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Being the eldest wife of the Pandavas, Draupadi was the undisputed Queen and must have had thousands of saris safely deposited in her lockers in Indraprastha.
But none of them was of any use to her when the die was cast (literally). And she had to pray to Lord Krishna for an endless series of saris to tire Dushasana out in his evil design.
The repertoire of armory of Maharathi Karna was no inferior to Arjun's...indeed maybe more...he was preparing assiduously for the coming battle. But all of them ditched him when he needed them most.
Nikita Krushchev wanted to do a one-up on Kennedy on the sly sending a shipload of nuclear-tipped missiles to Cuba, the jugular of the US. He had hundreds of warheads in his Russia...these were of little use to him while at sea and he had to beat a hasty retreat.
Once I was alone at KGP while my son and my wife were on a trip to Vizianagaram. I cooked a sumptuous meal and kept it in the fridge and snoozed. And dreamed that I was hungry as hell. And that I was famished, starved and was about to beg in the street for a morsel...dream hunger can't be satiated by food in the real-world fridge.
Four days back I had my cataract surgery on the left eye. The Counselor Dame was insistent that I have to wear my eye-cap during nights and use dark glasses 24 hours ;)
This morning I happened to be alone sitting in the prisoner-sofa and felt that the new pair of dark glasses were too tight and hurting my temples. So I asked my son to fetch my old pair, which were in his glove compartment...and he did it kindly. And I was grateful to him since they were just loose enough for me.
And thinking of this and that and glancing at the headlines of DC I snoozed for maybe ten minutes. On waking up I was looking for my glasses and they were not on my eyes. And I looked here and there, walked to the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and was mystified. And worried. And sat back in the sofa and in frustration shook my head. And the glasses fell down on my nose-bridge from my forehead.
Those were the days when computers were new at KGP and students had access only occasionally in the computer room in the Phy Dept. Late one evening Aniket visited my office and sat down glumly. I asked him what was the matter. And he replied he was awaiting the arrival of the System Administrator. I asked him what for. And he replied:
"I forgot my password"
Since I have now taken up daily blogging as an Upasana, my mind is full of words. My vocabulary is no less than my neighbor's...rather.
But occasionally I don't get the word I want despite hectic searches on the web. Like the other day I was trying to recall the name of my Muthukur friend, Viswanatham. It took all of 4 days for it to spring up out of the well of memory. And once it was there I couldn't think of anything else for more than an hour...it was all Viswanatham...Viswanatham...Viswanatham till I felt I will go crazy with the stupid fellow.
Here is Thurber on the subject:
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"Now, what?" demanded my mother, grimly, pulling us apart. She was capable, fortunately, of handling any two of us and she never in her life was alarmed by the words or actions of any one of us.
"Look out for Jamie!" said father. (He always called me Jamie when excited.) My mother looked at me.
"What's the matter with your father?" she demanded. I said I didn't know; I said he had got up suddenly and dressed and ran out of the room.
"Where did you think you were going?" mother asked him, coolly. He looked at me. We looked at each other, breathing hard, but somewhat calmer.
"He was babbling about New Jersey at this infernal hour of the night," said father.
"I just asked him," I said. "I was trying to think of one and couldn't sleep."
"You see?" said father, triumphantly. Mother didn't look at him.
"Get to bed, both of you," she said. "I don't want to hear any more out of you tonight. Dressing and tearing up and down the hall at this hour in the morning!" She went back into the room and shut her door. Father and I went back to bed. "Are you all right?" he called to me. "Are you?" I asked. "Well, good night," he said. "Good night," I said.
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Being the eldest wife of the Pandavas, Draupadi was the undisputed Queen and must have had thousands of saris safely deposited in her lockers in Indraprastha.
But none of them was of any use to her when the die was cast (literally). And she had to pray to Lord Krishna for an endless series of saris to tire Dushasana out in his evil design.
The repertoire of armory of Maharathi Karna was no inferior to Arjun's...indeed maybe more...he was preparing assiduously for the coming battle. But all of them ditched him when he needed them most.
Nikita Krushchev wanted to do a one-up on Kennedy on the sly sending a shipload of nuclear-tipped missiles to Cuba, the jugular of the US. He had hundreds of warheads in his Russia...these were of little use to him while at sea and he had to beat a hasty retreat.
Once I was alone at KGP while my son and my wife were on a trip to Vizianagaram. I cooked a sumptuous meal and kept it in the fridge and snoozed. And dreamed that I was hungry as hell. And that I was famished, starved and was about to beg in the street for a morsel...dream hunger can't be satiated by food in the real-world fridge.
Four days back I had my cataract surgery on the left eye. The Counselor Dame was insistent that I have to wear my eye-cap during nights and use dark glasses 24 hours ;)
This morning I happened to be alone sitting in the prisoner-sofa and felt that the new pair of dark glasses were too tight and hurting my temples. So I asked my son to fetch my old pair, which were in his glove compartment...and he did it kindly. And I was grateful to him since they were just loose enough for me.
And thinking of this and that and glancing at the headlines of DC I snoozed for maybe ten minutes. On waking up I was looking for my glasses and they were not on my eyes. And I looked here and there, walked to the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and was mystified. And worried. And sat back in the sofa and in frustration shook my head. And the glasses fell down on my nose-bridge from my forehead.
Those were the days when computers were new at KGP and students had access only occasionally in the computer room in the Phy Dept. Late one evening Aniket visited my office and sat down glumly. I asked him what was the matter. And he replied he was awaiting the arrival of the System Administrator. I asked him what for. And he replied:
"I forgot my password"
Since I have now taken up daily blogging as an Upasana, my mind is full of words. My vocabulary is no less than my neighbor's...rather.
But occasionally I don't get the word I want despite hectic searches on the web. Like the other day I was trying to recall the name of my Muthukur friend, Viswanatham. It took all of 4 days for it to spring up out of the well of memory. And once it was there I couldn't think of anything else for more than an hour...it was all Viswanatham...Viswanatham...Viswanatham till I felt I will go crazy with the stupid fellow.
Here is Thurber on the subject:
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
...It was some six months after this that father went through a similar experience with me. He was at that time sleeping in the room next to mine. I had been trying all afternoon, in vain, to think of the name Perth Amboy. It seems now like a very simple name to recall and yet on the day in question I thought of every other town in the country, as well as such words and names and phrases as terra cotta, Walla-Walla, bill of lading, vice versa, hoity-toity, Pall Mall, Bodley Head, Schumann-Heink, etc., without even coming close to Perth Amboy. I suppose terra cota was the closest I came, although it was not very close.
Long after I had gone to bed, I was struggling with the problem. I began to indulge in the wildest fancies as I lay there in the dark, such as that there was no such town, and even that there was no such state as New Jersey. I fell to repeating the word "Jersey" over and over again, until it became idiotic and meaningless. If you have ever lain awake at night and repeated one word over and over, thousands and millions and hundreds of thousands of millions of times, you know the disturbing mental state you can get into. I got to thinking that there was nobody else in the world but me, and various other wild imaginings of that nature.
Eventually, lying there thinking these outlandish thoughts, I grew slightly alarmed. I began to suspect that one might lose one's mind over some such trivial mental tic as a futile search for terra firma Piggly Wiggly Gorgonzola Prester John Arc de Triomphe Holy Moses Lares and Penates. I began to feel the imperative necessity of human contact. This silly and alarming tangle of thought and fancy had gone far enough. I might get into some kind of mental aberrancy unless I found out the name of that Jersey town and could go to sleep. Therefore, I got out of bed, walked into the room where father was sleeping, and shook him.
"Um?" he mumbled. I shook him more fiercely and he finally woke up, with a glaze of dream and apprehension in his eyes. "What's matter?" he asked thickly. I must, indeed, have been rather wild of eye, and my hair, which is unruly, becomes monstrously tousled and snarled at night. "Wha's it?" said my father, sitting up, in readiness to spring out of bed on the far side. The thought must have been going through his mind that all his sons were crazy, or on the verge of going crazy. I see that now, but I didn't then, for I had forgotten the Buck incident and did not realize how similar my appearance must have been to Roy's the night he called father Buck and told him his time had come.
"Listen," I said. "Name some towns in New Jersey quick!" It must have been around three in the morning. Father got up, keeping the bed between him and me, and started to pull his trousers on. "Don't bother about dressing," I said. "Just name some towns in New Jersey." While he hastily pulled on his clothes — I remember he left his socks off and put his shoes on his bare feet — father began to name, in a shaky voice, various New Jersey cities. I can still see him reaching for his coat without taking his eyes off me. "Newark," he said, "Jersey City, Atlantic City, Elizabeth, Paterson, Passaic, Trenton, Jersey City, Trenton, Paterson — "
"It has two names," I snapped. "Elizabeth and Paterson," he said. "No, no!" I told him, irritably. "This is one town with one name, but there are two words in it, like helter-skelter." "Helter-skelter," said my father, moving slowly toward the bed-room door and smiling in a faint, strained way which I understand now — but didn't then — was meant to humor me. When he was within a few paces of the door, he fairly leaped for it and ran out into the hall, his coat-tails and shoelaces flying. The exit stunned me. I had no notion that he thought I had gone out of my senses; I could only believe that he had gone out of his or that, only partially awake, he was engaged in some form of running in his sleep. I ran after him and caught him at the door of mother's room and grabbed him, in order to reason with him. I shook him a little, thinking to wake him completely. "Mary! Roy! Herman!" he shouted. I, too, began to shout for my brothers and my mother. My mother opened her door instantly, and there we were at 3:30 in the morning grappling and shouting, father partly dressed, but without socks or shirt, and I in pajamas.
"Now, what?" demanded my mother, grimly, pulling us apart. She was capable, fortunately, of handling any two of us and she never in her life was alarmed by the words or actions of any one of us.
"Look out for Jamie!" said father. (He always called me Jamie when excited.) My mother looked at me.
"What's the matter with your father?" she demanded. I said I didn't know; I said he had got up suddenly and dressed and ran out of the room.
"Where did you think you were going?" mother asked him, coolly. He looked at me. We looked at each other, breathing hard, but somewhat calmer.
"He was babbling about New Jersey at this infernal hour of the night," said father.
"He came to my room and asked me to name towns in New Jersey." Mother looked at me.
"I just asked him," I said. "I was trying to think of one and couldn't sleep."
"You see?" said father, triumphantly. Mother didn't look at him.
"Get to bed, both of you," she said. "I don't want to hear any more out of you tonight. Dressing and tearing up and down the hall at this hour in the morning!" She went back into the room and shut her door. Father and I went back to bed. "Are you all right?" he called to me. "Are you?" I asked. "Well, good night," he said. "Good night," I said.
...James Thurber in 'More Alarms at Night'
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