The Colours Within

It is quite nice that Japanese animation movies are being released in India nowadays with increasing regularity. Last week, we went to watch a “musical” anime called “The Colors Within”. It was a simple slice of life anime with fun and funny elements all the way through. Three kids meet over their interest in music and form a band out of the blue and get an opportunity to perform at their school! That’s the simple plot of the movie and the music is quite catchy. Sakura & Snehil haven’t been able to shake it off yet. Specially the rhyming words used in one of the “rock-ing” songs: Amen & Sōmen!

Anyway, more than the music, I got interested in one of the philosophical discourse between the main character (one of the three kids) and her teacher about a prayer. The main character is shown a few times sitting in a church and reciting a prayer asking God to grant her “Serenity to accept things I can’t change”. In the last of such scenes, the teacher notices her and asks her why does she not recite the full prayer! The teacher then completes the prayer (rather the first stanza) with two more lines whose paraphrasing reads “Courage to change things I can” and “Wisdom to know the difference!”.

That third line makes all the difference in that prayer. I feel the first two lines may be used to justify any behaviour but the last one puts the onus back on oneself. Much like it’s my responsibility to complete the post quota on this blog and I have the wisdom to know that I have the courage to get that done.

One more month to go

Art & Craft

Apparently, my daughter’s English teacher has asked all her students to bring a mini dictionary to school. So, as any sensible father would do, I gave my daughter a dictionary from my own childhood. I had used it during my schooldays and is most definitely (at least) 25 years old. Its plastic cover has suffered a lot of wear and tear but its pages feel almost new. So nothing really hinders its usage.

  

She was all right with her new possession and started taking it to school after her Diwali holidays. She must have introduced it as her father’s and her “friends” must have made fun of that. Anyway, after a couple of days, I asked her if she was using it much during her classes and she said yes. But she also revealed that she found a small piece of paper with a sketch on it. She claimed it must be my work and her “friends” must have made fun of that too! I asked her to show it to me and here it is:

I don’t really remember drawing this sketch of a character from Dragon Ball Z. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a Namekian named Dende. But the background problem of Physics / Maths suggests it must be my handiwork! I am not known to have doodled in my classes but then there must have been some specially dull ones or free ones. Nice one, if I say so myself.

Happy Diwali