Thursday, January 30, 2014

Look at a Teacup

-Patricia Hampl (b. 1946)
Hampl’s mother bought the teacup in 1939. Even on sale, it was very expensive. Her mother bought many China dishes and teacups from Czechoslovakia that year. She married an American Czech the same year. The cups are safe and now belong to Hampl.

The cup is thin and pale. It is shiny, and there are thin bands of gold around the edges, midway down the bowl of the cup and at its base. There is also a band of gold on the inner circle of the saucer, but it has been worn away. The outside of the cup has no decoration, but there are the pictures of flowers inside the cup. The flowers are like scattered blossoms from a bouquet and appear to be caught in motion.

Nothing bad happened to Hampl’s mother, but she is sad. When she says that work is the most important thing, her mother’s face shows fear. She thinks family is the important thing. By saying this, she shows a sign that she wants to say goodbye to her daughter.

Her mother is an ideal housewife. She is always busy at home doing different household works. She has been always responsible toward her husband and children. So, she has never showed her personal feelings and passion. She could never come out of the boundary of her house.

Once, the writer and her brother saw their father and mother kissing in the kitchen. As the children laughed, her mother felt ashamed and rejoined her work.

Hampl’s mother married in 1939. It was the year when the war broke out. Her mother bought the things that she needed the same year. Now, she has been giving them to the writer.

When the writer tries to get her mother to talk about her life, she is not ready. But the writer keeps on asking many questions about her past life. Sometimes her mother recollects that the girls of her time did not have all the facilities that the girls of the writer’s time do. They could not afford for safety pads, so they used cotton stripes. Her mother’s first pair of nylon stockings lasted two years.

The teacup was made in the country far away. An English politician shook the nation away, so it lost its absorption in peaceful work. If he had considered the future of the teacups and had left Czechoslovakia free, the things would have been different. The country itself does not exist, but the souvenirs are unbroken. So the cup is a detail, a small un-charred finger from the mid-century bonfire.

Hampl’s mother believes in accepting whatever comes in one’s life. She has no courage to challenge the course of events in her life. She hopefully believes in looking ahead. Hampl, on the other hand, cannot follow her footsteps. She is always inquisitive about history and sexuality. She wants to know the history and keep things right.

Many things fell in the year 1939. The newly married women’s bodies fell on the beds together with their husbands’ for the first time. When the mother first fell, the writer thinks, her virginity fell. The writer does not want to marry. She thinks that marriage is not compulsory for sexual intercourse. Not only the writer but also her whole generation thinks in this way. Her generation thinks that marriage is a painful experience. The bodies of war victims also fell that year. In Spain, bombs fell on women from the air. Hampl’s mother is embarrassed with her attitude to link events with each other. This is the difference between her mother and herself.

Mothers often want their daughters get married and have settled life. They try to prepare their daughters for their future. Hampl’s mother is also no different. She never had pre-marital sex, but the writer has had. She never talked in the way the writer talks.

Hampl and her friends spend time trying to describe the things. They talk about the past and feel that history has to be written. There are many things in their houses so that they can write history. They have to save them and hand over to the latter generation. Otherwise, they will also sink like her mother and the flowers, the symbols of tradition.

Oops! How’s That Again?


-Roger Rosenblatt (b. 1940-)
In this essay Rosenblatt enriches his discussion with remarkable examples. The tone of this essay is humorous, but it deals with a serious issue, i. e. psychological causes of bloopers.

Slips of the tongue occur all the time. Not all such fluffs are so easy to take, however. These verbal errors can have a very bad effect on both who hears them and who makes them. Almost all the great people of the world make such gaffes or faux pas. The word faux pas was originated in the seventeenth century. At that time, it was used to refer to a woman’s lapse from virtue.

Mistranslation also causes a lot of verbal errors. Such mistakes which are of low level are called bloopers. Another type of errors is called spoonerism in which the transposition of initial or other sounds of words occurs. William Archibald Spooner, the principal of New College, Oxford, used to do many such mistakes in the early 1900s. Once he chided a student saying: “You have hissed all my mystery lectures………” instead of “You have missed all my history lectures…”

When we find such errors funny, psychologists and linguists take them seriously. Victoria Fromkin of the linguistic department at U.C.L.A. thinks that slips of the tongue are the clues to how the brain stores and articulates language. According to her, thought is placed by the brain into a grammatical framework before it is expressed.

According to psychologists, verbal errors are related to mental process. Freud, for the first time, described that the errors do not take place accidentally. They express the speaker’s inner desire. Moreover, psychoanalyst Ludwig Eidelberg suggests that a slip of the tongue involves the entire network of id, ego and superego. He gives an example of a young man who entered a restaurant with his girlfriend and ordered a room instead of a table.

We find the mistakes funny because they break our monotonies. Slips of the tongue, therefore, are like slips on banana peels. But laughing at others’ mistakes is an act of meanness.

The most interesting laugh is produced by strange mistakes which show us a new world of logic and possibility. Lewis Carroll evoked sublime laugh by creating a new and foolish idea with the help of verbal errors.


Most of the human efforts are unsuccessful. Even the best planned actions fail. Nothing is as successful as dream. So, we laugh at each other’s mistakes.

In Bed


                                                                                                                          -Joan Didion (b. 1934-)
The writer suffers from migraine headache 3 to 5 times a month. She spends one or two days a week unconscious with pain. So it has become the central part of her life. In the beginning days, she tried to avoid the drug but now-a-days she takes it.

Didion didn’t have anything wrong with her at all except the migraine headache. So everyone thought it was only her imagination. She tried to ignore it and went to school and to her work, but she had to run onto her bed whenever it attacked. She wished a neurosurgeon would do a lobotomy on house call.

The writer had migraine for the first time when she was eight. It took her many years before she finally accepted it as a part of her life. It can be started by any of the various causes like stress, allergy, fatigue, an abrupt change in barometric pressure, an embarrassing disagreement over a parking ticket, etc. It is also hereditary. Both of the writer’s grandmothers had migraine. Her father and mother have also got the disease as their inherited property.

When migraine starts, the amount of serotonin in the blood falls sharply. Methysergide, or Sansert, a migraine drug, has some effect on serotonin. The medicine is a derivative of lysergic acid and has many side effects. Another preventive medicine ergotamine tartrate, which helps to constrict the swelling blood vessels, is also used.

Despite the availability of the medicines, none of them touches migraine headache once it has begun. Migraine headache has the symptoms like mild hallucinations, temporary blindness, a gastrointestinal disturbance, a painful sensitivity, a sudden overpowering fatigue, a weakened power to understand words, and inability even to do the daily actions. When migraine attacks the writer, she loses the house keys, spills things, loses the focus of her eyes and becomes unable to speak properly and logically. She also has a chill, sweating, nausea, and debility of endurance. She feels blessed because no one dies of migraine headache.

Didion’s husband has also a migraine headache. It is unfortunate for him but she is happy because he cannot accuse her of cheating. The doctors have given the name ‘migraine personality’ to a person who tends to be ambitious, inward, intolerant of error, rather rigidly organized and perfectionist. The writer is a perfectionist.

Heredity is the unavoidable cause of migraine headache. Now the writer has learned to live with it. It never comes when she is in real trouble. However, it comes when she has some unfinished work at home.


Whenever migraine comes, the writer just lies down on bed and lets it happen. She concentrates on her pain. After ten or twelve hours, the pain recedes. She feels refreshed. The migraine acts as a circuit breaker. When it is over, she feels happy again.

Malini



-Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
               
(This poetic play Malini is a story of love and hatred. Love in its absolute and pure form is all radiance, all pervading, and all compassionate. But often in the world, petty selfishness assumes the name of love and rules the world with hatred.)

Malini has given up all her ornaments. She is talking to her mother, the Queen, on the balcony of the palace. Her mother asks her why she is not wearing her ornaments and dress. She answers that she is poor though she is a princess. The Queen is a simple woman who believes that for a woman her husband and children are objects of worship.

The king comes in. He suggests Malini that she shouldn’t go further along her perilous path. He says she shouldn’t bring her new practice, the Buddhism, into the land of the old, the Hinduism, like a sudden flood. She must keep her faith within herself.

The Brahmins of the kingdom are agitated. They are asking for Malini’s banishment. The king and the Queen are not ready for that, but Malini is ready to be banished. She thinks that the common people need her lessons. She suggests her father, the king, that he should banish her.

Among the Brahmins who are demanding for Malini’s banishment, Kemankar has the strongest determination. He is extremely angry with Malini. He thinks that Malini and her creed should be terminated. He is ready to use force or spill the blood for that. He thinks Malini’s new creed is a grave threat for the established religion. The First Brahmin and the Second Brahmin also agree with him, but Supriya, Kemankar’s bosom friend since childhood, thinks differently. He is against using the force against Malini and her new creed. He thinks Malini’s ideas are the essence of all religions.

The Brahmins get the information that even king’s army is ready to revolt. They do not like this. They pray to Goddess for help. Meanwhile, Malini presents herself among them. They all bow and give in to her.

Kemankar, blind with his patriotism and his faith in the Hinduism, decides to go abroad to bring foreign soldiers to capture the kingdom and banish Malini. Supriya requests him to take him, too. But Kemankar leaves him alone with the hope that Supriya will remain faithful to him forever.

After that, Supriya comes close to Malini. He betrays his friend Kemankar. He is ready to support Malini. In fact, Supriya has revealed Kemankar's secret plan to the king. Now the king is so happy with him that he is ready even to give him his daughter. On Supriya’s request, the king is also ready to forgive Kemankar but Kemankar wants death from the king. He rejects Supriya’s request to accept the harmony with a different faith. He calls Supriya near to him and kills him with a single strike of iron chains. After Supriya’s death, the king is ready to kill Kemankar with his sword, but the play ends with Malini’s request to her father not to kill Kemankar.  

Watch documentary about Rabindranath Tagore

Unchopping a Tree


- W. S. Merwin
(This essay has a meaning different from its apparent meaning. It is a persuasive discourse. It suggests that we should conserve the trees and we should not cut them down. Chopping down the tree is so easy, but we find the task of rejoining its parts impossible.)

To unchop a tree, you must start with the restoration of the leaves, the small twigs, and the nests. The difficulty of the task depends upon the size, age, shape, and species of the tree. It will take a lot of labour. You may want to use the skill and labour of ants, mice or squirrels, but they won’t come to help you. Human beings do not have any substitute for the natural things. Once the leaves become dry, it is very difficult to restore them in their respective places. Every other damaged tree around must be repaired. If the trees are of the same species, the task becomes more difficult. But you should not give up hope. You should keep practising.

Though it is very difficult to handle the erecting of scaffolding, you should work carefully. You should very delicately use the tackle to erect the trunk. You’ll have to put the nuts into the hollow correctly. Otherwise, you’ll have to stop the work. You’ll have to hang the bole vertically above the stump. Every splinter of both the parts should be properly fixed. When the splinters are properly fixed, the appropriate fixative is applied. We will have to apply three different types of fixative for the core, the outer layer and the bark.

After you have joined the trunk and the stump together, you must gather the chips and sawdust. You should apply the correct adhesive for the chips and sawdust to fix them back to their places.


The adhesive for the chips is translucent. It is transparent for the bark and its subcutaneous layers. The joining does not set the sap flowing again. There will be passable small holes which will be completely joined perfectly, you cannot sleep properly. When you will have to remove the scaffolding, you cannot hope for a sunny and breezeless day. You cannot be sure how long the tree will stand at its place. You can do nothing more.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

The Six Million Dollar Man

 - Harold J. Morowitz (1927- )
Once, the writer received a birthday card from his daughter and son-in-law. The card contained a caption which said the materials that make up human body are only worth ninety-seven cents. He wanted to check whether the human body was so cheap or not. He took a price list from a bio-chemical company and started counting the price of human body.

After calculating every element of human body, Morowitz concluded that the average value of a gram dry weight of human being would be 245.54 dollars. He found his body weight was 76,364 grams. He cut 68% of his body weight for water. Then, he found the figure to be $6,000,015.44 as his body price. He was a six million dollar man. It was really an enormous amount in comparison to ninety-seven cents.

He wanted to find a balanced middle figure between the two. Keeping in his mind that information is more expensive than matter, he restarted counting the price. If the things were more complex and more informative, the prices would be higher. His six million dollar estimate seemed much too low. This was only the price of separated natural elements. If they had to be synthesized again, his body would cost six hundred millions or six billion dollars. Only insulin and ribonuclease have been successfully synthesized so far. But even after buying all the smaller parts, a human being would not have been bought as a whole.

The modern science has not been able to assemble the molecules into organelles. The price of human body in terms of synthesized cellular substructures becomes six hundred billion or six trillion dollars. Even at this stage, it cannot make love, complain, and do all those other things that constitute our humanity. When we further try to assemble organelles into cells, the cost becomes very high. It cannot be less than six thousand trillion dollars.


We cannot imagine of assembling the cells into tissues, tissues into organs, and organs into a person. It is staggeringly difficult. We suddenly realize that each human being is priceless. The scientific reasons are clear. As we go higher than the molecular level, we go beyond science. It might lead us to the conclusion that the human body is only the instrument for the precious human soul. 

Sunday, January 19, 2014

The Nightmare Life without Fuel


-Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

This essay shows us the future of human civilization without fuel. America is just an example. The essayist's motive is to make us aware about the dwindling fuel resources. He wants us to conserve natural sources of fuel.

We will have to walk on foot in case there is fuel shortage. The means of public transportation will be limited and over-crowded. Even riding a bicycle on a rainy day will be very difficult.

Only a little energy will be produced from the parts of old structures reused. It will be too difficult to dig up and transport coal. Nuclear fission will be too dangerous. There won't be any technology to use nuclear fusion as a source of energy. Solar batteries will be too expensive. Automobiles will vanish from the streets of the cities as a result of energy crisis. At first, only the rich people who earn their property unjustly will be able to drive cars along the road. So, their cars will be overturned and burnt. At last, the cars will be reused as a source of metal.

There are some advantages of having a few cars on the road. The air will be cleaner and fewer people will have colds. The crime rate will drop. Without fuel, the police will not be able to use the cars. So, the policemen will be back on their beats. The streets will be full of walking people. Even the parks will be crowded, so there will be mutual protection in crowds.
The scarcity of electricity will make people sit out of their houses in the hot season. In the winter, they will just wear sweaters to keep their body warm. Instead of taking a bath, people will have to take a sponge bath.

The suburbanites will suffer more than the city dwellers, because they depend upon automobiles very much. In absence of autos, they will have lots of difficulty in their everyday activities.

The limited source of energy will not be used for personal purposes. The railroads and subways will receive the major attention. Some energy will be conserved for agriculture as well. Until any new source of energy is found, we will have to huddle together to keep our body warm. If we need cool breeze, we will have to fan ourselves. The Americans will have to eat less to save food for export so that they will be able to buy oil and other resources.

The population of the earth will be growing further. The people outside America will be suffering more than the Americans because of starvation. There will be high infant mortality because of starvation, but the newspapers will take it as good news because it will help reduce the population.

Even those people who survive starvation will be permanently brain-damaged because of under-nutrition. They will be silently killed.

Because of the energy crisis, only a few countries will keep some soldiers, but they will also not use their army for the fear of biting into limited fuel reserves.

When the energy crisis will reach to the highest level, machines will be replaced by human muscles and animals. People will have very little time for leisurely activities. They will only work, sleep and eat. So, the human society will return to its pre-industrial stage. The subsistence farming will not help us from starvation, disease and violence, so the population will decrease to less than a billion.

Now, we can do nothing to save ourselves from all these bad effects of energy crisis. It is too late. We should have started to save the resources 20 or 50 years ago.
Note:
The Nightmare Life without Fuel was first published in the Time magazine in 1977. The writer has imagined the situation of America and the world in 1997, twenty years from the date of its publication, without availability of any kind of the contemporary fuel resources. At that time, the year 1997 referred to the future. But now, for us, it's already gone to the past. We are living in the world of 2017. That's why, the readers may find it awkward to read the essay with the figure '1997' mentioned repeatedly as a reference to future time. 

Similarly, the terms '5.5 billion' and 'the Soviet Union' are obsolete for us in the present context. The world population has already crossed 7 billion. And 'the Soviet Union' exists no more in the present world. 

In a nutshell, we must read the essay to get its main thrust: What is going to happen if we do not conserve the sources of fuel?
Watch video WORLD WITHOUT OIL

Monday, January 13, 2014

Irregular verbs

The verbs which are very often different in their past simple and past participle forms. Sometimes, there will be no change.

bare infinitive (v1)                               past simple (v2)                                  past participle (v3)

arise                                                     arose                                                    arisen
awake                                                   awoke                                                   awaken
be                                                        was/were                                               been
bear                                                      bore                                                     borne
beat                                                      beat                                                      beaten
become                                                 became                                                become
begin                                                    began                                                   begun
bend                                                     bent                                                      bent
bet                                                       bet                                                       bet
bind                                                      bound                                                   bound
bite                                                       bit                                                        bitten
bleed                                                    bled                                                      bled
blow                                                     blew                                                     blown
break                                                    broke                                                    broken
bring                                                     brought                                                 brought
broadcast                                             broadcast                                             broadcast
build                                                     built                                                      built
burn                                                      burnt                                                     burnt
burst                                                     burst                                                     burst
buy                                                       bought                                                  bought
cast                                                      cast                                                      cast
catch                                                    caught                                                  caught
choose                                                 chose                                                   chosen
cling                                                     clung                                                    clung
come                                                    came                                                    come
cost                                                      cost                                                      cost
creep                                                    crept                                                     crept
cut                                                        cut                                                        cut
deal                                                      dealt                                                     dealt
dig                                                       dug                                                      dug
do                                                        did                                                       done
dive                                                      dived                                                    dived
draw                                                     drew                                                     drawn
dream                                                   dreamt                                                  dreamt
drink                                                     drank                                                    drunk
drive                                                     drove                                                    driven
dwell                                                     dwelt                                                    dwelt
eat                                                        ate                                                        eaten
fall                                                        fell                                                        fallen
feed                                                     fed                                                       fed
feel                                                       fell                                                        fallen
fight                                                     fought                                                  fought
find                                                      found                                                   found
fit                                                         fit                                                         fit
flee                                                       fled                                                      fled
fling                                                      flung                                                     flung
fly                                                        flew                                                      flown
forbid                                                   forbade                                                forbidden
forecast                                               forecast                                                 forecast
forget                                                   forgot                                                   forgotten
forgive                                                  forgave                                                 forgiven
freeze                                                   froze                                                     frozen
get                                                       got                                                       got
give                                                      gave                                                     given
go                                                        went                                                     gone
grow                                                     grew                                                     grown
hang                                                     hung                                                     hung
have                                                     had                                                       had
hear                                                      heard                                                    heard
hide                                                      hid                                                        hidden
hit                                                         hit                                                         hit
hold                                                      held                                                      held
hurt                                                       hurt                                                       hurt
keep                                                     kept                                                      kept
kneel                                                    knelt                                                     knelt
knit                                                       knit                                                       knit
know                                                    knew                                                     known
lay                                                        laid                                                       laid
lead                                                      led                                                        led
lean                                                      leant                                                     leant
leap                                                      leapt                                                     leapt
learn                                                     learnt                                                    learnt
leave                                                    left                                                       left
lend                                                      lent                                                       lent
let                                                         let                                                         let
lie                                                         lay                                                        lain
light                                                      lit                                                          lit
lose                                                      lost                                                       lost
make                                                    made                                                    made
mean                                                    meant                                                   meant
meet                                                     met                                                       met
mow                                                     mowed                                                   mown
pay                                                       paid                                                      paid
prove                                                    proved                                                  proved
put                                                       put                                                       put
quit                                                       quit                                                       quit
read                                                      read                                                      read
ride                                                       rode                                                     ridden
ring                                                       rang                                                      rung
rise                                                       rose                                                      risen
run                                                        ran                                                        run
saw                                                      sawed                                                   sawn
say                                                       said                                                      said
see                                                       saw                                                      seen
seek                                                     sought                                                  sought
sell                                                       sold                                                      sold
send                                                     sent                                                      sent
set                                                        set                                                        set
sew                                                      sewed                                                   sewn
shake                                                   shook                                                   shaken
shear                                                    sheared                                                shorn
shed                                                     shed                                                     shed
shine                                                    shone                                                   shone
shoot                                                    shot                                                      shot
show                                                    showed                                                 shown
shrink                                                   shrank                                                  shrunk
shut                                                      shut                                                      shut
sing                                                      sang                                                     sung
sink                                                      sank                                                     sunk
sit                                                         sat                                                        sat
sleep                                                    slept                                                     slept
slide                                                     slid                                                       slid
sling                                                     slung                                                    slung
smell                                                    smelt                                                    smelt
sow                                                      sowed                                                  sown
speak                                                   spoke                                                   spoken
speed                                                   sped                                                     sped
spell                                                     spelt                                                     spelt
spend                                                   spent                                                    spent
spin                                                      span/spun                                             spun
spill                                                      spilt                                                      spilt
spit                                                       spat                                                      spat
split                                                      split                                                      split
spoil                                                     spoilt                                                    spoilt
spread                                                  spread                                                  spread
spring                                                   sprang                                                  sprung
stand                                                    stood                                                   stood
steal                                                     stole                                                     stolen
stick                                                     stuck                                                    stuck
sting                                                     stung                                                    stung
stink                                                     stank                                                    stunk
strike                                                    struck                                                   struck
strive                                                    strove                                                   striven
swear                                                    swore                                                   sworn
sweep                                                   swept                                                   swept
swell                                                     swelled                                                 swollen
swim                                                     swam                                                    swum
take                                                      took                                                     taken
teach                                                    taught                                                   taught
tear                                                       tore                                                      torn
tell                                                        told                                                      told
think                                                     thought                                                 thought
throw                                                    threw                                                    thrown
thrust                                                    thrust                                                    thrust
tread                                                     trod                                                      trodden
understand                                            understood                                           understood
wake                                                     woke                                                    woken
wear                                                     wore                                                     worn
weave                                                   wove                                                    woven
weep                                                    wept                                                     wept
wet                                                       wet                                                       wet
win                                                       won                                                      won
wind                                                     wound                                                  wound
wring                                                    wrung                                                   wrung
write                                                     wrote                                                    written

(Source: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 7th edition, 2005)