Lakshman's Corner

My temporary absence from the scintillating world of blogging has come to an end.

My inspirational “trio” ( remeber Three wise Monkeys & Three Judgemets !!   ) is back to complete a Trilogy .

First the  RIP : dedicated to someone who  famously described himself as a           gentleman bitch .  Gore Vidal is no more. I watched the Hard Talk re-run on BBC of a four-year old  interview with the just deceased , wherein his acerbic witticism visibly made the otherwise unflappable interviewer seem uneasy . I am not well read enough( nor  widely-read to be honest !! )  to write anything meaningful about Gore Vidal’s works . I knew of him as a novelist , a story writer , an essayist , & a political commentator but had read none of his works . What I did know though were some of his outrageously funny quotable quotes , which always come in handy , often as uncredited one-liners . Herewith some of these , aptly applicable to the world’s largest democracy wherein we participate , perform , & produce ( sorry , there I go again with my penchant for digression but this one was irresistable  !!  )  .  I am referring to democratic processes & not to what one-track minds would think !!

Coming back to the RIP dedication, who would imagine that he was referring to America & not to our very own India in his ” Half the people can’t read a newspaper , & half will not vote . One hopes it is the same half “.  Or in his somewhat snooty  ” Public figures can’t write their own speeches. There’s some evidence that they can’t read them either “.  Team Anna , in the euphoria of wanting to enter Electoral Politics , must take note of his warning ”  at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests ” .  Or the daily rant of most tax payers reflected in ” The genius of our ruling class is in making a majority of  people —–   drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”  How , one wonders , could he have known about the NDA – UPA hyperbola in our lives when he ascribed to Democracy the quality of giving us  “the feeling of choice like painkiller X  or   painkiller Y :  both just Aspirin” .  Cheerio Gore Vidal ; RIP .

The WIP  in this narrative occured when I drove  2 kms to a new Hair-Spa ( in my pre-HNI days I would visit the friendly neighbourhood barber shop when in need of a hair-cut & a vigorous scalp massage called ‘Champi’ orchestrated by the latest Bollywood number blaring full throttle from a precariously old radio ) . The hair therapist  at the Spa ( I thought they were called Barbers ; or Hairdressers in slightly up-market establishments ) spent over 10 minutes helping me through their Menu ( I wasn’t ordering a meal , hungry as I was ) to what he expertly believed to be the most appropriate treatment for my hair. The process started with a trim here & a clip there . Half way through these prelimineries , a certain religious fervour overtook  the therapist , & he excused himself to break his day-long  fast in response to his  ethereal  calling , leaving my hair & me as  work-in-progress so to speak , in no condition to stage a walk out in protest ( one sideburn trimmed & the other in wild disarray might be trendy only if sported  by a celeb ) . I amused myself , instead , through a vivid recollection of  the common sight of half tonsured WIP generated by  accredited barbers at a popular place of worship down south , by accosting unsuspecting pilgrims only to abandon them as half-done  captive demand awaiting completion of the tonsure, to accost more gullibles  : a clear case of two halves being grater than one full in revenue optimisation .

Finally , VIP  here refers not to any VIP but to my favoured brand of vests & boxer shorts  In the madness called the Phoenix mall , all global brands , differently priced , some shockingly so , were on display to the inexplicable exclusion of VIP . And that too , in synthetic fabrics & loud colours : whatever happened to the near-universal preference once upon a time for white ribbed Egyptian cottons.  A long & tiresome search finally produced results , albeit in a brand called MIP . May be there is a message there for one to move up in the hierarchy of needs from  very important to the most important .

Cheers for now

I have been a bit under the weather & in no state to Blog . Better now, I am back at work & my blog after a two-day respite to all ( at work & in the Blogosphere ).

There is so much that has happened while I was away  .

Team Anna’s 4th day at Jantar Mantar , Anna 4 one might say , continued to be a damp squib . The Government had , almost as an ominous warning , demonetised Anna 4 ( 25 paise coins ) , to prelude the wash out of Anna 4  ( sorry : a plagiarised joke !! ) .

The Brits were at their diplomatic best in altering the basic structure of their National Anthem so as not to hurt any sensibilities at the Olympics that they are hosting rather well since last night. The innocuous first verse warranted no change. The second verse invoking Divine help in doing rather a lot of nasty things to enemies of the erstwhile empire has been deleted to make way for the politically correct third verse which their atheletes are engaged in memorising . One needs to doff one’s hat at their ability to deal , ever so placidly , with a series of goof-ups in the run-up to the grand opening last night . In Jaya Row’s definitional finery, they come close to Satvik behaviour ( concerned but not perturbed ) compared with Desi reactions collectively bordering  Tamsik ( perturbed but not concerned ) at the Common Wealth Games in Delhi.

I appear to have digressed , as is my wont , from the theme of this blog & must therefore return to three monumental Judgements that were dispensed while I was away :

1. The Pakistan Supreme Court dispensed delayed , though not denied , justice to the Punjab Bakers’ sssociation by de-controlling the price of a “Samosa” in Lahore . Financial reforms finally visible in Pakistan !! May be the next mammoth step will be to allow multi-brand FDI in “Samosas” now that the price ceiling of Rs 6 has been removed .
2. It took a British court much less time , true to their reputedly efficient judicial system , to dispense justice to the bereaved family of the Pune lad who was murdered in cold blood in Manchester last Boxing day , with a harsher-than-life-imprisonment sentence to the accused & convicted .
3. Last , but by no means the least , was the verdict in the 8-year old paternity what-not in the Narain Dutt Tiwari case .  Predictably, the outcome was described by the defendent  as a politically motivated conspiracy . He reportedly praised the efforts of leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, & Madan Mohan Malviya , whose  traditions he claimed he would follow till his last breath. Of course , in the interest of brevity , I have left out a few words from these desultory statements by the octogenarian , & any mischievous connotations arising therefrom are entirely unintended.

The aforesaid LBBNMTL verdict called for some focussed research in Wikepedia ( where else !! ) & herewith some profundities thus culled :

• Not having sired a child in wedlock ( Press reported this with a telling yet camouflaged “first time Dad ” ) could be sufficient ground for an appeal in a paternity trial .
• The ” probability of parentage”  is 0 % in a negative result but 99.99% in a positive DNA result : meaning that while DNA can establish non-paternity in absolute terms , its establishment of paternity could be wrong in 0.01 % cases ( seemingly small though substantial in relative numbers for a leader of substance in a country of 1.2 billion ( 120,000 to be precise ). What you might wonder is the point I am making. The honest answer is that I haven’t the foggiest .
• The aforesaid 0.01 % are individuals with at least two sets of genes . Most people ( so Wikepedia would have us believe ) have a single & distinct set of genes. The formerly mentioned rare individuals are , it seems , referred to as Chimeras . A chimera of course is , in Greek mythology, a fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head , a goat’s body , & a serpent’s tail . In colloquialism , the word has a completely different connotation , when used as a rare adjective for a negatively multi-faceted person in the hare & hounds analogy. A plea of self confession in this regard might well be his only salvation : senseless invocation of names such as those cited above will definitely not get him off the hook .

Cheers for now & off we go to cheer the lads & lasses at London 2012 .

A blog ” The confessions of a Linguist ” by a Grammer pedant , under the nom-de-plume Brightbluesaturday , has been making waves in Blogosphere :  there appears to be no end in sight to the debate it has initiated between Descriptive & Prescriptive grammarians .

Selective excerpts from the blog deserve sharing :

• “We can’t send angry letters to TESCOfor having a sign saying “Ten Items or
  Less” instead of “Ten Items or Fewer” “
• “——  the difference between “your” and “you’re”, or “there”, “their” and “they’re””.
• “The difference between “its” and “it’s” is important. It’s not life and death, but it’s still important “.
• Words like “best” and “favourite” and “tallest” are superlatives. This means you can’t add a “most” or a “least” onto them. “Most favourite” is a redundant phrase.
• ” Café has an acute accent on the e. Otherwise you pronounce it to rhyme with “safe””.
• Yes, I  know, I know, as a linguist, I’m supposed to see language as being descriptive  ——–Well, for whatever reason, I’m a secret prescriptive grammarian.

This rant by a prescriptive grammarian deserved a telling response from the land where English ( Hinglish/ Inglish ) is often spoken with the “whole & sole” purpose of being understood & not with an eye on Grammatical purity . ” Who you are “ & “How you are “ are often heard , with equally fascinating responses in ” Why I should tell you ? Who YOU ARE to ask me !!  “  and ” Pulling on somehow “   ( if quite well ) , or a description of the malaise , if unwell ; such as  ” Tummy is making funny Gud Gud sounds”  or       ” having high temperature  & pain in the back side “

However , merely a descriptive response wouldn’t be telling enough .  After much deliberation , I chose to stun the purist  with a ” shock & awe “ ppt Signs of our Times ( please click on the link to view it )

Cheers & GN

July 22, 2012 marked the first ever electoral defeat for Purno Agitok Sangma , the 5′ something upstart who aspired to be a giant-killer . The loser’s painfully-cross-legged posture  ( vide his pic at Sabarmati trying to look like Bapu on his Charkha ) was sufficient ground   to disqualify him from Presidential candidature , given his ample girth & inadequate height ( BJP platform notwithstanding !! ) . Besides , he does not bear as endearing a name as Poltu does . And , most intriguingly , his polled votes to the total electoral college bore a ratio of 3.14 something : cross-voting in Karnataka & a near-total thumbs-down from his home county in the North East ensured that !! No wonder the upstart had to eat the proverbial Humble Pie.

Talking about intriguing  ratios , the day also marked  Global Pi- Day  ( 22/7=3.14 something ) : global barring the US of A , where they drive on the wrong side ( right ! ) & have their calendar all mixed up (  Month / Day instead of Day / Month ) & therefore celebrate the most intriguing constant in Mathematics on 14th March ( 3.14 ) , reportedly by baking , throwing , & eating of pies after their area & circumference have been calculated .

Most of us , if not all , know the mathematical significance of Pi in determining the area of a circle @ Pir2 , Pi being the ratio of circumference of a circle to its diameter. As a corollary , Pi also helps  determine the volume of a sphere. In field events  at the forthcoming London Olympics , the start- point for each runner must be carefully marked on the track through a Pi -based calculation to ensure that each runner covers the same distance per lap. And so the list goes on ( always a helpful way to end a sentance when one knows not  any more & yet knows that there is in fact plenty more !! )

What has defied any rational explanation through centuries is the frequent occurance of the irrationally inexact value of Pi in some of Mother Nature’s bounty. An example is in the meandering distance covered by many a leading river from point A to point B mostly approximating 3.14 times the staright-line distance between points A & B.

An addition to the ever growing mystique of Pi  could be the omen for a Presidential candidate without an endearing name such as Poltu, that if the poll results are scheduled to coincide with World Pi-day namely 22/7 ( = 3.14 something ) , chances are he will poll no more than 31.4 % votes , & end up with a Pied  face ( = variegated coll. for  red -faced ) . Stretching it a bit ( blogger’s prerogative when out of interesting ideas !! ) , Sangma adds up to 55 if you assign a numeric to each alphabet , against Poltu Mukherjee’s healthy 84+86 = 170 : & there you have it : a ratio approximating the mystical 3.14 .

A bit unfair , you might think , to corelate a Surname on the one hand , to , a Nick-Surname aggregate on the other. But then, one might argue with  vehemence that ( a ) no one stopped the loser from coming- up with an equally if not a more endearing childhood  name , in the absence of which , zero got assigned by default !! , & ( b ) whoever said the Presidential poll was a fair contest in the first place !!

Written with utmost respect for the Constitutional office of the President of India , though not necessarily in equal measure to the incumbent , the imminent  , & the loser- aspirant .

Cheers & a Happy Pi-day

A leading columnist writing in a leading daily on the loneliness of a superstar takes liberties , even before the last rites of the just deceased are performed, with the exact names of couple of his early dalliances : one long deceased & one of no consequence in the public domain .

The columnist  then goes on , tongue firmly in cheek , to state , & I quote , ” there was however another lady love (who)  shall go nameless : who understood (him) when she shared his life & home —– ”

The columnist finally ascribes, in first person quotes, to the aforesaid nameless former “lady love”  , claims that  ” she ( aforesaid lady love )  freed him from (his) countless hang-ups —- (she) liberated (him)   from all his inhibitions —– (he) was incapable of loving anyone . He was only ever in love with himself ” .

“She” in these quotes,  remains nameless courtesy the columnist , perhaps as a reflection of her deference to the enormity of the aforesaid “lady love” s present wealth & stature .  Bracketed “he” wherever it occurs is my camouflage out of deference to the deceased.

Journalistic euphemisms & anonymity have for long been the baneful prerogative of some so called responsible members of the fourth estate.

Her ( oops !! that narrows down the unveiling of anonymity somewhat ) sign-off line is her self- inflicted indictment , unintended of course, of her columnist credentials : ” —- there is a satisfying sense of closure now that he is no more —— the one thing that no body can ever deny him is —-( that ) everything (he) did , it was in his way ” . Surely she means ” — he did it his  way ” . “It was in his way “ has a completely different connotation , unless of course the aforesaid leading columnist wanted to be despicably mean to the memory of the just deceased.

For a more responsible obit-tribute to the deceased superstar , I strongle recommend Amitabh Bachchan’s blog for the day in www.Twitlonger.com : straight from the heart , with touching spontaneity , & impromptu excellence.

Of course , by his own admission, it took Mark Twain at least three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech !!

Cheers & a good night