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"What's your name, sir?" inquired the judge.
"Sam Weller, my lord," replied that gentleman.
"Do you spell it with a 'V' or 'W'?" inquired the judge.
"That depends on the taste and fancy of the speller, my lord," replied Sam; "I never had occasion to spell it more than once or twice in my life, but I spells it with a 'V'."
....Pickwick Papers
If that quintessential Londoner, Sam Weller, himself got into hot water with his judge and got reprimanded for his cheek, who am I?
It is unfortunate that the sweet English language has a depleted alphabet of 26 or so unlike our Sanskrit-based phonetic tongues brimming with 56 or so characters (some characters!).
So, any transliteration of say the verses of the Sanskrit Upanishads into English is laborious and full of inventive dots, crescents, and triphthongs (there you are!).
It is unfortunate that my English Teacher-Father dumped on me a name having bh as in Prabhakara, nothing like this ever imagined by any Englishman, except when he abhors.
In addition to this I had to live and work in Bengal (otherwise the very Heaven for Workers who Unite!) throughout my working life.
And, to my generation and the ones before, bh was as unknown as idly-sambhar in Bengal. Like Sam Weller they spells it with a v. And I had and still have trouble with this Jekyll-Hyde thing.
Not only that...Bengali non-matriculates like Gopi-da would also pronounce any legitimate v as bh :
1965 May (one week after I joined KGP):
Gopi-da: "Shasthrijee: do you have bhote in your home town?"
I: "I come from AP, not Kerala which is replete with boats and backwaters"
Gopi-da: "No, not bhote...BHOTE!!!"
Since it was Election Time, I could decipher after repeated trials and errors that Gopi-da was referring to the long piece of paper dropped into the piggy-bank Ballot Box.
In 1965 when I joined my Sacred Duties as Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP, it was such a small place that everyone knew everyone else and the thought of issuing Photo-ID Cards never occurred to the Administration.
But after 3 decades of Free Expansion when an ex-Army-Major took over as the PRO and at once suggested this fashionable thing, no one objected. And within a month or two all of us got our wallets or pockets adorned with great-looking laminated plastic cards; and we all felt that we were now SOMEBODY.
And everyone thanked Majorsaab whose bosom and mustache were bristling with pride.
As expected, I found that they goofed up my spelling and inserted the lazy v in place of the workhorse (ahem) bh.
I didn't mind it, but also didn't like it because I was approaching retirement in a mere decade and wanted to get every paper of mine in order.
I visited the Establishment Section to confirm that my Originals were in order (Pension Papers being their copies).
They were.
But I didn't like the all-important ID Card to be mis-spelt.
Majorsaab was a most enchanting person brimming with bonhomie and sizzling with spirits outside his Sanctum Sanctorum Office in the Foyer. He would laugh boisterously, joke at the expense of his own tribe of Sardarjees, share unending cups of tea with us at Harry's, shake hands all the time a joke of his nears its inevitable end cuing us to laugh boisterously, and so on and so forth.
But once he entered his Office, he was known to be a totally different persona, speaking little if at all, and that in clipped tongues, and not asking puny junior Professors like me to take a chair, if not the sofa...putting on the dog, briefly speaking.
To get my ID spelling corrected, I had to visit his Office every Monday Morning at 11, the allotted Visiting Hours for the likes of me.
When I knocked and entered, Majorsaab would be alone reading the homely Hindustan Times, and say: "Yes?" without looking up.
And like RKN's Swami, I used to get an urge to place a time-device that would explode under his seat whenever he said: "Yes?" in that clipped tongue of his.
Every time I narrate my sad tale and ask a replacement of my ID Card with my HM-Father's spelling, he would ask me to give it in writing and get lost.
After the fourth Monday of repeat telecasts, I got fed up, cut corners, visited the Section-in-Charge of Computerization & IDs in the top floor (all of them my friends because we were all in it for Donkey's Years).
I got my Brand-New Valid ID Card by evening.
Next Monday morning, when Majorsaab said: "Yes?" again, sinking his bearded and turbaned head into Hindusthan Times, I said:
"Thank you very much, Majorsaab, I got my card from the Compu-Section. But I found that they are busy undertaking the task of computerizing all old records before destroying them; and I discovered to my dismay that they keyboarded my Date of Birth wrong, and were preparing my Retirement Papers and were about to issue them to me a good DECADE before I reached my correct retirement age of 60....."
I looked up.
And found Majorsaab explode from his hot seat and fly out like a surprised Jack Rabbit, leaving me stranded, to, you know, which Section......
My friend VR (sadly no more) used to tell me several bawdy jokes on Speedy Gonsalves...
All Gonsalveses would hang their heads in unanimous shame before our Majorsaab's SPEED!!!!
...Posted by Ishani
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"What's your name, sir?" inquired the judge.
"Sam Weller, my lord," replied that gentleman.
"Do you spell it with a 'V' or 'W'?" inquired the judge.
"That depends on the taste and fancy of the speller, my lord," replied Sam; "I never had occasion to spell it more than once or twice in my life, but I spells it with a 'V'."
....Pickwick Papers
If that quintessential Londoner, Sam Weller, himself got into hot water with his judge and got reprimanded for his cheek, who am I?
It is unfortunate that the sweet English language has a depleted alphabet of 26 or so unlike our Sanskrit-based phonetic tongues brimming with 56 or so characters (some characters!).
So, any transliteration of say the verses of the Sanskrit Upanishads into English is laborious and full of inventive dots, crescents, and triphthongs (there you are!).
It is unfortunate that my English Teacher-Father dumped on me a name having bh as in Prabhakara, nothing like this ever imagined by any Englishman, except when he abhors.
In addition to this I had to live and work in Bengal (otherwise the very Heaven for Workers who Unite!) throughout my working life.
And, to my generation and the ones before, bh was as unknown as idly-sambhar in Bengal. Like Sam Weller they spells it with a v. And I had and still have trouble with this Jekyll-Hyde thing.
Not only that...Bengali non-matriculates like Gopi-da would also pronounce any legitimate v as bh :
1965 May (one week after I joined KGP):
Gopi-da: "Shasthrijee: do you have bhote in your home town?"
I: "I come from AP, not Kerala which is replete with boats and backwaters"
Gopi-da: "No, not bhote...BHOTE!!!"
Since it was Election Time, I could decipher after repeated trials and errors that Gopi-da was referring to the long piece of paper dropped into the piggy-bank Ballot Box.
In 1965 when I joined my Sacred Duties as Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP, it was such a small place that everyone knew everyone else and the thought of issuing Photo-ID Cards never occurred to the Administration.
But after 3 decades of Free Expansion when an ex-Army-Major took over as the PRO and at once suggested this fashionable thing, no one objected. And within a month or two all of us got our wallets or pockets adorned with great-looking laminated plastic cards; and we all felt that we were now SOMEBODY.
And everyone thanked Majorsaab whose bosom and mustache were bristling with pride.
As expected, I found that they goofed up my spelling and inserted the lazy v in place of the workhorse (ahem) bh.
I didn't mind it, but also didn't like it because I was approaching retirement in a mere decade and wanted to get every paper of mine in order.
I visited the Establishment Section to confirm that my Originals were in order (Pension Papers being their copies).
They were.
But I didn't like the all-important ID Card to be mis-spelt.
Majorsaab was a most enchanting person brimming with bonhomie and sizzling with spirits outside his Sanctum Sanctorum Office in the Foyer. He would laugh boisterously, joke at the expense of his own tribe of Sardarjees, share unending cups of tea with us at Harry's, shake hands all the time a joke of his nears its inevitable end cuing us to laugh boisterously, and so on and so forth.
But once he entered his Office, he was known to be a totally different persona, speaking little if at all, and that in clipped tongues, and not asking puny junior Professors like me to take a chair, if not the sofa...putting on the dog, briefly speaking.
To get my ID spelling corrected, I had to visit his Office every Monday Morning at 11, the allotted Visiting Hours for the likes of me.
When I knocked and entered, Majorsaab would be alone reading the homely Hindustan Times, and say: "Yes?" without looking up.
And like RKN's Swami, I used to get an urge to place a time-device that would explode under his seat whenever he said: "Yes?" in that clipped tongue of his.
Every time I narrate my sad tale and ask a replacement of my ID Card with my HM-Father's spelling, he would ask me to give it in writing and get lost.
After the fourth Monday of repeat telecasts, I got fed up, cut corners, visited the Section-in-Charge of Computerization & IDs in the top floor (all of them my friends because we were all in it for Donkey's Years).
I got my Brand-New Valid ID Card by evening.
Next Monday morning, when Majorsaab said: "Yes?" again, sinking his bearded and turbaned head into Hindusthan Times, I said:
"Thank you very much, Majorsaab, I got my card from the Compu-Section. But I found that they are busy undertaking the task of computerizing all old records before destroying them; and I discovered to my dismay that they keyboarded my Date of Birth wrong, and were preparing my Retirement Papers and were about to issue them to me a good DECADE before I reached my correct retirement age of 60....."
I looked up.
And found Majorsaab explode from his hot seat and fly out like a surprised Jack Rabbit, leaving me stranded, to, you know, which Section......
My friend VR (sadly no more) used to tell me several bawdy jokes on Speedy Gonsalves...
All Gonsalveses would hang their heads in unanimous shame before our Majorsaab's SPEED!!!!
...Posted by Ishani
********************************************************************************************
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