Loquacious, garrulous, verbose, prolix and circumlocutory, keep on pouring out of their ilk incessantly. Status quo simmers with the whole planet bubbling in the English cauldron; such that the Queen coyly throne-ed at Windsor, doth shy away. For, many an alien tongues fain ape hers.
Portals of the courses in management and higher sciences (CAT and GRE) have erroneously lost ways as they apparently lead routes into transforming the adept technocrats and financers and of course a handful hailing from the mistook destination where they cart; into leagues of Words-worth. Words and their worth, I sigh. Times struggle, whipping the (I) cads until the crammers scale the Pinnacle, as the tutorials parade to Launch their careers. And we the crammers charge at the 26 alphabet with gung ho spirits.
Charged up; we have out of the blue, metamorphosed into obedient learners that we mug up, revise and cross check each other. I see in bewilderment, how we who dare not pick up our books, lovingly play this word game, hauling a word here, throwing a word there; jumping with zest and the lilting voices pronounce the meanings. And god forbids, if we fail to recollect the meaning be prepared for an act of prostration. “please, please, please….”, and the howling caterwauls and pleads increase in decibels as we yearn for the meaning threatening to look up the dictionary. It’s a sin to look up the word list once we’ve done a particular set of words. “No no, impudent is impertinent and pertinent is nowhere close to being its opposite.” So the addling English muddles us in the chaos of words and their meanings, synonyms and their antonyms; forget the later stages of sentence correction and grammar.
“Ok, temerarious?”
“Daring”, sounds a stammering voice. And there goes his points higher demanding much adulation as now it’s his turn to quiz others. “Achcha, tell me the meaning of narcissism.” And the game goes on inexorably. As if my roommates weren’t enough, the next day at college was a macrocosm of what I went through a night before, and thence it’s become mundane for us to bombard each other with ‘words’. (And then came the difference between its and it’s!)
“Words, done”, heaves a sigh of relief, as exasperated, my roommate finishes all the word lists in the prescribed book. Somebody tell him what it means to finish mugging up all the words; all! Shakespeare and Wilde would have turned in their graves, had they heard him. Even Tagore would have smashed him hard had he uttered ere his soul left for the heavens. But our CAT/GRE aspirant paces ahead, to complete the English syllabus, moving on to punctuations and language. “Yaar, this is nonsense! Wren n Martin taught that a coma can never be followed by an immediate and, and here they’ve changed it all”, cried another buddy head hung in dismay. (Buddy?? Yea yea it’s informal. All’s colloquial!)
The desperate cries and hullabaloos intensify by the day now.
“Oye, it’s Math and not maths.”
“Crap! Leave alone English, this means my strong fundamentals of mathematics too are now doubtful!” ([Sic] overheard in the dreary corridors of the college.) And somebody, please, explain him the difference between a teacher and mental levels when he says he will complain about the faculties. Where it is a faculty of the college and faculties by the Oxford is mental or physical power or talent. Is he going to complain to the God above?
While we carp and cavil about this congenial cant, I assume this makes no convivial mode of communication for it may be out of comprehension for many. Language is conversation that is cordial for all and sundry, binding everyone and understood by all, serving its purpose of existence. Serving the meaning of the word ‘Language’.
