Some years ago, when a friend who had just been invited toprovide commentary for a cricket match broke the good news at the press club, asenior journalist told him: “At least now you won’t make spelling mistakes.”Had it been the reverse, and a commentator had been offered a slot as acolumnist, well might he have been told, “At least now you won’t make terriblemistakes in pronunciation.”
According to the British Institute of Verbatim Reporters(BIVR), the body that records public utterances, the word most people findhardest to pronounce is ‘phenomenon’.
The second most difficult is ‘remuneration’. I suspect it isnot the pronunciation so much as what the word represents – everyone wantsgreater remuneration, even those who struggle with the word, and you canimagine a boss saying, “No pay hike for you unless you can pronounce the wordcorrectly”, thus knocking out about eighty percent of the applications.
Third on the list is ‘statistics’, again, I suspect for whatit represents (bowling average, size of shirts, number of time you have askedfor an increase in remuneration and been turned down).
The BIVR, obviously staffed by kind people, clearly did notspeak to president George W Bush or they would have put the word ‘nuclear’above all others. Thanks to Bush, most of America think their country is aheadin the new cooler race, and wonder why the rest of the world is making such afuss. Every time there is a fresh order for new coolers in the working place,the security forces shut down the office, take everybody’s telephone number andadvise them not to leave town in case they are needed for later inquiries.Which is why so many people make do with old coolers there.
Which leads us (I don’t know how) to the novelist PhilipRoth who has decided to hang up his word processor. He is 79, and it is time,he says, he began reading what he has written rather than writing some more andthen discovering he has more books than years left in which to finish them. Asany mathematically challenged person will tell you, I am half his age, but itis a thought that occurs to me at regular intervals (not that Roth must retire,but that I must before I discover what he has discovered).
It started from the moment I wrote my first essay, “How ISpent My Summer Vacation.” I was eight or nine, and summer came at the usualtime, just after the annual school exams. How did summer know when my examswere I asked myself, and not getting an answer (for summer seldom spoke) movedon to other things.
That summer was a beautiful one, full of sunshine and warmsmells and wonderful things to eat. Yet I could not enjoy any of it because ofthat darned essay I had to write. I decided to keep a diary. On the first day Iwrote in it thus: I have decided to keep a diary to help me with the writing ofmy essay on how I spent the summer vacation. On day two I wrote: Today Ichecked the entry for yesterday. On day three I wrote: It is day three and Istill have not written my essay. On day four it was: It is day four, and ditto.
“Go out and play, meet friends, take in a movie,” screamedmy mother who felt I was wasting my time sitting indoors trying to write when Ishould be outdoors falling from trees or scraping my knees on the roads. But atleast I had something to write in my diary: Today my mother screamed at me, “Goout and play, meet friends, take in a movie.”
And so it went on, a mobius strip of experiences, capturedbetween the covers of a book, but no sign of the essay I was supposed to write.
Finally, on the last day of the vacation, I made up a story.Of how I had visited friends, gone out and played and taken in a movie and doneall those fabulous things one usually does during a summer vacation. In a senseI had done it – in my imagination. That’s when I decided to retire fromwriting. No more, I said. And I have been writing ever since. Mr Roth willprobably have the same experience.
Suresh Menon is author, most recently, of Pataudi; Nawab of Cricket. He is also the Editor of WisdenIndia Almanack
