hWat is dyslexia?

The English language has a lot of problems inherent in it and that is what makes it so cute. However, it causes a lot of problems for those who learn it as a second language. Isn't amazing that some of the learning problems is seen only in those who learn English and still we think they are school problems or the children's problems? In a world like ours where even sickness is seen as a potential market, there is more chance for a child to be learned dyslexic. If the diagnosis is a farce, the treatment that follows is a comedy of errors. Instead of letting the children find our what they are strong in, they are made aware of their weaknesses using snake oil therapies. Some children are proud of their problems since it guarantees them some initial attention. Some other see a potential excuse for not doing the homework. Some day the school gets fed up of them and leaves them to swim or sink, mostly sink.

Why can I write?

True, this is a correct sentence. But something at the back of our mind tells us that something is not right. The question looks right if we use ‘can’t’ instead of ‘can’, right? There we have some clue to the strange sound of the title. When we can’t we want to know why and we ask why. When we can, we simply take the ability for granted. We never bother to ask why we can do something. When we can, we don’t want to know why we can, but how we can. Obviously it is a different question demanding a different answer.

This is a question that we should encourage the writers to ask themselves. They might be able to come up with some answers. I asked this question to myself recently though I can’t claim to be a writer of any notability or notoriety. But there is something that those who know me have figured out about me. I love writing. To me, the key board of the computer is better than that of the piano and for audible reasons too. I love to hear the tapping sound on the keyboard and surely, I have a preference for certain well sounding keyboards. After I learned touch typing, the sound of each key seems to be chasing each other with the backspace key coming in between and wiping it all out like a green monster in a child’s video game.

There, almost 250 words already and I have not said anything I intended to say. I am relishing it, revelling in it.  I also delete a lot of what I type, like a child making sand castles.

But the question remains. Why can I write, well or ill, while many can’t. Why am I different? Is it an ability to be proud of, a difference to be put right or a disability to be made use of? I asked this question to myself one of these days and came up with several reasons.

I write because I can. I can because I don’t fear. Growing up with people who didn’t know much English and among books which never had the guts to point out my errors, though they themselves were impeccably error-free, I was never a singed cat. I learned a little bit of grammar from a favourite teacher at school, just enough not to be laughed at. Nobody took the pain of making me feel bad about the errors. I corrected myself when I found that I didn’t mean what I had said and hadn’t said what I meant. I think the unsinged cat says it all.

And there is the passion too. There is music in the words, apart from the tapping of the keys. This is not new knowledge to anyone. Everyone knows there is something in writing like humming an old song. But there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Something inhibits their motivation, external or internal, to write. They do want to write and many satisfy themselves by talking or talking about the writing they are going to do. As I see it, it is just the fear of standards we set for ourselves or we let other set for us that prevent us from playing on this Apollo’s harp which can raise not just cities but an entire world, the Middle Earth for one.

Thus I believe that the magic potion that makes a prolific writer out of any kid we meet is nothing but our forbearance or shedding of our fastidiousness. When we think of the occasions when we correct them, if it is an honest introspection, we may find new answers. Were we trying to show them an error or show off our knowledge? Pedagogue of pedantic?

We should try to see a child’s writing just the way we see his drawing. It is not correct. But then his drawing is not realistic either, though he intended it to be. Bear with them. Let it come. Let it gush out and remove the clogging in the conduit. Let it come out in quantity and then we can work on its quality and accuracy. That is, if it has not gained them by then and in all probability it would have. 

Sandpiper

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a PhD in linguistics at the University of Lancaster. Her debut novel, In the Eye of the Sun (1993), set in Egypt and England, recounts the maturing of Asya, a beautiful Egyptian who, by her own admission, "feels more comfortable with art than with life." Her second novel The Map of Love (1999) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, has been translated into 21 languages and sold over a million copies.  She has also published two works of short stories, Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper(1996) - a selection from which was combined in the collection I Think Of You in 2007, and Stories Of Ourselves in 2010.

Soueif writes primarily in English,  but her Arabic-speaking readers say they can hear the Arabic through the English. 

 She was married to Ian Hamilton, a famous English literary critic.

She lives in London and Cairo.

The short story Sandpiper by Ahdaf Soueif reads more like a poem than a short story. The basic elements air, water, fire and earth interplay with one another in this story highlighting the events that happen in the life of the main character. There are very few specifics; even the names of the main character are not mentioned. The place names are mentioned very rarely which gives this story a certain universality and timelessness.The story is told from the first person point of view of the central character, Lucy's mother and Um Sabir's daughter-in-law. This is a typical example of feminist writing.
There is no intriguing plot in the story and the conflicts are mainly internal. Marital discord due to cultural differences can be cited as the theme of the story.
The narrator, Lucy's mother, herself a writer, takes us into her first short utterance itself. It is a simple sentence which sounds like part of a private casual conversation and it sets the mood of the story.

                                      Outside, there is a path.

The rest of the story is about how she is unable to find her own path to happiness. She had met her husband, an Egyptian, in her own country. After a long courtship of four years, they got married and every year she has been six months in her husband's place at Alexandria near Cairo, Egypt.

"...:twelve years ago, I met him. Eight years ago, I married him. Six years ago, I gave birth to his child."
This cold objectivity is also heard when she talks about her motherhood.

As the story opens we see her at the beach near her husband's home in Alexandria. She is describing how she used to spend her time at the beach. Her description tells us a lot about how she loves to see the basic elements interacting with one another. They are very gentle to each other. They chase, cajole, fondle, unite, get into each other's being. This even forms a cycle. She is very passionate about everything in her life. She takes an interest in everything around her. The stranger the subject of her interest, the stronger her involvement. She is hungry for more and more varied experiences.

On the other hand her in-laws are very protective of her like they are generally of the women folk. It has been spelled out to her at the Cairo airport that women are considered second sex in Egypt. Coming from a more liberal land like Europe, it mattered much to her though she managed to adapt herself  to that.
After her first child was born, he husband became less passionate about her. He would have tried to harmonize her with his culture for long and then gave it up when he got really frustrated. She would have lavished all his love and time on her child, ignoring him. From the way she talks about how expectant she was when she was expecting this sound only natural. The part where she talks about how she played with her child even when it was still inside tells us that certain things are universal and do not pertain to any single culture.




  

Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins: an analysis

Gerald Manley Hopkins brought into the world of poetry some new methods and theories of his own. A few of them are used in his poem Pied Beauty too.
The poem is in praise of God who crated this world with unimaginable variety. Hopkins uses his own phrases, words, rhythm and ideas to express his awe and wonder at the greatness of the Creator.
He begins the poem with a clear and straight forward statement.

             Glory be to God for dappled things-

Then he goes on to list and describe some of the things in his own way. He believed that, just like the landscapes which refer to the beauty of nature out in the open, everything had its own inner beauty also. He referred to this as the inscape, or the inner world of things. He also believed that through several methods which he referred to as instress, the poet brings out the inscape in everything they write about. So though the poet is writing eulogies and eulogies on God, this is done through bringing to light the real beauty in things.
Hopkins uses some traditional methods like figures of speech and comparisons and well chosen words and sound to show things in a clear light. He also uses rhythm, stress and alliteration to make his lines beautiful. He also invents new words when he finds the old ones inadequate.
For example, he compares the sky which has more than one colour to a cow which has more than one colour. The patterns on the body of a cow are very similar to cloud formations. Hopkins uses the word 'brinded' to refer to the way the cow is coloured. This is a word he coined for the purpose of shedding  new light on the pattern of colours on a cow and in the sky. The new and strange words make the readers look more deeply into the objects of comparison. We do so to get a better meaning of the word but we are actually getting a clearer idea of the objects of comparison.
Hopkins also juxtaposes things of different nature. Just after he describes the sky he talks about the patterns of the body of trouts. After referring to God's greatness as seen in two basic elements, air and water, Hopkins refers to fire indirectly when he says,

 fresh fire-coal chestnut-falls...

In the next line he makes a direct remark about the fourth element, the earth when he says,
Landscape plotted and pierced - fold, fallow and plough;
We can also see that the poet breaks the conventions of language use to keep us alert about his utterances. Since words and phrases easily become cliches, the novelty in expression and the shocking way in which the poet has dared to move away from the conventional usage, help the poet hold our attention while he shares his thoughts with us.
Hopkins uses sprung rhythm as his meter. In this meter the first syllables are stressed and it gives each line its energy and power when we read it out loud. Another device used by the poet is the use of special sounds like sibilance and alliteration as in lines like,

                   Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings

which shows alliteration and

                   with swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim'

which shows sibilance

After showing us a list of things which are examples of pied beauty, the poet goes back to his original intention of praising the glory of God who created all this. He admits that he doesn't know how God makes all things beautiful. He states that God's own beauty remains eternal and unchanged.
Thus the poem raised from mere eulogy or a simple prayer to the level of a work of art since the poet has managed to shed new light on our experiences of life. The thought content remains simple but the way the poet describes the world around makes us see the world as we have never seen it before.