Isn’t she pretty?

The first blooms on my Ixora and thereby hangs my next blog!

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.

Sunday’s Spillover and Awakened Memories

The Sunday sermon spelt out our intended mission for the coming 12 months: Caring for Creation through Conservation. We were told that the youth of our Parish would be visiting our homes to educate us in caring for the environment, recycling waste material and, in the process, they would also collect all unnecessary items like excess plastic bags and packaging materials.

Now, I have some enthusiastic visitors to look forward to. I have, for a long time, been looking for solutions to the disposal of various packaging and unwanted add-ons like plastic measuring spoons. I thought that if I collected enough (and it does not take much time to do that considering the speed at which a normal household goes through cereal and detergent packets!), the Companies would welcome the return. No go.

The plastic spoons were snapped up by my maid to be exchanged for garlic. Cardboard cartons went with the newspapers for selling and the rest - inner packing, wet packing – was sadly consigned to the waste bin. One of our windows overlooks the municipal garbage dump. Not a scenic view but a very educative one. One can study those ubiquitous scavengers, the crows, or the rats and multiplying cats. Or even the humans. Man, woman and child, they visit, they pick over and then collect what they particularly specialize in, carrying away the ‘lucky finds’ in discarded cement plastic gunnies – the great Indian recycling machine.

This reminded me of Sapna.

My husband had wound up his business and we were shutting shop, quite literally. With shutter rolled up, we sat down in two comfortable chairs with a rather large cardboard carton between us and a stack of files for each. We sorted through the files, discarding with a will every unwanted scrap: correspondence, manuscripts, proofs, notes and other assorted jetsam of twenty years and more. So absorbed were we in our task, that we did not notice the little slip of a girl watching us, anticipation in the gaze. When I did look up, I noticed her hopeful expression. Dressed in a ghagra-choli, her shoulder length hair in a tangle, bangles a jingle and a sack that was three times her size trailing behind her, she could only be a rag-picker. So young and already a wage earner!

This was not the time to quibble about child labour, and we beckoned her forward. She eagerly emptied our carton and we told her to keep coming back for more till we were done. This she did on winged feet, returning almost immediately after disappearing around the corner. Finally, it was time for a break and we shut shop, telling her to come back same time, next day. She kept reappearing till we had cleared out every unwanted piece of paper. And at the end of it all we were bidden farewell with a stunning smile. For a time, she had a steady ‘income’. Her reward from us was some cash and a bar of chocolate. Maybe she should have been in school, but then our paths would never have crossed and perhaps her family, whoever they were, would have had to forgo a better meal. She told us her name but was not too forthcoming with any further information. Today, she would be roughly ten years older. Twenty, twenty-two? With, perhaps, a child of her own?

PS : This piece is supposedly in the style of Cory Doctorow!!

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.

Cadet Prayer

The day’s opening hours, for me, must include a scan of the newspaper headlines. A common feature, of late, has been the army, its officers and various unsavoury shenanigans. Whither the Indian Army?

My father served in the Indian Army. I treasure his parchment commission, received at the time of Independence and signed by our first President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad. Thankfully, for the duration of his service, the Indian Army was the exemplar of discipline and duty: standards that were set for home and family too. The army way of life then and now are far removed from each other. Life was more difficult then without the major comforts that army families enjoy today. That was the time of laying foundations, of building, of creating a blueprint for those to follow. It was also a time of intermittent but very active war. It was a trying time that built men of character. It was a time when men of character were trying to build a nation.

And I like to think that what kept these men straight and true was the Cadet Prayer. Though he served with the Indian Army, my father was trained by the British and he always carried a little card embossed with the title ‘Cadet Prayer’. No author is mentioned. Travel stained and somewhat faded with time, this little card must have been part of the cadets’ kit.

Here are the words:

“O God, our Father, Thou searcher of men’s hearts, help us to draw near to Thee in sincerity and truth. May our religion be filled with gladness and may our worship of Thee be natural.

Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing and clean thinking, and suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretence ever to diminish. Encourage us in our endeavour to live above the common level of life. Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won. Endow us with courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy. Guard us against flippancy and irreverence in the sacred things of life. Grant us new ties of friendship and new opportunities of service. Kindle our hearts in fellowship with those of a cheerful countenance and soften our hearts with sympathy for those who sorrow and suffer. May we find genuine pleasure in clean and wholesome mirth and feel inherent disgust for all coarse minded humour. Help us, in our work and in our play, to keep ourselves physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight, that we may the better maintain the honour of the Corps untarnished and unsullied, and acquit ourselves like men in our effort tor realize the ideals of our Army in doing our duty to Thee and to our Country. All of which we ask in the name of the Great Friend and Master of men.”

Christian in concept, the prayer is universal. It holds man in commitment to God and Country. Sadly, many have been killed in the name of both.

A Simple List of Errands

A bright window, in an otherwise rainy week, beckoned and since my ‘to do’ list was fairly long, I stepped out with rather misplaced optimism.

The first stop was to pay the electricity bill. The queues were serpentine at every window, so I joined the nearest. Suddenly, a lady with bright orange hair entered and went right to the head of the neighbouring queue. The outburst was immediate, and very, very vocal. Unfazed, the woman announced that senior citizens had to be given preference and she stuck to her guns. Though I carry a personal cloud of grey, I am some months off that magical, open sesame – ‘senior citizen’. Still, if needed, I would wade in and add my voice. But she needed no help. Bill paid, she marched out head held high. A young housewife sarcastically remarked that from now henceforth she would stay comfortably ensconced at home and send her mother in law to pay the bill instead. And I thought: how uncaring the generation of today is of the senior citizen of tomorrow – themselves. Were we so crass? I hope not.

Queues in India mean pushing, shoving, jostling and the air turning blue with epithet and loud comment. Queues here are rude and unwieldy. Some time ago, I read that Asian immigrants to Britain would have to undergo ‘training’ in queue etiquette and I am not surprised. The Indian queue is definitely not a welcome import.

Bill paid, I left the building to find a howling downpour awaiting me. Brolly unfurled, I stepped out to be greeted by fresh puddles and pools. Passing cars zoomed through exuberantly, splashing muddy water on pedestrian, wary and unwary alike. I mentally notched up a laundry bill as my skirt acquired a new and unwanted pattern.

A standing taxi and an alighting passenger saw me succumb, even for the short distance I had to travel. The taxi driver was chirpy. What’s the time? Three on the dot, why? I have to pick up a passenger in the neighbourhood and do not want to travel too far. Don’t worry; I just need to go a little further down the road. Destination reached, I pay the minimum fare and am greeted with a toothy grin and a thank you. A different kind of sunshine but a welcome one. Over-charging, cantankerous taxi-drivers are the norm.

I enter my favourite herbal store and am greeted by the salesgirls with a smile. I am a regular and they know me. The shelves are turned around but the salesgirl takes me through to my usual purchases and I am quickly done. Bill paid, I step out with a spring in my step. The day is looking up. With the pavement all to myself, I twirl my umbrella all the way to the cake shop. My husband and I love cheesecake and don’t need to watch our calories. Lucky or what?

Still coming down but, thanks to plastic, my purchases remain dry. I walk along the causeway, once possessed of open and airy pavements, now encroached upon by hawkers. Pedestrian traffic is two way in a single lane and ‘roadblocks’ are inevitable. I attempt to edge past a burly matron, two plump lads in tow, who is bargaining with a bangle seller. I try ‘excuse me’ and the locally correct ‘side please’. No go. I suck in the stomach and sidle past. Whew! I rush through an open stretch before I am beaten to it by the oncoming gang of college students – the causeway is a college-goers dream, with its clothes and bric-a-brac . My way further is again blocked, this time by a group in burkhas. They may have been draped in unrelieved black crepe, but hands and feet were beautifully manicured with nails sporting petal pink or fuchsia. Four inch wedge heels made sure that their feet remained above the water line.

Every now and then, a flute seller surfaced, playing a repetitive and enticing tune. But no tourists were out today. No one to con into unwary purchase. Somehow the flute one hears and the flute one purchases never resonate with the same sweetness.

One more stop: Vinod our neighbourhood provider of photocopies, prints, faxes and other sundry services. My prints were ready. I now have two new crochet patterns to experiment with.

I head for home, a hot bath and a hot cup of tea. A simple list of errands taken care of – mission accomplished and how!

Christmas in July

Christmas is our favourite time of year, and the countdown begins once we cross the halfway mark on the calendar. As early as that? Yes. Call us crazy!

This is the time when crochet patterns for Christmas start appearing on the Net and when my fingers get itchy to experiment with hook and yarn, needle and embroidery floss. What will this year’s theme be?

Last year it was snowflakes. There were patterns galore to be sourced from the Net and from instructions collected over the years. As each little scrap of lace took shape, excitement began to build and from the many, a few personal favourites were selected and worked upon. Soon, I had a little ‘snowstorm’ as my workbasket filled. Come November, I had reached my target and all that was left was to send the snowflakes on their way where they would, hopefully, grace the branches in homes here and across the globe.

This year the tussle is between a Christmas tree, a bonnet and a heart. All three are delightful, easy to make and a joy to behold. So far, the tree is a frontrunner with the bonnet and heart coming a close second and third.

So, which will it be? Wait and see!