The Longest Journey.

Well, I'm just back from an invigorating trip to Ooty. Ooty (or Udghamandalam for the intransigent jingoistic linguist) has grown since I first went there, but not since I last did. We went up for the Easter weekend - we generally go up for Easter, my family and I - it's a family tradition of sorts. We all leave our respective homes on Thursday morning and land up at our place in Ooty by late Thursday and spend the whole evening together, as a family. The next day we attend Good Friday Service at the Orthodox Church in Conoor (a Malayalam service) and are thoroughly tortured together, once again, as a family. Rather beautiful, really...

However, this year, I decided that I would join the family up at Ooty on Friday evening, after attending the Good Friday Service down in Coimbatore. So I accordingly embarked upon the bus at around two. Bus journeys to Ooty can be classified into two type :

a) Bad

b) Worse

This one, thankfully, was merely Bad.

It started off all right - I jumped into a bus that was about to leave, got a seat and settled down fine. So far so good? Well, that's about as good as it got (Oh my God! - two cliches in twelve words.... That's terrible! My writing is rapidly going downhill...). I got into one of those buses which, for some inexplicable reason, most people here seem to think are a Mighty Marvel of Modern Mechanics - a DVD coach. I don't really agree about that. Actually, I disagree. Strongly. In fact, I'm of the firm opinion that if one has been a bit of a naughty boy, and once one dies and is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the Ninth Circle of the Inferno, Satan will, on special occasions, torment his subjects by making them sit in one a DVD coach while he drives them up to Ooty tooting obstreperously on his horn (pun intended). I really think so. No one, however, seemed to share my view. On the contrary, everyone seemed to have a gala time. Except me, of course. They'd put on some awful movie songs with a beat resembling something or someone hitting what I can only assume to be a tin can with a fifty paisa coin in a very rambunctious and tuneless manner. And, to add insult to injury, I was seated near the speaker.

Even when one relates these incidents, seated comfortably miles away both spatially and temporally from the incident, the memory of the suffering endured and the torture withstood is likely to strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears from the eyes of women. So one would understand when I say that I was not exactly in my most gregarious and effusive mood. But, as fate would have it, I was seated next to a sociable septuagenarian - a woman as garrulous as I was reticent and as loquacious as I was taciturn.

"So," she said in Tamil. "Are you going up to Ooty?"

I maintained a stony silence.

"Traveling alone?"

I studied the roof of the bus intently.

There was silence for a few minutes.

"The weather is very hot, isn't it?" she asked.

I stubbornly refrained from speaking. A sphinx could have learned to ply its
trade from me.

There was silence for a few more minutes as the lady pondered upon what course of action to take.

Suddenly a biscuit packet was thrust violently under my nose.

"Want a biscuit, ma?" she asked.

The bus hit a bump, and her hand involuntary jerked up. I was biffed in the nose by a packet of biscuits.

"No thanks," I said ungraciously, rubbing my nose.

"Have, have."

"No, really. I just ate."

"Good, good.... So," she said, " Are you going up to Ooty?"

I realised here that I was in trouble. This woman was evidently a Past Master in Making People Talk.

"Hmmm," I said, noncommittally, making a sound that could indicate that I was or I wasn't.

We began our ascent up the mountain.

"Traveling alone?"

"Hmmm," I said, noncommittally, making a sound that could indicate that I was or I wasn't.

"It's very hot isn't it?"

"Hmmm," I said, noncommittally, making a sound that could indicate that it was or it wasn't.

"It'll be cooler once we go up."

"Hmmm," I said, noncommittally, getting the hang of the whole conversation.

"Fasds wasdac asdfs."

"Hm... Hmmm?" I asked, suddenly thrown off.

"I asked if you were felling sleepy."

"Yes, yes, yes, yes," I said, gratefully. "I am. I think I'll sleep now."

So saying I lent back to sleep, but the bus suddenly and violently screeched to a halt.

"TEA!!!" the conductor bellowed. "Ten minutes break."

I sighed as I moved to let the old lady out. She seemed delighted at the chance to stretch her legs.

"Tea!" she exclaimed. "Ooty tea is the best in South India."

"Hmmm," I said, moodily, making a sound that could indicate that it was or it wasn't.

I disembarked as well and, walking up to the tea shop, I bought myself a tea. This trip was working out awfully. Mad grannys and rotten music. I hoped the second leg would be better. At any rate, I decided that I would firmly make it known that conversation of any kind was unwelcome. I mean it's a free country. People have a right not to get tortured. This isn't fair.

Fortified by a cup of tea, I boarded the bus again. Granny was there already.

"So," she said as I sat down and the bus began to move, "Wasn't that good?"

I relapsed into moody silence, wondering how to get rid of the old lady. The bus climbed higher.

"Tea always tastes good in the hills," she said, as a lorry roared by.

I scowled in reply.

"Oh!" she said, "I don't like that smell either! Those dirty diesel vehicles cause too much pollution when they drive uphill."

I narrowed my eyes menacingly.

"And the smoke gets in your eyes too, doesn't it?" she added sympathetically. "Does it hurt very much?"

"No," I said, through clenched teeth.

"Is your throat hurting too? We shouldn't allow lorries uphill during the day."

I gave up. I was defeated. I was a broken man. I do not want to dwell anymore upon the story, but suffice to say I had to endure another half an hour of lousy music and loony conversation. I reached the Ooty bus stop and stumbled out of the bus like some shipwrecked mariner upon a deserted island, and staggered away home.

This story, sadly, does not have a moral. Or if it does, it's something that is not immediately visible. Not at first glance at least. Maybe it is that one must always look on the bright side. For I must admit, the bus ride could have been Worse. It could have been like the last time I returned by bus from Ooty. Compared to that time, this was a stroll in the park. A lighthearted jaunt in the sunshine. The other was a horror story - it really was. But now is not the time for that story. Now is the time for drinking, now the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot. Perhaps later, when you've broken a limb or torn a ligament and sadly bedridden, I will tell you the story. I will come when Life has no meaning and when you are crushed under it's heavy foot. When the bird does not sing. When the stream is silent. When the brook does not babble. I will come to visit you with a spring in my step and a song on my lips, and, sitting back sit in an armchair, with the sun setting in the background, a sight dimly seen through the partially drawn curtains, with a highball in my right hand I will begin to relate to you the whole sorry tale. And you, upon hearing the misfortunes I was sadly subjected to that day, will feel that things aren't as bleak as they look. In fact, they're positively bright. Here, beside the news of holy war and holy need, ours is just a little sorrowed talk, I will hear you hum to yourself.

And Life will take on new meaning. The bird in the sky will sing. The stream will sound. The brook will babble. And a shout of joy will pass your lips and you will Sing, as Pippa did, as he Passed, in his Song:

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven -
All's right with the world!

Verbal Garbage.

Today I came across a site (can’t remember the name, but I do assure you I did indeed come across it – all the way to the other side, even) for all those kinky sesquipedalian (I’m bound to have spelt that wrong – my troubles with normal, straightforward spellings, leave alone words having circumvallated themselves within thick walls of rough and dense verbage that I cannot for the life of me seem to penetrate, are well documented) out there (You rock, you crazy guys!! Or, as you’d perhaps prefer it – You are of an extremely calciferous, petrous and lithic nature, you outrageous, outlandish, mentally challenged sapient species)…

I actually can’t seem to remember how I did come across that site, you know… Mysterious. Inexplicable. Baffling, even. I mean, for one, it didn’t start off with four beers – that’s generally how these Great Mysteries start (It's like one moment you're in a cozy bar, having a little drink, and then, wham! the next moment you're in a dark alley at three in the morning with a concupiscent cat trying to interest you in the smell of it's rear). And secondly, I was supposed to be doing my assignment (on second thoughts, I think thats how I managed to come across it). And that got me thinking about this email I got the other day (Oh, fie upon you, perfidious disingenuous element of confabulation!) about verbose, periphrastic and generally confusing sentences; and so removing myself from the customary hebetudinous and torpid manifestations that usually accompany the somnolent state that I currently find myself in, I have contrived to reproduce, as best I can, examples of the above that are sure to delight and disgust you:


We'd Say : Beggars are not choosers
They'd Say : Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.

We'd Say : Beauty is only skin deep
They'd Say : Pulchritude possesses solely cutaneous profundity.

We'd Say : Cleanliness is godliness
They'd Say : Freedom from incrustations of grime is contiguous to rectitude.

We'd Say : Look before you leap
They'd Say : Surveillance should precede saltation.

We'd Say : Where there's smoke, there's fire!
They'd Say : Where there are visible vapours having their provenance in ignited carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.


Isn’t this a fantabulous fricassee of the fustian form?!? Compendious, epigrammatic and orotund it most certainly is not. And in response, I would like to quote the pithy, sententious apothegm of the immortal Auther Dent.

As I recall, his exact words were, “Eh?”

- Me.

P.S. A game for those among you who enjoy such sport... There is one word used wrong in the sentences above. Would any of you care to point as to out which one it actually is?