Unmuddlings!!

Or for that matter why does almost everyone like Coelho? And why is he such a huge bestseller??...Not that he has great language, not that writes of esoteric topics. There would be at least a million more writers who have the ability to express better and as many number of books which wanted to write on more exciting topics. Yah, I have gotten madly in love with Coelho after Eleven Minutes and now The Zahir [till whatever portion I have completed]. That did get me into thinking what is it that makes me like him so much. And like every movie and book that I [all of us] really enjoy, I [we] feel I am the persons expressing using the author’s name. How many times, have we caught ourselves extrapolating the part of the protagonist and playing it well beyond the script!!!! Eleven Minutes, I had started a few years earlier – but hadn’t finished as someone had flicked it from me or [more likely] probably I would have forgotten it in a seat pocket in- flight. It was always in my mind to go an...

In one of those eventful days, where there was action every moment, I was taken back to an oft read [part of CHSE course work ages back] and almost forgotten essay called Forgetting - was it Forgetfulness instead – [probably by the famous essayist G. K. Chesterton….Sanghs/Usha..does this ring a bell, can u throw light pls]. Hvnt we all read hilarious stories of the uncle searching for his specs which were perched on his nose or the ‘triumphantly’ forgetful mathematician…..scornful about mundane umbrella and lunch boxes occupying the mental space…..till the wife falls off the scooter or runs away with a student [am sure never with a similar minded colleague] or till some other catastrophe hits to make the proud owner of the ‘forgetfulness’ shake himself off the tag of the high browed ‘boon’ and gets to acknowledge that its is actually a hidden, stealthy ‘bane’…simple conventional wisdom types…..no blessings in disguise, no self lulling splendor really.. I mean, while its good to not g...

Last week I happened to bump into a thinking civil servant, who in turn made me ponder along a dimension I had never pondered before. Its like this – countries which have a successful sporting track record, have people/communities with a certain degree of nationalistic pride. Well, I wanted to re-articulate and internalize different adjectives - such as a certain character, excellence orientation et al. [For, after having read - almost 2 decades earlier - Nobel Laureate Tagore’s essay titled ‘Patriotism’, I always have tend to nod with him that patriotism / nationalism is/are tinged with a wee bit of insularity]. I ran through a quick test – countries like USA, Germany, now China, S Korea, Japan, Netherlands, Australia and to some extent Great Britain…was a revelation. Noteworthy, is the rise of China as an economic and a sporting superpower has coincided. So has the relative of fall of Great Britain on both dimensions. Quite interesting really. Also when one checks this against certai...