Pensiamento Fantastico: Logos

When at college, I do remember how  I would go and search for new books to read especially on how to become a writer, how to build a good vocabulary and how to get published. Rather than spending time on learning what was in the curriculum, most of my study time was spent exploring the world of books on my own. Now, much to my chagrin, I imagine how many more marks I could have scored or how I could have got a job I dreamed of, if only I had been less adventurous and more industrious. 

My teachers at college were a huge inspiration for me; for most, they have a favourite or the other; but for me, they were like an extended family. One would advise on reading classics in sparetime; one would bring in lists of foreign words and phrases to embellish the writing style; one would give us writing assignments; one would read and comment on my amateurish writing efforts; one would ask us to write down all the words that we knew categorising them by active and passive vocabulary and so on. 

Those days, I was so obsessed with improving my vocabulary that I had a notebook for writing new words and their usage. The dictionary was a favourite tool (unlike now, when google is the ultimate tool) for the process of learning words. I used to gobble up new words during my last year, neglecting my studies, so many that my favourite book was Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis. 

The fascination for polysyllabic words made me use words such as essentially, prolific, voracious, capricious, precocious, meticulous in my assignments and answersheets.  However, the constant reading of this book ended the day when I bought a personal copy and it remained a showpiece in my bookshelf till it was frequently discovered during a houseshift, (which is of course routine is a way of discovering old useless stuff and losing precious new stuff). 

The love of words from Latin and Greek was a natural side-effect  of studying in a college full of scholarly teachers. My favourite words that were used in writing were raison d'être, faux pax, sanctum sanctori, debut and so on. This became a trend so much that I'd sit with the dictionary for hours just to find some new word to show my scholarship with, all in the true humour of a scholar. 

Once I landed on this word membrum virile but the moment I looked up the meaning I had to suppress my laughter and disappointment that this is one word that I might never get a chance to use in writing ever. So much for the love of Latin words! 

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can  apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.