Learning Outcome of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children

I have completed the original reading of Rushdie's Midnight's Children. This novel has deeply impacted me and I wanted to share a few lines from the book that resonated with me and changed my personality.

S. Rushdie's MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN

Learning Outcome

Literature has an essential role in shaping our lives and identities. It teaches us valuable lessons about the human experience, helping us to make sense of the world and our place in it. Through literature, we learn about love, loss, struggle, triumph, and how to navigate the complexities of life. It can help to shape our identities, broaden our horizons, and deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. By exposing us to new ideas, experiences, and perspectives, literature helps us become more well-rounded, empathetic, and thoughtful.

After reading Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," I have gained several valuable insights into the nature of reality, life, and identity. 

Some of the most essential takeaways from the text are:

1. The inevitability of death: We all owe death a life, and no dominion is everlasting.
2. The subjectivity of reality: What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same, and reality is a question of perspective.
3. The importance of embracing complexity: Does one error invalidate the entire fabric? A blend of past and present is the glue of personality.
4. The power of choice: A person must sometimes choose what they will see and what they will not.
5. The relationship between action and thought: When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.
6. The lasting impact of the past: What you were is forever who you are, and there is no escape from a past acquaintance.
7. The nature of guilt and sickness: Guilt is a complex matter, and sickness is grief in the body.
8. The duality of triumph and downfall: The moment of one's greatest triumph also contains the seeds of one's final downfall.
9. The importance of self-acceptance: "I am who I am, that's all there is."
10. The transient nature of things: "The clouds will soon roll by," and past and present are divided by an unbridgeable gulf.

By internalizing these insights, I have gained a deeper understanding of the complexities of life and the human experience, appreciate the power of perspective, the importance of self-acceptance, and the lasting impact of past experiences on present identity.

Here are some quotes from the novel which attracted me and helped me to grow more-

The learning outcome of reading Midnight’s Children:

• The ice is always waiting just under the water's skin.
• We all owe death a life.
• You could not see the new city from the old one.
• No dominion is everlasting.
• Unless we're the ones who are wrong... no people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for tomorrow
• What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same
• To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.
• Reality is a question of perspective
• Does one error invalidate the entire fabric?
• Be wise, Imitate the action of the snake. Be secret; strike from the cover of a bush.'
• The moment of one's greatest triumph also contains the seeds of one's final Downfall;
• The Clouds Will Soon Roll By
• I am who I am, that's all there is.
• Past and present, too, are divided by an unbridgeable gulf.
• A blend of past and present is the glue of personality,
• When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy
• No escape from a past acquaintance.
• What you were is forever who you are.
• What-can't-be-cured-must-be-endured
• A person must sometimes choose what he will see and what he will not; look away, look away from there now.
• Sickness is grief in the body
• Guilt is a complex matter

Here is my blog on Midnight's Children- PART I AND PART II (Click on Part I and Part II to visit it)

This will be helpful. Thanks for visiting.

CLASS ACTIVITY- MACHINE TRANSLATION- THE HOME AND THE WORLD

Hello! This blog is posted as an assignment given by Yesha Bhatt Ma’am. It deals with our class activities we did while learning Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘The Home and The World’.

THE HOME AND THE WORLD- CLASS ACTIVITY- TRANSLATION

Activities we did while learning The Home and The World are-

• Introduction to the text by the teacher
• Movie screening of Ghare Baire directed by Satyajit Ray
• Discussion on themes and concepts
• Reading of the original text
• Board work for the reading session
• Class activity- translating own write into Bengali with help of Machine Translation (Google)

Yesha ma’am assigned us a task to write anything in English or any other language and translate it to Bengali with the help of Google.

HERE IS MY ENGLISH WRITE UP

We are all feminists. We are perhaps unknown to the theory but might be playing a significant role in this fight. Girls are taught to be good wife material and boys are grown to be fearful of fragility. Boys are molded to be hard men which develop fragile egos and girls are molded to cater that ego and shrink ownself. Problem of gender prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.

ENGLISH TO BENGALI

আমরা সবাই নারীবাদী। আমরা সম্ভবত তত্ত্বের সাথে অজানা কিন্তু এই লড়াইয়ে একটি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ভূমিকা পালন করতে পারে। মেয়েদেরকে ভাল স্ত্রী হতে শেখানো হয় এবং ছেলেদের ভঙ্গুরতার ভয়ে বড় করা হয়। ছেলেদেরকে শক্ত পুরুষ হিসেবে গড়ে তোলা হয় যা ভঙ্গুর অহংকার বিকাশ করে এবং মেয়েরা সেই অহংকে মেটাতে এবং নিজেকে সঙ্কুচিত করার জন্য তৈরি করা হয়। লিঙ্গ সমস্যা আমরা কেমন আছি তা চেনার চেয়ে আমাদের কেমন হওয়া উচিত তা নির্ধারণ করে।

Āmarā sabā'i nārībādī. Āmarā sambhabata tattbēra sāthē ajānā kintu ē'i laṛā'iẏē ēkaṭi gurutbapūrṇa bhūmikā pālana karatē pārē. Mēẏēdērakē bhāla strī hatē śēkhānō haẏa ēbaṁ chēlēdēra bhaṅguratāra bhaẏē baṛa karā haẏa. Chēlēdērakē śakta puruṣa hisēbē gaṛē tōlā haẏa yā bhaṅgura ahaṅkāra bikāśa karē ēbaṁ mēẏērā sē'i ahaṅkē mēṭātē ēbaṁ nijēkē saṅkucita karāra jan'ya tairi karā haẏa. Liṅga samasyā āmarā kēmana āchi tā cēnāra cēẏē āmādēra kēmana ha'ōẏā ucita tā nirdhāraṇa karē.

We had a wonderful session online with Budhiditya Das. She is an alumni of the Department of English. As we studied a novel by R. Tagore ‘The Home and the World’ and watched a Bengali movie Adaptation (with English subtitles). We got a chance where we could verify that our translation contained the same essence as our writeup or not. Budhaditya ma’am’s mother language is Bengali, our few students read their writing and translation and we realized that machine translation is not at all reliable. Machine disregarded a few sentences or words according to its flexibility. As we are not at all familiar with Bengali language we don't understand the pauses in the language.

Later I also translated my English writing into Hindi and from translated Bengali to Hindi.. Just to check the translation, which translation could catch the better essence of my English write up.

ENGLISH TO HINDI

हम सब नारीवादी हैं। हम शायद सिद्धांत से अनजान हैं लेकिन इस लड़ाई में महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभा सकते हैं। लड़कियों को अच्छी पत्नी बनना सिखाया जाता है और लड़कों को नाजुकता से डरने के लिए बड़ा किया जाता है। लड़कों को कठोर पुरुषों के रूप में ढाला जाता है जो नाजुक अहंकार विकसित करते हैं और लड़कियों को उस अहंकार को पूरा करने और खुद को सिकोड़ने के लिए ढाला जाता है। लिंग की समस्या यह निर्धारित करती है कि हम कैसे हैं, यह पहचानने के बजाय हमें कैसा होना चाहिए।

BENGALI TO HINDI

हम सब नारीवादी हैं। हम शायद सिद्धांत से अपरिचित हैं लेकिन इस लड़ाई में एक महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभा सकते हैं। लड़कियों को अच्छी पत्नी बनना सिखाया जाता है और लड़कों को नाजुकता से डरने के लिए पाला जाता है। लड़कों को सख्त पुरुष बनने के लिए पाला जाता है जो नाजुक अहंकार विकसित करते हैं, और लड़कियों को उस अहंकार को संतुष्ट करने और खुद को सिकोड़ने के लिए उठाया जाता है। जेंडर मुद्दे परिभाषित करते हैं कि हमें क्या होना चाहिए न कि हम क्या हैं।

ham sab naareevaadee hain. ham shaayad siddhaant se aparichit hain lekin is ladaee mein ek mahatvapoorn bhoomika nibha sakate hain. ladakiyon ko achchhee patnee banana sikhaaya jaata hai aur ladakon ko naajukata se darane ke lie paala jaata hai. ladakon ko sakht purush banane ke lie paala jaata hai jo naajuk ahankaar vikasit karate hain, aur ladakiyon ko us ahankaar ko santusht karane aur khud ko sikodane ke lie uthaaya jaata hai. jendar mudde paribhaashit karate hain ki hamen kya hona chaahie na ki ham kya hain.

We ended our session by writing our names in Bengali on the class board.

MY EXPERIENCE

My personal experience of using google translation, the machine translation is not able to catch the punctuation marks and pauses in the sentence of the paragraph. I also realized that machine translation is better programmed in translating Hindi into Bengali than English to Hindi. Many times the essence of the write up gets completely lost. After the talk with an expert we got to know about the perfect pronunciation of the Bengali language. She also told while checking the translations of the students in the class that the machine is many a time ignoring or bluffing some sentences according to its flexibility.

I am grateful to Yesha ma’am for this wonderful learning session.