IPL event
The Cambridge dictionary defines auction as ‘usually a public sale of goods or property where people make higher and higher bids... until the thing is sold to the person who will pay most’. Other dictionaries more or less have similar meanings. Cricketers now enjoy demi-god status and to line them up for an auction looks strange. No doubt IPL is also a platform capable of producing stars of the future. Perhaps more dignified terminology could be used to describe the whole exercise.
V. Subramanian,
Chennai
In print
Little things do matter a lot in life. When I was in my teens, I first visited Sabarimala which was considered to be a difficult journey. Just before I set out, my friend told me to take along a postcard — to write something on it and post from Sabarimala. The addressee was me! In those days, mail was cleared in Sabarimala either once or twice a week. So, when I received my own postcard a week later, I felt like a boy who had been rewarded with a bar of chocolate. An advocate once visited his daughter in the U.S. She wrote a postcard to him which said that she would be unhappy with the thought of his having to go back to India after a while. The advocate was so touched that he has ‘preserved’ the postcard (‘Open’ Page, February 13).
V. Lakshmanan,
Tirupur, Tamil Nadu
Tirupur, Tamil Nadu