A few minutes back a news channel broad casted "breaking news " as Arundhati dead" below it above 10 seconds later a flash came "Arundhati the elephant is dead"
A simple reading of the breaking news flash..reminded me of this saying I read in Sanskrit when in school.."Aswathama hathah kunjarah." This was a landmark line of the Mahabharata finally leading to Drona's fall.
A misunderstanding , that it was his son who was slain,says the epic, lead the great teacher to put down his arms.
A cry that misled in simple terms..
I just remembered a story my grandfather told me as a kid.
It goes like this. A small boy was sent to his aunts village during his holidays. A couple of days later the boys parents received a telegram that said "Mookendi missing" Now the boys name was Mookandi and the parents were distraught on getting the telegram.They rushed to their relatives house only to discover that what was actually missing was a "mook- kendi"( kendi in Tamil is a vessel which has a spout".. A small spelling mistake changed everything ;)
Makes me think.. positioning of words when giving important news or mere spelling errors may change the meaning.
Anyways after a couple of minutes the news channel promptly changed the flash to "elephant dead" . Maybe someone in the news room remembered Aswathama Hathah kunjarah" too :))
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