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.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHYCcnbWID5dmBRnsvFqFNEVrOx-aShhESxRXIyn-FXvcioUxyK_MShdO7EWUhJSzbDxE4FZxINeLp_GsW4n6DR7DQ0LWkNgNdnpqpgclesoZ0gSFvIKoHN6Wt1thgMBY_MB-R-TSVnh8/s1600/1959+Bollywood+Poster+NAVRANG+%257E+V+Shantaram.JPG

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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https://mrweis.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/malapropism.jpg

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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https://s3.amazonaws.com/lowres.cartoonstock.com/telecommunications-indian-red_indian-native_american-squaw-chief-gra061122_low.jpg

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

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&


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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http://media.santabanta.com/images/picsms/2015/sms-15197.jpg

"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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http://images.pcmac.org//images/Users/howard.bernice@lee.k12.al.us//MPj04395260000[1].jpg

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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Decimal Point

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http://www.funnyjokester.com/j/math-joke-decimal-joke.png

An Online Coaching Portal:

"Submit five question papers and earn a five-figure remuneration"


gps: I know this portal...the five figures include the decimal point and two zeroes after it.





....Posted by Ishani

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Politics

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http://www.internetboekhandel.nl/base/87/CBcover/0385094787.jpg

Don Marquis
1878-1937
"aesop
revised by archy"

a wolf met a spring lamb drinking at a stream and said to her you are the lamb that muddied this stream all last year so that i could not get a clean fresh drink i am resolved that this outrage shall not be enacted again this season i am going to kill you just a minute said the lamb i was not born last year so it could not have been i the wolf then pulled a number of other arguments as to why the lamb should die but in each case the lamb pretty innocent that she was easily proved herself guiltless well well said the wolf enough of that argument you are right and i am wrong but i am going to eat you anyhow because i am hungry stop exclamation point cried a human voice and a man came over the slope of the ravine vile lupine marauder you shall not kill that beautiful and innocent lamb for i shall save her exit the wolf left upper exit snarling poor little lamb continued our human hero sweet tender little thing it is well that i appeared just when i did it makes my blood boil to think of the fright to which you have been subjected in another moment i would have been too late come home with me and the lamb frolicked about her new found friend gambolling as to the sound of a wordsworthian tabor and leaping for joy as if propelled by a stanza from william blake these vile and bloody wolves went on our hero in honest indignation they must be cleared out of the country the meads must be made safe for sheepocracy and so jollying her along with the usual human hokum he led her to his home and the son of a gun did not even blush when they passed the mint bed gently he cut her throat all the while inveigling against the inhuman wolf and tenderly he cooked her and lovingly he sauced her and meltingly he ate her and piously he said a grace thanking his gods for their bountiful gifts to him and after dinner he sat with his pipe before the fire meditating on the brutality of wolves and the injustice of the universe which allows them to harry poor innocent lambs and wondering if he had not better write to the paper for as he said for god s sake can t something be done about it

http://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/dm-aesop.htm

Book gifted by Shyamala Rajan

...Posted by Ishani

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