Birds, talents and luck
When a freshly carved chair wobbles a bit, it begs several cruel questions: Whose fault is it? What went wrong? Did the carpenter not take…
When a freshly carved chair wobbles a bit, it begs several cruel questions: Whose fault is it? What went wrong? Did the carpenter not take into consideration the flatness of earth? Or was the earth moving way too fast for him to figure out the math? How are we to attain stability in life when we can’t get a grounded chair? Plane and simple. When a chair wobbles, it’s defeating the purpose for every stakeholder involved. The carpenter had one job of getting the perpendicular right. The chair had one job of staying put at one spot. The sitter had one job of sitting quietly but couldn’t.
Gone are the days when your father’s wealth or the colour of your eyes or the freckles on your face mattered. As of today, the criteria have changed. There has to be something about you that would make others pay attention to what you’ve got to say or express. In simpler words, be interesting. Correction: Be damn interesting. Don’t fall into the trap of borrowed personalities. Sculpt yourself. Yes, it’s difficult to be unique when every second feature is a copy of a copy of a copy but don’t underestimate your ability to create something new — either out of yourself or for yourself. It’s human nature to be influenced but it’s human imperative to be influential. And in case you’ve already established that you can’t be interesting, regardless of all attempts, then there is only route left for you: be interested.
The opposite of problems used to be solutions. Not anymore. Nowadays, the opposite of a problem is attitude. When coronavirus started spreading across the globe, leaving powerful governments (and those who run actually them) out of their depths, it became obvious that a problem doesn’t wait for its solution. There are a lot of people who haven’t stopped washing their hands since February/March this year. Similarly, there are many, if their privilege allowed them, haven’t left their houses in a long, long time. I hope there isn’t anyone who hasn’t touched their face since COVID-19 started trending. The point being, when out-of-syllabus questions arise, what should change is your way of thinking. Standard solutions will follow much later.
Talent goes a long way but it has to stop if industry doesn’t show up. It means something only when hard work is put in. Otherwise, talent leaves the room sooner than it entered. I am personally aware of many talented young folks but I am sure not all of them are hardworking. Some of them take their innate qualities for granted. This peculiar mindset is in agreement with the essence of youth: people tend to believe that they will never get old until they do. GH Hardy once called mathematics “a young man’s game”. Even if you forgive the casual sexism of his era, it’s telling how difficult discipline can get whichever field you adhere to.
I am a student of chess and history but nothing, absolutely nothing, fascinates me like poker. And to witness the same few set of top players winning big championships is what I can never wrap my head around. How are they doing it? Are they that lucky? Impossible feat. There are many methods to understand what’s going on there but the most convenient one is to accept that they know something the rest of us lesser mortals don’t. They have cracked the code of the game. They know the game as well as the gamers and throughout, they play both equally. In some sense, this isn’t very different from seeing the same group of quizzers winning top competitions. If you notice, they don’t always know the answers beforehand. They just happen to connect the dots quickly and guess out correctly before their rivals can. Maybe that’s what makes them winners and not the final score.
When a vile piece of news floats around, you will hear many of the choicest curses both online as well as offline. And you can’t blame people for being sentimental. We like to call ourselves ‘practical’ but emotions run (and ruin) the day. In my confession, of late, I’ve started swearing a lot and it is amazing how little I care about the direction of the words. None of my harshness is addressed to anybody in particular; it’s always projected to an abstract group of people called log (in Hindi). Let’s not even get into the logarithm of this deep-rooted disdain and dissent. In our country, everybody else is an idiot except you and your similar-minded folks. I totally admire and enjoy such a beautiful extent of a limited imagination. When I say I hope they rot in hell, I don’t know what exactly do I want from them. After all, how does the style of death make any difference? Who is immortal amongst us anyway? Or am I openly admitting that I am necro-sadist?
Do you challenge yourself enough? Are you aware of your fortune and privileges? Or shall you wait till something critical happens in your life so that you can recalibrate where you stand right now? I don’t know about you but I am paranoid about happiness but extremely sanguine with sadness. During moments of cheerfulness, I am worried that I’ll jinx it but when something bad happens, I am in the flow. Maybe I’ve reached this weird state of existence thanks to constant ups and downs. Or maybe because I wholly get it when people say that they don’t feel good about something. As a test of character, perhaps you should check how it’d be like if you are cut short on something. For instance, you must spend an entire day using your left hand instead of your right or vice versa. Or cover one eye and go through the day to note how fortunate you are.
Many varieties of birds visit our balcony and as I am typing this, a pair of Indian robins are busy building their nest. They showed up last week and were making a fair amount of noise. I thought they were arguing with the much larger pigeons who often gathered on our AC condenser. Fast forward to this week, pigeons are gone and these two little birdies are bringing in dried twigs and leaves, furs, godknowswhatelse and are piling it up on the condenser. I wonder how they coordinate amongst themselves. Nature is indeed amazing. Can’t wait to see them finish their work and settle down. The female robin (the brown one; the males are black in colour) will lay eggs and hatch them for days. Later, the little ones will emerge and demand food. After nourishing them for a few weeks, the nestlings will develop their feathers. And after that, the little ones will grow and fly away not remembering who laid the eggs in the first place.
Master: “Do you hear that?”
Padawan: “What, master?”
Master: “Pay attention.”
Padawan: *trying to focus*
Master:
Padawan: “I don’t hear anything.”
Master: “Try again.”
Padawan: *focuses harder*
Master:
Padawan: “Are you talking about the wind outside?”
Master: “No.”
Padawan: “What is it then?”
Master: “That’s the sound of you fading away without your permission.”
When tragedy is close to your mind, comedy is bound to stick closer to your heart. We laugh a bit more than usual when a comedian cracks a joke. It’s a mental preparation that also functions as a defense mechanism in keeping bad mood away. We all wish to give in to humour because we all can’t be happy but we all can laugh our escapism away. Which is why our newfound cultural dependence on comedians is a noteworthy phenomenon. Also, the power a (successful) stand-up comedian enjoys on the stage in terms of attention is unparalleled. To let a person talk for more than an hour without interruption has to be the SI unit of free speech. In such a scenario, imagine being a stand-up comedian whom nobody — especially family and friends — listens to except those who show up at his show.
There is a WhatsApp forward going around warning people to be careful in public. With the recent upswing in unemployment (and eventual inflation), there are fears of rising crimes in urban areas. As women tend to wear jewelry, one common occurrence could be an increase in chain-snatching. So, the circulated advice is practical: avoid wearing gold. As soon as I saw this video, I was reminded of this young thief who reminded us how flawed our laws can be. Apparently, he was a chain-snatcher who, after robbing an old woman, ran across the road, jumped the divider and ended up under a passing car. The car-cam showed that the chain-snatcher was at fault. Turns out in India, it doesn’t matter what really happened on the road. As long as a person is dead, the case will be up against the one who was in the other car — unlucky enough to survive. In another scenario, if you were speeding on the wrong lane and died, the case will be set up against the one who was actually following the rule within the right lane. Coming back to our chain-snatcher, he died instantly and the car driver had to pay the deceased family some lacs to settle the case. Strange country. Stranger stories.