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Record Tidbits
Scholastic Book of World Records Published by Scholastic India Pvt. Ltd. World records almost always make interesting reading. And if there are vivid pictures to make it more interesting, the tidbits get digested faster. The Scholastic Book of World Records is such a book. It makes you want to pick it up and create a new global map based on the foundations of superlatives: the world’s largest and the smallest; the shortest and the longest; the fastest and the slowest?...
My Country is a Land of Plains!
February 26: India is a land of rivers, cows, wheat fields, hot dusty plains and flat-roofed houses. This is what Stanzin Zangpo had learned in his class. But he is from Ladakh and he had never seen these things. The 12-year-old boy could not even imagine them. His part of India had jagged snow-capped mountain peaks, bitterly cold climate, large barren wastes of land and frozen lakes. But now Stanzin knows differently. He and 29 other children from Ladakh have come to Delhi on a trip....
Taming the Boors
October 28: Regulars at the Lucknow University campus in Lucknow, are familiar with the site of a tall, well-built young woman, in police uniform, zipping past on a powerful motorbike. The young woman is Lakshmi Singh, a police sub-inspector who has recently taken charge of Lucknow University’s outpost. And she is on a mission – to curb the spiralling violence against girls studying in the University. The Lucknow University campus, is supposedly one of the most notorious campuses in India....
Where is Sirisha?
July 22: Two-year-old Sirisha has been missing since March. Missing along with her are eight siblings. Sirisha’s father P.L Narasimhan has been running from pillar to post to get her traced, but has not had any luck so far. Now, the Hyderabad-based Indian has taken the extreme step of appealing to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of America, for help. Yes, the same FBI that is shown in Hollywood films as rushing to find the criminal who has hijacked the American President’s plane....
Creating Light from Garbage
July 22: We all create garbage. Every day we throw away armloads of things that we don’t need. Wrappers, leftovers, car parts, torn cloth, vegetable remains and mounds of other such stuff. What we throw away at home is domestic garbage. There’s much more that factories throw away. Garbage from factories is often very dangerous, because it could be poisonous chemicals, or plastics that choke the earth. The result of all this throwing away is that garbage levels around the world are rising, and fast....
Mormu: Daughter of the Forest
Mormu Oraon was lying under a sal tree in the jungle. As the first rays of golden sunlight fell on her face, she stirred a little. Rubbing her eyes, she sat up slowly. Nearby, her mother poured steaming tea into clay cups. Dawn had just broken, but the day had begun for the Oraon family. Twelve-year-old Mormu is an adivasi or a tribal. She lives in Ranchi district, in India’s eastern state of Bihar. She is the first in her family to go to school....
Smart Ones and Fools
This morning we got a call in our office from a friend who gave us us the news that the Taj Mahal had collapsed in an earthquake in the wee hours of dawn. As soon as we let out shocked gasps we realised that we had all been made fools. For it is April 1 or Fool’s Day today! Last year, one of India’s most well known TV networks put out a news report that left the viewers speechless....
Children of a lesser god
This is the story of a small boy of my age working next door. His name is Bharat. His parents could not afford his studies and food. So they sent him to someone’s house to work as a servant. He was interested in studies. But there was no use. He had to work hard day and night. In the morning, when I go to school with a heavy bag on my back full of books, young Bharat also comes to the bus stop, to drop his master’s son....
The Circle of Life
February 5: Young Vittal Partani is one of many volunteers who has been engaged in a singleminded task these last few days in the town of Bhachau that was devastated by the January 26 earthquake, in Gujarat. But there is something special about the 20 year-old and the youngsters accompanying him on the rescue mission. All of them are orphans of the Latur earthquake disaster of 1993. Only this time around, their roles have reversed – from victims to rescuers....
Teachers' Day
Teachers’ Day [Illustration by Shiju George] September 5: An average teacher teaches, a good teacher explains, a superior teacher illustrates, and a great teacher? A great teacher both learns and inspires students to ask questions fearlessly, for asking the right question is like taking the right turn amidst a maze of lanes and bylanes. But these are different times. While school students say that teachers are no longer interested in teaching, teachers turn around and say that it is not their fault – nobody is interested in learning and that society treats them like dirt....