Mercedes' Mind Mirror

“Amiya okay now stand up!” I stood up slowly and hung my head, my face still red from laughing crazy. I stifled the treacherous torrent of laughter making its way up as Mr. Hussein said: “Okay now Anantthhha stand up okay now.” “Idiot!” hissed Anantha. The little embarrassment I had felt a second before evaporated as fast as it had come. Anantha Venkatraman was one of my best friends and partner in crime. We were the bickering twosome. All our fights usually ended in uncontrollable spurts of laughter. “Now okay if you continue this okay behaviour it will affect your okay performance. This is not a joke,” continued Mr. Hussein. I tried my hardest not to laugh when I caught sight of someone in the next row making tally marks on his desk to count the number of times Mr. Hussein said “okay now”. Anantha, eager to get back into the teacher’s good books, said: “Sorry Sir”, resetting his features to a grim and sorry expression. I feared he would get away with it because Anantha was one of Mr....

I want to inspire people. Now you may think 'who's this little kid saying that big word?'. But I have a reason to want to inspire people. It's because I have been inspired by a few. I have been to four different schools since I first joined the crèche at Mary Nilayam and have been taught by a great many teachers or rather many great teachers. And when I left each school some of the people who left a lasting impression on me were my teachers. I was one of the average kids in the class since grade 8 at my old school - Indian School Al Ghubra - in Muscat. And definitely did not belong to any cliques and ‘popular gangs’. I was just another kid. Yet I still got those “good work”, “excellent” and “keep it up” remarks whenever I submitted an assignment or scored well in a test. I don’t know if the teacher meant any of it or if it was part of the protocol whenever a student did well. Either way those remarks produced the effect it was meant to have. It meant encouragement fro...

There stands the lonely house. It is a beautiful thing with its ivory walls and polished doors and windows.It gleams pale gold in the afternoons. But the wrought iron gate is always shut.No one comes in or goes out. The windows are never opened. It stands all in glory like a cursed jewel no one will claim But there lives a strange family in this house. They say they are strange creatures. They are never heard speaking except for low moans and some kind of hissing. They have red eyes and their bodies are grey and have bony red feet. If you ask anyone they have never seen them. Then one day I saw them proud pigeons strutting about under the eaves. Few years back when my grandmother died, our ancestral home was abandoned. It was like a mansion amidst a clump of trees like one of those witch castles in old stories. My grandmother wasn't alone all those years. She had her trees and birds and snakes and all those tiny creatures to keep her company. They seem to know her only too well...

When the cab pulled to a stop at a ‘straat’ full of tall houses I felt the first tickles of excitement racing through every nerve. As we hauled out the bags from behind I heard a cry of joy. I turned around to see Mummy and Pappy with Ivo, still handsome though now his hair was grey as ash and his skin perhaps a little less taut but his perfect Aryan features remained just as I’d remember them from his old photographs. Then came Ilse, but she was not at all what I’d seen from the photos Pappy brought a few years back when he had revisited Belgium. She was supposed to be pretty but plump with greyish straight hair tied in a bun at the back and wearing huge earrings. Instead out stepped an Ilse dressed in a turquoise dress, prettier with shorter flaming red hair that curled at the end, and plumper than ever. There was someone else too, someone only Pappy had seen on his last visit. But Marnix had grown taller than Pappy had seen him last. Marnix is Satya’s little brother though he was ha...

Appreciation is indeed candy for the ears.I was working on the Teacher's day programme last week and while surfing online for some quotes i came across one that struck me. " The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated," an observant James Willliams had said.I for one never felt apreciated at the right time for the right thing.I have felt slighlty put out on such occasions and though I have not voiced that feeling openly anywhere I always thought it most unfair. A few weeks before my auntie Alice had called.She wanted to talk to my mother but she wasn't home at the moment.She then asked how i found my new school,friends and studies.I think I gave her the general idea when i said i wasn't doing that well and had found just a handful of trustworthy friends and that teachers had their own pets.Auntie Alice always had lots of kind words and advice for anyone in distress.She has told me a a little story.There was a boy who failed a ...

If you're joining in kindergarten things are so easy to get along with.You're your silly, small, innocent,forgetful, cute self.So nobody has a problem with it because everybody is more or less the same at that age.A little fight over some silly thing is forgotten before the day ends.That way it's so convenient to get along with the other kids.Its pretty fine till you've reached teenage.It's funny how things go so horribly weird around this time.I don't know about other teens but I get really conscious when among an unfamiliar crowd.So far, going to a new school has been most terrifying for me.I gathered the following over the past 3 months about things you can,can't,should and shouldn't and won't be able to do when you're new(if you are a girl): 1. You just won't be fully satisfied with how things run in this new place.I kept comparing my old school to this new one and realised i had been living in heaven that just looked like hell. 2.Don...

"Hey Michael Jackson's dead!I heard so on the radio"NO!! I couldn't believe my half deaf ears!!I took a moment to shake it off ,to convince myself that it couldn't have happened.I was waiting for my friend to say "just kidding".But she didn't and her face looked serious but unperturbed.As if!!Michael Jackson is a Universal Icon. C'mon !!Icons don't just die one fine morning.They are supposed to get really really old and pop in an out of news ocassionally ,fall really sick later and then maybe die,not abruptly as though God just accidentally stepped over a wire and unplugged Michael from the world and went 'oops!it was meant for later'. There was an argument on whether he was really dead or not or if it was some kinda publicity stunt or some really imaginative kid's idea of a joke.I took the ' he can't be dead just like that' side.The rest of the day was spent yakking about Michael Jackson.I just did not want to believ...