I looked up at the ceiling of a tasteful South Indian restaurant off the Kanchipuram-Vellore highway. On the glass-and-brick tiled ceiling, each glass tile had been decorated differently. While one showed paisleys, the other had delicate peacock motifs. Only the rich earth colours bound these tiles together in some commonality.
I was hard put to decide which one was the best of all: until I shook off my habit of comparing things with each other. Why should I rank them? Each tile was so beautiful in itself!

It’s all very well to rank toothpastes in the order of taste, a purely subjective listing. But to slot human beings, particularly children: doesn’t it jar? It’s like telling one child: “You are half as smart as that other child!” or “You write twice as well as this child!”

There goes the natural drive of both children: for each will henceforth be spurred by (our implanted motive of) constantly judging him/herself with respect to another.

I was working with a group of teachers who teach underserved children, and many of these teachers are themselves from poor backgrounds.

One teacher confessed that he had not gone to school until he was ten years old, as he was a postman’s son and could not afford it. When he showed up in school at the age of ten, his headmaster took him straightaway into Class III, saying he could not possibly take such a tall boy into kindergarten!

And he was now a teacher! As if this wasn’t moving enough, I felt my hair stand on end when I heard this teacher recite a poem of Wordsworth. His diction, accent and delivery would have shamed a Convent educated boy.

Thank heaven I didn’t rank him at the start of the workshop: for I would have surely placed him at the tail end of the class, if I had done so!

Ranks close doors which we forget are not really locked.

That's why it's best not to even try turning that handle: for how else can we sit back and enjoy the variety of those numerous coloured glass tiles?