Kannada Expletives Etymology !

I have always been interested in etymology. It is usually very logical in most cases. In Sanskrit, you can invariable trace it to the 'धातु'... In English, you can trace quite a lot of words to Latin and Greek roots. But what interests me is the words that people use most often without thinking ... ತಲೆ ಕಾಯಿ ಬುರುಡೆ, ಕತ್ತೆ ಬಡವ, ಮಣ್ಣು ತಿನ್ನು, ಬಡ್ಡಿ ಮಗ, ಇತ್ಯಾದಿ. ಈ ಪದಗಳು ಹೇಗೆ ಹುಟ್ಟಿದವು ? ಇದರ ಅರ್ಥ ಏನು ? ಅಥವ ಇದಕ್ಕೆ ನಿಜವಾಗಲೂ ಅರ್ಥವಿದೆಯೆ ?

ಅಲ್ಲ, ಯಾವೋನಿಗಾದ್ರು ಬಯ್ಯಬೇಕಾದರೆ ಬಡ ಕತ್ತೆಗೇಕೆ ಹೋಲಿಸುವಿಕೆ ? ಅದರಲ್ಲೂ ಕತ್ತೆ ಬಡವಾಗಿರುತ್ತೆಯೆ? ಹಾಗೆಯೇ, ಬಡ್ಡಿ ಮಗ ಎಂದರೇನರ್ಥ ? ಮಗ ಬಡ್ಡಿ ಕಟ್ಟಬೇಕೆ ಅಥವ ಕಟ್ಟಿಲ್ಲವೆ...

ನನಗೆ ಸಧ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ಬೇರೆ ಪದಗಳು ಹೊಳೆಯುತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ. ಈ ರೀತಿಯ ಇನ್ನಿತರ ಪದಗಳು ನಿಮ್ಮ ನೆನಪಿನಲ್ಲಿದ್ದರೆ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಸೂಚಿಸಿ...(NO PROFANITY ALLOWED)
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NOTE: If you cannot read the Kannada Fonts here, please see this link for help.

Maybe I too need a change ! Or...

I know ... I know... When you stuck with a problem that you can't solve, you start blaming things around you ... Exactly what I am doing right now...

What is it with me and books ?

I don't know what it is with me and books. I have had an affair with them all my life! But I find them irrestible once I even see them(I assure you it is not bibliomania but only bibliophilia! There is a lot of difference between them! And moreover, I am not the kind who would go to any extent to buy a first edition/out-of-print book just for the heck of it. A booklover according to me is one who really respects his books and takes great care of them.

Gone are the days when I ued to just go and browse the books for hours in Nagasri, Book Paradise, Prism and other bookstores in Jayanagar 4th Block. I even love collecting them. Sometimes I hardly feel like returning them back to the library or to the person I borrowed it from(beware if you are the person I borrow books from!). Hell hath no fury to my cursings if you borrowed a book from me and returned it damaged! Also, I have a friends who invert an open book toremember the page! Ughh... Why the hell cant they find a small piece of paper to use as a bookmark ?

In fact, there are different qualities of first hand and second hand books(thats new and used for the Americans) that I love. The smell of the pages of the new books is something that pulls me into the bookstores every once in a while. Paperbacks, hardbound novels, textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopaedias all have different kinds of smells and feel. Sherlock Holmes would probably have identified the publishers of his day by smelling the paper!

On the other hand, second hand(or used) books have that used 'feel' which is indescribable. A good reader would have made small but intelligent comments/annotations(only pencil allowed! I hate people who write using pens in their printed books) in the margin(though I never write in margins) or provided a reference to some other similar/contrasting work which immediately makes me reach for Google.

I still have the Oxford English dictionary that my grandfather had got on his 11th birthday in 1925! He used the book till his very last days. If he found a new word in the newspaper, he would reach for his dictionary. What is it that enhances the charm of a book as its usage increases ? I know many people who love to just buy brand new books to adorn their bookshelves. What is the use if you never get to 'use' them at all ?

There are some splendid articles by Pradeep Sebastian in the Hindu. His column titled the 'Endpaper' describes the true characteristics of a bibliophile. You can sample his writings on Writing in Margins and Bookshelves.

ಡಾ|ರಾಜ್ - ಗೌರವ ನಮನ

ನಾನೇ ರಾಜಕುಮಾರ,
ಕನ್ನಡ ತಾಯಿಯ ಪ್ರೇಮದ ಕುವರ
ಅನೀತಿ ಅಳಿಸಿ, ನ್ಯಾಯವ ಉಳಿಸಿ
ಶಾಂತಿಯನಿಳಿಸಲು ಬಂದ ಪ್ರೇಮ ಕಿಶೋರ...
ರಾಜ್ ಕುಮಾರ್...

Dr.Raj and Kannada Film industry were two names for the same thing. I just can't find any words to say in my blog today and moreover, there is nothing about Dr.Raj I can write that the Kannadigas do not know about. His filmography alone is almost 35% of the list of watchable Kannada movies!

There never was and never will be another personality like him in Kannada Film World. We will all probably thank him silently while watching any of his movies for leaving behind such a rich legacy of Kannada movies of every conceivable genre.

May his soul rest in peace.

UPDATED: I cant put it better than what this article says.



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Miss those books...but aah... I found good ones again !

It all probably began when my parents used to buy me all sorts of books during my primary school days. Those days, Navakarnataka publications used to set up exhibitions in Bhadravati (and many small towns in Karnataka) where they would sell Russian fairy tales, novels, comics, etc at rock-bottom prices. I also used to get Chandamama, Baalamangala(Kannada mag;Dinga was my favourite in this), Gokulam, Wisdom(this one was really good!), Champak at home! Those were the days indeed...

After that, in High School, I started and completely finished the series of Enid Blytons, Hardy Boys, etc stuff. Also, read the complete Sherlock Holmes, Ruskin Bond and R.K.Narayan back-to-back many times. Then it was the era of pulp novels :-) ... The Sidney Sheldons, Irwing Wallaces held me in fascination for a short while(Beware: I will hitlist anyone calling Frederick Forsyth or Jeffrey Archer as pulp writers).

It was only after all this(or maybe during PUC) that I started to discover the REAL books. The ones that can really influence you... The autobiographies of Lee Iacocca, Akio Morita, etc, the Feynman books, those awesome gems of Kannada literature like the Mankuthimmana Kagga, Jeevanadharma Yoga, Baaligondu Nambike, etc. I also read a lot of very pleasant good books in Kannada like Namma Oorina Rasikaru, Mysooru Mallige, Kanooru Subbamma HeggaDathi, Triveni kaadambarigalu, Durgaastamaana, Sandhya Raaga, Mathadaana, etc. With 7 Jnanapith awardees in Kannada(more than any other Indian language, including Hindi), there is enough of past literature itself to last for a lifetime of reading.

I can still remember H.S.S(my High School Kannada Master) saying that we were missing out on some of the most important things in our life by not reading those books. I can understand him now and can only be thank my lucky stars that though I was a little late, I woke up in time to enjoy them.

Internet Speed

WHOA ! My University desktop Internet speed is 22Mbps !!! But then, it should be since it is close to the backbone(just 1-2 hops is my guess) through the Bellsouth lines! University networks ROCK!!!

dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-04-07 08:53:17 EST:
22484 / 10697
Your download speed : 22484 kbps or 2810.5 KB/sec.

Your upload speed : 10697 kbps or 1337.1 KB/sec.



This is the speed distribution graph of other users in the past fortnight.

Test your Internet speed here.

Thinking of a change...

Seeing other blogs, I have come to understand that there are a whole lot of thigs that you cannot do with Blogger. For instance, classifying posts according to categories, search bar, etc. In these cases, Wordpress seems to be a lot better than Blogger.

Some other interesting features are listing recent comments, calendar, recently updated freinds' blogs,etc... Most importantly, it would help if I want to host the blog on my webpage later.

I'd be grateful for any opinions/experiences ?!?

I have reserved a wordpress address for myself and am experimenting here: http://pratapa.wordpress.com/

Hectic Trip

Had a ball of a time during my whirlwind trip to Florida during Spring Break ! A hell-of-a road-trip of about 2000 miles in 4 days visiting Key West, Miami and Orlando! And the real part was that we spent most of the time on the road or sightseeing some cool places. 3 out of the five nights were spent in the car :-) (Not that it came free... Suffered awful backpain for the next 2 days).


Will upload pics later.