Sometimes letters in words are silent, not to be spoken out or pronounced but they’re nevertheless. Almost vestigial, like earlobes. Would that be a correct analogy? Not sure. But letters are silent often times, that’s not unusual. Listen. Thistle. Plumber. Pneumonic. Psychology. Psychopath. Psalm. What if the “S” in skill were silent and we were celebrating our skills? SkillHindia. What does that become with the first letter of the alphabet silent? Think about that. But never mind.

All of the above was digression, a straying from the central things that want to be expressed here. Let’s get back to the point we never even started from.

We were on the many things many crores of people have been taught. There, back on track, as the headline of this column this monsoon Sunday morn would tell you. No bets the monsoon, though. Nobody can tell the weather, the weatherman gets paid for it but even he can’t tell. Is this a monsoon morn? Look around, tell us. Did you receive your newspaper pleasantly dappled? With raindrops? This is mercifully an inside page, it would have survived a mild showering on the frontpages.

There, lost track again. Recover. Reco-ver. Taught. Things. Crores. And crores.Of people. Right. SkillHindia ne kar diya kamal. No, not right. Not kamal, that could be read for something else. We don’t want propaganda here. Kamaal, SkillHindia ne kar diya kamaal.

But what kamaal? What did we teach you? What did you learn? In what scheme? ChillHindia? In which we taught you how to forget your troubles and tribulations and problems and not complain or demand or protest or go on strike or hunger strike or dharna-warna or march-sharch or procession-wosession but just chill. Or FillHindia, in which we taught you, as the course says, fill the place up and make ourselves more populous than Cheen, and show them that we can beat them. Bang! Ki… Na, na, skip that one, although it won’t be skipped. MillHindia, in which we taught you to keep going through the mill, lagey raho, kolhu ke bailon, churn the oil. PillHindia, in which we taught you to keep swallowing the bitter pills in rashtra hit. ShillHindia, in which we taught you about the uses of spoons and ladles. TillHindia, in which we said forget about the laws we make, that’s our job, you just work the land and let us do what we do with what you produce. WillHindia, in which we taught you to let nothing come in your way, not even the jobs we can’t give you. Where there is a will, well never mind.

There is the lattice above left
It goes down and goes uphill
You’ll need muscle and heft
And a master spider’s skill.