On Speaking English in India

Indiaspeak - Times of India

In Praise of the Humble Comma

As someone who is rather "comma friendly", I quite love this little punctuation mark: softer than the full-stop, less ambiguous than the semicolon. A pause for breath, but without the period's finality. Suspensive pauses, commas at the end of run-on-lines, dramatic pauses...

Commas can change meaning, shift mountains...

O Romeo Romeo v/s O Romeo, Romeo - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Jesus he was a handsome man v/s Jesus, he was a handsome man - Cummings, Buffalo Bill

Was Juliet merely proclaiming her love for "Romeo Romeo"? Or was it "Romeo, Romeo" the comma expressing a realisation of who Romeo is dawning upon Juliet, a pause that expresses it all?

Is "Jesus" Cummings's "OMG"-like exclamation, or is the poet reflecting on "Jesus" who was "a handsome man"?

And so I give you the article: "In Praise of the Humble Comma".

Must. Have. Cake.

You know those days when you could just kill for some chocolate cake?

God, I want chocolate cake!!

On Blogging

The Rime of the Thirsty One

I had one of my low blood pressure "episodes" (for lack of a better word) recently.

I was doing the dishes and the kitchen began to swim about in front of me - it's a good thing I didn't fall into the soapy suds right there and then. I passed out, and when I came to the kettle was bubbling, the tap was running, and it was drizzling a steady pitter-patter on my window-sill.... Water water everywhere... Did I mention I was thirsty as hell?
 
I spent the rest of the day on my couch. I didn't go to work, I didn't do my laundry, I didn't water my plant, and I didn't finish the dishes.Water water everywhere... It sucks when you living alone and there's no one to pass you a drink.

Crazy Plant Lady

I bought a plant last week.

I thought I needed something to focus on apart from myself. Living alone is a bitch, and I don't feel like being the crazy cat lady of Oxford just yet. So I got a plant for 99 pence, and pocketed the one penny change - I figure if I kill 99 plants, I can get the hundreth one using spare change.

But as it turns out, I can fake a green thumb pretty well.

Today it got its first flower: Yellow petals pushing out against the green stem. I'm proud of my plant.

Tonight I'll be alone, I'll curl up on my couch and watch numerous episodes of "America's Next Top Model" and read a bit of Irving Stone before bed... I'll have my dinner... I'll moisturise and brush my teeth and gulp down my vitamins...

And then before I turn of the lights, I'll water my plant. And maybe tomorrow, I'll see flower number two...

Why I Blog

A friend told me I was "living the dream": Struggling writer, one-bedroom apartment, in a foreign land. The stereotypical, the usual.

I write the banal: articles devoid of emotion. Pieces where editing for length is easy, because nothing really means anything to me. That writing is cold, detached, my foster-works, adopted by me under the "creative" sway of corporate invention. The words mean nothing, cutting them is easy - these are no children of mine, they can fit in any mold, I couldn't care less.

Something has to pay the bills.

So I blog. I write what goes through my head, my own stream of consciousness, put down with the tap-tapping of a keyboard. Words with some meaning, at least to me. I blog because I have to put it down somewhere. Mrs. Dalloway bought her own flowers, Nashira will write her own meaning.

I've sold my soul, but something has to pay the bills.