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.

"Time" - Song by Pink Floyd

I like the lyrics to the song "Time" by Pink Floyd:


Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
There is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath, one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has come, the song is over
Thought Idd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

PS: The picture is "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali.

Challenging stuff !!

Puneetha writes:
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Hello uncle,

I just wanted to know if the following can be written either way or it should be written in a particular way. Please let me know the reason. We have to rearrange the given words to form meaningful sentences.
For eg.
1.It guards you/no harm/ring/with its/will be done/as/protective.
No harm will be done as it guards you with its protective ring.
OR
As it protects you with its protective ring, no harm will be done.

Vijay's reply -- Both the sentences look grammatically correct, the first one sounds more smooth and is preferable, but there does not seem to be anything wrong with the second one.


2. apart/also/there are/from hot deserts/cold deserts.
There are also cold deserts apart from hot deserts.
OR
Apart from hot deserts,there are also cold deserts.

Vijay's reply: The second one sounds much more smooth: "Apart from hot deserts, there are also cold deserts". The first one "There are cold deserts also, apart from hot deserts" looks grammatically correct but awkward



3. Cricketers/greatest/world/the/in/Kapil Dev/one/of/the/is
One of the greatest cricketers in the world is Kapil Dev.
OR
Kapil Dev is one of the greatest cricketers in the world.

Vijay's reply -- Both look grammatically correct


I didn't find one option much better than the above in the other exercises. Either the questions were set by a not very competent person, or I am not as good at English as I thought!

"Dear Diary" ?

From Puneetha:
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when we are writing a letter we will specify "dear ..."
is it required when we are writing a diary?

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My answer:

Hi Punitha,
I have seen the usage "Dear Dairy" many times, so it may be the customary way of writing a diary.
But I welcome more knowledgeable answers from others.

Puneetha writes:

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Hello uncle, how can I improve my vocabulary?Please suggest some ways where I can make my article small and precise.how shall I end a letter to the Editor regarding some issue like"scarcity of water"
thank you.

Firstly, corrections to the note above: 'uncle' should be written with a capital U, there should be a space after the question mark, instead of 'where' some other word (or different structure) should be used, like 'how'. There are a couple of more mistakes too, try to find them ! Don't feel bad that I pointed them out ! It is just a learning thing.

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Dear Puneetha,
Thanks for writing and apologies for not noticing your comment for a long time. Your questions are pretty broad ! Not easy to give exact or clear answers.

How to improve your vocabulary ? I must admit I don't have a simple answer to this. Looking back at my own experience, I used to read a lot so I got exposed to many new words. I never used to go to the dictionary and look up the word's meaning. This was not a very good thing, as I just used to try to guess the meaning of the word from the sentence or the context where I read it. So sometimes I got only a vague idea or a wrong idea about the meaning of a word. However after bumping into a word enough times, usually things got sorted out. Getting the pronunciation right was much harder -- living in my world of books I rarely heard the words being actually said, so I came up with all kinds of funny pronunciations for words.
There are some more 'artificial' ways to try to improve vocabulary like learning a list of new words and trying to use them in sentences. This is probably good, but it is harder to do and does not come naturally. I would be interested to hear from you and other students what kinds of things they try to do to improve their vocabulary and what are the results.
Do think about this too -- to write good essays, perhaps it is more important to research or think through carefully about what you are saying, express it clearly and logically and have good grammer, than use many big words. As long as you have enough vocabulary to express your thoughts effectively, that should be enough !

How to make your article small and precise ? I think you would need to be clear in your own mind about what you are trying to convey in the article. Normally we are not too clear so then we beat around the bush and talk about different things and the article becomes wordy and diffuse and not precise. So if you can prepare for writing the article by first saying "this is what I want this article to be about", it may help in focussing your writing.

Regarding your question - How shall I end a letter to the editor on some issue like "Scarcity of water" ? Nothing special is needed I think, for example, something like:

Sincerely,
Puneetha
Class X, Only Games School,
Swarganagar
Email: puneetha@english.com

should suffice.

Do write again with your questions !

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A nice picture, just to add some variety to the post:




It was taken at the Kolkata Maidan, a huge open space in the middle of Kolkata.

I saw this sign at Bangalore International Airport above a drinking water dispenser (also called a 'water fountain', are there any other synonyms you can think of ? ) that was not working. The spelling is wrong, it is correctly spelt as 'unserviceable'. I first thought that it was wrong usage too and that the word 'unserviceable' referred to something that is beyond repair, cannot be repaired. But on checking, I found that interestingly it has got two uses: one is the meaning above (beyond repair or something that can never be used), and another meaning that means that something that *currently* cannot be used (see for example at answers.com . The second meaning does fit the context in which the word was used.