English, the Beautiful Language

English is a beautiful and versatile language, a great language to express your abstract thoughts very clearly and lucidly. English is the bridge to the future, to all advancement, improvement, progress and betterment. The latest scientific achievements and technological advancements are brought to your doorstep, of course no prizes for guessing - only in English. You cannot speak for a few minutes without using a single English word (excluding aachi thamizh pechu). As Rajaji said English is the gift of goddess Saraswathi and one of the very few good things our colonial masters have left behind us. It really is a wonderful experience to hear a stirring and eloquent speech in English or read an article written in the most grandiloquent or magniloquent style. It isn’t that easy to be pompous or bombastic or ostentatious in your writings, though without a shadow of doubt, it you will invite attacks and criticisms all around for that.

Millions, at least in our country, surreptitiously harbor pangs of desire to speak English fluently if not flamboyantly. This desire burns brightly or dully, but burns nevertheless. They would find it difficult to admit, except to a close few, that mastery of this beautiful language has eluded them somehow despite their best efforts. They literally  pine to misery and wish that somehow they gain mastery of this exotic language. Of course without the requisite effort or by a miracle - a la makakavi Kalidass.

But how does one gain mastery in English? Or for that matter how does one gain mastery in anything? Most self-development books delve deep and come up with the usual plethora of adjectives – dream, determination, devotion, dedication, sheer will power, burning desire, perseverance, passion, love, lust, interest, never say die and so on. The key is to have unending passion and an unquenchable thirst and a childlike curosity. The only catch in that is, nobody can teach you how to be passionate, how to be madly in love or how to acquire the burning desire. So all start with a bang, with great josh and even a bit of sporadic ferocity and but eventually fizzle out in a whimper. Sustaining the velocity and intensity is the problem. Very few get into the groove! Did not Calvin Coolidge succinctly put it ‘Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent’?

Casting aside all those issues, let me venture to suggest a few practical things.

Bacon said, ‘Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man’. So read, read and read. Start with newspapers, magazines and then slowly move on to light novels. Anything serious like management, philosophy in the beginning will make one more interested in the subject and lose focus on the enchanting and everlasting beauty of English.

 

For heaven's sake stop using SMS language, which will destroy the thought process for sure! Start writing a few letters to newspapers about anything. With Internet at your disposal, this should not be a tall order at all. Increase the frequency and keep churning out letters.

Write generous comments (no need to be parsimonious) on the blogs you read and probably the best place to start is with this blog. So go ahead and comment on this blog, right Now!

You can graduate slowly to writing articles on topics you love and like

Finally you can start your own blog at some point of time.

Then there is always poetry (if you can come this far, kudos to you) the refugee of all dreamers. Plato said that poetry is twice removed from truth, though I may not agree with this. I would go with Aristotle who gave a spirited reply to Plato - of course by writing a great treatise called poetics. And of course I also indulged in poetry.. Hmm looks like eons ago!!

Projects & Global Warming

Times when I descended into throes of agony & pangs of anguish when questioned about delays in projects!

I used to dish out the valid reasons (obviously not so valid for my bosses) about resource crunch, hazy and nebulous requirements, Customers changing requirements like a town bus driver shifting gears, the ubiquitous attrition, the mediocre skill set of the developers and so many other things under the sun that I have lost track of it. Probably it was not that convincing to bosses and sure there were the occasions when strands of doubts about capabilities, efficiency and effectiveness criss-cross in my mind.

Then if flashed to me one day, like Buddha getting enlightenment under the bodhi tree, sort of feeling Newton must have had when the apple dropped on his head or the excitement Fredrick Kekule should have experienced when he divined the structure of benzene. It dawned to me what is wrong with projects, project management and the world in general.

The scientists, environmentalists, ecologist and good measure of two bit socialists, politicians of all hues, the blokes in research institutes and academic universities like the JNU have all singing the same tune for such a long time that I chided myself for being so naïve and blind to such a glaring and obvious fact.

If it rains cats and dogs and brings Bombay to a standstill or if it does not rain, if arctic ice caps melt or do not melt, be it famines, droughts, cyclones, tornados, typhoons, heat waves, cold waves, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, mudslides, low rainfall, excess rainfall, dry river-beds, rivers in spate, tidal waves, tsunamis, fog, smog or any phenomena - it all because of only one thing – Global Warming. Blame it all on GW, anything and everything under the sun. Man is such a messy animal interfering with Mother Nature and incurring her terrible wrath. How dare these puny creatures even think of conquering her?

I had grossly underestimated the effects of global warming. I thought it was only to do with rain, temperature and earthly things, but I did not realize that its effects are all pervasive and all encompassing. At least our venerable folks have painted it to be so with some generous help from the media who come up with grim titles about the impeding doom and disaster.

On reflection I need not have made my mind a swirling cauldron of negative thoughts, undue worry and stark pessimism, after all my projects were not completed in time only because of global warming. So all project managers RIP.