Ms. Roy

If it gets any slower, it would stop. That’s how the week was. Went so slow that I feel I am sitting at exactly the same place on the time scale as I was last week. Or may be it was the book I was reading last week. Power Politics by Arundhati Roy. It’s a collection of a few of her articles. I have read a lot of her pieces online but I can keep reading her work again and again. Yes. I hear people seething their teeth over how she goes on and on with long sentences filled with words found only in an unabridged dictionary. And I vividly remember someone saying her writing would get failing score from a 5th grade English teacher.

And I, like a true gentleman, am going to jump to her defense. I shall not discuss her views. I am not exactly in conjunction with her opinions. I will only discuss her style. Agreed whatever she says could be said in a short simple sentence that can be understood by a 6th grader with English as his second language. But where is the fun in it? Where is the entertainment? Why do we have long winding dialogues in our movies? Why do we have punch lines in movies? Politicians make sure to include sound bites worthy of publication in next day’s newspaper in all their speeches. Why? To convey a picture. An opinion. A point of view with a bang.

If I am writing a research paper, a scientific article, I would be concerned about conveying the facts right and the right facts. Every word would count towards conveying something coherent. A sentence would be scrutinized independently and needs to stand the scientific analysis. There is no room for flowery flamboyant language. Each sentence would be like the ten individual 1's that add up to 10. Each one is vital. Each one is simple. No debate what so ever in what they mean.

When it comes to painting a picture with words, I am not too bothered with the individual facts and minute details. It’s the big picture that I am concerned with. I would be more worried about making the reader think about what I am thinking and less about what exactly I am thinking. I want them to address issues I discuss but not necessarily understand or know fully how I address them. That requires, if needed, drugging the reader with magical words, creating an aura and mystic around the issue, so that the reader is motivated to think about it. Not so as to embed my ideas. But to bounce it off him so as to see those thoughts in a new light. Those meandering words are like rainbow. No two person ever sees the same.

Ultimately it’s a question of personal choices. Like choice of food or clothing. Her writing to me is like long Chinese noodles with lots of spice. Ya they are difficult to eat. Clumsy especially to those who use the chopsticks to try and learn to use it till the food arrives and drop it at the sight of their food. Yet we enjoy those long winding spicy noodles. May not be relished in our everyday hurry. But certainly a nice choice when you want to enjoy not just the food, but the atmosphere you are having it in, the people you are with and the discussions that are ignited by all that and more. Her writing is like that. It needs to be enjoyed at its pace. Used as a beginning to discuss what she attempts to open your eyes to. You may spend more time reading a sentence because of the construction and the choice of words. That’s more time to ponder and form an even more convoluted opinion on the discussion. They are writen to make you aware of issues. Not to educate you on them.

And think about all the impressions you can create with your new found command over complex sentences. No longer can the English major in the marketing department fool you. Instead you can fool around him/her and get away with a date. You can bulldoze your way to the top by talking complex, correct and inexplicable sentences to 'will not confess I didn’t understand' managers.

Whoever said KISS (Keep it simple, stupid)…