Grapes, Bananas & Coconuts

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In our mother tongue,Telugu, there is this rough division of writing styles into three according to the toughness of the language used. These are:

(1) Draaksha Paakam (Grapes-Style)
(2) Kadalee Paakam (Bananas-Style)
(3) Naarikela Paakam (Coconuts-Style)

Grapes are of course the easiest to eat...just gulp them. Bananas have to be peeled before you can eat them. And coconuts are hard...you have to break them with a tool before enjoying their rich flesh.

An example of the Grapes-Style is Vemana Shatakam, written by a heterodox Yogi of the 14th century. Its 100 verses use the simplest diction and prosody but carry rich ideas by way of very original metaphors. C P Brown, a British Civil Servant of the 18th century, was so taken by Vemana's verses that he translated them into English.

The Bananas-Style is epitomized by the famous Bhagavatam of Potana while the Coconuts-Style is purposely exhibited by his B-i-L Shreenatha, both of the 15th century. Apart from other famous simpler works, Shreenatha wrote his Coconuts-Style work: Kashi Khandam just for the heck of it maybe. It is said: "Kashi Khandam ayah pindam", meaning "Kashi Khandam is like a ball of iron"

In English literature, the Grapes-Style is best illustrated by Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. It flows like wine. He got his Nobel for it. I picked up the slim book of 100 odd pages in the Wheeler's Bookstall on Platform #1 of KGP on my way to Gudur. And finished it in one hour. And turned back to the first page and re-read it in a couple of hours. (The only other book I re-read like that back to back is Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn...5 years after retirement). Faulkner is said to have written disparagingly of Hemingway's Style saying: "You don't need a dictionary to read him" or some such thing. To which Hemingway retorted: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."

The Bananas-Style is exemplified by the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by my favorite author, Oliver Wendell Holmes. It requires a certain effort, but after a few readings you find every sentence is a quotable quote. There is something funny about 'excerpts'. I used to read the Autocrat in my room in the Physics Department at KGP which I shared with DB for twenty years. And when I found a particularly nice passage I used to read it aloud for DB. And he used to get so excited by these excerpts that he would ask for the book, but wouldn't go beyond the first two pages.

The Coconuts-Style is certainly Milton's prose booklet called Areopagitica. We had it as an optional text during our B Sc (Hons). It is said to be a 'polemical' speech by Milton against censorship (as old as Milton!). None of my classmates chose it but I did (being a pervert) and got first rank in our Part I English. I am still fond of coconut flesh (called malai in Hyderabad), provided it is crushed in a mixie and made into liquid chutney...after losing my cracking teeth.

DB told me once that a famous Bengali writer (Parashuram?} compared the aging of their women-folk with the aging of coconuts...green with lots of fresh and healthy water till age 25 say, then the harder temple-breaking stuff with less water and richer malai between 25 and 45, and then the over-ripe ones with nil water but detached copra full of rich oil, 45 onwards.

I would say that both men and women start off in the Grapes-Style as kids between birth and puberty. And in the Banana-Style between puberty and marriage. Then on they branch off...women going into the hard Coconuts-Style whle men grow into Oranges-Style. I mean in worldly wisdom. Women, like Queen(s) Elizabeth and Queen Victoria become hard as copras, while men grow into the oranges of Hyderabad...you have to peel them, rip them, remove the seeds, and suck them...only to find they are sour and dry...like good old gps...


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