This post has reference to Sri K T Narayana's recent irrelevant posts
on the Feminist Writers.
um...
Well! This happened a long time ago. Once, in India, I went to meet a
physician friend in the hospital he worked. Just out of curiosity, I
asked him if I could just chat with any of his patients in the ward. He
said: 'sure, no problem.' He took me into the ward. I saw a very well
dressed young man, busy pacing in the ward. He greeted my doctor friend
with an army salute with his left hand. My friend reciprocated, and said
to me that I could talk to him. He told me that this young man was one of
his star patients with two post-graduate degrees. I was a little
surprised; he did not look like one that ever needed to stay in a medical
ward under doctor's constant care.
I walked to him, introduced myself, and we started talking. He talked
freely about several things: politics, poetry, philosophy, Nehru dynasty,
market forces, Nannaya's plagiarizations, corruption, communalism,
koochipoodi dance, his brother-in-law's mischief, etc, etc. Boy, you name
it, he knows about it! He sounded omniscient! He was very authoritative
in his replies and assertive in his statements. Even before the
completion of my question, he was ready with an answer. On everything, he
has the last word, at least he believed he has the last word, although,
he was frog-leaping from one topic to the other, quite incoherently,
making very little 'sense.' He told me that he was writing a
comparative study on Beowulf, Rig Veda and Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha.
We talked for about half-an-hour. Frankly, he did the talking, I
listened. All this time, he was holding his right index finger pointing
to the sky, held close to his right ear lobe, the other three fingers
tightly closed, and the thumb clasping. I got curious and asked:
"Why are you holding your index finger like that?"
He replied: "O! I have to hold it exactly like that!"
I did not understand. I thought he has some medical problem with the
phalanges of his finger.
"You mean, you can't fold that finger?" I asked.
He yelled, and yelled very confidently:
"Heck No! If I fold that finger, the earth would fall down and crumble!"
I quit.
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Regards to all and my best to Sri KT.
-- Venkateswara Rao Veluri