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http://omshivam.wordpress.com/vedic-astrology-jyothish-light-of-knowledge/maha-kumbha/the-legend-of-prince-ram/the-legend-of-king-vikramaditya/
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I suffer from a mild verbal malady that can best be called: "Bloomerism"
The chief symptom of this is misreading words, substituting familiar words or their extensions for unfamiliar or out-of-context words.
Let me explain:
1. In our pre-university chemistry I read that zinc dust traps hydrogen gas and this had a new term which I read as 'occulsion'. You may ask me why occulsion? It so happens that I was familiar with the term 'occult', having read many stories of bhoots and bhoot bungalows in my school years. I duly passed my chemistry exam in low-flying colors having answered, in my own words, the question of the hated zinc dust and its digestion of innocent hydrogen gas.
It was much later at KGP that I was shamed to learn that there is no word called occulsion and what I misread was "occlusion". Of course I had taught 'occultation', rightly, when I was teaching optics, both heavenly and earthly, to my students. I don't think that word either had anything to do with bhoots and bhoot bungalows.
2. In my final year at the Vizagh University, my sister's friend, Dr K, arrived at our place and was exhibiting the new tooth paste that she had bought just then. And she passed it on to me. And I read its name and joked:
"Of course these pharma chaps have a right to spell words misleadingly"
"What is wrong with the tooth paste name?"
"It ought to be Binaca Flouride, not Fluoride, no?"
"No...Fluoride is correct"
"You mean it is not a derivative of flourine?"
"Of course, it is...and the etching gas is spelled fluorine, not flourine"
That was an unforgivable rebuke from a lady my age and I ran to my chemistry book and found that she was right all along while I passed my Part I Chemistry with my own way of spelling flourine as if it was a derivative of wheat flour.
3. When I joined IIT KGP as a junior faculty, I found an upcountry gent named Vinod had also joined our department at the same time. And we became friends. And when I first saw his signature in the lab khata of a student, I told him that he was spelling his surname wrongly. And he was aghast and asked me what was wrong with Srivastava.
I told him that it ought to be, strictly speaking, Srivatsava. And he asked me why. And I said that the name is perhaps derived from Srivatsa, the holy mark on the chest of Lord Vishnu, for which there is a gotra called Srivatsa Gotra. He pooh-poohed me and I challenged him and brought out my 8-year-old copy of 'Treatise on Heat' from my university days. And to my consternation and contrition I found that I had misread, for all of 8 years, the spelling of Srivastava, the co-author of the famous Saha.
4. My fond cousin, Late Sri GVR, it appeared, was also prone to this bloomerism in a mild way. I was staying for my pre-university year with my Shakespeare Uncle at a small town called Nidubrole, a few stations south of the big junction Vijayawada (also called Bezwada, or Blazewada for its summer temperatures). GVR was then studying in MR College, Vijayanagaram, far north along the Madras-Howrah line. And used to visit his dad's home at Nidubrole often. But he traveled by Mail or Express trains that whizzed past small and cute wayside stations, not stopping or slowing down.
And on one of his trips he told me that there is a small station named after an unknown gentleman between Vijayawada and Nidubrole. And I asked him what his name was and he said he was called T Sundurum. I was charmed but not convinced. But since GVR was about 5 years senior to me I didn't dare argue. On my next trip to Vijayawada I took a passenger train that stopped for its own sweet time at all stations. And I got down at each station looking for the name-board: T Sundurum. At last I found it...or rather its GVR-misnomer. A good fifty years later, the other day, the village was in the news for all wrong reasons...29 odd chaps were convicted in a mass-murder clash between two castes 20 years ago and the High Court finally let most of the accused free after they served their sentences all these years.
The name of the station, stylized by the British, remains 'Tsunduru'...aka Chunduru in our mother tongue...
5. Yesterday my son forwarded me a mail that our Owners Association wrote to our recalcitrant builders asking them to speed up work on what they charmingly called their 'Snag List'. This had about 40 items like Manjeera Water Supply, drainage, lift maintenance and such. I sped through the list, not being much into this sort of a thing. But suddenly stopped at one item which I read as:
"Fulfill quickly your promise of installing girls at the landings"
And I quickly counted that there were all of 16 landings in our multi-storyed complex which calls for the installation of 32 girls, two per landing, on each side. And that figure of 32 girls recalled this wonderful story I had read in Chandamama 60 years ago:
King Vikramaditya (of the Vikram-Betal fame) was gifted a throne by Lord Indra which had 16 steps. On each step on its either side was installed a dancing doll called Salabhanjika. And Vikram ruled for all of 1000 years before he was defeated and his throne trashed.
And after another 1000 years the throne was mysteriously dug up from a wayside mound by the workers of Raja Bhoja. And brought to his court. And Bhoja was charmed that Vikram's hallowed throne was discovered in his kingdom and started to mount it. But as he tried placing his foot on each step, one doll after the other jumped to life asking Bhoja a tricky question and saying that if he couldn't answer it wisely he was not entitled to the throne.
And Bhoja answered some questions right and smiled sweetly at other questions like our KGP students in their grand-vivas. The salabhanjika-profs were immensely pleased with his wisdom and humility and permitted him to be duly enthroned.
...And I was lost in this wonderful story before I re-read the Snag List carefully and found, as you might have guessed, that our builder never promised to install any girl at all but only 32 grills...
...Posted by Ishani
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...Lord Indra was so much impressed by the justice given by King
Vikramaditya that he gifted a Golden Throne with 32 talking statues
whose names are:
1 Ratnamanjiri,2 Chitralekha,3 Chandrakala,4 Kamkandala,5 Leelavati,6
Ravibhama,7 Kaumudhe,8 Pushpavati,9 Madhumalthi,10 Prabhavati, 11
Trilochana,12 Padmavati,13 Keertimati,14 Sunayana,15 Sundervati,16
Satyavati, 17 Vidhyati,18 Taravati,19 Rooprekha, 20 Gyaanvati, 21
Chandrajyothi,22 Anurodhvati,23 Dhramvati, 24 Karunavati,25 Trinetri,26
Mrignayani,27 Malayavati,28 Vaidehi, 29 Manvati, 30 Jayalaxmi,31
Kousalya, 32 Rani Rupavati...
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I suffer from a mild verbal malady that can best be called: "Bloomerism"
The chief symptom of this is misreading words, substituting familiar words or their extensions for unfamiliar or out-of-context words.
Let me explain:
1. In our pre-university chemistry I read that zinc dust traps hydrogen gas and this had a new term which I read as 'occulsion'. You may ask me why occulsion? It so happens that I was familiar with the term 'occult', having read many stories of bhoots and bhoot bungalows in my school years. I duly passed my chemistry exam in low-flying colors having answered, in my own words, the question of the hated zinc dust and its digestion of innocent hydrogen gas.
It was much later at KGP that I was shamed to learn that there is no word called occulsion and what I misread was "occlusion". Of course I had taught 'occultation', rightly, when I was teaching optics, both heavenly and earthly, to my students. I don't think that word either had anything to do with bhoots and bhoot bungalows.
2. In my final year at the Vizagh University, my sister's friend, Dr K, arrived at our place and was exhibiting the new tooth paste that she had bought just then. And she passed it on to me. And I read its name and joked:
"Of course these pharma chaps have a right to spell words misleadingly"
"What is wrong with the tooth paste name?"
"It ought to be Binaca Flouride, not Fluoride, no?"
"No...Fluoride is correct"
"You mean it is not a derivative of flourine?"
"Of course, it is...and the etching gas is spelled fluorine, not flourine"
That was an unforgivable rebuke from a lady my age and I ran to my chemistry book and found that she was right all along while I passed my Part I Chemistry with my own way of spelling flourine as if it was a derivative of wheat flour.
3. When I joined IIT KGP as a junior faculty, I found an upcountry gent named Vinod had also joined our department at the same time. And we became friends. And when I first saw his signature in the lab khata of a student, I told him that he was spelling his surname wrongly. And he was aghast and asked me what was wrong with Srivastava.
I told him that it ought to be, strictly speaking, Srivatsava. And he asked me why. And I said that the name is perhaps derived from Srivatsa, the holy mark on the chest of Lord Vishnu, for which there is a gotra called Srivatsa Gotra. He pooh-poohed me and I challenged him and brought out my 8-year-old copy of 'Treatise on Heat' from my university days. And to my consternation and contrition I found that I had misread, for all of 8 years, the spelling of Srivastava, the co-author of the famous Saha.
4. My fond cousin, Late Sri GVR, it appeared, was also prone to this bloomerism in a mild way. I was staying for my pre-university year with my Shakespeare Uncle at a small town called Nidubrole, a few stations south of the big junction Vijayawada (also called Bezwada, or Blazewada for its summer temperatures). GVR was then studying in MR College, Vijayanagaram, far north along the Madras-Howrah line. And used to visit his dad's home at Nidubrole often. But he traveled by Mail or Express trains that whizzed past small and cute wayside stations, not stopping or slowing down.
And on one of his trips he told me that there is a small station named after an unknown gentleman between Vijayawada and Nidubrole. And I asked him what his name was and he said he was called T Sundurum. I was charmed but not convinced. But since GVR was about 5 years senior to me I didn't dare argue. On my next trip to Vijayawada I took a passenger train that stopped for its own sweet time at all stations. And I got down at each station looking for the name-board: T Sundurum. At last I found it...or rather its GVR-misnomer. A good fifty years later, the other day, the village was in the news for all wrong reasons...29 odd chaps were convicted in a mass-murder clash between two castes 20 years ago and the High Court finally let most of the accused free after they served their sentences all these years.
The name of the station, stylized by the British, remains 'Tsunduru'...aka Chunduru in our mother tongue...
5. Yesterday my son forwarded me a mail that our Owners Association wrote to our recalcitrant builders asking them to speed up work on what they charmingly called their 'Snag List'. This had about 40 items like Manjeera Water Supply, drainage, lift maintenance and such. I sped through the list, not being much into this sort of a thing. But suddenly stopped at one item which I read as:
"Fulfill quickly your promise of installing girls at the landings"
And I quickly counted that there were all of 16 landings in our multi-storyed complex which calls for the installation of 32 girls, two per landing, on each side. And that figure of 32 girls recalled this wonderful story I had read in Chandamama 60 years ago:
King Vikramaditya (of the Vikram-Betal fame) was gifted a throne by Lord Indra which had 16 steps. On each step on its either side was installed a dancing doll called Salabhanjika. And Vikram ruled for all of 1000 years before he was defeated and his throne trashed.
And after another 1000 years the throne was mysteriously dug up from a wayside mound by the workers of Raja Bhoja. And brought to his court. And Bhoja was charmed that Vikram's hallowed throne was discovered in his kingdom and started to mount it. But as he tried placing his foot on each step, one doll after the other jumped to life asking Bhoja a tricky question and saying that if he couldn't answer it wisely he was not entitled to the throne.
And Bhoja answered some questions right and smiled sweetly at other questions like our KGP students in their grand-vivas. The salabhanjika-profs were immensely pleased with his wisdom and humility and permitted him to be duly enthroned.
...And I was lost in this wonderful story before I re-read the Snag List carefully and found, as you might have guessed, that our builder never promised to install any girl at all but only 32 grills...
...Posted by Ishani
************************************************************************************************************
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