The Notice Board.

[A story, formerly published under Socyberty. ]

Image Courtesy: Google

I didn't find the error, but it found me. It was demoniac! It was a Black Hole!

As part of the new year celebrations, the students of the MBA department had written a poster and displayed it on the notice board. It was a Hindi message, though written in English script on the new year celebration. It seemed the brain child of an undeveloped poet.

Hindi is a language that follows gender specification for words. One of the words used in that write-up was masculine in gender, but was preceded by a feminine preposition, whereas it must be a masculine preposition.

It attracted me as I reached near the poster. It had started pulling me in whenever I passed near it from that day. The error revealed itself as a Black Hole. It was horrendous. I wanted to get rid of this trouble. I waited for someone to notice it and change it.

Three days passed. But the error remained the same. Making mistake is part of life, but retaining that mistake is no less than sin, death, curse. Every language has a soul and these students are corrupting it. I thought. I had no other choice but to wait. The fourth day I waited outside their class, attracted by the Black Hole, the error. I knew that someone will come out and I may be able to set myself free from the pull, but I didn't know how.
A girl came out, an elegant, tall, good looking girl, with plaited hairs. I invited her attention. She came near me. I was unaware of how to solve the 'problem', for the problem was as concerned about the 'soul' of the language as with the factual error the students had committed, and I felt little sure about making them understand the way the 'fact' and the 'soul' are linked.
I blurted out- "You have made an error"- pointing my forefinger on the words.
She smiled and nodded as if she already knew about it, as if making an error was all natural, as if she was not very much concerned about it.
"You are correct. I too noticed it." -She said.
"You are corrupting the soul of the language. I think you should correct your mistake, as soon as possible."- That was my turn to advise her. And I did it thinking the least about the intelligibility of the matter I have spoken, without thinking whether the girl would understand anything about the soul of the language or not.
She smiled again and said- "You are right. There is a soul in every language, and there is an identity. Even the errors made in the usage of a language conveys a meaning. It shows how alien the person who had used the language is, from the original language. For this reason, even that error has an identity and an existence. It communicates something."
When I looked at her, her eyes were fixed on the poster. "I think it should remain so."- It was she who said this. There was a new light that shone suddenly for me. The light was that of wisdom.
"Every man has a freedom not to listen to a woman, but every woman listens to man for, she knows, the wisdom the man has, constitutes one third of the wisdom of a life time, and she is always happy to have the full, for she is having the two third of it."- I thought.
I appreciated her with a smile and returned.