Mohan flatters Modi

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This (mutilated) Letter appeared in today's DC:

KING CANUTE

In his article Economy: Time to get real (March 31) Mohan Guruswamy has made a mistake about King Canute. The Wikipedia says that Canute's name is usually quoted in the context of the story King Canute and the Waves, but that misrepresents Canute as a deluded man who believed that he had supernatural powers. The original story says the opposite and portrays him as a wise king. 

G. P. Sastry

Hyderabad

Mohan Guruswamy is an intellectual and as such a scholarly baiter of Modijee. And compares him repeatedly with the popular version of King Canute as a cheap boaster. But in the process Mohanjee glorifies Modijee as a wise and humble king who despises flattery (thank you!).

Read this lovely poem by William Makepeace Thackeray:

http://allpoetry.com/King-Canute

...

And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay,
But alone to praise and worship That which earth and seas obey:
And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day.
King Canute is dead and gone: Parasites exist alway.




...Posted by Ishani

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Home Libraray

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Four months back oranges here were selling at the incredible rate of Rs 19 a kilo.

My son's lady-physician ordered him to eat oranges to tone up his stressed health. And I bought a kilo and brought them home. And as usual he was trying to force an orange piece into my unwilling mouth...I never eat fruits or sweets. My tastes are sourly.

But, in one of my failed attempts to dodge, he won and I found myself sucking a piece that was forced into my toothless mouth.

And found it good...sour enough and unlike a sweet.

And I got addicted...I was buying three kilos...one for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little girl who lives in our home.

Very soon they stopped eating and I was eating all the oranges I bought...it was time-pass fun peeling and sucking and spitting.

And my senior citizen friends remarked that my cheeks have plumped and my general vigor has gone up by a factor of 2.

Soon the orange season was over and their price skyrocketed to Rs 50 a kilo. But I am a bloody addict and found myself spending Rs 100 everyday on my new addiction.


Then one day I found my throat a bit clogged. And then blocked. And then the cough started. And I couldn't sleep at all.

Next morning my son saw my pathetic condition and gave me a strip of 3 tablets of azithromycin asking me to take one a day and in three days I would be cured.

I found relief in 3 hours.

After 3 days I was completely cured but found myself too weak to walk even a few steps. Life didn't seem worth living anymore...but there was a 6% hike in pension and a promise of another 30% hike looming.

I gave up oranges.

And found myself saving Rs 3000 a month. 

Since I couldn't walk I started reading books in my home library. And liking it.

And the idea came that I could buy online as many as 15 paperbacks of my childhood classics per month in that Rs 3000.

And of building a tiny home-library for little Ishani...she is into reading English story books for kids and chastising me for my poor spellings like 'color'.

And I have already ordered half a dozen books and got them too.

But suddenly I became dubious...

When I was in my first year of BSc (Hons, Physics) at my University in Vizagh in 1958 I found we had to read all of 17 prescribed Eng Lit books in two years and pass in two papers at the end of it.

One of those books was "Newman's Idea of a University" (1863, 200 pages). All my classmates said it was unreadable and chose to leave it in the 'choice'.

It was a book I could afford to buy and so I started reading it.

There was a weird ball-pen with me then with all of 4 refills in 4 colors..black, blue, green and red:

http://www.penantique.com/Penantique/Pen/Vintage_Pens/Vintage_Pens_1/Caran_d'Ache_Four_Color_Ballpoint_Pen/Caran_d'Ache_Four_Color_Ballpoint_Pen_1.JPG

During my first reading I started underlining its 'important' passages in black ink. In my second reading, a different set of them in blue ink. And next in green and next in red.

And found at the end of 2 years (before my exam) that the whole text got underlined in various colors....and all my friends declared I was crazy.

Another slim prescribed book I could afford to buy was Milton's prose book titled Aeropagitica (1644). That too became my favorite although our ma'am advised all of us to leave it for 'choice' and didn't bother to teach us it at all. 

I passed...somewhat gloriously...the examiners must have found the 'difference'.

And in my 4th year when I was supposed to be mugging up 17 books of physics, I came across a book titled 'Autocrat of the Breakfast Table' by a chap called Oliver Wendell Holmes (1858).

And devoured it.

I read that book 5 times in the 5 ensuing decades. An 1885 second-hand edition is with me now, gifted by Edwin F Taylor who had to ransack all the book shops in the Harvard Square in search of a new edition...in vain.

I tried to interest at least a dozen well-read friends to read it...it boomeranged...the most diligent succeeded in reading all of its first 3 pages, cursing me.

With such a history of craziness I wonder if it is at all a good idea for me to try and build a home-library for little Ishani in these modern times.

But I console myself that it is enough even if she looks at the titles and remembers the names of their authors...to impress her friends and her ma'ams...like I did...







...Posted by Ishani

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Freshers' Intro

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...Posted by Ishani

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Two Cultures

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1965: Faculty Hostel cum Guest House, IIT KGP  :


Me sitting and smoking on the lawn bench. New chap arrives and sits beside me and speaks:

"It is so hot and humid here. In Australia it is early spring now and beautiful" 

"Is it so?"

"Yes...I was in Melbourne yesterday"

"Oh!"

"Yes...I was a Visiting Professor at the Melbourne University"

....Silence....



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2015: Nile Valley Apartments, Hyderabad:


Me sitting and brooding on the lawn bench. New chap arrives and sits beside me and speaks:

"It is so rocky and barren here. In Coastal AP is is all green now and beautiful"

"Is it so?"

"Yes...I was in East Godavari yesterday"

"Oh!"

"Yes...we have 1000 acres of farmland in the Konaseema Delta"

...Silence....






...Posted by Ishani

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Nature's Lap

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...Posted by Ishani

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Withering Heights

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I was 19 then...a fresh research scholar at Vizagh with loads of cash in my empty pockets. 

There was this Hindi film running in Leela Mahal maybe. It was titled Navrang.

I saw it all of 12 times in a month. Understood not a single word of spoken Hindi but was humming its unintelligible songs.

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I don't think I can watch that movie for one minute now...I understand Hindi.

I turned 65 in 2008. My son showed me the movie Great Train Robbery on the screen of his PC:

http://film24h.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/The-Great-Train-Robbery-1978.jpg

I loved every screenshot of it. I didn't follow a single sentence of the dialogues. I still don't. But I would love to watch it again on the big screen at home.

When I was 12, I read Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. Could get the gist of the story but not the meaning of most words.

I turned 65 when I read his Huckleberry Finn printed from the PC. Read it twice over and loved it and thought I got the meaning of its crazy dialogues.

I then read his Following the Equator same way. But it was easy to read and follow.

I loved reading dictionaries...in particular the massive Webster. I would pull it down from the rack in search of some obscure word and get lost for a couple of hours browsing it and forget the word I was looking for.

I thought I knew the meanings of most words in English that I find in newspapers and most novels.

The other day I ordered Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. And opened it with relish.

And found that I have to consult the dictionary for at least 2 words in each para.

Fortunately my son gifted a smart phone the other day.

So I lounge on the single sofa Sailaja gifted me...with the bloody book in the right hand and the phone in the left (for opening the Free Dictionary).

I feel humbled.

Don't know the meaning of a simple 4-letter word like 'trig'.

The consolation is that the Cambridge English Dictionary also doesn't...

...Posted by Ishani

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Kiss of Death

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From times immemorial I have been suffering from a strange disease which I had called Bloomerism earlier:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2014/05/girls-at-landings.html


It is somewhat akin to malapropism but not quite the same thing. A malapropism is a speech confusion like saying:

"I joined Alcoholics Unanimous"

Mine is more like tweakapropism. 

I see something in print and, while trying to read it, what registers in my mind is quite another thing than what is printed. Something similar but bewitching. Often atrocious. But I get carried away into a reverie that lasts quite a few bewildering minutes till I re-read the thing when everything becomes meaningful but prosaic. Thurber would have loved me.

For instance, in the post I referred to above, I read that our builder failed to redeem his promise to install 32 girls at the sixteen landings in our apartment complex. Quite a beguiling promise till the 32 girls turned out to be 32 grills after all.

This morning I was scanning the headlines on Page 5 of our DC and read the item as:

Man gets lifer for kissing sis-in-law

I felt sorry for the chap and was wondering how tough our law has become under the new regime which is somewhat puritanical.

It is the two 's's in sis that misled me by their proximity.

Turned out that the chap really 'killed' his sis-in-law. He hit the dame with his auto and tried to make it seem a hit-and-run affair...not a kiss-and-run affair.

Serves him right...but what about ME!!!

It was so much wasted sympathy...not empathy...I have no sis-in-law, for kissing or killing or kicking...

Yet another headline on Page 4 today that I read as:

Hell-tourism project faces rough weather

Hmmmm...




...Posted by Ishani

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Red Indians

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This appeared in the Letters to the Editor column in today's DC (with the usual editorial butchering):

RED INDIANS

The edit page article of Sreeram Chaulia was brilliant (Cuban Revolution, March 22). However, while condemning "Uncle Sam's historical bullying of innocent Latin American nations," he forgets the butchering of the Red Indians to whom the continent originally belonged. Save a tear for them too.

G.P.Sastry

Hyderabad

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1943 World War II:

Roosevelt: OK. We will help you in the war. But promise to give freedom to the Indians whom you have suppressed mercilessly for 200 years.

Churhcill: Which Indians are you talking about?...The  brown ones who have multiplied 3-fold during our benign regime, or the Red ones whom you have made extinct?





...Posted by Ishani

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Freudian Vetting of ToI

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"Final call on punishment will be taken by the VC and chief proctor, after whetting students' reply to notices"

...ToI Front Page Box March 15, 2016





...Posted by Ishani

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Summum Bonum

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Ishani and her mom are in Nellore on leave, attending a family marriage. And the last date for paying Ishani's school fees was looming. My son withdrew the needed cash from an ATM (which he rarely does) and asked me to accompany him to the school. He is scared to go there alone and so am I. So we two form a joint stock enterprise.

My son and I waited on the sofa in the Reception. And his turn came and he was going in.

Meanwhile the ever-efficient HR, Ms S, walked out of her cubicle and saw my son and greeted him. I was trying to hide myself under the sofa but to no avail. As soon as she saw me, she wished me and I walked over to them. And she said:

"Sir, we would love to have your Ishani Booklets for our Library...we can pay the charges if any"

I was overwhelmed and did a big pranam and said:

"My pleasure...tomorrow by this time I will be here with a copy each of the lot"

And I was, with all of 8 booklets (many bound in the Library Edition). Including the Telugu Ishani Shatakam.

And Ms S was pleased and said:

"Thank you sir! Kids here do read books in our Library, you know"

And I said:

"What better place can be there for the Ishani Booklets than her School Library! It is the most secure and ideal place for them...thank you!

Love's Labor Not Lost...





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