Sunday, January 15, 2006

sredni vashtar's origins

The internet anagram server is a sophisticated tool for people wanting to indulge in sophisticated idling. Key in a name and have a laugh at the flattering and the nasty statements it makes on your him/her . There are plenty of examples that speak aptly of the person or the thing: Clint eastwood - Old west action. Times of india - "foetid simian" etc. Hoping to find something interesting in my name I keyed in mine at the server. The character crunching was pretty fast but the results were mostly sterile, producing stuff like: A SAKI HARMS NIRVANA RUN. But I managed to trivially deduce a flattering variation - SAKI MUNRA NIRVANA RASH. And yes i think it is flattering to be a "rash" of somebody that great despite the gaffe in spelling (munr{a}).

Saki Munro reminded me of his famous short story with a mysterious title -- "sredni vashtar". People have already speculated on its origins -- see wikipedia for instance. But they all seemed `idle' speculations compared to what I found at the anagram server : "Dr Hess' variant".

So who was this doctor Hess? Whoever that might be - I firmly believe that Saki did have this in mind when naming him. I write this not just with the authority of being the human variant of Saki Munro rash but with some solid research backing it: Saki himself prophesies this in his story. Google for "the doctor would be proved right" and read this splendid story.

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