CommonSenz

Nothing has more strength than dire necessity - said Euripides, the ancient Greek tragedian and to this day his observation holds good. Inconvenience and trouble drive us to find solutions and every conceivable problem gives birth to a necessity. Man invented vehicles to transport themselves between places. With the progress of civilisation came more complexities. Time being of essence, the need to be transported faster has grown each day. New faster modes of transport have been introduced. With greater number of vehicles being added each day to the roads, the pressure on roads have increased and now it has reached a stage where it has become counter-productive. There are roads, freeways, flyovers and there are a plethora of vehicles. The end result is that people still find it extremely difficult to reach their destination on time. Bumper to bumper traffic jams have undone all that had been achieved as people are still stuck with the necessity to be transported faster. As is t

This happened when we were in the 10 th standard at school. Whenever I recall the incident, I have a quiet chuckle.   By ‘we’, I mean, my classmates, Rahul and Anamitra and me. Thrice a week we walked to our tutor for tackling an enigma called mathematics, the single most fear invoking subject for us. It was actually a desperate attempt to master the subject and thereby avoid the predicament of being branded as “mathematics failed” students. This collective resolve united us in activity and spirit. On the way, there was a sweet shop which was kind of avant-garde as it stocked sweets which were not available elsewhere in the small town. It was a routine for us to stop at the shop and try the different types of enticing sweets displayed in glass-covered display counters. While having sweets, we discussed anything from cricket to other interesting things that caught our fancy, and of course the girls in our class. There was one particular girl, Madhuchanda, who though small and pet