OOPS!

Talk about whimsicality!

While fiddling around with the comments list on my blogger control panel I accidentally deleted all the more recent comments there.

I am, of course, deeply dismayed. My deepest apologies to all who had written those comments. Please don't stop writing, and I promise not to be so silly ever again...

Taking a break

I have written sixty times on this blog this year. Over that same time, the followership has risen a bit, and so has the number of visits. The figures are not bad, but I would have been happy to have more followers, more visits and more comments. I have this suspicion that not enough of the readers of my other blog visit this one frequently. I do, do hope that they would give it a try. As I have said before, it offers a different flavour, and you would get a more well-rounded mental picture of me if you read both. I have said that this is not merely a fun blog, but one dedicated to whimsy. That is a much broader, deeper idea: so I write about everything from noses to mobile mania to mangled English and pretty doctors and what have you, and I expect my readers not only to smile with me but muse along, too, and perchance to jerk awake and revise some of their long-fixed opinions now and then…

Anyway, I shall take a break for a while. Sixty times a year is quite a bit; many blog-writers I know cannot write more than two or three times, unless they are writing fatuous nonsense three times every day. Take time to explore older posts on this blog, and comment on some of them, as Rashmi has done recently. Good critical commentary and suggestions will of course be welcome, too. Some of you might discover, if you give it time, that it grows on you, even if I say it myself. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas.

No 'chat-ting'!

My older ex-students often tell me they cannot access me by chat on gmail, or even look up my blogs, because, though they are stuck before computers all day long, most colleges and offices - out of sheer exasperation with how much employees tend to waste company time on the net if left to their own devices, I'm sure - have blocked out all sorts of facilities, including blogs and sites like Facebook and orkut.

This morning one old boy told me something that really takes the cake. Apparently the computers in his workplace are loaded with some sort of filtering program that blocks out anything that has the word (or wordlet) '-chat' in it. As a result, he said, he cannot even look me up by name on Google Search (I being a Chatterjee)! The same goes for Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay...

A great speech mangled

In a cartoon titled 'Gaurav' in The Telegraph today, the smart young teenage hero is thrilled to see that The History Channel on TV has dubbed Dr. Martin Luther King jr's famous speech, not into Hindi but Indian English, so that the great man seems to be saying "I'm having a dream that one of the days, my baba-logs, you know, will not be judged by skin and all, yeah? But by their good character only..."

For the benefit of the mystified, the relevant line in the original speech was I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 

The Devil's Dictionary

I first came across Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's dictionary when I was in high school, and it has never ceased to enthrall with its wicked wit. Here, for instance, are three of Bierce's idiosyncratic definitions:

Beggar: One who has relied on the assistance of friends.

Cannon: An instrument used for the rectification of national boundaries.

Belladonna: In Italian, a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential similarity of the two languages.

And if you think that Bierce was petty enough to be a misogynist, here's another:

Brute: see Husband.

Inglis as she is spoked...

I was recently reading the blog of a (now very common type of) smart aleck who was lecturing the world about how English is such a wonderfully fluid and flexible language, how its real charm lies in the way users keep on modifying it 'creatively', and how those who insist on some standards are pitiable stick in the muds at best, and no better than racists or sexists at worst.

Now I have written about this tendency before – this inability to believe that there can be standards higher than one’s own, this innate inability to respect people who are better than oneself (which might persuade one to try and become slowly better at doing things; that’s the only way people can improve – whether it is at math or music or cooking or anything else), this pride in semi-literacy and justifying one’s incompetence at expressing oneself well with the argument that anything goes, after all, as long as one can somehow get one’s thoughts across (you can check previous posts here, such as Indlish, Job application goof-ups and many more). What does it matter if I write 'grass eats cow' instead of  'a cow eats grass', really (what does it matter if instead of eating off a clean plate I use one on which the cat has just relieved itself)?

The effect of this pernicious (and increasingly popular, naturally, in an age when anything that requires talent, mental discipline and sustained effort is anathema, an age when Mozart and Lady Gaga can be called musicians in the same breath) doctrine is that people expect to get away with anything at all. A student writing ‘Portia had a wonderful father who wanted to marry her even after his death’ expects so, the teacher who says ‘I have two daughters and both are girls’ does so, the restaurant manager who writes a sign saying ‘The water in this restaurant has been personally passed by the manager’ does so, the barman who warns in a notice that ‘Ladies are advised not to have children in the bar’ does so, the leave applicant at the office who writes ‘My wife is ill and I am the only husband at home’ does so, the tourist who exults over how cheap the ‘fooding’ is in the hotel he has found does so, the idiot who writes Jibananda Das when he means Jibanananda Das on his blog and does not notice the mistake in a whole year does so…I remember William Safire the famous American newspaper columnist sighing that there was a time when Americans could speak instead of snorting and grunting like cave-men and worse. And it is that breed of American (I know many who are better) who are spreading the virus of linguistic philistinism worldwide, among all those who identify the worst of everything American with ‘smartness’ and modernity (it's cool to wear shorts of the kind that keep half your backside open to public view...)

The fact that most ‘educated’ people these days are illiterate except when they are dealing with numbers, that most PhDs and MBAs would swoon if I gave them a comprehension exercise from P.G. Wodehouse, does not automatically give them a right to impose their illiteracy upon those who know better. And to those who claim that ‘everybody’ is doing it, my retort is that you don’t know everybody; try consorting with your betters rather than your peers. Finally, I am not  stuck in the days of Shakespeare or John Ruskin: even among the best and most successful  contemporary writers, grammar, spelling, syntax,  idiom and careful choice of words are just as sacrosanct as ever – as you could check out with J.K. Rowling, Jeffrey Archer, Stephen King, John le Carre, John Grisham, or even Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Jhumpa Lahiri.

But that is, of course, only if you can do something as hard and ‘boring’ as reading books… I forget myself! Of course most educated people deal only with the likes of Chinamen selling umbrellas and electronic toys, and therefore need no more English than is required to compose blurbs on packaging cartons (ever read that kind of 'English'?)

And by the way, I direct the same sneer at all those Bengalis who cannot speak or write three successive whole sentences in chaste Bangla without lapsing into English or Hindi slang. In West Bengal, at least, that accounts for 998 ‘educated’ folks out of every thousand now. They say 'ami car-ta niye season flower shopping korte jachchhi', and are very proud of it. Anyways, they're absolutely awsum, lol! (OMG, wasn't that the coolest line I writed here, dude?)

Did I tell you about my new gizmo/junket?

My good young friend Sumitha had once written to me via email about why she hates so-called social networking sites: most people, she said, merely put up all kinds of pictures and drop all kinds of names just to draw attention desperately to themselves: look, I have been there, done that, I hobnob with so many big noises, and so forth. It disgusts me too, and I have seen the same tendency on people’s blogs, and even in emails they send to me: they are not in the least interested in other people, they only want to talk about themselves and their piddling ‘achievements’ and acquisitions. We were brought up in an ambience where we were told only crass and ‘uneducated’ people do that sort of thing: now it’s spread like an epidemic. It isn’t civilized to talk about such things; it’s best not to mention them at all unless absolutely necessary in the context. It only tells others you suffer from great insecurity combined with a bloated ego, and if you are ‘admired’ for that, it’s only by people who are just as crass and silly as you are (Ooh, she’s got a chauffeur/ a new laptop/ a new hairdo!).

Of course there are people about whose travels and houses and cars and wines I love to hear – but that’s not only because they are close friends but I know that showing off is the last thing on their minds; all they want is to share with me the kind of stories I like to hear. Alas, their numbers are pitifully small.

And then there are people who are so dull that it never occurs to them that their vaunting may sound offensive and stupid: when it is pointed out to them, they privately take offence, and sometimes get back to you with lame apologies – ‘That’s not what I meant…’ Why on earth don’t people reflect a bit about how others might react to what they say before saying it?

Fast life

I normally pay all my bills within a few days of receiving them, but last month, through an oversight, the phone bill was forgotten till almost the last moment. The 29th of the month is apparently the last date for paying this sort of bill without a fine. The payment office is virtually next door, so I dropped in twice, on the mornings of both the 28th and 29th, and came away scared by the long queues - it would have entailed standing for an hour at least. 

This morning I went again, and there was nobody else, so it took me less than a minute to get the job done. The price - a fine of ten rupees.

There are so many hundreds of people around who can both afford to and are quite comfortable with standing in long queues for hours on end so that they might not have to pay ten rupees extra. These people are all more than well-off, it goes without saying - the ruling party calls this a rich man's neighbourhood! - and they all sing in chorus at the appropriate places about how terribly busy they are, what a fast life this has become...

Creativity zindabad!

In a very recent ad, a bank promises to come to your house in case you have such a bad stomach upset that you can hardly leave the loo for more than a few minutes at a time (I suppose it goes without saying that if you are in really bad shape, the man from the bank wouldn't mind dealing with you right there in the loo).

I'm sure that when young people these days talk about advertising being a creative art form, this is the sort of thing they have in mind...

(If you are interested, you can see that particular ad any weeknight on Kaun Banega Crorepati, courtesy Sony Channel).

Smart kids

I asked a fourteen-year old in class whether he had done his homework, and if not, why not. His reply, almost in one breath, was 'I remembered, Sir... I forgot, Sir!'

Talk about coherence and articulateness.

Holding my breath

There's hardly 360 days left for Durga pujo. Yippee...!

The things we value

I borrowed a hammer from a very elderly neighbour, and he was almost frantic that I might forget to return it before going away on a three-day trip (rest assured he never uses the hammer himself; he calls in a mechanic, who always comes with the full bag of tools).

I had also borrowed a certain book from him that I had seen on his shelf, and  returned it recently - almost a whole year after. Believe it or not, he had entirely forgotten about it.

Going, going, gone

For the last two months and more, the local media, both print and electronic, have been screaming their heads off telling us night and day just how many days are left for the pujo bedlam to begin.

It has just occurred to me that the long wait is almost over. In a fortnight from today, there will be blessed relief again...

Agony uncle

I quote from the regular pullout section titled aami in Bartaman newspaper, Saturday 25^th September 2010 edition, p.2. It is the veteran journalist-turned personal counsellor Ranjan Bandopadhyay giving advice to a young married woman.

The lady writes (and I translate): My husband is a glutton. When I went around with him in the days before our marriage, he came across as smart and stylish, and a good conversationalist too. Within a few months of marriage, I discovered that the real person is very different. He has rustic habits of eating and sleeping. He snores, and eats like anything. He is not even clean in his person. Sad to say, my mother-in-law supports him in all his bad habits. Believe it or not, such a crude man still manages to earn a large pay-packet. That’s all he understands, in fact: money. But money alone cannot make for happiness, can it? How can I adjust with a man like that all my life?

The counsellor replies: Had you lived together before marriage, you would have at least found out in time that he snores in his sleep. I think you are rather foolish. That same uncouth person seemed smart, stylish and good to talk to before marriage? And now he has turned out to be dirty, unmannerly and crude? Your mind and eye are both given to illusion: what looks like a butterfly to you from afar becomes a bat when it comes close. Anyway, your husband has one positive quality at least – he makes good money. I don’t think there’s a dearth of love (prem) in this world; money can buy it for you. Use your husband’s money cleverly; your way is clear. You might soon emerge as a high-flying socialite. Poets, philosophers and artists will queue up at your door as friends, lovers and sycophants to drive away your loneliness.’

'I'm good'?

As is my wont, I have been wondering about which way the English language is going. Just about every moron thinks 'anyways' is a vast improvement on 'anyway', and the moment they go to college they are taught that in order to sound cool and with it you have to write 'I'll revert to you' instead of 'I'll reply to you', or even 'I'll get back to you' (if only they knew what a dictionary was, and could summon up the energy to check what 'revert' really means!). And that it's OK and cool to sign off with just 'Best' (best what? Will their fingers drop off if they write 'With best wishes'? ... mine haven't yet). 

Recently I felt like throwing up when someone said in an email 'I hope you're doing good'. For the love of God, doing good is supposed to mean doing something of some use to others, as in giving alms; if I am feeling fine, I ought to say 'I'm fine/doing well' or 'I'm alright' or 'I'm okay', even, and only an arrogant boor will declare to the world 'I'm good'!

'aajkaal competition-er joog'...

I keep hearing parents and children mourning/gushing about all the 'competition' around us these days, in every sphere of life. I guess they are right: except in the sphere of serious learning, there seems to be competition everywhere - to shop more, to flaunt more, to shout more, to abuse more, to pollute more, and what have you. On a TV channel called Sangeet Bangla today, they have just announced a competition about who can narrate the best story about prem kora (having a love affair, but the flavour of the Bangla cannot be quite captured in English) this pujo season. God bless them all!

Atithi devo bhavo!

I am thrilled to bits by the latest public interest advertisement by Aamir Khan on TV, where he reminds us that though we are exulting over how quickly we are becoming a major player as a nation on the world's stage, we had better change some of our not-so-edifying habits fast if we want to improve our global image, culturally speaking: habits like spitting right and left in public, littering everywhere, and training our little boys to do their soo-soo just about wherever their mummies please. A short while ago, Aamir was exhorting us not to be rude to foreign tourists, or try compulsively to cheat them at every turn. Tellingly, these ads underscore the fact that most certainly it is not just poor and illiterate Indians who indulge in such uncouth and unsocial behaviour. 

Kudos to Aamir. I hope many more people will listen to him than to me. I hate to live with the knowledge that I live in a country with some of the worst public manners in the world, despite pretending that most of us are bhadralok...

New age teachers

In our day, teachers used to tell us to study hard all through the term, so that we could ease up on the day before the examinations were due to begin: that, they said, was the key to doing well. Not that all of us (or even most of us) listened, but that is how we were advised.

Times have changed, and so have teachers, except, I suppose, for a few stick-in-the-muds like me. Recently the Principal of a leading school advised the school assembly to start studying as 'the exams were approaching'. The said exams were supposed to begin the next day.

Just one day's harvest

Glancing through just two newspapers this morning, I found

·        Pantene advertising a ‘mystery’ shampoo,

·        Rock band U2 has been fined by civic authorities in Spain for rehearsing ‘too loudly’,

·        One man has killed his wife for giving birth to a girl,

·        Another has killed his daughter for having too many boyfriends,

·        Some judges have been caught cheating in a law examination they were taking,

·        A greedy and stupid college-goer who had bought 12 mobile phone SIM cards one after another when they were going cheap is now in trouble because the service provider had allotted 103 more numbers to her without her knowledge.

Aren’t people absolutely wonderful?

Try this

Zinsser is a scholarly author, but here he writes in a lighter vein.

Guess?

This very morning, somewhere in my little town, I saw a man's name on his post-box:

G.B. Shaw.

... and if you keep an eye on the papers, you will see a company which makes iron-work furniture calls itself Irony.  There is also yet another business group which goes by the name of Weird Industries Limited.  Check the link: I kid you not. If my memory serves me rightly, the chief minister of this state (supposedly an educated man) did not baulk at inaugurating one of their new projects a while ago.

Missing Jerome K. Jerome

One important characteristic of the humorist is that he can see weird inconsistencies between what people say and what they do, and he chooses to laugh over them rather than to curse or cry. If he writes or talks about it, he does so in the hope that others will share his way of looking at things, and find things to laugh about too. He sees, for instance, that the more ‘educated’ people become, the more they cannot spell or write whole sentences grammatically (the number of my pupils who write catched and teached and seeked and ‘I didn’t knew’ after ten years in school is rising rapidly). And that people put on amulets with ‘powerful charms’ so that they can get into engineering college. That the fewer friends we have, the more desperate we become to add to our list of friends on Facebook. And the lazier people get, the more they complain (or exult!) about being busy. Or that wants multiply much faster than incomes, so the richer people get, the more unhappy they become.

The fact that humorists are in such short supply augurs ill for mankind. We are taking ourselves too seriously, and our skins are getting ever thinner, so maybe we dislike those who make fun of us. Besides, unlike our ancestors, maybe we are all so sure that we are perfect that we cannot bear to have anybody point out our faults to us (humorists have usually been keen on reform). So maybe closet comedians are lying low, since they don’t enjoy the prospect of being pilloried or burnt at the stake?

Why hasn’t another book like Three Men in a Boat been written in more than a hundred years?

Learn English, the Indian way

I don't think I need to say anything.

Thanks for voting

Time's up. Thanks to all of you for voting. Pity that the number wasn't larger, though.

Seventy five percent said they found the blog hugely entertaining: that makes me happy. The six who said they find it only mildly entertaining might write in to say what, in their opinion, would make it more enjoyable to them. Just please let me know your names, though: I don't set store by anonymous comments.

To the few who said they don't enjoy this blog at all, I am sorry that my tastes don't match yours. Please don't visit again!

Whodunnit

In the aftermath of the recent train accident at Sainthia station, West Bengal, TV channels and newspapers, as is their wont, are inundating the public with all kinds of theories, more or less bizarre, about what could have gone wrong. Here is one of them. 

Heaven knows what official inquiries will eventually reveal (if anything at all - such inquiries are much better known for covering up after a mess than otherwise), but for the present, I think, the moral of the story is that you shouldn't accept tea from strangers, especially in the middle of the night! Even more especially, if you happen to be driving a train. It's not good for you.

MLAs in helmets

My newspaper says (The Telegraph, 13th July, p. 3) that some MLAs in the Karnataka Assembly have gone to attend meetings protected by helmets, claiming they are afraid of being manhandled by some of their colleagues in the ruling party.

Parliamentary politics has always seen some degree of rough and tumble: that is supposed to be inseparable from full freedom of expression. They banned the induction of arms of any kind inside the sacred precincts long ago so that some people's representatives didn't get carried away in their enthusiasm to make their point into murdering some of their peers. Now, it seems, even bare hands and legs have started posing sufficient menace: we might soon hear about MPs and MLAs arriving to serve the people in full body armour. Who says democracy isn't flourishing in India?

Never just right

In this country, they keep telling you till long after you start sleeping alone that you are 'too young' for certain things - consorting with the opposite sex, for instance, or experimenting with drugs (even of the very mild sorts) - and then, before you know what, you are suddenly 'too old' for everything, except perhaps politics. Just when are we ever the right age?

This is the reason why, though I make fun of such people too, I feel a sneaking sympathy for both little boys who try very hard (by growing beards and jauntily perching cigarettes at the corners of their mouths) to look grown-up, and old geezers who dress up like young rakes in the desperate hope that they might look the 'right age' despite their swelling midriffs and their bald pates and their wheeziness. But honestly, is most of life supposed to be yearning to grow up and then lamenting that the 'right age' is past forever? How sad.

Odd choice!

Why is it that these days both on the streets and in the newspapers and fashion magazines one only gets a choice between looking at over-dressed women who resemble misshapen mountains of lard and those who look like well-oiled lizards (size zero, my daughter says they are called, just skin stretched tight over bags of bones sticking out at all sorts of odd places) who have little to cover themselves with?

Has anybody else noticed?

The world of Don Camillo

They make neither priests nor humorists the way they used to.

That was the thought that kept passing again and again through my mind as I was savouring a set of Don Camillo books that Shilpi had very kindly sent over all the way from the United States.

I shall not write much about either the irrepressible village priest Don Camillo (and his eternal friend-cum-bête noir Peppone) or about his creator, Giovanni Guareschi: a google search, I have checked, will yield enough to whet the curiosity of any real reader/connoisseur of humour, and then the books are waiting. All I want to say here is that I am grateful to an old boy for having reminded me of the books (which, thanks to yet another great Catholic priest – Father Pierre Yves Gilson – I have had the privilege to know, I enjoyed in full measure long ago, when I looked after the library in St. Xavier’s School, Durgapur. Another time, another place…)

Earthy, credible, wicked, whimsical, unfailingly imaginative, loveable, and yet also informed, thoughtful, large-hearted, moving and memorable. I rarely use so many adjectives at one go to describe anything, but they all fit in admirably in this case.

In one sense, the stories are period pieces now, as much as those of Dickens are. Yet – as all good books should be – their essential appeal is eternal. Nothing about these stories is more endearing than the little candid conversations that Don Camillo has with his mentor on the cross. I often reflect that certain writers – Tolstoy, Dickens, Ruskin, Chesterton, Eliot and Guareschi among them – have done far more for Christianity than any flesh and blood priest has ever done. A pity that the Vatican has not always done them justice.

Try this link if you like.

Google instead of brains?

A young and with-it person was complaining about why it is necessary to memorise so many things in order to become educated - all sorts of things from multiplication tables to dates in history to names of so many body parts to rivers and mountains and oceans and what not: 'After all, if there's anything you want to know you can always google it, can't you?'

I didn't see any point in arguing, so I agreed that he was probably right. So in the kind of future he has in mind, I said, doctors and lawyers and other people who used to be called 'knowledge workers' would simply google everything whenever people came to them for advice and help. And teachers, too: already I can see that teachers (at least in schools and colleges) are not really expected to know anything. And I am sure, I said, that people would gladly pay them hefty fees for using google to tell them what they needed to know.

The boy at least had enough intelligence to look abashed. But how much longer, I wonder?

Politically incorrect!

·        Brats need the cane, not fancy therapists (but of course, monsters shouldn’t masquerade as teachers, either).

·        Women can’t have their cake and eat it too. (On those terms, few would want to be 'liberated').

·        The world owes no human a living (so out of work ‘intellectuals’ shouldn’t whine).

·        There are too many scientists around these days. They add much more to confusion than to illumination. They’d have been better employed as taxi-drivers.

·        The problem with education today is that too many lazy people want to make a good living out of it, and too many unwilling people have been pushed up to high school and college, when they should have been sent out to make their own living.

·        Don’t waste your time and money on a book or movie or game until the hype has quite died away.

·        Old wisdom: a team of doctors can be deadlier than a team of hired assassins.

·        Things are badly out of kilter when criminals get more social attention and sympathy than their victims.

·        Then  again, there are too many ‘victims’ around these days: constructing their victimhood is a large-scale industry. Nobody has to be good just because it’s a woman, or a Hindu, or Black, or very young or very old or whatever.

·        We cannot all simultaneously claim to be good people and lament that corruption is taking the country to the dogs.

·        If you have too many friends, there’s probably a big emptiness inside you.

·        The more the jargon, the less the content – that’s an ironclad rule.

·        When a journo or lawyer offers lessons in morality, run. Give me politicians any time.

·        There are four kinds of people in this world: those who have nothing to eat, those who are too busy to eat, those who live lifelong as parasites, and those who have stepped off the treadmill.

·        It’s a good sign if dogs and children like you (but beware – they liked Hitler, too!).

Suhel Seth

was my contemporary (a year or two senior, I think) at Jadavpur University. Even in those days he had a wacky and often naughty sense of humour, as he widely publicised in the hand-written magazine titled Jabberwocky that he edited. Since then he has gone places, and done a lot of things in his time.

I am writing this post just to say I love his page called 'Survival Strategies' that is published every Sunday in the magazine titled 'Graphiti' that comes with The Telegraph. Maybe it's because I have a subliminal wish to be wickedly in-your-face like that myself, if only I had not lived in a 19th-century village, where they all expect teachers to be boring and goody-goody stuffed shirts, never doing anything other than churning notes and collecting fees, for fear of 'what they will say'....! Take a look at the page yourself to see what I am talking about. (You can even follow his page on Facebook. Just type 'Survival strategies Suhel Seth' in the search box).

God willing, I'll do something of the sort myself, when I am old enough, and no longer have to give a damn.

Breathtaking put-downs

I just read Shilpi's blogpost, and the last put-down was superb: the man says to the woman 'I didn't give up my seat for you because you are a lady, ma'am, I did it because I am a gentleman'!

Such magnificent put-downs are necessary to put the rude and the uncouth back in their proper place, and even to make nice people think and re-examine their attitudes towards a lot of things. It reminds me of the prince accosting one John Tower, and quite gratuitously insulting him in public with the remark: 'Hello, Tower. I hear you are the worst blackguard in Liverpool?'. Tower bows to the ground and says, 'I hope your Highness has not come to take my reputation away!' 

And then there was M.K. Gandhi after he had become famous as the Mahatma, who was always good for innocent-sounding but wicked ripostes. When asked what he thought about western civilization, he simply said 'It would be a good idea'. It takes my breath away...

Indlish

Remember me? I am Professor Seth.

Once I taught you geography. Now

I am retired, though my health is good.

My wife died some years back.

By god's grace, all my children

Are well settled in life.

One is sales manager

One is bank manager

Both have cars.

Other also doing well, though not so well.

Every family must have black sheep.

Sarala and Tarala are married,

Their husbands are very nice boys.

You won't believe, but I have eleven grandchildren.

How many issues you have? Three?

That is good. These are days of family planning.

I am not against. We have to change with times.

Whole world is changing. In India also.

We are keeping up. Our progress is progressing.

Old values are going, new values are coming.

Everything is happening with leaps and bounds.

I am going out rarely, now and then

Only, this is price of old age.

But my health is OK, usual aches and pains.

No diabetes, no blood pressure, no heart attack.

This is because of sound habits in youth.

How is your health keeping?

Nicely? I am happy for that.

This year I am sixty nine

And hope to score century.

You were so thin, like stick

Now you are man of weight and consequence.

That is good joke.

If you are coming again this side by chance

Visit please my humble residence also.

I am living just on opposite house's backside.

The Professor, by Nissim Ezekiel

To think that this was written almost half a century ago! (You might also try The Patriot by the same poet). How might the poet have felt if he had lived and observed the 'English-educated' crowd in today's India, where most English teachers themselves don't have the faintest inkling any more about the wretchedness of this pidgin that passes for English (as I should know)?

Horrifying thought: given our numbers, our determination to mangle the language, and the speed with which we are spreading all over the planet, this might be imposed as the International Standard fifty years from now!

Quiz to the readers: how many odd things could you find in the poet's mimicry of Indian English (remembering that language is always a vehicle of culture)?

Treasure forgotten

(photo from wikipedia)

Quiz: Where in Calcutta can you find a private zoo, 25-foot tall Belgian glass mirrors, chandeliers weighing many tons, original paintings by the likes of Rubens and Reynolds, priceless porcelain vases from China's Ming dynasty, giant stuffed heads of moose, and breathtakingly beautiful statues of Greek gods rubbing shoulders with those of eastern deities ... all presided over by a giant statue of young Queen Victoria carved out of a single block of wood? 

Answer: the Marble Palace, built by the fabulously wealthy (and cultured, unlike his early 21st century counterparts!) 19th century Bengali tycoon 'Rajah' Rajendra Mullick. It's just off Chittaranjan Avenue, a few steps after you have passed the Jorasanko Thakurbaari. It's so obscure that even a local rickshawpuller hadn't heard the name (nor had several elderly and young members of the smart set whom I asked at the city's biggest shopping mall, South City. I visited both places the same day in a bid to show my daughter what the city is like today...) Doesn't even the fact that the collection at the palace would be worth several hundred million dollars stir the interest of the most well-heeled of Calcuttans? How much farther will this social dumbing-down go?

Oh Calcutta!

Hard to love people like this

... and the picture itself should tell you why I can't sympathize with their plight!

It makes me sad that one of the most in-your-face signs that this country is 'developing' is that it is rapidly filling up with folks like this. Makes a nice juxtaposition with millions of emaciated and permanently hungry people, it does.

(nobody I know: just got the photo off the net while researching obesity on google images)

Making people read

Someone who is a bibliophile herself recently asked with a note of despair in her voice how she could persuade people to try out some books. I had hardly any advice for her, except to recall something I had read in Reader's Digest long ago:

A librarian who had the same problem (subscribers only went for the latest pulp fiction and refused to look at classics of literature or serious non-fiction) hit upon the idea of labelling one particular shelf 'For high-IQ readers only', and putting all her favourite titles on it. Books started flying off that shelf. 

Now whether the borrowers actually read the books they took home is, of course, another matter altogether!

Ten thousand visits!

Even as I write, the visits-counter has turned over, and I have crossed the 10,000 visits milestone. It has taken me 15 months: much faster than it happened with the other blog. Gives me a good feeling, knowing how hard it is to keep at this sort of thing for weeks and months on end in the midst of a busy (and not too funny) work schedule, with very little help – as I observed in an earlier post. Add to that frequent niggling irritations, like anonymous mugs and complete strangers chipping in just to say they don’t like the contents of this blog (and without making the slightest effort to show me how to do better – as by writing and maintaining a blog of their own)!

Indians are not known for their humour. I keep telling my girls and boys that they exhaust all their sense of fun by giggling so much over inanities and trifles all through teenage that by the time they are adults, they are surly grumblers all, or else they laugh only over obscenities, or over others’ misfortunes. Sit in on any office conversation or party gossip or roadside adda of college dropouts. I may not have a very exalted sense of humour, but I pride myself that I have never needed to stoop to such baseness.

One thing that a lot of people don’t know is that appreciating humour requires a) high IQ, b) wide GK, and c) often also a much better grasp of language than most people can boast of. There’s nothing more painful than watching a joke fall flat simply because the audience has no clue as to what you are talking about. Reminds me of the Bengali adage that a fool always laughs three times over a joke: the first time because he sees others laughing, the second time because the humour strikes him at last, and the third time realizing that he had laughed the first time without understanding…

It is not easy to be whimsical, especially in troubled times. I have met very few people in flesh and blood who can do that. So I am compelled to fall back on quoting the wise-saws of the great and the good, such as when Sir Winston Churchill scathingly put down his garrulous opponent in Parliament by saying ‘The honourable member is modest, and he has much to be modest about’, and when President Lincoln, on hearing about the drinking problem of his brilliant general Ulysses Grant, said ‘Find out what he drinks, and I am going to send a barrel to each of my other generals’, and the incident in the comic book Asterix the Legionary, where the eponymous hero tells friend Obelix to swallow the disgusting-looking mash they serve in the army, saying ‘The worse the food, the stronger the army’, then spitting out a mouthful himself, and commenting with a grimace ‘I didn’t know the Roman army was that strong!’

A good wish to all my followers. Do send in a few words of encouragement now and then…

Criticism

To say something good about others needs character; any uncouth fool can call you names.

While I welcome comments on this blog, they should come from people who have something worthwhile to say, something good to share, some little nugget of wit or wisdom that I and all other readers could profit by; and, if nothing else, to say thanks. And so, before typing in a few lines, the comment-writer should pause to reflect whether s/he has anything at all worthwhile to say, or whether s/he is one more of the literally uncountable pathetic folks who are dying for a moment's attention. There are people who strip in public, and abuse, and walk drunkenly - even without being paid - only to draw others' eyes to themselves, even if it's only looks of contempt and disgust that come their way.

I am reminded of the joke: 'Sir', said the man to the Universe, 'I exist!' 'The fact', came the reply, 'has not given me much concern'... and the fact that the young man who shot US President Ronald Reagan later confessed he had done it merely to get on the front page of all the world's newspapers and thus impress his girlfriend. Most human beings only appear sane!

One of the abiding motifs of the recollections of old boys and girls is about how much they laughed in my class. So, after 29 years, I don't really need certificates. I write here only for the entertainment and edification of those who like what I say. Everybody else is welcome to stay away.

So please don't bother to waste your time just to tell me 'I don't think much of the contents', without even offering a reasoned explanation, and suggestions for better things. If it is entirely a matter of your subjective, and probably untutored judgment, keep it to yourself; I am not interested in how many complete strangers don't like me, especially when I can see how enormously tastes vary: the same joke that someone enjoys hugely falls flat on someone else (who knows but simply because it flew over the latter's head?)

And I was just reminded that some people have to be hit with a hammer on the head before they can recognize a joke.

A wonderful howler

I was thumbing through some old issues of the once famous Punch magazine when I came across this absolutely priceless late-Victorian cartoon: the young man is reclining against the trunk of a shady tree beside his lady love, and by way of making conversation he asks her 'Do you like Kipling?' to which she tartly replies 'I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never kippled'!

Mad hatters

The world is full of madmen, they say, and we are all mad in one sense or the other. Is that right, I wonder again and again... are all of us equally mad?

I just heard from an old boy that their overhead water tank was overflowing, and the housewife next door - a middle-aged mother - drew their attention by throwing a brick and breaking a window.

And my wife says she was shopping at a women's wear outlet in Calcutta where there was this fat middle-aged woman trying out all sorts of fancy clothes appropriate for skinny teenagers and loudly proclaiming to anybody who'd listen that she didn't care about the price tag, because her lockers were chock-full of black money.

And amidst this blistering heat I can see whole families gorging on phuchka (paani-puri) by the roadside at ten o' clock in the night...

Yikes!

A father passing by his teenage daughter's bedroom was astonished to see the bed was nicely made and everything was neat and tidy. Then he saw an envelope propped up prominently on the centre of the pillow. It was addressed "Dad". With the worst premonition, he opened the envelope and read the letter with trembling hands:

Dear Dad,

It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you, but I'm leaving home . I had to elope with my new boyfriend Randy because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you. I've been finding real passion with Randy and he is so nice to me. I know when you meet him you'll like him too- even with all his piercing, tattoos, and motorcycle clothes. But it's not only the passion Dad, I'm pregnant and Randy said that he wants me to have the kid and that we can be very happy together. Even though Randy is much older than me (anyway, 42 isn't so old these days is it?), and has no money, really these things shouldn't stand in the way of our relationship , don't you agree?

Randy has a great CD collection; he already owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for! the whole winter. It's true he has other girlfriends as well but I know he'll be faithful to me in his own way. He wants to have many more children with me and that's now one of my dreams too. Randy taught me that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone and he'll be growing it for us and we'll trade it with our friends for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want. In the meantime, we'll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Randy can get better; he sure deserves it!!

Your loving daughter,

Rosie.

At the bottom of the page were the letters "PTO".

Hands still trembling, her father turned the sheet, and read:

PS: Dad, none of the above is true. I'm over at the neighbor's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than my report card that's in my desk centre drawer. Please sign it and call when it is safe for me to come home.

I love you

[Many thanks for the input to Subhadip Dutta]

A big loser

An old boy told me about a classmate in the English department of one of the most 'prestigious' colleges in Calcutta, who had been told by her professor to read and report about Irving Stone's magnificent fictionalized biography of the great Italian renaissance artist Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy.

Her report was 'This Michelangelo was a big loser'.

Imagine the kind of wife, mother, teacher and citizen this creature is going to become...

A touching thank you

Someone very recently wrote 'Thank you for this blog. Life's a bundle of worries and troubles, but it's good to know that every time I visit this site I can find something to smile over, and sometimes to laugh'.

My day is made. There's no better feeling than the knowledge that you have managed to make some people smile...

The richie rich

Among the people who most fascinate me are those who have so much money that they don't have to work for a living. The reason I am fascinated is that it so often happens that instead of being lazy dullards living sybaritic, inconsequential lives, they turn out to be among the most creative people, contributing things of incalculable value to civilisation. The Roman philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius was one such. So was Tolstoy (until he gave it all away), and Tagore, and Lord Kelvin the chemist, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (he too chose poverty). I could name dozens more. And so many of them keep working either because they are workaholics, or because they are addicted to the fame and money, or because they have found only work keeps them sane - look at Steve Jobs, and Sachin Tendulkar.

So what has Ms. J.K. Rowling been doing these three years since the last Harry Potter book was released? Can somebody find out and tell me?

Techie talk

A young man who has been seeing the ins and outs of the IT industry in India with wide-open eyes has sent me the following list of definitions. I don’t think I need to add any comments. Enjoy. And I hope this will be read by a lot of teenagers (and their mothers) who still think becoming an IT techie is the next best thing to winning a Nobel Prize…

Project Manager is a person who thinks nine women can deliver a baby in one month.

Developer is a person who thinks it will take 18 months to deliver a baby.

Onsite Coordinator is one who thinks a single woman can deliver nine babies in one month.

Client is the one who doesn't know why he wants a baby.

Business Analyst is the one who convinces clients why they don't need a baby.

Account Manager is the one who thinks that it is more important to know why the baby is not there than to have a baby.

Delivery Manager is one who ensures a baby irrespective of whether it is donkey's, monkey's or human baby.

Marketing Manager is a person who thinks he can deliver a baby even if no man and woman are available.

Resource Optimization Team thinks if nine women can deliver nine babies in nine months, one woman can deliver one baby in one month.

Documentation Team thinks they don't care whether the child is delivered, they'll just document 9 months.

Quality Auditor is the person who is never happy with a delivered baby.

Tester is a person who always says that this is not the right baby.

HR Manager is a person who thinks that...

a donkey can deliver a human baby - if given 9 months !!!

'Humbled'? what for?

I write often about how we keep stupidly abusing language, until we unconsciously come to say the opposite of what we mean. So 'crazy' which meant insane has now come to mean something to be happy about (I'm crazy about Paris Hilton), a 'fever' is something you wanted to cure, now you look forward to it (as in Saturday night fever, IPL fever). Of late this has been happening with the word humbled. Today's newspaper carries a huge banner advertisement placed by Reliance Mobile, declaring how they are 'humbled' to have crossed the 100-million subscriber milestone - when they obviously mean they are proud, which is just the opposite of humbled. In like vein an old boy wrote back to me saying he was 'humbled' to know that I still remembered him, when he too quite evidently meant proud. These days, it seems, it's politically incorrect to say you are proud about anything - unless it's 'Proud to be gay'!

New-age Ramayana

A young second generation Indian-origin boy in the US was asked by his mother to explain the significance of "Diwali" to his younger brother, this is how he went about it...

" So, like this dude had, like, a big cool kingdom and people liked him. But, like, his step-mom, or something, was kind of a bitch, and she forced her husband to, like, send this cool-dude, he was Ram, to some national forest or something.... Since he was going, for like, something like more than 10 years or so..... he decided to get his wife and his bro along... you know...so that they could all chill out together. But Dude, the forest was reeeeal scary shit... really man.....they had monkeys and devils and shit like that. But this dude, Ram, kicked with darts and bows and arrows... so it was fine.

But then some bad gangsta boys, some jerk called Ravan, picks up his babe (Sita) and lures her away to his hood. And boy, was our man, and also his bro, Laxman, pissed... all the gods were with him... So anyways, you don't mess with gods. So, Ram, and his bro get an army of monkeys... Dude, don't ask me how they trained the damn monkeys... just go along with me, ok....

So, Ram, Lax and their monkeys whip this gangsta's ass in his own hood.... Anyways, by this time, their time's up in the forest..... and anyways... it gets kinda boring, you know... no TV or malls or shit like that. So,they decided to hitch a ride back home.... and when the people realize that our dude, his bro and the wife are back home...they thought, well, you know, at least they deserve something nice... and they didn't have any bars or clubs in those days... so they couldn't take them out for a drink, so they, like, decided to smoke and shit... and since they also had some lamps, they lit the lamps also....so it was pretty cooool.... you know with all those fireworks.... Really, they even had some local band play along with the fireworks... and you know, what, dude, that was the very first, no kidding..., that was the very first music-synchronized fireworks... you know, like the 4th of July stuff, but just, more cooler and stuff, you know. And, so dude, that was how, like, this festival started."

The mother fainted..

Job application goof-ups

An old boy assures me that the following are real howlers found in job application letters/resumes. After each gaffe, there’s a remark from the selectors’ panel…

(current and ex-pupils, pay attention)

Cover letter: "I would be prepared to meet with you at your earliest
convenience to discuss what I can do to your company."
That's what we're afraid of ...

Resume: "It is my professional objective to obtain a position which
allows me to make use of my commuter skills."
I think we can oblige.

Weaknesses: "Suffer from prickly heat in summer."
Sounds uncomfortable.

Cover letter: "Enclosed is my resume for your viewing pleasure."
We can hardly wait.

Cover letter: "You are privileged to receive my resume."
We'll try not to let it go to our heads.

Objective: "To mature in the field of human behavior."
Good luck with that.

Experience: "10 years of experience in financial budgiting and
transactions rigistering."
But limited experience with the spell-check function.

Cover letter: "Please overlook my resume."
If you insist.

Cover letter: "I am submitting the attached copy of my resume for your
consumption."
Yum.

Skills: "Grate communication skills."
Yes, but can you talk and chop at the same time?

Experience: "Responsibilities included recruiting, screening,
interviewing and executing final candidates."
Seems kind of harsh ...

Cover letter: "Salary demanded - $65,000."
Would you like that in small, unmarked bills?

Strengths: "Ability to meet deadlines while maintaining composer."
Would that be Mozart or Beethoven?

Education: "B.A. in Loberal Arts."
Did you minor in ear piercing?


Cover letter: "I've updated my resume so it's more appalling to
employers."
We're pretty shocked already ...

Cover letter: "Seek challenges that test my mind and body, since the
two are usually inseparable."
Glad to hear it.

Cover letter: "My intensity and focus are at inordinately high levels,
and my ability to complete projects on time is unspeakable."
At these extremes, some things are best left unsaid.

Everything's tamasha now

... so thinks Pritish Nandy, and I have been saying the same thing myself for ages.

I only worry about payback time, because unlike Nandy, I still have many years to live, probably, and my daughter certainly does.

A new language in the making

I saw yet another johnny-come-lately private college (where they charge you several lakhs and take four years to 'teach' you how to be a waiter in a restaurant) advertise itself as an 'educational resort' in the paper the other day (by the way, those who 'teach' there are never called teachers or lecturers or professors, they are invariably called faculty - even in the singular. And they give 'bachelor' degrees...)

I have noticed in my own neighbourhood something called a 'Dental Inn'. Soon, I'm sure, they will call ICCU-s cardiac resorts, too.

Once you start corrupting language, you have opened the door to all the forces of chaos, dissolution and decay. Anyways... chillax.

A whole year at it!

Well, well – ‘Wanton whimsy’ was started upon a whim, and lo! It’s one year old already.

I hope a lot of you folks will say ‘Happy Birthday, and many happy returns’.

One thing I can vouch for: it’s hard work, no matter who you are, to be funny and off-beat at a stretch without being merely vulgar and fatuous. Even with help. So I need more help here. Not only by way of encouragement from my followers (may their tribe increase), but with frequent inputs of good stuff.

And also, I need more comment. In contrast to my other blog, my readers here are strangely silent. Feeling shy? … by the way, the best comments I have got in this one year are the one which was a witty rejoinder to something I had written, and the one which said this blog had completely restructured the mental image of me that the writer had built up on the basis of hearsay about my reputation.

Since this is a ‘whimsy’ blog rather than merely funny, I am also open to suggestions about new directions in which it may venture. Meanwhile, I’ll think of things on my own, rest assured. I remember Holmes telling Watson with a touch of pride in his voice, quoting Shakespeare, ‘I trust that age doth not wither, nor custom stale, my infinite variety’.

For now, I sign off with a little poem about one of the founding fathers of modern economics, Adam Smith, written by Stephen Leacock, who like me trained to be an economist, but later became a writer of humour. This has been quoted in Amartya Sen’s latest opus, The Idea of Justice:

Adam, Adam, Adam Smith

Listen what I charge you with!

Didn’t you say

In a class one day

That selfishness was bound to pay?

Of all doctrines, that was the Pith.

Wasn’t it, wasn’t it, wasn’t it, Smith?

In a rare lapse into elitism, Sen quips, paraphrasing Shakespeare from Twelfth Night, that ‘while some are born small and some achieve smallness, Adam Smith has had much smallness thrust upon him’. I leave my more erudite readers, especially the economists among them, to figure out what Sen means!

Egad!

Just saw a sign on a college-goer's T-shirt:

Save petrol, avoid girls.

What is the world coming to, when this kind of opinion has become so widely-held that it is being publicly proclaimed?

Anniversary coming up

This blog will be one year old in a week's time. Any comments/suggestions/requests/words of advice from readers who have stuck with me all this time?

Authentic Valentines

With tomorrow in mind, I was musing with my daughter that I first met her mother on a certain February 14th. And I am glad I did.

Little boy in love

A 15-year old took me aside to ask how they say 'I love you' in French. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The fellow writes the kind of English I did when I was in class 2... not that that is an uncommon thing these days, but imagine him trying to be amorous in French to impress his girlfriend!

Mysterious universe and some fun

The scientifically minded (who also have a sense of humour) might enjoy these doggerels.

The first, in praise of one great scientist,

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night.

God said 'Let Newton be', and all was light.

The other, written much later, is a wonderful riposte:

It couldn't last - the Devil, howling 'Ho!

Let Einstein be,' restored the status quo.

Campus recruitment circus

This link which I found on twitter (the first good thing I've found so far, I think) was too good not to share with my readers - especially those who have gone through the B-school campus recruitment circus already, a few who are about to face it and chewing their nails, and those a lot younger who are still fantasizing about it (and their parents too, of course).

Many thanks to Omkar Mazumdar/'splashyellow'.

Creativity, character and exams

We were once again discussing the perennial grouch of pupils against examinations - that they test crude memorising power to the detriment of far more valuable attributes like creative imagination, character qualities and so on. I asked how many people would have ever passed through school if they were tested for whether they were Einsteins and Tagores, and how they measured up against ideal characters such as Lincoln, St. Francis and Sri Ramkrishna. Predictably enough, there was a deafening silence which said everything...

Engineering wisdom

Some gags are too good not to share. Here's one such: What part of the car causes the most accidents? Answer - the nut that holds the wheel.

Marital bliss!

My mobile service provider keeps sending me a free joke every day, and an inordinate number of those are about the nasty side of marriage! One said the wife complained to her husband 'Dismiss this driver at once - he nearly got me killed!' to which the husband replied, 'Please give him one more chance...' and another defined marriage as a ceremony which involves putting rings on the fingers of a woman and chains on the hands and feet of a man. It must be a rabid misogamist who thinks up and circulates jokes like these. Strange that women subscribers haven't started protesting in large numbers. Or is it that they merely smirk, and don't care a hoot?

Ring in the new...

A wise guy told me recently that New Year's Eve was the night when millions of people got miserably drunk, frozen and broke in the quest for happiness, and a few thousand businessmen encouraged them lustily while counting their profits in warm offices before laughing all the way to the bank the next morning.

It should be clear from the above that I do not believe in special days. I had a very quiet and restful night myself, after watching crowd antics on TV for a while - exactly as I have been doing every time for almost two decades, to my entire satisfaction. My best wishes, for whatever they are worth, to all my readers nevertheless.