Spellbound

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Some people are very particular about spelling and punctuation (to say nothing of pronunciation): I mean, they are paranoid.

SDM, my Guru and Guide, was one of them.

Here is an SDM Snippet I posted more than 3 years ago but got deleted somehow:

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SDM was very very particular about the spelling of his name: S. Datta Majumdar.

One morning when I was sitting in his room, the postman arrived bringing in a wonderful picture post card, with a few words of adulation to SDM. But, he showed me the address where his surname was spelled 'Mazumdar'. He smiled wryly and commented: "So sorry that these few kind words were not for me but for someone else".

And he recalled the postman and returned it to him, telling him to mail it back to the sender, with 'Addressee Unknown'.

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I myself get upset when I make a spelling mistake or see one. The other day I blogged a Piece called: Mixed Feelings and Don Quixote posted the Comment:

"playing Bridge in the Faulty Club "----Is the "C" missing on purpose?? :)"

I was greatly amused by the bloomer and I attribute the error to my excessive reliance on Blogger's Spell-Check, which is 50% boon and 50% curse.

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My Love Affair with Lincoln started at the tender age of 9. There was this book: "Abe Lincoln, the Frontier Boy", Children Edition that was prescribed as a non-detailed English text.

All Math texts that I had to work through were postponed indefinitely; but all English texts were read cover to cover before the Classes began.

So I asked my Father (my walking dictionary) if there was a spelling mistake in Lincoln (the extra 'l'). He said it was ok ('l' silent).

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This reminds me now of a Sardarjee PJ:

This Officer and his Sardarjee NCO rushed into their trench when there was the sound of an approaching enemy aircraft. And as the aircraft drew nearer the Sardarjee suddenly stood up and shouted: "It is a Bomber, Bomber!".

Upon which his Officer admonished him: "Be silent!; Be silent!".

And then the Sardarjee shouted: "It is an Omer, Omer!"

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I then opened the Abe Lincoln book and was amazed to see that it had many pictures of Abe and his sister Sarah, but all of them were totally black with no facial features seen at all. And I asked my father if he bought a faulty specimen.

He said: "They are silhouettes".

That was a silencer. It took me 25 years to know that silhouette means 'shadow' and its queer etymology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silhouette

It was in that Abe Lincoln's book that I read that there were what were called: 'Spelling Bees' and Lincoln always stood first in his childhood. And little Lincoln became my boyhood idol.

And I never got over the mental picture of the feverish 'Bee' that goes from flower to flower and 'Spells' as it flits.

Only now I learned from Wiki where that 'bee' comes form:

.....Historically the word bee has been used to describe a get-together where a specific action is being carried out, like a husking bee, a quilting bee, or an apple bee. Its etymology is unclear but possibly derived from the Old English word bēn for prayer....

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When he at last okay-ed my Thesis Manuscript and dispatched me to the Banerjee Typing Center (that I fondly recollected in: Shyama o Shyamali):

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/05/shyama-o-shaymali.html

SDM warned me: "Your thesis is going to the US; see to it that there are no spelling mistakes".

And I spent days and nights ensuring that it was spell-perfect (Ha!).

SDM never went through my thesis since he knew what was in it. And C H Papas of Caltech passed it in one short paragraph of three sentences.

So I used to gloat that my Thesis was PERFECT,

A couple of years later there was a National Symposium on Luminescence in honor of HNB who was due to retire on his 60th Birthday.

And I was one of the Editors of the Proceedings that had to be printed.

When I went to HNB's Office to deliver my 'Introduction', written with a ball-pen, HNB glanced through it and pointed out a Big Bug in my Title humorously:

"It will be a Dishonor for me if your spelling of Luminescence gets into print: The word comes from 'luminesce' and not 'luminisce' (I wrote: 'luminiscence').

I was ashamed.

But then I recalled that two years back this word occurred in the Introduction of my Thesis at least once. And ran home, fished the damn thing out, and was aghast to find that it was again wrongly spelled: 'luminiscence'.

Papas was either in a hurry or overlooked my Indian spelling.

Now, now, look:

There is a red underline beneath the word 'luminesce' above (but not here), courtesy Blogger's Spell-check, which offers nonsensical suggestions; but Webster says it is perfectly ok.

I told you: "50% boon and 50% curse"

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T. P. Das was my hero at my University where I tried to do Experimental Research in NQR:

He was the only Indian to write (with E. L. Hahn) a monograph in the Solid State Physics Series (then only 7) edited by the greats: Frederick Seitz and David Turnbull (Academic Pres, New York) on NQR. The first page had frightening Equations talking about mystic things like Wigner-Eckart Theorem and Angular Momentum Matrix Elements (all foreign words to me).

When I ran away to IIT KGP it so happened that TPD was invited to give a talk when he was visiting his Home Town Bhubaneshwar on a holiday from his US. A very young short fair gent in jeans (absolutely unseen at KGP then) who gave an equally mysterious speech, which however had the stamp of an expert.

A decade later, I was glancing through the 'Latest Arrivals' rotating shelf in the Central Library at KGP (the Sanctum Sanctorum of that Temple of Learning).

And there I saw a lovely book by T. P. Das, hard-bound and published by Harper & Row, New York. It was fresh from their oven.

And to my consternation the Title in Big Print on the majestic cover read:

"Relativistic Quantum Mechanics of Elections".

And there was no Spell-Check then to pass on the blame.

TPD must have felt miserable!

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I bought a Paperback Edition of RKN's Ramayan as soon as it was released in the Indian Market in the 1980s (?).

It had a gorgeous color picture on its Cover, but going home, I saw that there were these over-bars (indicating extra length in pronunciation) on the wrong 'a's, reading 'Raamayaana' instead of 'Raamaayana'.

gps & TPD & RKN: great company!!!

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