The English Language!!

In this post, i attempt to conquer a hitherto unknown territory in the jungle of languages, chronicling the quirks of a language so used and abused (much like my pants in hostel that are so often used (and circulated!!!) but seldom returned!!).. No, no wiseguy, i am not talking about Swahili or the Bushmen tongue (that has more clicks than even a well-used computer mouse!!!).. What i am referring to is our wonderful lingua franca...err. English for those yet non-plussed (thats sitting with a vacant expression and a stupid smile, for all you laymen!!)..

English...The language of the empire (No not star wars man!! I am talking history where all these pale chaps from an island country with bad weather and worser food, but bloody good accents(Damn!!!), came over the sea to rule over us brown-skinned people wearing our sacred loinclothes and much longer dhotis and err..sarees too)..

I would try to limit myself to the provenance (thats posh for 'origin' my dear chaps) of English in this space...that would be England or Great Britian (Ah!!! social and political formalities)..Whenever i think of english, i get reminded of this english lady sitting in a stand-up comedian's show... when asked where she was from, she suddenly underwent a complete facial translocation, contorting her neck, pulling her upper lip back, pushing her lower lip out... No, she wasn't having a bad twitch ((like the ones you see on severely stress-affected poor American war veterans who have undergone god-knows-what in Korea, Kuwait, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc etc etc in their government's war for Justice and Democracy (I can hear a lotta guyz there sayin "ya right!!'))).. The lady was just sayin "Bedford!!" in a very english accent..

English accents... I mean, How weird can they get!!!... The other day, i was watching this english (err..British, really) movie on the telly (yep.. thats very british too) where there was this chap talking in a world-renowned Glasgow accent..I was having a really hard time understanding him whenever he said 'has' or 'horse' or 'house' or anything else starting with H coz hey!!! guess what??? he didn't pronounce any Hs... so i ended up earing..err... hearing (Bloody impressionable me!!!) 'House' as 'Ouse' or 'has' like...no, lets leave that be.. But hey even the poor bloke (good lord!!! The effects of the english society is on me!!) could be forgiven... He was just being colloquial..

But poor old english is probably one of those unfortunate languages that have been horrendously mutilated by their own countries' cities.. In london, Getting robbed is being "Blagged".. the suspiciously american metaphor for courage, that is, guts, is "Minerals" here.. as in, "Have you got the minerals to do that laddie??" and "I gotta go to my mother" becomes "I gotta go to me mum".. Grammatical genocide of a language that has been, for centuries, an indica of socio-political status..

But hey!!! languages are meant to be corrupted so that they may be widespread.. i mean, Afrikaans was born from a hotch-potch mixture of Dutch-Malay-Portuguese-french in south africa.. But this versatility of English is its strength too.. i mean, it has borrowed words from all the languages it has come in contact with, like.. say.. 'Thugs' was coined from the name of an indian tribe of theiving buggers (Now, there goes our higher moral ground in the english-speaking world!!).. Hey!! Hold you horses!! (Thats just a phrase, you bum... now, let go of that poor animal!!)..Even English was born as a corruption of High German language of ancient times (There!! You english-purist fools!!).. So it would be sensible to conclude on the behalf of all humanity (yep!! I would be doin that :-P ) that "Miscegenation of languages is the Mother of communication"..

Getting back to our (currently) beleaguered English, It has been found that in British universities that lesser and lesser number of young english people know proper (read "Grammatically correct") english..Seems our asian brethren (a sizeable, ever-increasing number.. just like my waistline!!!) are better off in this field, they know good english and make better english teachers... Now thats what i call a Colonial Kick-Back..

But lets...err... let me, quit yapping about that language, those people and that bloody beautiful, envy-provoking, posh British accent (I mean, which self-respecting Cricket-crazy-crackpot can ever forget Geoff Boycott's lovely accent) coz who else could have given us "High Tea","Tip-top,"Tin-heads", A Drowned-in-Illicit-love-affairs Royal family and Princess Diane (Besides Jallianwala Bagh, The Partition and finally, Freedom of course)..

Hell, off with it!!, India is booming (or so they say....ever heard of Inflation, Corruption and Farmer suicides, you Balloon-heads!!!).. so its only prudent that we break up this gathering of mourners to lament the loss of English.... and get on with learning Chinese and a few Indian languages coz its gonna be us guys who form nearly 90% of this world's populace tomorrow B-)..

Duh...how i plan to get beaten up by people in love!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here we are again....back to that nonsensical yet unputdownable (anyone opposed to self-flattery can go to hell) musings of a young college-going guy (now, here is where i point out the obvious "are college goers any older?? in INDIA".. anyway,time we gave some leeway for "dramatic license", which no doubt has screwed up many a movie adapted from a book).. so, i can hear some of you guys saying "what now??"... "Not one more ode to the legacy of writers (real writers need not bother to imply the implications of this line from my writings) who undoubtedly use five or rather ten words where one would suffice" ..well friends what i would like to point out is that "THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY".. i can blabber as much as i want and hey i am typing so all you tree-huggers can stop bemoaning the loss of valuable paper... so there, that gives me the freedom to muse as much as my king-size (ha ha ha.. you read that right!!!!) brain would let me...
Now that i have decided to pour (err.."type" would be more precise) my heart out and acquired you unwittingly (here, people unwitty by nature may substitute "naturally") as my reader, i shall start...what i would be troubling my grey cells for the following lines would be something thats in the air before matrimony and in the gutter afterwards...ya thats right (even if your guess wasn't.. never bother) its "love"..."love", that multi-million dollar movie maker.."love",that unceasing heart-breaker.."love", cursed be the maker (i know that sounds corny, but hey!!its gotta rhyme wise guy!!)...funny thing,"love" seems to be so fluid a concept (that is, if fluidity could be an acceptable feature of a concept)..so what i mean (ya.. median and mode too for all those PJ kings out there) is,if you look at love in an objective manner (that would be without the cupid's arrow up your rear end), you would find it to be a matter of convenience for certain(for the record, there is to be an emphasis on this word) people of this genre (ok.. i kinda sound old here, but no problem, wisdom need not always come with age and arthiritis)...that is, love for some is just touch and go (and much more than just "touch" for certain lucky lechers!!!)...
Gone are the days of undying love, of romeo and juliet...lets wake up...love has become more human, its mortal now...but hey!! in certain instances, there is a semblance to immoratility ("semblance" coz hey "nothing lasts forever" as is often repeated whenever you get some peace)....but love in itself and in the sayings of a million moonstruck poets (on certain days, me being a member of this populous group) is confusing...they say "love is blind",so i say "does that make the visually challenged, romantically unchallanged??????" (a point my hidebound critics are bound to concede)...
Well,there is a problem today with people (even with me, as many would gladly say.... but hey!! even gods aren't perfect), they can never get the difference between love and its dubious cousin, twice-removed, "infatuation"...there are (regrettably, many so) who don't know that love doesn't exactly mean sending a hundred messages a day to justify the one rupee your cell-service provider deducts daily....it doesn't mean cheesy forwards and "rip my heart and there you are" kinda suicidal crap.. it means more than that, much more than the word "much" could ever encompass...
But, never worry, infatuation, if you can identify it, is a fun way to pass your time...for one, you at least get to while away your time in rosy dreamlands besides convincing yourselves that he/she is the maker's customised manufacture piece for you (if it doesn't work out that well, you are free to use my oft-repeated maxim about even gods making mistakes)....
At the risk of being cynical as hell (as say, Mr.Scrooge on a christmas morning), let me attempt to look at your so-called "love" symptoms in a logical way... first, your heart skips a beat; never fret, thats an air-bubble in your blood, so get a cardio (or a lawyer for your will,speaking pessimistically)..then, you can't sleep in the night; thats probably coz you never eat anything healthy other than a baked disc of god-knows-what flour,topped with some seriously dubious-looking cheese and half a dozen week-old vegetables that are frosted and defrosted so many times that they themselves can't decide if they are fresh or not!!..... finally, there are butterflies in your stomach whenever you see him/her (err... may i ask when was the last time you slept on the garden with your mouth open??)....any other symptoms other than the afore mentioned are to be considered mutant versions of the above...
Now,vilified as i undoubtedly am, in the hearts of my love-struck readers, there is just one thing left to say.... "love" is not a passing cloud,its the perennial sky....its not just a river of joy, but also a rivulet of sorrow...penultimately,its not only about sending messages but also about sharing hearts (besides your money,home and soon-to-cease-being-happy life(ha ha ha))...and so now its time to give all you moonstruck mush-cows, ruminating on memories of your beloved, a melancholy goodbye.......Adios....

naah!!!!!!who gives a damn?

It was a rainy day.i was on the upper bunk of my bunker bed,counting just how many inches thick that coating of grime on the fan was..

well i could hear the muttered prayers of my roommate below (hey! i mean the lower bunk),praying for the bedscrews to hold,for his sake...

lost in thought as usual (a relentless user of those grey cells i am..), i looked outside...outside it was showdown.. seems the god had decided to let it all out... a conscious user of the language would have termed it as "raining cats and dogs",except for the fact that,there he didn't mean those animals which us humans lavish with the luxuries for which many unfortunate fellow beings would give their eyeteeth... and so much for those stupid "cats and dogs",hey those are droplets of water people...figure of speech my a#*!!!!

ok back to me,being of the melancholy type i remembered those good moments,those bad moments,family,love blah blah blah...you know the usual crap all college-going boys like me spend time thinking on, instead of on the so called "enlightening quest" for knowledge....meanwhile, my roommate slept off,curling under his blanket as if the devil himself was after him (hey! he looks like a foetus when he is curled up like that..disgusting. a 23 year old foetus is no longer a foetus, its a tumour)...

Finally i decided that it was time for those (poor) bedscrews to be free of the crushing burden of my big fat a#*(ahh! weight-loss that distant oasis in the desert of obesity)...The thump with which my return to terra-firma was accomplished prompted my mate to pay out a particularly rude expletive, which some warrior of the past had invented,thinking of who-knows-what pain..

Sunday afternoon,as it was, i was free as are our nations leaders at present..no probably i am wrong coz even they would be busy stashing away money in some ultra-secretive swiss bank or a bank on that heaven-of-the-embezzler Cayman islands...well then i settled on the only god-forsaken chair,cursing it for not serving its purpose,due to a particularly creative idea of some screwed up engineer somewhere who placed that all-important obsession for modernity over any sane idea of comfort...

I looked outside the window and saw a sheet of water (you know, the one you see when you have a waterfall over your head).. god,now i have to go to college wearing my blue jeans all brown with slush and pretend that its the new style on the block.. amazing how acting fashion-savvy helps you out in such tight situations..makes it easy to wear a rat/moth eaten jeans or a torn skirt for all you gals out there, and still get to pretend to be this hyper-cool guy/gal (while in fact you are praying that at least your undergarments are clean,coz they show)...Well the fact that all that slush would only make my poor jeans happy coz they can then expect to go near that most elusive and rare places (for them i mean),THE WASHING MACHINE,that heaven of detergent and water ,which they get to visit in about an era.(hey what are jeans for???)..

Slush apart, rainy days were good...think of those cozy nights (and most of the morning for me),curled up on that warm bed (alas! alone...) with a warm blanket over you...what can a poor, lazy boy do on a sunday?? so back to the bed it was,soundless though,as my poor heart couldn't bear an encore of that unparlimentary word from my mate.. as for him he was fast asleep,much like a roadside hag after drinking cheap booze he got at two pence a pint (oh shit!! now i gotta hide this)...

finally i got on the bed (now THAT is a herculean task if ever there was one)....Any bum would and should know that an idle mind is a devil's workshop...well, my workshop had just rolled-up its shutters...an interesting thing about boys is that, even when they get a picosecond of free time,their highly efficient (forgive the self-flattery) brains,tune into the most obvious haven to which all roads from the average college-going boy's head go,GIRLS....

I,by luck or fate,was an exception to this universal school of thought ( if..there is such a massive school somewhere)... hey,i am straight,so no shiv sena..but you know,once in a while there comes this really-great (this thing is getting to my head) exception to a widely-followed rule.I was one of those exceptions (he he)..Girls, bah humbug, i used to say (for which there would invariantly be swift retribution from my love-struck friends).."whats wrong???",i would argue,after all i've known many more crazy ideas (read "out-of-the-box")...

Well,i thought,girls have this huge potential of being an unerring pain in the a#*,that boys somehow tend to acquire as they battle on through life...well in context to certain girls i've heard of i can say that at least leeches were used in ancient medicines? coz they both seem to work on the same principle (now this is what i call "selective chauvinism").Its high time that girls understand that boys are diamonds...cool,efficient,practical,stylish..ahh! but a pity of nature,diamonds are brittle (and here is where girls come in :-P)..

Bless the guy who told that"diamonds are a girls best friend"..(probably he works for De Beers)... at this point of time an analogy hit the grey region (some people might be amazed to know that i have one) ,"its not just the shackles (girlfriends) that the average boy is scared of, we know that there has to be a guillitone (Marriage)"...But did god give us any other options?.....

No,no,no don't get me wrong..i am not the stupid girl-bashing guy that most of you have imagined me as.... my theory applies only to certain members of " The fairer sex"...Well,some of you might be happy (you better not be!!) that its time to wind up this ode to the oppression of the innocents.(the grey cells are crying for mercy you know)..Time to tell a tearful..ha ha ha..got you there eh??ciao for now...

err....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!

It was another rainy day(how come its a rainy day whenever i write something sensible?????? maybe even gods are amazed to see that i got a few grey cells)..I was at peace ( ya! ya! i can see some of you wishing me to rest in the same... keep wishing) with the world, life and everything there is to be peace with....a bit drowsy, i was dreaming just what colour wallpaper my house in the south coast of France sport( yes! i build not castles in the air but whole skyscrapers... just hope the bricks don't hurt when that falls to pieces....)

In case you were wondering where i was, you would be surprised to find me in the best place in the world for daydreamers,insomniacs and simply lazy bums.... THE CLASSROOM.... but my class or its drab environs alone were not responsible for my frequent forays into the realm of fantasy... it was the litany of condense, complex and confusing words( that is "a lecture" for non-geeks) that any college-going chap would give his girlfriend to avoid....

"wake up! wake up".... "who..what??" ..slurp (err... sucking-drool sound).." he is looking at you!"..."who.. where??.. oh yes!!".."you..yes..i am talking to you..welcome back to earth..a bit sleepy aren't we today" ( who was he kidding?.. i could see that he was all awake.. its "aren't you" buddy .. and they pay these guys to teach us grammar..just imagine)... in case you are wondering thats how most of my lectures go.. and that day i couldn't even deny that i was dozing coz he would have gotten my book only to see something like ECG( and a little wet stain on the edge).. in my experiences with lectures at least this one went well... there was this class where i was discussing some serious stuff regarding our very lives, with my pal (actually girls is more like it), when the lecturer ( now thats a repugnant word if ever there was one) asks us if he could do something for us(to make us stop talking that is..like he could..in his dreams..).. well. i almost asked for a coffee......

lectures.. ya.. those lullabies( funny to think a 50-year old fat,bald man with a wart on his nose singing a lullaby isn't it???? not so funny if he makes you stare blankly at his face for an hour in addition to making you positively swoon with sleep)....bet a pill isn't as good as one of my lecturers...funny how much you pay for a decent degree, realising a little too late that you find cutting (classes) better than comprehending( or at least trying your best to appear as if you are).....there is this saying "talking in Greek and Latin" ,well my lecturers seem to speak mandarin chinese with fluency( or at least thats how it sounds like to me)...whenever one of my teachers asks us if "its clear???", i feel like saying its as clear as a freshly painted wall....

see what i mean when i say these things are cool for insomniacs. they just pay the fees and voila! their very own lean (noooo...), mean(yes! yes! yes!...) sleeper machine....daydreamers get a full hour to indulge in their favourite fantasies( at least in your thoughts coz it looks a bit funny if you stand up in class and flap your hands as if you are flying)....and sloths get an hour to sit without doing perfectly nothing except drooling a bit from the corners of your mouth( which comes automatically after ten minutes in class)...well there wasn't much to think about( i mean if you can, then either you are a geek or its not a lecture).....so back to the bungalow-in-the-south-side-of-France thing it was..let me add a french girlfriend to that...naah..who knows i may be boyfriend number 47 for her...now where was i?? ya the hall..guess lavender will do..now for the bedroom....oh! and bye people......