Train of Thought

One of my favourite encounters in the Sherlock Holmes stories is when the famous detective follows accurately, as only he knows how, Dr. Watson’s train of thought.

Strange, isn’t it, how one thought can follow another till you end up at a wholly unexpected destination!

I love writing letters and I have penned quite a few in my middle-distance life. Not quite literary standard, they were still heartfelt communications. More than writing letters, I love receiving letters or reading letters written for others, which is why I pounced on the title Dear Girl, Dear Boy when it was offered by the library. It is a collection of letters written to children by their parents or siblings, most of them famous people. My favourite in the collection has to be the letter by James Thurber written in his trademark humour and the one by Virginia Woolf (yes!!) to a child from the child in the adult. The children of earlier times must have been extraordinarily precocious considering the expectations of their parents and the fact that some of the recipients ranged in age from 3 to 10!

The urge to communicate, for whatever reason, spreads across all species. Yes, even plants. Talk to them, ignore them and notice the difference. For us, humans, speech across the miles translated into letters (now sms and email!) which in turn gave rise to that mammoth enterprise, the postal system. Postage meant stamps which in turn gave birth to the world of Philately.

Little bits of colourful, sticky paper with serrated edges, stamps are magical things. They are the first step that sets in train the journey which sees your letters on their way. But more than that, they hold clues to history, natural history, geography, currency, culture, craft, music, the seasons and festivals (this list is very likely incomplete). Anyone who has collected stamps will know how to ‘read’ them. A friend, who is an enthusiast, has created a commentary around the sets in his collection, tracing the monuments in India , among other topics. Then there is also the story behind the creation of the stamp and the creator/artist. Sadly, a few generations down the line, stamps may soon go the way of dinosaurs.

My husband started collecting somewhat late in life. Christmas being his favourite time of year, it falls to his lot to open the cards and so he started noticing the stamps: each one with a different message on a theme, depending on the country of origin. He started preserving them. Word got round and friends and family helped to add to his collection. And what a pretty collection it is too: pictures of Christmas in tiny square or rectangle reminding us of good tidings and great joy. Of no particular value other than sentiment, we look at the stamps together and remember the cards to which they were attached and also their senders.

I wonder if Sherlock would have unraveled this train of thought!

Always in Fashion

The priest who celebrated our Mass was late today. He had his schedule mixed up and thought that he was meant to be the celebrant at the later Children’s Mass. His opening words were an apology for the late start and for the sermon to come – one that was prepared for children and not the sleepy adults who normally attend first Mass.

The words ‘old fashioned courtesy’ came immediately to mind. Here was someone who did not take us for granted, who respected our time, and who cared for us as people who mattered.

A little jingle that we learnt and, in turn, taught others still rings in my mind: They never grow old, they always seem new, those three little words, Please and Thank You. And yet how many of these three little words do we hear today? It seems that it is easier to demand than request, easier to shove than to say’ ‘excuse me’, easier to grab and run than to say ‘thank you’.

Sales people have been trained to say, ‘have a nice day’ – they do so routinely and automatically. When I cheerily respond, ‘thanks and you too!’ I receive a startled and sometimes hesitant ‘thank you’.

Is simple courtesy going out of fashion? I certainly hope not. Because it is one of those little things that make a difference: courtesy brings a smile to the lips and a lift to the spirit, to both the giver and the receiver.

Take my water vendor, for instance. Not quite an urchin, not yet a man, come rain or shine, he shoulders the 25 litre bottle from his transport to the dispenser in my kitchen. He was quite surly to start with, but now he greets me with a ‘good morning’ and a ‘thank you’ for the coupon and the tip (the latter probably helps!). A ‘thumbs up’ moment! I would like to think he spreads this courtesy to other clients too. A stone cast upon the waters? Who knows where the ripples will end.

Life without water?

Let’s start with hands. Hands need to be washed. But now we can dispense with soap and water as herbal purifiers have found their way to market – all it needs is a drop from a bottle for germ free hands.

The face? Wet wipes should suffice. The body? How about a common bath in the swimming pool or pond, or lake? Did I hear ‘ugh!’? It looks like it is coming to that and soon. We’ll also need disposable clothes and household linen. Pity the White Goods market, washing machines will be obsolete!! Chemical, waterless toilets already exist outside our homes but maybe that’s where we need to install them, too. Soon, we’ll be one large Starship Enterprise – an earthbound one. Imagine, everything at the touch of a computer screen and no water required! Or maybe we should just shift to Rajasthan. They’ve lived without water for years.

Which brings me to my happy Ixora: she needs her water (pink for a girl and therefore the ‘she’). The water we receive in our taps is a muddy slurry replete with worms, dead insects and leaves. Certainly unfit for human or animal consumption. So, I have now invested in a row of happy potted plants who receive their quota of incidental ‘fertiliser’. And they are thriving. There is some justice in the saying that poison for one is food for another!

And one last thought to speed you on your day: life without water means time to blog!

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.