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Our next distillate is Petrol (I still have to get used to calling it gasoline or gas). Petrol is now in the news here because the GoI suddenly hiked its price by a record-breaking Rs 8 per liter.
Hmmm!
The equivalent of this super-distillate in the world of book-readers is: Connoisseurs. I must have typed this horrendous word a hundred times, but still can't get its weird spelling right...I just punch in some c's, os', n's, s's and r's and 'check its spell'. And I just now checked Webster if any of its synonyms suits me. Here is the result:
As you can see, none of its synonyms is quite the thing. I am amazed that Webster includes 'nut' as a synonym. One great thing is that there is only one antonym: 'ignoramus'...and I didn't check its synonyms...
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I had the good fortune of meeting a few specimens of this rare species, Professor S H Rao of Geophysics heading the list...physics with or without 'geo' is the same with me ;-)
Reading is often in their blood and genes...their parents and their parents must have valued scholarship; and often bequeathed, in addition to taste, a vast collection of books. Books are their soulmates. SHR shifted the entire collection of his home-library from KGP to Hyderabad on his retirement. The touch, feel, smell and sight of books gives them a high.
Our Autocrat defines 'upstarts' as those who buy their silver...when I said this to DB, he and his mississ didn't catch on but their 'dot product' (who later on did her Eng Lit MA from JU) had a sparkle in her eye.
Connoisseurs have a knowing silence about them. You won't pick them in a crowd...they don't and don't need to tom-tom their vast knowledge. There is a metaphor for this: 'It is half-empty vessels that make sounds...they have a large variety of modes from rippling to sloshing'. The full vessels are silent, but quench your thirst handsomely...I mean, if anyone in our IIT KGP Campus in the pre-google era wanted to know what is a 'sauna bath', all he had to do was ask SHR:
http://www.trishir.com/products-details.asp?POID=286
When my piece, In Praise of Laziness, appeared in The Statesman's Now & Again column (courtesy Shyamal who posted it there) and sent copies to several of my friends, many said they enjoyed it. But SHR talked about the various allusions in it for more than an hour, from the obscure Maugham short story, 'Verger', to the 'The Life of the Bee' by Maeterlinck. And said that Maeterlinck won a Nobel for Literature...news to me.
Connoisseurs are so busy reading and enjoying top class literature that they have neither the time nor the mood to spend over amateur authors' 'outpourings of their hearts'. If you want a litmus test whether your 'piece' qualifies as readable (if not printable), just send them a copy. They may be nice to you and say they have enjoyed it, but that means nothing...if it is any good they will pick up their phone and talk to you about it.
A surprising thing about them is that while they can write up a good review, they have no time to write an article for publication. I don't know why. But I guess that when they start writing they would immediately start comparing their prose (or poetry) with that of their favorite authors and get dissuaded. While amateurs don't suffer this handicap.
I give three instances:
SHR himself never wrote any 'piece' and submitted it for publication like I did. And told me in so many words that "he can't write"....meaning he can't write like Addison or Lamb or Hazlitt... (not like gps).
I talked about Basudev Ghosh who was an Eng Lit Lecturer at IIT KGP. He bowled me leg and middle with his genius. He never submitted his Ph D thesis, nor even a 30-page article which would have enabled him to join the faculty of Cal Univ...his professors there knew his capability, so they relaxed norms to that short a write-up. I asked him why he declines to write, and there were tears in his eyes...after a short stint he left KGP to no one knew where...
Finally, Pratik-sir, in his Foreword to the third Ishani booklet confessed:
"I may like to write many things about GPS and his wisdom but would not do so for two reasons. One I lack the knack of writing and two there are great minds who have already said years ago in a much distilled fashion what I wished to say"
And then goes on to pepper his one-page Foreword with as many as four quotable quotes.
It looks only 'ignoramuses' take to full-time blogging...
While everyone is looking elsewhere, let me sneak in this opinion of mine:
"The worst book I ever read (so far) is that 5. Point something"
======================================================================
Our next distillate is Petrol (I still have to get used to calling it gasoline or gas). Petrol is now in the news here because the GoI suddenly hiked its price by a record-breaking Rs 8 per liter.
Hmmm!
The equivalent of this super-distillate in the world of book-readers is: Connoisseurs. I must have typed this horrendous word a hundred times, but still can't get its weird spelling right...I just punch in some c's, os', n's, s's and r's and 'check its spell'. And I just now checked Webster if any of its synonyms suits me. Here is the result:
******************************************************************************************************
| Main Entry: |
connoisseur
[kon-uh-sur, -soor]
 Show IPA
|
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | authority |
| Synonyms: | adept, aesthete, aficionado, appreciator, arbiter, bon vivant, buff*, cognoscente, critic, devotee, dilettante, epicure, expert, fan, freak*, gourmet, judge, maven*, nut*, one into, savant, specialist |
| Antonyms: | ignoramus |
****************************************************************************************************
******************************************************************************************************
I had the good fortune of meeting a few specimens of this rare species, Professor S H Rao of Geophysics heading the list...physics with or without 'geo' is the same with me ;-)
Reading is often in their blood and genes...their parents and their parents must have valued scholarship; and often bequeathed, in addition to taste, a vast collection of books. Books are their soulmates. SHR shifted the entire collection of his home-library from KGP to Hyderabad on his retirement. The touch, feel, smell and sight of books gives them a high.
Our Autocrat defines 'upstarts' as those who buy their silver...when I said this to DB, he and his mississ didn't catch on but their 'dot product' (who later on did her Eng Lit MA from JU) had a sparkle in her eye.
Connoisseurs have a knowing silence about them. You won't pick them in a crowd...they don't and don't need to tom-tom their vast knowledge. There is a metaphor for this: 'It is half-empty vessels that make sounds...they have a large variety of modes from rippling to sloshing'. The full vessels are silent, but quench your thirst handsomely...I mean, if anyone in our IIT KGP Campus in the pre-google era wanted to know what is a 'sauna bath', all he had to do was ask SHR:
http://www.trishir.com/products-details.asp?POID=286
When my piece, In Praise of Laziness, appeared in The Statesman's Now & Again column (courtesy Shyamal who posted it there) and sent copies to several of my friends, many said they enjoyed it. But SHR talked about the various allusions in it for more than an hour, from the obscure Maugham short story, 'Verger', to the 'The Life of the Bee' by Maeterlinck. And said that Maeterlinck won a Nobel for Literature...news to me.
Connoisseurs are so busy reading and enjoying top class literature that they have neither the time nor the mood to spend over amateur authors' 'outpourings of their hearts'. If you want a litmus test whether your 'piece' qualifies as readable (if not printable), just send them a copy. They may be nice to you and say they have enjoyed it, but that means nothing...if it is any good they will pick up their phone and talk to you about it.
A surprising thing about them is that while they can write up a good review, they have no time to write an article for publication. I don't know why. But I guess that when they start writing they would immediately start comparing their prose (or poetry) with that of their favorite authors and get dissuaded. While amateurs don't suffer this handicap.
I give three instances:
SHR himself never wrote any 'piece' and submitted it for publication like I did. And told me in so many words that "he can't write"....meaning he can't write like Addison or Lamb or Hazlitt... (not like gps).
I talked about Basudev Ghosh who was an Eng Lit Lecturer at IIT KGP. He bowled me leg and middle with his genius. He never submitted his Ph D thesis, nor even a 30-page article which would have enabled him to join the faculty of Cal Univ...his professors there knew his capability, so they relaxed norms to that short a write-up. I asked him why he declines to write, and there were tears in his eyes...after a short stint he left KGP to no one knew where...
Finally, Pratik-sir, in his Foreword to the third Ishani booklet confessed:
"I may like to write many things about GPS and his wisdom but would not do so for two reasons. One I lack the knack of writing and two there are great minds who have already said years ago in a much distilled fashion what I wished to say"
And then goes on to pepper his one-page Foreword with as many as four quotable quotes.
It looks only 'ignoramuses' take to full-time blogging...
While everyone is looking elsewhere, let me sneak in this opinion of mine:
"The worst book I ever read (so far) is that 5. Point something"
======================================================================
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