Once upon a time in Srirangam, absence of internet denied fledgling authors their share of instant publication gratification and Andy Warhol cursed “ten minutes of fame”. Net-nuts were spared of the cyber-gas of these authors and also of desquamated index fingers because of too much mouse clicking.
Living in that same ‘once upon a time’ artsy intellectual readers of Srirangam deigned to read pretentious essays like this one. They also deigned not to presume a fairy tale and promptly went to sleep before reaching the next sentence, because the essay started with once upon a time. They waited for their sleep instead, until they read at least two paragraphs.
[Artsy intellectual readers of yore can sleep now, others, if any, can continue reading and wonder what is the point of all this disjointed kaleidoscopic build-up. The reason could be explained in the course of these posts. And of course, I could be taking you for a ride through a longer and windier road than the one by the Beatles.]
By the way, (or ‘by the by’ for Hindu Letters to the Editor writers), if you are not certain of how long before ‘once upon a time’ was, it was a time for the parents of most us in Srirangam, Apple meant only the name of a costly red fruit given to patients admitted to the GH. For most of us attending the Sunday Orgees’ Quiz Times, Steve Jobs was fast becoming the correct answer to the PJ “Who is the oxymoron Ms Widows?” and Jim Courier is already the correct answer for “Which courier serves using a rocket?”
It was in those thankful times existed typewriters with dark-blue ribbons that made bell sounds (Ding!), when the roller carriage is manually adjusted to the next line of typing by a right-to-left movement of the horizontal L shaped limb. It was also a time when long sentences like the previous one was not bad English and was comprehended in one go without the author receiving boos from guys and gals suffering from mental mumps euphemized as Attention Deficiency Syndrome.
Where was I? Oh, typewriter. It was in one of those typewriters that we typed our first issue of the Ivory Tower.
Ivory Tower? Let it wait. I shall first brief upon the ‘we’. Obviously the ‘we’ included him and me. And you know me. I am this happy go unlucky guy who keeps re-searching what has already been searched (and not found because it has never been lost) and hence has long stretches of his life with every day getting better than the day after.
Let him wait until the next post, to get explained.
