Counselling For The Divorce Prone!

Cheeniya, I came across Viswamitra's post on tattoos and was very disturbed. I started to worry how our jilted fraternity and divorce aspirants would handle the tattoos honoured in the name of their sweet hearts. How would they peel or scrape away such indelible expression of love once their romance has evaporated? Rather than scraping into an ugly blotch, they might rework, let's say, “Bubli” to “Bubble”.

We have been utterly mislead about the jilted crowd. Everything else can wait but not the tattoo. Expired tattoos are the most perilous objects to hang around with following estranged romance. Your club should definitely take up such causes for general counselling and warn public to be careful with tattoos: no Bunty, Bubli, or other explicit impression. Keep their love obscured under “Darling”, “Sweetheart”, “Sugarplum”, “Beetroot”, “Carrot” to avoid amputation of their painted arm.

 

I've never heard of Avvaiyar. I looked her up and found fascinating accounts of her life and literature. Thanks for introducing her to me. Her Aathichudi collection of sayings and poems for children is undoubtedly charming and her style of crafting verses in ordered letters is remarkable.

It was also mentioned somewhere that Avvaiyar is not one woman but a group of women across ages who spread the Tamil word and literature. Reminds me of our Pythagoras and this cult. Everyone who had upheld his ideas and philosophy at that time would have been called a Pythagoras. There are accounts of her work honoured by NASA. I don't know many ancient Indian poets, let alone ancient female Indian poets. It is amazing how these women have managed to strive and flourish in those days and are still fondly revered.

One of the reasons I find your blogs delightful is the contextual anecdotes and trivia you tack on with every feedback.

 

Back then, tattoos were not fashionable. They were flaunted amongst rural tribes as religious sacraments. Style never featured in rituals for it was obeisance or servitude that made men and women go under the ink. Or the yogis in their coiled hair and loincloth declare their renunciation of the worldly pursuits in tattoos. No gentry would flash an arm full of embroidery with curlicues or chants. Times have certainly changed esp. the reason for getting a tattoo. Today, tattoo is a shout for free-will, conviction, free-expression, or even identity.

I like your idea of getting all the letters stencilled on the body, which is also flattering in a way to possess such forethought. If there is another industry which thrives on divorces apart from lawyers, it must be the plastic surgeons perfected in the art of bleach and knives to rinse the aspirant off from the artistic vestiges of a broken marriage.

 

Students in English convents have their insufferable tribulations. I have not studied in thoroughbred English convent though we sang carols on stage shows, if that counts, and I have had the opportunity to be taken under the wing of a Head Mistress who was no less formidable than Miss Thistlebottom. She was a stickler for spelling, pronunciation and vocabulary. A malformed or off-note word and she would lambaste at such abrasive language. Her infallible spelling and pronunciation didn't rub off on me, whereas, her harangue to pay attention, mark and look up in dictionary has terrified me so much that years on I still observe, mark and swipe online dictionary to honour her crying need to mind language even while watching television advertisements.

During one of her reformatory acts in summer opening of the school, a charter of word scouts was created to induce pupils to show more appreciation for English. Their job was to pick a word and flash it on the board near the school gate as “Word of the day”. I told you she was quite a forceful stomp like a 19th century suffragist. In the meanwhile, a Hindi teacher took slight at this preponderance of English in school goings and complained (more vehemently). He was allowed to form his own charter and launch “Shabd of the day”. As fate would have it, he proposed to co-opt the existing gotcha! gang where the student would scrawl both the English and Hindi word. Well as I forewarned, as fate would have it, I was the inaugural candidate for Hindi and my Hindi stinks.

I botched up on Hindi spelling and had my ears pinned for sloppy undertaking. The Hindi teacher thundered at such irreverence for alleged national language. The Hindi initiative barely made it to few days when another bumbling student's mistake took the biscuit. It wasn't even the pompous statesmen, just a comedy of errors that snuffed out non-English flavour. I was thrilled because acquiring one language was burdensome for someone like who still struggles with linguistic irregularities that transpire in my infelicities. Why am I telling this? That Avvaiyar and Kalidas fell through such tunnel vision. You might ask what happened to that Hindi teacher. He persisted in hosting drama and poetry events at school but he never allowed me even a whiff of those activities for the gross injustice I once did to our national language.

My factual knowledge is gleaned from the conversations I have with people. An anecdote here, a trivia there, a mention somewhere, on rare occasions I dredge up the stuff I read in books. My memory is too porous even to retain or cope with my tenuous reading. Moreover the stuff I read should be disjointed and whimsical and frivolous like Ambrose Pierce's Fantastic Fables for selective retention. If I read a book today, I can't recall the names of the characters a month from now, and I can't recall whether I read the book a year after. I am awed at times at your ability to recollect textbook material as part of academic curricula. Quite a stretch for me to rack my brain beyond a year of my reads.

Erm, we have divorced from the *main* topic and meandered too far into the rambling.