PCless: Day 3

monshu came home last night to find the walls of the office painted Ass Brown instead of the sophisticated shade of green we'd picked out. When he asked the painter about this, he confessed to having written the number of the paint chip down wrong. No harm done--he'll repaint the room at his expense--except for the time lost.

I really wish I could tell you all that being without our computer for a couple days has enriched our lives, that instead of composing detailed replies to anonymous Internet posters and watching Buzzcocks, I'm spending my evenings in deep meaningful conversations with monshu and reading the great works of modern fiction. All it really means is that I'm watching television in the evenings, a habit I'd pretty much broken myself of once the t.v. was banished to the basement.

Last night, we ended up watching a longish chunk of the Omen. I thought it would be just the movie to help lull monshu to sleep because it seems to have been directed by someone who thought Donner's version was too fast-paced and engrossing. I really can't imagine who this movie is for. Those brought up after the original will be turned off by the dearth of mayhem and paucity of gruesome deaths, and those brought up with it won't find a single twist to hold their interest. Although it's not a shot-for-shot remake à la Van Sant's Psycho, every scene is a monument of faithfulness. Eventually, I switched over to Jeepers Creepers, which is just the shlocky shocker for anyone who's ever longed to see the boho guy from the Mac commercials get horribly mutilated.

So, yes, Döblin is on hold while I wrap of Kiran Desai's The inheritance of loss. It's a solid good read that mercifully avoids most of the usual pitfalls of Desi lit. I'm not sure if I'll jump right into Vikram Chandra's Sacred games or pick up something else (Rushdie's Shalimar? Note a theme emerging) for a while, since much as I'm interested in the further adventures of Sartaj Singh, I'm not sure how ready I am for a 900-page novel at this point.

आज का शब्द / آج كا شبد / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ

जर्मन / جرمن / ਜਰਮਨ jarman

I suppose I shouldn't be in the least surprised to find that the Hindi/Urdu/Panjabi for "German" is a borrowing from English, given that the German state only formally came into existence thirteen years into the British Raj. But I rather suspected at least one would have preferred a reflex of Persian آلمانی almānī. It's rather ironic, in fact, to have an English borrowing for "German" when the native word for "English", अँग्रेज़ी / انگريزی / ਅੰਗ੍ਰੇਜ਼ੀ ãgrezī, obviously comes from somewhere else. (Portuguese ultimately? Hobson-Jobson is silent on the subject.)

It's also curious to see the country designated as जर्मनी / جرمنی / ਜਰਮਨੀ jarmanī when I might have expected the final -ī to be taken as a nisba ending and analogically expanded to jarmaniyā.