A long time

As I wrote the title of this post, I misspelled the word time. That somehow sparked off the thought.. what happens if we allow our spelling mistakes to remain? How does a sentence read? How does the topic make sense? Does it make sense ?  This brings to my mind, two instances. One, being Mrs Malapropp, from Sheridan's The Rivals, and her constant tendency to misinterpret and misinform. The second,  the sms lingo flourishing today. Many of  the people that use English in sms lingo can hardly spell properly to save their lives in normal circumstances. Spellings are a-changing and sms lingo seems to go the same way as the linguistic revolution Bernard Shaw wanted to see, where the language is simplified and represented only in terms of maybe the sounds they make, a much more phonetically driven script.
In the writing of the above passage, I must confess that I corrected my own spellings at least ten times over the course of fast typing. Thank goodness , though, that the Spell-check option while I'm typing is off. Mr Bill Bryson hilariously pointed out in one of his delightful essays, (This is an essay from the book: Notes From a Big Country) the dangers of allowing one's computer to check your spellings for you. Not recognising British spellings, or replacing so-called incorrect words based on what it deems appropriate . The results are comical, the author's role obscure, and the message is lost in correction.
 I also have a rather personal grudge against spell checks in the English language, which is, being Asian, the nouns I use would also be Asian, yet, every one of these is immediately marked and underlined in wavy red as though they're  mistakes, while the usage of a noun from European origins is left well alone. How do they put these names together, aside from the usual Smith and Jones? I wonder what policy they follow while creating and installing dictionaries in computer memories. It would be nice if they were much more inclusive in their word-pool of nouns, and considered the vast numbers of Non-native English speaking computer users they have.

And yes, the title of this post is "a long time ", which is what I took to post again following my previous one. That's just an arbitrary title with no real meaning. I love the word arbitrary, don't you? It captures the essence of a randomness and unpredictability that  sms everything up in a way, so much for the logical and organisational tendencies of the Human mind. This very evening, over a cup of chai, I was exchanging literary trivia with a friend who puffed away on cigarettes (whose smoke I tried to blow away from my face, and ended up with cold and neglected tea with a layer of malai on it) who asked me to look at an essay that Deleuze had written, analysing Alice in Wonderland.
He drew attention to a certain poem that a knight sings, where the name of the poem is one thing, the poem itself is another, and the poem refers to somethign else altogether. I'm still looking for this. If I find it, I will let you all know.

And yes, I finished  reading Devdutt Pattnaik's  " Myth =Mithya: A Handbook of Hindu Mythology" one of the most worthwhile  reads explaining the Hindu divine pantheon, in one of the most neutral, non-judgemental voices I've come across yet. If anything, that 's Mr Pattnaik's greatest merit, being able to write with neither attachment, detachment nor judgement, while exploring and understanding the reasons for Hinduism's many forms, interpretations, practises and meanings, and doing justice to the topic at hand. A voice I would not hesitate to trust.

So, readers; I shall try to be a bit more punctual with my writing, and please bear with me.
Love,
Sumedha