17 June 2021

As BBC World continues to be one of my favourite TV channels, I happened to view a program entitled 'The Troubles With Naipaul' Episode 2 this evening as I was relishing my lime juice. It was a program featuring V S Naipaul, a popular Trinidadian writer of Indian ancestry. He won the English Literature Nobel Prize for his 'A house for Mr Biswas'.

Since my school days, I have been fascinated by novels written by Naipaul, Mark Twain, Wole Soyinka etc. as their works were like reading history books. I think that to a large extent, their works give an unbiased account of the complexities and difficulties associated  with people who leave their home countries to distant lands as labourers. (My interest in this area got ignited by a lesson entitled 'Tom whitewashes the fence' when studying in my school final class back in 1966 when I was 15 years old).

Although like in any work, there are unacceptable  ideas, these works are okay to have some glimpse of history.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

My photo
Chennai, Tamilnadu, India
I am a retired K-12 Education Management Professional. I have worked at different levels in K-12 school systems, textbook publishing, elearning and Education NGOs. I have held memberships in The Association for Science Education (UK), American Association of Physics Teachers and The Malaysian Institute of Physics. I hold a 1st class B Sc Degree in Physics followed by B Ed [English and Physical Science] and M A [Childcare and Education] degrees. My published works include 59 articles in teacher development magazines in India and the US and a book entitled `Creative Classrooms and Child Friendly Schools' (listed in Amazon). This book is almost an anecdotal account of my professional experience in six countries (including Cambodia where I worked as Technical Adviser to the Ministry of Education, Youth And Sports). I served as mentor in the Certificate of Teaching Mastery Program offered by Teachers Without Borders.