WE had just finished our dinner and were watching TV when the doorbell rang. The boy who answered it came back with a pamphlet in his hand.
The area we reside in is actually suburban and still in the process of burgeoning, albeit at quite a slow pace. Nonetheless, enterprising investors are already busy identifying ventures. So, one often gets pamphlets delivered announcing the opening of a school, beauty parlour, estate agency, etc.
Anxious to see what kind of facility had been provided for our benefit this time, I took the piece of paper. One glance at it and all the TV programmes faded into oblivion.
It was the opening of a dry cleaning facility and what a unique write-up it was! I reproduce what it read: “All the living peoples and students have a good news that we offering you a concession package of dry cleaning. It’s a new cleaning center just your door step, were only we provide services as a server with new machinry. We wash all kinds of clothes, cotton clothes, claf, washin ware clothes, pant sharts, shalwar, kamiz, ladies suites, blankets, cartains, carpets, bed sheets and many more. Trust up on us once a time and give us chance for your batter service.” Quite unique, you would agree, in every aspect, be it the categorization of intended customers, the details of services provided, as also in linguistic novelty.
But let me humbly concede my failure in fully grasping the contents of the text in the first instance. For example, initially, one is at a total loss to understand the philosophy of making a distinction between the “living peoples” and “students.” If at all, the students generally seem livelier than the others. But then, you recall all the stuff you have read about life beginning at 40 (which, by the way, has recently been stretched a bit further — now they say it begins at 50) and all. The servers of the service seem to be of the view that students graduate to the status of living people only after they have sharpened their intellect after passing through the rigours of studies. How simple, how intelligent!
But one is still left with the riddle of addressing “the living peoples” of the area. After unsuccessful rattling one’s brain for some time, the wisdom of this emphasis on “living peoples” suddenly becomes so clear that one is ashamed at not being able to fathom it in the first instance. It is quite obviously aimed at the categorical exclusion of the ‘dead’ of the area from this package, and not without good reasons.
Just imagine, wouldn’t the poor servers of the service be in a real quandary, if taking advantage of ambiguity or rather non-clarity of this laundry package, all the dead people of the area would have laid their claims to this confessional deal. After all, besides being quite a dusty and windy area, the land (as also the burial ground) in our area, as elsewhere in the country, is anything but clean. And some finicky souls, if not all of them, might possibly decide to avail this lifetime (?) opportunity and get their dirt-darkened clothes dry cleaned. Some might even want to get them “clafed.”
The write-up is also a bold statement in freedom of language and rejects the mundane restrictions of grammar and composition, as well as the bindings of correct spellings and the likes. Not only that, it also deserves credit for bringing novel vocabulary to the bosom of the English language. “Claf,” for example, listed prominently among the services provided, is one such innovation, which necessitates referring to a dictionary. It is only after failing to find it there that one is forced to rack one’s mind and employ the not-so-common common sense that “claf” is actually our good old kalaf (starch) that has been Anglicised and then gifted to the English language, thus adding to its richness.
Appreciating their package immensely and never doubting a bit their expertise in their profession, I somehow decided that I was quite better off without their “batter” services.
WE had just finished our dinner and were watching TV when the doorbell rang. The boy who answered it came back with a pamphlet in his hand.
