'virahA'

After a sumptuous dinner at 8:30, I reached out for the old oxford Dictionary and my copy of "High school English Grammar" by Wren and Martin. These are essential to have a proper conversation with this particular friend of mine. With every essential thing in place, I reached out to my pocket for my cell phone, to find a soft prod of muslin against my thigh. I dug deeper with no significant results. A frantic search into the other-pocket, back-pocket, side-pocket, lower-pocket, inner-pocket, shirt-pocket and all I could fish out was an old crumpled, frayed, distorted, crumbling piece of paper with a greenish tinge and a vague digit ‘5’ etched in the centre and a still vague Gandhiji etched on a side. A round of search which involved upturning the whole room yielded no results. My roomy who turns wise occasionally asked me to list out all possible places where I keep my cell phone and then search in those places. I made a short list of all the places where I ever kept my cell phone.

Shirt pocket,

T-Shirt pockets,

Jumper pockets,

Trouser pockets,

Main zip of my travel bag,

Side pockets of my travel bag,

Front pocket of my travel bag,

Side pockets of my college bag,

Inner pockets of my college bag,

Front pockets of my college bag,

The pocket on the flap of my college bag,

The pocket under the flap of my college bag,

The pocket inside the flap pocket of my college bag

A half hour search into all the pockets yielded everything from squelched chocolates to shredded notebook leaves, even loose change worth 200 rupees which I never knew I had, but not my cell phone. After completing my list of possible places I made a few random checks on the shelves, under the pillow, over the mattress, in Bathroom étagère but in vain.

I had to face the reality “I had lost my phone”. I was not depressed because I had lost my cell phone. I had lost it several times only to retrieve it back in the most unlikely fashion, once I found it out in the college library’s restricted section after a week’s separation. In another case it mysteriously reappeared on the HOD’s desk the very next morning.

 I was depressed because I was missing my grammar classes. I was dejected……… forlorn….perhaps best described by the Sanskrit word ‘virahA’. This word with no corresponding term in English(at least to my knowledge), has crept into almost all the Indian languages more or less in the same form and with the same meaning; virhA or the colloquialism birhA in Hindi, virahamu in Telugu, viraham in Tamil. It describes the restlessness experienced due to the momentary or prolonged desertion of a loved one and in anticipation of a future meeting with him/her. The Great poet Kalidasa's mEghadUtam(The Cloud Messenger) epitomises this feeling.

As I could not write meghadUtam, I decided to watch 'Mission Impossible' for the nth time all the while envying Kalidasa for his skill.

* The words from Indian languages are spelled according to the Harvard Kyoto convention for romanisation.

Dare to 'dare'

I often find it interesting the way creatures with just one type of sex chromosomes tend to intimidate us, boys, with two types of sex chromosomes.

One not so fine evening, when the rain God was lavishly bestowing outdoors and the electricity department was showing its wrath indoors. I was sitting in the glum classroom with about ten of my classmates cursing the gods and abusing the electricity department. It was then that the supposedly brightest of the fairer sex had a bright idea of playing ‘truth and dare’.

For those who are not familiar with the game. It is the stupidest of the stupid games one might have ever heard of. It involves spinning a pen or a bottle, which decides the ‘Bakra’. The ‘Bakra’ gets an option to choose between answering a question from his life and performing a daring act. Either of the choices turns out to be equally daring and is usually decided by the meanest of the group. Another strange feature of the game is that you are expected to have high moral values and a deep respect for privacy when dealing with a ‘Bakri’, while the poor ‘Bakra’ is stripped and sheared in front of guffawing vixens.

With that basic information about the game, one can imagine the cynicism with which the idea met. The fairer sex is everything but fair. With the unfair argument of male domination and presumptions, we were forced into indulging in the game that makes Russian Roulette a safer option.

At last the pen was swung into motion. After what seemed to be ages of suspense, the pen slowed down and then ultimately stopped. The cap had been removed to enable free motion and the refill tip pointed towards its chosen ‘Bakra’.

“Truth or dare?” throats that fell dry due to anticipation seemed to have been recharged

.

The ‘Bakra’ quite understandably dared to dare rather than facing inconvenient questions. We were still racking out brains for an appropriate act when a pesky pigtailed girl came up with, “Why don’t you propose the girl sitting next to you!” a few ponytailed nods and the fate of the ‘Bakra’ was fixed.

The shy, timid, bespectacled, curly haired, introvert ‘Bakra’ on his knees while the arrogant,  overconfident, suave girl towered over him.

“myself Har….” he began

“Ahem” she interrupted “you see your phrase is improperly articulated. It should be ‘I am Harsh’.  In case you want to sound different you could say ‘I respond to the name Harsh.’ But what do you mean by saying ‘myself Harsh’.

I smirked, the terrorist had found a new ‘Bakra’ that day and she was bound to make a mince meat out of him.

“myself is a compound personal pronoun. It can be used as an emphatic pronoun as in ‘I typed the letter myself.’ or as reflexive pronoun as in ‘I hurt myself.’“

For the next half an hour we had a free lecture on compound personal pronouns and all of its avatars. Perhaps it would have continued longer, if it was not for the rain God who took pity on us and stopped the rain; or perhaps even he was terrified and decided to stay high up in the safety of heavens, rather than being terrorised by a terrorist with her grammar lectures.

Homophone Horror

The other day as usual she was blabbering through the speaker of my old cell phone, which lay on the couch, while I was responding to certain Facebook messages. I made sure to pay the least possible bit of my attention to her drivel. At some instant I heard her say, peruse. My heart lost a beat, “do you mean pursue!” I exclaimed. Instead of typing in a reply for poor Rahul’s detailed description of his newly acquired IPhone, I grabbed my phone. At last I had found an error, I had barely realized my grin before I heard a blast from the other end.

“No! I meant peruse, spelt P-E-R-U-S-E, it means to examine in detail. Don't you know this?”

I slapped my temple, ‘why the hell did I have to speak’, I cursed myself.

“How could you confuse ‘peruse’ with ‘pursue’” she continued, apparently indifferent to my current state of mind.” Peruse and pursue are not even homophones. Are you listening!” another blast, and I knew it was one of those junctures when God was thoroughly enjoying my lack of options.

“Ahem yes, you were talking about phones.” I said rather meekly.

A loud grumph ….. from the other end announced the impending tsunami.

“HOMOPHONE not phone or telephone or gramophone”, I could sense the supercilious tone going higher and higher while my guilt dug deeper and deeper into my heart.   

“Why could you not have said a simple ‘Yes’.”, my heart and brain seemed to question my tongue in a rare unison.

“Homophone” , my phone rattled, “is a term used to describe each of two or more word that have the same pronunciation but different meanings, spellings or origins. For example hour and our, new and knew.”

“This is not new, I knew it.” Inimical to my interruption, she continued.

“When I say I play with my ches(C-H-E-S) I do not mean I play chess(C-H-E-S-S); nor do I shoot(S-H-O-O-T) when I slide down a chute(C-H-U-T-E). Cherry(C-H-E-R-R-Y) is not being used as a metaphor when someone says she is chary of people who drink Chablis(C-H-A-B-L-I-S) shabbily(S-H-A-B-B-I-L-Y). you should understand that mean(M-E-A-N, adjective) people mean(M-E-A-N, verb) no good and that tear(T-E-A-R, noun) cannot tear(T-E-A-R, verb).”

“Talking of tear, you know, a woman’s handbag ripped off against a nail in the bus.” Thanking all the gods whom I could remember for the sudden change in topic, I chose to remain silent.

“Her bag” she continued”was a wonderful one, and the way she was flaunting it. It is good that the bag ripped. The way she was cuddling against the soft chambray…”

“you know” I interrupted” It is a ‘sham’ to ‘bray’ when you are not a donkey.”

 Goodness me, I dared to tease a girl; the next one hour I spent listening to the traditional respect commanded by women right from Vedic India to Victorian Dinner tables.

Universal Truth

Most of the boys would agree when I say, talking with a girlfriend is the most cumbersome task on the face of Earth. They (girls in general and girlfriends in particular) tend to notice the smallest of the errors and give gigantic lectures. Whether it is a result of some mutation during the course of evolution or it is a divine contrivance to punish boys, it remains a big mystery and the feature itself is a bigger pin in the ….. , I let you complete the phrase just in case there is some pig-tailed or pony-tailed creature policing out there.

I should admit that a few chats with a particular female acquaintance of mine have imparted more grammatical knowledge then “High School English Grammar and Composition" by Wren and Martin. She has this typical girlish attitude of identifying hard to pick grammatical errors and then hijack my call to give a lecture that takes eons to complete.