The Mole concept

Birthdays have been overrated in my opinion. Be it Harry Potter or Gandhi Jayanti, people have a fixation towards making a day represent a person's life or any big change in it. Perhaps as kids we are introduced to the concept of a birthday being special by ladening us with gifts. Back when I was in school, my parents had brought me up in a way to not expect any great gifts. So the only thing that made me wait for my birthday was the small celebration that happened in my class. Normally, in the class, the birthday kid would come in his or her favorite clothes and then the class would sing a birthday song for him and as a reward, he would distribute toffees to all the kids in the class. The bonus was that you could skip the boring class and go to distribute toffees to all the teachers in all the other classrooms with a friend who would assist you in this daunting task. Needless to say, the position of the assistant to the birthday boy was the most sought after. It was never the p...

I dont know what it is with this story that makes me feel more connected to it each time I come across it. I have read it many times, watched it being made into movies, heard accounts of it and even visited the place myself, but every time I am reminded of that horror it feels like I am hearing it for the first time. I transcend into that place, with my family and all my friends around me enjoying their time in the baisakhi mela, some distant voice shouting something on the microphone, hawkers bellowing over the crowd. Everyone is dressed in simple plain white dhoti and kurta, some kids running around the place gleely and their parents running after them. My grandfather holding some kid on his shoulders as he used to hold me when I was a kid. I then see brown colored khakhi claddened men rushing mindlessly through the narrow gates and filing into a line. I see a crooked smile on some white colored male who is twisting his moustache and watching in delight. My blood starts to boil. I se...