![]() One would assume, therefore, pholar meant a meal of fruits.īut the descriptions of this meal belies its etymology. It is a meal offered to Brahmin men and boys, and is ostensibly derived from “phawl (fruit)” and “aahar (meal)”. To take an example closer at hand, the word “pholar ” is found frequently in Bengali literature of a certain period. The past is not just another country, as LP Hartley so poignantly wrote it is often a completely different world, and with the passage of time we frequently lose the primer with which to decode these little embedded details. Similarly, twenty years from now, when summers in his homeland will regularly surpass 40 degrees Celsius, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” might invoke rather more acidity than it does affection. Had Shakespeare known how popular his Sonnet 18 would become amongst men courting women, he might have been rather surprised (and not a little amused). In that time, both our languages and the world have changed so vastly and so often that entire scholarly careers have been built upon disputing the pronunciation of a single vowel. Why the dreary reputation, then? Well, for one, we have accumulated and inherited these texts over multiple generations. ![]() A “classic” is therefore, by definition, a very readable book. ![]() Writing, after all, has never been a very well-remunerated profession, and those wishing to make a living at it could not afford to write indulgent soporifica if they wished to escape penury. Very far, in short, from the slow-grind of stentorian monologuing that we imagine classics to be. These are not just any genre fiction, after all, but highly dramatic tales of gods and monsters, torrid romances and murderous family feuds, interspersed liberally with ribaldry and tear-jerking tragedy. Granted, they are from an earlier era, and most old things acquire the patina of vintage in our eyes given adequate distance and nostalgia, but still. ![]() If one wishes to be entertained, these assumptions imply, then one should read products of that lowly stable, popular fiction.Īnd that is where this stereotype becomes baffling, for many of the literary classics of the western canon are, in fact, popular fictions. High art is serious business, after all, and must not be ruined by enjoyment. Some might even see virtue in such tedium. In many of our minds, the label “classic” seems to trigger a set of unconscious assumptions about a book, chief amongst them the certainty that it is bored-to-tears tedious (or “philosophically dense”, if one wishes to be kind). The prank served to underline an interesting cultural phenomenon for me. It turned out, however, that the book was in the school’s syllabus. And she’s trying to tell me that the book is in her school syllabus!” We were all suitably horrified, and suggested ways to nip this delinquent taste in literature in the bud. “Fellow has hallucinations, thinks he is talking to his dead father, goes on a serial killer rampage…I think there’s even a part where he tries to rape someone. “She’s reading about some manic-depressive murderer!” he had said, to general expressions of shock. A few years ago, he had a group of us worked up in quite a lather over the sort of book he had “caught” his teenage daughter reading. I have – and I am sure I share this misfortune with many – an uncontainable practical joker for a friend. IPL 2023: The Mohammed Siraj turnaround.Watch: Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan’s debut advertising film stars his father.‘Life here flows on like the Tungabhadra’: The multi-faith and multi-ethnic identity of Hampi.A daughter writes about her mother being put on virtual ‘auction’ on the Bulli Bai app.Gujarat HC judge Gita Gopi recuses herself from hearing Rahul Gandhi’s plea in defamation case. ![]() Why are Gujarat’s courts increasingly acquitting 2002 riots accused?.Nepal’s appetite for momos is a threat to the endangered wild water buffalo.HCL co-founder Ajai Chowdhry recalls in his memoir how the brand achieved success in its early days.In Manipur, a rebellion against chief minister N Biren Singh besets the BJP government.How food came to the rescue of the British in India.Less than a year since the Shiv Sena’s split, Ajit Pawar’s rebellion could put the BJP in a new fix.Watch three Hindi film songs that were inspired by Harry Belafonte hits. ![]()
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