This Above all
Questions that puzzle me
Khushwant Singh

WHY has a week only seven days and not eight, nine or 10? Why are there only 12 months in an year? Some months have 31 days, some 30 and one 28 or 29 days. Why do days of the week have names? Why are some considered auspicious by the various communities—Tuesday (Mangal) by Hindus, Sundays (Sabbath) by Christians, Fridays (Jumma) by Muslims? And why are Saturdays (shani) regarded inauspicious?

When such questions start bugging me, I get restless. Till I find their answers, I have no peace of mind. I have found answers to some of them and am somewhat relaxed. Seasons are ordinances of nature dictated by the way the earth revolves around the sun. So in the northern hemisphere we have four—spring, summer, autumn and winter. India has an additional season of monsoons.

Calendars are man-made. There are quite a few of them. The most widely accepted over the world is the Christian (or the Roman) from which it is derived, by which history is divided into two—BC i.e. before the birth of Jesus Christ, and AD, after his demise. Older than the Christian is Vikrami Calendar of the Hindu origin accepted in India. Though later came Hijri, dating from the flight of Prophet Mohammed from Makka to Madina. Since it is lunar year, Muslim festivals like Eid fall on different dates from year to year.

The Sikhs evolved their own, known as the Nanakshahi Calendar, dating from the birth of Guru Nanak. But most Sikh festivals continue to be fixed by the Vikrami Calendar. The Christian or Roman year is solar based. The Vikrami Calendar is a mixture of solar and lunar years. The Hijri is entirely lunar.

Whatever their differences, all divide the year into 12 months and the week into seven days. The names of the days of the week are pre-Christian and taken from Latin and based on Astral phenomenon. Thus Sunday comes from sun day, Monday from moon day, Tuesday from Mars, Wednesday from Mercury, Thursday from Jupiter, Friday from Venus and Saturday from Saturn. Oddly enough, Hindi words for the same derived from Sanskrit are likewise based on the sun, moon and the planets. Why? I have no idea.

Shibboleth

I wasn’t sure what the word meant but was too lazy to consult a dictionary. It is rarely used these days. So it was not worth bothering about. It could be another word for a slogan, a motto, or even a monument. Then I stumbled across it in the Old Testament and discovered it signified an accent by which one could tell where a person came from. For example, those who pronounce leisure as ‘layyar’ or pleasure as ‘plyyur’ have to be Punjabis. Those who pronounce school as ‘iskool’ must be from Uttar Pradesh. One who makes the sibilant ‘S’ into ‘sh’—sardarji into ‘shordarji’ or ‘shing shahib’—has to be a Bengali.

During my college days our favourite Tamilian accent joke used to be about a Madrasi clerk, saying ‘Madras governmenta, a very goodda, morning appointmenta, evening permananta; Delhaee governmenta, no gooda’. This sounds an exaggeration but I can vouch for the Udipi accent of my one-time senior colleague, Mohan Rao. For him ‘m’ was always ‘yum’. One day he was ringing up M.M. Amir, Member of Parliament. After the call was over, he said to me: "That was yum yum yameer, yum pee on the line".

The origin of the word Shibboleth is Hebrew of ancient times. Two Jewish tribes were at war against each other. One triumphed, the other fled across the river Jordan. When soldiers of the defeated army tried to sneak across the river on the pretence of being of the victor’s tribe, they were put to a verbal test: "Say the word shibboleth." The vanquished tribesmen were known not to be able to distinguish between ‘s’ and ‘sh’ (as in same as shame) and pronounced it as sibboleth. They were promptly beheaded. Over 40,000 failed the test and lost their lives. Somewhat severe a price to pay for a slip of the tongue.

Like Bengalis, the Nepalese also have a problem with pronouncing ‘s’ and pronounce it as ‘sh’. I recall once in Paris we invited the Nepalese delegate to a UNESCO conference for dinner. We thought it would be best to take him to a nice restaurant serving gourmet food. When we got to the locality which had several good eateries, we found to our dismay that they were overcrowded and many people were eating out of doors, seated around tables laid on the pavement with pedestrians walking around and motor traffic on the road. After trying three or four restaurants our kindly guest shouted: "Shingji, if we can’t shit inside, we can shit outside".

Winds of Okinawa

In July, 1944, I was called to Rawalpindi for an interview for a temporary Army commission. Having passed the outdoor tests, I appeared before a board of three British officers for a general knowledge test. World War II was raging with the Japanese giving the allied powers a tough time. I had done my homework. The presiding officer asked me: "Where is Okinawa?" I was prepared for the question and rattled off: "It is an island 620 miles of the Japanese island Kyushu. I also know a saying about the place: ‘Cursed be the winds of Okinawa. The winds raise skirts and at the same time dust in your eyes". All the members of the board had a hearty laugh. I was promptly offered a commission.

(Contributed by Jai Dev Bajaj, Pathankot)

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