Bangalore Mirror. Friday Oct 23, 2009.
With all this talk about Chandrayaan finding water on the Moon and others finding ways to challenge its potability on Earth and still others ever more determined to blast the last rocks there to squeeze out whatever it can from the regolith, the gushing vision of life-saving hydrant pouring down from the heavens above, for the time being, stays hypothetic.
Wonder what a vaastu expert’s take would be on this. To which direction of the orient would the moon be of us earthlings? Whatever the order there, Mr (or Ms depending on your parent culture) Moon has been quite a talking point nevertheless. And with my little boy on the watch, the cosmic forces always point to one plane – entertainment. There must have been some strong lunar vibrations even on that day then, when on his first solo net crawl, he happened to land on a web page on, who else but moon-man, Neil Armstrong!
That week at school, the topic of exploration in English was the Articles, a, an and the. We had completed an extensive worksheet and other exercises, by the end of which my son was quite a little master of their usage.
This is what beat me. Son in front of laptop, laments in high pitch: “This is wrong. He does not even know about Articles!" Puzzled, I looked at the screen. In bold italics was a flash image of Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon: That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.
My little boy was still frowning. He couldn’t have. My 2-day old Master of Articles couldn’t have! He exasperated, “which man mamma, and why is the man kind, anyway?” Sigh!
But however the little guy understood it, the fact remained: Mr Armstrong, astronaut of astronomical significance, physical visitor to an astrological site, first man on the moon, indeed seemed to have missed an Article! Not the particular kind NASA would provide but the one indefinitely used in a singular context and preceding a consonant sound in a sentence articulated by English speaking earthlings - blame it on ghore mangal dosh !
My task for the day, now, was this: distract my impressionable child from the grammatical gaffe* of the first man to land on the moon and do Planet Earth proud. I had to impress upon him, instead, the greatness this man had achieved in completing a mission that would reconfigure the course of space travel and scientific scope thereof (40 years hence we have found semblance of water! mangal less, mangal‘maye’ more like).
Astrospeak or agnostspeak, I would have to reiterate that at seven ‘he’, my son, would have to be absolutely sure of his a, an and the. To rocket to the moon, he would have to simply wait ‘for ages’ until he ‘grew up’ – by which time, of course, I would not have to worry about how he would quench his thirst up there.
At that precise moment though, I had to answer the question, “ ... and why is the man kind, anyway?” Yin was not in supply and Yan would have to be spared for someone older. So I immediately agreed that as per what was taught in school that week, in omitting the Big A, Mr Armstrong indeed seemed to have uttered a contradiction as his opening statement to Moon. I have to say that the three inch smile beaming up at me was worth three times as many lunar landings!
But he is little, see? So information had to be trickled gently. And only what he would soak in without any explosion, could be imparted. Suffice to say, I survive. As does (thankfully) his grammar teacher at school.
*There really was no error. Bad radio transmission blotted out the quickly uttered ‘a’ before ‘man’ in the first half of Armstrong’s line (nasa.com)
~http://www.bangaloremirror.com/blogs/post/Moon-hydrograde-Earth-and-other-Article-ations.aspx
With all this talk about Chandrayaan finding water on the Moon and others finding ways to challenge its potability on Earth and still others ever more determined to blast the last rocks there to squeeze out whatever it can from the regolith, the gushing vision of life-saving hydrant pouring down from the heavens above, for the time being, stays hypothetic.
Wonder what a vaastu expert’s take would be on this. To which direction of the orient would the moon be of us earthlings? Whatever the order there, Mr (or Ms depending on your parent culture) Moon has been quite a talking point nevertheless. And with my little boy on the watch, the cosmic forces always point to one plane – entertainment. There must have been some strong lunar vibrations even on that day then, when on his first solo net crawl, he happened to land on a web page on, who else but moon-man, Neil Armstrong!
That week at school, the topic of exploration in English was the Articles, a, an and the. We had completed an extensive worksheet and other exercises, by the end of which my son was quite a little master of their usage.
This is what beat me. Son in front of laptop, laments in high pitch: “This is wrong. He does not even know about Articles!" Puzzled, I looked at the screen. In bold italics was a flash image of Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon: That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.
My little boy was still frowning. He couldn’t have. My 2-day old Master of Articles couldn’t have! He exasperated, “which man mamma, and why is the man kind, anyway?” Sigh!
But however the little guy understood it, the fact remained: Mr Armstrong, astronaut of astronomical significance, physical visitor to an astrological site, first man on the moon, indeed seemed to have missed an Article! Not the particular kind NASA would provide but the one indefinitely used in a singular context and preceding a consonant sound in a sentence articulated by English speaking earthlings - blame it on ghore mangal dosh !
My task for the day, now, was this: distract my impressionable child from the grammatical gaffe* of the first man to land on the moon and do Planet Earth proud. I had to impress upon him, instead, the greatness this man had achieved in completing a mission that would reconfigure the course of space travel and scientific scope thereof (40 years hence we have found semblance of water! mangal less, mangal‘maye’ more like).
Astrospeak or agnostspeak, I would have to reiterate that at seven ‘he’, my son, would have to be absolutely sure of his a, an and the. To rocket to the moon, he would have to simply wait ‘for ages’ until he ‘grew up’ – by which time, of course, I would not have to worry about how he would quench his thirst up there.
At that precise moment though, I had to answer the question, “ ... and why is the man kind, anyway?” Yin was not in supply and Yan would have to be spared for someone older. So I immediately agreed that as per what was taught in school that week, in omitting the Big A, Mr Armstrong indeed seemed to have uttered a contradiction as his opening statement to Moon. I have to say that the three inch smile beaming up at me was worth three times as many lunar landings!
But he is little, see? So information had to be trickled gently. And only what he would soak in without any explosion, could be imparted. Suffice to say, I survive. As does (thankfully) his grammar teacher at school.
*There really was no error. Bad radio transmission blotted out the quickly uttered ‘a’ before ‘man’ in the first half of Armstrong’s line (nasa.com)
~http://www.bangaloremirror.com/blogs/post/Moon-hydrograde-Earth-and-other-Article-ations.aspx
Comments
But some consider 'Shakespeare' to be that fallacy of belief... who's to say?
They both (even if just in spirit and not physical truth)have loaned mankind hope and substance. so i guess we should at least regard that debt. what say? :)