This is something that I copied (I think, from the Times of India) down in my scrapbook more than two decades back but I enjoy reading it even today.
Nothing angers writers more than nit-picking copyreaders and publishers who attempt to improve their grammar. No wonder the French essayist, Montaigne, commented that “the greater part of world’s troubles arise because of questions of grammar.” American novelist Raymond Chandler was incensed when his English publisher ‘corrected’ some split infinitives. “When I split an infinitive, God damn it”, he said in an angry letter, “I split, so that it stays split!”
Winston Churchill as a cabinet minister also discovered that his bureaucrat secretaries were forever “improving his English” and correcting his odd penchant for splitting infinitives. On one such Whitehall file, he noted: “This is the kind of impertinence up with which I shall not put.”
Even the mighty Fowler in his Modern English Usage concedes that the English-speaking world may be safely divided into five categories: those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; those who do not know, but care very much; those who know and condemn; those who know and approve; those who know and distinguish.
The authority concedes that those who neither know nor care are the vast majority and are a happy folk to be envied by most of the minority classes. ‘To really understand’ comes readier to their lips than ‘really to understand’, lamented Fowler, who felt that category three should be bogey-haunted authors. He says that in their phobia of avoiding split infinitives, they make their normal writing style awkward and humpy.
Fowler is full of praise for category four who boldly go forth and break rules where necessary and reject the trammels of convention. Fowler says, “We maintain that a real split infinitive, though not desirable in itself is preferable to either of two things – real ambiguity or patent artificiality. We will thus split infinitives rather than be accused of ambiguity or artificiality; we will admit to sufficient recasting to avoid them altogether.”
George Bernard Shaw had a very low tolerance threshold for newspaper sub-editors correcting his copy. He once complained to the editor of The Times, London, “There is a busybody in your staff who devotes a lot of his time to chasing split infinitives.” Asserting that every good literary craftsman splits his infinitives when the sense demands it, he urged the editor to dismiss “this pedant”. It is of no consequence whether he “decides to go quickly; quickly go; or quickly to go. The important thing is that he should go at once.”
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Thirteen Gremlins of Grammar - From my Scrapbook
Thirteen Gremlins of Grammar
1. Correct speling is essential.
2. Don’t use no double negatives.
3. Verbs has got to agree with their subjects.
4. Don’t write run-on sentences they are hard to read.
5. About them sentence fragments
6. Don’t use commas, that aren’t necessary.
7. A preposition is not a good word to end a sentence with.
8. Remember to not ever split infinitives.
9. Writing carefully, dangling principles must be avoided.
10. Use apostrophe’s correctly.
11. Make each singular pronoun agree with their antecedents.
12. Join clauses like, a good conjunction should.
13. Proofread your writing to see if you words out.
And above all, avoid clichés like the plague.
The Spell-Check - From my Scrapbook
This is a favourite of mine:
Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea.
It planely marx four my revue
Miss tax I do not sea.
I’ve scent my message threw it,
And I’m shore pleased to no
Its letter perfect in its weigh
My checker tolled me sew.
- Author unknown
Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea.
It planely marx four my revue
Miss tax I do not sea.
I’ve scent my message threw it,
And I’m shore pleased to no
Its letter perfect in its weigh
My checker tolled me sew.
- Author unknown
William Safire's Rules for Writers - From my Scrapbook
I had written this down somewhere but do not know where I had kept it. The other day a good friend stumled upon it and sent it to me.
William Safire's Rules for Writers
Remember to never split an infinitive.
The passive voice should never be used.
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
The adverb always follows the verb.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
Parts of Speech - From my Scrapbook
I realised that the best thing to do when you have nothing else to post is to dip into your scrapbook and find some gem like this:
A NOUN’s the name of anything;
As school or garden, hoop or swing.
ADJECTIVES tell the kind of noun:
As great, small, pretty, white or brown.
Instead of nouns the PRONOUNS stand
Her face, his face, our arms, your hand.
VERBS tell of something being done;
To read, count, sing, laugh, jump or run.
How things are done the ADVERBS tell;
As slowly, quickly, ill or well.
CONJUNCTIONS join the words together,
As men and women, wind or weather.
The PREPOSITION stands before
A noun, as in or through a door.
The INTERJECTION shows surprise;
As oh! how pretty! ah! how wise!
A NOUN’s the name of anything;
As school or garden, hoop or swing.
ADJECTIVES tell the kind of noun:
As great, small, pretty, white or brown.
Instead of nouns the PRONOUNS stand
Her face, his face, our arms, your hand.
VERBS tell of something being done;
To read, count, sing, laugh, jump or run.
How things are done the ADVERBS tell;
As slowly, quickly, ill or well.
CONJUNCTIONS join the words together,
As men and women, wind or weather.
The PREPOSITION stands before
A noun, as in or through a door.
The INTERJECTION shows surprise;
As oh! how pretty! ah! how wise!
Added on 26 Oct 2011. Till today, I did not know who had written this marvellous piece.
A Google search reveals that the poem is titled 'A Grammar Rhyme' and the authors (!) are by David B Tower and Benjamin F Tweed.
A Victorian Schoolmistress’ Rules of Punctuation - From my Scrapbook
This is not something that I have written. It is from my scrapbook. I do not know who the author is, nor when it was written, though there is a reference in the caption that may give a rough idea of the period.
A Victorian Schoolmistress’ Rules of Punctuation
Sentences start with a Capital letter,
So as to make your writing better.
Use a full stop to mark the end.
It closes every sentence penned.
The comma is for short pauses and breaks,
And also for the lists the writer makes.
Dashes – like these – are for thoughts by the way.
They give extra information (so do brackets, we may say).
These two dots are colons: they pause to compare.
They also do this: list, explain and prepare.
The semicolon makes a break; followed by a pause.
It does the job of words that link; it’s also a short pause.
An apostrophe shows the owner of anyone’s things,
And it’s also used for shortenings.
I’m so glad! He’s so mad! We’re having such a lark!
To show strong feelings use an exclamation mark!
A question mark follows What? When? Where, Why? And how?
Do you? Can I? Shall we? Give us your answer now!
“Quotation marks” enclose what is said
Which is why they are sometimes called “speech marks” instead.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
The Litmus Test
In Kerala, Malabar is considered the cradle of football. The school I studied in was the State football champion. The only other school in the town was the runner-up and, like the celebrated ‘We try harder’ slogan of Avis Car Rental which was No 2 in the business, they tried harder.
Sethu, the captain, was the toast of our school. He was excellent in the football field. A half-back, he would receive the ball from a full-back, and send it to the centre-forward through his classic long pass to net a goal. He was good at dribbling too: it was sheer joy to see watch him dribble the ball past opponents.
The trouble was: Sethu was good at little else. Academics held no interest for him. He failed in several classes and was, at the age of eighteen, still in Class VIII. This was a cause of worry for his father, a tailor, as Sethu was the only hope of the family. He looked forward to the day his son would start working.
A well-wisher, a middle level officer in a reputed industrial venture, had assured Sethu’s father that he would ensure that Sethu gets a job in the company he worked for. Sethu would be an asset to the football team of the company. It was prominent among the National B League teams and with Sethu in the bag, it was hoped, the team might make it to the A League.
There was a snag, however. Sethu HAD to pass Class X. Sethu’s father was worried. With good reason: Sethu was still Class VIII and going by the past records, it would take at least half a dozen years for him to reach Class X. As for passing the Board Examination, well, that was anybody’s guess. The day his son would start supplementing the income to run the family looked distant.
It was because the eighteen-year old footballer had spent a couple of years in a few classes that he came to be my classmate. It was his third year in the class. Sethu had, as expected, fared poorly in the final examination. With his one-digit score in chemistry, it was clear that unless the school was generous, he would not make it to class IX.
He met the headmaster and told him: either you promote him or I pull him out of the school. The headmaster of the rival high school in the town had agreed to admit him in Class IX. The headmaster was in a quandary. Should he give in to the threat and relax the academic standards to the lowest levels? At stake if he did not do that was the reputation of the school in sports and games. The choice was difficult and the trade-off unethical.
He consulted the senior teachers. The physical instructor Mr Sadanandan was keen to retain him in the school at any cost, but the vocal Mr Thomas who taught Chemistry was particularly against such a dilution of standards. The other teachers adopted a middle-of-the-road policy – it would be good if Sethu can be retained, but their value-system did not allow them watering down the levels. (This was much was before the advent of grace marks.)
Finally, they came to an understanding: a small committee would be formed to re-assess Sethu’s ‘prowess’ in Chemistry. The headmaster would chair the committee and the members would be the physical instructor and the Chemistry teacher. There would be an interview. Three questions would be asked. If Sethu answered none correctly, he would have to be sent out. If he answered at least one correctly, the Headmaster would use his discretion and give a couple of marks to make it 35% and Sethu would pass.
In the final event, to everybody’s surrise, Sethu was promoted. One of those evenings, on our way home from school, Sethu told me want happed on that fateful day.
On the appointed day, Sethu was summoned before the committee. Mr Thomas fired the first salvo: What is H2SO4 commonly known as?
Sethu was at a loss.
Mr Thomas asked: The Cl in Na Cl stands for chlorine. What does Na stand for?
Sethu had no reply.
The headmaster tried to be helpful: Na Cl is common salt whose chemical name is sodium chloride.
Still, Sethu had no clue. He remained silent.
Mr Sadanandan’s face fell. It was sure Sethu did not have a fighting chance. He requested the other two members: Let me ask the next question. They agreed.
The physical instructor asked: If blue litmus paper is dipped in an acid, what colour does it turn to?
Sethu had no reply. Mr Sadanandan encouraged him: Sethu, it’s a simple question. Tell us the answer.
Sethu said: I don’t know, Sir.
Mr Sadanandan said: Yes, that is the right answer. He does not know.
The headmaster, eager not to lose him to the rival schools, agreed, exercised his discretion, and thus out came Sethu with flying colours!
Sethu, the captain, was the toast of our school. He was excellent in the football field. A half-back, he would receive the ball from a full-back, and send it to the centre-forward through his classic long pass to net a goal. He was good at dribbling too: it was sheer joy to see watch him dribble the ball past opponents.
The trouble was: Sethu was good at little else. Academics held no interest for him. He failed in several classes and was, at the age of eighteen, still in Class VIII. This was a cause of worry for his father, a tailor, as Sethu was the only hope of the family. He looked forward to the day his son would start working.
A well-wisher, a middle level officer in a reputed industrial venture, had assured Sethu’s father that he would ensure that Sethu gets a job in the company he worked for. Sethu would be an asset to the football team of the company. It was prominent among the National B League teams and with Sethu in the bag, it was hoped, the team might make it to the A League.
There was a snag, however. Sethu HAD to pass Class X. Sethu’s father was worried. With good reason: Sethu was still Class VIII and going by the past records, it would take at least half a dozen years for him to reach Class X. As for passing the Board Examination, well, that was anybody’s guess. The day his son would start supplementing the income to run the family looked distant.
It was because the eighteen-year old footballer had spent a couple of years in a few classes that he came to be my classmate. It was his third year in the class. Sethu had, as expected, fared poorly in the final examination. With his one-digit score in chemistry, it was clear that unless the school was generous, he would not make it to class IX.
He met the headmaster and told him: either you promote him or I pull him out of the school. The headmaster of the rival high school in the town had agreed to admit him in Class IX. The headmaster was in a quandary. Should he give in to the threat and relax the academic standards to the lowest levels? At stake if he did not do that was the reputation of the school in sports and games. The choice was difficult and the trade-off unethical.
He consulted the senior teachers. The physical instructor Mr Sadanandan was keen to retain him in the school at any cost, but the vocal Mr Thomas who taught Chemistry was particularly against such a dilution of standards. The other teachers adopted a middle-of-the-road policy – it would be good if Sethu can be retained, but their value-system did not allow them watering down the levels. (This was much was before the advent of grace marks.)
Finally, they came to an understanding: a small committee would be formed to re-assess Sethu’s ‘prowess’ in Chemistry. The headmaster would chair the committee and the members would be the physical instructor and the Chemistry teacher. There would be an interview. Three questions would be asked. If Sethu answered none correctly, he would have to be sent out. If he answered at least one correctly, the Headmaster would use his discretion and give a couple of marks to make it 35% and Sethu would pass.
In the final event, to everybody’s surrise, Sethu was promoted. One of those evenings, on our way home from school, Sethu told me want happed on that fateful day.
On the appointed day, Sethu was summoned before the committee. Mr Thomas fired the first salvo: What is H2SO4 commonly known as?
Sethu was at a loss.
Mr Thomas asked: The Cl in Na Cl stands for chlorine. What does Na stand for?
Sethu had no reply.
The headmaster tried to be helpful: Na Cl is common salt whose chemical name is sodium chloride.
Still, Sethu had no clue. He remained silent.
Mr Sadanandan’s face fell. It was sure Sethu did not have a fighting chance. He requested the other two members: Let me ask the next question. They agreed.
The physical instructor asked: If blue litmus paper is dipped in an acid, what colour does it turn to?
Sethu had no reply. Mr Sadanandan encouraged him: Sethu, it’s a simple question. Tell us the answer.
Sethu said: I don’t know, Sir.
Mr Sadanandan said: Yes, that is the right answer. He does not know.
The headmaster, eager not to lose him to the rival schools, agreed, exercised his discretion, and thus out came Sethu with flying colours!
Monday, April 20, 2009
Words, Words, Words, Redux
Those of you who have been following my blog (The number is just a handful, sob, sob) may recall that one my posts was on words coined to meet the demands of the modern day.
A friend who read it has very kindly supplied me with a few interesting words. There is something common and peculiar to them: all of them have been formed by addition, subtraction or alteration of a letter to or from a word found in a standard dictionary.
Take, for instance, SARCASM. Add an H to get SARCHASM, defined as the gulf between the person who comes up with biting sarcasm and the person who doesn't get it.
Or DOPELER EFFECT which is the tendency of stupid (dopey) ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
A hoarding erected, or a poster pasted, or a slogan painted, very, very high on a wall is, you guessed it right, GIRAFFITI.
The BOZONE LAYER is formed by cronies surrounding the boss in such a way that bright ideas from others cannot penetrate that layer. (This one, unlike the ozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future!)
Remember the scriptures? Satan in the form of an insect – a bee, a bug or a mosquito - that gets into your bedroom in the night and cannot be cast out is, what else, a BEELZEBUG.
KARMAGEDDON? It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
Not exactly in the league of add-delete-or-change-one letter, is CATERPALLOR, (for, two letters have been changed), the colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
You have been told that decaffeinated coffee is good for you. Decathlon is the tough ten-event sporting contest. Forget that two letters have been changed here too, DECAFFLON is the gruelling ordeal of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Before reading on, I have a caveat: this friend of mine is no saint and some of the coinages are a bit off-colour. Some of them may offend your sensibilities, but I cannot resist the temptation to put them in, for, if I do not, I will be denying unadulterated mirth to others. They have been arranged in ascending order of my perception of smuttiness, and therefore, gentle reader, stop when you feel that you have reached the threshold of your tolerance. Having applied for that anticipatory bail, let me proceed:
One word for all promise and no action (not necessarily of the carnal variety) by a glib talker is GLIBIDO.
Add an H to CASTRATION, to get CASHTRATION, defined as the act of acquiring an asset without resorting to a loan, as a result of which the subject is rendered financially impotent.
OSTEOPORNOSIS is defines as a degenerate disease. Need I say more?
You might know someone who knows nothing. If he is a despicable fellow to boot, what better word would describe him than IGNORANUS?
FOREPLOY is any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
If after reading this, you are tempted to remark that I suffer from VOWEL MOVEMENT (the inevitable verbal diarrhea that spews from one’s mouth when there is nothing significant to say), my day is made!
Note: My friend who supplied me with these words tells me that most of these were received as entries for a contest run by the Washington Post.
A friend who read it has very kindly supplied me with a few interesting words. There is something common and peculiar to them: all of them have been formed by addition, subtraction or alteration of a letter to or from a word found in a standard dictionary.
Take, for instance, SARCASM. Add an H to get SARCHASM, defined as the gulf between the person who comes up with biting sarcasm and the person who doesn't get it.
Or DOPELER EFFECT which is the tendency of stupid (dopey) ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
A hoarding erected, or a poster pasted, or a slogan painted, very, very high on a wall is, you guessed it right, GIRAFFITI.
The BOZONE LAYER is formed by cronies surrounding the boss in such a way that bright ideas from others cannot penetrate that layer. (This one, unlike the ozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future!)
Remember the scriptures? Satan in the form of an insect – a bee, a bug or a mosquito - that gets into your bedroom in the night and cannot be cast out is, what else, a BEELZEBUG.
KARMAGEDDON? It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
Not exactly in the league of add-delete-or-change-one letter, is CATERPALLOR, (for, two letters have been changed), the colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
You have been told that decaffeinated coffee is good for you. Decathlon is the tough ten-event sporting contest. Forget that two letters have been changed here too, DECAFFLON is the gruelling ordeal of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Before reading on, I have a caveat: this friend of mine is no saint and some of the coinages are a bit off-colour. Some of them may offend your sensibilities, but I cannot resist the temptation to put them in, for, if I do not, I will be denying unadulterated mirth to others. They have been arranged in ascending order of my perception of smuttiness, and therefore, gentle reader, stop when you feel that you have reached the threshold of your tolerance. Having applied for that anticipatory bail, let me proceed:
One word for all promise and no action (not necessarily of the carnal variety) by a glib talker is GLIBIDO.
Add an H to CASTRATION, to get CASHTRATION, defined as the act of acquiring an asset without resorting to a loan, as a result of which the subject is rendered financially impotent.
OSTEOPORNOSIS is defines as a degenerate disease. Need I say more?
You might know someone who knows nothing. If he is a despicable fellow to boot, what better word would describe him than IGNORANUS?
FOREPLOY is any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
If after reading this, you are tempted to remark that I suffer from VOWEL MOVEMENT (the inevitable verbal diarrhea that spews from one’s mouth when there is nothing significant to say), my day is made!
Note: My friend who supplied me with these words tells me that most of these were received as entries for a contest run by the Washington Post.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Pun with Words
There was this king who hated puns. Sadly for him, the best jokes his courtier related were all puns. His Majesty was fed up with the courtier’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of what the King found distasteful. Having been inflicted with puns day in and day out, the King challenged him, ‘Come up with a pun on me if you can!’ Pat came the reply, ‘But, your Majesty, the King is no subject!’
That was perhaps the first pun that I came across. Mr Venceslaus who taught us English in Class IX was the one who narrated this to us. Ambrose Bierce, he had added, had defined it as a ‘form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.’ That was the first time I was hearing of 'The Devil’s Dictionary' authored by Bierce. Coming to think of it, Mr Venceslaus was the one who introduced me to several things that have caught my fancy and had me in their thrall – like crosswords, tongue-twisters, puzzles, word games, brain-teasers etc.
But then, I digress. This piece is not about Mr Venceslaus, it is about puns. The world consists of two types of people: those who like pun and those, like the king we spoke of, who do not. The latter seem to subscribe to the theory that puns don’t make us laugh, but groan. Caligula was one such: it is said that he ordered an actor to be roasted alive for a bad pun. Dryden called it the ‘lowest and most groveling kind of wit’.
Dissecting a pun, one could say it arises from the use of two similar-sounding words that differ in the sense or a word with two (or more!)meanings. They are considered to be the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: their life is no longer than the nanosecond in which we resolve the semantic confusion. Most of them are, at least look, contrived, though Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, that master of humour in contrived situations, himself was no punster. Mark Twain too, like Plum, enamoured reviewers with punlessness.
Shakespeare, however, does pun, and pun often. Many are bawdy: puns operate, after all, on double entendre. Yet the bard is guilty less of punning than wordplay, which Elizabethan taste considered more a sign of literary refinement than humor; hence ‘puns’ in seemingly inappropriate places, like a dying Mercutio’s ‘Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.’
The heaviest dose of puns that I ever received was the answer to the contrived question (which is an integral part of the joke) ‘Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert?’ The answer, which packs a three-pun-punch is, ‘Because he can eat the sand which is there. But who brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred.’
My friend Marcel Hickman once told me of a colleague of his in what was then called Exide India. On a complaint from his wife of domestic violence, he was nabbed by the police. This was reported in The Statesman, Calcutta (It had not been rechristened Kolkata then) beneath the headline ‘Exide Employee Charged with Battery’. Knowing that Marcel is given to invent stories like this, this might be apocryphal, but nevertheless punny, oops! …funny.
That was perhaps the first pun that I came across. Mr Venceslaus who taught us English in Class IX was the one who narrated this to us. Ambrose Bierce, he had added, had defined it as a ‘form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.’ That was the first time I was hearing of 'The Devil’s Dictionary' authored by Bierce. Coming to think of it, Mr Venceslaus was the one who introduced me to several things that have caught my fancy and had me in their thrall – like crosswords, tongue-twisters, puzzles, word games, brain-teasers etc.
But then, I digress. This piece is not about Mr Venceslaus, it is about puns. The world consists of two types of people: those who like pun and those, like the king we spoke of, who do not. The latter seem to subscribe to the theory that puns don’t make us laugh, but groan. Caligula was one such: it is said that he ordered an actor to be roasted alive for a bad pun. Dryden called it the ‘lowest and most groveling kind of wit’.
Dissecting a pun, one could say it arises from the use of two similar-sounding words that differ in the sense or a word with two (or more!)meanings. They are considered to be the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: their life is no longer than the nanosecond in which we resolve the semantic confusion. Most of them are, at least look, contrived, though Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, that master of humour in contrived situations, himself was no punster. Mark Twain too, like Plum, enamoured reviewers with punlessness.
Shakespeare, however, does pun, and pun often. Many are bawdy: puns operate, after all, on double entendre. Yet the bard is guilty less of punning than wordplay, which Elizabethan taste considered more a sign of literary refinement than humor; hence ‘puns’ in seemingly inappropriate places, like a dying Mercutio’s ‘Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.’
The heaviest dose of puns that I ever received was the answer to the contrived question (which is an integral part of the joke) ‘Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert?’ The answer, which packs a three-pun-punch is, ‘Because he can eat the sand which is there. But who brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred.’
My friend Marcel Hickman once told me of a colleague of his in what was then called Exide India. On a complaint from his wife of domestic violence, he was nabbed by the police. This was reported in The Statesman, Calcutta (It had not been rechristened Kolkata then) beneath the headline ‘Exide Employee Charged with Battery’. Knowing that Marcel is given to invent stories like this, this might be apocryphal, but nevertheless punny, oops! …funny.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Placement of a Different Kind
I am worried about placement. At the ripe old age of 62? Yes.
So was Andre Agassi, going by what he is supposed to have said. ‘Placement is everything’, he said, talking about winning strategy in Roland Garros.
And my son Gautam, when in the last trimester in the B-School, too was worried about placement.
Yes, gentle reader, we are talking about placements of different kinds.
The placement in question right now is in the game of Scrabble. The number of points you garner is everything and at each stage, it varies with placement. It could fetch just the sum of the face-value of the tiles, or a lot more, depending on where you get to place the tiles. The over-all image, the big picture, is what drives and dictates where to place what tiles.
To me, the points that the placement gives is all that the tiles mean. Smutty words are perfectly par for the course in Scrabble for me, as long as they fetch points and help me on my way to winning another game.
Like if I have K and F, I would pray for a C and a U (rather than an O and L, or an O and R) so that I can put the F on the red square at the top left or the bottom left corner, the K in the light blue square three squares away to the right of or below F, and fill the intervening squares with U and C. F means 4 points, K is 5, and C is 3 and U, as a vowel, has only one point. That makes it 13 points, but the placement gives you 54. Get what I mean? But then you should be so lucky.
I prefer tiles of lesser value like H, Y and V to the high Z or Q or even X or J, sometimes. The latter fetch lots of points, yes, but you are stuck with them until you find the exact spot to place them to get a triple word score or double letter score.My personal strategy is to hold on to a tile of U until the queen of the lot, Q, has put in an appearance. Because, The humble one-point U is a valuable tile. Without U, you can't make many words using Q. There are only four of them. Until the Q is played, I do not let go of the first U that I get.
Of course, this requires some cerebration and calculation. If you stand to make some 30 points and also get the bonus of 50 points for using up all seven tiles, you should go for it. That sort of lead is hard to beat, unless your opponent chances upon a big one too.As a rule, I try to hold on to at least one S, one D and a blank tile till near the end of a game, because that's when the going gets tough and your options get limited. I don't use up my blank tile quickly either. It is precious; I hold on to it and go on playing small simple words until I lay the killer word on board and slay'em.
I am talking about leisurely Scrabble games with friends like Santanu. We play a fairly open game, not minding giving the other player a chance to open a new area of the board. As a result of the cooperation, we toted up a combined score of over 932 points. We got Bhawani to immortalise that moment through a photograph with the two of us flanking the board, much like the shikaris with the trophy – the carcass of a tiger or a wild bison that was the game of the day!
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Vote Your Caste
No, gentle reader, that was no typo. I mean ‘Vote Your caste’ when you cast your vote.
April 16 is drawing near; we Indians are preparing to exercise our franchise some time between the middle of April and May. We are expected to choose our destiny by electing those who will make ours, but our leaders are exhorting us, covertly and overtly, through their actions and words, to vote our caste.
Look at what the leaders and candidates, no matter the colour of the flag they salute, have been doing: they have been calling on our sadhus and ulemas, raagis and behenjis, chaplains and pundits, preachers and mahants, bishops and maulvis, and sanyasis and dervishes. The ‘godmen’ – that oxymoron touted as India’s ultimate enrichment of the English language – must be rubbing their hands in glee that they, generally shunned, are in great demand.
Winning or losing is, understandably, a life-and-death issue for the candidates. This critical juncture in their life may bring to the surface the old fears that haunted the primaeval man. The believers among them can be pardoned if they reach out for the comforts of superstition, supernatural and ritual.
But the members of the revolutionary parties? The general election is not an ordinary event; so much depends on its outcome and one cannot take chances. They do not want to leave any stone unturned. Several Communists, whether in West Bengal, Tripura or Kerala, look as much to pujas as to the politburo to bless them with power.
And not just that. They choose the candidate after looking at the religious composition of voters in the constituency. Look at the rivals of put up by the major parties or fronts. Surely, it is no coincidence that the candidates belong to the same religion or caste? And this religion and caste is what the majority of voters in the constituency belong to.
They also call on the religious leaders ‘seeking their support’ which translates into a diktat to their membership to vote a candidate they suggest.
The moral of the story? The parties expect you to vote your caste.
April 16 is drawing near; we Indians are preparing to exercise our franchise some time between the middle of April and May. We are expected to choose our destiny by electing those who will make ours, but our leaders are exhorting us, covertly and overtly, through their actions and words, to vote our caste.
Look at what the leaders and candidates, no matter the colour of the flag they salute, have been doing: they have been calling on our sadhus and ulemas, raagis and behenjis, chaplains and pundits, preachers and mahants, bishops and maulvis, and sanyasis and dervishes. The ‘godmen’ – that oxymoron touted as India’s ultimate enrichment of the English language – must be rubbing their hands in glee that they, generally shunned, are in great demand.
Winning or losing is, understandably, a life-and-death issue for the candidates. This critical juncture in their life may bring to the surface the old fears that haunted the primaeval man. The believers among them can be pardoned if they reach out for the comforts of superstition, supernatural and ritual.
But the members of the revolutionary parties? The general election is not an ordinary event; so much depends on its outcome and one cannot take chances. They do not want to leave any stone unturned. Several Communists, whether in West Bengal, Tripura or Kerala, look as much to pujas as to the politburo to bless them with power.
And not just that. They choose the candidate after looking at the religious composition of voters in the constituency. Look at the rivals of put up by the major parties or fronts. Surely, it is no coincidence that the candidates belong to the same religion or caste? And this religion and caste is what the majority of voters in the constituency belong to.
They also call on the religious leaders ‘seeking their support’ which translates into a diktat to their membership to vote a candidate they suggest.
The moral of the story? The parties expect you to vote your caste.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Ten Reasons Why I Do Not Want Shashi Tharoor in the Indian Parliament
1. He is handsome; no one will take a second look at me.
2. He has had a brilliant academic career; I barely scraped through my school.
3. He is a reputed author; my read does not go beyond the newspaper.
4. He has held exalted assignments; I am a lower division clerk.
5. He is widely travelled; the farthest I have gone to is the taluk headquarters.
6. He is highly-connected; the most powerful person I know is the secretary of the party in my village.
7. He goes around wearing natty suits and rimless glasses; I have no such accoutrements.
8. He sends email messages from his Blackberry; my prepaid mobile does not work because I have not recharged it.
9. He is proud of his Malayali lineage but spells his name as Shashi, not Sasi.
10. I am a progressive Keralite, but his name does not tell me what caste he belongs to.
PS
For those who have not been watching the election scene in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala very closely, Dr Shashi Tharoor, author and former UN official is a candidate. Though a Keralite by descent, he was educated elsewhere (Kolkata, Delhi and abroad). The average Malayali who has not had the opportunity for such exposure just cannot stomach the possibility of his making it to the Lower House. These are the typical thoughts (slightly exaggerated, of course) that go through their minds (Forget that true to their intellectual pretensions, they might put forth more rational arguments). How do I know? Simple: I am one such.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Revenge of the Spurned
The natural law of life says that everyone, irrespective of his status in life, must die one day. The natural law of office life says that everyone, irrespective of his position in the hierarchy in the organization, must retire. So it was that M retired from the Bank.
Several Indians believe in life after death. It is therefore not surprising that several officials too reappear in the corporate firmament in a new avatar. So was it that M, came to be given a senior assignment in a small private sector bank. He thought it necessary to revamp the systems in his new perch. The obvious shortcut was to implement the time-tested systems in vogue in the bank he had worked for earlier.
For this, he needed the copies of the important circulars and checklists so that he could bring out similar publications in his bank. He called on P, his erstwhile colleague, a General Manager now, who extended the usual courtesies. Upon knowing the purpose of M's visit, P sent word for Y, an officer in charge of a certain department and asked him to get copies of the materials that M wanted.
While M waited, tea and snacks were served and old threads picked up. In about fifteen minutes, Y was back with the papers.M glanced though the material and observed, ‘But these cover only agriculture. How about Small scale insustries?’ P replied, ‘Oh, that area is looked after by another officer; let me call him.’
That was how I was summoned to the GM’s cabin, unaware of the presence of the other two – M and Y. The sight of the unexpected guest surprised me. Though not too pleased with the encounter, I reminded myself, ‘KTR, you are in the cabin of the GM, not with M who chaired your promotion interview, but with M, the guest of the GM. This is not the time to bring up the past, KTR. Rein in your temper, KTR, and behave yourself!’
P, who had genuinely believed that M and I had not met earlier (After all, I was a junior officer in a branch far away from Trivandrum when M was GM), introduced the two of us to each other for good order’s sake. P said, ‘KTR, you would, of course, know M. But Mr M, you may not know KTR. He is one of our bright young officers. He has just been promoted. And he has been nominated for a plum post.
Extending my hand, I said, ‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’ Pretending that he had not seen my extended hand, he turned to P and said, Don’t I know KTR? This bright spark was in a bit of a spot with his boss. But for my timely intervention, a disciplinary case of insubordination would have been slapped up against him. And he will agree that but for me, he would not have been promoted.’
I could take no more. I rose from the chair I was sitting on, drew up to my full height. Livid with rage, I replied, ‘I guess Mr M, that you memory is failing you.’ Turning to my GM, I requested, ‘Sir; I will need five minutes to refresh the memory of Mr M.’
Without giving P the time or option to take a decision on my request, I turned to Mr M and fired my salvo. ‘It was not because of you, but in spite of you that I was promoted. And my respect for the boss who displayed integrity in conveying the adverse remarks to me is greater than for you who played a confidence trick on me.’
Not heeding the frantic gesticulations of P, I proceeded to narrate the story I had related in 'A Trip to Hell - Parts I and II' and added, ‘So, what you did was to extract an apology from an unsuspecting junior officer by promising him that the confidential report would be amended, and then magnanimously pardon him, with a veiled threat to use that note of apology against him.’
Pushing away the left hand of Y who was giving me a hard pinch on my thigh in his bid to control me, I continued, ‘And in the interview that you chaired, the only words you allowed me to utter were the greetings on entry into the chamber. After that you took over, narrated your version of the above story to the other members of the interview panel, and sealed my fate.‘Now, Mr M, tell me if it was your timely intervention that I was spared of the disciplinary case and whether you were instrumental in my promotion.’
When I finished, P asked me to sit down. I thanked him and took my seat. Realising that no business could be transacted with me in that foul a mood, P said, ‘We’ll meet later.’
As I stepped out, M extended his hand and said, ‘Let bygones be bygones. Forget the past. Let us part as friends.’
It was my turn to withhold my hand. I replied, ‘I cannot let SOME bygones be bygones. You are my sworn enemy and we shall remain so.’
With those words, I stomped out. I do not recall if I banged the door behind me.
Several Indians believe in life after death. It is therefore not surprising that several officials too reappear in the corporate firmament in a new avatar. So was it that M, came to be given a senior assignment in a small private sector bank. He thought it necessary to revamp the systems in his new perch. The obvious shortcut was to implement the time-tested systems in vogue in the bank he had worked for earlier.
For this, he needed the copies of the important circulars and checklists so that he could bring out similar publications in his bank. He called on P, his erstwhile colleague, a General Manager now, who extended the usual courtesies. Upon knowing the purpose of M's visit, P sent word for Y, an officer in charge of a certain department and asked him to get copies of the materials that M wanted.
While M waited, tea and snacks were served and old threads picked up. In about fifteen minutes, Y was back with the papers.M glanced though the material and observed, ‘But these cover only agriculture. How about Small scale insustries?’ P replied, ‘Oh, that area is looked after by another officer; let me call him.’
That was how I was summoned to the GM’s cabin, unaware of the presence of the other two – M and Y. The sight of the unexpected guest surprised me. Though not too pleased with the encounter, I reminded myself, ‘KTR, you are in the cabin of the GM, not with M who chaired your promotion interview, but with M, the guest of the GM. This is not the time to bring up the past, KTR. Rein in your temper, KTR, and behave yourself!’
P, who had genuinely believed that M and I had not met earlier (After all, I was a junior officer in a branch far away from Trivandrum when M was GM), introduced the two of us to each other for good order’s sake. P said, ‘KTR, you would, of course, know M. But Mr M, you may not know KTR. He is one of our bright young officers. He has just been promoted. And he has been nominated for a plum post.
Extending my hand, I said, ‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’ Pretending that he had not seen my extended hand, he turned to P and said, Don’t I know KTR? This bright spark was in a bit of a spot with his boss. But for my timely intervention, a disciplinary case of insubordination would have been slapped up against him. And he will agree that but for me, he would not have been promoted.’
I could take no more. I rose from the chair I was sitting on, drew up to my full height. Livid with rage, I replied, ‘I guess Mr M, that you memory is failing you.’ Turning to my GM, I requested, ‘Sir; I will need five minutes to refresh the memory of Mr M.’
Without giving P the time or option to take a decision on my request, I turned to Mr M and fired my salvo. ‘It was not because of you, but in spite of you that I was promoted. And my respect for the boss who displayed integrity in conveying the adverse remarks to me is greater than for you who played a confidence trick on me.’
Not heeding the frantic gesticulations of P, I proceeded to narrate the story I had related in 'A Trip to Hell - Parts I and II' and added, ‘So, what you did was to extract an apology from an unsuspecting junior officer by promising him that the confidential report would be amended, and then magnanimously pardon him, with a veiled threat to use that note of apology against him.’
Pushing away the left hand of Y who was giving me a hard pinch on my thigh in his bid to control me, I continued, ‘And in the interview that you chaired, the only words you allowed me to utter were the greetings on entry into the chamber. After that you took over, narrated your version of the above story to the other members of the interview panel, and sealed my fate.‘Now, Mr M, tell me if it was your timely intervention that I was spared of the disciplinary case and whether you were instrumental in my promotion.’
When I finished, P asked me to sit down. I thanked him and took my seat. Realising that no business could be transacted with me in that foul a mood, P said, ‘We’ll meet later.’
As I stepped out, M extended his hand and said, ‘Let bygones be bygones. Forget the past. Let us part as friends.’
It was my turn to withhold my hand. I replied, ‘I cannot let SOME bygones be bygones. You are my sworn enemy and we shall remain so.’
With those words, I stomped out. I do not recall if I banged the door behind me.
A TRIP TO HELL - II
As luck would have it, it had to be M (Please see A Trip to Hell - Part I) who presided over the committee that interviewed me soon for promotion to the next grade. That was the first ever promotion interview I attended.
I was the youngest and the junior-most candidate. Therefore, I was the last candidate to be interviewed. (Now I recall bemusedly that it was so at every promotion interview I had attended in my life!) The panel was understandably tired after a series of interviews. As for me, I had waited the whole day for my turn. It was 7.30 pm when I was called in.
As soon as I stepped in, the Chairman turned to his colleagues (So far away in time, I do not recall who these worthies were, nor does this matter one bit for the completeness of this story) and said, ‘This is Mr Rajagopalan who fell out with his boss about the adverse remarks made in his CR. He is lucky that I intervened and saved him.’
M then proceeded to describe in detail the sequence of events described in A Trip to Hell - Part I and his own version of the ‘Operation Rescue KTR’ that he had launched.
I had just to sit back and listen to the harangue.With that, he had sealed my fate in the interview. For, no other member of the panel posed me any question. The Chairman of the panel too did not.
This must have been the only interview where the candidate was dismissed by the interview panel without giving him a chance to utter a word. The result of the interview was, predictably, negative.
This narrative would not be complete if I did not add with a hint of pride that in every single interview that I attended in my career after that non-interview, I had performed to my satisfaction and got selected on practically every occasion. Thanks are due to the chairmen and members of the panels of interview who did ask me questions and did allow me to speak : )
I was the youngest and the junior-most candidate. Therefore, I was the last candidate to be interviewed. (Now I recall bemusedly that it was so at every promotion interview I had attended in my life!) The panel was understandably tired after a series of interviews. As for me, I had waited the whole day for my turn. It was 7.30 pm when I was called in.
As soon as I stepped in, the Chairman turned to his colleagues (So far away in time, I do not recall who these worthies were, nor does this matter one bit for the completeness of this story) and said, ‘This is Mr Rajagopalan who fell out with his boss about the adverse remarks made in his CR. He is lucky that I intervened and saved him.’
M then proceeded to describe in detail the sequence of events described in A Trip to Hell - Part I and his own version of the ‘Operation Rescue KTR’ that he had launched.
I had just to sit back and listen to the harangue.With that, he had sealed my fate in the interview. For, no other member of the panel posed me any question. The Chairman of the panel too did not.
This must have been the only interview where the candidate was dismissed by the interview panel without giving him a chance to utter a word. The result of the interview was, predictably, negative.
This narrative would not be complete if I did not add with a hint of pride that in every single interview that I attended in my career after that non-interview, I had performed to my satisfaction and got selected on practically every occasion. Thanks are due to the chairmen and members of the panels of interview who did ask me questions and did allow me to speak : )
Sunday, January 18, 2009
BREAKING-IN
Handing over the keys to our brand new car, the salesman briefed us about the terms of the warranty and extended warranty and the free service and the paid services and the exclusions. Then he proceeded to give us detailed instructions on how to handle 'her'.
“For the first two thousand kilometers, you should not exceed sixty kilometers an hour,” he said. “After the break-in period,' you can bring her to us. We will re-set the accelerator so that you can drive at higher speeds,” he added.
The expression 'breaking-in' brought to my mind 'breaking-in' in another context.
* * *
I had just got married. Though not the only child, for she had a younger brother, Bhawani had been brought up as a darling daughter. As in all urban nuclear families, her parents constantly doted over her. (I must add that all the hug and cuddle had not spoilt her, though.)
In marrying me, she was virtually being 'transplanted' from friendly and familiar surroundings to live with a stranger in alien climes and times.
As for me, I came from an entirely different background. I had grown up in a joint family as one among half a dozen kids and a horde of cousins. It was a case of survival of the fittest. Talking rough and acting tough were not unusual.
The world then had not heard of hi-falutin concepts like pre-marital counselling. The circumstances in which I got my bride were such that there was nobody to tell me how to handle or tackle my young partner in the early days of marriage. How was I then to know that being the only daughter, Bhawani might have grown up as a pet, apt to get peeved at the slightest provocation?
As a result, I had behaved in my own style, unmindful of the fact that I was dealing with a girl, not used to the abruptness that was my 'hallmark'.
Like the time we were at the breakfast table in 'our home'. It was the first upma (a light breakfast item made of broken wheat, popular in South India) Bhawani had made. And she had forgotten to put salt in the preparation.
Jestingly, I said, "It is called upma because up (salt) goes into it." It was, of course, not true; it was meant as a joke; an original one, characteristic of me, using play of words. As I sat back, (and gloating in the smug thought: how smart of me to have invented that wisecrack!), Bhawani got up from the chair and went into the kitchen. She returned a little later. I did not give it much thought.
It was months later that I realized how hurt she was at that innocuous sentence. And that was when she revealed it to me. The reason she had gone into the kitchen was as much to fetch the salt as to wipe the tears that streamed down her cheeks. Still to get used to my style of putting things across, she could not bear the ‘insult’.
Even in 2009, tears well up in her eyes when she is reminded of that episode, as I am sure they will when she reads this. (An offshoot of this incident is that she has never ever forgotten any of the essential ingredients of her recipes - least of all, the upma!)
PS: This piece will remain incomplete if I do not append what a friend of mine for over three decades remarked on hearing this story: ‘I find it difficult to believe that you were ever so boorish to make the remark in such an inappropriate situation!’
“For the first two thousand kilometers, you should not exceed sixty kilometers an hour,” he said. “After the break-in period,' you can bring her to us. We will re-set the accelerator so that you can drive at higher speeds,” he added.
The expression 'breaking-in' brought to my mind 'breaking-in' in another context.
* * *
I had just got married. Though not the only child, for she had a younger brother, Bhawani had been brought up as a darling daughter. As in all urban nuclear families, her parents constantly doted over her. (I must add that all the hug and cuddle had not spoilt her, though.)
In marrying me, she was virtually being 'transplanted' from friendly and familiar surroundings to live with a stranger in alien climes and times.
As for me, I came from an entirely different background. I had grown up in a joint family as one among half a dozen kids and a horde of cousins. It was a case of survival of the fittest. Talking rough and acting tough were not unusual.
The world then had not heard of hi-falutin concepts like pre-marital counselling. The circumstances in which I got my bride were such that there was nobody to tell me how to handle or tackle my young partner in the early days of marriage. How was I then to know that being the only daughter, Bhawani might have grown up as a pet, apt to get peeved at the slightest provocation?
As a result, I had behaved in my own style, unmindful of the fact that I was dealing with a girl, not used to the abruptness that was my 'hallmark'.
Like the time we were at the breakfast table in 'our home'. It was the first upma (a light breakfast item made of broken wheat, popular in South India) Bhawani had made. And she had forgotten to put salt in the preparation.
Jestingly, I said, "It is called upma because up (salt) goes into it." It was, of course, not true; it was meant as a joke; an original one, characteristic of me, using play of words. As I sat back, (and gloating in the smug thought: how smart of me to have invented that wisecrack!), Bhawani got up from the chair and went into the kitchen. She returned a little later. I did not give it much thought.
It was months later that I realized how hurt she was at that innocuous sentence. And that was when she revealed it to me. The reason she had gone into the kitchen was as much to fetch the salt as to wipe the tears that streamed down her cheeks. Still to get used to my style of putting things across, she could not bear the ‘insult’.
Even in 2009, tears well up in her eyes when she is reminded of that episode, as I am sure they will when she reads this. (An offshoot of this incident is that she has never ever forgotten any of the essential ingredients of her recipes - least of all, the upma!)
PS: This piece will remain incomplete if I do not append what a friend of mine for over three decades remarked on hearing this story: ‘I find it difficult to believe that you were ever so boorish to make the remark in such an inappropriate situation!’
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
I WISH I'D SAID THAT!
I belong to the tribe endowed with what my friend Manimury refers to as ‘staircase wit’.
Picture this: the boss has just administered you a severe dressing down. Without a murmur, you stomach all that is said. You slowly emerge out of the corner office with downcast eyes. As you walk down the staircase to your table, like a revelation comes the appropriate, if mildly insubordinate, response that you ought to have given to the boss. (Maybe you may even tell your colleague or wife that you did, in fact, mouth those words.) That is staircase wit.
It always happens to me. Somehow, at the material time, all the right words and expressions give me a miss but a little later, they come to me, with a vengeance, as it were. And I am not talking of the expletives and invectives of the Nixon variety which we, in the four-letter age, use when we wish to retort or rebuke. The crude, even the lewd, dominates our response. We tend to swear and curse. If the speaker is not a prisoner of the Punjabi blasphemy, F-word trips off our tongues with frightening fluency. Sadly, we’ve bid goodbye to the use of wit and repartee.
How different was the world of our forebears! The English — and those who enjoy imitating them — delight in witty ways of putting the rapier in and giving it a turn ever so very lightly. They don’t bludgeon but they delicately carve and slice. Consider the following put-downs. They make their point with great effect, yet it is difficult to be offended by them. (I am not certain if all of them are factual. That some of them may be apocryphal does not taken away from their charm; on the contrary, one pays a silent tribute to the inventive mind the fashioned the comeback.
“He has all the virtues I dislike but none of the vices I admire” (Churchill)
“He has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends” (Wilde)
“He had delusions of adequacy” (Walter Kerr)
Some of them start off deceptively with a what looks like compliment, and it takes a while to realize that it is left-handed. Consider these:
"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." (James Reston about Richard Nixon)
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” (John Bright)
“A modest little person with much to be modest about” (Churchill about Attlee)
“Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go” (Wilde)
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." (Moses Hadas)
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." (Mark Twain)
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts … for support rather than illumination” (Andrew Lang)
And some are unambiguously humiliating:
"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." (Thomas Brackett Reed)
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without an address on it?” (Mark Twain)
“He’s not only dull, he’s the cause of dullness in others” (Samuel Johnson)
“In order to avoid being called a flirt she always yields easily” (Talleyrand)
It’s not just authors or politicians who have a way with words. Occasionally even Hollywood celebrities can be remarkably witty. Billy Wilder dismissed an unkind music with, “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” Robert Redford once said of a fellow actor: “He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.” And Mae West of a suitor who was less than ardent: “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” My favourite, however, is Groucho Marx's legendary comeback to a man who said he had ten children because he loved his wife: "I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth every now and then".
In my college days, the audience at debates applaud repartees far more than weighty and serious argument. The better debater always had a quiver full of arrows aimed at his opponents. A regular used to be: “He’s a well-balanced man with a chip on both shoulders”. Another was this comparison: “The difference between Mr. X and me is a question of mind over matter. I don’t mind and he doesn’t matter.”
Stories featuring Winston Churchill and Lady Astor who seem to have been habitual sparring partners are indeed numerous and though almost a century has passed, they are still as popular as they are delightful. I cannot resist the temptation to quote these classic exchanges though I am sure you would have heard them.
Once, when a tipsy Winston Churchill stumbled down the stairs of the House of Commons, he fell in front of a disapproving Lady Astor. “Winston”, she reprimanded, “you’re drunk”. “And you’re ugly”, he shot back. Then, rising to his feet, he added: “But tomorrow I’ll be sober.”
At a dinner where Lady Astor was pouring coffee, she handed a cup to Winston Churchill with the words “If you were my husband, I’d poison your coffee”. Accepting, he replied “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
But it wasn’t just Winston Churchill and Lady Astor who used their wit to keep the other in his or her place. Gladstone and Disraeli did the same in the 19th century. Gladstone, who was more proper and less flamboyant, was frequently at odds with Disraeli. “Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.” “That depends, Sir”, Disraeli responded with a flourish, “on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”
I suspect Disraeli usually got the better of their exchanges but Gladstone’s description of him has achieved a certain rhetorical immortality. He called him “a sophistical rhetorician inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity”.
Sadly, the art of well-crafted repartee seems to be dying a slow death.
Picture this: the boss has just administered you a severe dressing down. Without a murmur, you stomach all that is said. You slowly emerge out of the corner office with downcast eyes. As you walk down the staircase to your table, like a revelation comes the appropriate, if mildly insubordinate, response that you ought to have given to the boss. (Maybe you may even tell your colleague or wife that you did, in fact, mouth those words.) That is staircase wit.
It always happens to me. Somehow, at the material time, all the right words and expressions give me a miss but a little later, they come to me, with a vengeance, as it were. And I am not talking of the expletives and invectives of the Nixon variety which we, in the four-letter age, use when we wish to retort or rebuke. The crude, even the lewd, dominates our response. We tend to swear and curse. If the speaker is not a prisoner of the Punjabi blasphemy, F-word trips off our tongues with frightening fluency. Sadly, we’ve bid goodbye to the use of wit and repartee.
How different was the world of our forebears! The English — and those who enjoy imitating them — delight in witty ways of putting the rapier in and giving it a turn ever so very lightly. They don’t bludgeon but they delicately carve and slice. Consider the following put-downs. They make their point with great effect, yet it is difficult to be offended by them. (I am not certain if all of them are factual. That some of them may be apocryphal does not taken away from their charm; on the contrary, one pays a silent tribute to the inventive mind the fashioned the comeback.
“He has all the virtues I dislike but none of the vices I admire” (Churchill)
“He has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends” (Wilde)
“He had delusions of adequacy” (Walter Kerr)
Some of them start off deceptively with a what looks like compliment, and it takes a while to realize that it is left-handed. Consider these:
"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." (James Reston about Richard Nixon)
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” (John Bright)
“A modest little person with much to be modest about” (Churchill about Attlee)
“Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go” (Wilde)
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." (Moses Hadas)
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." (Mark Twain)
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts … for support rather than illumination” (Andrew Lang)
And some are unambiguously humiliating:
"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." (Thomas Brackett Reed)
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without an address on it?” (Mark Twain)
“He’s not only dull, he’s the cause of dullness in others” (Samuel Johnson)
“In order to avoid being called a flirt she always yields easily” (Talleyrand)
It’s not just authors or politicians who have a way with words. Occasionally even Hollywood celebrities can be remarkably witty. Billy Wilder dismissed an unkind music with, “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” Robert Redford once said of a fellow actor: “He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.” And Mae West of a suitor who was less than ardent: “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” My favourite, however, is Groucho Marx's legendary comeback to a man who said he had ten children because he loved his wife: "I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth every now and then".
In my college days, the audience at debates applaud repartees far more than weighty and serious argument. The better debater always had a quiver full of arrows aimed at his opponents. A regular used to be: “He’s a well-balanced man with a chip on both shoulders”. Another was this comparison: “The difference between Mr. X and me is a question of mind over matter. I don’t mind and he doesn’t matter.”
Stories featuring Winston Churchill and Lady Astor who seem to have been habitual sparring partners are indeed numerous and though almost a century has passed, they are still as popular as they are delightful. I cannot resist the temptation to quote these classic exchanges though I am sure you would have heard them.
Once, when a tipsy Winston Churchill stumbled down the stairs of the House of Commons, he fell in front of a disapproving Lady Astor. “Winston”, she reprimanded, “you’re drunk”. “And you’re ugly”, he shot back. Then, rising to his feet, he added: “But tomorrow I’ll be sober.”
At a dinner where Lady Astor was pouring coffee, she handed a cup to Winston Churchill with the words “If you were my husband, I’d poison your coffee”. Accepting, he replied “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
But it wasn’t just Winston Churchill and Lady Astor who used their wit to keep the other in his or her place. Gladstone and Disraeli did the same in the 19th century. Gladstone, who was more proper and less flamboyant, was frequently at odds with Disraeli. “Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.” “That depends, Sir”, Disraeli responded with a flourish, “on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”
I suspect Disraeli usually got the better of their exchanges but Gladstone’s description of him has achieved a certain rhetorical immortality. He called him “a sophistical rhetorician inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity”.
Sadly, the art of well-crafted repartee seems to be dying a slow death.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Eco-Driven
Mr Chandran, the enterprising science teacher of our village school, believed in inculcating scientific temper in children and sensitizing them about ecology though environment and bio-diversity had not yet become buzz-words. He had novel ideas to make even the drabbest subject appealing. Rather than rely on the illustrations in the book, he would ask bring live specimens of plants and insects. Not for nothing that his peers thought him to be a bit queer.
Items got added to the school laboratory, an apology for one till his advent at little or no cost. On hearing of a snake being killed, he would rush to the site with a jar of Formalin, collect the dead reptile which would then be a hot addition to the laboratory. The nest of the tailor-bird, dried leaves and flowers of every description mounted on cardboard, all came in handy.
It occurred to Mr Chandran that the interest of the children in ecology could be kindled by setting up a Nature Club. The children were awash with ideas: they could go to the nearby wooded area and collect samples of the flowers and the leaves, to the riverside and identify the fishes and undertake a trek to Tirunelli during Onam holidays to see the diverse flora and the fauna.
When it came to the brass tacks, however, there was a problem: money. These projects needed funds. The idea would not get past the Headmaster who had always thought of Mr Chandran as an eccentric with new-fangled ideas. Even if that was accomplished, there was no chance of getting financial support from the school manager for whom the school was more a profit-centre than a temple of learning.
One of the boys suggested that funds could be mobilized through a collection drive. Some teachers contributed their mite and children chipped in with small change, All that added to a sum too small for their needs.
Perhaps the affluent people of the locality could be touched, someone said. After all, it was a good cause, was it not? So, off they went, to Kumaran Vydyar who ran a thriving Ayurveda clinic, Sankaran Namboodiri the landlord and ‘Vyaghram’ Subbu Iyer the moneylender. Though all were not equally forthcoming, the response was positive.
The next person to be approached was Mammu Haji, who made money by trading in the cash crops of the village. Barely literate though he was, good causes brought out the benevolent man in him.
The children briefly explained their mission to the affluent Haji: founding of the Nature Club in the school which would meet every Monday. Not one to shirk his responsibility to the society, the Haji fished into one of the pockets of the broad green-and-red belt that held his chequered lungi and his corpulent person together, extracted a Rs 1,000 note, thrust it into the leader’s hands, saying, “Why stop with just one ‘neychore’ club? You youngsters should eat well. Set up a Biriyani club which can meet every Friday!”
Footnote: For those uninitiated in Malayalam, the word 'neychore' is a combination of 'ney' (rhyming with ray and meaning ghee) and 'chore' (rhyming with bore and meaning cooked rice) and the dish is exactly that - rice cooked in ghee with the hint of cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. One of the delicacies in North Malabar, specially popular in Muslim households, its aroma is tempting and, to translate a phrase used in such contexts in Kerala, the mere thought of it would leave one salivating enough to 'launch a thousand ships' - like good ol' Cleo's face is supposed to have done. So what is if it adds a couple of thousand calories and a centimetre or two to your girth?
Items got added to the school laboratory, an apology for one till his advent at little or no cost. On hearing of a snake being killed, he would rush to the site with a jar of Formalin, collect the dead reptile which would then be a hot addition to the laboratory. The nest of the tailor-bird, dried leaves and flowers of every description mounted on cardboard, all came in handy.
It occurred to Mr Chandran that the interest of the children in ecology could be kindled by setting up a Nature Club. The children were awash with ideas: they could go to the nearby wooded area and collect samples of the flowers and the leaves, to the riverside and identify the fishes and undertake a trek to Tirunelli during Onam holidays to see the diverse flora and the fauna.
When it came to the brass tacks, however, there was a problem: money. These projects needed funds. The idea would not get past the Headmaster who had always thought of Mr Chandran as an eccentric with new-fangled ideas. Even if that was accomplished, there was no chance of getting financial support from the school manager for whom the school was more a profit-centre than a temple of learning.
One of the boys suggested that funds could be mobilized through a collection drive. Some teachers contributed their mite and children chipped in with small change, All that added to a sum too small for their needs.
Perhaps the affluent people of the locality could be touched, someone said. After all, it was a good cause, was it not? So, off they went, to Kumaran Vydyar who ran a thriving Ayurveda clinic, Sankaran Namboodiri the landlord and ‘Vyaghram’ Subbu Iyer the moneylender. Though all were not equally forthcoming, the response was positive.
The next person to be approached was Mammu Haji, who made money by trading in the cash crops of the village. Barely literate though he was, good causes brought out the benevolent man in him.
The children briefly explained their mission to the affluent Haji: founding of the Nature Club in the school which would meet every Monday. Not one to shirk his responsibility to the society, the Haji fished into one of the pockets of the broad green-and-red belt that held his chequered lungi and his corpulent person together, extracted a Rs 1,000 note, thrust it into the leader’s hands, saying, “Why stop with just one ‘neychore’ club? You youngsters should eat well. Set up a Biriyani club which can meet every Friday!”
Footnote: For those uninitiated in Malayalam, the word 'neychore' is a combination of 'ney' (rhyming with ray and meaning ghee) and 'chore' (rhyming with bore and meaning cooked rice) and the dish is exactly that - rice cooked in ghee with the hint of cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. One of the delicacies in North Malabar, specially popular in Muslim households, its aroma is tempting and, to translate a phrase used in such contexts in Kerala, the mere thought of it would leave one salivating enough to 'launch a thousand ships' - like good ol' Cleo's face is supposed to have done. So what is if it adds a couple of thousand calories and a centimetre or two to your girth?
Friday, November 14, 2008
SEEDS OF CONFUSION
Saramma kochamma had a green thumb. She had always nurtured dreams of having a patch of green and a beautiful garden in front of her house. For years, the dream did not materialise because her husband, Joyichan, an engineer in the steel plant in the north Indian town, was only entitled to a flat for most part of his career. She had, however, kept her interest alive by having potted plants in the balcony.
Ten years before his retirement, Joyichan was promoted to the next cadre which entitled him to a bungalow. For Saramma kochamma, the fact that she could now have a proper garden was more interesting that the position or the pelf the elevation would bring. And she made most of the opportunity. In less than six months of shifting to the bungalow, there were daisies and lilies, chrysanthemums and begonias and sunflowers in the garden in front. The birthday gift Saramma kochamma would value most, the children and Joyichan knew, was a packet of seeds of astorias or gladioli bulbs.
On winter Sunday afternoons, the entire family would be out in the garden, basking in the sun, the patriarch catching up with the reading and the children Susanmol and Sunnykutty engaged in a game of Scrabble. Saramma kochamma would be there too, of course, talking to her plants. The neighbourhood envied the well-manicured lawn and the vegetation and the blossoms.
In course of time, Susan was married off to a doctor in Canada and Sunny got a good job in a reputed software firm in Bangalore. Joyichan was retiring in a few months and Saramma kochamma could not bear to part from her plants. She was delighted that her husband changed his earlier decision to settle down in their flat on the Marine Drive in Cochin. They would let out the flat and move in to Joyichan’s ancestral property in the village near Kottayam, he had said. Saramma kochamma’s joy knew no bounds: after roughing it out for decades in the dry steel city, she would get back to the pastoral life. She decided that in the fairly large parcel of land that was theirs, she would have a kitchen garden behind the house and a good garden in front.
The sprawling house got a fresh coat of paint, the furniture a good polish. A cousin who lived nearby helped her landscape the compound and prepared a layout for the flower beds and the lawn, the perennials and the annuals, the creepers and the bushes. Soon enough, the hitherto neglected habitat was the cynosure of all eyes. The aging couple was enjoying their new-found loneliness in the new ambience.
Sunny soon found himself a bride in Molly, a research scholar. After a wedding in the church in May, they were soon off to Ooty for their honeymoon. The Queen of the Hill Stations was at her colourful best, getting ready for the Rose Day. Molly had been told of her mother-in-law’s love for the flora and bought packets of seeds of flowering plants and put them in a medium sized envelope made of kraft paper.
Sunny, a career boy, had decided what the future would be for his wife and him. She would let Molly complete her research, and armed with a Ph D, she would be in a better position to find a job in the Silicon Valley where he planned to migrate to. So, it was no children, no pregnancy till the Ph D was awarded. Sunny, an ecology-conscious youth, was averse to flushing the used condoms down the toilet. He put them in an envelope to be thrown out discreetly.
A fortnight after the wedding, the couple returned to the parents. As soon as they reached, Molly, in a bid to please the mother-in-law, pulled out the envelope from the pocket of the soft baggage and presented it with a flourish to her with the words, “These are some seeds we brought for you from Ooty.”
That evening, the young couple took an evening walk in the countryside when they planned to dispose of the prophylactics. Sunny felt that the feel and the weight of the packet seemed different from what he expected. Further probe revealed sachets marked ‘carnation’ ‘azalea’, ‘peony’ and ‘aster’ in the envelope.
A TRIP TO HELL - PART 1
Whoever said we dream in black and white was not right. I can say that with a great degree of certainty because last night I had a dream in several mega-pixels per inch (Oldtimers who are not computer-savvy may replace the last four words with ‘Technicolour’.0 It was special not just because of the variety of hues. It was like ‘The Bible’ by Cecil de Mellow: notable because of the number of characters who appeared in it. Like a mega-serial, it went on and on and on.
I dreamt that I had died. I was transported to a place that was neither awash with luxury nor miserable. It was neither heaven (Plush furniture, euphonious music, good wine, sumptuous repast, white sands, long legs) nor hell (Fire, boiling oil, sharp spears with red-hot business ends). It was a no-man’s land where people of my kind who were neither saints not sinners were consigned to, I presumed.
While I was wondering why none of our thinkers had mentioned only about heaven and hell and not about this area, the Supreme Judge appeared. After quickly completing what I suppose are the usual formalities, He pronounced my verdict: Hell.
To say that I was disappointed about the verdict would be a gross understatement, but I found several familiar faces there.
****
M was first one I met. He was a General Manager of the Bank I used to work for.
My boss G made some adverse remarks in his annual Confidential Report (CR) on me. I must concede that he was considerate (which, as you will learn later, is not a virtue that those who claim to be great men possess) to convey those comments in writing to me. Aggrieved that these comments were unfair and apprehensive that they may impede my career, I put in a request to the General Manager under ‘grievance redressal procedure’. The letter was drafted using facts and figures to demolish the observations of the boss in the CR.
Deafening silence is the only response for months. I send a reminder. Followed by another. Suddenly, I get a call from the Head Office: The General Manager wants to ‘interact’ with me in his office regarding my submission. I reach the venue on the appointed date. I am summoned in.
M surveys me from tip to toe and toe to tip. He remarks, ‘Just as I thought! A young officer with aspirations to rise in life threatened by a wily boss who is out to mar his career just because he has a pen in his hand. I see your point. I understand your predicament because I have faced such situations myself.
‘Mr Rajagopalan, I have gone through every line of your letter. Personally, I appreciate the way you have argued your case. You have marshalled incontrovertible evidence to support you. And arguing the case logically, you have put across your request. I must compliment you on your drafting skills.
‘I see that you have been hurt, and hurt deeply. And with good reason. I will ensure that justice is done. I will see that the CR is corrected and the damage is controlled.’
All I can do is to mumble a ‘Thank you, Sir!’
M then resumes, ‘Whatever I said so far was on a personal plane. You must remember that I am the General Manager of the Bank and am responsible for official propriety. I observe that certain words that you have used smack of insubordination. I cannot ignore your intemperate tone. There is enough in that letter to proceed against you for insubordination. Notwithstanding that, I want to get you out of this mess because you are an officer with a spark within.
‘I have thought a way out. I will address a letter to you pointing out the offending words and asking you why action should not be taken against you. You can send me a reply that you did so because you were worked up emotionally and request me to view the facts presented, ignoring the offending words for the use of which you may apologise. On receipt of your reply, I will neutralise the remarks. It’s a deal,’ he said reassuringly.
‘Fair enough,’ I tell myself. ‘Okay, Sir, I will do that’, I thank him for the intervention and leeve.
True to his word, I receive a letter the following week on the lines indicated. I shoot off a reply on the indicated lines and wait for the letter informing me that the adverse remarks in the CR had been neutralised and justice done.
A letter does arrive in a fortnight. It reads: ‘Though there are sufficient grounds for proceeding against you for insubordination, in view of the apology tendered by you and having regard to the fact that you are in the early years of your career, we are inclined to take a lenient view and you drop the matter.’
Not a word about the CR or the adverse remarks, not to mention correcting the injustice.
I deliver a hard punch on M’s belly and walk ahead.
I dreamt that I had died. I was transported to a place that was neither awash with luxury nor miserable. It was neither heaven (Plush furniture, euphonious music, good wine, sumptuous repast, white sands, long legs) nor hell (Fire, boiling oil, sharp spears with red-hot business ends). It was a no-man’s land where people of my kind who were neither saints not sinners were consigned to, I presumed.
While I was wondering why none of our thinkers had mentioned only about heaven and hell and not about this area, the Supreme Judge appeared. After quickly completing what I suppose are the usual formalities, He pronounced my verdict: Hell.
To say that I was disappointed about the verdict would be a gross understatement, but I found several familiar faces there.
****
M was first one I met. He was a General Manager of the Bank I used to work for.
My boss G made some adverse remarks in his annual Confidential Report (CR) on me. I must concede that he was considerate (which, as you will learn later, is not a virtue that those who claim to be great men possess) to convey those comments in writing to me. Aggrieved that these comments were unfair and apprehensive that they may impede my career, I put in a request to the General Manager under ‘grievance redressal procedure’. The letter was drafted using facts and figures to demolish the observations of the boss in the CR.
Deafening silence is the only response for months. I send a reminder. Followed by another. Suddenly, I get a call from the Head Office: The General Manager wants to ‘interact’ with me in his office regarding my submission. I reach the venue on the appointed date. I am summoned in.
M surveys me from tip to toe and toe to tip. He remarks, ‘Just as I thought! A young officer with aspirations to rise in life threatened by a wily boss who is out to mar his career just because he has a pen in his hand. I see your point. I understand your predicament because I have faced such situations myself.
‘Mr Rajagopalan, I have gone through every line of your letter. Personally, I appreciate the way you have argued your case. You have marshalled incontrovertible evidence to support you. And arguing the case logically, you have put across your request. I must compliment you on your drafting skills.
‘I see that you have been hurt, and hurt deeply. And with good reason. I will ensure that justice is done. I will see that the CR is corrected and the damage is controlled.’
All I can do is to mumble a ‘Thank you, Sir!’
M then resumes, ‘Whatever I said so far was on a personal plane. You must remember that I am the General Manager of the Bank and am responsible for official propriety. I observe that certain words that you have used smack of insubordination. I cannot ignore your intemperate tone. There is enough in that letter to proceed against you for insubordination. Notwithstanding that, I want to get you out of this mess because you are an officer with a spark within.
‘I have thought a way out. I will address a letter to you pointing out the offending words and asking you why action should not be taken against you. You can send me a reply that you did so because you were worked up emotionally and request me to view the facts presented, ignoring the offending words for the use of which you may apologise. On receipt of your reply, I will neutralise the remarks. It’s a deal,’ he said reassuringly.
‘Fair enough,’ I tell myself. ‘Okay, Sir, I will do that’, I thank him for the intervention and leeve.
True to his word, I receive a letter the following week on the lines indicated. I shoot off a reply on the indicated lines and wait for the letter informing me that the adverse remarks in the CR had been neutralised and justice done.
A letter does arrive in a fortnight. It reads: ‘Though there are sufficient grounds for proceeding against you for insubordination, in view of the apology tendered by you and having regard to the fact that you are in the early years of your career, we are inclined to take a lenient view and you drop the matter.’
Not a word about the CR or the adverse remarks, not to mention correcting the injustice.
I deliver a hard punch on M’s belly and walk ahead.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
HOUSE OF CARDS
AN ADVANTAGE of having been a banker for over a good three decades, Viswanathan says, is that people regard you with a lot of respect. You are the poor man's Alan Greenspan. People consider you clued-up about the nuances of high finance. True, they might be consulting you on matters financial. Though it might be a simple issue, you put on the grim demeanour matched only by that of the World Bank President James Wolfensohn.
Viswanathan came to be a `consultant' of sorts to the residents of the colony on matters financial. While he was in service, he had offered service at the doorsteps of his neighbours. Even after he retired, several of his neighbours had stayed with the old private bank he used to work for. Some, however, had opened accounts with branches of nationalised banks in the vicinity of their offices.
The number of those who had been lured by the gleaming glasses and the shining chrome of the new kids on the block was not small. These banks were one-stop-shops (It might be old-fashioned not to say `shoppe' or its variants such as shopee and shoppee ) where you could buy insurance policies, get yourself a credit card, a car loan, a home loan, or whatever.
Chacko was a votary of the new generation banks. He was impressed by the smartly turned out young men, in pin stripes and navy blue neck ties and speaking with an accent, working in plush environs with piped music. When he opened an account in mid-2002, he was given a debit card. And a few weeks later, a sweet voice on the telephone told him that a pre-approved credit card with a drawing limit of Rs. 50,000 would be his.
The joining fee had been waived and there would be no annual fee for the first year. Would he please come and sign the application and complete certain simple formalities? He did. And in due course, the credit card arrived. Not given to purchases on impulses, he had no chance to use it even once. Every month, the courier would religiously bring bills demanding payment of Rs. 0.00. His wife, Aleyamma, used to tease her husband about the bills: you never use the card and make the company incur cost for sending you bills! Unfortunately, Chacko succumbed to a massive heart attack within nine months of the arrival of the credit card.
Nevertheless, bills for Rs. 0.00 continued to arrive, which she ignored.
The grieving widow was surprised when the courier delivered a bill from the credit card agency, this May, for Rs. 2,000. It covered the annual fee of her late husband's credit card from the ensuing year. No other amount was due, as the card had not been used. Aleyamma consulted
Viswanathan and replied to them that she had already informed the bank of the demise of her husband in February. Would they therefore please drop the claim? Next month, she received a bill for Rs. 2,250 (The annual fee, the late fee and the interest on the annual fee. She scurried to Viswanathan, and on his advice, sent another letter explaining that no amount may be demanded, as she had already intimated the fact of her husband's death well in time to the bank.
In July, she was again given a bill. The balance which had been Rs. 0.00 had risen to somewhere around Rs. 2,560. Viswanathan was away in the U.S. with his son, but Aleyamma, tutored well by him, sent a proper response.
She ignored the next two bills, which showed inflated amounts - Rs. 3,040 and Rs. 3720, respectively. Then, one day, she received a phone call from the credit card agency. She told the voice at the other end, "I had written to you more than once that Chacko died in February." The voice replied: "But, ma'am, the account was never closed and the late fees and interest charges still apply."
Viswanathan, who was back after his U.S. trip, happened to be there on a social visit when the call came. He took over and tried to reason with the caller. The response was, "Since it is three months past due, we are handing over the matter to our recovery department." Viswanathan asked, "So what? We'll tell them that he is dead."
"Then they'd report the account to the frauds division, or report it to the credit bureau...maybe, both!"
"Do you think God will be mad at him?"
"...Excuse me ...?"
"Did you just get what I was telling you...the part about his being dead?"
"Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor!"
Now, he told the supervisor the same things he had already said.
"I'd like to repeat to you that Chacko died in February."
The supervisor would have none of these: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
"You mean you want to collect from his estate?" Viswanathan obviously knew his ropes.
"er...er...huh?"
"Could you send us a certificate of death?"
"Sure."
Aleyamma sent a photocopy of the document and thought the matter would rest there. She was therefore surprised when, a few days later, they called again.
"Our system just isn't set up for death..."
"Oh..," she couldn't care less.
"I don't know what more I can do to help...", the other end was desperate.
"Well... if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing him, I suppose... I don't really think he will care...." Aleyamma was at her tether's end.
The caller was adamant, "Well...the late fees and charges do still apply."
"Would you like his new billing address?" Aleyamma felt like teasing the girl at the other end.
"That might help."
"Vault No... , ... Cemetery, ... Church, Trivandrum 695 ..."
"Ma'am, that's a cemetery!"
"What do you do with dead people on your planet?" Aleyamma asked.
The rest of the story is not pleasant.
Viswanathan came to be a `consultant' of sorts to the residents of the colony on matters financial. While he was in service, he had offered service at the doorsteps of his neighbours. Even after he retired, several of his neighbours had stayed with the old private bank he used to work for. Some, however, had opened accounts with branches of nationalised banks in the vicinity of their offices.
The number of those who had been lured by the gleaming glasses and the shining chrome of the new kids on the block was not small. These banks were one-stop-shops (It might be old-fashioned not to say `shoppe' or its variants such as shopee and shoppee ) where you could buy insurance policies, get yourself a credit card, a car loan, a home loan, or whatever.
Chacko was a votary of the new generation banks. He was impressed by the smartly turned out young men, in pin stripes and navy blue neck ties and speaking with an accent, working in plush environs with piped music. When he opened an account in mid-2002, he was given a debit card. And a few weeks later, a sweet voice on the telephone told him that a pre-approved credit card with a drawing limit of Rs. 50,000 would be his.
The joining fee had been waived and there would be no annual fee for the first year. Would he please come and sign the application and complete certain simple formalities? He did. And in due course, the credit card arrived. Not given to purchases on impulses, he had no chance to use it even once. Every month, the courier would religiously bring bills demanding payment of Rs. 0.00. His wife, Aleyamma, used to tease her husband about the bills: you never use the card and make the company incur cost for sending you bills! Unfortunately, Chacko succumbed to a massive heart attack within nine months of the arrival of the credit card.
Nevertheless, bills for Rs. 0.00 continued to arrive, which she ignored.
The grieving widow was surprised when the courier delivered a bill from the credit card agency, this May, for Rs. 2,000. It covered the annual fee of her late husband's credit card from the ensuing year. No other amount was due, as the card had not been used. Aleyamma consulted
Viswanathan and replied to them that she had already informed the bank of the demise of her husband in February. Would they therefore please drop the claim? Next month, she received a bill for Rs. 2,250 (The annual fee, the late fee and the interest on the annual fee. She scurried to Viswanathan, and on his advice, sent another letter explaining that no amount may be demanded, as she had already intimated the fact of her husband's death well in time to the bank.
In July, she was again given a bill. The balance which had been Rs. 0.00 had risen to somewhere around Rs. 2,560. Viswanathan was away in the U.S. with his son, but Aleyamma, tutored well by him, sent a proper response.
She ignored the next two bills, which showed inflated amounts - Rs. 3,040 and Rs. 3720, respectively. Then, one day, she received a phone call from the credit card agency. She told the voice at the other end, "I had written to you more than once that Chacko died in February." The voice replied: "But, ma'am, the account was never closed and the late fees and interest charges still apply."
Viswanathan, who was back after his U.S. trip, happened to be there on a social visit when the call came. He took over and tried to reason with the caller. The response was, "Since it is three months past due, we are handing over the matter to our recovery department." Viswanathan asked, "So what? We'll tell them that he is dead."
"Then they'd report the account to the frauds division, or report it to the credit bureau...maybe, both!"
"Do you think God will be mad at him?"
"...Excuse me ...?"
"Did you just get what I was telling you...the part about his being dead?"
"Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor!"
Now, he told the supervisor the same things he had already said.
"I'd like to repeat to you that Chacko died in February."
The supervisor would have none of these: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
"You mean you want to collect from his estate?" Viswanathan obviously knew his ropes.
"er...er...huh?"
"Could you send us a certificate of death?"
"Sure."
Aleyamma sent a photocopy of the document and thought the matter would rest there. She was therefore surprised when, a few days later, they called again.
"Our system just isn't set up for death..."
"Oh..," she couldn't care less.
"I don't know what more I can do to help...", the other end was desperate.
"Well... if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing him, I suppose... I don't really think he will care...." Aleyamma was at her tether's end.
The caller was adamant, "Well...the late fees and charges do still apply."
"Would you like his new billing address?" Aleyamma felt like teasing the girl at the other end.
"That might help."
"Vault No... , ... Cemetery, ... Church, Trivandrum 695 ..."
"Ma'am, that's a cemetery!"
"What do you do with dead people on your planet?" Aleyamma asked.
The rest of the story is not pleasant.
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