Chicanery – Learn English: Lesson 1

Example 1

Addressing a rally in Kerala yesterday, BJP’s high priest Amit Shah accused Kerala of being a killing field. “More than 120 BJP workers have been martyred,” he declared.

The fact: “Police records with details of every political murder between 2000 and 2017 accessed exclusively by NDTV impugn both the political fronts in Kerala. In the last 17 years, 85 CPM workers, 65 RSS or BJP workers, 11 workers of Congress and IUML each have been killed - mostly by their political rivals including CPM and RSS or BJP.” [Source: NDTV]

Example 2

Today the assistant high priest Yogi Adityanath addressed the same yatra flagged off yesterday by the Supreme High Priest and said that Kerala should learn how to run hospitals from UP.

The fact: Kerala has the best medical care system in the country. It has efficiently run hospitals in every town and health centres in most villages. Almost all the villages except in some tribal areas have primary health centres with a variety of medical streams such as Ayurveda, Homeopathy and Unani. There is an exemplary palliative care system in the state. Kerala has the lowest infant mortality rate in the country and the best child care systems. Who has forgotten the death of numerous children in UP recently due to sheer neglect? Yet this man, a Yogi and a chief minister to boot, dares to utter such blatant lies in no other place than Kerala.

Exercise

Use the word chicanery to make meaningful sentences.

1. BJP’s chicanery has crossed all limits.

2. While colonial America looked upon lawyers as mere traders who earned a questionable living by chicanery, contemporary India makes use of some questionable traders to perpetuate chicanery as the ruling party’s official political tool.

3. “Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.” John Adams

4. When hundreds of people are being killed in the cow belt India in the name of cow protection, the Jan Raksha Yatra organised in Kerala by the BJP is sheer political chicanery.

Comments

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below. Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

I'll Take These With Me

Annanya Gulia Annanya Gulia is a grade 12 student of Army Public School, Noida. A former colleague of mine in Delhi, who is now Annanya’s English teacher, drew my attention to the remarkable poetic gift of the young girl. I would like to present one of the poems here. Coming from a teenager who lives in the heartless National Capital Region of India, this poem deserves a deep look. The central theme is the value of lived experience over conventional success. The young poet emphasises that marks and certificates, often seen as measures of achievement, are not what endure. Instead, intangible qualities such as kindness, resilience, curiosity, patience, courage, and the lessons from scars, form the true wealth that she will carry forward. Superficial recognition is not what she hankers after but a celebration of inner growth. What struck me particularly is the rich and vivid imagery employed in the poem. “No rolled-up mark sheets like battle flags” underscores the exaggerated im...

Maveli in the Pothole Republic

Illustration by Copilot Designer I was trying to navigate the moonscape they call a ‘national highway’ when my shoe vanished into a crater big enough to host the G20 summit. Out of it rose a tall figure, crowned and regal, though with a slight limp. “Maveli!” I exclaimed. “Yes,” he said grimly. “Your roads are terrible. I thought the netherworld was bad, but this—this is hell on asphalt.” I helped him up. “Don’t worry, Maveli, our leaders say we’re heading toward becoming a global economic superpower. See, even Donald Trump is impotent before our might.” Maveli frowned. “Yes, yes. I saw your leader guffawing in the company of Putin and Xi Jinping. When he’s in the company of world leaders, he behaves like a little boy who’s got his coveted toy.” “Are you a little jealous of him, Maveli?” I asked. “I have reasons to be, but I’m not. Let him enjoy his limelight. A day will come when history will put its merciless foot on his head and send him to his own Patala.” Tha...

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog