The

Virupaksha
Monologues.
Wherein it is demonstrated,
among many another thing,
that all important questions
were fully discussed in 1991.

from the archives

of words-l
millennial commemoration edition
December 1999
The Monologues
 I
Wed, 6 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
18:48:00 IST Subject: Forgive my long letter; it is only my first time!

Most esteemed Sirs/Madams,

I, Virupaksha Mokshagundam, have chanced
to observe that a list for “English Language Discus-
sion” is existing on this electronic network. I am
always very desirous of ascertaining how english is
used in the modern world, and most especially how
her usage is made by persons who own her as their
birth-tongue.
But, Sir (and Madam also) I am coming very
very rapidly to the conclusion that the people in the
opposite half of the earth are not correctly han-
dling her at all! Contrary to this, people of India,
due perhaps to having only a stepchild’s relation to
her, hesitate very much to maltreat her! And so it is
happening that the only correct english in the
world is being used in India!
Before a thousand people dispute this fact, I
am demonstrating my statement by giving illustra-
tions. Unfortunately, I am at the moment in posses-
sion of very few undeleted messages left from the
torrent of missives I kept getting inundated with by
the hour, but even that is, I say, amply abounding in
shudder-generating solecisms! I am producing
parts of it below:

>>From: IN%“[email protected]”
>>“English Language Discussion Group”
>>Subj: Re: Of all the stupid things . . .

>>Sorry to be a little slow replying to this one . . .

5
Should not, I ask, this be written as “slow in reply-
ing”, failing which, should not at least a comma (“,”)
be inserted?
Also, it is a bad habit to leave sentences hang-
ing Trishanku-like in midair.
Banish the three dots from ends of sentences, I
say, and let there only be one reassuring one!

>>Obviously there may be reason to have statistical

>>information but does it have to be a part of the
>>student's record?

To your humblest servant, “obviously there may be”

is sounding counter to logical faculties! If one is so
sure as to say “obviously”, why is one also saying
“may be”?

>>tricks to allow information to be kept but not to be

>>linkable.

To allow anything NOT to be linkable also seems to

me to be forcing manifestly negative entities to BE!
Leave such jobs to poets, I say, who will carry on
supplying nomenclature to airy negativities!

>>(legally I hasten to add!).

And what, one wide-eyedly wonders, does one’s

very good friend do illegally? The other query
which is springing to one’s mouth is: what did he
finally add?

>>Not their official ID card but their personal

>>information.

Pray what manner of sentence is this? There no

verb in it, I saying in jest!

6
 >>Anyway — hang in there. This *is* a good list!

I am not professing to know the meaning of “hang

in there”. However, I am thinking that this is a new
phrase minted in recent times, so that all users are
not completely familiar with it. But this is most
precisely what I am subscribing to this list for! I am
still assured (I assure you) that wading through the
flood of mail will leave my english prodigously
improved!
But wait! Even as I sit here, offering words to
the strange machine, I am getting one more mes-
sage! What is it?

>>I can but try, Karen; I may watch the Arsenio Show,
>>but I'm not all that hip. [or hype, if you prefer. I
>>think.<sigh>]

>>Dis - Don’t you dare dis my old lady! He was dissin’

>>the flag by sewing it to the back of his 501s.

>>Dig?
>>Ruth

No! I am not digging this at all! What is all this, I

say? And now that I am saying this, I also ask: Why
is everyone attaching “cha” to “bet”? Why are some
people being so preoccupied with chilis and cres-
cents? It is astonishing!
I apologise many hundred times for being so
impertinent as to write this, but this matter was
becoming urgent for me beyond bounds of toler-
ance. So I am hoping only that no one considers
this offensive. I would also be elated to the limit if
people provide explanation for this amazing phe-
nomenon, viz. the rightful claimants to english as
their speech-carrier manhandle her so badly! Truly,

7
 it must be because familiarity begets contempt,
just as in the case of bhilla women of the moun-
tains who chop sandalwood to feed the fire in the
stoves.
I take your leave with the greatest respect.

Yours sincerely,
Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

II
Thu, 7 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
13:45:00 IST Subject: RE: Re: Kaloo kalay, oh frabjous day!

1 O frabjous day, calooh, calay!

2 the vorpal BLADE
3 the FRUMIOUS bandersnatch

one must be careful when quoting

I remain your most humble servant,

VM

III
Wed, 13 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
01:26:00 IST Subject: The second letter now, for ending the subject.

This letter I can only describe as “RE: Re: re: The

forgivable long letter from TIFRVAX, India, and not
from “Galmin/Donut””, ha, ha.
But, seriously speaking, god! what is happen-
ing? I have come back after a trip out, to see if my
anyone is answering to my letter at all, and what do
I see? Filed away by my good friend Tushar (under
the kind umbrella of whose computer account I am

8
writing these letters) I am seeing some thirty-odd
replies!
I am really touched by this, I say!
But what is this apology business, I ask? I am
not seeing any need for apology, just because peo-
ple are finding my writing funny! It is only bearing
out what my old teacher was always saying: that
“good” Kannada or “literary” Marathi will not
translate directly into dignified English.
I have read intently and with great care the let-
ters so kindly sent, especially those by Ruth Han-
schka, Tony Harminc, Natalie Maynor, and I must
say, I am agreeing with them entirely! Indeed, is it
not more sensible and rewarding to enquire how
people ACTUALLY speak, rather than preach loftily
about how they should? It seems, when told, to be
the only undertaking worthy of a truly scientific
temper. I am sitting here blushing with hot shame
at not having realized this elementary point. But
disabusement in this manner, it is only the best
form of enlightenment.
So if we are insisting on talking about apolo-
gies, it is I who must apologise, to each and every-
one who is finding the letter irritating, and
especially to Mr. Tony Harminc, whose letter I was
so impertinently pointing to from the altar. Please
accept most contrite apologies, Sir!
I am now trying hard to keep communications
short and nonnonsensical, and most especially to
suppress the (so natural) urge to allow present pro-
gressives to proliferate!
Everyone who sent messages, and spent valu-
able time explaining trivial points, I am thanking
them from the heart. I am indeed finding myself so
moved that I am submitting below a variant of the
icon:
:.-)

9
 where the extra dot is denoting a tear.
Is it not appropriate?
I remain your respectful servant,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

IV
Sat, 16 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
01:21:00 IST Subject: MY ramblings on “poetry”.

I was intending all this time to “lie low” and

observe how english is being spoken but now I am
thinking, after seeing a great deal of words
exchanged on poetry, that I might as well make my
own humble contribution of tallow to the flames!
I am surprised how almost everyone is seem-
ing to give such little importance to rhyme! Actu-
ally I am not assigning to it overmuch significance
myself. What I really want to say is that the FORM
of a poetic work is of prime importance. (no pro-
gressive, see?).
The music of the words, the voluptous plea-
sures of uttering syllables of human language, are
they of no value at all? To me, they are seeming to
be the real features which are setting poetry apart
from prose. Further, do we not sometimes call even
scientific works “sheer poetry”, by virtue of their
elegance and economy? (Do not take THIS remark
very seriously, but it is still of some importance.)
Yes, I say, if it is not titillating one's mind with
it's form, it is not poetry; even if it's content is of
immense profundity it is at most an academic trea-
tise or literary prose, depending on whether truths
or lies are said in it. Respectively, of course.
And now you may ask, if nothing is said in it,
what then? It is then called journalism.

10
 Modulo the jokes, I am requesting you to con-
sider my opinion, for I am serious. Take the recent
topic of “frumious” vs “frubious”, for instance. It is
quite all right to use poetic license and say “frubi-
ous”, but then pray what kind of bandersnatch are
you speaking of? Fruity, furious, frugal, a very
ambiguous creature indeed! (Mathematicians here
would call it “frobenius split”!.)
Now a “frumious” bandersnatch, on the other
hand, fumes madly in it’s fury, and this, in it’s reso-
lution, is very satisfying, though perhaps not so
much for the beamish boy.
Why am I writing this drivel? It is to empha-
sise that one MUST assume, especially in the case
of Lewis Carroll, that he has spent a lot of time con-
structing the sounds of his poems; fine-tuning and
optimising his words, as it were. Since it is a “non-
sense” poem this fact is even truer, and it is
strengthening my case, since: THIS is true poetry,
almost completely freed of the chains of “meaning”,
a torrid, pure dance of human sounds which rouses
only glimmering ghosts of “meanings” in every
mind it chances to encounter.
I am stopping now, since my letter is already
intolerably long, but let me say that I am possessing
more arguments supporting my point. It is just so
happening that I cannot get them together to pro-
duce a single focussed argument. I am having a sus-
picion that it is electronic mail which prevents me
from giving sustained thought to things, but I will
write about this later.
I remain,
Truly yours,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

11
 P.S.: I say, I am just now noticing that I am writing
about “truer facts” somewhere! I am writing a letter
about that and other things in just some time!
Please read that also.

V
Sat, 16 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
02:44:00 IST Subject: Four disconnected topics.

Here I am, writing again. I am mentioning my more

trivial doubts first.
1) Firstly, I am confused when to say “it’s” and
when “its”. My question is: is there a unique one
which is the short form of “it is”, and if so, which is
it? The other one is: “belonging to it”.
2) Is it really wrong, or I should be saying
“unconventional”, to split infinitives? I am submit-
ting a funny sentence I made up once:

-> To make sense of this sentence, you are adviced to

pay to not pay attention to split infinitives and to
ignore to only read unsplit ones.

3) With reference to e-sleep, I must say that

half the people in this institute will not realise there
is a joke in this. This is because many north Indians
are actually pronouncing sleep and study as e-sleep
and e-study from time immemorial! They are mak-
ing this peculiar pronunciation when an initial ‘s’-
sound is followed by another consonant.
Now I am talking a bit about the use of the
progressive reflecting the state of my own mind! I
am more used to Marathi than Kannada, and in
this language at least, what one would say for “now
I will talk” or “now I am talking”, in my feeling lies
between the direct translations of the two. The

12
 english usage of the progressive is not taught. It
only SEEMS natural. But talking about mental
states is sounding a little far-fetched, I say! Perhaps
Marathi would have been a good language for Mr.
Einstein, since people are habitually using the sin-
gle word “avakaash” to denote both space and time
in Marathi since very long ago! Therefore I would
say that just looking at me writing “the fact is even
truer”, one must not directly conclude that I am
having several degrees of truth in my mind! As I
said earlier, it is only sounding natural at the time.
(Talking about progressives again, if one was
being very strict, almost the only correct usage that
could be made is in: “I am typing this very sen-
tence.”!)
I remain most sincerely yours,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

VI
Tue, 19 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
02:09:00 IST Subject: Ambiguous uncles, ambiguous aunts.

Dear Sirs/Madams,
Before coming to my main query, I want to
explain that I am getting your excellent messages
after a very big time lag. Therefore I am unable to
join any discussion in its high noon. This is no
great disadvantage, however, since I am generally
having very little of any importance to say.
A propos espy/estop etc., though, I am think-
ing that it might interest some people to know that
the Urdu speakers are regularly using the word
“ispanj” to denote a cloud bereft of rain. They are
also using it to refer to “sponge”. I do not know

13
which of the words in quotes is an entailment of
the other. Perhaps someone is aware?
But on to this question, for the answer of
which I am getting most desperate. It is: Are there
english words which are of common usage which
distinguish among the various types of uncle, aunt
or cousin one might have?
I must explain that I am calling my father’s
brother a different “sort” of uncle than my mother’s
brother. This is perhaps only because there exist
different words for them in my language. In english,
however, a cousin may be female or male, and be
related to you through a maternal or paternal uncle
or aunt. This is most inconvenient for people like
me, since a cousin, read about in english, assumes
an eightfold life! “Tom!”. No answer. Fine indeed,
but Tom’s aunt did not merge into unity till very
much later in the book! A disconcerting experi-
ence!
If there are in english such words as I am
describing, no one here is knowing them. I read
once about a person who tried to remedy this by
inventing words like “mobroson” to denote the
cousin who is the mother’s brother’s son. Alas,
these constructions are impractical and ludicrous.
Besides, I can see in this system no way to avoid
calling my paternal aunts “fasists”, and though this
is very felicitous and truthful, in my case and Bertie
Wooster’s, it is not a politic thing to practise.
So to anyone who is being knowledgeable in
this matter, I request to kindly inform me as fast as
your business permits.
Yours in gratitude,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

14
 P.S. I have received just now a letter enquiring
about preoccupation with alliteration. I am submit-
ting a letter about such preoccupations of the San-
skrit poets which will perhaps amuse you.

VII
Tue, 19 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
03:18:00 IST Subject: Ambiguous uncles, ambiguous aunts.

Practically even before I sent my letter, back came a

reply from Mr. Gary Cunningham. I am most thank-
ful, but now I have to live in a world where aunts
and uncles are forever fuzzy. I will take some time
to get used to this, I say! I must add that it is not of
very great importance to overspecify one’s relatives.
Why, the heroes of the Mahabharat most probably
did not even consider nephews and sons as differ-
ent. At least they were using the words inter-
changeably, regardless of how distant a nephew
was, or so I hear.
As for calling elderly friends “uncle”, that is
not uncommon here, too. In fact do we not all call
strangers “brother”? In Bombay the only way men
are addressing each other is “bhai”, which of course
means “brother”. How women are addressed is
much more complicated, and so I won’t needlessly
add deadweight to this missive.
Truly yours,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

15
 VIII
Wed, 20 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
01:21:00 IST Subject: RE: Re: Ambiguous uncles, ambiguous aunts.

>Just to throw another iron in the fire, Yiddish has a

>term that describes the relationship between the
>respective parents of a married couple. In other
>words, my wife’s mother and my parents are
>‘makhatunim.’

Yes, there are such terms in most Indian languages

also. For instance in Marathi the
(son_or_daughter)-in-law’s father is “vyahi”;
mother, “vihin”.

IX
Mon, 25 Feb From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
91 01:35:00 IST Subject: Alliteration.

Dear Sir/Madam,
I have read the letter by Ms Nancy S Ellis, talk-
ing about the irresistible lure of alliteration. The
ancient poets who wrote in Sanskrit called allitera-
tion “Anupraas” and counted it amongst the
“baser” figures of speech (as opposed to “nobler”
ones like the metaphor). This however did not save
them from falling prey to what are perhaps the
worst excesses of alliterative verse to be found in
any literature of the world! Some of these are truly
humorous, but also rather awesome demonstra-
tions of verbal acrobatics.
I am drawing your attention to the epic poem
Kiratarjuniya written by the great poet Bharavi.
Here, in the midst of truly noble poetry, one will
find verses like these:

16
 (To simplify reading, I am splitting words into sylla-
bles. But I say, writing this in roman is a difficult task!)

SA SAA-SIH SAA-SU-SUH SAA-SO

YE-YAA-YE-YAA-YA-YAA-YA-YAH
LA-LAU LEE-LAM LA-LO-LO-LAH
SHA-SHEE SHA-SHI-SHU-SHEE SHA-SHAN

which is to be found in the 15th canto (sarga). This

verse is not nonsense. In fact, most critics are say-
ing that it is not even sounding very contrived.
Or take for instance this one:

CHAA-RA-CHUN-CHUSH-CHI-RAA-RE-CHI
CHAN-CHACH-CHEE-RA-RU-CHAA RU-CHA
CHA-CHAA-RA RU-CHI-RASH-CHAA-RU
CHAA-RAI-RAA-CHAA-RA-CHAN-CHU-RA

which uses only two sounds. There exists an even

more incredible one:

NA NO-NA-NUN-NO NUN-NO-NO
NAA-NAA NAA-NAA-NA-NAA NA-NU
NUN-NO-NUN-NO NA-NUN-NE-NO
NAA-NE-NAA NUN-NA-NUN-NA-NUT

I have separated syllables as I would pronounce

them, and not according to the actual sandhis
involved.
As I said, these verses do make perfect sense.
But I say, what a performance in its own right! One
stares in fascinated horror at what lengths even a
poet can go to. Perhaps they did it to satisfy the vul-
gar tastes of their patrons. But frankly, I say, I am
finding myself unable to staunch a flow of admira-
tion.
These three examples are from the 15th sarga
of the Kiratarjuniya. There are many more exam-

17
 ples, some extremely intricate, to be found in litera-
ture. They play with rhymes, homophones,
palindromes, and verses with other symmetries.
But the “anupraas” is seeming to be all pervading.
I am having special interest in this perhaps
exclusively Indian tendency, for I too am a victim of
it. Had my respected grandfather not been so fond
of resounding words, I would not have had the mis-
fortune to bear a ridiculous bombastic name all
through my life. But now I am stalking furtively the
corridors of this institute, reduced to a nervous
wreck by trying to keep beyond a dense curtain my
secret sorrow: the gale force of my official quadru-
ple-barrelled name, which I have asked very few to
brave.
Yours,

Mokshagundam Takshakabhushana
Virupaaksha Kaamaakshivara.

X
Thu, 28 Feb 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
02:33:00 IST Subject: This is not a very serious letter!

Dear Sirs/Madams,
There are some comments I am wanting to
make which you may find interesting. They are in
response to several different letters I have seen.
1. Some days ago I saw someone writing
something to the effect that an empty set is not
empty. An empty set IS empty, I say! Pray what else
can it be? One is not even needing to know what
“empty” means in order to say that an empty set is
empty.
2. I am really very amazed to know that
“squirrel” is being pronounced the way it is. If any-

18
one in the United States hears me talking it is going
to be found very funny. But what are you thinking
of the word “whirring”? Perhaps it is not pro-
nounced with an /ur/?
3. Regarding a-e-i-o-u, I am feeling very sure
that I have seen the word “acheirous”, but this may
be wrong.
4. I say, I cannot think of a word with three
consecutive double letters, but I am thinking of
“committee”. Should one not say that there is only
an “iota” of a flaw in it?
5. “Nine yards”, I am surmising, more whimsi-
cally than with recourse to logic, may refer to the
nine yard saree, which is the longest and in some
sense the completest garment one wears (if
female).
6. Road signs: This is perhaps not what you
meant by “funny road signs”, but it is nevertheless
humorous. You must understand that signboard
painters here are not well versed in english. I have
observed a notice on a road in Bombay which says:
“Motorists please allow some space for pederas-
tians.”
7. There was some inquiry about whether my
name is not unweildy. It is, and I have found it out
when I was applying to take the Graduate Records
Examination for american schools. I have no obvi-
ous way of shortening it. “Virup” sounds ugly, for
that is what it means, and “Veeru” is sounding like
a denizen of the criminal classes—with whose
mental propensities mine would differ to a certain
extent.
Allow me to say a few things more. Not wish-
ing to detract from the high merit of most of the
contributions, I am still thinking that more
restraint would have been desirable when sending.
Is it always a good thing, I ask, piping one's stream

19
of consciousness unprocessed into the MAIL com-
mand? I understand that I am not one entitled to
prescribe behaviour, and so I request you to take
this not extremely seriously. But perhaps there is
some truth in saying that everyone makes much
more careful statements when they are harder to
broadcast. I sometimes fear that the electronic mail
will corrupt whatever thinking faculty I possess, by
goading me into sending without hesitation the
first thought which is born in my mind.
Do not misunderstand this please! I am enjoy-
ing this list very much! In fact I am finding myself
becoming more and more like one of you! Indeed
the similarities have gone up to such an extent that
...
But oh karma! I will have to end the message I
say! There is my pet elephant baby, Kuvalayaap-
eeda, trumpeting impatiently for its daily walk and
the round of plucking and crushing lotuses! After
that I must spend a tense ten minutes studying
tenses in bambaiya hindi and—oh in the names of
the polynomial Vishnu!—I must learn the whole
Warli tribal language before 9 a.m. tomorrow, and
it is already 11 p.m.! Kindly excuse me!
Taking your leave in great haste,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

20
 XI
Tue, 19 Mar 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
17:41:00 IST Subject: E00 A silly query.

E01 Dear Sir/Madam,

E02
E03 God save me from writing at the slightest
provocation,
E04 but I say, this activity is in a large measure
addictive! So
E05 here I am writing about sundry topics I have
seen discussed on this
E06 list, to which I am thinking I could make cer-
tain contributions!
E07
E08 I read communications by some people
which expressed annoyance
E09 at certain usages of the language, and I must
say it relieved me,
E10 since I too am finding some things extremely
irritating when I am
E11 seeing them on a printed page. I am sorry I
cannot enumerate the full
E12 set of these, but I am giving you some exam-
ples.
E13 One is the utilisation of the letter “n” as a
conjunction. It had
E14 mystified me very much when I had seen it
first, but I am not getting
E15 used to it even after knowing that it denotes
“and”.
E16 The other thing I am disliking very much is
this great penchant people
E17 are having for giving to news items headlines
with punning allusions.

21
E18 If one reads about “elephantine problem”, to
give a recent instance,
E19 one can be sure that the news is about an ele-
phant holding up traffic.
E20 Is it necessary, I ask, to title a cat's photo-
graph as “purrfect”? I
E21 could ask the same about other usages like
“jest in fun”.
E211 I would also like too add, as an afterthought,
the peculiar habit
E212 of denoting mathematics by the word “math”.
This usage has never failed
E213 to revolt me, and I am feeling that it is suc-
ceeding only in emasculating
E214 a glorious body of thought. However, I may be
biased in my opinion, since
E215 I learn mathematics in all seriousness. Also I
might be shying from it
E216 since it is only something that I am not used
to.
E217
E22 There are other faults one can pick. I am
reading everyday the
E23 Times of India, but even in a respected publica-
tion like it I have
E24 found several very funny statements arising
out of misuse of language.
E25 Perhaps I will send you, for your amusement, a
list of some I found in
E26 a single paper.
E27
E28
E29 Allow me to ask a question which is troubling
me a bit. I was
E30 looking recently at a book which concerned
itself with “George

22
E31 Orwell’s English and Ours”. I am sorry to be
unable to give precise
E32 references, but I was not reading it too care-
fully—in fact I just
E33 skimmed through it. One statement caught
my eye, however. It was
E34 saying something to the effect of the following:
E35 It is well-known (said the author) that one
can think of a
E36 large family of modern languages, including
several Indian and
E37 European languages, to have arisen substan-
tially from a single source.
E38 A typical word would start from the “primal”
tongue and appear in
E39 different versions in different offshoots of the
language.
E40 I am aware that this account is not sounding
sufficiently
E41 precise. I apologise for that. The statement
which really surprised me
E42 was a passing remark the author made, to the
effect that the reason
E43 for the words changing precisely in the way
they did was “not known”,
E44 though it was fairly certain that it had noth-
ing to do with the
E45 anatomy or predilections of the particular
family of speakers.
E46 Now I had always thought that the “sound” of
a language, the
E47 cadences and the syllables peculiar to it, arise
wholly from the
E48 peculiarities of the speakers. Is it not natural
to think that the
E49 word for the number 8 in our ancient lan-
guage (the illustration the

23
E50 author gave) has turned to “ashtau” in San-
skrit, because her speakers
E51 found it the most natural (or, so to say, the
least unnatural)? Why,
E52 can we not say exactly the same thing for the
rules of inflection, the
E53 way consonants change in the sandhis, these
being the little things
E54 which ultimately determine the sound of a
language? Do not
E55 underestimate this property any language
has; people can identify a
E56 language by it’s sound, without so much as
knowing the “ABC’s” of it.
E57 My opinion is that there are minute differ-
ences in people’s
E58 speech-making equipment which go to make
languages sound “guttural” or
E59 “tipsy” or “lisping” or “sonorous” or “harsh”.
They may not affect the
E60 language sounds in a very crude and obvious
manner, but they may
E61 induce in the language (or dialect) a propen-
sity to sound as it sounds,
E62 the propensity then being reinforced by con-
stant usage.
E63 Needless to say, I am possessing no logical
arguments in
E64 favour of this opinion, but had it not been for
the book I would have
E65 gone on believing in it, without so much as
realising the essentially
E66 arbitrary nature of such a belief.
E67 Can someone having some leads to this ques-
tion please reply?
E68 I would be most obliged to have an answer.
E69

24
 E70 Yours with respect,
E71 Virupaksha Mokshagundam.
E72
E73 P.S. Was there not going to be a discussion on
“semantic fields”?
E74 Please do start it; I can guarantee the pres-
ence of at least one avid
E75 listener!

XII
Tue, 19 Mar 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
17:35:00 IST Subject: Now that I am in touch again.

Dear Sir/Madam,
The last few days have been very trying for me,
since I was not receiving any mail whatsoever from
this excellent list. I, while thinking about it and
pondering on the possible events which could have
lead to such a disaster, sometimes contemplating
such thoughts as to whether I had been removed
from the muster of subscribers for being too dis-
gusting and tiresome, ate. I, praying feverishly that
communications be restored, regardless of the ago-
nies I undergo while extracting semantic content
from so many of the postings which eclipse my
friend's personal mail, fitfully slept.
But now all is well, and the joy of it! Truly I
cannot describe it on Words! There is only one way
I am seeing to celebrate this; it is to satiate my too
unmanageable cacoethes scribendi. Therefore I am
sending you a letter which I intended sending long
ago. I am aware that not many will be interested in
it now, but has this merest of objections ever
deterred a person possessing such gall as I do?

25
 Before I go away, let me bring to your attention
a sentence I observed on this very list. Some of you
may be knowing that I am very sensitive to any con-
troversies about using the present progressive in
peculiar contexts. But here is the sentence I saw
(amongst some others):

>So that’s it.

>
>I’m teaching a class right now so I have to go.
>
>Chris

It is “ringing a bell”, is it not? Since I have never

chanced upon classrooms with computer terminals
in them, perhaps, I found this sentence thoroughly
mysterious. But native speakers of english—I have
stopped making coherent sense out of their out-
pourings many months ago.
Please read my other letter also, since I have
asked a question in it an answer to which I would
really appreciate reading.
With respect,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XIII
Thu, 21 Mar 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
02:19:00 IST Subject: RE: Dialectical term for carbonated beverage

The “Subj:” of this letter is indeed mystifying. “Dia-

lectical word”—I say, this is taking the name “Dis-
cussion Group” too seriously!
Yours truly,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

26
 XIV
Thu, 21 Mar 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
01:30:00 IST Subject: Two tentative prepositions and “thrice”.

Dear friends,
(The line above is an invention of mine.)
I was surprised to learn that the word
“amongst” could be thought to be archaic. Why, it is
quite a commonly used word! Subscribing to
“WORDS-L” has expanded my horizons to a very
large extent. Since the subject has come up, may I
make a similar query about the word “thrice”? Is it
in common use or is it, too, considered a fossil?
Everyone around me is using it quite regularly, but
rather puzzlingly it is puzzling some fresh imports
from the U.S.A..
A propos the topic of prepositions, I have two
questions to ask:
1. Can the word “astride” possibly be consid-
ered a preposition? I have seen the phrase “astride
the horse” somewhere.
2. The same question about “via”. Perhaps it is
not considered standard english.
Question 2. above reminds me of a phenome-
non which might amuse you. Let me first point out
that (north) Indian languages have “postpositions”
functioning in the same way as prepositions do in
english. Since the civic transport offices here are
peopled by more or less total illiterates, this gives
rise to completely misleading descriptions of pub-
lic bus routes in english. For instance, if a bus is to
go from A to B (defying Zeno) through C, the ver-
nacular would strictly read “A-from C-via B-to”. In
practice it is “A to C-via B”. This is quite correct so
far, but imagine the translation! It is : “A to C via B”!

27
 Such subtle phenomena must have probably
made thousands of innocent tourists lose their way,
and an equal number of natives misunderstand the
meaning of “via”. But, “mark the sequel”! Now some
kindhearted soul has made the corrections in the
english renderings, but the vernacular notices have
simultaneously changed! Thus the natives will now
wander on foreign strands and the tourists will be
confused about Indian postpositions.
There is another thing which is puzzling me.
(This is rapidly becoming the most common sen-
tence in my letters, is it not?) It is to do with the
phrase “one in the same”. I cannot see how confu-
sion arises in such cases due to HEARING incor-
rectly. There will be some ambiguity in hearing a
phrase, of course, but surely it is by an easy, if not
an automatic, process in one’s mind that the sound
is correlated with a standard phrase which is fre-
quently appearing in print! In fact, that is the only
way any word is finally fixing himself in one’s mind.
Ergo, the origin of such constructions as “one in the
same” has to be provided with less trivial explana-
tions.
Please let me know about “thrice”, “astride”
and “via” as soon as your business permits. It is not
very urgent, however.
Sincerely yours,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

P.S. I am still laughing heartily at the “texting . . .

texting” message. Forgive me.

28
 XV
Thu, 21 Mar 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
23:37:00 IST Subject: “three-peat” and “cooking my daughter”. Also
“glittering”.

Dear Sir/Madam,
I would like to make some comments about
certain letters I read yesterday.
The word “three-peat” sounds rather funny,
and I congratulate the person who thought of it. I
submit that there is a very natural word which does
the job of “three-peat”. That word is “reiterate”. It
seems that this fact is not generally appreciated,
but one only has to reflect for a moment to realise
that if one wants to be strictly logical, to reiterate
anything would necessitate doing it thrice (three
times) at least; for after all, mere iteration requires
doing something twice. But alas, there are people
who are getting so carried away while speaking,
that drunk by their own speech they say “once more
I reiterate”, when they are only saying something a
second time, falling fully twice short of the mini-
mum quota dictated by logic.
I am thankful that the discussion on “semantic
fields” has started; I admit that I was waiting for it
more due to being intrigued by the name than any-
thing else, but it is interesting stuff nevertheless. I
cannot resist repeating something I read in the let-
ter from Mr. Bobaljik; it struck me as extremely
bizarre:

“If it [the letter] comes twice, please erase the other

one.”

“The other one”—a mysterious phrase; a shadowy

sign, lacking a referent.
I hasten to add that the letter was excellent.

29
 Reading the word “onomatopoeia” brought
another question to my mind. Consider the word
“glittering”—can it in any sense be decreed as ono-
matopoeic? Perhaps the question will be more sen-
sible in the context of some foreign languages—
“lakh-lakheet” in Marathi for instance, or the San-
skrit “jhalan-jhala” as used by the great poet
Muraari in his “Anargharaaghava”, both denoting
the same quality as does “shining”, or more prop-
erly “glittering”. It seems intuitively clear that these
words are “onomatopoeic”, but then all that glitters
does not make a sound, still less a sound which
could be unhesitatingly associated with glittering
objects. What is the answer to this question, then?
Perhaps someone knows?
Speaking about postpositions again, I recall to
you a letter sent by Mr. Tony Harminc, giving the
example of “I am cooking my daughter for lunch”.
Although quite humorous, the sentence is unlikely
to arise in practice. The crucial point here is that in
a sentence like this, the preposition “for” is linked
inextricably with “my daughter” in most Indian
languages, by virtue of “my daughter” possessing a
particular inflection, and “lunch” carrying quite
another.
In notices like “from A to B via C”, however,
the names can be left uninflected, by convention or
otherwise, and this brings to the fore all the deeply
hidden uncertainities of english.
The pedagogic exercise finished, I am taking
your leave. Please communicate about “glittering”,
since this will clear a doubt I have nursed in my
mind for a great length of time.
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

30
 XVI
Tue, 26 Mar 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
03:42:00 IST Subject: Mr. Bobaljik exits.

Dear ___________,
There are indeed quite a few things that I am
yet to learn! In the name of the divine thirty-three-
crores, who would have thought that the term “mis-
ter” could be anything other than respectful! Yes, I
admit I pondered quite at length about the exact
terms of address to use when I first started on this
mad letter-writing spree, and decided upon “Mr.”
unless objected to strenuously. Perhaps it is only
sensible to call everyone by the first name. I am
afraid this will rather make my postings look like
an untidy quilt, a patchwork of violently clashing
usages, but then I ask myself: what of english her-
self? And thus I am at peace.
This brings me to the topic of my own name. I
have seen it mangled beyond the wildest reaches of
my fancy; the roman script, I am thinking, is capa-
ble of such fantastic transformations as no one
using scripts based purely on syllables will ever
imagine—I am heart and soul in favour of the
devanagari, then, for though moderately complex it
can mix up the components of words only in very
sensible ways, ways comprehensible to the lan-
guage-speaking mind, and for this boon, I say, the
necessarily miserable quality of cryptic crossword
puzzles is seeming a ridiculously small price to pay.
Virupuksha, Virsupaksha, Virupushka, I am
staring in fascination at these, and waiting in tense
apprehension for the next one to arrive. Moksha,
Paksha, the green ghostly words have impinged on
my eyes many a time, and they have left me with
nothing but a startled surprise.

31
 May I, then, try to show how the name is pre-
cisely parsed? I am no professional linguist, but I
believe that the following is correct.

Virupaksha ((vi + roop) + aksha ) one with the ugly eye

“ugly” “eyed” i.e. the god Shiva, with the notorious

third eye.

Mokshagundam ((moksha + gunda) + /um/)

name of my ancestral place

do not ask me where it is,

perhaps it does not exist.

Since I have started,

Takshakabhushana

Takshaka + bhushana
one who uses the mythical “ornament”
serpent Takshaka as an ornament i.e. Shiva again,

by relying on a story long forgotten.

Kamakshivara (Kama + akshi) + vara

one who wedded Kamakshi,

“passion” “eyed” “wedder” the sloe-eyed woman,

(female) i.e. the god Shiva, as you have perhaps
guessed.

And thus I go about in the world, Mokshagun-

dam Takshakabhushana Virupaksha Kamakshi-
vara, my name translated to human language
saying “shiva shiva shiva”, which is an expression of

32
 the onset of disgust and end of endurance, popular
amongst the highest class of brahmin in these
parts.
I am admired for bearing any name I am given
with equanimity, including “pax”, but admired only
by those people who are ignorant about the ordeal I
have gone through at the tender age of twelve days.
Call me “pax”; it is a product of the language of
Bombay and it revolts me, but then there are worse
names to call me. Otherwise, Virupaksha is good,
for even with all possible permutations of letters it
is still recognisable. And of course, the amount of
offence taken at any such perturbation is nil.
Yours truly,

vidrupaakarichakshu
muktibhavagramarakshakamandalesh-
waravaasiyam

XVII
Sat, 30 Mar 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
05:11:00 IST Subject: Ideas without language?

Dear friends,
I am writing again, now that the things which
I am wanting to ask have become a reasonable
number. To think that this alone makes a letter
worth writing is of course being vain in the
extreme, but then quantity has almost always suc-
cessfully passed for quality.
On to the body of the letter :
1. Regarding plurals of words ending in “o”: Is
there a standard convention for writing the plural
of “zero”? This is one word for which I—and possi-
bly many others—find a genuine need.

33
 A propos this, what could you suggest as a
word analogous to “first” and “second” in the case
of “zero”? How can one rephrase “Chapter number
0”?
2. I am reading all the learned discussions
with the greatest interest; in fact I can now claim
that I am being able to comprehend the texts of as
many as 30 letters of the 100 which I am getting
daily from the list! But one thing which is irritating
me faintly is the consistent use of “inate”. It is mak-
ing language sound, to my ears, somehow inert and
prostrate.
3. Concerning a word I encountered recently :
what is the meaning of the word “Svengali”? It is
certainly not a mixture of Swahili and Bengali. I am
unable as always to provide the precise source of
this word, and thus cannot say in what context it
was used, while context is all important, is it not?
4. “Coke”: In India, the universal usage is
seeming to be “coldrink”. I have observed that this
is the word written, be the script roman, devana-
gari, kannada, or gujarati (and quite possibly ben-
gali, but I cannot vouch for that, my acquaintance
with the bengali script being strictly nodding).
5. The very idea of ideas without language—
why, it is striking me speechless! One’s language is
utterly fundamental. It must be kept very firmly in
mind that our senses are not standing indepen-
dently—the world, after all, is strangely chaotic. It
will not organise its amorphous mass for the sake
of animals with senses. The only way to make it do
so, I am feeling, is to impose our names and words
on it. Perhaps I do not express this very well, but I
do firmly believe (until someone corrects me) that
only through language do we comprehend the
world.

34
 6. I was going through some very old mes-
sages from the list which have survived with me,
and one of them, by Mr.—ah, forgive me, not Mr.—
Price Caldwell, proved a revelation, for it contains
the word “onomatopoetic”. A conscious neologism?
A serendipitous invention? Be it what it may, it left
a warm glow in my heart for the rest of the day.
7. The great chain of being: I hold it to be self-
evident that elephants are the closest to humans,
cats too dreadfully superior, and dogs rather infe-
rior. About dolphins, we have never been intro-
duced, but I am sure I will take some time to
overcome my timidity in their august company.
8. As I finish this letter, I am deciding to really
make an effort to be less verbose henceforth.
I take your leave with respect,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XVIII
Tue, 9 Apr 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
15:35:29 EDT Subject: Transcendental mnemonics.

Since no one seems to have mentioned the famous

mnemonics for pi, I am submitting them. A good
sentence to remember was devised by none less
than Sir James Jeans:

How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy

problems involving quantum mechanics.

Reading off the number of letters in each word

gives 314159265358979, which are the first few sig-
nificant digits in the decimal expansion of pi. Per-
haps I am repeating a very well known one now, but
here is a “poem” which goes to many more digits:

35
 Now I, even I, would celebrate
In rhymes unapt the great
Immortal Syracusan rivaled nevermore
Who in his wondrous lore
Passed on before
Left men his guidance
How to circles mensurate.

I am sorry to say that I do not know the originator

of this.
I always remember a verse which gives 32 dig-
its:

gopeebhagyamadhuvraata shrngishodadhisandhiga
khalajeevitakhaataava galahaalaarasandhara

There are 32 “letters” in this, and if assigned num-

bers according to their position in the devanagari
alphabet correctly give the first digits of pi. Osten-
sibly it is a verse in the praise of a certain Krishna
(who is a deified man over here).
I am still remembering myself hearing my
grandfather reciting the list of a certain class of
Sanskrit verbs, and (in case you are interested) the
cryptic name which the immortal Panini chose to
give which was “sate”. It was just a string of the rel-
evant verbs, but it was mnemonic too, and I will
never forget the beginning:

shaklru—pach-muchi-rich-vach-vich—sich-praach-
chhi-tyaj-nijirbhaja-. . .

I will also remember all my life the entirely

useless list of Russian ports on the west coast, their
names now long obsolete: Nina, Novograd(-a),
Petrograd(-a), Riga, (n-) Odessa. Which form a per-
fect “Arya” meter when said with the a-’s and n-’s. It

36
rings in my ears at odd times and then will not
leave me in peace for days on end.
Allow me to describe here a device which
helps us remember the correct names for prosodic
units. These units are 3 syllables long and any
sequence of long and short is written down as a
sequence of these units (akin to a binary numerals
translated to octal, ha ha). The string to remember
is:

Ya Maa Taa Raa Ja BHaa Na Sa (Ya Maa)

Starting with, say, Taa one reads Taa Raa Ja, i.e. long
long short, which is what T stands for. It has always
impressed me that the descriptions of eight groups
of three syllables each can be packed into a string
of eight.
“Mississippi” inevitably reminded me of a
mnemonic which I heard long ago and which is
striking my prudish self as sufficiently improper to
withhold even from this list, yet witty enough for it
to be criminal not to speak about it at all. I heard it
as a lurid tale beginning “Emma comes-a first, I
comes-a next, . . .” but this is where I am stopping.
I am thinking that I will fall upon the excuse of
sparse mail to send some more letters. Bear with
me.
Yours with respect,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

37
 XIX
Thu, 11 Apr 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
04:47:51 EDT Subject: Stop these elephant jokes!

Sirs,
The recent exchanges on this list of puerile
and by all standards truly tasteless remarks about
elephants has left me saddened and pained, and in
fact I would have added “beyond words”, if only
sadness and pain had existed there.
Am I hearing some groans already? Fear not,
this is no schoolboy essay in defence of elephants,
and definitely no emotional outpouring here: I am
a champion of dignified restraint, and I am practis-
ing what I am preaching. Allow me, then, merely to
repeat what I said not so long ago to our friend
LABBEY, who lives in GTRI01:

“. . . Kuvalayaapeeda’s natural intelligence has been

embellished by a certain grace of manner, which
makes his company a pleasant one and a walk with
him an especially rewarding experience! He is truly the
best possible illustration I can exhibit for my entirely
reasonable thesis, which is what I stated before: ele-
phants are our true equals. They are neither looking
down upon us, nor are they considering us gods. They
are treating us with cheerful good humour, and yet
they are not averse to getting angry at us sometimes,
and sometimes playing pranks on us.”

It remains my thesis to date.

I am reminded here that mice are popularly
believed to be three dimensional projections of cer-
tain ten dimensional superintelligent beings. What
a thoroughly preposterous notion this is! Let me
assert flatly that mice are no such thing; elephants

38
emphatically are. The number ten, I may add, is
also much underestimated.
When I am saying that elephants are noble, I
am meaning that they are truly noble. Hiding in
cherry trees, leaving pugmarks in butter, why—are
all of you thinking that elephants are merely BORN
in aristocratic families? An elephant possessed by
lunacy, chewing soma greenery, on an oddly bright
full moon night might possibly indulge in such
inanities, but honest to goodness elephants with
their innate biological nobility will never stoop to
these low shameful shenanigans. One has to take
but one look at their calm humorous eyes to be
convinced of the fact beyond dispute. It is not the
case that elephants are incapable of producing
humour, but to say that they behave in such bizarre
manners is truly like accusing great poets of resort-
ing to the crudest forms of slapstick.
Let there be no more stories of elephants,
then, with their dubious authenticities.
I am turning now to talk to Bernard, for the
first time visage to visage, and what can I say but
that I am speechless again! You, Sir, have imparted
to me a shock; you have reorganised from the root
many opinions which had always been dear to my
mind! I had always held—and shame be on me—
that tongues of dogs did nothing more than exude
fast thick pants, and lick one and all indiscrimi-
nately, and on special occasions loll out to drool at
the peal of a bell in certain well appointed scientific
labs. How was I to know that they could be firm
enough to bear the load of a complex language, or
sufficiently resilient to dole out weighty words in a
measured manner? Forgive me.
My pet elephant Kuvalayaapeeda, though
quite a baby, is precocious enough to talk to me like
an adult elephant. He is regretting, he says, that he

39
 cannot join this excellent list, since he cannot so
much as enter the institute building, let alone get-
ting to a computer terminal. All important ser-
vices, it seems, were built without keeping him in
mind. He would protest, he has told me often, if he
could bring together elephants in large enough
numbers to constitute a minority. But that will
never come to pass; even his sister stays in far away
Mysore, and he is rather more relieved about it than
anything else. Methinks the real reason is very dif-
ferent: it is to do with the eternal problem of diffi-
culties with english, however hard he may try to
conceal it by claiming difficulties with a keyboard.
Which in turn reminds me—I congratulate you for
possessing extremely fine paws.
Well, it seems that my policy of dignified
restraint did finally go to the elephants, despite my
bravest attempts, but then, perhaps a voice in sup-
port of elephants is also required amidst a clamour
of silly jokes.
I remain,
Yours truly,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XX
Fri, 12 Apr 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
14:42:13 EDT Subject: 5-letter word with 1 consonant.

Dear friends,
As a five letter word with one consonant, I
suggest “audio”. The word “adieu”, if common
enough, will also do.
Finally what about Aeolia, (possibly) the place
where harps are made? This is six letters long, if
“ae” is taken to be consisting of two letters.

40
 “causal” and “casual” impressed me very much.
If such a thing amuses you, I would like to mention
a certain puzzle which occured to me. Can you give
two “big” words, ne got from the other by a permu-
tation, so that they are (approximately) opposite in
sense? How long a word can be given? I am know-
ing an example with eight.
Truly yours,
Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XXI
Sun, 14 Apr 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
14:55:54 EDT Subject: V’s A to V’s Q.

My intention is to give the answer I had in mind for

the “metathesis question”, (for some reason also
called a “challenge”), but before that I with some
perverse logic shall also appoint myself an arbiter,
giving as a pretext the fact that I asked the ques-
tion. The answer “CREATION” and “REACTION” is
quite fanciful and indeed the one I most admire. It
is, as one would say, quite creative. “CONSERVING”
and “CONVERSING” is also good, but taxes one’s
imagination. The others, however, mystify me. Per-
haps I have not understood them. Can you explain,
I am asking a person whom I can only describe as
[[t[g]]i[t[gs]]] ?
And now to my answer, which is in no way
poetic and in fact quite mundane, but has a certain
advantage in that it is (IMO with an inevitable H
wedged in) more transparent.
The words I had in mind are “INSECURE” and
“SINECURE”. Is this not a satisfactory answer?
Truly yours,
Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

41
 XXII
Tue, 30 Apr 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
00:20:47 EDT Subject: 1 as a platonic form.

Dear Sirs/Madams,
I would like to suggest some answers to some
questions posed by Chris. They are as follows:

>How would these philosophers handle the question

>as to the perfect form of the concept “one”?

I would say that the question is a settled one.

One merely has to give the mathematical definition
of the number. The number one (and hence the
ideal form of the number one) is: the set of all sets
of exactly one element.
Unfortunately I have stated this in such a way
as to look like a circular definition. This is not so.
But let us not lose ourselves in that morass here.
Is it not true that this definition encompasses
all instances of the number one? Although the defi-
nition was not arrived at with a platonic view in
mind, it fits the bill quite well. And then, one would
call Mr. Bertrand Russell a philosopher too, would
one not?
Turning to the question of small number of
syllables, I am afraid I would suggest a much more
mundane explanation, viz. the most common
words tend to get shorter in length, if they were
ever long. Certainly the long Sanskrit names for
numbers have short counterparts in the modern
languages of India.

>Sorry this is so rambling but I can’t see that

>words are merely symbolic, even given phenomena
>like onomatopoeia which has some definite
>representational aspects.

42
 >
>Chris

This is indeed most puzzling. On whose side are

you, sir? Do phenomena like onomatopoeia
strengthen your case or weaken it?
Another thought is striking me at this point.
However, I think I will write about it later, if I can at
all follow it through to any fruitful notion. Until
then, I take your leave.
Yours most sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

(Why did Virupaksha Mokshagundam cross the

road? To manoeuver his nameplateinside his
house.)

XXIII
Tue, 30 Apr 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
00:21:58 EDT Subject: Chutneymakers crossing roads.

Dear Sirs/Madams,
Before I forget, let me at the outset blurt out
some examples of “paired words”, viz. “here and
anon”, “few and far between”, “present and cor-
rect”.
However, I was going to talk about a small
point which troubles me. Is it being found neces-
sary to append a “:-)” to every small jest which is
made, especially at my expense? I am of course
referring to a recent posting by Michel, concerning
chutneys. (By the way, fancy chutneys being a fash-
ionable food! The ways of the fashionable are truly
unfathomable.) It was rather laughable to see a
buddha who is miraculously both laughing and

43
reclining, being employed just to assure me that a
joke is being made. Wretched is the man who has
to explain his joke! And I say, this holds also for
Michel’s joke, despite the fact that it was the poor-
est I have come across for a long time and thor-
oughly non-humorous. (I presume no icons are
needed here.)
Is anyone thinking, by the merest chance, that
jokes involving Indians will perhaps offend a cer-
tain subscriber? If it is coming out of a gut feeling
of not joking about minorities, please let the
thought fail, and immediately. To describe the
Indian population as a minority is to be guilty of a
certain terminological inexactitude, not to men-
tion perpetrating a most wildly funny joke, the sec-
ond funniest in this genre.
It is high time now that I am considered an
“old member” of the list. I am sure I am worthy of it,
although I have not explicitly abused anyone in
public postings, nor used any profane language.
In parting, I would also like to set correct one
of the postings. It says (I regret to say I have deleted
it): “Chatni” is a Hindu word. There is no such thing
as a Hindu word. The language intended is proba-
bly Hindi. The word also exists in practically every
other Indian language.
The mistake is very probably inadvertent. I am
mentioning it lest someone be misinformed.
Yours most sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

44
 XXIV
Tue, 30 Apr 91 From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
00:20:33 EDT Subject: Three topics which are probably obsolete.

These are several topics I was intending to write

about but could not due to a great isolation which
befell me. The machine took ill for four days and
even now it shows the slowness of a convalescer.
The probable outdatedness of a letter has never
stopped me from pandering to my urge to talk,
however, and so here is the letter for whatever it is
worth:
ONE : Something mohur about money.
I was most disappointed not to see an Indian
currency in the recent perpetration by Paul Bar-
foot. In my own feeble way, then, I shall say that I do
not care a damn.
A propos “case quarters”, I think it may inter-
est you to know that the native words for “solid
coin” and “loose change” are (translations of) the
words “bound” and “free” (as used, say, for prison-
ers).
My mother was telling me of another coinage
in this context. It seems that all along the Pune-
Bangalore railway line and aboard the trains, hawk-
ers are regularly using the word “dollar” to denote a
single coin of a high denomination (as opposed to
“chillar”, which denotes small change). We have at
last obtained the holy grail of financial dependence
on the U.S.A., it seems.
TWO: fUrther - uni, fArther - ambi.
Matthew Beams writes: “What is the differen-
tiation between farther and further?”. Forgive me
for this, but why say “differentiation”? To my mind,
what is required is the difference. This is reminding
me of a school friend who quite without compunc-

45
tion spoke words like “choosement” and “eatifica-
tion”, due to genuine ignorance or an attempt at
jest I was never able to ascertain. I was once
deceived by a book with the title “Analysis of differ-
ential groups”. Far from being the expected mathe-
matics text, it was a sociological study. But let me
not be frivolous.
I am thinking that both “further” and “farther”
are used for denoting essentially the same thing,
but the former is generally restricted to those cases
where a one-dimensional extent is involved, the lat-
ter being used when there is greater degree of free-
dom. Thus, for instance, “further” is preferred for
extent in time, while “farther” would be a natural
choice in a forest. Their sounds are also suggesting
such a notion to me.
This brings me to another topic on which I will
write seperately. It is about Chris’ letter about
words as symbols vs. representations.
THREE : A puzzle of sorts.
Regarding “pairs of words”, I am reminded
inevitably of “each and every”, the catch phrase of
clerks in government offices from far away in the
mists of time. Whence such locutions come I do
not know.
But I say, it is not only Indians who are guilty
of letting the language gain flab! There exist a lot of
phrases which can be considered as one word, for
all practical purposes. For instance one thinks of
“for all practical purposes”. It is not of Indian ori-
gin, I think.
My question is: what is the longest phrase
which has become almost one word?
Clearly the question is not precisely posed. I
may further explain what I am meaning by saying
that I have in mind a phrase of seven words which

46
 can be predicted from its first word in almost all
cases. Can anyone identify it or suggest a longer?
I hasten to add that I have not lengthened it by
using present progressives!
FOUR: The surprise ending.
I remain,
Yours truly,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XXV
Mon, 13 May From: [email protected]
91 06:04:04 Subject: a WORDS-L posting
EDT
On Diens, 16 Mar 91 00:00:00.01 QST I don’t care
what my userid is I am what I bloody well am and
let there not be even a residual doubt about it said:

>> could have been nice but unfortunately I was not in

>> a position to get the thing going inside the allotted
>> time . . .

> I wouldnt DREAM of doing such a thing!

>

Now *this* is what I call a really great idea! :-)

Virupaksha
<laughing his head off but putting a helmet on
it>

47
 XXVI
Tue, 14 May 91 From: [email protected]
09:17:13 EDT Subject: New subscriber.

Dear Sirs/Madams,
I fear I have taken certain liberties with the
subscribers of thisexcellent list, by being indirectly
responsible for introducing to it a new subscriber. I
quite casually mentioned the list to him and he at
once pounced upon the idea of subscribing to it. I
have a notion that his intentions may not be
entirely innocent. However, I am refraining from
prejudicing you in this matter and leaving it for you
to observe and decide.
To give certain information about him, his
name is Vatsyayan Mahalingam, which has quite
dangerous cadences, resembling my own name,
and a few other dangerous characteristics besides.
He, like me, is parasitic on someone else’s compu-
tor-account.
I write this only in order to give you some
advance intimation and also to declare that I am
not to be held responsible for what he says. (I might
add that this may not be quite as lurid as it is
sounding.)
Yours most sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

48
 XXVII
Tue, 14 May 91 From: [email protected]
17:20:54 EDT Subject: Re: reply to Re:RE: reply to re: rE: RE: Re:

The following is a letter I received some time ago:

>Nay, nay! Let’s not wish Galmin upon ourselves! That

>reminds me. Where is Virupaksha? We haven’t
>heard from him lately.
> --Natalie ([email protected])

Madam, Virupaksha is very much existing. There

were reasons—inevitably unavoidable ones—which
were preventing me from writing. In desperation, I
sent the following message:

----------------------------------------------------------------

> On Diens, 16 Mar 91 00:00:00.01 QST I don’t care

> what my userid is I am what I bloody well am and let
> there not be even a residual doubt about it said:
>
> >> could have been nice but unfortunately I was not
> >> in a position to get the thing going inside the
> >> allotted time . . .
>>
> > I wouldnt DREAM of doing such a thing!
>>
>
> Now *this* is what I call a really great idea! :-)
>
> Virupaksha
> <laughing his head off but putting a helmet on it>

----------------------------------------------------------------

My intentions, I hope, are clear. The above is “a

WORDS-L posting”; it is, in my opinion, sufficiently

49
typical to go unremarked. It could be about any-
thing at all, but THIS one certainly means abso-
lutely nothing. Thus am I attempting to keep in
touch, to be “with it”, to “belong!”, without having
the faintest idea of what is proceeding on the list
now.
The last line is in some sense the only one
which is not entirely fictitious; I am finding such a
posting quite humorous.
Due to the slowness of my computor-system
perhaps, I am at all times temporally isolated from
the list. I am unable to join any discussion and the
quickest repartee from me is likely to be greeted by
a bewildered “what is this about?”. I am, in this
manner, forced to refrain from talking at all, and
undoubtedly the list is very much the healthier for
it.
It is this elephant gait of the computor which
makes me loath to write.

Even now I perch against the strange machine

For it to stutter all it ever feigned to claim
As answer to my vermin-ridden undivine
Commands, it must needs do to its eternal shame

Now if this doggerel is making me a poet, remem-

ber that I am also finishing my “undergraduate
years” now. I need warn you no further.
Or perhaps I should, about the fact that I am
writing a succession of letters in a short time from
now.
Yours most apologetically,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

50
 XXVIII
Tue, 14 May 91 From: [email protected]
17:40:01 EDT Subject: Why worry about PC?

Dear Sirs/Madams,
I am hereby going on record as asserting that
Tom Lee is talking bilge, on the sole count that he is
being meta-meta-PC. So easy are the ways of going
up the meta ladder.
In a feeble attempt to please everyone, I am
disagreeing violently with Bill Sjostrom. What is all
this brouhaha about “PC”? Is the incidence of such
imbecile notions so great as to worry about them?
If some cranks are insisting upon presenting some
damn-fool arguments against certain usages,
ignore them I say! The way it is going on, one would
think that fully half of the world is evaluating logi-
cal arguments merely on the strength of what
labels they carry. This, I say, is difficult to believe,
especially of the academic world. Are there a lot of
people like that?
Another thing which struck me as odd was a
letter—I regret to say I have forgotten which—say-
ing “the CNN is trying to alter our consciousness by
using the word ““international”” . . .” . Pray how? I
confess I am most puzzled by this. If labels of
things are arbitrary—surely no one will challenge
that—how can a different label alter one's view of
the world ?
Expecting answers,
I remain,
Yours truly,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

51
 XXIX
Tue, 14 May 91 From: [email protected]
17:51:09 EDT Subject: Galmin.

Who is Mr. Galmin Stound? What did he do, and

when? Why is he called “donut”? What are some of
the properties which I share with him?
Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XXX
Wed, 15 May From: KIRTI <[email protected]>
91 03:07:16 Subject: Re: New subscriber.
EDT
Virupaksha Mokshagundum deserves to be unsub-
scribed from this list. He has some gall, to go about
maligning innocents like me, Vatsyayan Mahalin-
gam, when I seriously try to join this list out of gen-
uine interest.
I say, this chappie has gone to absurd limits
this time, first he uses my computer-project-
account and takes charge of it, makes it his own,
and says I’m parasitic on some one else’s account!
ORION is my OWN account, the name being cho-
sen due to a personal idiosyncracy. Needless to say
after this that TUSHAR is my computer-project-
account name, named after my friend Tushar
Samant, who is now in California. Anyway, the
point is that this blighter Virupaksha might just be
taking you innocent listers for a big ride.
Agreed that Virupaksha and I don’t see eye to
eye on certain matters, but this fellow is now wash-
ing the dirty linen in public. I went out of my way

52
 by letting him pile on to my project-account. And
now he does this to me, is this friendship I say?
What I want to tell you all is that be careful of
this man Virupaksha, he is not a very bad sort
but—I shall refrain from further mud slinging.
In friendship,

Vatsyayan Mahalingam.
(e-mail: [email protected])

XXXI
Fri, 17 May 91 From: [email protected]
04:11:12 EDT Subject: Re: Ropes on ships

>>I (seriously) wouldn’t be surprised if people haven’t

>>started writing little command-files for their PC
>>word processors to globally change things like
>>“mankind” to “humankind” throughout their
>>document should a nasty habit have slipped by
>>their personal proofreading.
>>
>> MacPhil
>
>I tried it and it went into a loop and started printing
humanmanmnamnaman
>manmanmna......
>:-)
>

>Don Pirot, | BITNET: DPIROT@UALTAVM

This, I regret to say, is entirely a figment of

Don Pirot’s imagination. I do not know whether
machines are sufficiently idiotic to entangle them-
selves in such trivial loops, but in any case a
machine replacing “man” by “human” will produce
“ . . . huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuman”.

53
 Mr. Pirot must be lynched on the count of
rampant sexism; he has evidently attempted
replacing “man” by “manman”.
Yours most sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XXXII
Fri, 17 May 91 From: KIRTI <[email protected]>
15:02:14 EDT Subject: aSTOUNDing galminophobia

Good heavens! How in the world can I be Mr.

Galmin Stound? Ms. Ruth, rest assured that if I
were to bump into him in some street (remote as
the chance may be), I wouldn't know him from
Adam or whoever the primogenitor of humanity
may be. Furthermore, let me hasten to add that
though Mr. Galmin Stound might possibly be the
kindest soul on this green Earth, he might even
have the milk of human kindness sloshing inside
him, yet the fact remains: I have nothing whatso-
ever to do with him, nor am I in any way whatso-
ever related to him.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get this feeling
that a large number of the subscribers of this list
have been struck down by a new disease: Galmino-
phobia. Otherwise there would not have been this
urge, among fellow-listers to classify any new sub-
scriber with an unfamiliar name and from suffi-
ciently remote a place, as the latest avatar of
Galministic origins.
I believe somebody has compared Virupaksha
Mokshagundam with Mr. Galmin Stound, to him/
her I have one conjecture to offer: it is quite likely
that there never was a Mr. Galmin Stound, except
as a manifestation of Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

54
 And as you all may have noted, Virupaksha does
have a Galminesque sense of humour. No doubt
this may bring some disappointment to the Galmi-
nophiles amongst us, and to them I offer my sin-
cere regrets.
Oh by the way Ms. Ruth, thanks for the wel-
coming words.
In friendship,

Vatsyayan Mahalingam.

XXXIII
Mon, 20 May From: [email protected]
91 08:13:53 Subject: about “punny”
EDT
T. Halkowski asks: “Was the pun intended?”. This is
amazing. Most certainly it was intended.
The list is well known for sic puns.
Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XXXIV
Mon, 20 May From: [email protected]
91 06:23:45 Subject: “personally” and hyphening.
EDT
Dear Sirs/Madams,
I would like to bring up three points which
have suggested themselves to me in the recent past.
1. Consider the a statement on the following
lines: “Personally speaking, my opinion is . . .”. Is it
at all necessary to say “personally speaking”? If one
is submitting one’s own opinion, it IS personal I say!
Is there a difference being made between private
opinion and a “public opinion”? In that case, how is

55
an opinion remaining private if it is told to another
person?
2. My second doubt is concerning a satisfac-
tory way of hyphening in some cases. One example
where a problem is arising would be: “A proof based
on a symmetric equation”. If one writes this as “a
symmetric equation-based proof”, one binds words
to each other in an unintended way.
Saying “symmetric_equation” etc. is certainly
not acceptable. On the other hand, a space has
always had weaker preference than a hyphen. How
does one resolve this, or does one just exclaim
“dash it all”?
3. The final point is a mere quibble. Stephen
Karlson writes: “Ten minutes is an interval of time,
which consists of an uncountable infinity of
points”.
This is certainly a rather elaborate structure
imposed on time! I would say that “points in time”
are always discrete, i.e. the number of “points in
time” inside a bounded interval is always finite.
One example of a bounded interval is one between
two named events in the past. Ergo, it follows that
ten minutes will definitely not contain even count-
ably infinite points, not to speak of an uncountable
infinity!
Yours &Co,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

56
 XXXV
Mon, 20 May From: [email protected]
91 06:27:15 Subject: Mokshagundam counters Mahalingam.
EDT
IMPORTANT LETTER: PLEASE READ

Sirs,
Far be it from me to use this list as a duelling-
ground, but I am feeling myself compelled to chal-
lenge the extraordinary letter by Mr. Vatsyayan
Mahalingam.
Apart from the fact that Mr. Mahalingam is
not possessing the slightest bit of common
decency, he is also guilty, if I may say so, of a certain
amount of terminological inexactitude. He is stat-
ing brazenly that Mr. Tushar Samant is currently
residing in California. This is, to put it quite plainly,
false. Mr. Samant has been a good friend of mine for
the past seven months; he has not left the city of
Bombay, by his own account, for the last six years.
It is apalling me, and causing me not a little
grief that Mr. Mahalingam should have resorted to
this cowardly way of making mischief, when things
could have been settled in a so much more gentle-
manly manner inside the institute itself. Instead,
Mr. Mahalingam has chosen to write to this excel-
lent list, and make amazing claims to compound a
felony. This, I feel, is in no sense cricket.
I iterate here that I am the last person to sug-
gest that a list is a suitable place to conduct per-
sonal vendettas, but I MUST DRAW ATTENTION
to one statement of Mr. Mahalingam which is
exceeding all bounds of acceptable taste. He is
going so far as to suggest that I, Virupaksha Mok-
shagundam, am impersonating a certain Galmin
Stound. There is no need to counter this, I trust.

57
 However—and HERE IS WHERE MANY ON
THE LIST MAY GET INTERESTED—I myself have
a suggestion to make which will perhaps sound far-
fetched at first. Vatsyayan Mahalingam is an
exceedingly improbable name, a fact which has set
me thinking. The name “mahalingam” parses as
follows:

MAHALINGAM = MAHA + LINGAM

This is common enough; the prefix “maha” is one of

amplification. In short, MAHA-X means “big X” or
“the great X”.
This takes care of the first four letters. Now,
you are urged to stare CAREFULLY at the last six:
L,I,N,G,A,M.

******THE GREAT X, where X = { L,I,N,G,A,M }!******

Does this suggest anything to you? Does it send a

shiver down your spines? I assume that my warning
has registered. If it has not, well, juggle the letters
further. I am speaking no more.
With the best intentions at heart,
Sincerely yours,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

58
 XXXVI
Tue, 21 May 91 From: [email protected]
03:05:56 EDT Subject: infinitely many moments?

I would like to continue on a question which Nor-

man Hill took up. He writes :

>>I would say that “points in time” are always discrete,

>>i.e. the number of “points in time” inside a
>>bounded interval is always finite.

>I would think that in saying this you would

>provoke much argument from many physicists,
>mathematicians, and others. For instance let
>T0 = midnight, and let T1 = 10 minutes after
>midnight. Are you claiming that there are only a
>finite number of distinct moments between T0
>and T1. I THINK NOT. (No i am not Descartes—
>I am not vanishing—sorry :))

I do most seriously think that there “are” only a

finite number of moments in such an interval.

>Let’s suppose that T0 < T2 < T1.

>Then T2 = T0 + X where X = any real number
>between 0 and T1-T0
>
>I say that there are indeed uncountably many real
>numbers that satisfy this equation.

This is correct. However, the question is not that of

REAL NUMBERS at all. Real numbers are imagi-
nary constructions. They were constructed by
mathematicians, with certain ulterior motives, but
none of them, I think, was to model time in the real
world. Any definition of the real numbers, I claim,

59
is too elaborate to have an obvious and immediate
physical acceptability.

>Now, I will agree that the number of measurable

>moments might not be as large, but just because
>something can’t be measured mean it doesn't exist?

Yes. All possible clocks in the world, running on

time or awry, in phase or out of it, and of any period
whatsoever, will make together a FINITE number of
ticks in ten minutes.
If it were possible “in principle” to subdivide
time with arbitrary fineness, one would still have to
take back the finiteness statement, but is such sub-
division possible? It is not obvious to me.
(By the by, also notice that an arbitrarily fine
subdivision would still imply only a COUNTABLE
infinity, and not an uncountable one!)
That something does not exist if it cannot be
measured seems to me to be an entirely reasonable
restriction on the definition of the word “exist”.
After all, if one started interpreting such words
more and more liberally, a time may come (in
finitely many ticks) when they cease to carry any
information at all.
To impose on our familiar time the structure
of real numbers—so remote to the intuition—is no
doubt poetic (and also mathematically conve-
nient), but the word “exist” ought to be reserved for
different notions: e.g. the fact that I am finding it
hard to imagine that I have passed through infi-
nitely many moments (since I started typing)
should be relevant here.
These are of course some suggestions I am
finding reasonable.

>Norman Hill

60
 Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

P.S. Mr. McPhil has probably found juggling with six

ascii letters too trivial for one with his juggling abil-
ities. However, let us not ignore the dark clouds
gathering over the horizon.

XXXVII
Wed, 29 May From: KIRTI <[email protected]>
91 14:00:30 Subject: Et tu, Virupaksha?
EDT
Ha! This man Virupaksha is apalling. His zeal to
reduce my name to MUD (or to GALMIN) will put
the missionaries of the bygone times to shame. I
went away for a small holiday and here I am back
and much to my trepidation, I find that this snake
in the grass Virupaksha has struck again. I say, this
blighter has become an absolute pain in the poste-
riors. The last six letters of my last name contain
the letters forming GALMIN. So what? Are two
chappies whose names are identical upto a permu-
tation identical? Only a fool would believe this Vir-
upakshique logic. If he had accused me of being,
say, The President of United States—or to stress my
point, accused me of being even the Vice Presi-
dent—I might have just about tolerated the insinu-
ation. But this fiend in human shape has gone far
beyond normal levels of decency and accused me of
being Mr. Galmin Stound. I shall not take this lying
down. We Mahalingams have our pride.
Virupaksha is loopy to the tonsils and has
about as many gray cells in his brain as an amoeba
has. The man obviously needs to see a therapist
soon. He is only one step from a loony bin.

61
 I’m convinced that he isn’t Mr. Galmin Stound,
for after Mr. Quinn remarked in one of his messages
that the works of the Mr. Stound are available at
some place by “ftp”, Virupaksha immediately
jumped up. Since then he has pestered a whole
bunch of people over here asking them to ftp Mr.
Stound’s works from the appropriate place. No
doubt he will succeed in his endeavours. Since
Galminophobia is quite rampant on the list, I
thought this information might come in handy. I
think you might soon have Virupaksha’s Galmi-
nized letters in your mailboxes and from what I
have heard of Galmin, you might have a full scale
disaster on your hands.
Gentle souls like me do not like to threaten
anybody but another accusation that I’m Mr.
Galmin Stound would precipitate an irreversible
identity crisis, and several weeks of therapy ses-
sions for me. But I have no doubt that as soon as I
get back, such vitriol will flow into the list from my
cursor as never before and even the likes of Mr.
Stound will pale into insignificance before its
onslaught. I would like to point out that I’m not
trying to start a duel on the list nor do I have a per-
sonal vendetta to settle. This whole business, if you
care to recall, was sparked off by this blighter’s let-
ter styled “New Subscriber”, which no doubt you all
must have read with horror. My motives for reply-
ing, I hope, are completely clear.
In, and only in, friendship,

Vatsyayan Mahalingam.

62
 XXXVIII
Fri, 31 May 91 From: [email protected]
20:37:39 EDT Subject: Re: Et tu, Virupaksha?

Sirs,
I write this letter numbed with shock, as any-
one will be, after reading the subversive rot coming
from the pen of a certain Vatsyayan Mahalingam. It
is indeed unfortunate that I should waste the valu-
able time of the list subscribers by writing letters
like the present one, but I am thinking that one is
justified in writing practically anything if provoked
so extremely as by the remarkable letter of Mr.
Mahalingam.
Locking horns is in many ways a pleasant pas-
time, if the warring is done in a witty and dignified
manner. Indeed, I would have most eagerly jumped
in the fray if a matter of principle were being dis-
cussed. Mr. Mahalingam, however, is neither witty
nor dignified, and as for having any principle at
stake, I would be surprised if such novel ideas have
ever so much as touched his mind—if I may speak
of such a thing as his mind without undue distor-
tion of reality. A lively discussion or a constructive
criticism of one’s foibles will always be appreciated
by any right-thinking individual; I am hardly hesi-
tant on that point—nor, I suppose, is anyone else.
Stooping to vulgar abuse, however, is far from this
and smacks of the worst possible taste and, if I may
say so, a faulty upbringing.
If there are existing schools of etiquette for
humans, on the lines of obedience schools usually
conducted for the benefit of canines, Mr. Mahalin-
gam would do well to join one of them. In fact, for
lack of them, he he may even enroll with our best
friends, so desperate is the need. However incom-

63
 petent he may be to perceive this particular point
at present, it would benefit him enormously to be a
less crude approximation of a human being. He is
strangely forgetting what the agreed upon bounds
of decency are. Small wonder, then, that he is tran-
scending them so shamelessly and so often.
HIS warning the list of a “full-scale disaster” is
really striking me, with its most exquisite irony. If
there were only some way of stopping this outrage,
then upon my word I would use it. One wishes this
were the U.S.A., where one could have indulged in
litigation, charging the man Mahalingam of resort-
ing to mental torture, and ending up vastly richer
in the process. Alas, in the unsophisicated society
in which we live, this cannot be done.
I can do nothing more than express a fervent
wish that this turns out the last letter of this
unsavoury exchange.
Yours &co,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XXXIX
Fri, 31 May 91 From: [email protected]
20:39:17 EDT Subject: swastika, ghostly words, group possessives.

A long period has passed since I wrote a letter to

the list. I am thinking that I might just write about
certain points which have struck me in the recent
past.
1 SWASTIKA
I could not uncover a usage of the word “swas-
tika” as denoting the number 10 000. It is used
much more commonly to denote an auspicious
agent, generally either a poet singing auspicious
songs or “an auspicious sign”, which is the one we

64
are seeing everywhere. This is the meaning logically
following the verb “swasti”. I have never seen the
ends of the fylfot going round in a counterclock-
wise fashion. The sign can be seen everywhere, and
is too well established to possess any evil associa-
tions brought on by the recent past. The current
conjecture, I may add, is that it is a symbol for the
sun.
2 TWO GHOSTLY WORDS
I recently heard someone using the verb
“misle” in all seriousness. This was intended as a
verb with past tense “misled”. It is reminding me of
another ghostly verb which exists only in the dusty
corridors of the Indian administrative offices. The
verb is “to bonafy”. An applicant, for instance, has
to bonafy oneself if he wishes to be a “bonafied”
applicant.
It puts me in mind of another query recently
made by Mr. Akio Tanaka, about a suitable word for
“beltway mentality”. I suggest “centrimentality”, so
that one can talk of centrimental persons.
3 FRIEND OF JOHN’S BIKE
In phrases like “friend of John’s bike”, I—
alongwith most people around me—am using the
rule that “X’s Y” always has greater precedence
than “Y of X”. (No one is invoking this rule con-
sciously, of course.) Thus the above phrase in my
opinion is referring to the friend of the bicycle.
I would say that the “X’s Y” relation has bind-
ing stronger than almost every other relation. This
is ruling out “group possessives” totally. Is it signifi-
cant here that an Indian language such as Urdu,
under the influence of Persian and Arabic, makes
“Y of X” into practically one word? (e.g. bazmemeh-
fil for what should be two words joined by a con-
junction: bazm-e-mehfil. )
4 I CLOSE WITH A QUOTE

65
 I close with a quote. (What indescribable glee
engulfs the person who can say this! This is the first
time I am doing this and I am feeling quite elated
and “learned”.) It is from a play by Mr. Tom Stop-
pard, named “The Real Thing”. Henry, the success-
ful (“established”) playwright, is talking about a
certain play written by Brodie, a youth who vanda-
lised a national shrine. I need explain the context
no further.
(I may add here that the ellipsis is part of the
speech; I have deleted nothing.)

“Leave me out of it. They [the conditions in which he

wrote the play] don’t count. Maybe Brodie got a raw
deal, maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. It doesn’t count.
He’s a lout with language. I can’t help somebody who
thinks, or thinks that he thinks, that editing a newspa-
per is censorship, or that throwing bricks is a demon-
stration while building tower blocks is social violence,
or that unpalatable statement is provocation while
disrupting the speaker is the exercise of free speech . . .
Words don’t deserve that kind of malarkey. They’re
innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing
that, meaning the other, so if you can look after them
you can build bridges across incomprehension and
chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off,
they’re no good anymore, and Brodie knocks corners
off without knowing he’s doing it. So everything he
builds is jerry-built. It’s rubbish. An intelligent child
could push it over. I don’t think writers are sacred, but
words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right
ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little
or make a poem which children will speak for you
when you are dead.”

Sincerely yours,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

66
 XL
Mon, 3 Jun 91 From: [email protected]
15:17:20 EDT Subject: Why “quote”?

A. Conn, residing at Tufts, writes that the sentence

“I close with a quote” should be “I close with a quo-
tation”. This is sounding particularly pertinent,
until one sees that “quote” is also “(colloq.)” for
“quotation”.
Now the point which may arise is that a word
may well have a colloq. meaning, and that in itself is
never in doubt, while what IS really germane is
whether any paranoid worth his salt should use this
colloq. meaning so completely without compunc-
tion.
This too is a powerful argument and I cannot
do but give my explanation; it is admittedly lame
and the only thing I can say in its defence is that it
is true.
I have acted on the rule of thumb that it is
somehow or the other more “poetic” to use the verb
for the noun. One can hear his say, read his writ;
why not also accept his quote?
Besides, one can have a hearty laugh at the
expense of the primitive notions of poeticality
which still reside in the mind of the babu who has
probably never read any english poetry after Tenny-
son.
The verb for the noun; it is reminding me of
another extract from the same play (The Real
Thing ), a drunk husband talking to his wife:

“I’m showing an interest in your work. I thought you

liked me showing an interest in your work. MY show-
ing. Save the gerund and screw the whale. Yes, I'm sure
you do. . . .”

67
 Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XLI
Tue, 4 Jun 91 From: [email protected]
16:54:36 EDT Subject: Afterthought about “possessives”.

Very recently, Virupaksha Mokshagundam wrote

the following:

>I would say that the “X’s Y” relation has binding

>stronger than almost every other relation. This is
>ruling out “group possessives” totally.

He would like to take back the statement.

“group possessives” are not being ruled out totally, I
say. The example which is coming to mind (now!)
is: “The Mysore king’s palace”. This certainly
denotes the palace of the king of Mysore. Thus,
mere juxtaposition is taking precedence over “X’s
Y”.
Ironically, this counterexample is coming from
a relation which denotes possession, i.e. one which
has the same meaning as “X’s Y”.
Allow me to sum this up, then. In the—shall I
say—“dialect” of people with whom I am talking in
english daily, the three main constructs denoting
possession are:
1 XY
2 X’s Y
3 Y of X
where,
1 precedes 2, which precedes 3. (A taste of the
Haryana typhoon's bowling, for instance). All of
these may not be valid for a given example, so that

68
these “rules” apply only to constructs occuring
“naturally”.
I am also thinking that the relations associate
with themselves in particular ways :
1 associates to the left, e.g. “Haryana typhoon
magic” denotes the magic of the typhoon from
Haryana.
2 associates to the left, e.g. “John’s friend’s
bike”.
3 associates to the right.
Now the associativities of 2 and 3 are in my
opinion entailing each other; they are just a result
of a reversal of order in 2 as contrasted with 3.
Thus, if one can make a firm statement about the
associativity of either, the other statement will fol-
low.
The case of 1 is not so clear to me. Is “X Y Z”
always equivalent to “(X’s Y)’s Z”? I am bringing up
this question since examples such as the following
are suggesting themselves: “Agra murder mystery”.
It is not clear what is really meant: mystery of the
Agra murder, or the murder mystery of Agra. In
fact, that exactly one of these is meant also seems a
fairly bold claim to me. What is actually the case,
then?
I may add here that by “possession” one is not
meaning possession in the narrowest sense, i.e. as
materially belonging. I am aware that saying this is
largely unnecessary.
My questions, then, are:
1. Are the precedences I have given correct?
2. Can one make a firm statement about the
left associativity of “X’s Y” (or equivalently, the
right associativity of “Y of X”)?
3. Is there such a thing as an unambiguous
resolution of “X Y Z”, and if so what is it?

69
 I scarcely need say that all answers are relative
to a particular manner of speaking, i.e. a dialect.
Apologising for sounding like a school test
paper, I take your leave. (It is important for me to
know. For is it ((school test) paper) or (school (test
paper))? I must know what I am sounding like at
least!)
Yours sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XLII
Fri, 7 Jun 91 From: [email protected]
18:13:31 EDT Subject: Another new word, “Yf”, and a puzzling letter.

Dear Sirs/Madams,
Some more questions have come to my mind. I
am starting with a word I had encountered, and
which all the talk about ignoring reminded me. The
word seems to me to be extremely bizarre. It is:
“ignoral”.
Presumably it is to be used in a sentence like
“All my requests were met with complete ignoral”.
Is there such a word?
While reading a posting about “blue moon”,
another doubt came to me. The relevant line is: “Yf
they saye the mone is blewe”. Now, is the first word
“Yf” or is it “Ys”? This I am asking since “Yf”, in my
own guess, would refer to women, and for some
mysterious reasons, our ancestors were never well
known for giving any great respect to women’s
opinions. The sayings of “wise” men, however, were
apt to get accepted unconditionally.
On the other hand, I may be completely
wrong.

70
 I end with an extremely puzzling letter. To
understand the context I am first quoting the mes-
sage which prompted it:

>>But I do believe that Japanese is inherently less

>>precise than English.

>>On the other hand, that is from my perspective as a

native speaker of English.

To this, MacPhil replied:

>You are not the only one to feel that way.

>I have heard knowledgeable people say that the
>cultures of these languages and what they have
>developed/contributed are the same way. Look at
>things like some of the religions, etc. How many
English-based koans are there?

I do not comprehend at all! It is not that I am

disagreeing with the points being made—my diffi-
culty is much more fundamental: I am not under-
standing what it is that is being said! I should
perhaps make this clearer. I am not asking who
“knowledgeable people” are. I am merely asking,
e.g., the following questions:
1 What are “cultures of these languages”?
2 What is one referring to by saying “what
they have developed/contributed”?
3 In fact, what is the precise meaning of “they
are the same way”?
4 Further, I cannot see what is meant by “look
at things like some of the religions, etc.”. What is it?
5 What are “English-based koans”?
6 Finally, how is all this relevant to the matter
at hand?

71
 Of course, the last question will be answered
once the earlier ones are, but till then, I confess, my
mind will remain in a whirl and I will still entertain
some ungentlemanly doubts about whether english
is to be considered a precise language after all.
Yours Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XLIII
Fri, 7 Jun 91 From: [email protected]
19:01:02 EDT Subject: “rabbit-the-cat.gif”

A propos the “gif” file requisitioned by Mr. Tanaka, I

do not see how any question can arise. True, it
requires a practised eye to see the picture, but it is
not so extremely difficult. I merely had to stand a
little far from the screen of the computor to see
hundreds of rabbits and cats in the most realistic
detail. Intrigued, I borrowed infrared binoculars
from the astronomy laboratories to look at it, and
staring at me was a grave simurgh. Going upwards
in the ultraviolet range, I could discern the archi-
tectural plans of the sun temple at Konarak. There
was nothing which could stop me then. I turned the
file on its side and found the recipe for the elixir of
life, which resolved itself into new ways when I put
it under a microscope, to reveal the frightening
countenance of the great Kapalik, Aghorghanta.
To those who are still possessing a copy, I say:
do not discard this file, it is too valuable for that !
Why, one only has to reflect it in a parabolic mirror
to see the musical score for a melody so ravishing
that we in this institute had to stop playing it after
some three professors became insane in their mad
delight. One can view it through an icosahedral

72
 crystal to percieve the full text of a program for the
computor which turned the machine into a
superbly articulate scholar, who, to our surprise,
settled for ever the question of mind versus matter.
Those who lack icosahedral crystals need not
despair, for this great breakthrough in human
thought will be made available by anonymous ftp. I
could extoll the extraordinary virtues of this docu-
ment endlessly; the holy and the profaner texts, the
mathematical theorems, the profound poems, the
draft drawings of fantastic machines, the genetic
sequences of humans, the pictures of nuclear bomb
explosions, the weaving patterns for flying carpets,
a master dictionary of all languages, predictions of
all future stock exchange happenings—but then, I
am thinking, why not leave the joy of discovery to
everyone?
If there are any new findings, communicate
with us; we are planning to start a newsletter con-
cerning precisely this.
Yours &co,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XLIV
Mon, 17 Jun From: KIRTI <[email protected]>
1991 11:51:19 Subject: some general remarks on words-l, Virupaksha
TZONE etc.

General Digression on Words-L, Virupaksha and

other topics
Of all the four classical humours the one
which my friend Virupaksha seems to have in
abundance is the Choleric humour. God, when he
was forging Virupaksha Mokshagundam in heaven
must have been very careless in his work and

73
dipped him for a bit too long in a cauldron full of
Choler. How else can one explain his imbecilities
and a complete lack of understanding of my
letters? I’m at a loss to explain this phenomenon
and the only explanation I could come up with is
the one I’ve expounded above. It seems to go very
well with the general principle that there are people
in this world, who have absolutely no sense of
humour. Take the example of many of the famous
Russian authors. I’ve always been amazed at the
dry humourless writings of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky
and many others. Let there be no doubt that I have
a lot of respect for these Gentlemen of yore and
have read a lot their writings. But every time I read
these the-hero-hangs-himself-in-the-first-chapter
or hero-freezes-to-death-with-his-beloved-in-Sibe-
ria type of novels, I have had to reach out for a stiff
restorative and a vintage Wodehouse (in that
order) to calm myself down. If my friend Virupak-
sha (God forbid such things) was to write a novel or
whatever other bilge he might be capable of writ-
ing, I’m convinced that it will be the most humour-
less work ever thrust upon humanity. If there is any
alternate theory any of you have to offer I'm all ears
(or eyes in this case).
I don’t think there is any point in adding that
this bachelor’s offspring Virupaksha is the most
vile human being on this green Earth. That his let-
ters, full of insane insinuations, are too boring and
furthermore they lack originality and inventive-
ness, will be clear to all who have endured his mali-
cious onslaught. Why he is still allowed to be on
this list is a mystery to me. Anyway, that brings me
to another topic.
When I signed on this list, I was under the
impression that it is supposed to be “English Lan-
gauge Discussion Group”. I now realise that this list

74
has nothing—absolutely nothing whatsoever—to
do with English or any other langauge. For months
on there was this endless and rather trivial discus-
sion on “grading and suing of and by students in the
United States” and what this might have had to do
with English Language is still beyond me. And later
there was this blighter Virupaksha who has no
understanding of English Grammar writing very
pretentious letters about diverse topics, and pass-
ing off his idiotic English as a common practice in
India. Why has he gone uncorrected so far? His
English is absolutely intolerable. Please correct it,
criticise it, till he gets his tenses and participles and
so on right.
And now there is this latest FAD on the list!
The GIF files! What has your picture (or mine) got
to do with English language? Why is so much effort
spent on this complete triviality? If you want to see
Virupaksha for instance all you have to do is see a
picture of a Snake in the Grass, because that’s what
he is. If you wanted to see my picture then look at
anything that you might consider a blot on the
horizon—that’s all.
The idea of having “bios” however is not so
bad. I am going to contribute a rather long memoir
styled “Virupaksha for the Compleat Idiot” to it
soon. This memoir has been compiled with Viru-
paksha’s help (though he will refuse to admit it
now) and speaks the truth and only the truth about
Virupaksha Mokskagundam.
In friendship,

Vatsyayan Mahalingam

75
 XLV
Fri, 28 Jun 1991 From: [email protected]
15:40:55 Subject: A concise history of “words-l”?
TZONE
Dear Sirs/Madams,
It is after a long time that I am writing a letter
to the list, and not so much for being taken up by
sundry matters which are the lot of the academic
student at this time of the year (albeit I am to a cer-
tain extent) as having found nothing of any conse-
quence to say. I am reading the postings every day,
of course. It may not be improper here to add that
the list to me is seeming to have changed consider-
ably in character since the occasion of my joining
it. It perhaps depends on the changing member-
ship. It remains as interesting as ever.
This longish preamble now brings me to my
topic, which is a rather childish request. Could any-
one supply me certain facts about “words-l”, espe-
cially when it was instituted, by whom, and are
there extant members from the first day, et cetera?
If anyone can, please do so. The list is ripe enough
to enter the stage of self-awareness. (One only has
to take care not to allow it to degrade to dandyish-
ness.)
The mention of collective nouns brought to
my mind several suggestions, which I submit:

a pandora of malaprops
a sperm of swoonerists
an ellipse of eccentrics
a bounty of tyrants
a prflbzxxx of earwickers
a puerility of collective noun coiners

In our institute, collective nouns for mathe-

maticians are popular, some being: a category of

76
 logicians, a sequence of analysts, a group (or a com-
plex) of algebraists, a sheaf of geometers (with the
variant “a variety of algebraic geometers”), a bundle
of topologists etc.
I will end my letter here, but before that I warn
everyone of an impending letter from the animal
Kuvalayapeeda. My respect for elephants is consid-
erable, but I am passing on this letter more because
of a threat from the nonhuman rights branch in
Bombay. One can always delete the letter, of course,
if one thinks it below one’s dignity to read such let-
ters.
Apologising in advance,
Yours truly,

a verbiage of Mokshagundams.

XLVI
Fri, 28 Jun 1991 From: [email protected]
15:49:15 Subject: Re: 21st Century
TZONE
Mr. Mark Susskind has said:

>I have heard people refer to the 1990s as “the turn of

>the century.”
>Has it started already? I thought that it first begins
>in 1999 or 2000.

I would like to mention that the 21st century

begins in the year 2001.
Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

77
 XLVII
Sat, 29 Jun From: [email protected]
1991 18:01:20 Subject: Regarding “E-mail”
TZONE
Forgive me for being so impertinent as to write the
following, but I could not contain myself after read-
ing an astonishingly immature letter by Mr.
Macphil. I am not having anything to say about the
contents, of course, but content myself with citing
two examples which have been extremely puzzling
for me as regards the usage of the english language
therein.

Example 1:

>If so, you should be aware of them. Together, they

>comprise 30% of the top 10 dailies . . . that's not why I
>read them, but . . .

If “30%” in this sentence is referring to 3 out of

10, then I daresay that there are very few persons
incapable of divining it. On the other hand, what
may be being mentioned is something in the man-
ner of sales, readership, etc. In this case, it must be
so mentioned explicitly. Whichever way, the sen-
tence carries very little information and one won-
ders why it was made.

Example 2 :

>>the article is relevant to mention at all, isn't it

>>relevant enough to give a short summary?
>
>no!

This leaves me short of breath. All I can say at

the moment is that it must be an extraordinarily

78
 bizarre article. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I
have never come across an article for which was
not relevant to give a summary of contents, yet
mentioning which was quite relevant. To my no
doubt impoverished mind, it is seeming like a con-
tradiction in terms. Of course, I may just not be
knowing what the word “relevant” means.
At the risk of sounding like a pompous pulpi-
teer, I must say that words are in a certain sense
sacred, and to use them vaguely or illogically is in
that sense blasphemy.
Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XLVIII
Sun, 30 Jun From: [email protected]
1991 15:26:15 Subject: leap years
TZONE
>I'm not sure how the 365.24 (?) days/year really
>enters into the determination.
>
>The sole factor of 28/29 days in February is whether
>it is/not a leap year.

The peculiar and seemingly arbitrary rules (“fac-

tors”) for leap years have been arrived at in order to
take into account the fact that the year is slightly
less than 365.25 days. Whether Gregory's astrono-
mers made use of the now-standard continued
fraction approximation to the actual number of
days is not known to me. 365 + 1/4 - 1/400 does
approximate the number of days in an year rather
beautifully, however.
Strangely enough, the next finer correction
seems to be to declare every 40000th year as a leap

79
 year, overruling the 400 rule. We have accidentally
hit upon a pleasant pattern.
In all honesty, I cannot guarantee the exist-
ence of a 40000 rule. I apologise in advance if it is
found wrong. I am only recalling having read it
somewhere.
Yours Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

XLIX
Fri, 19 Jul 1991 From: [email protected]
16:48:58 Subject: was re nothing, is re 8 topics
TZONE
Dear Sir/Madam,
How strange it feels to write a letter again
after such a lengthy interval! Truly, I feel almost a
stranger! I have just managed to surf over a wave of
two hundred odd letters, and the one thing which
affords me much pleasure is the thought of a cer-
tain Mr. Mahalingam who has been absent from the
network for much longer than I have been. You
must of course excuse the tenses in my last clause.
But then, let me turn to more palatable, if triv-
ial topics. Before I start, I must apologise for not
having sent a letter by the animal Kuvalayapeeda. I
was strong enough to reject it on the grounds that
it was too pompous, even when compared to
myself. I have stood up to the nonhuman rights
activists in this matter and I am feeling most virtu-
ous. But lest someone should still be intrigued, I
quote the beginning of it:

>A hearty greeting to all! Although I am not familiar

>to subscribers to the list, the converse is far from
>true, since I have been “lurking” on the list for a

80
 >long time, in spite of lurking being so difficult and
>unnatural an activity for an elephant.
>I ask your indulgence on one point . . .

The letter gets much more sickening afterwards.

Now to some points I would like to bring up
concerning some of the communications to this
list.
1 Why oh why is the strange incantation
“myxyzptlk” being used? I did not inquire about it
on the certainty that it will feature in gleanings(n)
for some n, and yet where is it? I demand that it be
appended to the gleanings list immediately!
my yearly xaminations yield zero progress
towards lending knowledge?
many young xtraterrestrial yetis zap poor
trekkers like kamikaze?
My head whirls, wild and weary.
2 Animal Idioms brings to my mind the
strange coincidence that most Indian languages
also use “bathe like a crow” to denote a hasty bath.
It may or may not sound counterintuitive to
english speakers that “sleep like a dog” denotes a
very cautious sleep.
3 This in turn puts me in mind of a possibly
unusual phenomenon; that of Number Idioms. We
say “the number 36” to mean a very bitter disagree-
ment; this is because in the devanagari and related
scripts, 36 looks like two persons standing back to
back. Apart from 69, which is sounding to me as
arising more out of the need for euphemism than a
fancy for a picturesque symbol, is there any such
phrase in the english language?
The other example I have in mind is even fun-
nier and involves the number 420. Almost every-
where in the country, or at least in the region of the
aryan languages, 420 (char-so-bees in Hindi, say)

81
denotes a person who is untrustworthy and who
will cheat you at the first opportunity. Why such a
an idiom should exist is beyond me, although it is
true—and is the only explanation I have heard -
that clause number 420 of the Indian Penal Code
deals with swindling.
I would like to know examples of idioms
involving numbers, although of course not “one”,
“two” or “three”, which are words, if I may say so.
4 I must take up again the question of
hyphening. I asked about constructs such as “sym-
metric equation based” and was advised not to
introduce hyphens at all. Now I have run up
against “non zero divisor”. It is seeming to me that
a hyphen must follow “non”. But I am intending to
talk about something which is not a zero divisor
and not about a divisor which is non-zero, in which
case writing “non-zero divisor” is very much mis-
leading. I am unable to think of anything except
saying “non-(zero divisor)”! What are you suggest-
ing?
5 It struck me forcefully the other day that if
one has to speak strictly, then one cannot say “my
watch is fast”. One can only say it is ahead. Yet
there are people all round me who will say the
watch is fast or slow when they are speaking
english, while in their native languages they will
still say it is ahead or behind. It is most puzzling.
6 Mr. Akio Tanuki writes:

>And, I'm not sure whether it is a bad thing or not,

>but Tanuki is rumored to have extremely large
>te***cles. :) I don't remember the American
>motorcycle racer's name.

What, I ask, is so improper about tentacles?

7 About the following letter,

82
 >In balance, all French speakers know an English
>word that is not English: smoking. Smoking is the
>French (and German too) word for a dinner jacket
>
>Tony H.

I am thinking that Germans ALSO have such a

word.
8 The fox who would have been the craftiest
but who turned out to be the most faux was of
course the gunpowder fawkes. I am most tempted
at this moment to go on about foxtrots and guys
and the hounding of poor Mr. Ykins, but then one
must be really Ruthless on such occasions.
Yours Most Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

L
Fri, 19 Jul 1991 From: [email protected]
18:33:12 Subject: Re: was re nothing, is re 8 topics
TZONE
>> I am thinking that Germans ALSO have such
>> a word.
>
>I miss the point. Is it that the phrase with “too”
>is inelegant?
>I am thinking that I don't understand the problem.
>
>
>Tony H.

I must apologise for these feeble jests. I merely

wanted to point out that the German word “also” is
such a word.
Horror of all horrors! Could it be that all my
little jokes upto now have escaped in the guise of

83
 ununderstandable problems? In the name of the
thiry-three crores (330 millions)! I am prepared to
rewrite all those which I can recall!
Yours &Co,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

LI
Fri, 26 Jul 1991 From: [email protected]
17:56:46 Subject: synthetic/analytic (short)
TZONE
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing the following letter out of curios-
ity. A while ago, if you recall it, a letter titled “syn-
thetic/analytic” had appeared on this excellent list.
It was forwarded, I think, by Natalie. It has in it a
statement saying that “highly synthetic” languages
have are different from the “highly analytic” ones
even in ways involving speech timing, meters,
rhyme etc.
This led me to reflect on what the relevant
characteristics are for some languages I have been
exposed to, and it seems that all the North Indian
(aryan) languages have properties different from
english! Now I would never have noticed this unless
I had read the letter above. But to turn to the sub-
ject at hand, consider the following, where, as an
example of an “Indian” language, I have taken the
language Sanskrit in order to avoid controversies:

Sanskrit English

word order o-v, postposi- v-o, prepositional

tional

84
 Sanskrit English

word accent initial final or penulti-

mate

word tendency polysyllabic monosyllabic

speech timing “iso-moric” stress-timed

syllables short/long stressed/
unstressed

clusters simple complex

meters quantitative accentual

rhymes front rhyme end rhyme

music monody polyphony

I am, of course, no expert, and I have inter-

preted all the words involved in the best way I can
(i.e. I am guessing their meanings). But it is surpris-
ing to see so many predicted properties appearing
consistently in one language. Of course, what I have
just put down above applies to most modern aryan
languages as well as Sanskrit. My question then is :
do the experts consider Sanskrit and modern aryan
languages as “synthetic”? In that case, are our lan-
guages at a stage of lesser development? Finally,
how is it that languages so strongly related as the
two above exhibit such totally different properties?
Are the long Sanskrit compounds which were
the most dreadful part of our school an example of
“complex morphology” or “complex syntax”? I do
not really know the meanings of these words, but
are these compounds to be called one word or sev-
eral?
I am aware that my questions are probably
possessing wildly differing levels of naiveness, but
please understand that I am a layman only.

85
 My final question is: This letter originated in
something called “sci.lang”. Is this a list? If so, how
helpful is it for a total imbecile whose only pretext
for subscribing it is an interest in language? If it is
helpful, how does one subscribe to it?
And now that the “scholarly” part of the letter
is over, I might mention a phenomenon arising in
the writing of Indian names which may have a con-
nection with confusing “morphology” with “syn-
tax”. On the other hand, it may not, since mine is
only a blind guess.
When a name such as, say, Ramlal is to be
written, in the roman script it is always written as
“Ram Lal”. In fact, it is a single name, and Lal is not
a second name, father’s name, or place name. To be
geographically correct I will also submit the north-
ern name Rajendra Prasad and the southern name
Anantha Murthy, which in reality are Rajendra-
prasad and Ananthamurthy.
This tendency, originally started, I suspect, by
the British, becomes most ridiculous when initials
are determined by it. To be politically unbiased, I
am giving two names:

Atalbehari Vajpayee written as “A.B.Vajpayee”

Harkishanlal Bhagat written as “H.K.L.Bhagat”

But then, long names do pose problems. I am

an authority on the subject.
Yours Sincerely,

V. M. Gundam.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Mokshagundam Takshakabhushana Virupaaksha
Kaamaakshivara
----------------------------------------------------------------

86
 parasitic bitnet address: | “If a four letter man
[email protected] | marries a five letter
current postal address: | woman, what number of
TATA INSTITUTE, BOMBAY. | letters would their
| children be?”
| Hemingway

----------------------------------------------------------------

LII
Fri, 26 Jul 1991 From: [email protected]
18:11:14 Subject: Cannot stimulate replies, will simulate them.
TZONE
Dear Sir/Madam,
I do not know how to apologise for this letter,
except saying that it is human nature to expect
people to reply to one's communications. I am lack-
ing any real point to make and I cannot expect any-
one to take notice of me, but then wading through
two hundred odd messages I am getting today, I am
feeling that I should also contribute. To save every-
one the trouble I am writing several replies myself,
and hoping that they are accurate representations
of reality. I cannot be held guilty for this; after all,
that a letter has really been written by the person it
is reportedly from hardly makes it more probable to
be true to reality, like the ancient notion of advaita,
where “i” and “another” dissolve into one and in
fact the distinction becomes nonsensical. At least,
it becomes nonsensical if the distinction between
sense and nonsense has survived.
Well, I have had my say. Why, I ask, shirk from
attaching the replies to it too?

87
Price:

Virupaksha, this letter is very beautiful and moving.

The notion of advaita, shall I say, is striking me as very
poetic.

Ruth:

Hey Viru, it won’t do for all netters to become one. For

one, shooting peanuts at such short range won’t be so
much fun. What say, Don, and how’s the new super-
duper-no-overheads-energy-efficient-peashooter-
canon, or did it get classified by M? <disappearing
with great haste into nuclear shelter, yet sporting most
annoying grin on face>

Adam C.:

My dearest Virile Pasha, how about postponing for the

moment all the bullshit about advaita and paying
whatever attention you can to the name of the list?

Michel:

Bonjour, Viral Pox. Has your laser third eye tripped a

fuse or are you just being in your ground state insanity
? :-)

Natalie:

>of me, but then wading through two hundred odd

messages I am getting I just checked, and the average
daily traffic is only coming upto 51.342 messages. This
of course may be because the T zone computors are
out of commission in entirety!

88
Bernard:

Oh, Natalie has goofed again, I say! I am checking at

this very moment, and the daily traffic is averaging
only 51.337! What an unpardonable crime to report
differently!

Macphil:

By the way, did you know that the average of list post-
ings across time differs significantly from the average
across the spectrum of lists? This appeared in the
Journal of Networkers, May 87. Could this sort of phe-
nomenon imply a factor involving different mental
propensities of different listers and so on?

Bill:

>and in fact the distinction becomes nonsensical. At

>least, it becomes nonsensical if the distinction
>between sense and nonsense has survived.

Are you knowledgeable of the fact that it has

NOT survived in certain universities I have been in?
At the University of Jungenjinanuke, two professors
were forced to eat vegetarian food for a week when
they tried to state that certain assignments by stu-
dents were nonsensical. If you don't smell the com-
ing of a movement against sensism, how will you
ever survive in the academic world ?
Last, and hence by necessity not the least,

Nancy Ellis:

What subversive tripe is all this! Ignore such bilge

which is issuing from Virpashka, I say!

89
 Nancy Ellis, after 2 minutes:

I say, this is perhaps a mildly funny letter, although

essentially stupid. Only it is making one react a bit ini-
tially.

Yours &Co,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

LIII
Sat, 27 Jul 1991 From: [email protected]
17:50:47 Subject: “push starts”
TZONE
A propos the following letter concerning “forehead
dots”:

>The spot on the forehead (I did forget to ask what it is

>called) is indeed a designation of marriage when
>worn by a female (it is not worn by men).

>It does not matter what caste, etc. It is not, however,

>as popular as it once was and occasionally is worn by
>a woman unmarried, just as some unmarried people
>here wear rings.
>
>Mac “I used to juggle five, but they found out about
each other” Phil

The one fact to be mentioned here, of course,

is that all the above is only in the context of HINDU
(married) women. Yet, I have observed many Mus-
lim, Christian and Sikh women also wearing them
and a few married Hindu women not wearing
them. Jains and Buddhists follow the Hindu tradi-
tion in this matter. The Zoroastrians (Parsis) are
seeming to be the only real exceptions.

90
 Another thing I am observing is that the exact
hue, position, and shape of the “dot” IS depending
on caste to quite an extent. Instead of launching
into intricacies of caste, I will content myself by
saying that I have seen colours from almost purple
to almost saffron, positions anywhere between the
join of the eyebrows to practically the parting of
hair, sizes ranging between a tiny dot and a rupee
sized disc, and several departures from the circular
shape, for instance a crescent. The variations do
seem to me to be correlated to caste and class.
The “norm” could be formulated as a bright
red pea-sized circular disc on the center of the fore-
head.
Most Sincerely Yours,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

P.S. This is reminding me of an incident I was wit-

ness to wherein a car with a license plate MCP was
towing another with license plate MRS. MCP strid-
ing ahead with Mrs in tow struck me as a rather
felicitous description of the traditional Indian cou-
ple.

LIV
Fri, 2 Aug 1991 From: [email protected]
17:41:39 Subject: RE bring/take
TZONE
Dear Sir/Madam,
Let me say at the outset that seeing everyday
as I do the costly and beautiful teeth of an elephant,
I am finding all discussion of the teeth of cats and
dogs utterly trivial and insignificant. Similar
remarks apply to the evolutionary scale. To speak
frankly, trying to distinguish cats from dogs on the

91
 majestic span of the evolutionary scale is hair-split-
ting to a degree comparable to sensing individual
people from satellites of geocentric heights.
Concerning “bring” versus “take”, I may men-
tion one turn of phrase which I have noticed some
correspondents using, which is not directly rele-
vant but yet, I feel, may add to the confusion. It is:
“unsubscribing to a list”. I am always using “bring
from” and “take to”, and “unsubscribing to” also
seems very strange to me, much more than just the
word “unsubscribing” standing alone.
Regarding “anymore”, the usage given by “X
happens anymore” is extremely unusual. Now if
one took “X does not happen anymore” as correct,
and if one wanted to coin a new term, then logically
one would be compelled to say “X happens every-
more”.
Yours Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

LV
Fri, 2 Aug 1991 From: [email protected]
17:46:07 Subject: idiotic subscribers
TZONE
from - TUSHAR “Virupaksha Mokshagundam”
to - ‘Vatsyayan Mahalingam’ <ORION@TIFRVAX>
subj -

Dear Moby Dick,

Do you with your immense repository of
knowledge about the USA know anything about
“Peewee X” where X may stand for anything? The
oafs subscribing to WORDS-L are not seeming to
stop it from fevering their practically unfunction-
ing brains. With all the enmity I have with you I am

92
 still admitting grudgingly that you are not the stu-
pidest nor the most pompous subscriber to that
list.
Please answer me about “Peewee”, but be wary
of what are being termed as “e-oops”’es. Even your
most civilized reply will precipitate a catastrophe if
it gets known to the uncivilized barbarians who are
peopling the WORDS-L list. I am still thinking over
the theory that they are robotic simulacra of vice
presidents, but seem to prefer the simpler explana-
tion that they are all irremediably drunk when they
face the computor. In either case do not “reply”
without discrimination. To look at endless inanities
on an innocuous statement one makes is an
unpleasant experience, especially so if perpetrated
by silly asses possessing no intellectual substance
whatsoever.
I stand by all my accusations against you, of
course.

-V.M.

LVI
Sun, 18 Aug From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
1991 02:03:00 Subject: I take your leave.
IST
Dear Sir/Madam,
This is my last letter to WORDS-L. I now have
to return to a village where there are no computors
and no electronic network. A propos list-servers, I
think that there are some differences between dis-
cussions on lists and ordinary verbal discussions.
They are:
1 At the time of sending a letter, one does not
have any knowledge of what the others are sending.

93
This results in several people sending identical
replies to a question.
2 People in the same geographical area are
logged into their computors at the same time, and
hence can achieve something resembling a conver-
sation. People who can consult the machine infre-
quently and at odd times always have to see a
discussion which has been completed, or a series of
remarks which have gone stale with time.
Realising this, I always attempted to send
things which were necessary, relatively indepen-
dent of topicalities, and likely to be new. I also
habitually collected several points in one letter
which I sent (or to be precise, asked my friend to
send).
I am naturally grieved to leave this excellent
list, since I gained enormous benefit from it. It has
managed, in an almost unnoticeable manner, to
smoothen the rough edges of my english, in which
present progressives proliferate no more, which is
much less awkwardnessful, and whose “quaint
charm”, I am happy to say, is to a greater or lesser
extent a thing of the past.
I am still recalling my first letter to WORDS-L,
and I compare it often with my second. I am think-
ing I may well lay claim to being the fastest convert
from the “prescriptivist” to the “descriptivist” fash-
ion of thinking.
It is in such ways, and many more, that
WORDS-L helped me. It sobered me from a gram-
mar-drunkenness and intoxicated me with a very
different, and heightened, sense of language. This
has been due to the fact that WORDS-L is a list of
people who talk about their topics, and not of aca-
demics who discuss theirs. This, I feel, is one
strength of such a list. I will certainly not forget
WORDS-L ever.

94
 I hope that my own contributions, if they were
inconsequential, at least did no great damage to
the list. I take the opportunity to apologise now if I
hurt anyone with my occasional clowning. It was
not meant to be serious. And—if I may start a sen-
tence with an and—if my writing struck you as
stilted, formal, boring or dull, then I can always
take shelter behind the argument that the list was
actually enriched by another variety of english!
Goodbye.
Yours Sincerely,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

LVII
Mon, 12 Aug From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
1991 22:16:00 Subject: Macphil’s defective palindromes.
IST
Dear Sir/Madam,
I have been thinking about Mcphil’s queries
about near-perfect palindromes, which I will take
the liberty of naming “merodromes”, thus making
the name describe itself. Allow me to recall that
what was required was a word whose former and
latter halves were identical upto a permutation, yet
not reverses of each other.
The most satisfying example I have of this is
the word “reappear”. Apart from this, one can pos-
sibly coin the word “neotone”. Stretching the imag-
ination further, one can have “gel-algae” and also
“brassbars”. Please note that we have used a rea-
sonable definition for words with an odd number of
letters, and one which was suggested by Macphil.
If one knows a palindromic word where the
central letter or pair of letters is “s” (or “ss”), then
one could possibly add an “s” at the end of it ; how-

95
 ever, I am not able to think of a good example at
this moment. One can of course think of sonons,
the quanta of sound.
I trust I have been of some help.
Sincerely Yours,

Virupaksha Mokshagundam.

LVIII
Wed, 28 Aug From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
1991 16:40:00 Subject: Virupaksha : the truth.
IST
Dear wordslers,
Virupaksha Mokshagundam is dead. More
accurately, Virupaksha the playshape has stopped
its jactitations. We think that we should explain
the whole business fully and clearly.
We are graduate students visiting TIFR, two of
us in the computer science department, one in the
department of communication systems, and one in
mathematics. When we arrived at the institute, we
took over the account belonging to Tushar Samant,
who was then leaving the institute. He had the
habit of listserving for fun, and we asked him not to
unsubscribe from any of the lists he had subscribed
to.
By far the most interesting list for us was
WORDS-L. When we saw some postings to it the
idea of VM began to form.
In TIFR there has been going on for the past
six years a huge and ambitious knowledge-base-
and-natural-language project, Vagvilasini. We saw
some of the output produced and were quite
impressed by the connectedness of its “discourse”.
And so we thought of piping its babble into
WORDS-L.

96
 For some reasons of our own we named our
“subscriber” as Virupaksha. Having done that, the
name Mokshagundam, (as also the names Takshak-
abhushana and Kamakshivara) seemed inevitable.
(Later, we had begun calling TIFRVAX as the
FAKEVM node.)
Getting proper output from Virupaksha was
not easy. We had to make a lot of decisions about
his “default settings”. Finally we decided that the
safest bet would be to give him a traditional brah-
min “upbringing” and a “register” straight from the
babu's mouth. We hoped that any anomalies which
might have ordinarily looked very peculiar would
go unnoticed among the “alien” turns of phrase and
especially the present progressives.
It is difficult to explain the technicalities, but
each letter by Virupaksha was prepared as follows :
We decided on the subject of the letter and gave
the system (in “Virupaksha settings”) a “general
idea” of what was to be written. Then we let Viru-
paksha go on on his own. After he had “written” the
letter, we occassionally retouched it at some spots
if it sounded too weird. The formatting, uploading
and sending was done totally by us.
Initially our intention was merely to produce
one letter, but it turned out so much funnier than
we expected that we thought VM was worth a some
more letters.
Public interface with the Vagvilasini system
seems to be a strange mixture of hush-hush and
openness, so we are not at all sure whether what we
have done is illegal. Secondly, we suppose that we
have committed a SVONE (serious violation of net
ethics). We only hope that VM will be taken as a
joke. If he was a donut he was a benign donut. We
hope.

97
 A lot of “strange” things about VM should get
clearer now—his inability to give on-the-spot
replies, his tendency to initiate discussions rather
than continue them or write letters on new topics
and not follow up, his dubious grammar and
unusual imagery, hints of stock phrases, an out-
pouring of data in preference to argumentation,
and a whole lot of other minor things.
Let us clear up one possible misunderstand-
ing. There was no ALGORITHM which cranked out
the VM letters (that day is far off!). We had to work
with the system in different ways for different let-
ters. Virupaksha seemed quite incapable of keeping
up a “correspondence”: he was fine for a single
piece of discourse, but was hopeless with a
sequence of letters. In short, we worked quite a bit
ourselves, and with all modesty we think that we
have handled quite a complex knowledge database
for something more than a toy example.
Apart from giving general directives the letter
were genuinely VM’s. Of course we had to retouch
at some points, but those were very few. We
rejected some letters. Also, two letters were written
entirely by one of us (conforming AMAP to VM’s
style). For the “cannot stimulate, will simulate” let-
ter, the batter was provided by VM and the raisins
were put in by us.
Our big embarassments were:
1 “lest” was not balanced by “should”—hardly
something to expect from a wren-&-martin cram-
artist.
2 The constant use of “english” as an adjective
(or maybe some other perplexing bug) which
resulted, if you have noticed, in VM never capitalis-
ing “English”.
We did not touch these “mistakes”, since they
weren’t mistakes.

98
 Although we are sorry to perpetrate VM on
the list, we are also sorry to pack him off. It was
necessary to kill him, since we are going away in
different directions, and he would have soon devel-
oped into a high-caliber bore anyway. But then,
WORDS-L can be called the richest list of around;
between Galmin and VM we have seen them all,
haven’t we?
We might as well explain here three shadowy
figures connected with VM:
1 Tushar Samant: Any letter signed by him
was written by one of us. The real Tushar has left
TIFR.
2 Kuvalayapeeda: An attempt to create
another character, which bombed. The idea was to
have a style chock-full of textbook Indianisms; the
end effect was unpalatable.
3 Vatsyayan Mahalingam: This is a genuine
human being, as can be checked. When he was
joining the list, we tried to talk him into signing on
as “Garett Leighman” (juggle ’em, Macphil!), but
old Moby Dick refused.
We really hope that VM has been more enter-
taining than irritating. It started purely as a practi-
cal joke, but we learned a lot from it. We might
even write up the whole thing to produce a more-
data-less-crunching (read all-data-no-crunching)
paper. And we have had our fill of wild-grad-pranks
in the bargain.
If you are not totally pissed off at this stage (we
do apologise—sincerely) you are urged to answer
these questions:
1 Did you ever suspect anything funny about
VM? Did you suspect an AI system was involved?
2 The “retouching” was done by one of us ear-
lier and by another of us in the later letters. Did this

99
 show through? Were the earlier letters significantly
different from the later ones?
3 Do you remember any letters which were
really different? Any letter which you would now
guess was written manually?
4 VM evolved, rather than burst fullfledged on
the list. (e.g. present progressive got scarcer as time
passed) Do you think VM had a coherent “person-
ality”? If so, what sort of anthropomorphic adjec-
tives would you use to describe him?
Please send replies to TUSHAR@TIFR-
VAX.BITNET if you think they will crowd WORDS-
L. If you have any other comments to make
PLEASE do so.
This seems to be a complete enough account
of VM, so we—what else but—
Most Respectfully Take Your Leave,

Vinayak Prasad
Rustom Mehr-Homji
Pandurang M V Kallianpur
Akshay Ganguly
(TIFR, Bombay)

LIX
Sat, 31 Aug From: TUSHAR SAMANT <[email protected]>
1991 11:33:00 Subject: ITMA!
IST
Here is a Virupaksha letter which was sent but
somehow never reached. It will sound totally topi-
cal now, but was clearly important for him.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir/Madam,
Although the following will only sound like
raking up past and forgotten things, I cannot rest
until I have dealt with the matter. It is to do with a

100
letter which I had sent to the list, titled “idiotic sub-
scribers”. When I read a reply such as the following:

>Subj: RE: idiotic subscribers

>
>From all of us “uncivilized barbarians,”
>Thank you. We like you, too.
>
>Evelyn

could you blame me if a flush of shame is heating

my face?
Truly, I have made an attempt at humour
which went beyond tolerable limits. Ever since
Natalie said that every “e-mailer” has, once at least,
committed an “e-oops”, I was resolved to commit
one myself. Hence I wrote the letter, ostensibly to
my “friend” Vatsyayan Mahalingam, which con-
tained some extremely unpleasant remarks about
subscribers to this excellent list. I do not believe
that you are all silly asses without any intellectual
substance. The only thing I can do now, and this is
what I do do now, is to apologise in a most humble,
if not absolutely grovelling manner, yet tinged with
sufficient sincerity. I will not attempt to make such
jokes on the list again.
If my apology is sounding ridiculous, I assure
you that the fault lies entirely with my english.
Regarding “sensing individual people from
geocentric heights”, I must concede that its essen-
tial fogginess is unparalleled on the list. I address
this specifically to Don. I must have been irremedi-
ably drunk when I faced the computor the day I
wrote this. We brahmans get intoxicated even with
the smell of garlic. Forgive me.
On to some other topics :

101
 >From: Jarmila Pankova <[email protected]>
>Hi y’al,
> I’m new here on words-l. What are you talking
>usually about?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Someone in my own tradition, I see. I am hav-

ing a suspicion that if one conducts a survey
encompassing the world, the construction above
will be by far the most favoured. In the interests of
preventing native-english-ism, I propose that the
grammar books should make present progressives
the only legal tenses in such cases as above.
About “WOG”: A question coming to my mind
is : What is a “golliwog”? Does it have any connec-
tion with “WOG”? I am recalling faintly that there
is some relation between “golliwog” and “black-
skinned”. That is the reason for which I ask.
Regarding pronunciations: What is anomalous
about “cloven/oven” and “mauve/gauze”? Are not
the vowels sounded identically in both cases? This
gives rise to another question. Can one be said to
know a language if he can read and write it fluently,
yet having a very nebulous notion of the way it is
pronounced? I may be having such an ability with
english.
Finally, I should perhaps mention that this is
amongst my last letters to the list “WORDS-L”.
Before the month is over, I will leave the institute
and the network world for ever, and go back to
teach mathematics in the Mokshagundam munici-
pal school. However, please do not jump up in joy
that this IS my last letter; given my liking for pomp
and ceremony, I am not above devoting an entire
letter to a farewell.
Sincerely Yours,

102
 Virupaksha Mokshagundam.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Shades of Aziz?

103