Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

@Iravati
On search engines (327)
I have never seen a greater pack of lies than search engines. They are just copy cats. And to increase their value over their rivals, they quote astronomical figures only to lure people as bookies do in horse racing. The latest to join the bandwagon are the online stores. They sell everything on earth! When I asked Google for online shops, it threw 179 million results! Man's gullibility has never been exploited in such large scale ever before!

 

@Iravati
On Shakespeare (328)
My references to Shakespeare have driven many people to the conclusion that I hate him. I am a staunch believer that no one can handle words as he does to make it as mystical as possible. Even when he coughs, people make a note of it. Very few writers have swayed over the literati as he did. You may be interested in this write up Who Was Shakespeare for its speculative content. The writer could be a Freemason. Look at this too. The Truth About Shakespeare
My English professor once told us that we had no right to talk about him when we could not explain one sentence of his from just one play! His voice broke midway as he started sobbing!

 

@PushpavalliSrinivasan

My wife keeps watching these channels alternatively to see if their reporting is accurate. I ask her 'how do you know who is telling the truth' and she tells me that she checks it with the other. According to her, if two people say the same thing, there is a 90% chance that they are speaking the truth!

 

@Iravati
Winnie the Pooh (329)

A good point. We all grew on Ambuli Mama, a local folklore monthly. It was supplemented by the stories we heard from our aunts and grandmas. I sometimes wonder if the modern children are unfortunate to lack the kind of colourful living that we had some 7 decades back. But then our needs were limited in terms of knowledge and our future was of limited scope. The modern children are pitted against the whole world. They need far more sophisticated resources than what we could even think of. All points to them!

 

@Iravati
On Mouse/Mounts (330)
I was thinking about this ongoing discussion and a thought struck me. Why do we think that all the mounts of the Gods were really animals and birds? They could have been gadgets which they used during their movement across the Universe and they probably named them as we know them now. We have heard that Pushpaka Vimana was used as a flying machine for travels across the globe. Don't we have cars that carry the names like:
Barracuda (Plymouth) ...
Beetle (Volkswagen) ...
Cobra (Shelby, Ford) ...
Mustang (Ford) ...
Impala (Chevrolet) ...
Viper (Dodge) ...
Super Bee (Dodge) ...
Stingray (Chevrolet Corvette)
Jaguar
Just a thought!

 

@Iravati
On donkey (331)

In these parts, there is a saying that even donkeys will be very pretty when young. Probably the import of this sentence is that the true quality will be known only when a man grows old. But to make a declaration why do we drag the donkey in? Sounds very unfair.

In the last few days, I have read through so many references on donkey, I wonder if I have started looking like one! I remember my dad asking me 'you donkey! Where have you been loafing around for hours?' When I pointed out to him that donkeys were not generally footloose. I would tell him that I had seen donkeys staying put in the same place for hours, he would become very thoughtful as we could see from his knotted brows. Finally he would say 'Yes, I too have noticed it' and instantly forget about all my loafing during the day!

 

@Iravati
On nonsense (332)
I suddenly remembered that I had not gone through Wikipedia's take on Nonsense. It was certainly an eyeful but fell far short of my expectation. Pure nonsense is a tougher quality to cultivate than sheer brilliance. If you peruse our history, you would find that nonsense had greater following than sensible takes. Be it the man who first announced that the earth was round or the one who added that it went round the sun and not vice versa had to cut a sorry figure. The toil of men over the generations to keep nonsense in its rightful eminence can make even the driest eyes moist.
Nonsense Novels by Stephen Leacock is one of my top favourites. I melt when I hear statements like “I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.” (Oscar Wilde)

 

@Iravati
On idealistic romance (333)

If you had studied in Presidency College around the time I was graduating there, you would not have missed seeing this guy. He was regularly falling in and out of love, that he had perfected the art of managing his former loves. When he was going with his current beau and an old one happened to pass that way, he would make faces at her . He would put out his tongue and pull his earlobes simultaneously pulling his tongue back in. The rattled ex-love would stare at him and burst out laughing. That house keeping call on the old nest is all too sentimental for a human being. Birds, of course, will be birds!