meghdoot ??!!??!

I dunnno what triggered the thought, but i was seriously debugging the code for my final project in advanced CFD, when i was suddenly reminded of an incident of just about a year ago. And i felt, incomplete and irrelevant though it may sound, that I had to blog it in. ;)

There was this fine day in my final sem undergrad, when I was trying to pull my friend's leg. I was trying to draw an analogy to Kalidasa's Meghdoot, when to my utter amazement, this person denied all knowledge of anything called 'Meghdoot'. Imagine any decent self-respecting Indian professing such a blatant ignorance of one's culture and history. To not know of the works of Kalidasa ... i felt scandalised.

The rest of the class spent in painstakingly recounting what little i knew of this father of drama and play, I tried to set right the obvious effects of the hideous loopholes in our educational system. It is quite evident that we do not lay enough stress in educating the youth about our country and our culture. I shall refrain from speaking more on the same lines, as I know that a coupla hundred zillion lines have already been written on the topic in everything from the Rosetta stone to the Voyager spacecraft's data capsules.

But what still doesnt fail to amaze me, is how the place (read school) one studies in, so drastically influences one's knowledge of our history. I do accept the fact that no single correct point of view can be decided upon for recounting the happenings of the past 5 millenia in the subcontinent. But shouldnt the attempt be made to present the facts from a secular viewpoint, such that the children be able to draw their own conclusions & opinions of our incomparable history.

Note : I really mean all that i've typed above.

Sidenote: I was hoping to capture the essence of the writing style of some very distinctly typical indian critical writers. Though im not going to spot out the specifics of the form and style, it has not turned out the way i expected it.

Summer Project: Ill try and post more stuff in the same tone. Lets hope we can then put our heads together and see if i have, in fact, done a passable job at mimicking such essays that keep appearing in major indian dailies.

posted by RamV at 00:39 :: Permalink :: Blog This