Anglophilia

 *************************************************************************************************************

In many ways my life has been a blessed one...so far...

Chiefly because I got to live in places that were anglophilic; or, at least, not overtly anglophobic.

First, 21 years in Coastal Andhra; next, 40 in West Bengal; and the last, 16 in Hyderabad.

During my time in Coastal Andhra in the 1950s, we were more against Tamil than against English. The Madras Presidency ruled us rather mercilessly. And a quiet gent from my native town, Nellore, went on a fast-unto-death; and died, in order to get rid of the hated Tamil Rule in 1953. His name is Potti Sreeramulu. Nehru had to quickly yield and carve out a separate state, Andhra. And that led, in 3 short years, to Linguistic States (much like Europe). 

Although our mother tongue happened to be Telugu, we had no aversion to English...rather, we loved it and indulged in it. My practically illiterate but highly intelligent mother stunned me once using the English word "publicity" in a derisive sense.

Three Englishmen are lovingly remembered: 

1. Duke of Buckingham for his famous Canal that runs parallel to our fertile Coromandel Coast...where "early pumpkins blow"....The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

2. Sir Arthur Cotton for his irrigation canal networks (there is a Museum named for him in Rajamundry).

3. Charles Philip Brown for the first Telugu-English Dictionary (there is still, I presume, a statue of his on the Tank Bund  in Hyderabad)

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I then went to Bengal. And I visited its glorious Victoria Memorial a dozen times:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/05/ulat-puran.html (860 page views)

Bengalis are very friendly to visitors and the English language. Or at least were during my decades there.

Once my younger sister and I wanted to visit the Alipore Zoo in 1974. At the Howrah Station we boarded a city bus which we were told would take us to their famous zoo. I didn't know Calcutta or Bengali well then. So I asked my neighbor bhadralog, in English, to tell us when we should get down. He nodded his head. At Esplanade he told his neighbor to help us, and got down. At Shibpur he told his neighbor to help us, and got down. And he got down along with us at Alipore, led us all the way to the back-gate of  their proud Zoo, and bade us good bye and good wishes and left, all smiles.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Soon after reaching this strange city of Hyderabad in 2005, I boarded an auto rickshaw. And, as is my custom, chatted the driver up, got down, and paid the meter fare and a sumptuous tip. And he salaamed and gave me a thin plastic wisp of a card. And I was puzzled; and pleased to see that it was his Visiting Card (printed in impeccable English). 

I never had a Visiting Card...or, as my son calls it, Business Card...

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

And then for lack of an absorbing pastime to pass endless time in my retirement, I took to blogging in English and published the booklets:

1. Limericks & Light Verses

2. Raadhaa Rhymes

3. "Ishani Booklets" (five)

And got bored in 2015. And gave up English writing.

And wanted to write fun-verses in my mother tongue Telugu (to which I became a foreigner for all of the previous 50 years).

But with the help of Google I published the booklets:

1. Ranga Raaya Vaastava Satakam (రంగరాయ వాస్తవ శతకం)

2. Ishani Satakam (ఇషాని శతకం)

both in faulty prosody (ఛందస్సు)

And then I was fortunate to join the celebrated Shankaraabharanam (శంకరాభరణం) Telugu Poets Group.

Within a couple of days Sri Kandi Shankarayya Garu (Admin) taught me the correct prosody and encouraged me to keep writing verses in his group. 

Which I am doing till today...writing fun-verses...

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Although I can now write passable Telugu verses free from errors, I can't write chaste Telugu. This is because I had never read any of the holy tomes of classical Telugu (and do not intend to do so now...my reading is still confined to a little bit of English, my first love). 

So I tend to fall into an occasional English word well-known to all...like "joke" (జోకు) in my Telugu verses.

Sri Shankarayya Garu understands my predicament and condones.

But not some of my myriad pundits in the Group.

They deride such common English words "Foreign Words" (అన్యదేశ్యములు).

They love to use Sanskrit words. The more the merrier.

Those few who can write an entire 4-line verse as ONE compound Sanskrit word, Samaasam (సమాసం), are worshipped as gods.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I wonder when Sanskrit turned a "local" Telugu lingo.

For Andhras, Sanskrit is much more of a foreign tongue than English is. Nobody in the street speaks Sanskrit, writes Sanskrit, or understands Sanskrit (unlike English).

Sanskrit is a Divine Language (దేవ భాష).

It was born, brought up, and perished in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP).

Our rishis invented it...and all of them, without exception, belonged to the IGP.

Vedas were revealed in the IGP.

All the Puranas like Ramayanam,  Bharatam, and Bhagavatam were written in the IGP.

All our gods like Shri Raam and Shri Krishna were born, brought up, and expired in the IGP.

Ayodhya, Mathura, Hastinapur, and Kashi are in the IGP.

All the ten Avatars belonged to the IGP.

And IGP is mainly UP!!!

Not AP; nor Telangana!!!

Blaming me for writing a word or two of English in my fun verses is a cheap stunt.

Rather, they should all avoid Sanskritized Telugu words as "Foreign Words" (అన్యదేశ్యములు) :)

As my favorite English Writer, Shobhaa De would say:

"Why is that thunderbolt not striking my head yet???"

Shobhaa is a Shiv Sainik by birth and turned into to a Shakti by wedding a Bengali gent :)

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$