Musings

Let sleeping dogs lie

It is hot as I walk to work, and I know it will be hotter by the time I get back. The month of May is like that. The lane between the hospital wards and my lab is usually deserted as no patient relatives are allowed to linger on during these pandemic times. But today there are five stray dogs, sleeping in various languid poses. If these were Bollywood beauties stretched out on some beach with their limbs in fashionable disarray they might have been called anything from sexy to obscene. But these dogs seem completely oblivious of anybody, just enjoying their dreamy languor. Let sleeping dogs lie. The thought runs in my head, as I tiptoe past careful not to step on any, lest they snap at me.

The lockdown has ensured that the sixty or seventy cars belonging to the residents neatly parked along the roadside gather dust and grime. But now the dogs are wiser. Each car seems to have acquired an owner dog, which sits like a king on its royal seat atop the roof. Undisturbed and cool, they seem to reign, with no worries about territorial wars. Like us, summer is a lazy time for dogs too.

There is another brown stray dog which frequents the area where I stay. People usually leave leftovers for it to eat. It usually used to sleep in the shade between the two wheelers. But since it has got hotter, it first moved to the spandrel below the staircase. Two days later it shifted its sleeping area to the lower stairs. Earlier it used to open one eye, when I tried to climb the stairs, now it doesn’t even bother with that. Yesterday it occupied the entire mid-way landing. Now, I can climb over one stair, but I can’t possibly jump over the entire landing. And this lazy bum refused to shift.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The line runs like a ditty in my head as I gingerly jump over the sleeping dog. What was that called? A pangram. A line which had all the 26 letters of the English alphabet. I remember my mother returning from typewriting lessons with sheets neatly typed with this recurring line. Later these were used on computers to display fonts.

Are there any more such lines with all the 26 letters of the English alphabet? Yes there are. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. That has all 26. So has: How quickly daft jumping zebras vex! Do you know any more of them? Love these word games. Takes my mind off the heat and sleeping dogs, in any case.

2 Comments

  • Sudhir Kumar Kalra

    Loved reading “LET SLEEPING DOG LIE”. Nice piece of writing. 😂… In our times (I mean when I was in college) there was no “Plus Two” after matric like present times education… It was prep then after matriculation…Now for a graduation course it is like this 10+2+3 but earlier it was 10+1+3 to complete BA or BCom or BSc. I had this Typewriting as a subject as it was a choice for students doing B Com and I also used to practice on this line “The Quick Brown…”. As our teacher told us, we used to add one more word i.e. LITTLE before LAZY DOG though it was not necessary or may be it was there because that way you get to practice how to type “tt”. Liked the way you sewed dexterously this pangram in your writing…Cool 👍!!!

    Here is one pangram in Hindi:

    “ऋषियों को सताने वाले दुष्ट राक्षसों के राजा रावण का सर्वनाश करने वाले विष्णुवतार भगवान श्रीराम, अयोध्या के महाराज दशरथ के बड़े सपुत्र थे।”

    If you happen to find any book in a book shop on practice lessons of Typewriting, you would find many such pangrams in that book.

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