Wodehouse in Bengal

Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fleming as Bertie and Jeeves

After one of Jeeves's sensational pick-me-ups, I could begin to think clearly.

"Where was I last night, Jeeves?"

"At Mr. Pirbright's residence, sir. Mr. Pirbright had announced a celebration to acknowledge the termination of the Marxist stronghold in the Indian state of West Bengal, sir."

I confess I was at sea.

"West Bengal, Jeeves?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, what about it?"

"Mr. Pirbright, sir, I understand, is significantly anti-communist. He was ecstatic at receiving news of Lady Banerjee's victory."

"A woman, Jeeves?" The set-up seemed rummy. "Does she believe that the stars are God's daisy chain?"

"I would assume not, sir. Lady Banerjee does not express herself in rhyme. She shows a marked disposition towards the reflection of life on canvas."

"A painter, you mean?"

"Precisely, sir."


I right-hoed, and after a few minutes of forking a thoughtful plate of eggs and bacon, I put my gentleman's gentleman another question.

"Surely she is someone's aunt?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Lady Banerjee,"

"The possibility cannot be ruled out, sir."

"Aunts," I told the fellow solemny, "aren't gentlemen."

"I fear not, sir. Lady Banerjee has been heard referring to herself as a common man."

"You mean like a cartoon?"

"Not quite, sir. She--"

"I get the drift, Jeeves. So there is change brewing in West Bengal?"

"It seems so, sir. The Marxist rule has been reported to have stalled development."

I mused a bit. "What was it the poet said about hope, Jeeves? Something about silver."

"Sweet hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head."

"That's the one, Jeeves. I see your memory is as tickety-boo as ever. Still eating fish, what?"

"Yes, sir."

"From the Bay of Bengal, eh?"

"The finest, sir."

Help a Child to Study

If you're reading (and understanding) this, you've received the benefit of education. Everyone else isn't so lucky, even if they are smarter than most of us. Unable to pay for higher eduation, they miss out on career opportunities, not to mention that all their brilliance and talent goes to waste. Help a Child to Study is an NGO based in Mumbai that makes it possile for underprivileged children to get educated. They are looking for your support.




Help A Child to Study sponsors the higher education of meritorious underprivileged students, supporting them to achieve dreams of a better future. We sponsor all formal courses above 10th, including 11th and 12th, diploma courses, degree courses, B.E., M.B.B.S. and Postgrad. Through education our students are able to escape the cycle of poverty through their own talents.


Details: We are very proud of our students - who are the children of labourers, small scale farmers, weavers and other families with low incomes. These students have enormous potential to succeed and only need financial support to do so. We are thrilled that today some of our graduates are placed with large companies such as Mahindra Tech, L&T, and TATA Consultancy Services.


Support: Education, higher education, sponsorship of students.


Note: We are looking for financial donations to support the higher education of our students, most of whom live in rural areas of Maharashtra and Karnataka.


This post is a part of BlogAdda's Bloggers Social Responsibility (BSR) initiative. I am exercising my BSR. You can too with three simple steps. Visit http://adda.at/BSRRBS and support the NGO's.

It will be a far, far better thing that you will do than you have ever done (at least in your summer vacations :P ).

Just not Tinkle

Tinkle--The Defective Detectives

"Summer vacation are on!" --I affirm, tearfully, that this sentence appeared in Tinkle, that children's magazine I believed was the apostle of correct grammar. Tinkle, a symbol that could denote my childhood!

Uncle Pai (Anant Pai)

We miss you, Uncle Pai. Your magazine is simply not the erudite and fun companion it once was. I resent the presence of millions of advertisements (McDonald's in my Tinkle!) and I will not condone it saying you're hard up, new Tinkle editors/money-makers. If so many brands are sponsoring you and if you can afford to arrange Samsung Corby giveaways (to kids), why did you have to increase the price of the magazine? That's such a far cry from Uncle Pai's attempts at printing a black-and-white Tinkle that poorer children could afford.


I echo Salman Rushdie: "Is nothing sacred anymore?" Why is the Readers Write column now called the Tinkle Mail Box with the @ symbol on top? Why do I see speech balloons filled with:

"...HE LOOKED AT ME AND MADE A THREATENING GESTURE. 

HE IS AFTER MY LIFE. SAVE ME, O MASTER!

?

Tinkle was never a Marvel comic; why all the italics? 

Most of the stories are still good, though; the old writers and illustrators are still present and features like "It Happened To Me" and "Tinkle Tells You Why" are mercifully still thriving.


You may say I'm creating unnecessary ruckus over one mistake that could have been a typo, after all. But it can also become a trendsetter, and that keeps me awake at night. You may also ask why I still read Tinkle, but my sister subscribes to it and it's right there in front of me and Janoo and Wooly Woo are on the cover and it takes only ten minutes and it's Tinkle...almost. I just hope it doesn't turn into another Champak, depriving my sister and thousands of other kids of a magazine that can shape lives.

My tryst with fiction

Here it is: I actually completed a piece of fiction that I’d started. It was supposed to be a story, but it turned out to be more of an experiment in very subtle magical realism than anything else. I posted the thing on Facebook, ready to brave all sorts of comments. This is what I got:

·        Better than Stephenie Meyer. Barely.

·        “Not so gud :/”

·        This isn’t fiction at all.

·        Hmm. Now check out this video.

Such lovely people. So why was my story/rambling/collection of words so strongly rejected? I have a clue. "But nothing much happens," a friend of mine intoned on the phone. This made me mad. "What does she mean nothing much happens, italicised no less?" I thought. I agree nothing much happens externally--the whole thing consists of a train ride and later, some tears; but aren't thoughts, memories, confusions and yearnings concrete incidents? Don't they usually affect the course of our lives more than "real" happenings? 

Or do people always expect extraordinary happenings and twists and morals in a story? Or am I unbelievably unimaginative?

Anyway, this episode taught me some things:

·        A little of what we hate is always present in ourselves.

·        I should have used fewer semicolons (like some writer said on his deathbed).

·        The people who encourage you are the people you are grateful to the most, because you are only human.

·        It is easy to criticise the writings of other people, and the ones who take the criticism seriously are the best of all. 

·        Never call your story Sunshine.

·        It doesn’t hurt much to dabble in things that are not your forte. 

Major Irritations

I had this post about spelling and grammar mistakes on signboards and posters, and I'd mentioned it was fun collecting them. This wasn't. The majority of the pictures here are from newspapers, and cost-cutting methods seem to have resulted in absolutely useless people called proofreaders being sacked. It's a sad, sad world.

It makes sense, although probably not in the way they intended.

I think proper grammar ought to be introduced.

Investigations have revealed that this person sucks at grammar.

Fishy.

Behold, the Chennai Kings of Supper!

What a yucky world.

This one was fun. I wonder what they teach.

Disclaimer: The images are shaky because my phone camera refuses to ever cooperate with me. I am trying to figure out what I did to provoke that sort of revenge.

A very thin line

I was reading the college prospectus today, and in the list of college societies, I came across "The Sindhi Circle" (or something similar). Now why was I suddenly on the verge of anger? Why did I want to scream, "Blasphemy!"? Then there was the Gujarati Association, the Hindi Parishad, the Marathi Vangmaya Samiti and so on.

I shouldn't have felt like screaming. Is it the world we live in, is it the values inculcated in us, that make most of us crinkle our noses at the slightest suggestion of communalism or linguism? These societies were founded, I can see now, with the best of intents: the preservation of regional languages and development of interest in them. Maybe I can blame the world (Religious factionalism and bigotry, Shiv Sena-MNS-ish linguism and regionalism) for making me paranoid. Or maybe I am right. Identification of communities, when used politically, often leads to loss of lives. I am not exaggerating.

Why, then, did I not object to the French Club or The English Association? These are languages, after all. All these societies receive the same platforms. Then again, there has never been any tension in India regarding the superiority of one of these languages over the other.

But people have always fought over Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and several other languages; not to mention religions and castes. Are we, then, to lose all identity with regard to communities, make our surnames neutral, and blend into a homogeneous mass of a people with no variety? Or are we to continue to promote our own languages, dialects, religions, castes and risk going overboard like we always have?

Perhaps we should promote the communities of others, not ours. Utopia, I know. There was something someone (I don't remember who, it's very frustrating) said about how to keep discrimination at bay: breed with those outside your community, those outside your religion, country and if and when we come into contact with aliens, breed with them.
It isn't a foolproof method, but it's worked in the past. You can't tell an Aryan from a Dravidian now. Hail forbidden love!
I have a feeling it was APJ Abdul Kalam who suggested the breeding part.