(389) Best of 5 years ago this month Sept. – 2008 (17)

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Art of Balanced Exaggeration in Conversation – 1

Art of Balanced Exaggeration in Conversation – 2

-Valibhai Musa 

 

વાણીવિનિમયમાં સંતુલિત અતિશયોક્તિની કળા (૧)

Click here to read in English
હું વાણીવિનિમયના શાસ્ત્રનો કોઈ નિષ્ણાત નથી; કે વળી કેવી રીતે વ્યક્તિઓ સાથે વાતચીત કરવી અને કેવી રીતે સભાઓને સંબોધવી તેનો માર્ગદર્શક પણ નથી. મને મારી જાત ઉપર દયા આવે છે કે શા માટે હું મારા નાના મોંઢામાં મોટો કોળિયો મૂકવાનો પ્રયત્ન કરીને બહુ જ ગહન અને વૈજ્ઞાનિક અભ્યાસ સમા વિષયને મારા આજના લેખમાં પસંદ કરી રહ્યો છુ! હું મને પ્રશ્ન પૂછું છું કે, ‘મિ. લેખક (Author), તમે કેવી રીતે હાથમાં તલવાર વગર જ માત્ર બખ્તર ધારણ કરવાની હિંમત કરી રહ્યા છો!’ પણ, હું ‘જે થાય તે ખરું’ ના ખ્યાલ સાથે તૈયાર જ છું. હું અહીં ગુજરાતી સાહિત્યકાર વીર નર્મદના પડકારને યાદ કરું છું, ‘યાહોમ કરીને પડો, ફત્તેહ છે આગે’.

હવે જો હું આપણા ભારતીય રેલવે પ્રધાન શ્રી લાલુપ્રસાદ યાદવને તેમના બજેટ પ્રવચન દરમિયાન તેમણે કહી સંભળાવેલી કેટલીક હિંદી પંક્તિઓના તેમણે જ કરેલા હિંમતભર્યા અંગ્રેજી ભાષાંતર સંદર્ભે તેમને અહીં યાદ કરું તો મારા ભલા વાંચકો મને થોડોક સહી લેશે તેવી આશા સેવું છું. હું મારા વિષયની હદ બહાર જવા માટે દિલગીર છું, પણ તેમના હિંદી પઠનને તમારા મનોરંજન ખાતર તમારી નોંધ બહાર અહીં આપવા મારી જાતને રોકી શકતો નથી.

 

William’s Tales – 2nd Anniversary with 100 Posts

I feel illimitable pleasure to share my glad tidings with members of my blog family. Today marks the 2nd Anniversary of “William’s Tales” with its score of 100     posts. Being it a self-propelled blog, I had to work hard, but with no any physical or mental fatigue even at this age of 68. In the length of this period, many friends and strangers have mobilized me and motivated my creative works. List of all those behind my blog is very long indeed, but lack of space forbids me to enumerate all.

With apology of many un-named supporters of mine in this Article, I would like to remember and thank some who have helped me during my 2nd year of blogging. They are:

 

Peeping into an Exemplary Social Life of a Local Chief

Days roll in months and years; and, years in decades. It was a hard day of September 06, 1980 for not only village of Kanodar but for the people of distant areas who knew the Late with his popular name ‘Vajir-kaka’(kaka=uncle). About three decades have passed to demise of Honorable Mr. Vajirbhai Rajabhai Polra (Dawawala), but the deep wounds of his missing in the hearts of the people are not yet healed. I, the author of this post, have been in close contact with him and I have witnessed many more occasions of his life. I have somewhere written in my previous post that I had always been the friend of old hand people at my very young age and I was lucky enough that they all had, in reciprocate, accepted me as their nearest one in spite of much more age differences among us.

I am here with this post on V-kaka with my only aim to pass on the message of the Late’s missionary life to native young generation that has obviously born after 1980 and might not perhaps be knowing who ‘Vajirkaka’ was. When I am setting my finger tips in motion on keyboard of my computer to write something about V-kaka, it does not mean that nobody else has not contributed to build the image of this village of Kanodar and its community. Like V-kaka, they people have also done their great and their services cannot be evaluated accurately and justly even in number of volumes. Every human being is bound to live a double life. Let me clarify here that I have used the word ‘double’, not ‘dual’ in my statement. My learned Readers will easily understand that I am talking about human’s personal and social life. More a person cares for social life rather than personal one, more he or she advances towards greatness and becomes a local, national or global hero..

 

ML GRGOV

Click here to read this story in Gujarati Version 

Preface :

(On experimental grounds, some my literary works were published un-titled previously. I had asked my Readers to suggest the title though it was my work to do so. But, here, particularly for this post, I am not going to put any burden on your shoulders for giving the title to this post as it is already given above but in a non-dictionary word. It would be better if you restrict yourselves till you finish your reading to go to Key Notes at the end to set the letters and understand the title. Meanwhile, I hope you will bear with me until you do your job lately in this regard.

My impatient Readers will think that the turban is many times greater than the head. It means that the preamble is extremely extended, but I am helpless as this post falls in category of a certain form of literature. I’ll not explain now, but, the time will say what form of literature this Article is. I’ll not leave you hanging too much longer; but state that, now onwards, a story will follow. There are many kinds of literary stories, but if you are familiar with this peculiar form*, it is good; if not, don’t worry. Now, proceed on to read the story. If you agree with its content, it is great; if you do not agree with it, it is great again.)

ML GRGOV 

“Once there was a man, one of the rarest of the rare genius personalities. I’ll keep his name reserved; if need be, it will be disclosed later on. Meanwhile, let us call him Mr. Nobody. His life was the greatest challenge to science of human behavior. His conversation was efficient, his dialogues were witty and his satires were deep to understand. Sometimes, he asked some absurd questions to the people and at the end he had to answer them himself. People laughed, but he remained neutral not expressing any emotions on his face.

Though his conversations seemed absurd, people regarded him as an intelligent man. His absurd style was just to entertain the listeners and nobody felt insulted even in public. He once asked a Madam who was a Nursery teacher that she taught the kids the wrong pronunciation of alphabet ‘W’. He said that it is not double ‘U’, but it is double ‘V’.  He not only stopped there, but said further, “Have you ever thought that the non-capital pairs of ‘b’ and ‘d’ as well as ‘p’ and ‘q’ are nothing but mirror images of each other?”

One day, he was in an extra-ordinary mood and exposed his secret knowledge addressing to a small group of people in the words as ‘I am going to tell you a saying on an elephant. It is that a living elephant is worth INR 1,00,000; but when it is dead, its cost goes to INR 1,25,000.’ Then, he put an acute question ‘What do you think of a powerless President of a democratic nation?’ All were speechless as they could not follow what he meant to say. After the silence of few minutes, he said, ‘When President is in his office, he is a rubber stamp; but when he is no more, he becomes a postage stamp.” Some understood and some did not, all laughed and clapped; but Mr. Nobody was still like a statue. There are many such examples of his wit, presence of mind and sharp intellect; but there is no room for all those to narrate here.

People wondered how he could control his emotions and keep on his vacant face while in conversation. He made listeners laugh, but he won’t laugh. Some youngsters investigated that he had never laughed even in his normal private life. One day they asked him to unveil its mystery and to their surprise they came to know that since his age of 10 to present age over 50, he had neither laughed nor smiled even for a single time. In reply to what about early 10 years, he said that he had only laughed but never cried. He explained plainly that he had laughed while taking his birth also instead of crying as normally new born babies do. His mother said that he was an abnormal child reacting adversely. All the members of his family were used to distinguish his expression of emotions. They took both his crying and laughing otherwise in the sense as we actually mean those.

He had laughed last at the age of 10 when his father had died at his very young age. You will feel it hard to believe how a mentally normal child might laugh on its father’s demise instead of crying. When the members of his family, his mother, neighbors and rest relatives were crying, Mr. Nobody broke out in shouts of laughter in the equal degree to crying on such the sad event. He continued to laugh on until his father’s funeral service was over and his grief was calmed down.

His mother was annoyed great for shameful behavior of Mr. Nobody. She scolded and warned him in anger that she would kill him if ever he laughed until she lives. Mr. Nobody proudly said, “It was my last laughing of my life. My mother is no more now and even though I don’t laugh. I feel guilty still now that I had laughed at the death of my father. It was not my intention to do so, but I was helpless. I can’t understand till now why it happened so with me. There might be some neurological deficiencies by birth or the mechanism of expressing emotions would have failed to function. Whatever it may be, but it was the fact that my styles of expressing happiness and gloomy were exchanged.”

On that day, some youngsters made up their minds to make Mr. Nobody laugh at any cost. They were confident they would succeed nevertheless many would have failed. They all stood around him and began to tickle him in his arm-pits with poking of their fingers. Mr. Nobody felt the titillation so thrillingly that he began to laugh within no time after long past 40 years. Once his laughing started, it began to increase gradually. Within five minutes, his laughing reached its climax. His laughter was now out of control. His parents, Neurologists, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, class-mates, street friends – the list might grow extensive; but all were unsuccessful with this practice that those youngsters did. He laughed and laughed until his cheeks were red and eyes full of tears. He turned curved from the waist while laughing. He sat down on earth and continued his giant-like laughing.  The youngsters also enjoyed great. They shouted loudly and laughed fiercely with joy that they had at long last succeeded in their aim.

Now, those young men kept away from him leaving him alone to act upon his laughing. They were excited with the result that the engine of Mr. Nobody’s laughter had picked up and reached nearness to its full motion which had remained sticky for the last 40 years. At least for half an hour, Mr. Nobody kept on laughing. A great crowd of people had gathered there enjoying the non-stop laughter of Mr. Nobody.

But to the surprise of all, Mr. Nobody stopped laughing all of a sudden as if a vacuum brake was applied to the engine of his laughter. Mr. Nobody was no any more!”

– Valibhai Musa

Key Notes for Title ML GRGOV and form of story ZYHFIW*:-

Write all the 26 alphabets in sequence on a plain paper from A to Z in first line.

Similarly, write all alphabets from Z to A in second line.

Now find out related letters of the words “ML GRGOV” and “ZYHFIW” from the second line correspondently standing for each in the first line.

Hopefully, you have found out my title to the post and form of story also.