I never have been a poetry person, but just read this interesting poem, called a Double dactyl, I got as part of the AWAD weekly issue:
The subject was the word maudlin (Def: 1. Overly sentimental. 2. Foolishly sentimental because of drunkenness - origin from Mary Magdalene).
email quote:
I'm reminded of poet James Merrill's decidedly unmaudlin double dactyl on the subject:
Higgledy piggledy
Mary of Magdala
Said to the Dolorous
Mother of God:
"Parthenogenesis
Ought to be left to the
Simple amoeba or
Gasteropod."
Double dactyls, as some of your readers may know, are a light verse form with very strict formal rules. DDs are quite difficult to write, but delightful when wittily conceived and carefully constructed.
--- end ---
One of the rules is to have the last line of first para rhyme with the last line of the second para! Truly awesome I think, given that it usually hard to make first line rhyme with the second :-)
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Stereotypes!
After a long gap, I finally managed to go to India for a vacation. And the funny part is, when I left for India, when I reached there, whoever I met, everyone assumed I had come to get married! And everyone had the same reasoning...the dude is 20 something odd (ok closer to 30), going to India after such a long time for such a long time....is obviously going to see girls lined up by his parents and will pick 1 and marry her! I tried telling everyone that it is not the case, I am just going on a vacation (part of which was actually spent working from B'lore!), but no one believed me!
That's when I realized that Indians are, to a large extent I would say rightly so, stereotyped....we do our engg, come to the US for our Master's, get a job and H1, work for a couple of years, go to India, see a few girls short-listed by our parents, select one..get married, get her here on H4 or try to get her H1 done through a consultant...wait for the Green Card and while waiting continue slogging at work! Of course, in between they have kids who become US citizens and we feel happy that at least our kids won't have to go through all the we went through!!
Another part of this image is best explained by this story : When I had just moved back to the US and was planning to buy a car, I decided to check out some Ford cars only because a friend told me I could get a new one for under $10K! Turned out it was not the case..But when my boss' boss heard that...he was like how dare you break away from the template?! I was like what template?
He goes...a desi dude is never supposed to even consider buying a Ford! He has to either buy a Honda or a Toyota!! And then of course, the above thing about marriage was repeated for good measure :-)
The best part was a friend sending this about why I am still single...:)
That's when I realized that Indians are, to a large extent I would say rightly so, stereotyped....we do our engg, come to the US for our Master's, get a job and H1, work for a couple of years, go to India, see a few girls short-listed by our parents, select one..get married, get her here on H4 or try to get her H1 done through a consultant...wait for the Green Card and while waiting continue slogging at work! Of course, in between they have kids who become US citizens and we feel happy that at least our kids won't have to go through all the we went through!!
Another part of this image is best explained by this story : When I had just moved back to the US and was planning to buy a car, I decided to check out some Ford cars only because a friend told me I could get a new one for under $10K! Turned out it was not the case..But when my boss' boss heard that...he was like how dare you break away from the template?! I was like what template?
He goes...a desi dude is never supposed to even consider buying a Ford! He has to either buy a Honda or a Toyota!! And then of course, the above thing about marriage was repeated for good measure :-)
The best part was a friend sending this about why I am still single...:)
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