Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

On aging actors

Geneviève Bujold looked great in Anne Of The Thousand Days. She didn’t make it big in Hollywood or so I think. She was also offered the role of Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek series which she could not commit to. We would have had another Persis Khambatta among us if Ms Bujold had essayed it. Our discussion here made me look up aging actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood here. Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Haviland are known names but the rest I had to look them up. Unbelievably many centenarians are still agile in public work though retired from the silver screen. Doris Day is still alive! That was news to me.

What could be the secret of aging gracefully. If one has no intent to go insolvent with all those Lakme anti aging creams, what is the natural formula to stay youthful? People would swear by yoga, fruit diet, meditation and other Eastern philosophies to stay buoyant in life, but what do you say? How to preserve that Geneviève Bujold charm?

 

On profile

I was thinking of a swashbuckling profile picture with a new moniker. “Iravati” is worn out now. I created her just to respond to one thread and skedaddle but then you returned and QPQ happened and now Gardhaba happened. I read somewhere that things in life happen when you are not looking for them. Strange, but, if you had returned few months later or I left few months early, we would not be talking today. This is what amazes me the most about life, it can stun even the ceded stupefied.

 

On Search Engines

There, there, by hinting what could provoke a nagging query, you worked up my brain now. What could be displayed on the millionth page never crossed my mind. May be there is no millionth page. May be it is smoke and mirrors. It is only a ruse to beguile us into thinking that the machine is omniscient. May be there is void beyond the hundredth. Has that ever crossed your mind?

In the beginning, when search engines were the new toys in the digital town, I would be fascinated with these knowledge boxes. I would type in something like ...

“What do you think is the capital of Andorra?”
“Do you know when did the first man land on the moon?”

A friend would look at me and bemoan, she really thinks there is a Mechanical Turk behind the scenes to salute him in a humane voice for his ministrations. He explained, you can just just type

“Capital of Andorra”

Occasionally, I relapse and still peck “Can you tell me the story of Gardhaba” .

 

On Shakespeare

Why do people quote Shakespeare generously? OK, he is good. He wrote continental love stories without ever setting foot in any of those cities. He milked the human emotions and produced cheesy tales. But still, he is good. That’s all I hear. He is too good to be true. I only read abridged Shakspey takes. I came across a research article few years ago which scientifically and linguistically examined Shakespeare’s works. I don’t have the link and my brain is so porous that it can only remember a thing or two on a weekly basis. The article introduced me to something called garden-path sentence in the context of Shakespearean writing. Why is Shakespeare so mind-blowing and popular? Because Shakespeare hets up your mind with his constructs. He would lead you on in a semantic garden path of ambiguity and not reveal his full intention till the finis.

Here's how Wikipedia explains a garden-path sentence.

"The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families."

The initial parse is to read the complex houses as a noun phrase, but the complex houses married does not make semantic sense (houses do not marry) and the complex houses married and single makes no sense at all (after married and..., the expectation is another verb to form a compound predicate). The correct parsing is The complex [noun phrase] houses [verb] married and single soldiers [noun phrase] and their families [noun phrase]. Rephrased, the sentence could be rewritten as There are both married and single soldiers, and the families of those soldiers, living in the complex.

But our Shakoo deliberately frames sentence with garden-path affects. You have to readjust your interpretation as you read forth. I have not read his unabridged works so I don’t know if our sly writer has in fact peppered his writing with such giardiniera constructs. If that is true, then his fair writing is foul, and in spite of that, his foul writing is fair.

 

On Winnie The Pooh

I grew up on cartoons more than books so I am equally confounded.

Valid point! Cartoons are slapstick. They dress up pain in mirth. Even the most tugging Charles Dickens' novels when adapted for cartoons are upbeat and risible. Cartoons leave very little for imagination. The cheerful interpretation is peeled and fed to you whereas in books the readers is tasked to forge his own interpretation. That is how sad books can be made into funny cartoons.

She was adamant that Pooh is out and out a cartoon. They say, never argue with kids but when the kid is talking so much sense — true, Pooh is more popular as a cartoon these days — who would argue with such defiant insights. She is a bright kid. Any time I visit her she squeals on all the cartoons she watches. She reminds me so much of my childhood except that her cartoons are more hi-tech now whereas Aunt Ira watched kinescope cartoons.

 

On Mouse/Mounts

When Iron man asks Edwin Jarvis what suit to wear or Batman asks Alfred Pennyworth what vehicle to take out, these are the kind of befitting responses their mentors give. Cheeniya, you are analytic and spot-on! Rats are sitters and mice are supple. Ganesha would have preferred a mount which is readily available on his beck and call rather than wait for one that needs to warm up its hinds. When Gods ride on these companionable mounts, they vanquish evil and perform great feats. That made me thinking …what happens when mortals take to these rides. There are lot of instances of innovators inspired while riding horses or elephants. But our man of interest was swimming/riding a dolphin when he was inspired to form a company. Marc Benioff’s idea for Salesforce.com sprung from his mount splashing in water.

Benioff decided it was time to think more deeply about the technological landscape – and his own career. So he took a sabbatical that started with a trip to India where he met a variety of diverse people, including a spiritual leader and humanitarian, Mata Amritanandamayi (who helped strengthen his commitment to doing well and doing good in business). Benioff's next stop on this global journey was Hawaii, where he discussed various ideas for new businesses with an assortment of entrepreneurs and friends. While swimming with dolphins in the Pacific Ocean, the fundamental epiphany for Salesforce.com surfaced. He reflected: "I asked myself 'Why aren't all enterprise software applications built like Amazon and eBay?'"

Mata Amritanandamayi only blessed but a dolphin ride actualized that blessing. Gods also ride on these unorthodox mounts like mice and donkeys because you never know when and where inspiration strikes to kill a demon.