THE STORY OF A WHATSAPP GROUP

 

It was in the early days of WhatsApp that the a few classmates belonging to the batch of 1975 decided to form a WhatsApp group called the Old Boy's Association (OBA). In the first week, there were only six members, but soon word spread and the number swelled to thirty. And then the students of the other divisions were admitted. It was just a matter of weeks that the number crossed two digits. Encouraged, the admin threw open the forum to all the alumni of the school. They were all strung together by the common thread of the alma mater.

By the time I joined the group, it already had more than three hundred members from as far away as the US in the west and Japan in the east, but predictably, the majority was India-based. Members

belonged to different generations: while I was from the batch of 1961, I learnt from the profiles that some were decades senior to me and some were as recent as 2019.

The camaraderie of the members and the good cheer that they spread had to be seen to be believed. One did not mind the fact that one had to earmark a chunk of one's leisure hours to delete the inevitable good morning and good night messages, birthday greetings (though merely a crisp HBD in many cases) and anniversary wishes.

They shared stories of the pranks they played in and out of the school campus, posted some old group photos and referred to teachers by their nicknames. Many wrote nostalgically about their teenage crushes and rued the fact that they were destined to grow up.

Soon, there was an issue: there was a disconnect when the seniors went through the posts of juniors as they could not even understand the lingo some of them used. Likewise, the juniors could not enjoy the dialogue between two seniors as the topics discussed and the personalities featured had retired long before.

So the admin found it expedient to form a few subgroups: OBA 1940s, OBA 1950s, OBA 1960s and so on till OBA 2010s, the number denoting the decade in which one left the school. Thus I belong to the OBA 1960s group. Obviously, the OBA 1940s and the OBA 1950s groups were small compared to the others and the 2010s was the largest — and most vibrant.

Inevitably, sooner than later, people got fed up regurgitating old tales and started looking for new stuff. They shared jokes and cartoons, news clippings and forwards, memes and trolls, videos and songs. Though not related to the school days, they were interesting nevertheless. Motivational talks, health-related articles, advice on wealth management too made frequent appearance. The traffic in the group became dense, with devotional songs and talks by religious leaders, patriotic slogans and political pieces becoming regular fare.

Some members opined that as everyone may not be interested in all these, it is not fair to burden EVERYONE with ALL posts. The admins (by then, there was a team of admins instead of one) formed a few new groups dedicated to different areas — OBA Music, OBA Health, OBA Jokes, OBA Religion, OBA Politics, OBA Literature, OBA Wealth, etc. One was free to join multiple groups depending on one's interest, but cross-posts (Homoeopathy posts in, say, OBA Literature, for instance) were a strict no-no.

But then there was a problem: those who enjoy Semmangudi and Amjad Ali Khan found it difficult to co-exist with fans of Metallica and Pink Floyd. Votaries of vegan food could not stomach the recipes of Mutton Yakni and devilled venison. The puritans among the book-loving community found discussions on some works by certain authors distasteful.

The admins were up against a wall. The problem that the members were facing was genuine and serious. So the roped in some volunteers from different interest-groups to act as admins of new groups formed for the different segments. At the last count, OBA had 127 groups, some representational names being OBA 1980s, OBA Ghazals, OBA BeeGees, OBA Yunani, OBA Trinamool, OBA Harry Potter, OBA Dark humour, OBA Hrithik Roshan, OBA Bobanum Molleyum, OBA Nihilism, OBA CPM, OBA Bailey's Irish Cream, OBA Tintin, OBA Porn, OBA Theosophy, OBA Harley Davidson, OBA Indore Gharaana, OBA Space Science, OBA UPSC Exams and OBA Kosher food.

This works! I am a member of only eleven of them which hold my interest.

MEMORIES TRIGGERED

Yesterday a friend and I were playing a game of Scrabble. At some stage in the game, my rack had what I thought was a bingo-friendly combination: AGIINP and a blank. I could make PAI(R)ING but it was a "non-go" (the Scrabble player's jargon for a Bingo on the rack that encounters a no-go on the board. Or PAI(N)ING.

I wished I had an S in place of the second I in which case the possibilities seemed endless: SPA(C)ING, S(C)APING, SPA(R)ING, (R)ASPING, S(H)APING, P(H)ASING, PAS(S)ING, PAS(T)ING. PA(R)SING, SAP(P)ING, (L)APSING, GASPIN(G) — and many more. Buy then, as in life, so in Scrabble. I philosophised: you don't get everything you want.

That was when the word PIGNOLIA flashed in my mind. Not a common word, I agree. Like almonds or cashew nut, this edible nut of a pine tree is used in confections. I could make the word using the floating 'O' of the OVARY on the board. I did exactly that and scored a hefty 78 points.

Now, though I had come across this word in 1957 — that is, a good six decades and a half back — I was using this word for the first time in my life and in my Scrabble journey.

I was in Class VII in the MCCHS (Malabar Christian College High School) in what was then called Calicut. Our class teacher was Mr VM Easow who taught us English and mathematics. The strong foundation he laid in these subjects is what I built upon. Equally, if not more importantly, I cherish the values "Easow-Maash" taught us.

Easow-Maash had an impeccable handwriting, whether he wrote on the blackboard or on paper. A typical foolscap (NOT fullscape, he would repeat) sheet with his writing would have thirty lines — no more, no less — (I can see Easow-Maash frowning that I did not use the correct "no fewer") and no over-writings, no corrections and no ersures.

The last periods on Fridays were allotted to the class teacher. Easow-Maash used it for personal interaction with the students and overall development: elocution, recitation, quiz, etc. On days when the weather permitted, we would venture out: he would take us to the college playground. Though his house was on a plot adjoining the playground, instead of going home at the end of the period, he would walk us back to the class and leave the school only after the long bell goes.

On one of those Fridays, Easow-Maash took us to the beach. We picked up seashells and pebbles and made sand-pits and sand-castles. Some who had gone to the shaded area of casuarina trees came back with their pockets full of its seeds with spikes. That was when Easow-Maash told us about acorns and pignolia, the seeds of pine trees.

A strict disciplinarian, he always carried a slender cane while in school. After entering the class, he would place carefully place on the table, making sure that everyone saw it. I don't however recall a single instance when Easow-Maash wielded the cane, though! A frown, a stare, an angry glare — and the most recalcitrant brat would cower and submit.

The stern-faced teacher had a impishly humorous facet too. The proverb which goes something like:

"The greatest oak

Was once a tiny nut

That held its ground."

was paraphrased by Easow-Maash as:

"The mighty oak

Was once a little acorn;

And the tallest yew

A nut like you!"

He would tweak the children's rhyme

"Under the spreading chestnut tree

There we sit, both you and me.

Oh, how happy we will be!

Under the spreading chestnut tree."

to

"Under the spreading chestnut tree

I sold you and you sold me.

Oh, how happy we will be!

Under the spreading chestnut tree."

(Mind you, this was long before horse-trading and resort-politics had acquired the currency and the legitimacy they enjoy today!)

Tailpiece: Even after placing PIGNOLIA, I lost!

TRUE TO TYPE

 

A friend of mine has put up an interesting post on stenography and dictating letters. There he has also narrated the evolution of the machines he used: from his father's old Remington manual typewriter whose keys he punched when he started out, to the feather-touch keyboard of the laptop he uses now. The journey has had several pit-stops where he used different variants: the clunky machine in the neighborhood typewriting institute, Olivetti manual, Brother electric and electronic typewriters, word-processors and now computers with the user-friendly speech-to-text feature.

That is the story of my life too, except that it was an Underwood instead of a Remington. And the typewriting institute bit — I did not attend one because there was none in the village I lived in. That lack of education shows: I still use my right middle finger for all the typing that I do and my left thumb for the "capital shift". I can clock a speed of 30 words per minute and though I cannot boast of a six-sigma level, my output is generally error-free.

These days I rely a lot on the speech-to-text feature both in English and Malayalam and have attained about 90% accuracy. The problem is that I have to be on the lookout for the gaffes like FACE for PHASE (and vice versa) and "The penis mightier than the sword."

I was in my early twenties when I had my first stenographer (That does sound pompous! He was actually the only one in the department I was attached to and, truth to tell, was shared by the three officers senior to me; I only tagged along!) Shesha Iyer (Swamy to everyone), the epitome of competence in his chosen field, had barely one year to retire. Having been with the organisation for thirty-seven long years, he was a fantastic resource person.

One of my bosses who was not too good at dictation often used to feel the urge to use the services of a stenographer, if only for ramping up his self-esteem. He would call Shesha Iyer, start dictating the letter number, date, addressee, salutation, subject line and after "With reference to your letter number (reading it aloud from the file) dated (again reading it aloud), comma, we have to advise as under, colon."

After this elaborate introduction, he would look up from the file and sit back in the swivel chair. He would then close the file and hand it over to the amanuensis with the words, "Swamy, you know what I have in mind. Please bring the draft reply." And Swami would do exactly that: an appropriate and correctly-worded reply would be on the boss' table in fewer than thirty minutes.

But I have digressed, for, I wanted to relate my experience with Shesha Iyer. Being a rookie, I would, at times, get stuck for the right word. From the context, he would guess what I had mind and supply me with the right phrase or word. The unsolicited, though welcome, input would interrupt the flow of my thought.

After a couple of such interventions, temporarily abandoning my usual respect for the grey hair and the bald pate, I asked him, "Swamy, are you, or am I, the one dictating the letter?"

THE BALLS OF A BRASS MONKEY

 

Haven't you come across the expression: "It was so cold that it would freeze the balls of a brass monkey"? I have always wondered where this strange, if slightly profane, expression came from. And what does it have to do with a monkey of whichever material?

I am told it comes from the naval profession. A munkey (also spelt monkey) was a kind of gun made of brass (or iron in some cases) used in war-ships. The cannon balls (made of iron) for use in the gun would be placed on a dimpled brass plate on the deck of a war-ship.

As the small amount of seawater held in place by capillary action at the contact point of two balls freezes on a particularly cold day, it pushes the balls apart. This will make the stack of balls less stable, making the once at the edges fall.

Even if seawater did not intervene, given the coefficients of expansion of iron and brass, the balls may get displaced from their dimples on cold days. That is how the balls of a brass monkey freeze.

Reasearch says there are similar expressions like "talk the tail off a brass monkey" and "hot enough to melt the nose off a brass monkey". Are they related? Your guess is as good as mine.

ROMANCE WITH COFFEE

Over fifty years back, in India, except for certain pockets, coffee was not as popular as it is today. While in Jabalpur in 1968, on a Sunday, I took my colleagues to the Indian Coffee House in Sadar Bazaar for a cup of coffee, the first cup in their life. After taking a sip, Brijesh Sinha, Nikhil Sarkar, Aaftaab Queraishi and Devendra Sharma cried out in unison, "यह जली हुई चाय लगती है! (This tastes like burnt tea!)". They did not empty their cups. I felt personally insulted at the remark and action. I faintly recall that it took some time before my anger towards them subsided!

The reason I refer to this episode is that it would give you an idea of my affinity with the beverage. I guess I was justified in being cut to the quick by the affront, having been a coffee person all my life. (Forget that at that point in time, I had still not attained the voting age.)

The coffee that my mother used to make was by boiling Brooke Bond coffee powder and adding milk and sugar. It was good but nowhere near the filter coffee my friend Prakash Iyer's mother would treat me to during my frequent visits to his house in Cochin.

Believe it or not, coffee won me a prize in a quiz contest hosted by Prof Shantaram Rao of Maharaja's College in Ernakulam. The tiebreaker question was: What did Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord describe as “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love”? It was for the first time that I was hearing of the controversial clergyman, politician and leading French diplomat before the Revolution. Just one word away from the first prize, I hazarded a guess and shouted out "Coffee!"

I loved the aroma and the flavour of coffee, but, for decades, my exposure was limited to the coffee that dripped through the two-tiered filter.

My graduation to higher levels of coffee came about only after my retirement. When my brother Ram mohan returned after a stint in Oxford, he brought us a cafetière (also called a French press). Coffee is brewed in the glass carafe and the plunger is used for pushing the powder to the bottom before pouring the coffee into the mugs.

We did not, however, put it to use much though, because the contraption was large and one HAD to make large quantities. We soon reverted to our old conventional stainless steel decoction-maker.

Then cà phê sữa đá happened!

It was during our two-month stay in Vietnam where our son Hari was working in the area of coffee procurement for a commodity major that I came to know about the connoisseurs' take on coffee. Cà phê sữa đá (Vietnamese iced coffee) was an instant hit with me. The invigorating brew is made using coarsely-ground robusta beans. The aroma as the hot water seeps through the grains in the single-tier phin filter and drips into the condensed milk at the bottom of the cup forming two layers of colloids! The ice-cubes dropped into the mixture make it so divine I'd give my right hand in exchange!

Then we were gifted a Bialetti Moka coffee-maker where the direction of the water is reversed. The water boiling in the lower half rises through the coffee powder to the upper compartment, carrying with every molecule of the "poison".

And with that came a few packets of Vui Coffee (https://vuivui.in/) curated by Amaresh, my son's colleague in Vietnam. In Vietnamese, Vui means ‘happy’ and does Amaresh bring happiness to those who deal with him! His coffee is an experience!

My son Gautam too is a coffee-buff. He has a coffee-grinder which he uses every time he makes coffee. So the freshness sealed in the beans is unlocked only minutes before the coffee is brewed.

After his visit to Holland, Hari brought us a biggish packet of Douwe Egberts Aroma Rood coffee. The beverage it makes is, well, at the cost of repetition, black as the devil, hot as hell, ... Can a coffee-lover ask for more?

Edit: I forgot the Kumbakonam Degree Coffee. But then that deserves a separate post!

AIDE MEMOIRE

When did I come across the phrase 'aide memoire'? I am not sure.

Perhaps I learnt it at the Alliance Francaise where I had enrolled for a course in French when I was posted in Calcutta during the early days of my career. Or maybe I saw the word printed on the tiny cardboard box containing a corporate gift.

It was a small (6 x 10 cm) leather product which, on one side, had triangular pieces at the four corners to hold slips of paper in, and, on the other, a pocket for the spare slips. Its corners were reinforced with gold-coloured metallic beading and it had a leather loop which accommodated a tiny gold-coloured ballpoint pen.

As and when you remembered something — an item you want to add to the shopping list or a visit due — you pulled it out of your pocket and scrawled on the slip. It doubled as a place where you could "park" information that you may need in future: the phone number of your pharmacist, the arrival time of a train, a new word you learnt.

In course of time, the aide memoire was worn out and had to be discarded, but the habit stuck. A small spiral notebook took its place. You were spoilt for choice: exclusive ones in bond paper from Oxford Stationery in Park Street to the inexpensive ones sold by the hawkers in Esplanade or Dalhousie Square.

In my working days, I used to maintain two such books — one for official matters and the other for personal life. The former would get exhausted six times as fast as the latter, more or less reflecting the proportion of time I spent on the respective spheres of my activity. I would buy a dozen small spiral notebooks and replenish the stocks when they got depleted. On my retirement, the number of notebooks in use at a time was back to one.

One of the side-effects, if I may use the term, of Covid-19 is that replenishment of stocks became a casualty. One went out only if inevitable and returned as soon as the objective of the outing was accomplished "without pottering about in stationery shops" (quoting the strict instructions from the certainly better half).

So one had to make do with slips of paper made at home by cutting A4 sheets into sixteen equal pieces. The trouble with these chits is that they have this nasty habit of getting misplaced or scattered. They fly off the table, get lodged inside magazines and newspapers, or sometimes simply perform the vanishing act!

So much so that when you want to add one more item to the one you wrote on, you can't find it. So you make another, and another, and yet another, of course at different times, ad infinitum and end up with several chits. You write the same thing over and over again on several slips — all of which get lost unless they are used as bookmarks.

These slips are the cause of the intermittent civil wars at home: when I tell my wife that I am unable to locate a particular slip, she complains that she will soon drown in the gadzillion slips floating around. "Use Post-it slips, for heaven's sake! They will at least sit in one place, and not flit about like gadflies in the troposphere," says the significant one. "What's the fun, then?" I respond. In my saner moments, though, I do realise that she has a point: the chits far outnumber the items I have noted on them!

So you decide you will consolidate them all into one and destroy the others. (Remember WWI being described by HG Wells as "the war to end all wars"? Likewise, my fond hope is that this would be a slip to end all slips.) But you can't do that till you can find them all — at the same time, which is never.

PERSONAL FINANCE — SOME INTERESTING NUMBERS

72, 114 and 144:

Doubling of principal: If interest is compounded at quarterly intervals and the rate is r%, it will take approximately 72/r years for the principal to double. For instance, if the rate of interest is 6%, it will take about 12 years; for 9%, it will take about 8 years.

Three times the principal: It will take about 114/r years for the principal to grow three-fold.

(How have these been worked out? Suffice it to know that binomial theorem has been applied.)

Four times the principal: It will take about 144/r years for the principal to grow four times. [Edit: Given the above rule of 72, nothing earthshaking there, I discover now!]

70

Assuming the rate of inflation to be r%, the purchasing power of your corpus will be reduced to half in approximately 70/r years. (That is, if you do not touch it. If you withdraw, the doomsday is closer.)

25

If your present annual expenses are x, you need a corpus of 25x so that assuming a return of 6.5% and inflation rate of 8%, my excel sheet says, the entire corpus will be wiped out in less than 22 years. The corpus will stretch for a few more years with a lower inflation rate.

100 minus age

The ideal percentage of equity in your financial assets is around 100 — age. As one grows up, the percentage should decline.

20-50-30 rule

While at least 20% of your income should be saved, about 50% can be allocated for your needs and about 30% for wants. The proportion of savings can go up, but not down.

4

You should have an emergency fund of four times your monthly income to cover unforeseen eventualities.

40

Your EMIs should not exceed 40% of your gross monthly income after income tax.

0

After every credit card bill is paid, the amount due for the previous billing period should always be 0. Ignore the "minimum due" printed on the bill; it is a trap.

FAMILIARITY BREEDS "COULDN'T-CARE-LESS-NESS"

I am sitting in the waiting area adjoining an operation theatre where my wife is to undergo a cataract surgery. There are perhaps twenty surgeries scheduled for the forenoon. The patients and the 'bystanders' — in most cases the respective spouses — are all seated on the cushioned sofas. (It beats me why this blessed word — which means a 'mere, passive, onlooker' — is used for referring to someone who is supposed to be at the beck and call of the patient, the doctor, the nurse, the ward boy and the cashier, but let that pass.)

Presently, a nurse appears and announces the names of four patients — all women. She beckons them to follow her to the theatre. They get up, nod to the respective 'bystander' and proceed.

Ten minutes later, the nurse returns with four identical bags and hands over them to the four 'bystanders' of the patients now in the theatre. "It is the clothes of the patients," she explains. The hospital has thoughtfully provided uniforms to the patients for wearing in the theatre, one presumes.

Thirty minutes of expectation pass. A ward boy comes and asks the next batch of four to await the call. The surgery of the first batch must be over, one guesses.

A little later, the nurse reappears and asks the 'bystander' of Mrs N to identify himself. She asks him to hand over the bag containing the clothes of his wife, which he does. The next four, including my wife, are herded in the direction of the theatre.

Post haste, she returns with the bag and tells Mr N, "There seems to have been a mix-up. Your wife says these are not her clothes."

She collects back all the four bags, takes them to the gentleman and asks him to identify which of the four is his wife's. She pulls out the clothes one by one and displays them.

One of the bags has a peach-coloured sari, the second a navy blue ikat kameez and a white salwar, the third a mundu-veshti set and the last a black top and ice-blue jeans.

Mr N looks at the garments, fumbles, scratches his head in embarrassment and admits that he cannot identify his wife's clothes!

The nurse retreats to the theatre with the four bags: the patient would know which is hers.

I ask myself: she could have asked the other three bystanders to identify the clothes of their wives and, through this process of elimination, identify Mrs N's clothes.

Perhaps she was not too strong in the Logical Reasoning department. Or, by then, she had realised that husbands couldn't care less what their wives wore, which seems more likely.

THE CASE FOR (NOT OF) THE ONE-ARMED STENOGRAPHER

 

The other day, while writing a piece reminiscing my childhood, I wrote something like "... Moideen gave him the colour pencil ..." While revising the draft, a question popped up in my mind: should it not be "... Moideen gave the colour pencil to him ..."?

The more I pondered over the existential question, the more confused I was. So I asked someone who I thought could settle the matter one and for all by pronouncing the semantic verdict.

The expert told me that the problem arises because "to give" is a ditransitive verb: it takes two objects. OutFowlering the redoubtable Fowler, he added that there are five types of verbs: intransitive (Water flowed), monotransitive (The queen knighted him), ditransitive (She gave him the signal), tritransitive (I bet you ten rupees that she will not turn up) and ambitransitive (Usually, he ate — or ate his dinner — before 9 pm).

Though I was edified far beyond what John Collinson Nesfield or Percival Christopher Wren and his inseparable companion Martin had taught me, and I learnt about these nuances, he did not address my pressing problem.

So I asked him the question (Or, should it be "I asked the question to him"?) again. He said, "Moideen gave him the colour pencil" is as good as "Moideen gave the colour pencil to him" and the writer can chose what he considers better.

His reply reminded me of a law firm which the bank I had worked for used to consult. Let us call them Mirchandani and Iyengar. Their legal reports running into several pages — and costing several thousands of rupees — would contain references to Acts, Laws, customs and practices and cite case laws from courts in India and abroad and be replete with legal jargon (mens rea, ipso facto, mutatis mutandis, assentio mentium, and the like). They would discuss both sides of the issue at hand in great and intricate detail and conclude with "the bank may take an informed administrative decision in the matter."

My boss used to say after reading these reports that he suspected that there was an understanding between the two partners of the firm: Mirchandani would say one thing and Iyengar the opposite. The stenographer would faithfully take down both opinions. After typing out Mirchandani's view, she would open a new paragraph beginning "On the other hand," and record the opinion of Iyengar. Then she would add "the bank may take an informed administrative decision in the matter", the mandatory caveat.

"How I wish the steno had only one hand!" he would exclaim, suppressing a chuckle.

THE STORY OF A WHATSAPP GROUP

It was in the early days of WhatsApp that the a few classmates belonging to the batch of 1975 decided to form a WhatsApp group called the Old Boy's Association (OBA). In the first week, there were only six members, but soon word spread and the number swelled to thirty. And then the students of the other divisions were admitted. It was just a matter of weeks that the number crossed two digits. Encouraged, the admin threw open the forum to all the alumni of the school. They were all strung together by the common thread of the alma mater.

By the time I joined the group, it already had more than three hundred members from as far away as the US in the west and Japan in the east, but predictably, the majority was India-based. Members

belonged to different generations: while I was from the batch of 1961, I learnt from the profiles that some were decades senior to me and some were as recent as 2019.

The camaraderie of the members and the good cheer that they spread had to be seen to be believed. One did not mind the fact that one had to earmark a chunk of one's leisure hours to delete the inevitable good morning and good night messages, birthday greetings (though merely a crisp HBD in many cases) and anniversary wishes.

They shared stories of the pranks they played in and out of the school campus, posted some old group photos and referred to teachers by their nicknames. Many wrote nostalgically about their teenage crushes and rued the fact that they were destined to grow up.

Soon, there was an issue: there was a disconnect when the seniors went through the posts of juniors as they could not even understand the lingo some of them used. Likewise, the juniors could not enjoy the dialogue between two seniors as the topics discussed and the personalities featured had retired long before.

So the admin found it expedient to form a few subgroups: OBA 1940s, OBA 1950s, OBA 1960s and so on till OBA 2010s, the number denoting the decade in which one left the school. Thus I belong to the OBA 1960s group. Obviously, the OBA 1940s and the OBA 1950s groups were small compared to the others and the 2010s was the largest — and most vibrant.

Inevitably, sooner than later, people got fed up regurgitating old tales and started looking for new stuff. They shared jokes and cartoons, news clippings and forwards, memes and trolls, videos and songs. Though not related to the school days, they were interesting nevertheless. Motivational talks, health-related articles, advice on wealth management too made frequent appearance. The traffic in the group became dense, with devotional songs and talks by religious leaders, patriotic slogans and political pieces becoming regular fare.

Some members opined that as everyone may not be interested in all these, it is not fair to burden EVERYONE with ALL posts. The admins (by then, there was a team of admins instead of one) formed a few new groups dedicated to different areas — OBA Music, OBA Health, OBA Jokes, OBA Religion, OBA Politics, OBA Literature, OBA Wealth, etc. One was free to join multiple groups depending on one's interest, but cross-posts (Homoeopathy posts in, say, OBA Literature, for instance) were a strict no-no.

But then there was a problem: those who enjoy Semmangudi and Amjad Ali Khan found it difficult to co-exist with fans of Metallica and Pink Floyd. Votaries of vegan food could not stomach the recipes of Mutton Yakni and devilled venison. The puritans among the book-loving community found discussions on some works by certain authors distasteful.

The admins were up against a wall. The problem that the members were facing was genuine and serious. So the roped in some volunteers from different interest-groups to act as admins of new groups formed for the different segments. At the last count, OBA had 127 groups, some representational names being OBA 1980s, OBA Ghazals, OBA BeeGees, OBA Yunani, OBA Trinamool, OBA Harry Potter, OBA Dark humour, OBA Hrithik Roshan, OBA Bobanum Molleyum, OBA Nihilism, OBA CPM, OBA Bailey's Irish Cream, OBA Tintin, OBA Porn, OBA Theosophy, OBA Harley Davidson, OBA Indore Gharaana, OBA Space Science, OBA UPSC Exams and OBA Kosher food.

This works! I am a member of only eleven of them which hold my interest.

MEMORIES TRIGGERED

Yesterday my friend Dr Mohan Thomas Abraham and I were playing a game of Scrabble. (Whichever part of the world we may be in, every Monday and Thursday, we play an online game at 6:00 pm!) At some stage in the game, my rack had what I thought was a bingo-friendly combination: AGIINP and a blank. I could make PAI(R)ING but it was a "non-go" (the Scrabble player's jargon for a Bingo on the rack that encounters a no-go on the board. Or PAI(N)ING.

I wished I had an S in place of the second I in which case the possibilities seemed endless: SPA(C)ING, S(C)APING, SPA(R)ING, (R)ASPING, S(H)APING, P(H)ASING, PAS(S)ING, PAS(T)ING. PA(R)SING, SAP(P)ING, (L)APSING, GASPIN(G) — and many more. Buy then, as in life, so in Scrabble. I philosophised: you don't get everything you want.

That was when the word PIGNOLIA flashed in my mind. Not a common word, I agree. Like almonds or cashew nut, this edible nut of a pine tree is used in confections. I could make the word using the floating 'O' of the OVARY on the board. I did exactly that and scored a hefty 78 points.

Now, though I had come across this word in 1957 — that is, a good six decades and a half back — I was using this word for the first time in my life and in my Scrabble journey.

I was in Class VII in the MCCHS (Malabar Christian College High School) in what was then called Calicut. Our class teacher was Mr VM Easow who taught us English and mathematics. The strong foundation he laid in these subjects is what I built upon. Equally, if not more importantly, I cherish the values "Easow-Maash" taught us.

Easow-Maash had an impeccable handwriting, whether he wrote on the blackboard or on paper. A typical foolscap (NOT fullscape, he would repeat) sheet with his writing would have thirty lines — no more, no less — (I can see Easow-Maash frowning that I did not use the correct "no fewer") and no over-writings, no corrections and no ersures.

The last periods on Fridays were allotted to the class teacher. Easow-Maash used it for personal interaction with the students and overall development: elocution, recitation, quiz, etc. On days when the weather permitted, we would venture out: he would take us to the college playground. Though his house was on a plot adjoining the playground, instead of going home at the end of the period, he would walk us back to the class and leave the school only after the long bell goes.

On one of those Fridays, Easow-Maash took us to the beach. We picked up seashells and pebbles and made sand-pits and sand-castles. Some who had gone to the shaded area of casuarina trees came back with their pockets full of its seeds with spikes. That was when Easow-Maash told us about acorns and pignolia, the seeds of pine trees.

A strict disciplinarian, he always carried a slender cane while in school. After entering the class, he would place carefully place on the table, making sure that everyone saw it. I don't however recall a single instance when Easow-Maash wielded the cane, though! A frown, a stare, an angry glare — and the most recalcitrant brat would cower and submit.

The stern-faced teacher had a impishly humorous facet too. The proverb which goes something like:

"The greatest oak

Was once a tiny nut

That held its ground."

was paraphrased by Easow-Maash as:

"The mighty oak

Was once a little acorn;

And the tallest yew

A nut like you!"

He would tweak the children's rhyme

"Under the spreading chestnut tree

There we sit, both you and me.

Oh, how happy we will be!

Under the spreading chestnut tree."

to

"Under the spreading chestnut tree

I sold you and you sold me.

Oh, how happy we will be!

Under the spreading chestnut tree."

(Mind you, this was long before horse-trading and resort-politics had acquired the currency and the legitimacy they enjoy today!)

Tailpiece: Even after placing PIGNOLIA, I lost!

TRUE TO TYPE

My friend Muhammad Ali has put up an interesting post on stenography and dictating letters. There he has also narrated the evolution of the machines he used: from his father's old Remington manual typewriter whose keys he punched when he started out, to the feather-touch keyboard of the laptop he uses now. The journey has had several pit-stops where he used different variants: the clunky machine in the neighborhood typewriting institute, Olivetti manual, Brother electric and electronic typewriters, word-processors and now computers with the user-friendly speech-to-text feature.

That is the story of my life too, except that it was an Underwood instead of a Remington. And the typewriting institute bit — I did not attend one because there was none in the village I lived in. That lack of education shows: I still use my right middle finger for all the typing that I do and my left thumb for the "capital shift". I can clock a speed of 30 words per minute and though I cannot boast of a six-sigma level, my output is generally error-free.

These days I rely a lot on the speech-to-text feature both in English and Malayalam and have attained about 90% accuracy. The problem is that I have to be on the lookout for the gaffes like FACE for PHASE (and vice versa) and "The penis mightier than the sword."

I was in my early twenties when I had my first stenographer (That does sound pompous! He was actually the only one in the department I was attached to and, truth to tell, was shared by the three officers senior to me; I only tagged along!) Shesha Iyer (Swamy to everyone), the epitome of competence in his chosen field, had barely one year to retire. Having been with the organisation for thirty-seven long years, he was a fantastic resource person.

One of my bosses who was not too good at dictation often used to feel the urge to use the services of a stenographer, if only for ramping up his self-esteem. He would call Shesha Iyer, start dictating the letter number, date, addressee, salutation, subject line and after "With reference to your letter number (reading it aloud from the file) dated (again reading it aloud), comma, we have to advise as under, colon."

After this elaborate introduction, he would look up from the file and sit back in the swivel chair. He would then close the file and hand it over to the amanuensis with the words, "Swamy, you know what I have in mind. Please bring the draft reply." And Swami would do exactly that: an appropriate and correctly-worded reply would be on the boss' table in fewer than thirty minutes.

But I have digressed, for, I wanted to relate my experience with Shesha Iyer. Being a rookie, I would, at times, get stuck for the right word. From the context, he would guess what I had mind and supply me with the right phrase or word. The unsolicited, though welcome, input would interrupt the flow of my thought.

After a couple of such interventions, temporarily abandoning my usual respect for the grey hair and the bald pate, I asked him, "Swamy, are you, or am I, the one dictating the letter?"

STOREHOUSE OF ABSOLUTELY USELESS INFORMATION

 STOREHOUSE OF ABSOLUTELY USELESS INFORMATION

My friend Radhakrishnan Nair posted on his wall: How many words can you think of in a minute without the letter 'a'? Clue: I can think of a hundred in a minute.

He gave the answer soon enough: one to one hundred! Did you know that?

I am sure he was simplifying the question for us. What he did not tell us is that in fact, none of the letters A, B, C and D is present in any of the numbers zero to ninety-nine!

And, if one ignores the A in "and" (as in 101), the letter A first comes in 1000. The first B comes in one billion. For the first C, you have to travel as far as octillion (I followed by 27 zeroes!) [We are, of course, not talking about the Indian system of enumeration where crores and lakhs (also spelt lacs) are used.] D first comes in "thousand".

Of what earthly use is this information? About as useful as the knowledge that the King of Hearts is the only king in a deck of cards without a moustache. Or that the color you'll see when you open your eyes in a pitch-black room is called "eigengrau." Or when you say "I'll be back in a jiffy", you are guilty of extreme exaggeration because a jiffy is one trillionth of a second.

The word "dreamt", apart from "undreamt" derived from it, is the only word ending in MT. And some common words like month, orange, purple and silver have no rhyming words.

Here are some more:

The opposite sides of a die (used in a game of Ludo or Snakes and Ladders) will always add up to seven.

Golf balls have an average of 336 "dimples."

"Spoonfeed" is the longest word with letters in the reverse alphabetical order.

When words with f followed by i (like define, fight, office, difficult) are printed, the little dot over the i (did you know that it is called tittle?) disappears. Can't believe this? Check the words in this paragraph!

My brain is a repository of such useless information. Why do I collect and retain them? The answer is what George Mallory gave when he was asked, "Why do you climb the Everest?" He famously replied, "Because it is there."

FAMILIARITY BREEDS "COULDN'T-CARE-LESS-NESS"

 FAMILIARITY BREEDS "COULDN'T-CARE-LESS-NESS"

I am sitting in the waiting area adjoining an operation theatre where my wife is to undergo a cataract surgery. There are perhaps twenty surgeries scheduled for the forenoon. The patients and the 'bystanders' — in most cases the respective spouses — are all seated on the cushioned sofas. (It beats me why this blessed word — which means a 'mere, passive, onlooker' — is used for referring to someone who is supposed to be at the beck and call of the patient, the doctor, the nurse, the ward boy and the cashier, but let that pass.)

Presently, a nurse appears and announces the names of four patients — all women. She beckons them to follow her to the theatre. They get up, nod to the respective 'bystander' and proceed.

Ten minutes later, the nurse returns with four identical bags and hands over them to the four 'bystanders' of the patients now in the theatre. "It is the clothes of the patients," she explains. The hospital has thoughtfully provided uniforms to the patients for wearing in the theatre, one presumes.

Thirty minutes of expectation pass. A ward boy comes and asks the next batch of four to await the call. The surgery of the first batch must be over, one guesses.

A little later, the nurse reappears and asks the 'bystander' of Mrs N to identify himself. She asks him to hand over the bag containing the clothes of his wife, which he does. The next four, including my wife, are herded in the direction of the theatre.

Post haste, she returns with the bag and tells Mr N, "There seems to have been a mix-up. Your wife says these are not her clothes."

She collects back all the four bags, takes them to the gentleman and asks him to identify which of the four is his wife's. She pulls out the clothes one by one and displays them.

One of the bags has a peach-coloured sari, the second a navy blue ikat kameez and a white salwar, the third a mundu-veshti set and the last a black top and ice-blue jeans.

Mr N looks at the garments, fumbles, scratches his head in embarrassment and admits that he cannot identify his wife's clothes!

The nurse retreats to the theatre with the four bags: the patient would know which is hers.

I ask myself: she could have asked the other three bystanders to identify the clothes of their wives and, through this process of elimination, identify Mrs N's clothes.

Perhaps she was not too strong in the Logical Reasoning department. Or, by then, she had realised that husbands couldn't care less what their wives wore, which seems more likely.