There are three good reasons to be a teacher - June, July, and August :)

A good teacher is a master of simplification and an enemy of simplism. ~Louis A. Berman

I was thinking about teachers the other day and I realized I have had only a few great teachers who have left their mark on me. Since I have always been a ‘problem’ student, the single qualification for this role was the ability to grab my attention and get me interested enough to learn.

No matter what I may say about my mother, one of her greatest accomplishments is that of being a teacher. My mom has always had an amazing way about her to make people sit up and pay attention. As the fresh batches of students pile in each new academic year, anticipating the challenges ahead in finding something novel for every student always puts a smile on her face.

More than thirty years of being a teacher couldn’t have been easy or fun. However, if you asked her, she would say teaching scores of children the lofty principles of math and science, were the best days of her life. And they ain’t over yet. To my mother, teaching is a gift and an addiction. It gives meaning to her life and defines her. She would go into her grave, happily teaching.

She is one of those few, rare people to whom teaching isn’t a job but a vocation. If you had spoken to any of her students while they were in her class, they would tell you she was the most horrible teacher on the planet who lived to torture her students. Talk to them ten years later and she’s one of the few teachers they remember and are eternally grateful for.

A cross-eyed teacher can keep twice the number of children in order than any other, because the pupils do not know who she's looking at - Anonymous

Monsters Among Us

When one hears of serial killers, one thinks of a good plot in a movie or a juicy plot in a book. One thinks of it as a gruesome phenomenon happening far, far, and far away. When it comes to serial killers, we adopt an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ policy. Sure, when the chilling news first hits, we sympathize with the victims and are shocked at the inhumanity of the killers, but we do all this from afar. Because no one expects a killer so close to them, no one expects one to emerge from their own backyard.

"Every man to his own tastes. Mine is for corpses." - Henri Blot

I doubt any of the Londoners knew or suspected that a modern Jack the Ripper was brewing in their midst. He was a graduate student who was studying the work of serial killers. The police have said he bludgeoned his victims. These murders seem to have links to the standard MO of a number of serial killers, the most prominent being Jack the Ripper. It’s chilling and scary to think that somebody would be so entranced by the work of a murderer that they would carve out a similar legacy for themselves in the most gruesome Hall of Fame.


Once again in Bombay, a serial killer has surfaced. The police suspect one man is behind three murders that took place in Bombay's Kurla area over the last five months. The victims were all young girls, who were raped before being killed. It takes the lowest scum of the earth to prey of defenseless, little girls and kill them. It takes the worst kind of monster to snuff out an innocent’s life on a mere whim of lust or for game.

The Bombay serial killer seems to strike on the sixth of every month since February, taunting the Bombay police. With a death toll of three young, innocent girls, the police are desperate to find him. They launched their biggest manhunt for serial rapist and killer to date. They have announced Rs 2.5 lakh reward for information on the serial killer and have released a sketch to the public. Let’s pray he’s caught before the horrors continue and another life is taken.