Words Worth

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I have stolen today's Blog-Title from Supratim's mail, in which he writes, inter alia:

"My heart leaps with glee
whenever I see the word willy-nilly"

(with due apologies to Wordsworth)

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I first heard this word: "willy-nilly' in his Response to his Farewell by the youngest and shortest Director of IIT KGP (in both senses of the word: time and space), Professor C S Jha, circa 1977.

Prof Jha certainly was the most fluent speaker of all the Directors I heard. And he was benign even though he worked during Indira Gandhi's Emergency (the joke was that Emergency came rather late to IIT KGP much after it was lifted elsewhere).

The Farewell Function was held at the Open Air Theater (not yet Tagore's TOAT but informally BOAT, after ex-Director Brig S K Bose who conceived and delivered it) at 4.30 PM soon after the last period. To steer the students towards BOAT, HMC cleverly organized the Afternoon Tea & Snacks of all Halls of Residence in makeshift tents at the BOAT. So BOAT was brimming to its capacity and Prof Jha started his Speech thus:

"I can't really boast that the response of the students was overwhelming knowing that they have been made to attend the Function willy-nilly by their Wardens...."

Willy-nilly is like Hobson's Choice, another phrase wrongly used often. It means: "no real choice" because apparently Hobson used to ask his customers to pick up the horse nearest to the out-gate of his stable; like it or not.

It is said that Henry Ford used to advertise: "You can have any choice of colors as long as it is black", referring to his first mass-produced Model T car (black paint dried soonest).

In that Farewell Function to Prof Jha, our HoD, Prof H N Bose started his speech with: "We have assembled here to pay our homage...". Suddenly there were uproarious jeers from the back-benchers who thought mistakenly that homage is only paid to dead souls (like my Homage to SDM). Prof HNB waited till the jeering stopped and repeated: "to pay HOMAGE to our beloved Director Prof Jha".

Everyone fell silent at that thundering by HNB.

There was this DD circa 1967, Professor S C Mitra, HoD of NA. He was a fair and huge personality and was always called "Daddy Mitra": he was as benign as he was huge, and he spent most of his youth in England (with a white British wife), but was the opposite of Prof Jha as far as fluency in English went; and he was well-known for his wrong pauses: like his purported After-Dinner Speech at B C Roy Hall Day: "I enjoyed the chicken and my wife.........also enjoyed".

Once Prof BCB who himself spent 14 years of his youth in England was talking to me about Daddy Mitra's latest supposed goof: "See my marginal comments".

BCB thought that "marginal" had only the popular meaning: "insignificant". I knew better because the original Feynman's Lectures (Red Cover) had huge margins and were meant for marginal jottings and quick calculations. So I had to defend our beloved Daddy.

The Bottom Line is: "Look up Webster before you leap to criticize"


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