The Hindu #fail !

The Hindu newspaper has a photo today with a caption: "Honouring a great".
That's not correct!

You honour great men or women or persons (or great dogs!), but not 'a great'.

By the way - the #fail in the title is becoming a popular internet slang to express the idea of something negative, something that did not work.

A visit to the railway reservation counter

I went to the booking counter for Indian Railways at Indiranagar last weekend. Three cheers for the online booking facility of Indian Railways which means that I rarely have to visit the booking counter any more. I had to do it recently because I wanted to ensure that my mother-in-law gets a lower berth, something that the online site does not do so well.

There were two interesting things I noticed there. One was an ad for Agarbatties that said: "Pray for confirmed tickets with Cycle Pure Agarbatties". And a further statement underneath "Everyone has a reason to pray". Funny, no? They had found a humourous way to get their message across that plays on the anxieties of people sitting in queue waiting to buy a rail ticket. Further the message is very customized for the location -- it would not work anywhere else. That is nice to see -- most of the time people would just reuse their standard ad that they use elsewhere rather that create a new ad for a particular use.



The other thing was a notice board, of the sort where you have individual letters, that you can put together in order to make whatever message you want to convey. Here is the message I saw there:


ADVANCE BOOK NGSIARE OPEN UPTO 04-07-2009

It took me a little while to figure out what they were trying to convey. Want to give it a shot ?

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Photo from isado on Flickr. I don't know if there is a standard English spelling for for agarbatties, but the version I used is in use on many websites. The English word for agarbatties is 'incense sticks'. Did you know that incense sticks are popular in several south asian and south east asian countries too. Click through on the photo above to see lots of pictures of incense sticks. And there is a site called agarbatties.com ; quite funny, it has this rock music playing in the background that seems inappropriate for an idea like agarbatties.

A challenge!

One of my good friends Arvind Narayanan (who regretfully is not very cordial when he comments on my blogs) has seriously questioned the approach of this blog, and my qualifications to write it. Below is my response. I think I am justified in not publishing any more of his challenges, going forward as I don't want to spoil the tone of this blog, it is meant to be a non-controversial light space, and accessible to young people. (That, as far as I can detect right now, there are no young people or otherwise visiting this blog, other than my friends, does not discourage me, since I like doing this!)

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Dude, I think you cannot just have this casual approach to teaching English. I think you are causing more harm than good.

You cannot give a low quality answer like "this sounds more smooth" and hope to get away with it. A child might accept your answer - and thats why you need to be much more responsible before dispensing advise. Your answers have got to be more precise and accurate.


The time lyrics are so out of place in this blog it is beyond irritating.

I would suggest you stop this blog or acquire real expertise in grammar that goes beyond "this sounds right."
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I would count myself as someone very familiar with English. If I needed to justify these I would proffer a few somewhat offbeat items of proof: my english teacher at high school said that I 'would be an asset to any english department in the country', I've always scored well in english exams including a full score on the English GRE. I've read a ton of books, and written a lot through blogs (though I would be the first to admit that I don't proofread very much on the blogs). I would say I have evolved a nice sense of the language and I can critique quite well a piece of writing.
I was just being honest in responding to some of the questions as this 'sounds right' or 'sounds smooth'. The following are relevant:
-- it is quite possible, and I pointed that out, that the person who set the questions was incompetent or intended for more than one construction to be valid. In that case, indeed what I said makes sense. In fact in a phone conversation Arvind was actually not able to refute any of the statements I made, and since he's no mean wordsmith I rest my case.
-- English is highly idiosyncratic language and the rules have infinite exceptions. Besides usage is evolving rapidly, and usage varies from country to country. So indeed there are many areas where there is ambiguity and its the right thing to indicate the ambiguity rather than proffer a false clarity.

Regarding posting the lyrics of the song "Time" ; its a highly individual choice. I do this blog and it will reflect my likes and dislikes. Time is indeed a somewhat adult themed song but I feel that most of the time children don't suffer from being introduced to some serious ideas early. Don't misinterpret that statement - childhood is indeed a delicate time and harsh treatment or cruelty or other such indeed is terrible and can and should be a cognizable offence. But if a blog out on the web which no one is forced to visit (and which at this point no one visits!), which parents can censor; if this blog occasionally gets serious, why should anyone have a problem with that?

Okay - topic closed. Arvind -- your posts here will henceforth be moderated, not responded to.