"...The true walker avoids all company. The best companion for a walk is oneself...this being a grand opportunity for sifting and anlaysing life and people and coming to a conclusion over so many matters. Here company is untenable. You might as well say you are unable to contemplate the sunset unless you have a companion chattering away on your side. The true walker, even if he has been with himself for six hours, will never say, "I have been out with the greatest bore on earth, namely myself"..."
...RKN in: The True Walker
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It is well known that RKN used to take long morning and evening walks along the lanes and by-lanes of his Malgudi Mysore all by himself. But he would halt whenever he meets an acquaintance, exchange gossip, and proceed. And drop at his various mamool shops, buy a knickknack and get updates.
His walks were meant not only for his health but also to get ideas for his novels, characters and essays.
Khushwant Singh writes:
"..We saw a lot more of each other during a literary seminar organised by the East-West Centre in Hawaii. Having said our pieces and sat through discussions that followed, we went out for our evening walks, looking for a place to eat. It was the same kind of stroll as we had taken in Mysore punctuated by abrupt halts in the middle of crowded pavements till he was ready to resume walking..."
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211789
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My Ph D Guide SDM for a while used to come to the Department on his ancient pushbike but on his return trips in the evening to his Qrs, he would prefer to walk, lugging his bike along, with his trademark heavy bag latched onto its carrier. And, since I used to be the last person in his Office, I had to necessarily walk beside him all the way (I had sold my third-hand pushbike to raise money for Wills Flakes).
All along, he would continue his endless one-way-talk, halting his bike many times and turning to look at me for emphasis, stop at the entrance of his Qrs and talk on and on; till his Mrs invites both of us for Tea and Loochies (all is well that ends well!)
By the time he became HoD, he used to hire a rickshaw on a monthly basis for his journeys to and fro. And along the way, he used to pick up Prof GBM (at no additional cost to the poor rickshawala). The two used to have arguments routinely.
One day when I visited his Office, he was glum; and after a while he narrated what happened that morning. Apparently, he was so upset with GBM he got so furious that he asked the rickshawala to halt near Harry's and practically pushed GBM out; and was watched in the act by the Director riding in his Staff Car...
Two Big Kids!!!
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Prof B joined KGP around 1968 and was putting up in our Faculty Hostel for a few months. He was a decade or more older to me and since he told us that he did his graduation at Cornell, we were duly all impressed and expected to learn much from him.
Unfortunately, Cornell didn't seem to have broadened his non-physics mind, since we all discovered early that he was a Hindi fanatic from Allahabad...(he didn't change much even after thirty KGP years...soon after he retired and settled in Allahabad, he sent 5 verses in Hindi composed by him to be put up on the Office Notice Board by a colleague from Sangam with similar views...I guess I too should send my blogs to Pratik for the same purpose...)
Those were the years when the Central Government in their unwisdom tried to make Hindi compulsory and was met with stiff resistance from Tamilnadu and Bengal. The Congress lost both these states and never recovered till now, a half century later.
As a rule I am tolerant except when someone tries to harshly impose his views on others....Majority Bullying:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/majority-bullying.html
A few days after he joined us, we were at the breakfast table (a rare event) and I was applying butter to my toast. Prof B was a few chairs away and said:
"O makkhan jara paas keejiye!"
And I kept quiet. He repeated:
"O makkhan jara paas keejiye!"
three times (like the cock crew thrice biblically).
And I replied without looking up:
"Nenu ivvanu po!"
which meant: "Get lost, I am not passing it on!"
The two Telugu bearers, Narayan and Laxman, guffawed and B's face fell.
Matters came to a head after a few days. One evening, myself and Prof PCS of EE were taking a stroll. He was one of the most widely read persons I ever met with and it was a pleasure talking to him on a walk. B joined us from nowhere and at once started talking about the 3-language formula and the Constitutional Requirement of having Hindi as the sole National Language and teaching it compulsorily from school level onwards all over India...(RKN has a few very diverting pieces on this, like: "To a Hindi Enthusiast")
That got my goat and I entered into a vicious argument (the only one I ever did) for the next two hours...we went round the Campus roads twice over...like the Lion and the Unicorn...all along Prof PCS quietly listening without uttering a single word!
That was more like: "Quack the Walk"
Myself and DB never had our name plates on our Office Wall for many years, till Prof RNP took over as furniture-in-charge; and made some lovely wooden boards. He asked us our spellings and proper pronunciation and by the time he got them fixed on our wall, we discovered that our names were in the 2-language formula...
India was shining then for a while...but no longer...not even with so many rathyatras of jeesaheb...
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Tense Sentence
From ToI:
"...The victim might have had interfered with the activities of the accused..."
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