Teaching Tinkering

 

An undergraduate at Anna Malai University, Murty was quite conceited and piqued himself on his knowledge of English. Incessantly, he was used to deliver lectures to the brats of his class on this language. Little by little, this ambitious graduate prevailed and made a figure as a persuasive speaker. One day, he was aghast to find his name figured in the list of English teachers selected to teach the all-important English. After seeking out the instructions from the lecturer of his college, he asked him why he had been chosen!?0h, came the flat reply! They might have clues about my passion. Maybe it will be so useful when it comes to arguing with the students. moreover, I was well adept, and decidedly they must have grasped something out of it.

The Dean, in a low tone, started explaining the taught the conduct expected from them, "We have fixed up a garret upstairs, and you are urged not to loiter around, barring your classroom. The stuff will be sent down to you in your class". And he retired.

It was a million-dollar prestige issue to negate the offer for Murty. To teach this foreign subject with utmost fragility and agility was another challenge. Any sort of omission or commission may bury his status without any warranty, and may also engrave an indelible blerimsh on his spotless career. To salvage his forte was his prime motto, not dampening his speaker's image. But he was a Superbrat and tough to give up this defiant task. He reclined in a chair in his room, plunging himself into language books. Thoroughly, he made himself abreast of what he felt was difficult. Umpteen times he rehearsed the topic to be picked for tutelage, rummaged through several book pages, dog-eared a few, kept open for reference, and lastly he summed up to select "Grammar". Grammar is the core and perfect study of any prose or treatise, he admonished.

With lively delight, he approached the classroom. "So, my boys, I will deduce and dissect the Grammar. Before I proceed, I am wishful to know how much you are aware of the paramount grandeur of this concept? "Will you please try Mr. Raju Sir? Noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, and tenses are called grammar", replied Raju presently with no second deliberation with a plausible smile. He coined English is nothing but a colossal jargon, an unravelled enigma Murty was quite pleased and deduced that the student was right. But the befitting answer, as manifested, is a chapter that gives the art of speaking and writing a language correctly. "Grammar is like a puzzle, without the cheatsheet!" To simplify it, he said, "It is a term which renders an apt usage of a particular Language. "But. Michael was reluctant to accept this dictum; he butted in, "Sir, what is meant by particular, is it called for English exclusively or pertains to other languages too?"Murty was flabbergasted and puzzled. How he slipped. He sensed himself in a tight corner, what to do? If he refutes, he has to justify with concrete illustrations. If he adheres to then he has to be financial. This uncalled-for question troubled him and his pomp, he responded to Michael's query and said with valour Yes, it is for English only. "But, Sir, in every language Grammar plays a stellar role, is English alien to all languages?" asked Kiran swiftly. These Intrüders, inroad again, put Murty in a Whirlpool of the deep ocean. His faculties of nerve seemed inane, his wit ordained him that it is easier to be taught than to teach any, teaching is not all a bed of roses. But his inner heart was in a mess, full of turbulence for not to stray from this opportunity. He regained his courage, wiped out his sweating face, and bounced back. Yes, in every language grammar exists, but in English it is of an unusual nature," said he in a single breath. After this bold answer, silence prevailed. This soothing atmosphere paved the way for Murty to inflate his impetus manifold. He picked up a chalkpiece and wrote down on the blackboard "Now I will take 'Gerund", Gerund is an English verbal noun. Certain words act both as nouns as well as verbs. At once Chandu stood up and enquired, "Sir, you were talking about Grammar. Is it over by now? Murty nodded his head without inviting any further upheavals. He at once continued, "Gerund is that form of verb which ends in-ing and has the force of a noun and a verb, like doing, playing, swimming, etc.

Excuse me, Sir, we are told that if a suffix like "ing is used in a verb in a sentence, it becomes the continuous form of tense as present continuous. past and perfect continuous tenses. Isn't this gerund ambiguous? moreover, it is complicated too, then why is it so designed, sir? asked Kale innocently. Murty was extempore for Kales. Why! How to win over undauntedly and gratiate him again fomented perturbation. He appeared as a hoodwink in front of innocuous guys, his sermons started a hubbub in that class, and his wisdom turned flaccid. His flaming of English made his sinews numb. He posed to be benighted so far as that subject concerned. His bizarre nerve counseled him to pack up. And at the spur of that turmoil bell rang as by God's decree. And Murty tasted a sigh of relief, hurriedly he stepped out of the classroom, chanting "Hosanna in an inaudible voice, thanked God for His compassion, and his Survival. Since then, this animation ceased, and he never applied his prudence to such enterprises.

Uncle Podger hangs a picture .

A humour studied in School days as lesson.

You never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-maker's, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say:

"Oh, you leave that to me. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I'll do all that."

And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl out for sixpenny worth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and start the whole house.

"Now you go and get me my hammer, Will," he would shout; "and you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! You run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell him, 'Pa's kind regards, and hopes his leg's better; and will he lend him his spirit-level?' And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom!—where's Tom?—Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture."

And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.

"Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came across such a set in all my life—upon my word I didn't. Six of you!—and you can't find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the—"

Then he'd get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out:

"Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now. Might just as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it."

And, when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family, including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a semi-circle, ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third would help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of the nail, and drop it.

"There!" he would say, in an injured tone, "now the nail's gone."

And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be kept there all the evening.

The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the hammer.

"Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, gaping round there, and you don't know what I did with the hammer!"

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he would take the rule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one and three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in his head, and go mad.

And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different results, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the original number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure it again.

He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical moment, when the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five, and trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano, a really fine musical effect being produced by the suddenness with which his head and body struck all the notes at the same time.

And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the children to stand round and hear such language.

At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on somebody's toes.

Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done.

"Oh! You women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle Podger would reply, picking himself up. "Why, I like doing a little job of this sort."

And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall with force nearly sufficient to flatten his nose.

Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up—very crooked and insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake and everybody dead beat and wretched—except Uncle Podger.

"There you are," he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the charwoman's corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. "Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that!"

by Jerome K Jerome.

With the Photographer,a short story by Stephen Leacock

It was during my school days I enjoyed a lot hope you too may like.

In those days studio played a major role in getting a person photographed unlike the present age where there is a variety of gadgets available.

One fine day, the Author went to a studio to take a photograph of him. “I want my photograph taken”, said the Author to the Photographer, here ‘my photograph’ plays a major role throughout the story. After looking at him, the Photographer who is a drooping man in gray suit asked him to sit and wait without enthusiasm. After an hour, he asked him to come in. Author went in and sat down under a beam of sunlight filtered through a sheet of factory cotton. He rolled his camera but was not satisfied with something which made the author look very grave and shook. “The face is quite wrong”, he said. Even though it is humiliating, the author accepted his statement. He found fault with every part of the author’s face and suggested that it would have been better if it was three-quarters full. He kept on complaining about his head, ears and his facial features and twisted it. Soon after, he told him to open his wide mouth a little and close it immediately. When the photographer continued finding faults with his face and physical appearance, author asked him to stop his complaints.

“This face is my face. It is not yours, it is mine. I’ve lived with it for forty years and…”

After speaking harshly, author started to rise from the seat; in the meantime the photographer pulled the string in the camera and took the photograph without the conscious knowledge of author. He had caught the author in a moment of animation (in today’s sense candid). Author asked to show his picture but he neglected and asked him to come back on Saturday to collect the developed proof.

Author came back to the photo studio on Saturday to receive his copy of the photograph. When the photographer unfolded the proof author was shocked and asked “is it me?” The photograph is quite unlike of him all his facial features were altered. The photographer had effected many changes and retouched them. He also removed the eyebrows and drawn new ones and adjusted his mouth a little. He happily stated that, he used a process named the delphide for removing them. He had even removed the hair that was on his face. This enraged Author to blast over the photographer. He said he had come there for a photograph exactly like him, the real him but the photographer has changed his whole appearance to show his professional photographer tag. He asked him to keep that photograph with him because, for him it is worthless bauble. In the end, Author left that studio with tears.

Originality is beautiful and real. Being an original is about finding something unique about one self amid the part of you that goes along with the flow. People who can bring you down are everywhere. Some do it unconsciously and some take pride in belittling other people and in making one feel bad about them self. If everything is judged by appearance, no one can see the sweet fruit hidden like in a jackfruit. Being your self is like a crown we wear it all the time. An original is worth more than a copy.

Indian creativity and innovative ideas

I want to thank all my friends who have forwarded chain messages to me since last three years and  still continuing..India is one of the most advanced country when we talk of use of any product and innovating ideas.It is known for creativity beyond human capacity. Which emerge  from not hitech IITans or IT professionals but from very low profile street corner poor engineers too.Every indian is a born engineer, scientist and researcher.He rarely use megaphone to convey this but believe in actions in telling time. We  are so much emotionally connected to living things as well as non - living things that we don't want to part with them.This attachment inspire his or her sleeping engineer or scientist to create or innovate so that that item can be in use again for different task.we reject intoto Japanese system use and throw concept.Even the original producer never know how modified version of his brainchild is in use in India. And it altogether endorse the phrase necessity is the mother of all inventions.If venture to see his product he will certainly salute us and will learn  what he needs to do and how his product can be used and what are the Indian test conditions and requirements.We have the inherited tinkering habit which allow us to essay before surrender.We know there is no scale on the Earth which can measure the human imaginations.We are pioneer in usage and after usage of any product or space or waste.We have outsmarted technicians and technology in the pursuit of repairs.The next one is even terrible 

 

What happened with whatsapp and Facebook social media chain messages.

I stopped eating the tasty kurkure after I heard that it has plastic in it.

I stopped going to movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with Aids.

Forwarded hundreds of messages but still waiting for free balance.

I smell like a rotten egg since i stopped using deo's because they cause cancer.

I also donated all my savings to a 7 year old poor girl who was about to die in hospital about 700 times.

Made 100 wishes before forwarding God's pictures & etc by now most of those 'wishes' are already married.

I have stopped drinking Frooti as every six-months, one worker having AIDS dies in the Parle factory & his blood gets mixed in the Frooti.

Every week Chairman & X & Y  Director of Whatsapp send SMS to forward to 8 person in contact list if not my whatsapp will be charged or Icon will not become Blue. I have not forwarded sms, still my whatsapp is FOC (free of cost).

If I don't take Your calls sometime, assume that my mobile is charging & I fear getting Burnt if I talk when mobile is charging. Because very alternate days it is fixed somebody died of this as informed in chain SMS.

Now if you don't send this message to your friends in next 10 seconds, a Coconut will Fall on Your Head tomorrow.

Last week one message I received  that if I send a link to 10 persons then I will be given free iPhone 6 . I sent link to no less than 51 but I couldn't give my shipping address I failed miserably in every attempt to post my address. Perhaps it may lying in the ship for want of my address.

one boy whose missing whatapp photo was circulated for 1 year even after he returned back next day.

Now the trend is increasing and is on test of the users now the latest offers is

Whatsapp is giving AI service as agent for anything you want or ask anything it will answer you.