Science can be fun!

 On the Science Day, let us the  seriousness laugh away. 

1) A proton is walking up and down the railway platform. "Want any help," a coolie asks him. "Thank you. No need. I travel light," says the proton! Ha! Ha! Ha!

2) When Oxygen and Magnesium go out, it is an "OMg" moment! Ho!Ho!Ho!

3)An acid with an attitude is known as: A-mean-oh acid! He!He!He!

4) A frog goes to an astrologer. The man says,"Very soon a very beautiful girl would love to know all about you." "Where?," asks the super elated frog. Answers the astrologer, tongue firmly in cheek, "In the biology lab, on the dissection table."

5) On Feb 14, the girlfriend of a chemist exclaims,"love is in the air." "No, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide are in the air," he immediately corrects her. 

Sure, science, too, can be, and is, FUN!

The Marathi Day

 In Maharashtra, February 27 is a feverish day annually, whatever might be the actual temperature. It has to be as it is the Marathi Day. The celebration of a mother tongue is indeed a requisite as its speakers alone can truly glorify it.

Every year on this day or on its eve, almost ritually, there are programmes after programmes glorifying Marathi, speeches and fervent discussions on its quasi classical status, its not being granted the classical status as yet, et al.  Genuine issues indeed, but why do they get merely repeated ritualistically?

Beyond mere jingoism and photo-ops, how can the language of heart be the master  language its ardent supporters fervently want it to be? First and foremost, it has to be the language of knowledge. 

In this era of knowledge as the real capital (the best example of it would be the kpo's and/or the start-up's), how can we strengthen Marathi as a language of knowledge, of information, of science and technologies, of commerce and business, and most importantly, of humanities is the real question.  

Umpteen workshops for script writing and/or poetry making may flourish on the D-day, and beyond, as the Wapp Groups have turned in to a writer minting factories. But entertainment industry has only these many possibilities which are anyways "managed" with their own logic, if any at all.

Actually, a language grows great because the thought in it is unusual. Remember how and why Sant Dnyaneshwar could initiate Marathi? He began a new mould/mode of thinking. His attempt hence was more radical than that  by any predecessor, for instance.

Marathi needs to grow now in that fashion, as the language of radical, path breaking thought, knowledge and wisdom. It has to create a new pathway instead of the much travelled rout(in)es. May be, better translation modes,  encyclopedia and dictionaries might help? German, for example, has up to date dictionaries for each and every discipline and its tributaries. English  is a rich master of world affairs because it chooses to accept newer concepts and terms from every intellectually creative are(n)as or for folk forms and terms of daily usage. Initially, the terminology may appear difficult, but why is there such a terrible need for excessive simplification? Why not believe in the user's native capabilities and capacities? 

In brief, only when the language of heart becomes the language of head, it would gain real prestige, I suppose. 

Pratima @ how to make the mother tongue the dream language with immense status that we want it to be?

Well begun...

 Sanju spoke about Prakash Mama on the occasion of  Mama's Platinum Jubilee Celebration. How well and effectively he began, how wonderfully he summed up all of Mama's unique qualities! Indeed his three minutes long speech was wonderful. Well begun is indeed half done.

Yet Sanju's speech  was wonderful not only because it was well begun but also because it was well intentioned. That was why it sounded remarkable and genuine. The leaders' talks, for instance, are exceptionally well begun, well articulated, but the intentions behind them are hardly genial or genuine, and hence  the speeches are a problem in the end.

Look at the entire dialectics around the current Russian war, for example. Like the war, the speechifying, too, is extremely efficient, but hardly efficacious. That is, I suppose, because such delivery is neither human nor humane.

A war, for example, is terrible because its costs are human in the end. Humane they never are, moreover. When a soldier breathes his last in a war, for example, it is not just a man dying. 

He is somebody's son. His old parents, too, lose a lifetime when the body is home. Draped in whichever colours it might be, their universe is forever dark thenceforth. He is somebody's brother, somebody's best buddy. His children's future is forever dark henceforth. His better half would always be a half henceforth. An entire web of relationships is forever frozen in grief and loss from then on.

In other words, wars may or not begin well, but they never end well because the human(e) cost of a war is beyond any count. It was hence that the sixties were truly volatile. The student unrest, the feminist questioning of the status quo, the racial upheaval were all indeed earth shaking. Yet what uniquely defi(n)ed the decade were the gunny bags back from Vietnam.  

Especially because the war machinery now is horribly lethal, how one wishes no war ever began! However well begun it may appear to a power monger, be it Russia or China or its minions like our dear neighbour, for each and every one involved in it directly, and for millions like us suffering it indirectly, it is never going to end well.

Pratima@ revolutions never can truly emerge from the barrel of a gun!

The Pity of War

 Yet again begins yet another war. Such is its proportion and contours that it appears like a throw back to the Cold War era. May be, Russia wants back the 'glory' of the USSR, lost in its opinion in the wake of the Tiananmen Square and the Fall of the Berlin War of the late 1980's era. China, its so far discreet partner in crime, is no longer merely a discreet Commie Ally. Its expansionist market controlling moves are no secret. In fact, the fear the world over is Ukraine is a lesson China would perfect In Taiwan.

After 9/11 and after Afghanistan, the U.S. would not want a war, but it must flex its muscles in distant Europe, yet again war ground after the World War II. And yet much water has flown under the bridge. The times, and most importantly, war technologies, have drastically changed, become more lethal.

What has Not changed is 'the pity of war, the pity war distilled' as the shell shocked poets of the first world war would put it. The tragic realities of the trenches were horrors that scarred a generation. But much worse was the intense realisation that as the bigwigs played their stupid games that led to a tragic war that had precious little to do with glory, either at the individual or the national level.

Pratima@ a new fever arises in the Post Pandemic stage, the latest, the newest version of war fever!

Remembrance

 February 24 is the Central Excise Day, it seems, celebrated in the memory of the 1944 Salt Act, and to encourage the sincere officers.

That reference brought back a trunk full of memories of Papa's. Papa was a Central Excise Official. He was horribly honest. Yes, I have used the right intensifier for the adjective.

Well, his genuine honesty, his being true to his profession, his observing both the letter and the spirit of the Central Excise laws sure brought him genuine satisfaction, but it landed him in many difficulties, too.

First and foremost, due to his honesty, he was a thorn in the side of the corrupt and their boot licking lackeys. As a result, he had to face umpteen transfers. Before he could properly settle down to question the status quo, the powers that be in that place would get him sent away so that their dark deeds do not get exposed. He and Aai literally had to pack all the utensils and other stuff in a big trunk, and move on. Hence the reference to trunk full of memories. 

Since he so much insisted on the subtleties of the Central Excise rules and complex subsets of sub-regulations, he was obviously much in the way of those who would like to bend the systemic rules any which way.  He was too straightforward to even notice such daggers beneath the cloak types, moreover.

 He generously helped the honest though. I remember, one of his colleagues, a Customs officer, met with a major accident, but was not helped by the powers that be in his office. Papa stood by him like an elder brother, he used to ferry him to hospital, too, though obviously he could not help the man financially. I suppose though, it is Papa's psychological support that finally got him through. 

Papa had to live in awful places all alone as Aai-Papa, they both, decided that Pune should be the educational centre for their children. I still can see that one room small tenement in Sholapur in my nightmares. For a couple of years, he used to daily commute to Mumbai, and back. The very thought gives me the heebie-jeebies even today.

He believed in you so completely, totally and intensely that you could not even dream of breaking his faith in you. Such a faith is great in the personal space, but in the public sphere, such a completely straightforward behaviour makes you an easy target of the crooks in the office based politics that is the bane of our polity.

Well, I have always maintained that it is the honest, genuine officers like Papa who drive the jaded juggernaut of the system and keep it mobile, relevant. People like him may be very few, may be, just 2%, but it is they who are the essential glue, the cement that keeps the entire system from coming apart, be it the socioeconomic, cultural, political sphere(s). Such people may not reap many public rewards as they often may not have the chicanery needed to land such awards. Their very life, however, is the biggest prize though. Fond though difficult memories indeed!

Pratima@ a simple life genuinely lived, that was Papa.

Reciprocity

 Yesterday I saw a lovely cartoon. It showed a fish outside its container, sharing its bit of water with another fish. The tagline was: help others even when they cannot help you back.

The tagline made me feel both, a sense of satisfaction and a sense of confusion. Well, the satisfaction bit came from the fact that one always tries to help, family, friends, others, why, even flora and fauna. One always tries to be just and fair. So far, so good. That is the way it has to be, too.

The confusion comes from the fact that most often, even when everybody knows how straightforward and clean you are, none wants to help you. Why could it be so? After much thought, I have arrived at the conclusion that one occupies in their mind only that much space wherein they can further jump to their advantage.

Well, be it so. The fun lies in giving, than taking. So let it continue. So it was, and so will it be.

pratima @ paid or genuine/ a smile is a smile!

Learning Languages

 Learning languages can  be great fun. To begin with, each language is just a code accepted by a community. While learning a language, it is an exhilarating  experience to get the feel of the known in an unknown way. 

Let me give a few examples, real fun they are, however much oft quoted. A dog is a 'chien' in French, while Germans hound it as 'Hund', 'pero'/but the Spaniards love the 'perro'! Just listen to the way the dear animal sounds in different languages. A dog barks in English as 'bow-wow', while in German, it is 'arf-arf'. Have you ever heard a dog intone 'wan-wan'? Well, yes, in Japanese, that is the way! They  'wan-wan'. No wonder, the Japanese are forever thinking of a 'win-win' solution, especially since their love for the pet friend/child is quite a legend.

Sometimes, across languages, you find a unique bonding. In German, a brother is a 'Bruder', quite like the Sanskrit 'bhratru'. The German 'Vater' ('v' pronounced as 'f') , the father, reminds of the Sanskrit 'pitru'. The Sanskrit 'matru' is the German 'Mutter' , and English mother, while 'shwashru' is 'Schwester', that is the German version of sister. Well, languages, too, believe in families! In Indo-German family of languages, Sanskrit is the mother node, while English and German are sister branches.

Funniest, however, are the 'falsche Freunde'. In translation theory, this term refers to words across languages that sound similar but have a vastly different meaning. Even in today's liberalised (in all senses of the term) times, many parents may be embarrassed if the unwed daughter is 'embarazada', that is, pregnant  in Spanish. The German secretary, it seems, gave 'Gift' (poison) when her English busy boss told her to give the dear wifey a birthday surprise. You know why? Well, the lady in question was a Norwegian who aggressively asserted her 'gift'( married status in Norwegian)!

 Multiple such examples abound, making language learning great fun. Well, let us end with a rather crazy example. My Marathi students chuckle with pleasure tinged with a 'serves you right' feel when they learn that in Spanish Daddy Dearest is known as 'padre' which in their mother tongue means, well, no harm, checking a Marathi in to English dictionary!

Pratima@ Learn a language at each-n-very (st)age!