Not written by me ...but a passionately written poem about 21st c entury English...Magical and logical Written and performed by Dizraeli for macmillandictionary.com

The 21st Century Flux
English. The new disease?
It pours out of television speakers and computer screens
Disregarding Babel with its very cocky fluency
Sticking on its labellings at every opportunity.
Nothing’s safe; it won’t stop when it begins to spread
it dominates the airwaves and reigns/rains on the internet
leaving cultures altered and confused as to what’s what
turns the dialecting of the youths to a hotch-potch
rag-tag scrabble bag; everyone’s affected
the little languages will not survive unprotected.
So hold your own, but get a firm hold of English
and every last one of us shall be a multilinguist:
Sing it!
Shampoo juggernaut moolah hullabaloo
ad infinitum, pow-wow, kudos, déjà vu
Won ton, billabong, beef, potato, hobo, dream
Wha gwan with the wigwam boogie
Mr. Chimpanzee?
Welcome to the twenty-first century flux
for now, English is the language of choice
and when it dies, as every tongue eventually must
let it be said you added your voice.
The professor said, “Pif! What language is this?
Degenerate slang isn’t Standard English!
We at the top must establish limits.”
I said “Prof! Language is the people that live it.”
Get loose, give it some vision and foresight
and juice; we can fling the dictionary door wide.
I live in a city where it seems like
every single idiom is intermingling stream-like,
Like streams, that know no barriers
No matter what dams and channels are established –
they are irrelevant. What matters is the message that is put across,
and the passion that’s invested in it. Nothing’s lost
it merely mutates, and lets the people speaking it
tweak it in new ways.

We have power supply for only a few hours out of the twenty four these days. The climate is no help too because it's scorching hot outside these days; sweaty and sultry inside rooms. My house is an exception. A very old house, it has a roof that is ten feet high and is cool at all times of the year. There is also a backyard with a few trees and a well.
I try to sit there on a stool under the trees and work on my lap top. It's wonderful to sit under a tree, even on the hottest of days. The problem wit sitting outside is, that there is a radio station right behind my house with a very noisy generator. So the minute power goes out, a deafening roar from that machine fills our back yard.
It's only when the machines are shut off when power returns that we experience an intense relief from that drilling sound.
Power cuts are a horrific experience. Mosquitoes, sweat, disorientation caused by sudden darkness, that makes us forget what we had planned to do, sometimes making it impossible for us to finish our chores, inability to use or even charge gadgets are all crippling the routine.

The magic a child can weave

This is a part of a  conversation i had with an eight year old, whom I am tutoring online.

Me: So tell me your friend's name.

Kid: Helen.

Me: Helen is a proper noun, while friend is a common noun. You understand?

Kid: yeah

Me: Now tell me the names of some flowers.

Kid : Daaaiiisy.....mmm White Daaaaaiiiisy.... Yellow daisy.....mmmm Pink.....mmmm

Me: Think of another flower.

Kid: Poppy.....White poppy....

Me: hahahaha ( very irresponsible of me...)

Played a prank...:P

HAHAHAHAHA laughing to myself about a prank i played on an unsuspecting person...

For the past one or two weeks, I had been much irritated to see a "funny" post on facebook. The post is based on a comedy track of Vadivelu's where he classifies women into three types - jill (gorgeous) jung (not bad looking) and juck (ugly), Some wise guy had taken a picture of three girls in their early twenties and labelled them JILL JUNG and JUCK. A few other guys were sharing this pic around and it kept turning up on my wall.
I felt sick thinking how the girls would feel if they saw the pic. Today, however, one young person came on chat and told me to look at his posts. He said he had posted something funny and guess what!!! He had jill, jung and juck on top of all of them. Here is what transpired when i continued to chat with him.

• • Me: I think all the three girls are looking good. How do you think they would feel if they saw this pic? Just you wait!! One of the girls is gonna file a legal defamation suit on you
• Young person: Why are you getting flustered? Are you among the three?

  • 
    
• 
  

  • Me: Yeah!!!!! The one in the green saree ...thats me from my younger days!!!!
• 
  

  • Y P: Gosh!!! you are Juck!!!!
• 
  

  • Me: Exactly!!! Now you see why i got so bugged?
• 
  

  • Y P: Is this the truth? It's really You???
  • 
    
• Me: It's me alright. I used to wear reading glasses then and used to plaster my hair with oil.
• Y P: Hey !!! Sorry!!! I just shared that. I didn't upload that picture.
• Me: hmmmmmm...Now you understand how I feel!!! when you comment it's all jolly and fun. But when joke's on you......hmmmmmm
• Y P : I said sorry...sorry ok?
• Me : alright!! Don't post such stuff again.
• 
  Y P : ok ok ok coollll...

  • i
• HEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEE HEEEEEEE

chaos-the magic of it and the logic behind it

I lead a chaotic life, fun filled, indulgent and frantically moving from one type of activity to another...it has its magical moments, but the truth is that I belong to the small percentage of people who don't actually have to slog for food. And I can be more useful than this. 

Good decision. How to implement it? How to be a useful person? or more useful than I am now?

The first thing is to change  my attitude. Adopt a serious attitude. So I searched for asanas that improve concentration and here is one that might be useful to all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWkcquMA3s

I watched the movie "The Help". A good watch. It was about racism in the late fifties and early sixties of the twentieth century. The camera, screen play, acting were all above average. Not too predictable, but definitely a feel good film. Like all average non intellectual movie watchers, I love feel good films. The face of the actresses who played the stoical, talented and loving black nannies and maids made an impression. One  of the faces was unforgettable, that of Octavia Spencer's. I later read that the film won an award for outstanding performance of the cast.
Reading this made me realize that the 'bad' white women in the film had acted extremely well and looked extremely good and well dressed. Wiki said that some black people's human rights organization had considered the film and the book on which it was based, to be an unrealistic portrayal of the plight of black people, as it did not portray the sexual harassment the women were subject to. The article in Wiki points out that there is a discussion in the film about such ill treatment meted out to some other characters.
It was a feel good film. It portrayed a social evil, but focused on the funny side,and at the same time made the more spirited, kinder, cleverer people its main characters. The aim of the film was to entertain and make people feel that we were once racists and had been cruel to a whole race, but were over that part. I realize that but let me repeat! It was a good watch. A very visually strong film with faces and images lingering on in my mind.

Today I listened to some songs sung  by M.L.Vasantha kumari. How original, creative, refreshing her singing is! I also listened to a song she had sung for a film. The difference in presentation was great. The film song had an elementary rhythm and MLV had dutifully fitted the song to the rhythm. But it did not carry the flavor of the raga. It was monotonous when compared to the song sung in the traditional carnatic style. In the carnatic song, she had let herself go in a relaxed way and come up with variations that brought life to the words. And the irony was that, the lyrics for the film song was by Bharathiyar and had a life of their own. Even someone like me, passionate about language, had to accept that language became subservient to music, when some one like MLV took over the lyrics.