adventures in the RTL (1)

it's funny how for someone who dreaded the very prospect of another day at d-school, i now spend the better part of my waking hours lounging around in college. 'A' says that d-school for him... is like a drug, he hates that he can't go without it. even more than he hates the place itself.

there are moments when i really love it... but they are few and far between. on the whole i'd say that i've grown to not dislike it. its sort of pathetic, this reconciliation being strongly tied to the even more pathetic realisation that i don't really have much of a life outside of this place.

what's scarier still is what comes next. i don't quite relish the prospect of being thrust out into an unfriendly world where no one takes me seriously. the last thing i could accuse people here of being is unfriendly (that's more my area of specialisation). and that's what makes spending time here all the more painful, the prospect of getting used to it.

however, there are some unblemished things here that no amount of acrimony can rob me of. guilty pleasures that my recent state of liberty allows me to indulge in shamelessly.

i stumbled upon the most beautiful book in the library today, a veritable cornucopia of the most brilliant information ever. it changed my life, it did.. this book. even if for just a split second.
it was called the "language atlas of india", a detailed (so meticulously detailed) description of different language groups in india.

[when i learnt that it was compiled by some lady IAS officer, who's name i forget, i zeroed in on my true calling...drum roll please, the cynics back home will love this one... to be an IAS officer, but only one who writes really cool books]

the first section dealt with the distribution of Indo-European languages in the country.. and i had this sudden urge to learn all of them, simultaneously. to become a linguist (i'm addicted to a lack of focus). then came the non-scheduled languages and that's where the fun really began- bhili, bhota, dogri, gondi, khurukh, santali, ho, kharia... just rolling these words around in my mouth was so delicious, imagine what it would be like to speak them!

in the course of an hour i learnt so much and felt so grand. i learnt that the country is simply crawling with bongs ('twas great to have my first hand observations vindicated in print, that too a map) followed closely by gujjus.

i learnt that in my home town of chandigarh, 168 people speak manipuri and only 1 each in rajasthan and punjab. which made me ponder that it must be quite lonely to be that one person, don't you think?

49,736 people in india speak sanskrit, 44,847 of them in UP and 695 in karnataka... two places separated by such a vast expanse of land and gazillions of people... it's enough to make a softy like me cry.

at times the colour scheme in the legend was a bit misleading... the different shades of pink were difficult to discern from those of red which lead me to some hilarious conclusions: 53% people in Madhya Pradesh speaking Telegu etc. but some of the facts once verified left me quite dumbfounded. like the 17,000 people in bihar who speak tamil.

so few things leave us feeling truly enriched and it is really quite spectacular when you find inspiration in places you least expect to...

i was perhaps a tad naive to believe that such linguistic dispersion just didn't or couldn't happen (in fact some might argue that it isn't nearly as much as it should be). but i suppose that's the brand of ignorance that is truly blissful, the kind that leaves room for perceptions to be shattered... and bucketloads more to be learnt.