Stiff-upper-lip police authorities world over surely take a jaundiced view of the kind of narratives dished out by P. G. Wodehouse, holding these to be posing a grave danger to the law and order situation in their respective areas of contol. After all, these espouse the merits of pinching not only policemen’s helmets but also umbrellas, silver cow creamers and such other objects which are dear to their owners. Suave gentlemen, in a hurry to impress a young lass waiting for the rain to stop, think nothing of stealing someone’s umbrella and offering it to the party of the other part. Woolly-headed Lords do not shy away from pocketing a scarab from the collection of American millionaires. Aunts who are not gentlemen keep enticing their nephews to steal cats so as to win an upcoming race. Even members of the porcine species get kidnapped. Cooks get charmed into moving to greener pastures so the lining of the stomach of their prospective employers may continue to be in the pink of health. Gutsy young ladies who are bent upon making insurance companies more spiritual by the latter having to cough up large amounts of claims resort to persuading profesional thieves to steal vintage stamp collections owned by their heart throbs.
Given this singular absence of morals and ethics amongst the characters etched out by Plum, it should come as no surprise that his books are not permitted to be stocked in the libraries of our prisons. This is the only way the prisoners can be reformed and the foundations of our civilization can be stopped from quivering uncontrollably.
Here is a rib-tickling post covering an incident which occurred in one of the jails of India earlier this year, wherein a hapless prisoner was summarily denied a book by the Master.
Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage / Minds innocent and quiet take / That for an hermitage. 17th-century English poet Richard Lovelace from his poem To Althea, from Prison.
My heart goes out to the well-known human rights activist, Gautam Navlakha. I shan’t go into the whys and wherefores or the rights and wrongs pertaining to the justification or otherwise of his confinement in a prison in Mumbai, where he is holed up in a high security cell. Let the lawyers and the judges break their heads over matters that go over my head. That is not part of the mandate I have set for myself in setting out to pen this piece. Reports tell us that he is allowed a 30-minute constitutional ‘in the open space’ and must clean his own cell. So far so bad, but it gets worse and this…
“I go in for what is known in the trade as ‘light writing’ and those who do that – humourists they are sometimes called – are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.” P.G. Wodehouse.
As a diehard fan of the complete works of P.G. Wodehouse, I was idly surfing the net to see what kind of material one might encounter on the Master, apart from the standard Wikipedia synopsis. I was pleasantly surprised to come across a website specially created for followers of arguably the greatest humourist the world of English literature has produced. There are those who would scoff at describing the works of the ‘Master of Farce’ as literature, but I will treat them with the scorn they so richly deserve. Rather than attempting to describe the contents of the website to the lay reader, I felt it might be better to send an email…
Kind of moody the guv’nor had been for some days. Not at all his usual bright self. I had put it down to reaction from a slight attack of influenza which he’d been having: and, of course, I took no notice, just performing my duties as usual, until this evening which I’m talking about, when I brought him his whisky and siphon as was customary and he burst out at me.
“Oh, dash it, Jeeves!” he said, sort of overwrought. “I wish at least you’d put it on another table for a change.”
“Sir?” I said.
“Every night, hang it all,” proceeded the guv’nor, “you come in at exactly the same old time with the same old tray and put it on the same dashed old table. I’m fed up, I tell you. It’s the bally monotony of it that makes it all seem so frightfully bally.”
In order to celebrate the 137th birth anniversary of P G Wodehouse, the Pittsburgh Millionaires decided to meet up on the 14th of October, 2018. The meeting took place at one of the Panera Cafés in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh, USA.
Lest some of you get an impression that the millionaires foregathered to discuss some trustworthy sources from where one could secure either a cow creamer or a scarab, you would be sadly mistaken. If your ambitions lead you to believe that you could have run into an arts dealer offering The Girl in Blue, the famous Gainsborough miniature, to one of the millionaires present at the gathering, you would be even more off the mark.
Had you been able to make it to the gig, you would have discovered the Pittsburgh Millionaires to be a group of strong and adventurous folks, well endowed and successful…
Of all the reading that I have done, I have never ever had so much fun,
Than whilst perusing Wodehouse, Laughing to burst out of my blouse.
That Bertie Wooster is so British, such a jolly good fellow,
Can erupt like a volcano at times, yet is disarmingly mellow,
Ample bosomed Aunt Agatha et al bully him into the ground,
Bertie would be lost if Jeeves, that paragon wasn’t around.
The aunts make mincemeat of Bertie without so much as a by your leave,
If it wasn’t for Jeeves the saviour, we’d weep for Bertie and for him grieve,
The Wooster name would fall into ruin, rust corrode their noble family crest,
Sans Jeeves to keep a vigilant eye and shoo away both aunt and other pest.
Bertie Wooster is so upper class, so stiff upper lip, simply so very English, He belongs to the right club, yet tormented by…
What happens when a banking professional like Suvarna Sanyal, who has spent a life time poring over bulky ledgers and checking debit and credit figures, turns his attention to one of the popular stories dished out by P G Wodehouse? Well, he simply whips up a series of illustrations which figure some of the better known characters from the canon in some selected scenes from the story!
Residents of Plumsville would recall that this is the only story in the canon which is narrated by Jeeves. Savour below the results of his labour of love which, incidentally, have already undergone a scrutiny under the precise microscope of an expert in all Plummy matters.
I want to explain to you why I am speaking to you directly, instead of letting Mr Wooster present one of his tales. I have been asked quite frequently to explain any formula I might have for…
I confess I have never had the chance of listening to the prattle of tender feet around me. However, this does not mean that I do not observe kids. I do so, with all the shrewdness at my command. When they giggle and stare at public speakers, the latter are all of a twitter. When they seek protection money from their wannabe step fathers, the soul cringes. When they use paraffin wax to douse fires, one sickens in horror. When they decide to extract a revenge of sorts from cabinet ministers who have reported their smoking endeavours in the shrubberies, one draws appropriate conclusions. When they celebrate their birthdays by either putting sherbet in ink pots or by going AWOL to enjoy a dinner and a movie, one gets overawed with the kind of courage they have.
Having suffered at the hands of such obnoxious kids as Thos, Seabury, Edwin…
ashokbhatia 