From time to time we all get to read some very interesting signboards and announcements which can be quite hilarious. Recently, I saw a sign outside a mutton shop which said: “As you lick mutton hear by at Rs. 250 par KG. Cheap but no Cheat”. It took me a little while to realise what the sign said was that here you could buy the kind of mutton you liked at a most reasonable Rs. 250 per kilogram without any kind of cheating!
Very close by was another sign, perhaps drafted by the same scholar, which very crisply said: “plis no pis” under which I found a man standing and relieving himself unhindered. Since the man was very helpfully doing what the sign said he should not be doing there I needed no further help in deciphering it!
From time to time I come across interesting nuggets like this which tickle the mind. Take for instance a sign outside a tailor's shop which says “Ladies and gents undertaken for stitching”. But what takes the cake for literary excellence is a small pamphlet which is supposed to promote Nandini Milk in a novel way, which one of my patients, who is also a reader of my column, recently received from the distribution agent. Although I have not been able to see what is so novel about the whole experiment, it can undoubtedly be voted the best example of “Inglish” till someone comes up with something better! I am reproducing above a scanned copy of it so that readers can have a taste of the milk of human kindness!
The Sad Sound of Music:
Most readers will know that until very recently there existed a satellite radio station called “World Space” which provided uninterrupted, round – the - clock music and news to almost all corners of the world. It had a very good subscriber base even in India and I too was one of its subscribers. Although I do not spend much time listening to music I used to enjoy the privilege of being able to tune in to programmes of my choice at the occasional odd hour at which I happened to be in the mood to listen to some music.
The goodness of this radio station was that it not only provided a very wide choice of music to suit all tastes and all age groups but it also kept it completely free from ads and commercial breaks that are the bane of most radio and television programmes today. Yes, broadcasting is a very expensive business and therefore to keep themselves going channels depend heavily on the cash flow that comes from advertisement sponsorship.
While this arrangement is a necessary evil, commercial interruptions can very often become a nuisance that disturbs the tranquility to find which we often tune in to a particular channel. Many business houses, hotels and even hospitals had installed “World Space” receivers to provide a continuous flow of soft music in their corridors. Some months ago “World Space” suddenly shut shop and subscribers were told that without sponsorship it had become impossible to run this service. It appears its owners had decided to apply for bankruptcy as they were unable to discharge their financial obligations to their creditors.
While I regretted this development as a loss of a good radio channel for which I had just renewed a year’s subscription, the loss of this facility meant different things to different people and I realised how much it meant to them only when I started reading people’s reactions in letters to the editors of newspapers and also in blog sites. People, especially those at drab night-time jobs and those who were separated from their families, wrote about how they had come to depend on it emotionally and how it had provided them the only relief from boredom and depression. There were many suggestions that some large business houses or philanthropists should take over the facility and continue to run it as a service to society. But despite much initial optimism, such proposals never found any takers and the service still continues to remain suspended except for its Osho channel which still remains on the air, thanks to the commune’s seemingly endless supply of funds.
But just a few days ago there was a letter in the mail for me which was marked “World Space”. I quickly opened it hoping that it was either an announcement of the resumption of the service or the refund of my subscription. Sadly it was neither. What the envelope contained was a set of claim papers from a firm of solicitors who were the legal agents of the organisation in India. The covering letter stated that as the bankruptcy application had been filed in a court at Delaware in United States, as a legal requirement all the subscribers were being given their legally due chance to file a claim for the refund of their money.
The letter had been conveniently posted to reach me a day after the last date to file this appeal had passed. And a note at the bottom very conveniently stated that the claim papers had to be physically handed in at an US address and they would not be acceptable by fax or any other electronic means. It is no wonder that someone very wise has rightly said the “law is an ass”. The law is an ass not only in India as we all think but also all over the world and it can not only take us for an expensive donkey ride but also kick us most painfully!
