Little Jack Horner
Jack Horner has moved out of the 18th century English rhyme into today's world and has assumed many forms - old and young, man and woman, rich and poor, relatively modest to blatantly boastful. The done thing nowadays seems to be for people to tell the world what they have, how accomplished they are or how happy they are - whether the world at large wants to hear it or not. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have probably only amplified this tendency.
People don't just lose or misplace their mobiles, they lose only their I-phones. I am sure a lot many people I know must have misplaced their phones somewhere, but the only two who told me had lost their I-phones. Either only the Apple product has a particular ability to jump out of the male shirt pocket or is the only one specifically targetted by the purloiner - your guess is as good as mine. So, statistically speaking, 100% of the phones lost by Rajan Mani's contacts are only I-phones (we will downplay the sample size of 2, shall we?!)
It is not only I-phones which seem to jump around, people's progeny also seem to be moving all around the globe. Hardly any of the people I know seem to have offspring in good old Mumbai or Bengaluru, leave alone Gobichettipalayam or Jhumri Tillaiya. Young people seem to be working or studying only in Chattanooga or Tuscaloosa, Seattle or San Francisco, Amsterdam or Rotterdam . This has definitely improved a general appreciation of geography, however. Old matrons now talk very knowledgeably about the TGV between Paris and Toulouse or flight connections between Chicago and Phoenix. Here again, statistical evidence seems to be against progeny still in India - all young people I have heard of seem only to be globetrotters, if I were to believe what their parents tell me!
Some years back, at a wedding in the family, I bumped into this old lady with another not-so-old companion in tow. The former asked the latter to tell us who she was. While we waited curiously, we were informed that the old lady belonged to the Pudukottai zameen - a peculiarly Tamil way of saying she belonged to the family of a rich landlord from Pudukottai. Now as I myself have seen at least six Pudukottais ('new forts' in translation) in Tamil Nadu, I don't have a clue as to which of these was being alluded to and whether the old lady actually belonged to that family - but I liked that style!
Definitely more subtle and less in your face than today's parvenus - but not Facebook-able or Instagram-able.
I look forward to the blatant boasts though - it gives me much more amusement!
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I did lose my phone twice, but no, it was not an I-phone. It was a normal phone! :-D
ReplyDeleteGood one ! Thanks for reading !
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