Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

On Money and Denominations

In the West, there is a thrift store concept where items are priced at 0.99c, not $1. Most of the times, shoppers are not keen to collect the residual 1c. They drop the cent in the charity box or don't even collect it unless you are paying by card. Any "x99" is effectively a rounded value, but as you said, that "x99" ka-chings in his mind as low priced whereas the rounded values as princely priced.

Bata built a business empire from this strategy and also the sturdy leather. Even today, I am a fan of bata chappals because of their simple design and durability. Once upon a time, Bata sales were pounced upon by eager customers like rapacious vultures on a spotted prey. Your undersigned was a diehard Bata fan while growing up. Their "x99" strategy only accentuated their prodigious sales.

There used to be a zingy Gold Spot ad when the bottle was priced at ₹5. By the time Amir Khan and Shahrukh Khan modelled for soft drinks, the price was winched to ₹20. With Hrithik's six-pack, the price soared to ₹60. Now I think it is at ₹70. I am afraid that if you bring in international talent to advertise these soft drinks, the price would cross the ₹100 mark and only betel leaves are affordable for a common man.

In the West, public transportation (trains and buses) is predominant than private vehicles. People of all classes prefer public transport because of its ease in commute. No parking hassles and traffic jams. In India, public transport is relegated to petit-bourgeois. Car is a status symbol! In the current state, where trains run at one hour delay, I can understand. I keep telling my friends, even if the Indian public transport is overhauled with punctuality and hospitality and comfort, people would still take cars because in India, your identity is intrinsically tied to a material index. There is no way an owner of Audi will leave his car at home and travel in a bus/train/metro. Sitting in an Audi and fretting at the chock-a-block traffic is still seen as a status symbol.

 

On Currency (continued)

@Cheeniya

Here's something interesting for you. Growing up, there was a culture and travel show called Surabhi hosted by Renuka Shahane and Siddharth Kak on Doordarshan. For several years, no Indian television programme came close to that format or charm. Recently, I stumbled on Epic TV with Indian history, culture, mythology, economy, food and everything charmingly and educationally Indian. I watched a few shows from that channel syndicated in Netflix. One such program is Kissa Currency Ka which traces the origin of currency in India. Ok, that is the background. The reason I have given the background is for you to know where I have sourced this trivia from. Remember, we discussed that curly anna. Other coins were not fortunate for such glory, for example, take the hue on a rupee introduced by George V. When George V ascended the throne, Indian coins were minted to commemorate and reflect the new regime. Here's the rub. A fascinating rub! The King was depicted wearing a robe with an elephant insignia. But the elephant was less an elephant and more a pig with a snout and stumpy legs. Such fuzzy imprint resembling a pig offended the religious sentiments and the coin was taken out of circulation. The royal debacle was rectified with a well-etched imprint of an elephant subsequently.




You would have thought such fuzzy follies ended thereafter. But the ₹10 coin from 2005 again stirred a controversy that the quadrants represented a religious cross for a secular nation. They had to be redesigned in 2009.




It is interesting to note the due diligence into a design of a coin/note. You have to think inside the box, outside the box, around the box, 3 kms away from the box so as not to slight or marginalize unwittingly any sect in a land as diverse as India. I like that job profile! Can you think like the tenth man for hidden slurs in a coin design.

 

On Spelling

As a kid, I used to love that zodiac forecast in daily newspapers. Today, you can do business transactions for financial gains. Today, you will take prudent decisions. Today, you can travel. For travel, isn't weather forecast a better indicator than one's horoscope?

Few years ago, I would have been dismissive about such celestial and numerological directives. But I have observed few things. May be these predictive shots are needed to supplement flagging will. There is biomedical research going on in 'placebo effect'. How are patients recovering with mere sugar pills in experimental groups? There is still no conclusive result on this 'placebo effect' but I aggregate astrology and numerology under the placebo effect which means it stimulates one's psychological will into actioning. This also explains why there is unprecedented swamiji cult breeding in India. People want to hear of a promising future and they are willing to surrender to any irrationality for such administration.

I had a friend back in college who donned the same shirt for every exam. Mind you, for all 7-8 exams in a row he would appear with the same sentimental shirt. He would presumably wash it overnight. I asked him once has he ever tried another shirt and flunked. He said that he was too scared to risk it now. He believed that he had been performing well in the exams for years owing to this totemic shirt. First, I was puzzled, then I was compassionate. People need such affirmative insanity or faith for self-assurance. They need an external assertion. They need that talisman, snake oil, or magic ring. So, I don't interfere with these superstitious or supernatural beliefs. As long as you are not paralysed, that same friend won't enter the exam hall prior to an "auspicious" time, people can mutilate their names, wear ten different rings made of magical alloys and synchronise their circadian rhythm with almanac's timewheel. That said, I am interested to track what happens when the pot-bellied torso of middle age outgrows that magical shirt from teens.

 

On Remakes

Talking of Malayalam-language films, the 1993 psychological drama Manichitrathazhu has spawned remakes in the entire South. Manichitrathazhu was remade in various languages, including Tamil (Chandramukhi), Telugu (Chandramukhi), Kannada (Apthamitra), Bengali (Rajmohol), and Hindi (Bhool Bhulaiyaa). All the remakes did extremely well at the box-office. Not many know that the sapling was a Malayalam movie which branched out and not the Tamil release. As the original Malayalam film was released a decade before the Tamil one, this fact is largely obscured away.

Actress Shobana was the original Chandramukhi. These Malayalam directors sow the creative seed, and the rest are the creative chorus. I agree when you say that there is lot of originality in Bengal and Malayalam film-making.

 

On Confusion

There are many filler phrases in English employed more for ornamentation and padding and less for utility. But it is the French that gets my goat. I was reading about the legend of Mata Hari and came across the French phrase femme galante. Femme fatale is common parlance! And intuitively Femme galante rings of galant, brave - ah! spy and brave. I don't know why, I had the urge to look it up. Ye Lo! "Femme galante" means "courtesan" in French. See, it is the French that gets my gallant goat and confounds me.

Don't ever give up on that loyal beard. Beards have survived as cultural memes since pre-history and history and honoured as beard jokes in the oldest jokes digest. Philogelos (Greek: "Love of Laughter") is the oldest surviving collection of jokes written in Greek around 4th century AD. The collection contains 265 jokes categorised into subjects such as teachers and scholars, and eggheads and fools. The main attraction is again a beard joke:

God made dino.
Then, he made rhino.
Then, he made hippo.
To confuse man, he made him a dumbo.

 

On Shakespeare's signature

@Cheeniya

Lil background. I like to recite the background on how I picked up these things so that you know why I am quoting what I am quoting with no straight links because my brain is very disorganised and wonky. Any time, I am in for a comedy novel, I sift this Guardian's Comedy List and pick a book. Most of my reads like Lucky Jim, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Queen Lucia, The Ascent of Rum Doodle etc have been sourced from this list. During one of those sifting days, I came across

Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon: No Bed for Bacon (1941)
London, 1594. A certain William is experimenting with his surname and Sir Walter is preparing the perfect potato. Lady-in-waiting Viola loses favour through an accurate but ill-advised impersonation of Mary Queen of Scots. This being the Golden Age, there's only one thing for it: Viola must disguise herself as a boy and audition at the theatre! No Bed for Bacon is an early example of poking fun at the Elizabethans using their own dramatic devices. The novel was out of print in 1999, when its strong similarities to the plot of the newly released Shakespeare in Love caused a pother.

I tried in vain to find a copy of that book in stores and libraries. Sigh! There is no ebook as well. With an amusing blurb like that, that book is high on my read list. Fast forward from 1941 to 1998 and Caryl Brahms's quaint novel was purportedly dusted and decked up by Tom Stoppard as Shakespeare in love. What amused me was this literary comparison from the Times Literary Supplement: here

According to Ned Sherrin, Tom Stoppard borrowed a copy of No Bed for Bacon from him before getting to work on rewriting the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love “in order to avoid duplicating the jokes”. Sherrin claims, in his introduction to this reissue, to have been amazed at the number of phone calls and letters he got from fans of Brahms and Simon about the film’s “alleged plagiarism” of the book. These comments are somewhat disingenuous.Shakespeare in Love owes about as much to No Bed for Bacon as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet does to Arthur Broke’s poem on the same subject – that is, a very great deal. Though there may, technically, be only one duplicated “joke” – “Shakespeare practising various ways of writing his name, ‘Shaksper, Shakespeare, Shekspar’”…

Technically, only one duplicated joke! That Bard's plurality of signature, indeed, ranks so high anecdotal that even in borrowed or inspired or plagiarised work, it had to be retained.

 

On Scent

Mouse with cold, is an intelligent question. Moreover, mice are depicted as chasing cheese. Does cheese has any smell? Any strong smell? Cheese has a stunted aroma. If cheese is all that the mouse cares for then it might be challenging for a sniffling mouse to find that aroma-less cheese. During one of those snotty days, may be mice raid our pungent spices and could care less or could not care less about their regular milky and mild diet.

 

On One-eyed

Fifteen tugs on this hairy man's beard
...Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of ink!
Ramble and the devil is veered
...Yo-ho-ho, and his senility never to sink!

Adaptation of Dead Man's Chest

 

Is that Thalapathi? That movie has one of my favourite songs: here. I so love that song!

I go by songs. I like a song then I probe the movie. Another song in Tamil I love is Ninnu Kori Varnam. Is Agni Natchathiram again an adaptation of any mythical tale or foreign movie because the plot is familiar but I am unable to correspond it with any known story.