Loose Sallies of the Mind

By Krishnasarma Somanchi

Over time, one gets observant as well as curious over the frailties of fellow humans. Being a student of literature, I was learning the more sensitive ways of responding to human vagaries. So when my friend asked me for some light stuff, I put down my ideas, coupled with a touch of humor, and sent off these skits to him. Thus came about these lighthearted musings on fellow humans. Some of the essayists I had to teach in the classroom, like Steele, Goldsmith, and Lamb, furnished me the tone, style, and attitude. Though these pieces deal with a common mans responses to experience, they present the uncommon mans sensibilities. It is this, if any, that makes these skits interesting to me and the likes of me, hopefully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jun 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490739175

Krishnasarma Somanchi

Krishnasarma Somanchi (b.1934) retired as professor of English at Nagarjuna University, India. He has taught British, American, and Commonwealth literatures, as well as English language and Indian writing in English for over five decades. He lives in India and has published over fifty articles in Indian journals. He continues to be interested in critical analysis of literary works. He believes his creative side is only “left-handed,” casual and sporadic. He has let observations of commonplace things, behaviors, and attributes over the years fl y around his active mind, and Loose Sallies is one such creation.

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© Copyright 2014 Krishnasarma Somanchi.

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978-1-4907-3916-8 (sc)

ISBN:

978-1-4907-3918-2 (hc)

ISBN:

978-1-4907-3917-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910513

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Table of Contents

Preface

Dog in the Manger

Beggars All!

On Halfways

Municipal Road Craft – 1

The Disjunctive Personality

Municipal Road Craft – 2

Intellectuals

Independent Approach to Education

Drawing the Line

Let Me Enjoy Myself

Honeyed Gifts

The Laws of Language

No Degrees Please!

Time-honoured Practice

Democratize Gods

Secret of Smooth Shave

The Taj vs Oil

Democracy on the Rails

Advertise-mentality

The Annual Stocktaking

What about the ‘Have-not-enoughs’?

Celebrate or Solemnize?

Smoking Strictly Prohibited

Some have more sensitive Nostrils

Of Pedigree and all that

Musings in the Mirror – 1

Musings in the Mirror – 2

A National Malaise

Education for Women

Two Cheers for the New Woman

The New Woman

Making a Fast Buck

Grow Old With Me

No Cause for Despair

Death came to me gently

My New Glasses

The Lament of the Flowers

A Modern Poem

Preface

T HESE are really loose sallies of the mind, stray, casual and leisurely. They are perhaps in the mode of Montaigne’s essays, and are entirely personal. My friend Sri A G K Murthy encouraged me to write these prose skits in 1978-79, and got them published in a rag, Skyline , with a very limited circulation, and now wound up. When my cousin, Sarada was sub-editor of Hitavada at Nagpur, she took some of them and reissued them in a better style. I added a few more to the origina l lot.

The poems too were mere experimentations in versification. ‘The Lament of the Flowers’ was done when my Engineer-friend, Durvasula, wanted a translated version of Karunasree’s ‘Pushpa Vilapam’ for his friend. ‘Death came to me gently’ was occasioned by the death of my brother-in-law in 1993. I composed ‘My New glasses’ when I learnt that my professor went blind in his eyes. My young colleagues emailed me their preparations for a seminar they were planning to attend on Modern poetry while I was sojourning with my son, Aravind, in San Fransisco in 2011. That night, in sleep, I composed a few lines, and, waking up completed ‘A modern Poem’, and sent it to them with a request that they identify the modern features in the poem!

These may not be bright or scholarly, but I assume they would entertain and amuse the readers. Happy reading!

Krishnasarma Somanchi

LOOSE SALLIES

OF THE MIND

Dog in the Manger

T o strike work is a fundamental right with me. So I shall go on strike, — for reduction of work, increase in salary, DA, payment of bonus, for withdrawal of an inconvenient rule, for the removal of a troublesome superior; strike if some people are not promoted, strike if some are promoted. Any cause is good enough for me. I have a right to be disgruntled, and I have a right to demand more and more. It is the headache of the organization or the government to look for resources to meet the additional expend iture.

I have seen others leading better lives than me. I see before me every day people who are patently dishonest getting preferential deals, and I smart as I am left behind. They have had their day. And I shall have mine, by hook or by crook. I want my promotion, and after that, still another promotion. I want my pay raised, again and again. I want a house. When I have one, I’ll want another one. A car, women, clubs, enjoyment. I want more of everything, and more.

In my enthusiasm to grab I lose sight of the many millions who have but half-a-meal a day and hardly a rag to cover their nakedness. There are thousands, tens of thousands, among them who are educated and yet unemployed, — perhaps better equipped than I for the job I hold, — dispirited, desolate and in despair. I cannot take them into my reckoning. I cannot afford to. For, if I but half-pause to sympathise with them, I would lose my faith in my slogans, and lose my dreams of paradise. No. They do not exist for me. I alone am, and I alone shall want. I cannot concede the needs of the others. If I do, then I must concede that I am a dog in the manger, occupying a post for which hundred others are better fitted than I, drawing wages that might easily feed twice the size of my family, and preventing them from taking over. Yet, I do not do my duty, because it is my right to strike. Such concession would make me lose my faith in myself, in my adequacy, in my indispensability.

What are real for me are my self, my family, my needs, my dreams, my promotion, my car, and my salary. All the rest is unreal. As I go to the place of my work (place where I do not work, rather) I do not see the multitude of human beings leading a dog’s life. So their needs, their right to life and food and shelter do not exist for me. If they are there, they have no right to be. Or if you prefer, let somebody else look after whoever is there. Let the Government, the Bhairava for all sins, look after them. I have a more important business of looking after myself.

If the government cannot do it, let us change the government!

(Written for Skyline March 20, 1978)

Beggars All!

A re we a nation of be ggars?

Lord Siva, Eswara, Adideva is represented as an inveterate beggar. So why not we, his devotees?

One day an able-bodied fellow approached me for alms, and I asked him, couldn’t he do something to earn a livelihood, instead of begging. Some bystander pulled me up: Give him something if you can, or else, ask him to go. It is very wrong to talk to him like that. I thought, maybe, yes. I was wrong. Wrong because I was thinking contrary to the traditional way that has raised begging to a sacred vocation.

On the national level, we have been always on the move from nation to rich nation with a begging bowl, as it were, metaphorically.