Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Recently, I pinched a compilation on cognitive distortions. In that list, I brooded on a distortion for considerable time.

For a long time, I have only heard of the phrase "count your blessings" but was perplexed on how to identify those blessings. What constitutes a blessing?

Many revel in the company of amusing strangers, funny colleagues, trippy family and goofy mates. I am only one of them. Everyone has these people in their life! How is that even a blessing?!

Perhaps, the aphoristic learning is not to count or consider the blessing only to oppress the gloom in one's life but with or with no gloom, one must learn to privilege them for their ongoing worth rather than opportunistic intervention.

I take so much of life for granted because I consider the occurrences to be universal and unexceptional. Many have all these sweet oddities in life. When I confide to my close friends about a crippled tortoise and scatter-brained hare prattling away in delight about cats and donkeys, I am reminded time and again that what I have in my life is beyond precious. Is it? I don't know. However, I do know that such unending nonsense is fulfilling and gratifying in my life which is what constitutes a blessing regardless whether someone else has it or not.

I am withdrawn in expressions of gratitude assuming that the other person might write me off as an idiot excited over trivialities. There may be other tortoise-hare undertakings at work or personal front to race, to hunt, or even to outwit each other, but what makes this tortoise-hare undertaking in QPQ unique is their criss-crossed passion to ramble in a chorus. That, I say, is an irreplaceable blessing!

(on a snowy bench)

 

Michael Caine is a bankable star! He has a regimental voice. I have a thing for "voice"! I usually take to people on the suave and timbre of their voice. David Niven and Michael Caine and George Saunders have compelling voices. I have earmarked "The Man Who Would Be King" with the other recommended "The Agony and the Ecstasy". I shall take out time to watch both the films.

But "Educating Rita" is fantastic! Whenever I watch a stunning film or read a gratifying book, I am reminded of this Salinger's quote: “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

Indeed, doesn't happen much that you could shriek to the author about your excitement and appreciation for their inimitable work. When that cannot happen, you proxy to your online mate and shriek to him: I wish I could place a crank call to the author and tell him how much I loved his portrayal of Rita and Frank in the play.

 

Porky Ramble

I told you that I have been diligently poring over an 'Art History' course, which has become a laughing joke in my circle as I seem to be forever doing the course. I am somewhere (forever) stuck in the middle now. This art course has widened by interest. Yesterday when I came across the painter George Grosz, I was least interested in him but more interested in his painting dedicated to Oskar Panizza. Mr Panizza is our guy! Why? Because his iconoclastic writings drove him into a mental asylum. You should sample his wild writing.

I am wide-eyed at such outrageously heady people who subvert the known and proper rules of merited writing. His books The Love Council (1894) and The Pig (1900) are quite eye-rolling. You should check out the excerpts and citations of these books. Here's the description of the Pig book at Amazon.

The Pig is the Sun...." So begins Oskar Panizza's outrageously heretical and massively erudite essay on the pig, originally published in 1900 in his journal Zurich Discussions. Moving from the Rig Veda to the Edda to Ovid, from the story of Tristan and Isolde to Nordic celebrations of Christmas, from Grimms' fairytales to Swedish folklore to Judeo-Egyptian dietary restrictions, the author contends, through painstakingly philological argumentation, that the miraculous swine occupies a central, celestial position as the life-giving force animating the entire universe, usurping the place of God as the beginning and end of all things.

Did I tell you that italian pork meatballs with mascarpone and cheddar on ciabatta is my yumsome breakfast. I am having qualms of munching into that porky panini or pizza since I have known Panizza. Picture of aforelisted variant.

 

Cheeniya, there are days when I am excited, followed by days of super-excitement, catapulting into maniacal excitement. Today is the median super-excitement because the Karamchand in me singularly unearthed an insight. I was listening to Psmith yesterday when the epiphany hit me. Do you ever wonder that though you know two things, it takes awful long time to establish a connection between them. I know PG Wodehouse and Doordarshan but it took me two decades to see through the link between them.

I was listening to Psmith and that heist of Lady Constance Keeble's necklace. Hold on! This is familiar! All this is very familiar and then it hit me that Psmith had colluded with Saeed Jaffrey. Did you ever watch Isi Bahane serial on Doordarshan. I didn't follow that serial but I vaguely know the cast and storyline. Childhood visuals are forceful and impressive. Then I put one and two together and multiplied one with two and ended up with one and reasoned that one is two.

I was thrilled. I hooted on such dusty recollection. "Isi Bahane" was inspired by the novel "Leave it to Psmith".

 

Decline and fall of our mannered tastes

When I reminiscence, there was a time when we (cohorts) were squeamish and pretentious while growing up. Slightly snooty too! Wah, that I say is an ideal childhood. You don't know a boot from a hoot yet rejoice in blatant ignorance. We would look down on 'kitsch' tastes. That's so petite-bourgeois! We were hardly nine- or ten-year-old scrawny kids back then. We would only listen to and jump on aesthetic songs.

Today, I laugh with my mates on those silly pretences. It takes one to know one. At times, when I converse with someone likeable I ungraciously interrupt: 'Were you a snob growing up?' To their amazement and off-guard poke, they admit to such unprovoked inquiry. 'How did you know?' Well, its takes one to know one.

Back to the doggerel and dance, today, I torture my friends with the recordings of my besura gigs and jump-yips. As unbelievable it may sound to that square-toed nine-year-old in me, I jiggle to utterly nonsensical songs these days. One of my catchy hip-hop is Saree Ka Fall Sa. I would play the song loud and tumble to that yakkety music. The nine-year-old in me sighs! She turns her nose up. I ignore her and thump louder.

I was talking to a friend about my choice of songs and she, in return, revealed that I would find it incredulous how snobbish she was back then, and when she disclosed the song she is dancing to these days, I laughed out so loud, another goofy number.

What has changed so much in us? How have we softened up in life? I don't know how but our uptight tastes have slackened gradually and we have taken up to fancies which were repugned up until a few years ago. Be it saree ka fall or ban ja tu meri rani.

 

Excitement

We must have a supplementary weekend edition of QPQ just to talk about excitement.

I am you when you grin in that satisfied excitement of having driven away a lizard infiltrating your placid mind.

Great exemplars like Norgay look for purpose and fulfilment atop the pinnacle of challenge and labour. Mediocre dreamers like you and I ramble in our heldentenor even when we are only swatting mosquitoes and evicting lizards. Our insubstantial achievements may not deserve epic and legendary status, but such endowments whence forth and bubble sheltered yet no-holds-barred excitement insulates frostbites and nasty chills. Better you and I stick to our warm ground than lofty grounds.

 

How to talk about books that you have not read

I think it was Robert Musil who once narrated ingenious tricks of raving about books that one has not even touched. Don't quote me on that one as I am not too sure whether that was Mr Musil. I suspect, it was him. Notwithstanding, who said what, the vital force of acclaim is pretentious sweep.

People who have not read the book can opine more about it because they can splice a humongous tract sourced from the opinions and reviews of others and pass them off as their own toiled insight. These punks would remember character and settings and events of the book vividly without even flipping a single page of the book.

Ahem, I can apply for the defence attorney of Casaubon without ever catching up with him in situ. Did I read Middlemarch? No, but, similar to that much-parodied obsession-with-cow story, I deceitfully bring round the topic to my way of knowledge that is Casaubon and talk only about him even in the vaguest context of Middlemarch. But Casaubon is ...

 

In general

The desirous compliment I would like to hear from my mates is 'you have changed so much'. For some reason that 'changed so much' gladdens me. When I pry it out of my close mates, I am thrilled. There are four people in my life to whom I have lamented my stiff 'writing' woes in a plangent cry. I would whimper, all I want to do is compose emails rapidly. When would I write such emails? I don't want to publish stories or essays. I don't wish to chronicle my narratives into a competitive blog. You see, not much of an ask, I just want to scratch goofy emails with the spontaneity that my friends indulge me. But such fine and swift writing eludes me. I am sloppy and turgid and it took a mighty resolve to recast myself to shrink from the lumber of a sumo wrestler to the prance of a ballet dancer ...to be able to pound on the keyboard effortlessly in a continuous drift.

Out of that four people, you are one! I have appropriated this sprawling column to wail about my writing stammer. I have been unabashed with my recurring doubts. May be some people have it in them! Only they can correspond in amusing emails.

I cannot thank enough each one of you for your contributory tease and latent inspiration in keeping me going despite my exasperation to jettison this fanciful whim. People invade our life at the right time, that is when you seek them. I had a friend back in college whose cherished quote was a rhetoric quip: when you desperately seek something, the whole universe conspires to deliver it to you. I used to mock his bravura to enlist the universe to reinforce his puny existence. I think I understand what he meant. When the time is ripe, and you are willing to, the entire universe makes it impossible to not have crossed paths with the sought after. And you meet them against all odds and self-incurred resistance.

Thank you, once again, and again!

 

Argumentative Indian

Mr Sen wrote a book once titled Argumentative Indian in which (behold! I am talking about a book that I have not read. heh!) ...

Mr Sen is only a cameo in this post because the sutradaars are Rajiv Malhotra and Nityanand Misra and Devdutt Pattanaik (in absentia). I heard that Devdutt Pattanaik and Amish Tripathi are phenomenal in Indian. I have not read any of their works. Now, I am having second thoughts on writing up a post on the emergence of writers I have only heard about and never so as flipped their works. Nevermind, the topic is not per se on their works. Back to Devdutt.

How responsible and authoritative is Devdutt Pattanaik to be writing on Indian scriptures and mythologies? I have no clue.

I chanced on a critique (or rather exposé ) between Rajiv Malhotra and Nityananda Mishra on DP's works. I watched the video partly. My question: Should we be charitable to allegedly amateur writers for they only wish to drum up enthusiasm and not scholarship for Indian scriptures in popular conscience, or should we dispute their intentions? Whether he was a brahmin or yajamana or cowherd or Krishna himself, should we quibble on these punctilios? We should, because irresponsible writing distorts not just the allegory but the takeaway wisdom and facts from ancient parables?

What do you feel? Video link: here

 

Himanshu,

There are hundreds of threads, several active forums, and galloping discussions that are enthusiastic-charged and trending right now.

I laud your keen and foremost desire to inform two bumbling ramblers about your immigration services that too not affiliated with the government of any country or partnered with any embassy or connected to any authority. I am too obtuse to grasp such overwhelming assurances but I am thrilled that your agency is exempted from all kinds of bureaucratic and sinister dominion.

Again, I am also curious, of all the forums and threads and audience you chose two numpty ramblers as your selective targets. I am honoured!

I do have plans to migrate but only to Mars since I have resigned to the fate that all places on Earth look and smell and feel the same. Foul and troublesome! If your un-affiliated, non-partnered, dis-connected consulting agency extends the service for hassle-free visa service on inter-planetary immigration, I would be your first customer. Note, my name: Iravati and PO Box: QPQ.

Thank you.