Father Vallins

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 wiki

Most of the readers of this blog would never have seen or heard of the chap sitting majestically in the wiki photo above. He looks like my mental picture of the HM-Father of RKN, but he is not. 

His name is Rt Hon'ble V. R. Srinivasa Sastri (1869-1946) and he hails from a place inTamil Nadu close to Srinivasa Ramanujan's own Kumbakonam. 

He was born to a poor temple priest (both were poor), but achieved much e.g.:

He gained worldwide fame for his prowess in the English language. Sastri was a close follower of Gopal Krishna Gokhale. He was also a close friend and associate of Mahatma Gandhi who addressed Sastri as his "elder brother" in writings. Sastri was made a "Companion of Honour" in 1930. In 1921, the Freedom of the City of London was conferred on Srinivasa Sastri followed by the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh in 1931...Srinivasa Sastri corrected mistakes in the manuscript of The Story of My Experiments with Truth, the English translation of Gandhi's autobiography and also successive issues of the magazine Harijan that was edited by Mahatma Gandhi...In 1937, the then Governor of Madras offered to make Sastri the Acting Chief Minister of Madras Presidency but Sastri declined the offer.^[2] He also declined an offer of membership in the council of the Secretary of State for India

Some Sastri there...no relative of mine.

There was a story, vicious no doubt, doing the rounds at our AU in 1960.  Apparently our Rt Hon'ble VRSS, out of sheer habit, once wrote to Churchill correcting the grammar in one of Churchill's writings.

And Churchill fumed:

"What an educated Englishman writes is English."

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I was reminded of this story while reading Toby Young's column in The Spectator (reproduced in today's DC):

"Good English Really Does Matter"

Toby Young was picking up samples for the Bad Grammar Awards, on whose panel he is serving as a Judge. 

Below is an extract that amused me and recalled my own HM-Father who was fond of 'Good English' by G. H. Vallins, on which he got a Distinction (Star) once in his career:

...An entry we took more seriously was the following notice that is currently displayed in several Tube Stations: "It is safer to stay on the train than attempting to get off."

As I'm sure sharp-eyed readers will have spotted, the mistake here is to use an infinitive and then a gerund, when it should be two infinitives or two gerunds. So Transport for London should either replace the first half of the sentence with "It is safer staying on the train..." or the second half with "...than to attempt to get off."

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So here are the three versions:

1. It is safer to stay on the train than attempting to get off.

...by the Transport of London...entry for Bad Grammar Award

 2. It is safer staying on the train than attempting to get off.

...Toby Young's Correction #1

3. It is safer to stay on the train than to attempt to get off.

...Toby Young's Correction #2


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Now, everyone knows that I care little for grammar (rather than sense and sound) in my blogs. English is a foreign tongue and I never left India.

But I dreamed that my Father and Rt Hon'ble VRSS were both shaking their heads unanimously at Correction (#3) of Toby Young and re-correcting it as:

"It is safer to stay on the train than attempt to get off."

I can't say what Churchill's version would be...I have to ask ;)

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