Santa, See Them Please!

 Mariam Henna of I BA English Copy Editor 

would like it if the young generation can make a difference 
in this world. 

Santa, if you are real, we need you to be with 

some special young people this Christmas!

Santa Claus is back in town once again! While everyone is talking about going away on a family vacation, partying, and the fun things that the youth of today are upto, who among any of us actually think of spending time among those little innocent children who are living a life deprived of everything that we (the lucky ones) take for granted? Even Santa seems to have forgotten about them. Below is a true account of what I experienced on my visit to an orphanage.

Caged Lions : The Real World

"Smiles going miles, with a

Small hug. Waiting for the rays

Of a Brighter tomorrow

To dawn  on them, They wait like

Caged lions, Fighting the world

For their survival"

Those innocent faces lighted up the moment we walked into the Orphanage, which almost looked similar to being locked up in Jail. Their smiles craved for attention. Although most were shy at first, the other little ones kept rambling on about their days just to have someone to share it with. Some danced, some sang, some drew flowers and houses, while some just sat close to us, in order to reciprocate the feeling of love. Each of them were eager to show us their abilities and talents and get appreciated for it. The memory of how an eight year old talked to me about his dreams of tomorrow lingers deeply in my heart.

Most of us are lucky enough to have  a home with parents to love, share, fight and laugh with along with being privileged to  having other  materialistic things. While we end up taking all these for granted, for those young ones even little things like having someone to smile at them or hug them makes a big difference in their lives. Moroever having the privilege of education is a faraway dream for them. Even when we taught them simple things within our knowledge, they listened to us with rapt attention.

I am a person who believes that it is better to have loved and lost, rather than not having been loved at all. My eyes still brim with  tears when i think of the plight of the kids who have been left on the footsteps of the orphanage, or on the roads, by the very people who gave them birth. A vision of them wailing..crying..little realizing that they would never see the faces of their parents flashed before my eyes. Throughout the nineteen years of my life, i have never felt as much happy at heart than when I spent the few hours with the kids. They showed me a different perspective of life - the "real life" outside the safe zone of our home!

While the youth of today are often criticized for living in a hazy world, self-centred and insensitive, it is time we step ahead and make a change to the world. We need to counter the misconceptions regarding our attitudes! We need to change if necessary. This is just one part of the world. There are still a lot of untold stories about the gruesome conditions of children living on the street, about ‘grandmas and grandpas’ left to mend for themselves at old age homes by their own children. Now it is up to us to rewrite their stories and make it a happier one filled with love!! 

P.S : If anyone is interested in making a real difference this Christmas, please do get in touch!

The New Normal

Are you ready to face tragedies in life without losing your dignity?
What does it take to be a true survivor? 
Collins J Peter of II BA English Copy Editor 
shares his views on the topic.

                                                                     

Recently I read a book  titled  Touched By Suicide by Michael F. Myers and Carla Fine. The book deals with real life cases of suicidal trauma, but I tried to glean something else from it.  Among the series of events described in the book, a father’s plight caught my notice.  

‘A father who had returned from work found his daughter hanging from a back yard tree’  - this was the incident that caught my attention. This was cited as an illustration for a particular topic.  Later, through the course of reading,  I realized that this incident was narrated by the same father who had witnessed that traumatic scene.  What made him live after this ? How had he coped? ... Optimism ?  Hope?

The very evolutionary trait of homo sapiens equip them to cope with or adapt to the cosmos and its variations. When technology helps us transcend our physical limitations, we achieve a great deal of progress.  Then, what is our coping strategy towards social issues when we are on the verge of complete deterioration of social  rapport?

Nobody wants to be confined within a particular social institution such as family, or religion.  ‘Leaving home' is the norm of today’s social world.  The fact is that, as distance advances between the individual and social institutions, there is more chance of being entrapped in various ‘anti’ behaviours.  Perhaps this idea is closely related to the views of the humanist scholars of the 15^th  century:  ‘Man makes a constant attempt to strive for good but often finds himself caught in a trap of evil.  At a time he is caught between the desire for immortality and of earthly fame’ (quoted from Shapers of Destiny by Susan Varghese).

The realisation that one is far away from home often leads to ‘self-disintegration’ which may manifest in the form of suicides, now mostly among those in the per-adolescent age.  The trouble- shooting ability of our younger generation has been lost in the ‘e-world’ which caters them a virtual environment for anything and everything.  The risk factor is when ‘e-world’ depicts the life on a screen where problems could be solved with a single click, it is not at all possible once the system is shut down. 

The reason for the girl’s suicide in the incident, at the beginning of  this essay, is not mentioned in that particular book.  Later, her father begins to reach out to others who undergo a similar trauma in their life.  He is now adapted to a life without his daughter.  You might have noticed that your pain or  a mental anguish gradually tends to cease as time moves on.  At first with minutes,  then  hours, then days and as this goes on, your worries dwindle to nothing.  When the year draws to an end,  a few  wish for a normal, better start. All we need is a ‘brand new normal’, more than a normal, where we study to live along with the past trash and future surprises.  May be, that desolated father had learned this very tactic of life at the end.

Reference

Varghese, Susan. Shapers of Destiny. Print. Trichur: Current Books, 

     2010

Myers, Michael F and Carla Fine. Touched By Suicide. Print. Gotham 

     Books, 2006