BOOK EXCERPT: Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Then he went on to explain in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people’s thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place you would discover that most of them are thinking that same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be- that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city then you don’t really belong there.

Giulio asked, ‘What’s the word in New York City?”

I thought about this for a moment, then decided. “It’s a verb, of course. I think it’s ACHIEVE.”

(Which is subtly but significantly different from the word in Los Angeles, I believe which is also a verb: SUCCEED. Later, I will share this whole theory with my Swedish friend Sofie, and she will offer her opinion that the word on the streets of Stockholm is CONFORM, which depresses both of us.)

I asked Guilio, “What’s the word in Naples?” He knows the south of Italy well.

“FIGHT”, he decides. “What was the word in your family when you were growing up?”

That one was difficult. I was trying to think of a single word that somehow combines both FRUGAL and IRREVERENT. But Guilio was already on the next and most obvious question: “What’s your word?”

MAGAZINE EXCERPT: THINGS GIRLS DON'T KNOW ABOUT GUYS from FEMINA, DECEMBER, 2006, by VARDHAN KONDVIKAR

OK. This list is a bit self-defeating because girls know much more about guys than we ourselves do. Frankly we’re not that complex. We’re like dogs – give us food, a cozy place to sleep, walkies every day and a few belly–scratches and we’ll chug along fine. But, like dogs, we have a few secrets, some as smelly as the dead rat under the bed and some not. And finally, let me stress that this list (I have picked the ones that I enjoyed most) was compiled through a fairly limited poll, and there aren’t strict rules for male behavior, but then there are always some weird guys who won’t agree with me…

We don’t lust after every second girl. We lust after every third girl.

We really really love our cars. More than you’ll ever know. And saying “You love that heap more than you love me” isn’t a good course of action, trust me.

We do get pissed off when women are mistreated. We aren’t often vocal about it, but rape, wife-beating, dowry deaths and female infanticide infuriate us. You don’t need to dominate women to be a man.

We don’t drive our cars that fast to show you how macho we are. In fact, most of the times, when there are girls in the car, we actually drive more carefully and gently than when we’re alone.

We don’t like cockroaches either. We may not scream and flap our hands at them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t find them dirty and annoying. Please regard any squashed cockroach as a favour worth repaying at some point, not a constitutional right.

We actually do find swearing funny. Really! We swear when we’re totally upset and then have a big belly laugh over particularly imaginative curses afterwards.

We don’t all love Keira Knightley. She’s pretty, yes, but she’s also dreadfully skinny and simpers too much. If you’re tempted to lose so much weight that you look like her, you’re an idiot.

We will not run screaming if you have pimples or frizzy hair or have put on one half of a gram overnight, so don’t believe the ads. And most of the times, we won’t even notice.

We do gossip. We love it, in fact. Bitching about our colleagues is immensely entertaining and we do it every chance we get.

We don’t care that much if our boss is a woman. If she’s hot, by all means let her stay!

We don’t think all pretty girls are stupid. Frankly, we know the female of the species is deadlier than the male, and we just need to feel we have some sort of chance of survival.

We will never grow out of playing computer games. They’re part of life. Accept it. And trying to wean your man off them is a very bad idea – you’ll just end up with a depressed, moping bore who weeps for his Playstation in the middle of the night. Now you don’t want that, do you?

We like babies too. We also think they’re cute and cuddly and generally smell nice. We just don’t get the point of getting all gooey over anything that’s bald and wets its pants.

We don’t really like going up against big muscular guys that you pick fights with. We can feel our teeth being loosened and our heads kicked in, and however much we love, just pipe down, okay?

Our messes are not messes. The way clothes are carefully piled in seemingly random order, the books lying around in unsteady piles, all make sense to us, and our delicate sense of orientation can be disturbed horrible if you try and tidy up for us.

We really aren’t listening when you talk about curtains. Even the ones who appear to, and can actually give coherent answers, are operating completely on autopilot. Any such coherent responses stem from the same survival instinct that causes us to freeze when we see a lion and avoid the dark.

Guys do cry. It takes a lot to do it, but it happens. And oh, if it does, never ever remind a guy of that. No, not even when you’re telling him how cute he is.

We love it when you dress up. Sure, it takes a long time, but the results are generally worth it. More than anything, that’s because we like it when you’re proud of yourself.

We’re really, seriously, terminally terrified of asking a girl out. At least, if she matters and this isn’t just for a date. So give us a break, huh?

We don’t know jack about girls. Girls are, on the whole, complex, thinking creatures, with more coloured wires than the average bomb. If we don’t get it right, don’t explode, okay?

THINK AGAIN.

I cleared my Oracle exam; scored an 81% neat. Yay!! The Structured Query Language has left my brain completely unstructured though. I need to return to some language that I understand (and enjoy) more. Speaking of languages, my perception of the English language has changed drastically in the last 2 months, since T.I.M.E happened (T.I.M.E is a popular coaching class that helps you prepare for the MBA entrance exams). I used to be a complete English grammar freak, a thorough perfectionist. There was no rule in grammar that I didn’t know about blah blah! All the while I was blissfully unaware of the most important rule: There are no rules in the English language. Can’t blame me though, they never said this in school.

A language is governed by the rules of its grammar say our English teachers. What is grammar if I may ask?

Wikipedia describes grammar as the ‘field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics. English grammar is a body of rules (grammar) specifying how phrases and sentences are constructed in the English language.’

Going by these definitions, a sentence does not qualify as correct if it does not abide by the rules of grammar. But then again, what is a language? Isn’t it a mere means of communication? Any means of communication succeeds if it can convey correctly. So then is grammar as important as we have been taught to think it is? Let's find out.

We’ve been told since the day we learnt to break a twig that a proper noun (name given to a person, place or thing) cannot be preceeded by an article. But you do agree that the Ganga is considered sacred in India. I read in the papers today that Indian artwork is scoring really well in the United States of America. (Apparently a stainless steel mirror sculpture by Indian artist Anish Kapoor sold for a sum of Rs. 6.8 crore at Sotheby’s sale of contemporary art in London.) I would myself love to own a Jiaur Rahman. (He is a brilliant young Indian artist. What you see in this post is a watercolour by him titled ‘Rainwashed’. You can check out more of his works at http://www.jiaurrahman.com/). The joys brought by fine art are something else; and they say abstract nouns (names given to physical entities that we cannot see, hear, touch, taste or smell) cannot be used in plural. Yeah right!

What about Mc. Donald’s very famous tagline, “I’m Loving It!” It’s grammatically incorrect. Do we question it? No. Do we use it? Yes, because it speaks to us. It’s become a trend! There’s another rule stating that words indicating indefinite quantity (some, few, many, much, more) have to be followed by plural forms but we never say ‘some breads’, do we? They also say that collective nouns are always followed by verbs in the singular form but the committee was never seated around the Round Table. The committee were seated around the Round Table. The simple present tense, as a rule, is used to indicate facts, habits, opinions and routine activities. But we use it more frequently to predict future events!

There are a hundred other such exceptions that you will come across if you pay a little attention and this is only about spoken English. Written English is another story altogether! So how can rules be called rules if there are more exceptions to them than normal occurences?

Grammar, in practical terms, is just a set of guidelines agreed upon by the world to standardize the language. Without grammar, what an Indian perceives of a verbal communication may be completely different from what the American intended to say. The Wren & Martin is not the Bible. Of course, there are a few basics we can’t argue about, but that’s about it. After all, the language came first, not the Wren & Martin.

BOOK EXCERPT: The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

…And that was how, Your Excellency, my employer’s marriage came to an end.

Other drivers have techniques to prolong the marriages of their masters. One of them told me that whenever the fighting got worse he drove fast, so they would get home quickly; whenever they got romantic he let the car slow down. If they were shouting at each other he asked them for directions; if they were kissing he turned the music up. I feel some part of the responsibility falls on me, that their marriage broke up while I was the driver.
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(This little rectangular mirror inside that car, Mr. Jiabao – has no one ever noticed before how embarrassing it is? How, every now and then, when master and driver find each other’s eyes in this mirror, it swings open like a door into a changing room, and the two of them have suddenly caught each other naked?)

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Keep you ears open in Bangalore – in any city or town in India – and you will hear stirrings, rumours, threats of insurrection. Men sit under lampposts at night and read. Men huddle together and discuss and point fingers to the heavens. One night, will they all join together – will they destroy the Rooster Coop?

Ha!

Maybe once in a hundred years there is a revolution that frees the poor. I read this in one of those old textbook pages people in tea stalls used to wrap greasy samosas with. See, only four men in history have led successful revolutions to free the slaves and kill their masters, this page said:

Alexander the Great.
Abraham Lincoln of America.
Mao of your country.
And a fourth man. It may have been Hitler, I can’t remember. But I don’t think a fifth name is getting added to the list anytime soon.
An Indian revolution?

No, sir. It won’t happen. People in this country are still waiting for the war of their freedom to come from somewhere else – from the jungles, from the mountains, from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. Every man must make his own Beneras.
The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out and read.
Instead of which, they’re all sitting in front of colour TVs and watching cricket and shampoo advertisements.

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