Change, change, change.

The more I think about it, the more amazing I find it. I must have been born under a forward-looking star that ordained that I would see so much change and so much history in the making in a single lifetime. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2007/04/pain-and-suffering.html. For instance, as a child, I saw MK Gandhi at fairly close quarters at one of his prayer meetings in Mahabaleshwar. I wrote about it in my still unpublished novel http://www.addgandhi.com/original/ on Gandhi and Hollywood, The Last Gandhi Movie. A few years later, I listened to Nehru’s famous eulogy at his funeral (“the light has gone out of our lives”) on our 5-valvr Bush radio. http://www.eulogywriters.com/ghandi.htm. So even if I rank among the lesser mortals who do not make history, I have been a mute witness to history in the making. Some of the late 20th landmarks I watched at more than six degrees of separation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation were Nehru’s death, the infamous Emergency interlude, Operation Bluestar and its aftermath, to mention the most noteworthy. I witnessed India’s progression from a colony to a state capitalist economy to a free economy. I saw at least one hack Victoria driver being butchered from my third floor terrace at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/07/morgue.html in the 1946-47 riots as well as Muslim houses behind as well from across my present residence in old Thakurdwar being put to flame in the 1992-93 massacre following Babri Masjid’s demolition. Apart from these, I saw my own family graduate from the coal choolah and the kerosene stove to bottled cooking gas and from the coal-fired water heater to electric heater. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/heat-of-days-long-past.html. I saw the valve radio making way for the transistor powered one. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2007/03/clueless-in-mumbai.html. I saw my portable typewriter making way for the PC in a span of forty years. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/my-portable-typewriter-tale.html. And, I also saw myself graduating from the milk in a bottle and later in a plastic bag that needs boiling every morning http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/neo-luddite-relents-sheepishly-shame.html to the milk in a carton that needs no boiling at all. The Internet, e-mail, IM. SMS, Wen 2.0, cellular phones, CDs, DVDs, the likelihood of the end of the civilisation as we know it and of the institution of marriage … good grief, Charlie Brown, where are we headed?

Here comes the spleen. (Sing it to the tune of ‘Here comes the bride’. Once more with feeling.)

This specimen (from the twenty-fifth issue of QuiteATake.com) comes from my own Archives. (The Hindustan Times Archives do not go back beyond 01 August 2004.)

> Quoting verbatim an unsigned hate E-mail I received is an apt way to open the twenty-fifth issue of QuiteATake.com. …

"Sub: Naipaul

Naipaul is a not a sourpuss, and unlike you is a well respected man of considerable talent and sharp intellect.
I bet you have not read some, let alone most of his work, yet in order to improve you (sic!) Indian version of secular credential, really a well established Nehruvian type of muslim appeasement, you feel that you have to slight this man. Pathetic hindu wimp forever subserviant to islamists!"

I wonder what the Nobel laureate would make of it. Either this fan of his has given up on English spellings or his ability to spell has given up on his mind so full of hate and venom.

Anyone wishing to answer him may apply to me for his E-mail address.

In the meanwhile, my PC's spellchecker has put the whole thing in proper perspective. Helpfully, it offered "muslin" as an alternative to "muslim" sans capital "m"; "hind" for ditto "hindu"; the correct spelling of the Frenchified "subserviant"; and "psalmists", "alarmists" and "Islamite" in lieu of "islamists." It made no comment on the "you" used in place of the intended "your," though. (The "sic!" is mine own.) And, it even offered to change "Frenchified" into "French-fried," the joker!

[P.S.: One of the joker’s contributions I forgot to mention was “Peruvian” instead of ”Nehruvian”.]

The piece that drew the hate mail-writer’s ire was two issues earlier. It read:

> If passport denotes nationality, Naipaul is an "intellectually and culturally bankrupt" Briton or Britisher if you'd rather I use a word the British shun.

He's certainly not one of us "unwashed" Indians, thank our lucky stars, nor an "unlearned" Trinidadian. An Oxford don who later confessed to having wasted his youth at "a very second rate provincial university," Naipaul is a sourpuss with a disposition to match.

Or else why would he perpetually view the world through jaundiced eyes?No, my bone of contention is neither An Area of Darkness nor India: A Wounded Civilisation. I found both these uncompromisingly truthful and brilliant.

It's simply that, Nobel laureate or not, the man comes across as an insufferable boor.

Give me, instead, the Royal Canadian Air Farce anytime. http://www.airfarce.com/.

In retrospect, though, I feel I wrote too harshly and unfeelingly about Sir Vidiadhar. After all, he has the right to feel and write any way he wishes. Sorry for the lapse, Sir Vidia.