N is for Neither Utopia nor Dystopia

“A utopia cannot, by definition, include boredom, but the ‘utopia’ we are living in is boring”, writes Svendsen, a Norwegian author. And I follow the shadow of these intuitive lines.

The fact that our mother Earth is the only place to live and endure life is so ridiculous and grotesquely odd. If this universal truth and belief hold water, our world dominated with the Homo sapiens (‘Wise men’ by Latin) shouldn’t smell with cancer of slaying, butchery, homicide, robbery, kidnap, violence, rape and murder. 

Today, almost generally, every front page of the newspapers have turned to be the bedroom of these man-made catastrophes. But in any way, the rising statistics does not cause even the slightest fever of flabbergasts in the minds of the people. Rather, these man-manufactured disasters have been to a certain extent established as daily rituals.

Utopia or Dystopia? It is for us to accept    (Photo courtesy: Click LINK)

At one time, as I was flipping the site of the Toronto Public Library, this phrase kept my eye glued and released only later when my conscience agreed that it was a truth. The phrase read: 

Humans are the only creatures in this world who cut the trees, make paper from it and then write ‘save the trees’ on it.

So phenomenal and remarkable.

This phrase, I bet is sweeter than the music composed by Beethoven or more beautiful than the sculptures of Michelangelo.

It is so painful to accept that we have a pair of organic eyes that is lavishly contaminated with the cataract of poor vision. In other words, we are blind people who can see but don’t see.

Otherwise, why is that so-called EDUCATION ought to bring desirable change in the behaviour of humans not taking place? If the world is to be called a Utopia, it should be the ‘education’ that we humans receive, help in changing the colour of our thinking. That same education should help us build bridges, not the walls in our society. That education should bestow us the values, morals, principles and ethics to taste the sense of brotherhood, not the enmity and frenemy. That education should define rape and murder, drug abuse and robbery as crime and not as a fashion of contemporary living.

Or else, when this only planet capable of banking our lives are full of undesirable entertainments, our stand to claim that the world is a utopia would be the best joke for the next generations to read in our history. The once clean sheet of this world is almost unexpectedly getting polluted with the air of dystopia.

I am standing water, perplexed to judge: “Is our world Utopia or Dystopia”?          

“If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either” – Joseph Wood Krutch  

M is for My Old Dutch

If I were to write an epitaph, I certainly wouldn’t need to google the archive of my brain for a theme. The encyclopedia of my life with My Old Dutch would feed me enough materials to weave into any desired number of episodes.

Like any ordinary, during our pre-nuptial days, we followed suit in crafting our own blueprint of life that we will spend together. As civil servants, to make that equation of togetherness complete, the marriage certificate is one official coupon needed to be unveiled. But unfortunately in our case, the legally powered marriage certificate was blunt to cut the commands of so-called educated officers. Today, the seven-year-old legal produce collectively shares the space in my closet to accumulate the dust of its maturity.

Nevertheless, the flame of our life survived thousands of tremors and tsunamis caused all due to (that illegal) separation. We always expected the light to be at the end of every tunnel of our hope. And certainly, on many occasions, we waited for the liable officials to settle the dust of our pangs owing to those painful disconnections. Since nothing could germinate over time, it has made us endure acting another episode of a real fairy tale.

Now that I am studying overseas, the dimension of our separation has augmented. We still feel the same pain but in a different form.

 

Those old memories still kept young..... (way back in 2007)

Whenever I read the lyrics of her messages, it makes me vividly remember one of my salad days where an elderly woman shared to my mother: “A life without our husband is like removing the feathers from the wings and letting to fly at the same speed throughout”. Incredible!

Salvaging her lines, I have always given a thought that I will not let this history behead the timeline of my life but failed. We realized that unless things are within our own clutch, nothing extraordinary can be performed. Thus far, we celebrated life in our own dimension.

We have not and never entertain those histories to miscarriage our hopes and dreams for the future. I owe my lady who helps me manufacture strengths to believe in.  

To you my lady, I also remain indebted for not letting ourselves stand on the graves of departure and weep because you knew that our relations did not perish.

That tease and cry, mockery and argument, fight and injury all make me think of our relation to be that of Tom and Jerry’s. No matter who lost or was injured in the play, we can’t endure living without each other.

Although we have died as much as we lived, our hopes of getting together still grow because we know that when the absence was making a difference in our lives, the presence should make a double difference.

“A perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other”- Anonymous

L is for Letter to the Father of the University

An awardee of the "Father of the Year" in 1994, Dr Bhinyo Panijpan, is a distinguished figure at Mahidol University. He is the recipient of numerous other prestigious awards besides "Mahidol University Distinguished Invention Awardee" in 1998 and "Mahidol University Distinguished Research Awardee" in 1985, only to name a few of the many. 

Currently, he works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry under the Faculty of Science at Mahidol University. A British educated doctorate has a wide range of experiences in legislative, research and teaching know-how. He had been visiting worldwide as a visiting professor from 1979 to 1987 in renowned universities of the U.K and the U.S.A, New Zealand, India and Japan. He has more than hundreds of research papers and not less than fifty publications in international journals. 

The all-rounder, Dr.Bhinyo Panijpan

This living genius who has a proven record in detecting errors in the textbooks that were used extensively globally for many years was invited to our first class as a keynote speaker to speak on the  “Trends in Science and Technology Education".

As a token of respect and appreciation, I wrote the following letter and forwarded it through our course director. This is how I felt and wrote:

August 18, 2014

                      

Dear Sir,

It was a privilege for me to have attended the first seminar class with you as our guest speaker. I did not realize how quickly the time has elapsed since I was engrossed in your captivating lecture. Our course coordinator Dr. Namkang Sriwattanarothai has not mistaken to have invited the right person to speak on the right theme: Trends in Science and Technology Education.

Your fascinating discourse has always reminded me of one special charisma you possessed: You spoke of who you were. You are genuinely a 21^st century educator. Be it physical or life science, chemistry or technology, arithmetic or social science for that matter, you seemed to have conquered the entire stage. If there is one word that can substitute your name, it would be an ‘All-rounder’ because I found the multiple intelligence of an American developmental psychologist Howard Gardner in single you.

Your words were simply magical and contained huge gravity in its meaning. In a short span of time within your circumference, I was made to draw a vivid skeleton of how a 21^st century teacher should look like. To be one, I agree with your words that we have to be an authentic learner driven with the intrinsic motivation. The clarity and eloquent interpretation during your profound lecture encouraged me to learn the things with clear understanding as you revealed to be one among many.

Sir, as I was passionately engulfed by your enthralling speech, I remembered the words of a famous Indian freedom fighter known by the name Mahatma Gandhi who have said: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” Your words are etched deep inside the library of my heart. Besides professional advices, I would not forget to remember the importance of a social life you decorated. If I were to duplicate a few, you highlighted “People are more important than knowledge. So, don’t let the good works done by losing the friends”. Well stated. Socialization has often been victimized as the worst market of negligence in this contemporary busy world.

Eventually, even if I cannot mature to a kind of teacher you dreamt, I will not let my effort to cultivate that seeds of goodness in others before it shrink. I will consume myself to let others see the route to their destination.

Sincerely Yours,

Dumcho Wangdi

MSc. in Science and Technology Education

Institute for Innovative Learning

Mahidol University

“The more that you read, the more things that you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go” – Dr. Seuss