The collected works….

Through all my years of reading, I have fallen in love with certain authors.  So, when I come across Omnibus Volumes sporting ‘The Collected Works of…’, I promptly grab them off the library shelf and indulge in a read fest.  Reading and re-reading favourites is a joy-filled event for the bookworm, as any bookworm will tell you!  I have cried my way umpteen times through Little Women, chuckled as heartily through all of Durrell and Herriot and sat terrified (despite knowing the outcome) through tomes of Crime and Horror – a genre that has just too many favourite authors to list here. Right now, I am indulging in PD James, Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie from the past and look forward to the new acquaintance of Jonathan Kellerman and Carol Higgins Clark. 

That’s the beauty of the printed word.  It is there, to visit and re-visit.  It allows you to look forward to new friends in the offing and to keep up acquaintance with old.  One need never lose touch.

Which is why I am sad.

In the past week, we have enjoyed a series of Masses for the blessing of our homes in the Easter season.  This means that we have also enjoyed a series of sermons which have been instructive, inspirational and practical.  Sermons that are sadly transient because they are spoken and are alive for that time span only (perhaps a little longer till memory fades).  The homilies were delivered by different priests, each drawing on personal experience, adding their own touch of humour and sharing their interpretation of a topic. Each was unique.  Each was a treasure.  

One tech-savvy priest blogs his sermons, shares them on Facebook and they are there for all to visit; saved in e-format with the option to print.  They can be returned to whenever the heart demands and they can be shared across time and space, for the love of the Word of God is timeless and is relevant to all people without exception.  Social Media take a bow!

Now, if only we could persuade all our priests to preserve their preaching as well – a sort of ‘Collected Work of Best Sermons’!  

And here’s a thought to wrap up this blog – the printed message in my morning paper: living on earth might be expensive, but we get to travel around the sun for free!  

Now, isn’t that something!

99%

Blogging is hard work!

Sometimes you have an idea, but it doesn’t always pan out. When you sit at the keyboard, the words just refuse to flow. At other times, thoughts unbidden just pour forth and the fingers are hard-pressed to keep pace.

Take last Sunday, for instance. I had noticed an advertisement adjuring students to avoid ragging and to report incidents, if any, in order to nip the practice in the bud. I thought back to my own student days and remembrances of being ragged and decided to blog about it. But much though I had to say, the words remained locked inside.

And then, I found myself smiling to myself over the cat and mouse incident and humming to the CD playing a much loved track. Before I knew it, the words found themselves on the page and my blog was done.

Not all writing is that effortless. I often go through the piece and agonise over whether the readers will get the same picture that I have visualized in my mind’s eye and am trying to share - whether the words are apt, whether the piece is too long or too short, whether the language is too dated (though that is almost a given, given the years to my credit and my preferred reading!), whether I have been able to infuse a little bit of humour (the leaven in our daily loaf!) and whether the reader will be pleased to read.

This puts me in mind of a quotation from my collection : I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope…. and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities – Theodore Geisel

Ragging is one of life’s realities and, unfortunately, there is very little laughable about it. Hopefully, I will soon be able to share my thoughts and stir up some positive vibes.

In the meantime, my present thoughts are happy ones and so this is my offering for the day.

Why 99%? Because anything worth doing usually requires 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration though, in this October heat, it sometimes seems like one hundred percent sweat even when doing nothing!!

Hello Mr. Chips!

How I love the story with its sonorous roll-call. A diffident schoolmaster who grew into his job and finished his tenure magna cum laude! No thrills, no titillation and a sad ending. Yet it is a story that I have returned to again and again and it never disappoints.

Though I come from a long line of teachers, if the family tree is to be believed, I never wanted to teach having seen first-hand what it entailed. So, even though most of my classmates went on to do their B.Eds, I chose to explore other pastures. But one can never escape one’s genes, or so it seems: post retirement, I was roped in to teach via the Internet – I became an e-teacher! Now, once again, I have ‘retired’ and can indulge in reminiscence.

Aditi, Amita, Anuradha, Avantika……Deepti, Delna….. Gayatri, Gulveen…. Harsha…… Kadambari, Karishma …..Maclean, Misha, Moumita…. Nandita, Neeti …..Payal, Pervin, Pragya, Prakash, Priya… Rajshree, Rishabh, Roheena…. Sahaaj, Salil, Samalin, Subhash, Swapnila…. Tanvi, Tawina …..Vivek ……

…… they were just names to me till they started sending in their assignments. Gradually, I got to know them through their writing: some were eager, some recalcitrant, some energetic, some lethargic, some receptive, some quite deaf to advice. There were those who showed sparks of genius and there were the strugglers. They were diverse in attitude and capability – a motley crew - and they provided a challenging audience. It was only later, when circumstances allowed me to access their personal data on the Institute’s files, that I realized that some of the younger students were incredibly adult and some of the adults were incredibly young! How revealing our writing can be!! There was one student who fluctuated between maturity and a typical teenager, for want of a better description (I have yet to meet two teenagers who were similar – so what makes ‘typical’?) that I was tempted to ask whether I was dealing with two persons instead of one. I later learnt that the student’s mother was a teacher and had helped her with some of the assignments!

All in all, it was an exceptional experience and a learning curve – teaching over the Internet and interacting solely through the written word which, coincidentally, the courses were all about: News Reporting in the print media, Short Story Writing, Feature Writing and Practical English.

I was often amazed at the feedback – the very eclectic selection of poems and book titles that were sent in as personal preferences for the requested reports. This forced me to read books that I would never have looked at previously. Some books I would still not read anyway, but others made me realize that to teach, one had to expand one’s tastes. I also had to study like I never had before. I was, in my time, a questioning student and I was glad to find that my students were also interrogative, some of them fiercely so. The icing on the cake? Each and every participant in the Distance Education Program was there because he or she wanted to be there. It was a very personal interest that brought them to the courses and, therefore, they were a captive – and captivating! - audience. Here was no ‘whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face creeping like a snail unwillingly to school’.

Have I, like all teachers, touched tomorrow? I think so. Have I made a difference for the better? I hope so. Did I love ‘teaching’? I know so!

What’s With the Words?

I once read a short story, written in the first person, by an author who suffered from a rather strange speech impediment. What she heard herself saying and what she actually said were two different things. To illustrate, I quote (though not verbatim): Chancing upon her husband and young son in the middle of an argument that was going nowhere she said – or thought she said – “Stop this petty bickering!”. What they heard was, “Stop this Betty Pickering!” They promptly turned to her and said, “Who’s Betty Pickering? And why do you want her stopped?”

Well, this kind of mix up is rather uncommon in speech but very common with the keyboard. Fingers have a will of their own and very often letters are transposed or omitted with quite amazing results. One student writing about the joys of Facebook kept repeating about how wonderful it was to get in touch with his fiends (yes, spell-check did prompt me to change it!). Considering what the younger generation can get up to, and this particular student’s potential for mischief, I thought his choice was most apt and certainly descriptive!

More recently, I needed to send a message regarding a colleague and hit send before I realised that I had spelt her name as ‘Perker’ (once again, spell check popped up most helpfully!) instead of ‘Parker’. Considering that she is a real perk-me-up, perhaps this was a Freudian slip of the finger? Well, Leila, if you are reading this blog, you know that you have been featured!

Many are the anecdotes associated with mishaps in the use of English and no one had a better collection than the Reader’s Digest which published excerpts in the available space after an article. How many of you remember ‘Pardon, your slip’s showing’? Yes, I can feel the smiles.

A Sunday’s Musings

Sunday is a day of early rising, of attending the first Mass, of enjoying the first rays of sunshine as they break through the clouds on a monsoon morning, of entering a still sleeping house and sitting down to a freshly brewed, hot cup of tea and the morning paper.

Today, my attention is caught by a news item about a website that tells you who you write like. Just cut and paste a few paragraphs of your writing into the window provided and the site processes the text and then throws up the author whose style you supposedly imitate. It seems that I write like Dan Brown, which is quite an achievement since I have never read any of his books! Quite happy with my discovery, I decide to have some fun. I cut and paste different bits and pieces from my blog and find that my style is evocative of a plethora of authors including Ray Bradbury, Stephen King (creepy!) and David Foster Wallace. I must surely have a multiple personality. If so, I’m a happy schizo!! It also seems that I write like a man, or may be all these men wrote with a strong feminine streak?

My bit of fun over, I click on Facebook to check on comings, goings and doings. Yep, the usual: people playing Farmville, adding to their friends and finding new ways to abbreviate the English language. I read, add a comment or two and move on. The crochet and cookery blogs – updated on weekends - are always a delight since they are chock-full of mostly high-definition photos and I go drool, drool, drool while I grab the free downloads. Bloggers are generous folk; they share themselves, their time and their talent. Yes, that’s a pat on the back!

A quick check on emails and I’m done. Now, I get down to the serious business before I can enjoy the laidback second half of the day.

Sunday is definitely a good day, the Lord’s day, a blessed day. A day for saying ‘thank you’ for the week gone by and a day for refreshing the spirit in order to tackle the week ahead.

Of Borrowed Words and Porous Grandmothers… (and unexpected adventures in the English language!)

Never did I think that I would be penning thoughts to such a ‘Durrellian’ title. Then again, experience has taught me that ‘never’ is a word that never should have been included in the English Dictionary!

When asked to coach media students in writing skills via e-learning, I had little idea of the adventure it would turn out to be.

Invited to cast their words upon the page, our aspiring media professionals were surprisingly reticent. Surely the electronic medium was familiar territory? Slowly, as the assignments began to trickle in, it became all too obvious that the reluctance stemmed from the after effects of a regimented education.

In this time of guides, cheat sheets and coaching class notes, in the scramble for that perfect 99, one’s own words are worth zilch. We are witnessing the mass produced student, programmed to replicate his, or her, stipulated ‘portion’. It is not surprising, then, that the students found the Internet a very safe place to be. Here were the words that they needed: framed, formatted and ready to download. They were in for a rude awakening!

Challenged to produce original work, most of them ultimately stuck to ‘the cat sat on the mat’ formula for their sentences. Others - too few - stepped out and took that self same cat, prodded it till it fought, bit, scratched and then sat on the vanquished mat. Here lies proof that originality is not dead. Here lies inspiration - for words breed words, which is why reading teaches writing. Here lies imagination - without it the written word would be dull indeed.

Then there were those who took the English language where it was never expected to go, coining words and employing phrases which would keep a legion of lexicographers locked in labour for years to come.

But words are never wasted. They can set one upon a novel trend of thought and the English language, when employed by the uninitiated, is rife with unintended humour. One can look upon the phrase wryly and with jaundiced eye, but laughter can never be absent. It was this recurring laughter which prompted my thoughts. Having ridden the rollercoaster from exasperation to mirth and back, I felt the need to share the experience.

Yes, words are never wasted, and my gratitude is certainly due to that delightfully porous grandmother*!

*as part of a writing assignment one student, penning a condolence letter, wrote (and I quote verbatim!): ‘…Words are pouring probably like the tears from your eyes but I cannot go on like this. Grandmother suffered a lot later in life. Maybe she became porous after all the injections she took.’

“???????”

One of the assignments that I set for my ‘students’ is the writing of a poem: anything from a limerick to blank verse. And I am amazed at the disgruntled groans that arise. An inveterate scribbler from as far back as I can remember, I loved the English Language curriculum that demanded that we state our thoughts in metered rhyme. The ability to ‘doggerel’ at the drop of a hat was much appreciated and the habit has remained to this day as a handy tool for ‘Dear Diary’ entries. There’s so much fun in exploding into verse (or worse!). So, here’s my offering for today:

Do you ever

Wonder why

Amoeba are small,

And mountains are high?

Why dogs bark,

And cats meow,

And do what they do

Never asking “how”?

Why owls can see

On the darkest night;

And the upside-down bat

Loves moonlight?

Why plants still push

Through frost and snow;

And the trees in the forest

Lofty grow?

Only humans ‘think’

And question “Why?”

Worry and fret

Over how to get by.

The moral of this verse

Is plain to see

As the nose on your face,

Or the leaves on the tree.

God is Our Father

Trust in Him.

He created for Love

And not on a whim.

So question not

Or wonder ‘why’;

With God on our side

We’ll surely get by!

And, with that lift to my spirit, I shall leave you to get on with the day.

Why and Wherefore

As a sometime teacher to aspiring media students who need to brush up on language skills, it has been my wont to exhort them to write a paragraph a day. “Write on anything,” is what I advised them, “the view from your train window, an encounter with a classmate, a day on campus, window-shopping at the mall…anything. Just make it a habit to write!” A great believer that practicing and preaching go hand in hand, I set myself the same task. But when ‘have to do’ is faced with ‘distraction’, the latter offers the more delightful option. There’s always something to do which enables one to put off the evil moment. Let me illustrate. As I sat me down at the computer, I heard the crows outside my kitchen window embark on raucous conference. Intrigued, I trotted off to take a look. There were rows of crows on ledges, window sills, cables lines. In short, they were packed in feather to feather on every available perch. And as they indulged in simultaneous, tumultuous cacophony, I wondered who was listening to whom. Popping my head out of the window, I added a tentative ‘caw-aw’ of my own much to the disgust of the crows perched immediately below me. They turned a sideways beady glance in my direction and, almost without pause, continued in concert. I joined in again, more vigorously this time. My visitors few off but were immediately replaced by the next set of vocal gymnasts. This was certainly no ‘unchained’ melody.

My husband tells me that this happens prior to pairing off as the mating season begins. I was incredulous. But sure enough, a few days later there were pairs going beak to beak and females lovingly grooming their partners. Soon it will be nest building time. Crows building nests are harbingers of the monsoon. Let’s hope they get it right this time too.

Well this was one distraction that paid off. My paragraph for the day is done and dusted. Maybe there’s a moral in this somewhere?