krshnankutty took Bhargavan Mash to nearby hospital. Bhargavan Mash was inflicted with a new disease. He remained still with wide opened mouth. Though his respiratory system is normal no other vital sign is clear!

The duty doctor pushed on the puffed up nerve on the throat of Bhargavan sir. Bhargavan sir became normal and started talking to doctor.

The doctor came out of the casualty and inquired the matter.
“Any reason for this accident? I mean an incident in class room?”

“No doctor. Bhargavan Mash was a substitute in the newly started English medium class. The teacher in charge of the class was absent today. He had spent only five to ten minutes in the class, the time for taking attendance”.

“Yes, that is the reason. When a teacher call the names of students as Aswin, Akash, Arjun, Abhinav, Akhil, Azin, Allan, Andrew, Ann, Ashok, Aromal etc., this type of disease will happen. Wide opened mouth is the noticeable symptom. This could happen to anyone calling these names. Our present day parents are making their children first in the class by putting naming starting with A. Could we find any Oommen, Thomman, Kunju, Meenakshy, Ponnamma, Thankamma, Kamalakshy in future?”

By saying this doctor stood from his seat and went for ward inspection.

K A Solaman

Thursday, June 24, 2010

This Is Good-Motivational story

An old story is told of a king in Africa who had a close friend with whom he grew up. The friend had a habit of looking at every situation that ever occurred in his life (positive or negative) and remarking, "This is good!"

One day the king and his friend were out on a hunting expedition. The friend would load and prepare the guns for the king. The friend had apparently done something wrong in preparing one of the guns, for after taking the gun from his friend, the king fired it and his thumb was blown off. Examining the situation the friend remarked as usual, "This is good!" To which the king replied, "No, this is NOT good!" and proceeded to send his friend to jail.

About a year later, the king was hunting in an area that he should have known to stay clear of. Cannibals captured him and took him to their village. They tied his hands, stacked some wood, set up a stake and bound him to the stake. As they came near to set fire to the wood, they noticed that the king was missing a thumb. Being superstitious, they never ate anyone that was less than whole. So untying the king, they sent him on his way.

As he returned home, he was reminded of the event that had taken his thumb and felt remorse for his treatment of his friend. He went immediately to the jail to speak with his friend. "You were right," he said, "it was good that my thumb was blown off." And he proceeded to tell the friend all that had just happened. "And so I am very sorry for sending you to jail for so long. It was bad for me to do this."

"No," his friend replied, "This is good!" "What do you mean,'This is good'? How could it be good that I sent my friend to jail for a year?" "If I had NOT been in jail, I would have been with you."

- Author Unknown

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Can’t we have a World Malayalam Conference?

The Coimbatore city in TN is all set for a World Tamil Conference. More than 5,000 people from India and abroad, including a large number of scholars, will take part in the first five-day World Classical Tamil Conference. Thousands of delegates from India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Singapore, Canada, the US, Greece and other countries have confirmed their participation. These include around 1,000 scholars who will submit research papers. The conference is expected to raise the awareness level for cooperative and collaborative research on the classical side of Tamil language.

Then why can’t the Kerala CM V S Achuthanandan consider a similar Malayalam Conference in Kerala? If one is accomplished in Kerala, and of course not in London as organised by thoughtless people, more students study Malayalam and do research. The Tamil language has already won classical status in the country. The proponents of Malayalam are still knocking at the doors of Delhi bigwigs to get classical status to Malayalam. It is far good to conduct a World Malayalam conference to convince the authority and to make them aware of the importance of Malayalam language. And for this Achuthanandan need not pen title song for the conference as did by Karunanidhi. This job can be handed over to minister poets in the Cabinet like Binoy Viswom or G Sudhakaran.

The classical status to Malayalam should come through activity and not by act of contrition.


K A Solaman

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Kerala University bids goodbye to a 44-year-old tradition

University of Kerala bidding to 44 year annual degree system and switching over to credit and semester system is an effort to sail smoothly with the present trend. Nevertheless it would not bring any substantive gain. This is not an isolated opinion but many teachers working now in colleges join with this. The foremost reason is that all colleges in Kerala experience a staff-crunch and without adequate number of teaching staff the semester system cannot be carried out successfully. Teachers in guest faculty are working for a wage and they are not competent enough to make grade in the credit and semester system.

More intriguing is the undue importance of social service in the proposed system. In most of the colleges in Kerala currently what is largely going on is social service and no time for teaching class. Cattle feeding, thattukada running, mosquito census are some of the existing services available in the colleges now. With the introduction of more social services the colleges will turn into a market place where teaching and learning process will be a leisure work. As many as 20 different forums working in the college will bring a pandemonium comparable to one that is full swing at CMS College, Kottayan at present. Offering additional open courses to students, who are not at all interested teaching-learning processes, is very prying to note.

The clause that attendance would fetch grades and each student should have not less than 75 per cent attendance for all semesters will open more war grounds in colleges. The teachers would have to read threatening SMS from student outfits for denying attendance to their workers. It will be a tough time for teachers to manage second-rate degree course students who are destined to join these colleges because of denial of admission in professional courses. The Education Minister had made the school education already a mess. The proposed choice based credit system, will extent this confusion to Arts and Science colleges too. Let us wait and see number of years the students admitted to the newly introduced credit and semester would take to get their first degree.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Why I love football?

The media is seemed to be obsessed now with the news of the World cup football. The news of cricket is being shelved for football for a while. In my opinion football is definitely a more intense sport than cricket with more countries able to compete at a high level. Watching seven-hour days of cricket without a result is really profitable for channels but a boring experience for the viewers. The 90 minutes football thrills everybody and avoids boredom. Further football offers a much more intense display, and it creates an air of uniqueness that cannot be simulated by cricket. The tribal nature of football crowds may overstep the mark at times, but it undoubtedly trumps the cricket fans in terms of creating and maintaining an atmosphere. Football fans are almost a part of the game and this sort of affection is not seen in cricket.


Football is a simple game that appeals to a lot. In many countries it is the only game. Cricket has only a fraction of the exposure that football has. Scandalous match fixing in cricket is unheard in football. I love football more than cricket.

K A Solaman