A NEW LOOK AT AESOP’S FABLES

 

A NEW LOOK AT AESOP’S FABLES  

The Greek story teller Aesop is known for his all-time interesting stories of animal and birds.  The literary name for such stories is fables. Aesop was born at Delphi in Greece in 564 B.C. So great is the charm of his fables that even today they are read and narrated by millions of children and adults all over the world.

            As a literary piece ,a fable is a short fictional tale in prose or verse in which birds and animals are humanized when their stories are narrated with some eternal moral.

According to John S. Morgan, the author of Aesop’s Fables in the Executive Suite (1974) these fables involve animals, although some deal with humans and gods. By clothing men in the guise of animals, it was safe for Aesop to lampoon them.

Centuries before Morgan,   Socrates, the Greek philosopher (c. 470-399 BC) also put some of Aesop’s fables into verse.

            American Polish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) rightly observes  that Aesop’s fables teach lessons both in life and literature that are valid today and will remain so forever. Thousands of years ago he (Aesop) pointed out that no change in system can do away with the aggressor, the liar, the flatterer, the intriguer the exploiter, the parasite, etc.         

          John S. Morgan has presented more than forty fables in the form of limerick. Here is one specimen:

          Four mice told the fifth of their peers:

          “Bell the cat and help stop our fear.”

          The fifth said, “That is nice.

          I sure like your advice.

          But not for me --- get volunteers.

Aesop’s moral of this story is “It’s easier to give advice than to take it.” Morgan changes it into a modern precept for promotion for  people engaged in business, industry, government or education,  and puts it as: “Judge advice from associates for its practicality , impact and soundness.”

For each fable, Morgan gives his own precept for promotion. Here are three more specimens: Fable: The Blind Men and the Elephant: Aesop’s moral: Don’t guess at the whole from the part. Morgan’s precept: Know and appraise as many of the facts and circumstances as possible about the better job you seek. Fable: The Crow and the Pitcher: Aesop’s moral: Use your wits. Morgan’s precept: Innovation spurs advancement.     

          Morgan first gives a very short versified gist of a fable and then gives in detail what  he calls “The Contemporary Illustration.”

          According to available information Morgan’s book is still on sale , and as such it is worthwhile to read it both for pleasure and profit.

                                      *********

11th February 2021                                           G.R.Kanwal  

Capricorn Personality

 

Capricorn Personality

 

Capricorn persons are born between 21^st December and 19^th January.  Their Zodiacal Sign is goat; Zodiacal Lord Saturn, Zodiacal Limb knee and the gem that proves most auspicious is white topaz.

 Persons of this astrological class are advised to marry Cancerians and Virgos.  The former are born between 21^st June and 21^st July and the latter between 22^nd August and 21^st September. For the purpose of friendship and business partnership, they can also opt for Taurus who are born between 21^st April and 20^th May and Libras who are born between 22^nd September and 22^nd October.

 The Zodiacal sign of Capricorn persons is goat.  This animal is undoubtedly unintelligent but industrious and has a passion for climbing high places like mountains and hills.  Its

have a progressive mind.  They set their eyes on topmost positions. To put it pithily, they are ambitious, rather over- ambitious, because they want to soar, their faculties permit them. They turn a blind eye to their limitations.  Manifestation of overzeal is their singular characteristic. Even an ordinary Capricorn dreams of becoming exceptionally rich and climbing high on the occupational ladder.

 Since Capricorn persons try to overreach, it is uncommon that they meet with failures and find their dreams shattered in the long run.  They forget the wisdom ingrained in the oft-quoted proverb: “Cut your coat according to your cloth.”

 Studies show that some Capricorns have innate leadership qualities.  By dint of sheer hard work and perseverance, they surmount all difficulties and obstacles and attain commanding position in business, politics, professional services, armed forces, art and literature.  They are capable of becoming great teachers, thinkers, orators, managers, administrative officers and business tycoons.

 Honesty, hard work, integrity, frankness, optimism and cheerfulness are some other prominent qualities of Capricorn persons.  On the negative side, they can be  spiteful and selfish.

 Capricorns are short-statured, dark-skinned, black-haired but have beautiful and charming eyes.    They enjoy good health and live a long life but are prone to the ailments of lungs, knees, skin and blood. They are advised to avoid physical strain and mental depression.

 The occupations that best suit Capricorn persons are literary, aesthetic, political, medical, legal, managerial, scientific and technological.  They are also cut out for construction work and real estate business. 

  Among the distinguished Capricorns are Lord Curzon, Rudyard Kipling, Gladstone, Joan of Arc, Benjamin Franklin, mathematics wizard Ramanujan, Urdu and Persian poet Asad Ullah Khan Ghalib, Vivekanand, Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya, late Vice-President Krishan Kant, playback singer Mohammed Rafi and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

 The lucky colours of Capricorns are blue and purple; their lucky day is Saturday; lucky figure is 3 and lucky metal lead.  Their lucky months are May and September and the last days of April.

 

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

 

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

 

DISCOVERY OF A SECOND EARTH-LIKE PLANET.  Astronomers from six major centers, including Nasa, Harvard and the University of Colorado suggest that they are on the verge of being able to detect the presence of small, rocky planets, much like our own, around distant stars for the first time.  These planets are considered the most likely havens for extraterrestrial life.

 Dave Latham, a co-author on the paper at Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is reported to have said: “It could happen almost any time now.  We have the technological capability to identify Earth-like planets around the smallest stars even now.”

 Scientists argue that if water is crucial for life, then the most likely sanctuaries will be planets which lie in a hospitable zone, just the right distance from a star, so that it is neither so hot that water evaporates, or so cold that it remains permanently frozen.

 Dr. Dave Latham hopes that missions such as Nasa’s planned Kepler space observatory, which is due to launch in early 2009, would have a high chance of finding Earth-like planets if they are out there.  

 

 

WARMING TEMPERATURE CAUSING STRESS IN ARCTIC.  Experts say the Arctic is under increasing stress from warming temperatures as shrubs colonise the tundra, changing wildlife habitat and local climate conditions.  According to the annual update of the ‘State of the Arctic’ report released recently, sea ice fell well below the previous record, caribou are declining in many areas and permafrost is melting. Sys Richard Spinrad, assistant administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: “The bottom line is we are seeing some rapid changes in the Arctic.”  Winter and spring temperatures were all above average throughout the whole Artic.  This is unusual and looks like the beginning of a signal from global warming.  According to James Overland of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory:” If you go back 100 years, it would be warm in one part of the Arctic and cold in another.  We’re not getting that now.”  Jacqueline A Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in New Hampshire says:” Sea ice cover this year is 23% smaller than the past record low set in 2005 39% less than average.”

 

ROMANCE WITH ROBOTS.  Robots of the future will be so human like that it will be possible to have romantic relations with them.   David Levy who has recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationship, at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, says: “My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalise marriages with robots.  He adds: “There’s a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans….At first robots were used impersonally, in factories where they helped build automobiles, for instance.  Then they were used in offices to deliver mail, or to show visitors around museums, or in homes as vacuum cleaners, such as with the Roomba.  Now you have robot toys, like Sony’s Aibo robot dog, or Tickle’s Elmos, or digital pets. Advanced human-like robots will be tempting.  Many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them. 

 

                                                ---------

LIFE

                                               LIFE

LIFE is a curve --- it is not a straight line --- and the life of nation is even more of a curve.  Logical and straight lines are tangents which go off the curve and if the tangent is too far away from the curve of a nation’s life, then there is conflict and upheaval.---Speech in Parliament, 29 May 1951.

 

WITH all my determination and love democracy, I am not prepared to accept the statement that the largest number of people are always right.---Speech in Parliament, 18 Feb 1953.

 

THESE days the biggest temple and mosque and gurdwara is the place where man works for the good of mankind.  Which place can be greater than this…where thousands and lakhs of men have worked, have shed their blood and sweat and laid down their lives as well? --- Speech at the opening of the Nangal Canal, 8 July 1954. 

 

PEACE in our view is not merely abstention from war but an active and positive approach to international problems and relations, leading, first, to the lessening of the present tension through an attempt to solve our problems by methods of negotiation, and then, to a growing cooperation between nations in various ways – cultural and scientific contacts, increase in trade and commerce, and exchange of ideas, experience and information. --- Statement at the Dynamo Stadium, Moscow, 22 June 1955.

 

A nation cannot progress if it merely imitates its ancestors; what builds a nation is creative, inventive and vital activity. – Speech, Saugor, 30 October 1952.

 

ONE of the tragedies of history is the slowness with which people’s minds adapt themselves to a changing environment….Article, 27 May 1939

 

FRANKNESS hurts often enough, but it is almost always desirable, especially between those who have to work together.---Letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, 24 March 1939.

 

FREEDOM is not a mere matter of political decision or new constitutions, not even a matter of what is more important, that is, economic policy.  It is of the mind and heart and if the mind narrows itself and is befogged and the heart is full of bitterness and hatred, then freedom is absent.---Message on First Anniversary of Independence, 15 August 1948.

 

THE alliance of religion and politics in the shape of communalism is a most dangerous alliance, and it yields the most abnormal kind of illegitimate brood.---Speech in Parliament, 3 April 1948.

 

A university stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for truth.  It stands for the onward even higher objectives.  But if the temple of learning itself becomes a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives, how then will the nation prosper or a people grow in stature?---Speech, Allahabad, 13 December 1947.

 

ANYTHING that is static becomes stagnant and gradually leads to death.  I am all for opening our minds to every kind of knowledge or information that can be obtained.  I am all for free intercourse with the rest of the world; I want not barriers.---Speech, New Delhi, 17 November 1952.

                                                            ----------

ARE You Always Tired

 

 

ARE You Always Tired

           SELF  TEST

 

CONSTANT tiredness is a sign that something is wrong.  A medical check-up is always advisable.  But sometimes our doctor cannot do much to help us because the trouble lies within our minds.

 What then can we do?  The first thing is to find out all we can about the reason for our tiredness.

 Try this test on yourself.  Answer “Yes” or “No” to the questions before you look at the

 

1. Do you live sensibly – healthy, adequate diet, sufficient rest and relaxation, not too much rush?

 

2. Are you reasonably unaware of your body---no constipation, no chronic catarrh nor undue sexual tension?

 

3. Is your home life happy?

 

4. 4. Was your childhood happy?

 

5. Were your parents cheerful and easy going, rather than tense, nervous, anxious, fearful?

 

6. Are you happy in your work?

 

7. Do you think that what you are doing is of value and find it interesting and satisfying?

 

8. Are you having reasonable success in what you want to do?

 

9. Are your ambitions reasonable and practicable?

 

10. Can you carry on after a setback, snub, disappointment, or failure, without a feeling of humiliation or intense resentment?

 

11. Have you set a reasonable value on yourself and your achievement?  Do you think of yourself neither as someone who is the center of attention, nor as a nobody whom no one notices or cares about? 

 

12. Are you satisfied to do your best and to leave it at that?

 

13. Are you.content with a reasonable share of material satisfaction?

 

14. Can you forget your cares and worries when you are on holiday and when you got to bed?

 

15. Are you reasonably free from money worries?

 

16. Do most people welcome your company?

 

17. Do you feel at ease with people, with no feeling that they dislike you, or that you are an outsider, or different in some way?

 

18. Can you make friends?

 

19. Are your relations with people generally conducted with the minimum of friction or strain?

 

20. Are you satisfied with a reasonable amount of love and appreciation without feeling the need to be constantly re-assured of it?

 

Count five marks for every “Yes”.  A score of 40 to 50 is likely to be average.  Aim at 60 plus---which is very good.

 

Your “No” answers will provide the clue to the real reason for your tiredness.  This feeling gathers like a snowball over the years.  It may start, for example, in early childhood by unconsciously acquiring a strained over-anxious attitude from nervous parents.

 

The first step is to recognize what is happening.  Understand how it all started and developed and trace how it is affecting you now so that you can check it in yourself.

 

                                                            ---   ---

WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF A UNIVERSITY?

 

                 WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF A UNIVERSITY?

  This is how Drew Gilpin Faust,60, Harvard University’s first woman president, answers this question.  “The essence of a university is that it is uniquely accountable to the past and to the future --- not simply or even primarily to the present .  Ms Faust who is a Civil War historian and the former head of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at the university, says: “A university is not about results in the next quarter.  It is not even about who a student has become by graduation.  It is about learning moulds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia, learning that shapes the future.  Ms. Faults a Federal Commission on the future of Higher Education empanelled by the Bush administration for its focus on training a competitive work force for the global economy.  She holds while higher education makes a fundamental contribution to training a work force, it should strive to be far more than that.  Repeating the words of W.E.B.Dubois, she says: “Education is not to make men carpenters, so much as to make carpenters men.”  Faust looks at universities as stewards of living tradition and as places for philosophers as well as scientists, where learning and knowledge are pursued in part because they define what has over centuries made us human, not because they can enhance our global competitiveness.  According to Faust those who long for a lost golden age of higher education should think about the very limited population that alleged utopia actually served.  “College used to be restricted to a tiny elite; now it serves the many, not just the few.”

VIOLENT TEACHERS

 

VIOLENT TEACHERS

 

VIOLENT teachers are not a new species.  They have been there ever since schools came into being. Inflicting of severe physical punishment on students  was the teacher’s unchallenged right.  Even the victim’s parents encouraged it.  Rules did not prohibit corporal punishment.  If one reads the school experiences of great writers up to 19^th century, one would find how mercilessly they were beaten by their teachers. Their plight at home was no better, where they were physically hurt by their fathers, uncles and elder brothers.  Children had hardly any rights then.  They were occasionally loved but frequently hit and humiliated for all sorts of aberrations.

 

Since the second quarter of the 20^th century, some laws have been framed to protect the child from severe physical punishment.  In certain countries, only heads of schools are permitted to mildly slap or hit the child with a stick or a rod and put it on record.   Further amendments to these laws are admirably child-friendly.  In most of the countries, corporal punishment is now totally unlawful.  Not only this, even other forms of punishment which upset the self-esteem of the child or demoralize him or cause him emotional or psychic disturbance or deprive him of rightful learning opportunities through expulsion from the classroom or the school have been abolished.  Furthermore, teachers are legally restrained from using derogatory words like “stupid”or “idiot.”

 

However, practice is different from theory.  Teachers, both male and female, continue to use verbal or physical violence on students as a corrective measure.  Sometimes, agitated or enraged or desperate teachers throw their self-control to the winds and thrash the child so brutally that he/she either suffers grievous injury of a disabling nature or loses his/her life. It needs to be probed how teachers with such wild temperaments manage to get employment in schools and remain undetected until on an inauspicious day an unfortunate child falls a prey to their monstrous behaviour.

 

To eliminate the menace of violent teachers, steps will have to be taken at three stages.  Firstly, at the time of admission to schools/colleges of education.  Secondly, at the time of their employment in schools, and thirdly during the probationary period. of their service. Under no circumstances should any violent teacher be allowed to cross the last stage.

 

To put it succinctly, the profession of teaching is meant for those who can act as surrogate mothers or surrogate fathers, not for those who are likely to become demoniac because of their furious and diabolical attitude towards sluggish, negligent, undisciplined or unruly students.

 

                                                            -----