When we feel under the weather we are often caught in the Doldrums. Read about expressins like these and similar others in Words unlimited this time.

by S Upendran,

Madras eye, Delhi belly, Oxford blue, Mexican wave, and American dream. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the first element in the expressions that have been listed is the name of a well-known place…

S Upendran “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” Jacques Barzun So true, isn’t it? Next month the entire country will go through the farce of celebrating Teachers’ Day. It’s the day when students take pity on their gurus, and decide not to drag them out of the classroom to beat the living daylights out of them. It’s also the day when politicians with little or no education themselves drape shawls around a few of our ageing colleagues, grab the mike, and go into rhapsodies about the so called ‘noble profession’. Noble profession! Who are the jokers kidding? If it were such a noble profession, then why don’t our not so beloved leaders instruct their sons to embrace it? Why is it they marry off their daughters to businessmen or NRIs, and never to a humble teacher? Are we practicing teachers so low on the totem pole that we are not even considered potential son-in-law material? Is it only politicians who think this way, or are there others who willingly subscribe their view? What does the younger generation, which has its fingers firmly on the public pulse, think of teachers? Would they be willing sign one on as their life partner? I posed this question to a group of M. A. students and their immediate response was to guffaw. Is marrying someone from our tribe such a potty idea? “Marrying someone from the teaching profession? No way!” said Aijamal rolling her eyes to emphasise how ridiculous the very thought was. “They are so boring,” she added, with a wealth of emotion. My Adam’s apple did one of those quick galloping exercises. Teachers, boring? That can’t be right. I must have heard wrong. Fat chance! A few seconds later, her sentiments were echoed by her friend who employed the word ‘boring’ repeatedly to describe teachers. The Adam’s apple did another quick gallop. Were these girls trying to tell me something about my teaching? Teja twisted the knife further by pronouncing teachers as ‘not fun’ material. (And if the singer with the prismatic hair, Cindy Lauper, is to be believed, girls just want to have fun!) Anwesha readily agreed that teachers couldn’t be any fun. When pressed for a reason, she replied that since teachers were keen on ‘updating’ their knowledge, they spent all their time reading! ‘Life with them would be boring because they would not have time for anything else,’ she concluded. I was tempted to tell