Complaining

This will be the last extract I offer from the greatest guide to letter writing ever compiled, the compendious 1111 Letters for Al Occasions, the magnificent octopus orchestrated by K. Malik and published by New Light publishers of New Delhi. Because I'm bored now, that's why.

That K. Malik's advice in the matter of petitions is offered in a long and largely unsuccessful correpondence should not detract from the close study of this most fascinating chain. That he believes a causal link between mosquitoes and influenza should not, in this modern day, cause you to question this most learned man's sanity. That question, I think you will agree, was settled between us some time ago...


Public Petitions
Public Petitions are joint applications for a common cause. These should be signed by a large number of citizens to impress upon the authorities the urgency of the matter.

Growth of Mosquitoes
To
Lieutenant-Governor
Delhi

Dear Sir
The population of mosquitoes and flies has assumed unprecedented malevolence this year in West Delhi because the Corporation of Delhi has not sprayed the area with DDT and other pesticides.

There is great danger of malaria, flu and other epidemics breaking out.

We request that immediate steps should be taken to terminate the mosquito and fly nuisance and hazard in West Delhi.

Yours Faithfully
Ram Kumar
Karam Singh
Din Mohammed
Joseph Stephen
And other residents of West Delhi.

Reply to Above
Your application dated ...... has been forwarded to the Chief Secretary, Delhi Administration, for necessary action.

Reminder
To
The Chief Secretary
Delhi Administration
Delhi

Sir
We have the honour to draw your kind attention to our petition forwarded to you by the Lieutenant-Governor regarding the over-population of mosquitoes in West Delhi.

Kindly arrange to terminate the nuisance.
Yours faithfully,

Reply to Above
Your application has been forwarded to the Chief Health Officer, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, for necessary action.

Another Reminder
The Chief Health Officer,
Municipal Corporation of Delhi
Delhi

Sir,
Please state what has happened to our petition to the Lieutenant-Governor, forwarded to you by the Chief Secretary for ending the mosquito menace in West Delhi.

Reply to Above
I am personally visiting your locality on May 10 at 11am with necessary DDT staff to spray the mosquito-breeding pockets.

Reply to Above
You did not turn up on 10th May as promised. We had prepared tea and garlands in your honour, but you did not come.

Since you are too busy to come, please pass on our application to the mosquitoes themselves.

Letter of Apology
Dear Sir

I regret that I was unable to visit your locality on 10th May because I was urgently called to the Corporation meeting regarding your application to the Lieutenant-Governor.

Rest assured, my staff will soon be visiting your area to terminate the mosquito menace.

Yet Another Reminder
The Lieutenant-Governor
Delhi

Sir
We have the honour to draw your kind attention to the our petition dated .....

Mosquito menace continues as usual.

Reply to Above
Dear Sirs
I understand that the Health Staff did visit your area with pesticides to destroy the mosquitoes.

Reply to Reply
Yes, the Health Staff of Delhi Corporation did indeed visit the locality with pesticides.

They simply passed on our petition to the mosquitoes and sold the pesticides to a chemist.

And the mosquitoes lived happily ever after!

Late

Better late than never, they say... With profuse apologies for my tardiness this week, here is another smattering of little literary jewels from the strange and wonderful pen of K. Malik, author of 1111 Letters for Every Occasion, the guide to brilliant correspondence that is brought to us by New Light Publishers of New Delhi.


Response to Notices
Government notices bring forth a bumper harvest of replies. Your letters must be attractive enough to catch the eye, otherwise it is a labour of love gone-down the drain.

Paying Income Tax
With reference to your public notice in the national press, enclosed herewith is the receipted challan for payment of advance tax.

Freedom Fighters
Is it necessary that a man should have to go to jail in order to qualify as a freedom fighter!
I fought for freedom by writing a book against the British every month during the Quit India Movement. Am I not a freedom-fighter?


To,
The Maharashtra Emporium
New Delhi
Dear Sir
Kindly send me some of your fashion tips for my old wife who is becoming so unfashionable that I am being driven from pillar to post in the Delhi University campus looking for a modern wife.


Free Literature
Kindly supply me free literature for the eradication of malaria in my locality.

Positive Reply
We have the honour to send you herewith literature for the eradication of malaria as desired by you.

Negative Reply
We have run out of stock of literature on eradication of malaria.
It appears as if the mosquitoes have eaten or flown away the books against them!

Next week: Letters of Complaint

Complaint

While there must have been much to complain about in India back in the early '70s, K. Malik, the literary leviathan behind 1111 Letters for Every Occasion (brought to us, as you all well know by now, by grace of New Light Publishers of New Delhi) has decided that the course of the true complainer shall be set in the direction of surrealism. Microsoft insists on underlining the word 'goom' in red, indicating that it is not a word. I say no and a thousand times no! If K. Malik uses goom, then goom it shall be!

Strangely correct in his predictions regarding the death of the newspaper due to television (we've had to wait for the Internet to do that), the Mighty Malik's words on the matter will remain with me for a long time yet...

Letters of Complaint

Letters of complaint must be drafted as diplomatically as the letters of advice otherwise they lose the savour and bring no good results – often bad results.

Complaint Against Husband

Dear Lizzy

Do you want to know how my newly married husband is providing for the family?

“Is your husband much of a provider?” That is what you asked in your last letter.

He just has not had anything else to do except providing. He promises to get some furniture provided he gets the money. He promises to get the money provided he gets a job. He promises to go to work provided the job suits him. I have not seen such a providing man in all my life.

Yours,

On Smuggling

Dear Sir

Some people are complaining that you are guilty of smuggling, but I don’t believe a thing.

At a particularly loud clap of thunder, a woman walked along a street in London during the Second World War with a bag of smuggled goods.

“It’s alright”, said an urchin. “It ain’t Hitler. It is God.”

Yours,

Bad Service

Need I complain about service in your restaurant? After long waiting, one of your bearers told a customer, “Your fish will be coming in a minute or two now, Sir.” The sad man looked interested. “Tell me”, he said, “which bait are you using?”

Market Competition

If anyone believes that TV will replace the newspaper just let him try to wrap up last winter’s suit in a TV.

Reasonable Query

The Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Gentlemen.

Why is it that your switch engine has to ding and dong and fizz and spit and pant and grate and grind and puff and bump and chug and hoot and toot and whistle and wheeze and howl and clang and growl and thump and clash and goom and jolt and screech and snarl and snort and throb and roar and rattle and hiss and smoke and smell and shriek all night long when I come home from a hard day at the boiler works and have to keep the dog quiet and the baby quiet so my wife can squawk at me for snoring in my sleep?

Yours truly,

John Smith

Next week: Response to Notices

Love

Coming from the tradition that gave us the Karma Sutra, K. Malik has a lot to live up to when he proffers assistance to his countrymen in the preparation of letters of love. But it is precisely this noble endeavour that we are to celebrate in this week’s extract from that most efficacious of guides for the correspondent, 1111 Letters For All Occasions. Not for Mr. Malik all that messing around with pestles and mortars and bawdy talk of pinching and slapping, lingams and yonis. Oh no. Mr. Malik is much higher minded than that, although, by these examples, he lacks no ardour – and the spelling mistakes below are faithfully reproduced: it is, I believe, a testament to the strength of passion that overruled M. Malik’s normally scrupulous eye for grammar. But it is when he turns his hand to poetry that he transcends his own very high standards. And if anyone can be sure of what a household motion is, please do let me know. I suspect it is to do with housework rather than the toilet...

It is just possible that young people following his guidelines will find the effect of their epistles more prophylactic than procreational...

One last note. My apologies in advance to anyone reading this who realises that the silk ribbon-tied letter which led to love’s young dream blooming that has been preserved in a drawer all these years was not actually penned by young Lothario, but cribbed from K. Malik’s example. Please do not address your complaints to me, but to New Light Publishers of New Delhi.

LOVE LETTERS

Love letters are the most delicious part of all correspondence. Here below are a few specimens which you can use, employ and emulate.

Personal Magnetism
To see you is to fall head over heels in love with you. You are like a red rose that’s newly sprung in June. Your voice is like a melody that is sweetly played in tune.

When may I have the honour of meeting you and pressing you to my breast and squeeze the elixir our of your kisses and embraces?

Yours,

Feeding a Flame

All my thoughts, all my passions and all my delights feed the sacred flame of love for you in my heart.

Let us live, Lizzy, and love, and value at a paisa all the talks of crabbed old men who do not understand love.

Yours,

Ministers of Love

All my thoughts and fancies are concentrated on you. Day and night I think of nothing but you. When are you coming to me? Whatever stirs this mortal frame are but ministers of love. When shall I squeeze you in my arms to let the elixir ooze out of your rose-petalled lips?

Why not meet me Friday evening at Lido? I shall be there at 6pm.

Elopement

Let us leave everything and everybody. We shall sail beyond the sunset and the horizon. We shall follow the morning star until we die. It may be that we shall touch the happy Isles.

Censure

There are some meannesses which are too mean even for men. Only Women – Lovely Women – can venture forth to commit them!

To Middle-aged Women

You are a perfect woman, nobly planned, to warn, to comfort and to command. In your eye serene I see the pulse of the universe. You are a spirit, yet a woman too. Your household motion is light and free. Your steps possess virging liberty.

Best and Brightest

Oh, my beautiful beloved, best and brightest, come away. Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, are heaped for the beloved’s bed. Let me be crushed to juice under your satin skin. Your passion vibrates in my memory and makes me a slave of your passion. Help me to live or die.

Enhanted Boat

Bear Neena,

My soul is an enchanted boat that floats like a sweet swan on the ocean of your love. I am lost upon the silver waves of your singing. Come, love with me and merge into my heart and be mine forever.

Yours,

Nath

Stealling a Beloved

The seed we sow another reaps.

The wealth we find another keeps.

Let it not be said that the girl I discovered was kidnapped by another college student!

Be you mine forever.

From the Girl to the Boy

Oh, I am in love with the janitor’s boy.

And the janitor’s boy loves me:

He’s going to hunt for a desert isle

In our geography.

Next week: Letters of Complaint

Leaders

I suppose most of us have a visceral mistrust of politicians, but the method of dealing with them proposed by the mighty K. Malik, author of that most glorious collection of correspondence brought to us by dint of the earnest labour of New Light Publishers of New Delhi, 1111 Letters for Every Occasion, is quite singular. Write letters of advice to the leaders of all parties, giving them the benefit of direct contact with the electorate they seek to win over to their views. Tell ‘em how it is! And then get stuck into the current government, sharing a new way forward for the country!

In fact, K. Malik’s letters to various Ministers spell out an interesting alternative national agenda. Perhaps India would have been improved had he actually sent these letters rather than selling them to New Light Publishers? We may never know...

A footnote, perhaps interesting or perhaps not: the exhortation to the Sikh Akali party claims that Guru Nanak Dev founded Sikhism to bring together India and Pakistan. That’s interesting, as he died in 1539, a little over four hundred years before Pakistan’s sanguinary foundation. Further proof, should it be needed, that K. Malik does, indeed, exist in a parallel universe that is fundamentally different to our own.

Next week: Love letters.

Letters to the Leaders
People must keep a vigilant eye on the doings and misdoings of the political leaders. We must praise their good works. Also, we should point out their faults and the faults of their policies.

To the Congress Party
Please redeem your pledges of Price rise immediately.
If you do not, your days are numbered.
You can fool some people for all time and all people for some time but you cannot fool all people for all the time.

To the B.J.P.
You have failed to challenge the might of the Congress (I).
Why continue to have nuisance value?

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
Stop insulting Northern India, Hindu and Hinduism. Don’t cut your nose to spite your face.

To the Akali Party
Sikhism and politics do not go together. We must help bring together Hindus and Muslims, India and Pakistan. Guru Nanak made Sikhism for that purpose.

To the Minister for Foreign Affairs
In line with the great ideals of Mahatma Ghandi, we should abolish passports and visas. Let us have open doors to the world. That is the true mission of India.

To the Finance Minister
The word ‘Income-Tax’ should go. It smells of feudalism. It does not suit democracy. Income-Tax should be known as “Public Charity Fund”. And taxpayers should be induced to pay the maximum without coercion. If the government does not trust the people, why should people trust the Government?

To the Minister for Information
Television spells a great danger to the psychological health of the people. Children are wasting too much time seeing TV rather than studying their books. TV should be restricted to Sundays and holidays. It is a great national nuisance.

To the Minister of Agriculture
You must encourage people to become agriculture minded. Agriculture should be made a compulsory subject in schools. Children must grow something in schools or their houses, even on house-tops, to qualify for Board Examination.

Editor

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor are the most popular form of giving vent to public grievances; and you should learn how to write them. The letters to the Editor are like any other letters. There is nothing new or special about them. Here are a few samples.

To the Reader

Dear Reader

India is faced with a crisis of character. The dark forces that are creating this crisis should be ruthlessly exposed.

All of you are called upon to give us a helping hand in this crusade of ours to expose injustice, corruption, communalism, casteism, parochialism and all such disruptive ‘isms’ and place the culprits in the dock of public opinion. You should send us news exposing such dark forces operating in your town.

News must be accompanied by your full address and signed pledge that it is true and factual. We assure you that this would be kept confidential and disclosed under no circumstances.

This is your crusade.

Editor


Only Goat Skin

Sir

Please refer to Mr. A. Kumar’s letter (The Hindustan Times, Aug 11). The alleged ‘musk gland of the musk deer’ is nothing but goat skin puffed with coal dust, earth particles and small pebbles sewn and tied with professional tact sprinkled with cheap musk perfume. These are not the ‘testicles’ of male deer as alleged by Mr. Kumar. There is no need to be alarmed about the possibilities of the extinction of deer. This business is in line with other fraudulent business practices in the country.

Yours, etc.

Ram Swarup Goyal

Bus Conductor’s Conduct

Sir,

I was travelling by a Route no 85 bus (1616 express) at about 10am on 3^rd August. The driver was driving the vehicle very rashly and an old woman was about to be crushed to death near the Baird Road bus stop. I requested the conductor to give me the complaint book so that I may write the complaint. He refused to give it to me. He challenged my right to demand the complaint book.

Yours, etc.

Shri Bhagwan Sharma

Art for Art’s Sake

Sir,

Art for art’s sake has been debated by academicians for long. For a breath of change, let’s say – art for people’s sake too. We need not necessarily by committed to socialist realism. Incidentally, what deters us from evolving a cultural policy in tune with national aspirations of the people as Sir Aourobindo visualised long back? As we celebrate the Silver Jubilee of our independence, there could be no fitter tribute to that Yogi.

Yours, etc

A.K. Shukla

Next week: Letters to the Leaders

Club

It is now some weeks since I started posting a weekly extract from the book that appears as if it may change my life, 1111 Letters for All Occasions. I am becoming very grateful indeed that I have found it.

As an insight into the lives, loves, morality, interactions and struggles of 1970s India, 1111 Letters is a rare document of no small historical importance. Thanks to New Light Publishers of New Delhi, we are able to delve into the lives of everyday Indians in a very special and insightful way. Many readers of this blog have been delighted by the colourful and charming vignettes unveiled by this most special of books, to the point where I have been asked to present a lecture at the University of Michigan on the contemporary culture of 1970s India as seen through 1111 Letters for a not inconsiderable emolument. This is expected to be the start of an extensive lecture tour and I have, as a consequence, retained an American Agent to look after my interests.

Needless to say, I retained his services through a letter I wrote him that closely followed the template given in 1111 Letters.

However, I promised I would share an extract each week with you and, regardless of my other obligations, I shall be true to my word. Today, we investigate the section titled ‘Club Correspondence’ – a scathing attack on inequality in every way and a quite riveting correspondence. I apologise for the extract being a little long and complicated, but club membership was obviously not easy in days of yore.

I confess that the last letter in this series made me cry.

Club Correspondence

To join a social club you need some social correspondence with the Secretary of the Club before you are admitted and become a member. Some such letters are given below.

Qualifications

The Secretary
Chelmsford Club
New Delhi

Sir
Can I join your club? What are the qualifications necessary for becoming a member of the Chelmsford Club?

Yours faithfully

Reply to Above

Dear Sir
A brochure is enclosed herewith giving all the necessary information for the new members.
Yours faithfully

Introduction

Dear Sir
I am quite new to New Delhi and I think I know no member of the Chelmsford Club. Then, how can I be introduced?

Yours faithfully

Reply to above

Dear Sir
Please attend our Club dinner tomorrow night and bring the papers along duly completed.

I will have you introduced.

Yours faithfully

Reply to Reply

Dear Sir
I regret that I shall not be able to meet members of the Chelmsford Club tomorrow as I am flying to Bombay tonight.

Please make it later.

Yours faithfully

Open Offer

Dear Sir
Come to our club any evening at your convenience with the completed form.
Please ring me for an appointment.

Yours faithfully

Sending a form

Dear Sir
Kindly find enclosed herewith the Application Form of the Chelmsford Club duly completed and introduced.

Please enrol me as a member.

Yours faithfully

Negative Reply

Dear Sir
I am placing the form before the Governing Body of the Club in their next meeting.

I will inform you of the result some time next week.

Yours faithfully

Membership

Please intimate me the decision of the Governing Body about my enrolment as a member.

Thanks

Positive Reply

I am glad to inform you that you have been duly enrolled as a full member of the Chelmsford Club.

Negative Reply

I regret to inform you that the Governing Body has not been able to accord you membership of the Club. Your cheque for payment is returned herewith.

Reply to Reply

I fear the Chelmsford Club continues to be a Whitemen’s club with Whitemen’s mentality as in the days of the Whitemen’s burden.

The black must bear the burden of the White.

Next week: Letters to the Editor

Diplomat

It is often difficult to understand the thought processes behind the authors of the world’s greatest collection of letters since Samuel Johnson started a career in correspondence with a thank you note to his Gran for her Christmas gift of a jigsaw puzzle picturing a bear fight, 1111 Letters for Every Occasion. As I have said many times before, this most impressive volume comes to us by grace of the commercial acumen of New Light Publishers of Delhi.

As promised last week, today’s extract covers that most difficult of fields, diplomatic correspondence and we are all lucky that 1111 Letters’ author, the remarkable K. Malik, pursued a career in letters rather than diplomacy, otherwise his efforts to ensure the Pakistan issue was well managed would have doubtless have resulted in New Delhi being a radioactive hole by now.

Rather than omit advice that might be of help to those entrusted with preserving world peace and the brotherhood of man, I have reproduced the entire section.

A historical note here: it should be possible to date the original MSS of 1111 Letters from the reference below to the UAR, which was a union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser that lasted until 1961 – the name was subsequently kept by Nasser and was used until 1971, just after his death. The Shimla, or Simla, summit took place in 1972. The first Gulf War, between Iraq and Iran, broke out in 1980 – the Yom Kippur War of 1973 might be an explanation for the reference to ‘the Gulf war’. Alternatively, I might just be wasting my time because K. Malik is clearly in a different place to most of us and it is possible that this book comes to us from a parallel universe, in which case all these dates and references are subject to change.

Diplomatic Correspondence

Diplomatic correspondence between one country and another, one ambassador and another, is a rather tricky affair. All embarrassing commitments are made in vague words.

Egypt

Should we now presume that the UAR is going anti-Russian?

Reply to Above

It is best to presume nothing.

Pakistan

Will the President of Pakistan go against the spirit of Shimla Summit?

Reply to Above

Ask the President himself!

Israel

Has Israel attacked Egypt after the Gulf war?

Reply to Above

Israel has never attacked Egypt. It is Egypt which has always attacked Israel.

UAR

Is the UAR now anti-Russian?

Reply to Above

The UAR is not anti-anything.

USA

How long will USA bar Yugoslavia from the United Nations?

Reply to Above

I do not know.

Next week: Seeking Compensation...

Sorry

Firstly, an apology to New Light Publishers of New Delhi: I have previously attributed the incorrect number of contents to that most compendious collection of letters for every occasion, 1111 Letters for Every Occasion. I had previously referred to the book as '111 letters' and I am sorry. To err is human, but to do so by a factor of 10 is regrettably all too human.

Many businesses need to advertise themselves and one popular way of doing so is by issuing a circular. It is upon this very subject that I wish to regale you today by presenting some more extracts from that guide to life, 1111 Letters for Every Occasion. This section, be warned, gets pretty strange.

Mechanical Educational Toys
Dear Sirs
We are manufacturers of mechanical educational toys that are the rage of the younger folk all over the world.
Catalogue and trade terms enclosed herewith.
Yours faithfully...

Pure Drinks
We are the manufacturers of pure drinks from fresh fruits in Kulu orchards.
Enclosed herewith is a catalogue and our trade terms.
Yours faithfully...

Dolls for Daddies
Dear Sirs
We produce easily digestible dolls for daddies in colourful wrappers, suitable for presentation to old folk on their birthdays.
Details and trade terms enclosed herewith.
Yours faithfully...

Pocket Computer
We are the manufacturers of pocket computers that solve all your day-to-day problems wherever you are.
You find herewith a catalogue and trade terms.
Yours faithfully...

Speak to Your Beloved Dead
We are the inventors of an eerie telephone that can put you in touch with your dead friends and kinsmen. Enclosed you will find the illustrated catalogue and trade terms.
Yours faithfully...


As always, I must point out that I have not changed a word from the original and that this is not my invention but an extract from an honest to goodness book. Honestly. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. If anybody out there knows that a doll for daddies is something other than the unthinkable, I would dearly like to know...

Next week: diplomatic correspondence...

Birthday

I am a man of my word. I said I'd post more extracts from 1111 Letters For Every Occasion, that indispensable and encyclopaedic guide to every letter you will ever have to write. For anyone that missed earlier examples of the genius of this book, or the explanation of quite why New Light Publishers of Delhi came to be the proud promulgators of this peerless epistolic peregrination, the original post is here and more examples are here, here and here.

Today, we celebrate the boss's birthday. And then, just as a bonus, we seek a recommendation for a suitable groom. Both are of the usual high standard. Please do not forget, as you read them, that these have been earnestly suggested as templates for serious correspondence. For therein lies their charm...

Greetings to Boss

Dear Sir/Madam

Dear Honourable...

May I have the honour to send you my heartiest greetings on the celebration of your birthday this month? I know that you are far above these mundane matters and flowery tributes mean nothing to you but your birthday is a great and golden occasion for your friends and admirers who owe so much to you for your earnestness and sincerity in your crusade to promote public causes.

You have invested the better part of your life in selfless causes which the future generations cannot forget and the historians will write with genuine appreciation about the objectives you have realised against the heaviest odds in the most crucial days of history and a leader should be judged not merely by what he achieves but the circumstances in which he accomplishes the dim objectives beyond the blue horizon because he might well be sowing the seeds of better karma for a bumper harvest to be finally reaped by others who are not yet even born.

Congrulating you once again on your birthday,

Yours faithfully...

Confidential Report

What do you think of Mr. J.S. Stuart, the proprietor of Stuart Agriculture Company?

I am planning to marry my daughter with him.

Positive Reply

Mr. Stuart is an excellent young man belonging to a very respectable family of Hongkong.

I strongly recommend him for marriage.

Negative Reply

Mr. Stuart is a sharp-fingered man who has failed in business because of false pretence.

It is better to keep your daughter away from him.

Marriage

Last week I promised some more extracts from that most compendious guide to every letter you'd ever have to write, 1111 Letters For All Occasions, published by New Light Publishers of New Delhi. I might have forgotten to tell you that I paid Dhs 12 for it, but I'm sure it's cheaper if you fly to Delhi and buy it. If you buy a number of copies, the savings will only increase. The ISBN is 81-85018-57-X and no, Amazon doesn't sell it.

Chapter 28 deals with matters marital and I am sure that if you only put some of this sensible, good advice into your own marriage, harmony will rule your home. Do not under any circumstances contact me as a consequence of this guidance. I shall deny everything.

I don't know about you lot, but I was crying by the end of the introduction...

Anyway. Here goes:

Mighty Marriage Matters
Marriage is not a bed of roses. Many thorny problems crop up between the husband and wife which need to be carefully tackled. If angry, the wife often goes away to her parents and can only be approached through correspondence.

Staying with parents
Dear Subhash
It is now three months that I have been staying with my parents and expecting you to come and take me home.
Is there anything in the matter?
Yours
Lilly

Positive Response
I regret that I could not go over to Calcutta to take you home because of pressing business problems.
I am coming next Sunday and will return home the same evening by air.

Negative Reply
I do not find you happy in my house with my parents. Therefore, I have no option but to let you stay with your parents as long as possible.

Reply to the above
That is no solution of the problem. We have to find a house of our own where we can live peacefully away from people's problems.


Coming of a Baby
You will be pleased to hear that I now carry a baby in my womb.
What provisions should we make for him?

Positive Reply
I am coming to bring you to Delhi and take you to the Jeevan Nursing Home on the Pusa Road for proper advice and care.
We shall reserve accommodation in the maternity ward.

Negative Reply
Since you are now pregnant, I suggest that you should continue to live with your father and mother till the new arrival.

Illness of the New Baby
I regret to inform you that Enu is ill and needs your immediate presence.
Come immediately.

Positive Reply
(Telegram)
ARRIVING ELEVENTH. SHAM KUMAR.

Negative Reply
If the baby is ill, let the doctors take care of her.
I am no doctor.


More next week...

Letters

I have a number of prized possessions, for which I am thankful. Some of them are relatively valuable, like my first edition Seven Pillars of Wisdom and The Mint. Some have no value, like a neem leaf from a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka or a rhododendron leaf from Cloud’s Hill. Some of them have a different value, like my 1845 copy of Household Management, an early cookbook. And some of them are simply beyond value. Into this last category falls my copy of a book called 1111 Letters For All Occasions. It is a work of insane genius. The authors are K. Malik, Anand Sagar and JS Bright. To them, and to New Light Publishers of New Delhi, I am eternally indebted. The book is intended to be a template for every letter you will ever have to write in life. All you have to do is pick up 1111 Letters, flick to the appropriate section (Matrimony, employment, commercial, official and others) and look up the letter you need. Although occasionally tempted to use one, I have always allowed wiser counsel to prevail.

I found 1111 Letters in an old stationery shop in Sharjah. It was lying, unloved and unwanted inbetween some Islamic esoterica and some charts for small children to learn how a tooth is formed. I idly picked it up, was instantly enraptured and bought it on the spot regardless of cost, considerable or otherwise. I simply had to have it.

“This must be regarded as the unique book of its kind. No author has ever attempted to write such a large number of letters, covering every walk and talk of correspondence.” Say the authors modestly in the preface, noting that when the publisher commissioned this great work the authors were hesitant to take on a task of such enormity. But, luckily: “When we proceeded deep into the woods of the correspondence, we found the jungle both fascinating and rewarding.” They finish their introduction with an assurance. “The reader will reap the fruits which the authors sowed and we are sure he will relish it.”

You can sing that one, boys. Never has one relished so much as I. The book’s charm lies partly in its strange and colourful language but mostly in the fact that its authors have simply made up a number of scenarios and written letters to suit these. We are therefore introduced to a whole fictitious universe, the lives of Manmohan, Singh, Prabakher, Lal and others are exposed as they quarrel, seek appropriate daughters, ship goods to each other, fall out and then go to court. Their strange correspondences give a new insight into an odd and wonderful world.

The following is a typical slice of the genius on offer in this most compendious and compelling of works.

Failing to keep appointment

You had promised to meet me in the Stock Exchange but you never turned up.

What is the fun of having any appointment when one does not have the capacity to keep it.

Reply to the above

Dear Mr Lal

You are mistaken. You had promised to meet me in the bank and not the Stock Exchange.

I fear your memory needs some training.

With best wishes

Yours sincerely

Sohan Kumar

Reply to Reply

Nonsense!

You are a dirty liar.

We had an appointment in the Stock Exchange and not in the bank.

Final Reply

Please don’t lose temper.

There could have been some kind of misunderstanding between us.

Let bygones be bygones.

The above is carefully typed and verbatim. It is only a scintilla from what is, to steal a certain Dubai Shopping Mall’s catchphrase, a rare collection of wonderful things. I shall offer more on a weekly basis, I think.