What are words worth?

As we travel into town on an uncharacteristically quiet Sunday evening, the Bangalore roads are relatively traffic free, but the driver of the Meru cab decides to take me by the "easy route" where we will drive uninterrupted by traffic lights. He swings off the four lane highway into a quiet side street that seems to go on and on in the darkness, and I am beginning to wonder if I should have insisted on the bright lights of the main road. But just as my anxiety is beginning to take a dangerous turn, he points out to me a looming wall on my left. It is very high, and soon we come to a pair of massive gates that seem to hide something very important inside. "That's YSR's son's house," the driver notes. "Jagan. That's where he stays when he comes to Bangalore. He owns this whole stretch of land." I made suitably amazed-disbelieving-indignant sounding noises. Just enough to make him go on. "I once took a passenger in there, he was a guest...

Sometimes, when the students in my writing class toil over their assignment (though toil may be an extreme description of the level of engagement, sometimes!), I decide to take a mental walk with my own words. A couple of weeks ago, this is what resulted: You walk in, the world on your shoulders and in the undependable ink of the whiteboard marker, you're ready to deliver it, spell it out, deconstruct and analyze it, so that they can pick up the pieces and fit them into a jigsaw of their own desires and motivations (parentally fed/denied/rebelled against). There are alternative words for ambition that escape you, as your gaze flits from furrowed brow to glazed eye to drumming fingers and snapping ball point pens. Perhaps that's too strong a description for this pressure-- a heavy, blanketing, blinkering cloak-- they wear to the classroom. The world stays on my shoulder but it feels different, lighter, made less serious by the skeptical minds th...