Strange Encounters...

READING TIME: 5-7 mins.

Decided not to leave you hanging for another post, so here it is!

Had some interesting "encounters" today...

1. Intimidating Professor: My Java instructor for this term. Female for one thing. But she's one of those "intense" people. Close-cropped hair nearly as short as mine with large clear eyes - very engaging appearance. What really got to me though is the fact that she made most eye contact with me during the whole lecture. Maybe I was just sitting in the direction where she normally looks at, but I swear, she always made eye contact with me. Normally, I look at a person's mouth and not at their eyes - two reasons: 1. Scary!, 2. Have you noticed you can't look at both eyes at the same time? It's disconcerting...how do you choose which eye to look at?

2. Polish Student: Same class (the first of my day)...made an acquaintance with a female Polish student...very hot...and really good English (for some reason, I thought Polish people would have very heavy accents and clumsy pronunciation). Highlight of my day, you could say! (I rhyme all the time!)

3. Good Food: Yes, I had good food in the small meal hall right next to the Engineering building. This IS a strange encounter - nearly all college students across North America, and probably the world, will agree with me! Beef Stroganoff (nowhere nearly as good as my mother's, but still pretty decent), some Thai-style rice, peas and french fries.

4. Sublime Rhyme: Some of us must have either read about, seen on TV or simply heard about "poetry under a tree". You always get these images of thoughtful people musing under a tree, or reading a book in the peaceful shade of trees and the cozy protection of groves. But in today's "civilized" world, gone is the haven of trees and the time to actually read under them! Yet, that's the silver lining in living in the middle of nowhere like Fredericton - trees are still there (lots of them) standing on beautiful carpeted hills...right on my college campus! After classes, I had nothing better to do, so I decided to grab a book of poetry ("Gitanjali", translated as "Song Offerings" by our nobel prize winning Rabindranath Tagore of Bengal), get a cup of coffee and find myself a tree to read under.
Having found my spot and shade, I opened up my bilingual book of poetry (for those ignorant, Rabindranath Tagore wrote the poetry in Bengali and then translated, himself, into English). And thus my soul was reborn.
Sounds cheesy? The stuff this guy wrote is divine...as I read aloud the beautifully flowing lines, a chill crept up through me...like my undernourished soul was feeding on the warmth. Before this, poetry has always stupefied me. The poetry I usually read was either too esoteric to understand or too simplistic to bother with. But Tagore writes poetry like spreading butter on soft bread...flows smoothly across, and quickly absorbed. I finally understand what separates poetry from prose...prose is expression...poetry is pure emotion. One speaks to the mind, the other to the soul.

5. Symbolic Squirrels: As I was walking away from my tree, my body rejuvenated on poetry, my soul gushing through the pores of my skin, I noticed two squirrels on the grass. One was busy finding and nibbling on acorns. Carefully, I noted the energy of expression in a squirrel's movement. There was so much animation, it was almost like the squirrel was talking aloud to you. It's head and two small paws frantically vibrated as it bit away at the acorn. Once done, it jerked forward, head close down to the ground, till it found something else to nibble. Everytime it moved forward, it's long bushy tail (around the length of its body) rippled gracefully. It was a pure sight of "busy"-ness.
Around three feet away, lower on the hill, was a thoughtful squirrel. Its tail formed a comfortable cushion as the squirrel "sat upright", staring with a sort of faraway look in its eye (I was watching its profile). Absolutely still, with the slightest motion along its fur, due to its breathing. And it was staring at the road below the hill, with some amount of traffic at the time.
It struck me that these two embodied two major "categories" prominent in our time. On the one hand, you have ambition and survival frantically working away, oblivious to the world around. Then there are the ones who step back and ponder about our life on the fast track. Neat, huh?
It was also a bit..."homesickly" looking at the squirrels. I recall my mother telling me about her "Squirru Babu" that used to visit her at my brother's apartment in Chicago when she was there with him last year. Miss her...

6. Sex Sells: It's currently "Sexuality Awareness Week" here at college. One of today's items is this talk by a TV host (called Sue something), talking about and answering lot of "interesting" questions about sex (that's what she does on her show as well). It's happening at our Student Union Building, and on my way back to my room, I went by it. There was a line of people almost wrapping around the building! And there was still an hour left till the thing actually started!
And to emphasize my point, when I sat down to eat at the meal hall, there were these cards on the table advertising some kind of competition where you have to guess the winners of sports events. On one side, there's the picture of this model wearing a soccer jersey in teeny-tiny shorts, with her back turned to the people (and head turned towards them as well). It's absolutely irrelevant...but it's still there.

7. Cerebral Palsy: During dinner, I sat next to Claire, this year's proctor for the Pitt (that means the basement of the building, where my room is). Over the summer, she worked at an institution with children with cerebral palsy in Europe. I asked her more about it, and it was so sad. These children basically don't have control of their motor skills, and can't move their limbs at will. And most of them can't even speak because they have no control over their vocal cords!
For those who want to know more about this terrible disease, check out these links:
http://gait.aidi.udel.edu/res695/homepage/
www.about-cerebral-palsy.org/

Well...on the whole, it's been a wonder-"full" day! Little bit of everything - interesting people, food, literature, philosophy and morality. The ingredients that give education its true flavour.