LitAide

This story is about a young prodigy of music, who has the disability of deafness. Evelyn Glennie's loss of hearing couldn't stop her from achieving various feat in a field in which one's oral and auditory prowess is vital. She was not born with this disability, it was gradual. Initially, she was reluctant to share it with her parents, but when her grades were falling down, she finally told them.  It was a jolt to everyone including herself. Her parents were advised to send her to Special schools for the deaf and get her hearing aids. It was not in her nature to give up that easily. Her interest in music was immense. Through a chance incident in which she played a xylophone and a percussionist backing her up, she found a way to sense the drum beating, she could sense its vibrations. Her enhanced senses due to loss of one, aided her different body parts to grasp various notes.  "I had learnt to open my mind and body to sounds and vibrations" She received acclaim due...

"A Gift of Chappals" is an excerpt from a novella (a short novel) by Vasantha Surya, a writer, translator, poet, and journalist. This short story is about the playful activities of a group of cousins:- Mridu, Lalli, Ravi and Meena. Mridu, a young girl resided in Madras (present-day Chennai) with her Tapi (grandmother) and Thatha (grandfather). She visited her aunt, Rukku Manni's house and was welcomed there by her cousins, Lalli, Ravi and Meena. In the beginning, when they entered their house, Mridu took off her slippers unknowingly near old and dusty grey slippers. These slippers are important as we will see later. The cousins were excited as they found a kitten which was the centre of attraction for them. They laid the cat inside a torn football and fed it milk stolen from the kitchen in a coconut shell. Interestingly, they named it "Mahendraverma Pallava Poonai", in short, "M.P Poonai", after the emblematic cat belonging to the Pallava empire. Sudde...

"Wind" is written by Subramania Bharti, a prominent Tamil poet, journalist, and social reformer who played a key role in India's independence movement. In this poem, the poet presents the destroying nature of wind, how it threatens man-made creations, wrecking havoc in our lives. It makes fun of us for our frailty and weakness. The poet asks us to be wind's friend by becoming resilient. The wind respects those who are themselves strong, and who can build lasting things. The poet emphasizes the word "frail" by creating alliterative effect as this weakness is detested by the wind:  Frail crumbling houses, crumbling doors, crumbling rafters, crumbling wood, crumbling bodies, crumbling lives, crumbling hearts Our heart should be stoic to all disasters. According to the narrator, the wind tests our strength as he emphasizes this with  the metaphor of fire. If we are weak like a fluttering flame, the wind will blow it out. But if we are fiery and vigorous like st...