( 'The Sunday Oregonian', Portland, carried the other day a write-up, by Kent Hartman, on the American fixation for using superlatives. This evoked an 'infotaining' response from a visiting Mysorean. We publish excerpts from his letter to Hartman.)
Dear Mr. Kent Hartman, Your write-up provided me with no end of amusement. My favourite pastime back home (Mysore) has been to write for the print media on a wide range of topics. An activity that keeps my grey cells ticking.
I could not agree with you more about American fixation for use of superlatives --- words like 'awesome', 'fantastic', 'phenominal' etc.I am begining to wonder whether I am losing touch with reality or caught in a time warp.I believe, I have a certain felicity in the use of English language and touch a emotional chord with readers, as otherwise the newspapers back home would not publish it. In a decade or so it has piled up to 700 letters and articles. Would you describe it as 'fantastic' record? I feel 'incredibly' sad that none of my friends has appreciated my feat as either 'fantastic' or 'awesome'
Having gone through 'The Oregonian' for some weeks I am getting some insight into the American mind. Initially I was taken aback at advertisements that offer 'incredibe' dicount on a 'fantastic' range of the products; at the description of every tourist spot as 'the best in the world'. Now the shock is wearing off. These days when my grandson, a pre-school going five-year old, says something cute (is that the right word?) , I catch myself saying 'that's awesome'. Then, there is the loving expression 'I love you Dad', 'I love you Mom', also being used in the same genre as the superlatives. It occurs to me I have not said to my father, 'I love you Dad', even once, in these 103 years, that's his age. I feel 'incredibly' ( or should it be 'awesome') guilty about it and hope to make up for it in some 'phenominal' way.
I am very proud to be a "helium head", and to me (am I putting you down here/) your observation was exceptionally funny, brilliant, out of this world. Welcome to America the land of eternal optimism.
I enjoyed reading the article by H.R.Bapu Sathyanarayana. His brother Bapu Somasekhara was a classmate of mine in Mysore. His older brother Bapu Seetharam was my brother's senior by a year. His father was a colleague of my father in Mysore State Education Department. It is nice to hear that the old man is still alive. Reading the article by Bapu Sathyanarayana brought back memories of Krishnamurthypuram where our families lived for a number of years.
I guess the use of the word 'awesome' as well as the word 'awe' tend to be pretty aweful. Notice, our military proclaimed that it would 'shock and awe' the Iraqis ( at least those who unfortunately were in Baghdad during the blitzkrieg) not realizing that 'to be awed' means a manifestation of ' RESPECT and WONDER' exhibited as a consequence of exposure to , yes, an AWESOME spectacle, not a fearful and destructive one.
