Witness

There are moments to like or dislike

Or stoically watch the same thing;

Be it a passage of music unlike

any heard before, or a painting. 

I am, the unchanged I but I

am inconstant in my becoming. 

From a lowly pit to exalted high, 

like an onion subject to reckoning. 

Who is avenged, not I, but I

just watch my self-suffering, 

like idol adored for its idiotic smile

before a believer lamenting. 🌹

Tongueage

If we expose ourself to any language we learn it. An illiterate beggar on the road is more likely to surprise us with a turn of phrase which a scholar may not. It is the same reason why an ordinary German may know fluent German than a foreign scholar of the same language. It is because language thrives on the open streets, not in closed biblioteques. 

Why we accept the elitist opinions on the beauty of language is beyond me. A workable grammar, proper syntax & a reasonable vocabulary are the survival kit of any language. What gives language its vitality is its easy use with the purpose of carrying a thought across and not ornamental doodah! It is not what the 'Shastrys' of language claim and whose advise is taken by the Goverments in their official documents, circulars, etc. It is not a living language but a pile of dead bodies of words, put together to sound officious only to be, more likely, misunderstood. On Indian railway platforms you read notices with words like " नि:शुल्क" for instance. Most people who travel are not pundits or poets or logophiles. They are ordinary people in a hurry to catch the next train to their destination. Platform notices and other public notifications should serve as tools for easy communication & not impress with some idiotically inflated word which not all are likely to understand. It is because such words are not prevalent or even in day-to-day use. 

Poets, especially Mir Taqi Mir, who is called "ख़ुदा-ए-सुख़न" (God of poetry) used commonplace words in some of his most celebrated couplets. 

"सिरहाने 'मीर' के कोई न बोलो

अभी टुक रोते रोते सो गया है"

See that word 'TuK'. It is vernacular and it is that word which has made the shér famous! 

Javed Akhtar has told of his father, the celebrated Janisar Akhtar, telling him that is is easy to write with difficult words but difficult to write with easy. 

This fallacy seems to be universal. Pakistan made Urdu the national language but Pakistanis are obsessed with the exercise of infusing Persian and Arabic words in their Urdu. Just listen to the new field marshal Munir speaking at public meetings! His lips swear by Pakistan but his rooh, soul, seems to crave to fly out of his body and hover over the Arabian skies! 

I recently watched Dr. Arfa Syeda Zehra in a video saying that now-a-days Pakistanis are making Urdu more & more Farsi. (Rather farcical, methinks! ) 

Similarly, Ashok Vajpeyi, admittedly very eloquent and learned, uses Hindi in a manner that may be understood by only the educated elite from the Hindi belt. Sanskritisation of prakrit (which means unrefined! ) to me seems to fail in recognizing the very raison d'être of the natural reasons why a khadi-boli stood shoulder to shoulder with the classical languages. Tamil, debatably the only old-world language which has evolved through centuries with a regular maintainance of her vitality, has successfully retained her quality because it admits the seepage between the use of language in the various sections of her populace. There is a give and take. It is this barter, the natural exchange without imposition, which makes a tongue thrive. 

Some learned fellow in the aechelons of the ruling party has the wish to unify Indian subcontinent with one language and he feels it should be Hindi. The people, the end-users of language do not feel comfortable with this proposal. I am with the sentiment of the people. #Tamil Nadu for one, should NOT accept this proposal. So also west #Bengal, Assam and other states with literature comparable to the best in the world. If the nation wants to unite on the basis of one language then the nation must decide, the people should decide, not some official with his private, hidden agenda. RSS is trying to revive Sanskrit. With all due respect to its pliant, rigid classisism and the elitist aura, sanskrit will not regerminate in modern climate. We have only to go into the reasons why such a great language dwindled in the first place in a nation with such diversity as India. Diversity cannot, by definition, admit uniformality. Diversity must remain; it must be prioritized because it is more adaptive to vitality within its elements. For instance in a rose garden not all roses are of the same subspecies. We have red, yellow, white, blue, magenta,crimson, scarlet, salmon and even the rare black roses on display. Imagine a rose garden with one hybrid tea rose spread across furlongs. It may look fine but it may not have the sense in which Gertrude Stein said, "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose..."In this context Stein's line seems apt because a rose cannot be merely representational.  Seeing one rose is not enough to experience the essence of rose yet a rose in any shape and colour and fragrance is a rose. So it is this rose and that rose together gives you the broad picture of rose. That must be understood. A forest has more vitality than a laid out jardine. It needs maintaining. A forest, on the other hand, is best maintained if left to its own resources. 

The values which hitherto fore held things together are collapsing. Perhaps, letting go of the old is advisable to usher in the new, but right now the chaos makes deciding difficult. 🌹

Dream or a mare?

I sleep deep & so don't remember dreams. I dreamt last night and on waking up past 3.40, remembered parts of it. Decided to write it down lest I forget. 

I was lost in a village, deep inside Tamil Nadu. 

Much of the dream is forgotten. Don't know why or how I went to that village. Perhaps in passing, got down in that village mistakenly. 

It was a hamlet through which buses passed. There was a temple, small shops selling groceries, etc. It was difficult to communicate with the people because the people there spoke only Tamil & I don't speak Tamil. I have no phone with me, didn't remember any number to call, didn't see a post office or a government building and I had no cash! Had no idea what the name of the place was. One or two people I tried to ask for help waved me off. I wasn't looking like a beggar, I'm sure, not shabby in appearance but I didn't speak Tamil! That was the only reason why they didn't speak to me. 

Remember walking on the same street again and again, looking for a way out. I wanted to be comforted by some familiarity. I was hungry but moreover, I wanted to know the name and location of that god forsaken, damned hamlet! I roamed the streets, a few times pathways which led me to empty, uncultivated fields. I just roamed, trying to find some sign which gave me an idea. People didn't entertain me so I stopped trying to ask them, 

I saw at some point two boys of about ten playing along as they returned to their homes. I approached the boys and asked the one slightly fairer than the other whether he spoke any English. Yes he said. I wanted to know so much within a few minutes so as to not delay the boys from going home. The first thing I asked was the name of the temple. He told me some name which sounded like "Chincinati". Then I asked him the name of that place but before the boy could reply, I woke up. 

So weird! 

Drawing... 1392025

 

Monikers

The habit some people have of giving funny names to passers by.

 There were two cousins, Sanjay and Mahesh, who stood at the window of their house and called passers-by all sorts of strange names in Konkani. Something about their appearance made them come out with the most ridiculous names. A short, roundish man waking with a limp would be, for instance, "polio-pedha". 😄Sanjay was the one who shouted out aloud so that people would actually hear. At times he would address the person. The best part is, some of the passers smiled at Sanjay's mischief but most just ignored him. Mahesh, his cousin would usually simply laugh, holding his palms across his mouth in order to suppress his own laughter. Sometimes he would improve on his cousin's suggestive name. I used to watch them doing it.  The trait developed in me with good fertilizer of idleness & productive alluvium of boredom. 

I have christened many school mates in this fashion. A classmate of mine, Vallabh (we did KG to secondary schooling together), was "Vakl " meaning spectacles. He wasn't bespectacled; there simply was something about his frame and character which was very 'Vaklesque'. He came to mind early this morning. 

Devendra, another classmate, was "Amo". Those names stuck and those two, I remember, were called by those names just short of being official! When Devendra was to be included in the basketball team for instance, the coach would say, " OK, here's the first five: Nemi, Reza, Edwin, Amo & Shiva."

After decades, the other day my friend Mahendra gave me a call out of the blue from a bar in Panjim. After the initial huuhu-haaha, he said, hang on speak to your friend and gave Devendra his phone to talk to me. "Hallo",  I heard Devendra's distinct voice & I literally shouted with a pleasant surprise, for he was the last person I expected. "AVVOISSSS, "AMO" mare!!!”. 

He seemed surprised that I had remembered him after all those years. I had names for my women friends as well. One fish seller was named 'Kharén', (dried fish). Another one was RravLuk, a small hopper, believed to eat human hair, etc. 

It is not unique. I have heard many do it but not openly. Some of my friends have the habit and I have heard some of them whisper under their breath monikers given by them to others.

I myself was called by many names, right from Maruti, Mungerilal and what not. Some stuck, others didn't. My friends often made me believe that I was better then what I was. I played along. I made people laugh; if there wasn't that, life might have been not worth living considering my personal history. 

Not that it matters but someday I must pen an autobiographical. May be my nonchalance was a bluff!