Part I: Toranagallu

I live in a Steel township. (for the uninitiated, a 'steel township' is not a township built out of steel, but a township meant for employees of steel companies) Have lived in Steel townships all my life, and I love steel townships. The peace, the calm, the well planned outlay of the colony/town/city, the cleanliness, abundance of greenery, the lack of population and pollution, excellent educational and social environment, and the friendliness and feeling of oneness among the residents all combine to make steel townships my favourite places to stay. These are the kind of places where you still get to see lots of sparrows (of the real and not the stuffed variety), squirrels chase each other from tree to tree, colourful butterflies flit from flower to flower (and by colourful I mean the actually multicoloured ones and not the mono coloured excuses for butterflies that we sometimes get to see in a few places) and the twittering of a wide variety of birds wakes one up every morning. They are, I believe, one of the best places for a kid to grow up and therefore consider myself extremely lucky.

I have seen (visited/ lived in) quite a few steel townships - Rourkela, Bokaro, the Ranchi Steel Colonies, Jamshedpur and Toranagallu. I have been very impressed with all of them but till I saw Toranagallu, Ranchi satellite township was my favourite and Jamshedpur was the ideal (the standards to which, I believed, all steel cities must aspire). Now, post-toranagallu, though ranchi still remains my favourite, Jamshedpur has given way to Toranagallu. My! the place is beautiful! A small and a relatively very new town, (just about 10 years old) Toranagallu (a village between Hospet and Bellary in Karnataka) houses the Jindal Steel Plant and the adjoining Jindal Steel Township/town. The motto of JSW is stated to be "one tree for every tonne of steel" and boy have they lived upto it!

Wide Roads, all possible facilities built in within an overall township radius of just about two kms, amazing huge lawns (amazing - esplly because the area sees temperatures around 45*C and is very dry), trees trees and more trees and all the aforesaid qualities of a typical steel township, all enhanced many times because of the sheer beauty of it all. The entire place looks like one big holiday resort and I'm not even exaggerating. Of course the place is small and as yet very new and of course Jamshedur, having the advantage of time has far more facilities etc but I say, give Toranagallu time, and certainly it seems set to give Jamshedpur a good run for its money!

Compare this setting to the noise, pollution, heat, traffic, the crowds and filth of places like Calcutta, Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi etc. and I know exactly where my loyalties and my affection lie. It is at times like this, when I know that I have no chance of working or living in townships like these anymore and will have to stay in cities such as those enumerated above, that I start questioning the soundness of my decision not to take up engineering. You might say, these Steel companies too hire legal professionals but then there is also such a thing as job satisfaction! Makes one wonder at what could have been. (~sigh and a shake of the head~)

Vacations!

'Vacations' is a slight misnomer for this post since today is officially the last day of mine. I'm bunking a week of college and therefore have a few days of grace! However this post is more about what I have been doing the last two and a half months...

More than anything the last few months have been about travelleing from place to place... not so much exotic travelling (though that too is included)as just general good use of the Indian Railways. Here's a synopsis:

March 13th - Kolkata to Ranchi.
March 15th - Ranchi to Mumbai.
Sometime in April - Mumbai to Matheran.
Sometime in April - Mumbai to Alibaug.
May 1st - South Mumbai to Thane. (this, believe me, is atleast as eventful a journey as between two cities)
May 4th - Mumbai to Ranchi (in course of which I lost my well loved Mobile phone)
May 11th - Ranchi to Bangalore.
May 17th - Bangalore to Vellore and back.
May 20th - Bangalore to Toranagallu.
May 21st - Toranagallu to Bangalore.
May 23rd - Bangalore to Wayanad (Road trip)
May 26th - Wayanad to Bangalore.
May 28th - Bangalore to Ranchi.
Whew! have a week's respite before I make the return trip from Ranchi to Kolkata.
hmm.. maybe I'll do a post on Toranagallu, Vellore and Wayanad...some other time.. till then ciao.

Changes

Hmm... so i've changed the name of my blog (for those who don't know.. the earlier name was - "There are books and there are BOOKS")... since I was anyway not sticking to the blog name and the stated purpose... I thought it might be slightly less embarrassing to change the name itself! Also, this name serves to accomodate my indecisive self ... hence the 'other things'. :-)

Waiting for the Barbarians

I'm back after a long hiatus (not that anybody would have noticed) and the come-back post is again poetry. There is a lot to write about - I made another trip to another part of Kerala, read quite a few new books, and in general have quite a few things to write about. Am at home and jobless for the next one week or so and therefore hope to clear a lot of posting-backlog within this time.
In the meanwhile, I came across this poem while trawling randomly through 'Wondering Minstrels'. It's been written by Constantine Cavafy and has been translated by Edmund Keely. It is meant to portray the ultimate hollowness for tyranny. I ask, how different is our Democracy? See if you agree too.

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.

What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

A Riddle!!!

Here is a beautiful riddle set within a poem.... see if you can unravel it. It's a Poem by Edgar Allan Poe and is called - A Valentine

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Loeda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines! -- they hold a treasure
Divine -- a talisman -- an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure --
The words -- the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor!

And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets -- as the name is a poet's, too.
Its letters, although naturally lying
Like the knight Pinto -- Mendez Ferdinando --
Still form a synonym for Truth -- Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do

I could not unravel the said name or the three words..... if you do... please let me know!

Interesting 'Bookie' Quotations

1. Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs – Christopher Hampton.
   
2. Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book – Edward Gibbon.
   
3. I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good – Seneca.
   
4. To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter – Aliester Crowley.
   
5. A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people – Thomas Mann.
   
6. The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from one another. – John Constable.
   
7. There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it - Bertrand Russell.


8. A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you - Daniel J. Boorstein.


9. The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination - Elizabeth Hardwick.


10. I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading - Henry G. Strauss.


11. The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books - Katharine Mansfield.


12. A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. - Edward P. Morgan.


13. Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx.


14. Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all. - Abraham Lincoln.


15. TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they'll have with twenty-six. Open your child's imagination. Open a book. - Author Unknown.

"Entry From The Backside Only: hazaar fundas of indian english" - Binoo K. John.

I got this book as a Birthday present from one of my friends in college. The title seemed interesting and I thought, the book would be humorous, and so I immediately settled down to reading the book. Wellllllll........ the only thing that turned out to be interesting about the book was it's title. Humorous - the book was not!!! not from any angle whatsoever!!!!!!!!

Mr. Binoo. K. John is apparently a journalist who has apparently written two other books which have been well received by society in general. Both are travelogues - one about Cheerapunji and the other about the Malabar Coast. Praises for these books find their place on the cover of 'hazaar fundas...'. Well, if that is true, then Mr. John should stick to writing travelogues and not venture to attempt either satire, humour or even sarcasm.

The overwhelming feeling that a reader gets on reading this book is:

firstly that Mr. John has tried a li'l too hard to be funny and in the process has lost out on whatever li'l laughs he could have otherwise hoped to generate,

secondly that he has been unable to decide whom he is addressing the book to: the foreigners to whom he seeks to explain India's obsession with English or to the Indian's themselves for whom he is attempting to hold a mirror and get them to laugh at themselves.

I believe that had he been trying to do the latter, the book would have been far friendlier and made for more interesting reading.

Thirdly that he has written this book at a time in his life when he has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do and so he has stretched what could have been an entertaining essay into a torture spanning 212 pages.

Fourthly the book leaves you wondering whose sense of logic is at fault: yours or Mr John's? He takes one or two illustrations of 'Indian-English' and proceeds to make generalisations about the country as a whole and all it's people. Sweeping statements like: ".... the cleanliness and civic sense which no Indian can be credited with...", "...he forsakes Hindi with the unquestioned and guiltless ease of all Indians, giving yet another example of how tenuous an Indian's link with his mother tongue is", find their way onto almost each and every page of this book.

In attempting to explain why people take to 'Indian English' he lambasts the users of such English as those who are desperately trying to climb the social ladder. The tone of his writing suggests that what he really wants to say is that such people who have the temerity to vilify the most sacred of languages should know their place and should not aspire above their rank and 'capabilities'. He clearly draws the distinction between the 'aspiring-Indian-English-using THEM' and 'the-well-read-socially mobile-correct English using US'. And he makes it very clear which side of the fence HE belongs to. He says that the major reason why Indians want to learn English is because they want to go to foren country. A read through this book, gives one the impression that he is the one targeting social acceptance among the pool of internationally renowned authors and thinks that distancing himself from his ill-bred and ill-mannered countrymen is the best way to do so.

However, to be fair to Mr. John, the book also has a few merits. The anecdotes and the quotes that he has chosen to show case Indian English are extremely funny and raise quite a few laughs. But as a critic in 'The Hindu' said: Had Mr Binoo John not attempted to explain humour that is self evident and pat himself on the back, the book would have made for some interesting afternoon read with 'some chai wai for company'.

Another appreciable fact which cannot escape any reader's notice is how well researched the book is. Mr. John has dug up anecdotes of usage of Indian English from as far back as the early colonial era and has researched and gone through obscure books found only in the dusty corners of libraries such as the 'Nehru Memorial Library' in New Delhi. All, with the sole intention of bringing out the various ways in which English has been used in this country.

But on the whole, this book is disappointing. It takes too many uncalled-for pot shots at the 'common man' in India for it to have gone down my throat at least!!!!