What if ...TMK were in charge of the Canteen!?

Rsachi · Post by **Rsachi** » 11 Jan 2015, 01:27

Guys
i thinking NRI baiting has gone on too much. Let's stop it.
I know some astrology and can assure you that EVERY Indian will in one birth or other become an NRI. It is the law of karma. So let's not throw stones or diamonds at anyone.
Also, there are NRIs living and acting like RIs (Rigorous imprisoned). And there are RIs who pose as NRIs.
Then there are people like Sikka who live overseas and run large Indian corporates.
There are NRIs who return to serve the motherland.
Wherever an Indian lives, his heart and stomach are always back home here. So it actually doesn't matter!

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 11 Jan 2015, 01:33

Wherever an Indian lives, his heart and stomach are always back home here.

touché

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 11 Jan 2015, 08:31

Thus the duel goes on--
With douce words while
Devil possessed, others
Dig in who dare call us
Degenerates--destiny plays
A part--we live afar but not
Apart--A part of Bharath
We ever will be, by God's will

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 11 Jan 2015, 12:01

All of this comes under the category...kuch tO lOg kahEngE....kuch lOg bakvAs karEngE...lOgOn kA kAm hai kehnA/karnA...chODO in bEkAr kI bAtEn...

Rsachi wrote:So it actually doesn't matter!

Nothing does....

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 11 Jan 2015, 12:24

if thou had thy way, we will be speaking liketh this today

No. If I had my[/] way, the development of language would be intelligent and inspired, which some of it actually is, rather than based on the blatherings of those who cannot be bothered with education, dictionaries and so on.

The intelligent invention of language ranges from poets, such as Shakespeare, who is said to have added many words to the English Language, through the intelligent adoption of jargon, to the simply clever incidents like those who ask, if we can can have postpone, then why not prepone, if we can overwhelm, why not underwhelm? And so on.

There is always room for the clever, even if it is technical wrong

I know some astrology and can assure you that EVERY Indian will in one birth or other become an NRI ...

... Or a Greek, or a Spaniard, Brit, Frenchman, Inuit, Brazilian, Australian, etc etc.

Eternity is a long time and the soul has no nationality.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 11 Jan 2015, 22:26

So says a greek in his previous birth--
Yes, 'the soul has no nationality', true

If nationality means identity, what's that?
We now are an odd mixture of all that's from here,
Everywhere else--technology has hastened
The end of inequality; we are all equal--only
In possessing means of communication--for what?
Vegetable vendor to corporate vice president--

A tower of Babel we still remain in, nevertheless...

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 12 Jan 2015, 00:26

Nick, true.. I was only half serious. But this is another case of the United States and Great Britain being two countries separated by a common language. Here inventiveness in words is accepted and adopted in a manner that is akin to fashion. We don't know where it originates and how it spreads. And some stick and others don't. Except for the snooty professorial types, many would not have thought anything abnormal about the word that started this discussion. Do kids in UK pick up such U.S.A invented words? That is probably scorned upon which is usually a fodder for kids to do just that

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 12 Jan 2015, 02:01

Sounds cool to me.

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 12 Jan 2015, 08:26

I am totally against this word invention

very soon, type a word and open up the thesausus and you might end up having 2000 synonyms. And the foreign word influx too to add fuel to it.

When I was in class four, I spoke English in school out of complusion, or otherwise we were penalized. So we took pleasure in speaking Tamil wherever possible. We were given monkey clowns to wear and the more you erred the more you wear to feel ashamed. I was happy to wear in the assembly prayer . I loved to wear more monkey clown caps and loved giggling proudly. Innocence is bliss.

Whatever little English I spoke , I admired myself and others did too.

Now my language skills and the ability to grasp has become too poor , most of the times I don't understand what our forumites are conveying.

only Part sarcasm. Do you know that there exists language where sarcasm is not practiced, or rather not understood?

GM

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 12 Jan 2015, 08:33

VK , yes, kids in UK do pick up those words if it gets popularized in Hollywood movies. I have heard them using it a lot. And, unfortunately, no other country in Europe other then the UK try to learn the British Accent or British English unless there is an academic necessity. Hollywood impact.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 12 Jan 2015, 11:56

GM,
I like your 'monkey clown' story. Ah, school days, getting into trouble in our innocence...how true!

Sarcasm isn't tolerated by any, as far as I know. I don't see much of it here at Rasikas.org--humor and friendly ribbing among friends, yes. I arrive at the same point again--where we come from has little to do with it. What we say and how, makes a difference. If something is said to hurt people's feelings, it's not acceptable. If it's an attempt at humor and it fails, well, the intent wasn't there, and so one has to ignore it.

My dog's better than your dog, my taste is better than your taste kind of attitude can spell trouble.
Attitudes and perceptions do come into play. We vidEShis can be called 'ATRilE oru kAl, sETRilE oru kAl' (neither here nor there) people or 'enriched by two cultures' individuals.

Rupees and foreign currency don't have to come into it--for when I reach out for a newspaper here, it's covered with ads of jewelry, clothes and consumer goods, relegating news to look like the ads of yore (not that they are cheering). What am I to make out of it?

When I left the UK and went to live in the US many years ago, I could not believe that a paper carried supplements and ads to that extent. Every year I come to India now, I find the papers exploding with luxury goods and designer clothing, of which a single item would buy me a wardrobe for ten years easily.

By the way, there's no sarcasm in what I have said. People are people, and yes, chaque un a son gout! You know your french

which means LBR (lOkO bhinna ruchi)!

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 12 Jan 2015, 12:32

If TMK was in charge of the canteen ...packing parcel and taking home would not be allowed

On the language issue, what gets to me is the fact that, with the internet, no writer needs to even move their fingers from keyboard and mouse to check the definition or usage of a word. Certainly our newspapers do not seem to know that! I wish someone would tell the journalists/editors of the gibberish-language daily, The New Indian Express. Yesterday: complete misuse of the word "avenge" in the main front-page headline!

The Hindu, which always seemed to want to grow up to become UK's The Gardian is now Americanising instead. Two currently obsessively popular words are ink and footfalls. What's wrong with write/sign/agree or visitors? Footfalls is a complete nonsense: should we divide by two? Do we have to know the number of steps taken and divide by that?

Language certainly changes, but evolve is probably the wrong word, as it changes according to mass usage, which is always the least educated, lowest common denominator.

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 12 Jan 2015, 13:18

Hello Arasi,

That should be

À chacun son goût,

(or)

Chacun son goût.

We French

.. I am confused.. what am I? If my identity can go with language strength , I am rather French. At least no one is going to cringe in Chennai when I utter something wrong. Speaking Engligh is no more admired in Cities anymore. I went with my French friend and I was explaining something to him ( actually translating), and the manager in M & S gave me an "awe" look. Mind , that is Chennai. I was secretly enjoying as my accent makes the native French to cringe.

Nick .. Language evolves, right? Otherwise it becomes programming. Unfortunately it depends are who are the participants of the evolution.

Nick this is not for you.
when varuvaargal evolved to varuvaannjge, and varuvaa, the former was despised and the latter accepted. Am I getting TMKish to revive the thread . Repurposing.

Rasikas are not fully ready for repurposing ... it underlined my repurposing with a red line. error.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 12 Jan 2015, 14:33

GM,
Thanks for my lesson today in french--rusty and old as your student is

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 12 Jan 2015, 15:09

De rien

Je vous en prie == is more appropriate.

Also I missed a lot of forumites as I could not attend the gopilatha memorial . Hope you all enjoyed. Next time for sure.

venkatakailasam · Post by **venkatakailasam** » 12 Jan 2015, 20:01

One more NRI bait

டேய் பாலாஜி நேத்திக்கி பெரியவா சொன்னாளே { dei Balaji, nethikku periva sonnale...}

http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 17#p275917

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 12 Jan 2015, 21:19

Can we please stop feeding the ***lls, and not respond to each and every statement or bait?

venkatakailasam · Post by **venkatakailasam** » 12 Jan 2015, 22:00

Sorry..for the post..not much difference..

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 13 Jan 2015, 01:33

G_M,
>Speaking Engligh is no more admired in Cities anymore
You mean, in Indian cities? Really? The mass psychology unfortunately is that speaking in English is equated with being educated and being modern. Speaking in Tamil or any indian language does not provide that automatic affordance. It has gotten so bad that, say, you call a service company like a courier service to take care of a hard problem, you get that marginally better service if you complain in English. We are so mentally damaged on that front for quite a few centuries and I thought it is something we have to live with. There is a similar mental damage with appearance ( clothes, hair styles ( especially women)) and language which I do not want to go in here

We are quite strange indeed. This may be a difficult topic to talk about for a lot of us since we are all part of this damaged lot

( or as kAmarAj used to call 'orE kuttayil Uriya mattai' in a different context)

Nick, I did not even know about this 'footfall' thing. What?

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 13 Jan 2015, 07:20

VK

Indeed, you are right. You are better accepted , but of course only admired if your English is high flown. Verbose are better admired , unfortunately. It is a shame, English is the lingua franca of India. it is fine for being Lingua Franca, but I find it hard to digest when the whole family speaks English in order to anglisize or americanize the children at home. My observation is that it does more damage than good as they develop a more Indian syntax and mother tongue influenced accent. Once done it is hard to undo. But, I see no way out of it.

By the by , VK are you not a visitor for December ever?

sridhar_ranga · Post by **sridhar_ranga** » 13 Jan 2015, 09:15

Nick, I did not even know about this 'footfall' thing. What?

VKm, lucky you! never had to man your company's booth at Sapphire or Oracle Open World, I presume?

or hand out free cones of frozen yogurt to attract more 'footfalls' to your booth - or file a report to sales director / product manager thereafter! I envy you!

harimau · Post by **harimau** » 13 Jan 2015, 10:00

ganesh_mourthy wrote:VK

Indeed, you are right. You are better accepted , but of course only admired if your English is high flown. Verbose are better admired , unfortunately. It is a shame, English is the lingua franca of India. it is fine for being Lingua Franca, but I find it hard to digest when the whole family speaks English in order to anglisize or americanize the children at home. My observation is that it does more damage than good as they develop a more Indian syntax and mother tongue influenced accent. Once done it is hard to undo. But, I see no way out of it.

By the by , VK are you not a visitor for December ever?

We had a couple of guys in my college who went to the Lovedale residential school. They were forced to speak in English at school. They spoke what used to be derisively called "butler English".

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 13 Jan 2015, 10:18

sridhar_ranga wrote:never had to man your company's booth at Sapphire or Oracle Open World, I presume? or hand out free cones of frozen yogurt to attract more 'footfalls' to your booth - or file a report to sales director / product manager thereafter! I envy you!

Well, I guess we all have something to be thankful for, eh?

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 13 Jan 2015, 12:09

vasanthakokilam wrote:G_M,
>Speaking Engligh is no more admired in Cities anymore
You mean, in Indian cities? Really? The mass psychology unfortunately is that speaking in English is equated with being educated and being modern.

Wrong!

Perhaps, at first, you can't understand why I would say that?

Speaking in American is equated with being educated and being modern. English is a forgotten language and a forgotten nationality. Considering British/Indian history, that is not altogether a bad thing from the standpoint of us Brits: many a nation would not have continued to make its former colonisers so welcome.

It is also something that other English-speaking nations do too. I do remember, as a young hippie, adopting all that "cool, far out, man! Groovy!" stuff. All American, a fact that I never even thought of at the time.

Speaking in Tamil or any indian language does not provide that automatic affordance. It has gotten so bad that, say, you call a service company like a courier service to take care of a hard problem, you get that marginally better service if you complain in English.

This is bad... on a recent complaint call to a major national company (it might have been Airtel, but I forget), my wife had to speak English. What if she had not been able to? The company must have millions of customers that don't.

Nick, I did not even know about this 'footfall' thing. What?

And I didn't know about "affordance." I have my doubts, but at least google knows it.

I guess that, as Sridhar suggests, it is marketing jargon (otherwise known as male-cow excrement).

I'm not against jargon. Jargon can be the epitome of accurate, expressive and new language. On the whole though, the technical world comes up with some very good jargon, but the management and marketing worlds come up with rubbish that they think makes them look clever. How is it that they don't get that the rest of us are laughing at them!

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 13 Jan 2015, 12:13

Footfalls to Mean Something Else

Footfalls of the lord I heard
When I beheld the mighty Vitoria Falls,
Gently thundering, raising smoky vapors...

Walking back and forth the length,
Running sometimes, gasping, crying,
Singing out loud, exclaiming at times,
I could touch the hem of His garment
And hear his footfalls...........Falls!

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 13 Jan 2015, 12:18

And...
Back in this nitty gritty world,
When TMK is in the canteen,
Or anywhere else for that matter,
We all make a lot of noise it seems,
Not with utensils but with words

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 13 Jan 2015, 12:26

Nick,
I can imagine how you feel. I am glad I am conversant in some languages of Bharath. I am finding it increasingly difficult to follow what they are saying in english. I switch to the local language and that helps. It's both expressions and accents which have changed which makes it difficult for me. Some tamizh I hear on the TV pose the same problem

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 13 Jan 2015, 17:40

arasi wrote:I am finding it increasingly difficult to follow what they are saying in english. I switch to the local language and that helps. It's both expressions and accents which have changed which makes it difficult for me

Arasi, reading that, I now feel so much better, because that was exactly what happened to me on my recent trip to India. In fact, I would have missed a connection if I had not listened to the announcements in Hindi...now part of that was due to cutting things too fine, but you get the idea

venkatakailasam · Post by **venkatakailasam** » 13 Jan 2015, 18:17

It is not only the language or accent...but it is the mind set..

that is what is portrayed in the link above

http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 17#p275917

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 14 Jan 2015, 00:50

Nick, I didn't realize 'affordance' is not prevalent widely. We use it so often in the visual design circles, it has crept into my regular English.

btw, I made a reference to the sub-conscious connection between modern looks ( what you wear and how you cut your hair etc. ) and language (specific manner of speaking English or the local language ). This phenomenon has many facets and let me illustrate one facet with an actual incident.

Person A calls person B over the phone. They had never met before. B speaks in a more or less traditional tamil+english ( the usual, with a mixture of English here and there ). They meet in person later. Person B is in Jeans and T-shirt and she has a western hair style (short hair, hanging over the ears up to the shoulder length etc.). A's reaction is 'Wow...I did not realize she will look this way from the way she talked'.

I think such sub-conscious perceptions are fairly well entrenched in society ( may be just in Chennai ). The above incident led to a little conversation about this topic and a few people with us thought this is perfectly normal and also opined that if you see such a person, say at a get together, your default language to start a conversation with them will not be in Tamil. This became bit of a silly internal joke among that group. Whenever we see someone like that who speaks Tamil very well, we say 'hey, you are not supposed to talk Tamil this well'

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 14 Jan 2015, 03:14

I have had this experience on several occasions, with people who I know, because I've been told, "hail" (the favourite word of CM folk to describe origin) from S. India but who do not, in one way or another, look or behave the part in any way that fits my preconceptions, and, in a restaurant, speak Tamil to the waiters.

Biases, preconceptions and judgements. None of those are necessarily negative in this context, it is simply the way that our brains work.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 14 Jan 2015, 08:04

Harimau's sociological studies influencing us?

Kokilam,
'Affordance' is new to me. Is 'affordability' a passe word?

vgovindan · Post by **vgovindan** » 14 Jan 2015, 09:56

vk,
It is not that you may not know, yet, I may state that Dr V Ramachandran, famous neurologist has spoken of a person who could not recognise his own mother because of damanged brain which is not able corelate between the aural image and visual image - the portion of the brain which deals with visual image is damaged while aural portion is intact. In regard to unknown faces, we seem to have some bias - notions depending on other inputs. It is all in amygdala, they say. A TED lecture by Dr V Ramachandran -
http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_rama ... n#t-338047

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 14 Jan 2015, 10:05

VK

It is very true that we conceive a face already if face is the last to be seen.

That is how our mind works even for movie songs.

When you listen to new krithi you dont conceive a situation to enjoy it though.

But , with film music I have heard everyone say it. "This is not what I imagined ... or it is very different from what I imagined.... I imagined it to to be this way...it in a way excelled beyond my imagination. "

But you never know why you imagine it that way .

to me ,there was a song that excelled and one that disappointed.

this one was fantasitic when I saw it in the theater.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uF4F2KfrtU

and this one was a disappointment as I have heard it many times and relished but watched it in the tv recently and felt " what a song and how grotesquely filmed".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgaQ7ydMOMw

This is one reason why even the topic of a thread is actually really important as much as a movie title or a book title. Some makes you wanting to watch or read and some title keeps you away in spite of the good review.

The theory of everything that I watched recently was a serendipity. The title says a lot and leaves you only guessing.

There used to be a short little infortainment called "inru oru thagaval". After almost several hundreds of daily listening to the voice to me he was a different person altogether.

VK

From you writing and moderator status , style , information that you give .. if we were to sit across for a coffee .. I already picture you to be ( which may be totally wrong)

Mid 40s
Wheatish brown skin
Glasses (no not that glass)
Suave looking with a blend of slighly satirical or rather safely satirical
Tamil speaking
Not an orthodox demeanour
pleasant looking
clearly professional in approach
5.7"
Want to talk classical music , but seem to interested in many other things other than music... good world view I mean.

I already picture that for most of the people here and of course when you reply to post having someone in mind, this is automatically created by the brain - vaguely. The more you are associated to someone abstractly like this your mind definitely will.. or otherwise you are answering to a machine app like Siri.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 14 Jan 2015, 10:38

The kuyil doesn't wear glasses...

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 14 Jan 2015, 10:46

When was the last time you saw the kuyil? Time flies and the then the glass gets indispensable.

Do you remember your statement "Nadayum Thalarndhu".

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 14 Jan 2015, 11:01

'naDaiyum thaLarndu' is for folks of my age group. Spring cuckoo walks around with a spring in his steps. Wears contacts perhaps. At my young age, I wear neither--only reading glasses.

What do you look like, I wonder...

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 14 Jan 2015, 12:40

> Unfortunately I missed the the gopilatha concert or you would not be asking this question and I cannot take the opportunity to lie that I am the most radically, differently, creatively good looking ( TMKish)

TED video was wonderful. Why would you imagine a person to be so just hearing a voice .. are there similarity you are trying to to revive from the past?

why would you suddenly want to sing a song with a particular mood. Is it the tune or the words that makes that effect.

If thyagarja sang Manamu Ledha and Inta sowkya.. was he frustrated and in bliss at that point or does it show his creative charm alone. We never know if he planned it or just intuitively sang.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 14 Jan 2015, 12:51

You mean, radical, creative and good looking TMK?

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 14 Jan 2015, 13:36

Hethinks I mean. Not the general opinion.

Besides,

I am happy you are trying lending hand to Bharathiye. Always fascinated by the man. He lived just 200 Mts from where I live now, but I did not live then

. Now a museum it is . Nobody even visits it. A deserted building

http://www.pondicherrywiki.com/2013/05/ ... herry.html

the kuyil thopu ( now funeral ground) is where we used to bunk classed sometimes and visit ..hide out. special affinity for him.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 14 Jan 2015, 15:16

I know why TMK is said to be a non-reader of Rasikas.org posts. If I were TMK who does read our posts, I would say, 'take your conversations about others and other things elsewhere