Wee Bonnie Scotland.

Sir Isaac Pitman and I are old nodding acquaintances. It transpired thus. Smack after the conclusion of my Secondary School Certificate finals in March 1952, I enrolled at the Abhyankar Typing & Shorthand Institute situated bang next to the Rammohan High School at Prarthana Samaj. This much respected institution of that time happened to be within walking distance of 233 Khetwadi Main Road in South Mumbai where the Mankars used to reside at that point in my existential timeline. http://bit.ly/48tnw4. I had joined Abhyankar’s in order to learn touch typing to make up for my atrocious handwriting. The sacrilegious thought of trespassing into the venerated Pitman territory had never crossed my mind. Shorthand used to be all the rage among the young people then, particularly among girls because it was seen as a handy doorway – almost an open sesame − into the job market. The reason why I thought of Sir Isaac now is the late Ms Molly Weir, Miss Bonnie Scotland’s real- life avatar. Till the time I met Molly in print, the only Bonnie Scotland I had heard of was the eponymous Laurel and Hardy comedy http://bit.ly/N4c6ot.  I saw the hilarious movie as a child at the old Metro Cinema, a familiar Dhobi Talao landmark. To cut a long digression short, I picked a copy of Molly Weir’s Trilogy of Scottish Childhood (Diamond Books, London, 1988) at a sale in the Sunderabai Hall fairly recently. The book that I consider as perhaps the best autobiography I’ve ever read cost me a pittance: no more than a measly Rs.50/-. Molly, the bonnie Glasgow lassie, was a self-confessed whiz at Pitman’s shorthand. She toured all over Scotland as the Pitman brand ambassador in order to popularise the training course by giving live speed demos without receiving a single farthing by way of remuneration for her work. One of the most endearing things about Molly’s memoirs is her detailed description of the lengths she and her family would go to just to save a penny or two. That, I guess, gladdened my Third World soul. So also did the description of the way they had to tighten the belt in the World War II rationing regime. Then again, her chitchat about her tramcaur journeys downtown and elsewhere in Glasgow too touched a chord in my memory of things past. http://bit.ly/NjclbB. Molly’s most appealing characteristic as a writer, to my old-school way of thinking, is her self-deprecation, her humility, her modesty, and not the least her reticence in describing certain major events centring on herself. For instance, she describes in telling details the celebration of the wedding of her aunt but glosses over her own wedding with a sentence or two. Similarly, all through her courtship by her beau, she refrains from providing us with the details, even his name. Her autobiography gives ample scope for her humanity, her candour and her wry – at times, droll − sense of humour. It’s refreshing to meet someone who calls a spade a spade, doesn’t have a swollen head and misses no chance to laugh at her own foibles. For the record, Molly started her working life as a steno-typist, took part in amateur dramatics on the side and ultimately made a breakthrough to become a renowned BBC regular as well as an acting professional in British theatre and cinema. I sure would love to read the rest of her autobiography. 

We’re like that only.

Sue in Glasgow in the recently roughed over England has this comment to make: “I'm married to a non-Brit and after 10 years here he still looks on in amusement when he spots a voluntarily orderly queue.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7391776.stm. [Italics mine.] I have a strong feeling she is married to an immigrant from the Indian sub-continent. In our interaction with the British rulers for nearly a century (1858 -1947), we made their language, their political philosophy, their administrative style, their second most popular sport and their near pathological compulsion to gamble our own but certainly not their voluntarily orderly queue habit, their sense of humour, their love for animals. Of late, Indians have been relieving the British of a lot of “White Man’s Burden” http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/kipling.html – Jaguar, British Steel and Celebrity Big Brother to cite just three examples. Rudyard Kipling’s poem was addressed to American Imperialism, you’ll recall. Indians have by now made their presence felt there too. In spite of all this success, India is not shining. India is no Super Star. Certainly not with all those farmer suicides, the neo-Naxals gaining a foothold and spreading their influence, the gap between the haves and have-nots widening. Not even in the wildest narcissistic “Mein Hoon 60+ Mother India, yaney ki asli Bharatmata in a frilly pink taffeta dress” dream, no matter who dreams it and packages it for the cocktail circuit, domestic as well as NRI. Enough already? http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-earn-writing-bad-name-almost.html.