Tuesday

Where’s the Q?

The British apart from ruining a lot in India while they ruled us, gave us a lot such as foundation for the largest rail network, landmark architecture and of course the English language. But we seem to be ruining the language itself. Possibly its one way to repay them for ruining our land by ruining their language! We’ve pretty much removed the Q from our dictionary, not just literally but virtually from our lives.

I’m definitely not referring to spelling “quick” as “cuick” or “cooick”.
Couple of days back, I was wading through the traffic in my car, I had this thought of the Q. The distance I need to cover is a mere 3Kms which took me almost 35 minutes, that’s at under 6Kmph. Amazing isn’t it? I might have just managed to beat a few snails. But thankfully it was only 3Kms so I got the better of the snails!
The reason for the breakneck speed was us modifying the English language. I feel I’m not sarcastic enough at times, may be the mach speeds would be more appropriate! There were two lanes of vehicles, each moving in the opposite direction. But this is modified as three lanes. The middle lane is almost nebulous and can be used for wading in any direction. This lane is put to maximum use by vehicles that move on 2 wheels and of course the monstrous creatures that move on 3 wheels with a horrible horn that can spell doomsday for order. They are the root cause of all the entropy on the roads so much so that you could say “For whom the horn tolls!”
Of late, though you could even add the 4 wheelers as a part of the nebulous zone. Add a few pedestrians to this and its chaos incarnate! But one can’t really blame the pedestrians. I find more shops and highly overactive two wheelers on the footpath. Where can the pedestrian go? Only out of the Q!

Another place was at a food court near where I stay. The Q has been stamped out of our DNA. Although there was a barricade of sorts indicative to customers that they’re supposed to move along the locus of the barricade, it takes a lot more than the obvious to see the flaw. It seems Quirky if a person were not uirky! (Get it? The Q is missing!). I was quirky for a while until I realized.

English is a funny language by itself. We pronounce “put as put and but as but”. Fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing. Now, did you know that???? Remove the Q from it and it gets so crazy that it’s no longer even remotely hilarious.

I’d rather end this on an enigmatic note, not getting too rhetorical about the Q’s…



No comments: