Why this blog is called "Gallimaufry".

gal-uh-MAW-free\, noun.

Originally meaning "a hash of various kinds of meats," "gallimaufry" comes from French galimafrée; in Old French, from the word galer, "to rejoice, to make merry"; in old English: gala + mafrer: "to eat much," and from Medieval Dutch maffelen: "to open one's mouth wide."

It's also a dish made by hashing up odds and ends of food; a heterogeneous mixture; a hodge-podge; a ragout; a confused jumble; a ridiculous medley; a promiscuous (!) assemblage of persons.

Those of you who know me, will, I’m sure, understand how well some of these phrases (barring the "promiscuous" bit!) fit me.

More importantly, this blog is an ode to my love for Shimla. I hope to show you this little town through my eyes. If you don't see too many people in it, forgive me, because I'm a little chary of turning this into a human zoo.

Stop by for a spell, look at my pictures, ask me questions about Shimla, if you wish. I shall try and answer them as best as I can. Let's be friends for a while....

24 February 2008

There's something about post offices!

I wrote about one of my favourites on this blog in March last year. Here's a picture of another, my all-time, no. 1 favourite, located on Chaura Maidan:


In honour of post offices, bearers as they are of my favourite form of communication - letters - here are some Urdu couplets I've read and liked over the years....
Qaasid ke aate aate Khat ik aur likh rakhuu.n
mai.n jaanataa huu.n jo vo likhe.nge jawaab me.n

(Alok, remember this one?)

Gair phirataa hai liye yuu.N tere Khat ko ki agar
ko_ii puuchhe ki ye kyaa hai to chhupaa_e na bane


And no post on letters can be complete without a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which lose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said,—he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand … a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it!—this, … the paper’s light …
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God’s future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this … O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

1 comment:

gypsy said...

nice blog....nice foto's!!!!!!!!

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