Fly

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I love short words. Am crazy about them. After composing any piece, I inspect every word like a squirrel does its nut, and ditch it if I can find a shorter one that serves.

Short words are in short supply if you omit slang and flash-words. Wodehouse is at his best when the Drones Club slang of Bertie meets the ponderous circumlocutions of Jeeves.

Just before the last General Election I went madder than usual. The Indian scene then was like nothing else earlier. For me it was the silly season of 'limericks and light verses'. Unending political limericks were welling up as if from a fount. The one I cherish was provoked by the photo of a Gandhi Statue in DC:

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Unhappy Pauper

(with apologies to 'Happy Prince' by Oscar Wilde)

"A completely veiled Gandhi Statue waits to be unveiled on Friday. As part of the model code of conduct, all Government functions have been stalled during the elections"............photo caption.

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"Swallow, swallow, little swallow!
Lift the veil, it's too hot"

"I can't do it, I'll be caught
Dragged before EC; maybe shot"

"Tell me at least what's on?"
"All make merry with booze & biryan"

"Who will win & who will lose?"
"Whoever wins, you will lose;

First you get a flowery noose
Then your limbs broken loose"

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The last line owes to an earlier news item that the hands and legs of a Gandhi Statue nearby were smashed by boulders by one of those Senas.

I am rather proud of this light verse as most of its words have just one or two syllables. It is free from slang (Webster admits 'booze' with respect)

A day before I left home for College, my father gifted me a pocket dictionary. I finished reading it in a day and asked for a bigger one. My father was taken aback and said that dictionaries are to be 'consulted' but not 'read'. I was not convinced.

Since then the habit persists. I wanted to own as bulky a dictionary as possible. I got one gifted to me by my friend NP in return for a small favor, in 1969.

That was Webster's New World Dictionary.

1700 A-4 pages of so close a print that I now need an extra lens to read if lighting is poor. It cost Rs 12 minus 20% discount on a PL 480 Offer. I still have it, split into 2 volumes and re-bound. When I compose, I consult the online Webster in a side-window. When I am bored, I pick up my bound Webster, open a page at random, and keep flipping pages and browsing for a pleasant hour. Especially short words with cute pictures.

Apparently, when Indra mentioned this to his Princeton colleague, she burst into peals of laughter and referred henceforth to me as 'your crazy Dictionary Prof' (no gul!).

Today I was at a loss not getting any idea for my blogpost. And, then I opened my hard-Webster; it opened on the entry: 'fly'

I recalled my favorite Ogden Nash:

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"God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why"

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Fly rhymes nicely with why. And unlike 'what, when, where, whose..', Physics is all about 'why'. That's why perhaps I like the fly.

Forget about the housefly and butterfly or even Gregor Mendel's fruit fly. They are well known. But in my childhood I used to play with dragonflies. When a swarm of them take to the sky (there you have another rhyming word), it is time to go in, because it means rain.

Despite its name, the dragonfly is as harmless as a toy. You can hold its long tail between right thumb and forefinger, and take it to a tiny pebble placed on your left palm...it will roll the pebble with its wee feet and lift it to its li'le mouth. Even Ishani can hold it safely. Nothing happens....it just flutters its light wings. But it is supposed to feed on houseflies and mosquitoes 'on the fly'! Good!!!

The verb 'fly' is great too. The other day I had to break the sad news of DB to Anirban & Co by e-mail. I just quoted Thurber:

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"Who flies afar from our sphere of sorrow
Is here today and here tomorrow"

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Anirban wrote back: "It is difficult to write anything after Prof. Sastry (Thurber) has so aptly put it".

Below are some cute Webster entries:

flyblow: a blowfly's eggs or larva
fly book: a booklike case to hold artificial fishing flies
flyspeck: a petty or insignificant error or flaw
flyway: a flying route taken regularly by migratory birds
flycatcher: any of fly-catching small birds like the kingbird, pewee, and phoebe

Ah, now we roam to 'p' to look up pewee and phoebe. Another hour of joy!

The fly-thing I liked best was 'flywheel'. No, not the one in the Physics Lab. But in a Radio shop in 1970 or so. I was looking to buy a good Philips set. I asked what was so great about the costliest one. She said: "It has flywheel tuning". That sounded new. I turned the tuning wheel this way and that and just loved its droll roll. Couldn't afford to buy it though.

Moment of Inertia at work. Some Physics there!!!

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