Mortal wishes

I am obsessed with the topic of death and have written a book on the subject, Death at My Doorstep. I read an article by Valerie Grove in The Times, London, entitled “Let’s use death as a celebration of life” with added interest. She begins her piece with the famous line, “To cease upon the midnight with no pains,” and then continues, “Keats, in his Ode to a Nightingale, “half in love with easeful death”, voiced the mortal wish of us all. The Government’s proposed end-of-life care strategy to support people if they want to die at home is welcome and long overdue. What people dread and fear most is not death itself, but the pain and humiliation preceding it, in a strange place and among busy strangers.”

I go along with her inasmuch as she claims that though most of us dread death we accept it is inevitable and hope that when it comes it is painless — acute pain is worse than death — and not messy. As we grow old, our dependence on our children becomes an increasing burden on them. We become slovenly, spill food while eating, find it difficult to control our bladder and bowel movements, use bed-pans, which other people have to then clean up. We even to wait for other people to wipe our bottoms. We lose all our self-esteem and dignity. People are relieved when it is all over.

National dustmen

It will be a jolly good idea

To have an Indian on the Moon!

We, the pavement-dwellers will look up, up,

And expand our skinny shrinking chests

With justified pride and glory.

With bated breaths shall we wait

For the ‘manna’ and ‘honey-dew’

To fall from heaven,

While our ‘National dustmen’

(Oh, Dickens!)

Play their dirty blame games

In the ‘National dust yard’

To ‘capture’ or ‘retain’ the throne,

By hook, crook or by bribe,

While we’ll wait and wait till eternity

For, patience is the badge of our tribe.

(Courtesy: P. S. Nindra, New Delhi)

To cut a long story short

Of all the abbreviations which have become common currency in all languages spoken round the world, the most widely used is OK for Yes. Though Yes also has its variations — such as Yah, Yeah, Yup and Okie-dokie — it is OK that is the most frequently used. Yet no one is sure of its origin.

One theory goes that it was taken from the language used by Chocktaw Red Indians of America, in which Okay means Yes. The more current theory about the origin of OK gives it a precise date of birth — March 23, 1839. The Boston Morning Post of that date wrote “... he of the journal, and his train-band would have the contribution box etc. — OK — oll korrect — and cause the cocks to fly.” I failed to make sense of the item in the paper except for the fact that OK at that time stood for “oll korrect”.

However, there are a few other abbreviations that have gained universal acceptance: one is RSVP from the French repondez s’il vous plaît — reply if you please, and then PS from the Latin phrase post script.

A Punjabi gentleman coined suitable explanations for them in his mother tongue: turning RSVP into ruqqa saanoo vaapas paiyyo and PS into pichhon sujjhee.

Begotten by post

The most unforgettable character of my Lahore College days was the superintendent of our two college hostels, Gian Chand Bhatia. He treated hostel students like friends and I, being the secretary of the college students union, was treated like a close favourite. Mr Bhatia was, besides being the hostel superintendent, in charge of all junior staff.

One day, as I was sitting in Mr Bhatia’s office, a mali called Ganga Din, hailing from eastern Uttar Pradesh came to him seeking 10 days leave to see his newborn son at Bareilly. “But you have not gone home from Lahore for the last five years. How did you get a son?” chuckled Mr Bhatia. Ganga Din saw nothing wrong in this and replied humbly but confidently, “Sahib hum nahin javat hain lekin chithhel to pathavat hain.” (Sir, I may not have gone home for some years, but I have been sending letters regularly).

(Contributed by Jaidev Bajaj, Pathankot)