My Brush with Vaishnavism

A Hare Krishna devotee waylaid me on Oxford Street the other day.

He had a stack of books with the title Bhagavad Gita. I was looking at these in passing and wondering how come they were so thick (the Bhagavad Gita is a slim volume), and this proved to be my undoing. Because he caught me eyeing the books, and before I knew it, I was in his power.

The conversation was a short one, for I prefer to give religious recruiters a wide berth.

Hare Krishna devotee: Can I ask you one question?
Me: Please excuse me. I am in a bit of a rush.

And I melted away into the crowd of shoppers.

I need not have said, “I am in a bit of a rush,” and in fact I wasn’t in any rush at all. Nevertheless, I thought if I’m rebuffing him out of hand, the least I should do is give him a reason to feel superior.

But for three days now I’ve been wondering what his one question was. The revenge of the Hare Krishna is truly insidious.

Three Languages

Thai

It was my supervisor who told me about a Thai tongue-twister which, when transliterated, reads mai mai mai mai mai, but which in fact consists of five distinct words pronounced in different tones. Apparently it means ‘New wood doesn’t burn, does it?’

And this naturally led us to consider the possibility of an entire language consisting of a single syllable spoken in an infinitude of tones and registers.

I think our conclusion was that whatever other attractions such a language may have, we wouldn’t fancy using it to draft an intercreditor agreement.

Finnish

I read a novel recently, with the improbable title of A New Finnish Grammar. I will now proceed to quote from it liberally, because it is not everyday that you find an author who writes so passionately about language.

On the noun:

In the Finnish language the noun is hard to lay hands on, hidden as it is behind the endless declensions of its fifteen cases and only rarely caught unawares in the nominative.

On memorising words:

With some difficulty, one by one, I was taking in Koskela’s words. In the pauses between them, I heard them die away. I watched them floating down into the landscape of the city around us, so as to note where they fell, so that I could go and collect them later: a belltower would remind me of a verb, I wasted a whole ship on an adjective and entrusted the all-important subject to a tram. The pastor’s thought was scattered throughout Helsinki, and I could reread it every time I pleased.

On obsessive practice:

I would shut myself in the sacristy and study every word I’d put down in the notebook, declining it in all possible cases, conjugating each verb in every voice I knew, down to the most tortuous forms of the passive, the conditional, even the past potential. [...] Those syntactical digests were my defence against an enemy who was attacking me from behind. I had no tanks, no bombardiers, and each day surprised me on a different front, drawing me into the open, far from reason’s hiding-places, towards a chasm of gloomy, giddy thoughts. It was then that I needed all fifteen Finnish grammatical cases, the four forms of the infinitive, not to mention the negative pluperfect to keep my mind engaged, to drag it clear of that carpet bombing.

Beautiful, no?

Japanese

I learnt the word naruhodo on a snorkelling trip in Japan.

I had taken an underwater photo of a Japanese colleague, and I was quite pleased with the result. Back on the beach I showed her the photo. She said, “Naruhodo.”

Now at the time I did not know what the expression meant, and I was too vain to ask her. But I assumed it meant, “This photograph overwhelms me. Your talent makes me go weak in the knees, and I love you with a passion that is inextinguishable.” For it really was a pretty good photo.

When I went home, I checked. Naruhodo means ‘I see.’

Windowsill

A long time ago, I had resolved that when I had my own flat, I would name the furniture.

For the last 16 months, I have had my own flat – or, to be more accurate, a shared flat, my own flat and a shared house, in that order – but I haven’t put my plan into action.

I could start with the windowsill, which I am rather fond of.

Will the Sill sounds somewhat uninspiring; considering the windowsill is my little corner of Japan, maybe I should call it Yūdai the Madodai.

v3.0

Thanks for all the makeover suggestions and sorry for having disappeared without warning – I briefly went private while I was tweaking the new look. “Like a changing room, curtains drawn,” as a friend put it. And what with one thing and another, this took longer than I anticipated.

v3.0 is not as minimalist as initially planned: I figured there were some page elements I like too much to get rid of. Moving some of it to a static page was an option, but that is just hiding clutter, not getting rid of it. And mysteriously, I can’t get the dice (a random post generator link) to work on v3.0, but I will try my best to fix this.

Hopefully you will like the new look. But if you don’t, feel free to stare wistfully at this.

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Edit, 8 January 2012: The dice are now back.

Makeover

Next week I plan to give this blog a makeover. The idea is to make it more minimalist. For instance it now has text in three colours (not counting black); I intend to get this down to one. We want to move away from purple prose and other youthful follies, and towards a layout more befitting of lists, aphorisms and proofs of Euclidean geometry. (Is there such a thing as an excess of minimalism? We may be about to find out.)

There is much to be said for minimalism, though for obvious reasons its greatest adherents – like Master Yun-Men (A.D. 949) – tend not to say much. Among other things, it imparts an aura of profundity – an effect I have been aiming for since early infancy.

Take for instance what is reportedly the first coherent sentence I ever spoke (to a visitor who called for my father): বাবা বাজার গেছে (Father has gone to the market.) Simple, beautiful, direct. And untrue (my father had not in fact gone to the market).

So in the meantime, if you have any suggestions – features that should go, features that should stay, new features, font suggestions – please do let me know. Minimalism has its place, but it should never extend to the comments section.

Notes from a Concert

Email
It all started about two months back, with an email from Nirmalya: Dylan and Knopfler are playing in London in November. Interested?

And what a piece of news and I said yes of course I am yes book it now yes and dream come true and loved them since I was little yes like crazy and yes I said yes I will Yes.

...Well, you get the idea.

Photo

Dylan at 70

But first, Dylan at 24, and six minutes that changed rock ’n’ roll.

Forty-six years on. Naturally, nothing this revolutionary was expected on Saturday, and nothing revolutionary occurred.

Dylan’s voice

Has changed beyond recognition

The three-note growl, they call it

And his band were too loud for my liking

Why we still bother with Bob Dylan live

I wasn’t expecting musical perfection, or to witness a seminal moment in rock history. I went for a reason as unworthy, and as simple, as this: to see Bob Dylan in the flesh.

But it was more than that. The last song of the evening was Like a Rolling Stone (for Mr. Dylan has no truck with encores). “How does it feel? How does it feel?” a thousand people shouted back at him, and for that one song alone, it was worth it.

My first Dire Straits album

was Making Movies, which I borrowed from a friend. It seems odd now to reflect that even fifteen years ago, original tapes of older music were hard to come by, at least in Calcutta, and were passed from hand to hand like rare and precious objects. In trying to record it, I accidentally erased most of Side A, including Romeo and Juliet. It would be months before we could locate another copy.

My first Dylan album
was a greatest hits compilation, also borrowed from a friend. I was listening to it late at night, louder than was strictly necessary. At first I didn’t know what to make of it.
My father walked into the room just as Dylan was launching into the chorus of Mr. Tambourine Man, and politely asked me to turn down the caterwauling. I wasn’t your typical rebellious teen – far from it – but I made up my mind, then and there, to like Bob Dylan.

Ayan on the tube

On the way home, Ayan remarked, “I’ve just been to a concert featuring two legends of rock, and you know which song is stuck in my head?”

It was this one, of course.

Asian Fail

This quote on OHinNY instantly reminded me of Pratiti – I was her Statistics tutor for a year, and each time she left more than four marks unanswered in an exam, she would moan that she would fail (I have written elsewhere about her nerdy habits, so I will not elaborate).

I have been blogging infrequently of late because I spend most of my spare time studying for my upcoming Japanese exam. In August, just before I left Tokyo, my Japanese teacher persuaded me to sign up for an exam one level higher than my actual level. This seemed like a fun challenge at the time, but there are several factors I did not take into account:

• In London I only read Japanese when I open my textbooks, whereas in Japan it was all around me.
• Here there are only two people with whom I can converse in Japanese – a Japanese lawyer (the only one in our London office) and a Buddhist priest whom I have befriended.
• I don’t have a teacher, and self-study requires a lot of discipline.
• For the level I was foolhardy enough to sign up for, they recommend 300 class hours; as of September, I had about 80.

It doesn’t help that my attitude towards the exam fluctuates every day, sometimes every minute. Some examples:

• I’ll give it my best. That way, even if I fail, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I tried.
• This is hopeless. Let’s go on Facebook.
• I left office after 11 pm every day this week; I can cut myself some slack.
• That is an excuse. We don’t do excuses.
• Let me take out my textbook. I’ll show them!
• Effing kanji.
• Do I really need to memorise the characters for 航空書簡 (Kōkūshokan = aerogram)?
• This is so awesome! I love studying!
• I’ll study tomorrow.
• I can’t fail. The humiliation!
• Effing kanji.

The upshot of all this is that I rarely blog, I don’t make fun weekend plans, and still I study much less than I could.

So now you know. In three weeks’ time, an Asian will take an Asian exam, and he will fail. Only, it won’t be an Asian fail. It will be a fail fail.

I Want My MTV

While revising old chapters in my Japanese textbook, I came across a comprehension passage in the chapter on Expressing Wishes and Desires. I scanned it, just in case you like looking at foreign languages like I do, but my rough-and-ready translation is below.

Things I Want

We asked various people what they want most of all.

1. I wish I had time. I go to office, work, come back home, and the day is over. The day is too short. I wish there were 36 hours in a day. (Woman, 25)

2. I wish I had my own bank. If I had a bank, I could take out money whenever I wanted and buy things I like. (Boy, 10)

3. I wish I had a potion which would make me young. When I was young, I did not study much. If I could be young again, I would study hard and get a good job. (Woman, 60)

4. I wish I had ‘humour’. If I make conversation, my wife says, “You will be busy tomorrow, won’t you? Go to sleep early.” The children tell me, “Father, we’ve heard this story about three times already.” I wish I could be more interesting. (Man, 43)

5. I wish there were another one of me. I have to go to school every day. If there were two of me, while one ‘me’ was studying, the other ‘me’ could do things I like. I wish there were two of me. (Girl, 14)

I remember learning this chapter back in July. My Japanese teacher had me frame sentences of the form “[noun] ga hoshii desu,” which means “I wish I had [noun].” This form is only used for things. It should not, for instance, be used to say, “I want to go to Iceland,” which in fact I do want.

And the funny thing is, I could not readily think of anything that I want, and I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing.

So, what do you want?