Cleanliness is Next to Godliness. Not!

[Photo courtesy Cottonbro at Pexels.com]

There was a very popular example that my parents, teachers and other grown-up's used to overuse when I was a boy. "Even the dog wags its to tail to clean its spot before sitting down." Every single grown up used to love this example.  Any sign of laziness or untidiness spotted, and they would whip this out like the cowboy in the wild west whips out his six-shooter. 

If I were as much of a smartass then as I am now, I would have said "Yes, he does but he also runs around naked all day and drinks from the toilet. Will you please choose my role models more carefully, mom?" 

But I wasn't. But now I am. So, here I am to prove that cleanliness is NOT next to godliness, it's quite the opposite. Dirtiness is the godliness. What happens when a clean thing and a dirty thing come in contact? Who wins? The dirty. One rotten apple can ruin the whole basket but one good apple can't make a rotten apple good. What's more powerful?

And dirtiness is indestructible? When you are "cleaning" things, you are not cleaning anything, you are just transferring dirtiness from one place to another. Think of any activity where you are cleaning something, you will realise that you are making something else dirty. Dusting? You dirty the duster. You wash the duster. You make the water dirty that you wash it with. There is a whole cycle of dirtiness that's unbreakable and unescapable. Dirtiness like the soul is indestructible. "Nainam chhindanti shastrani..." Weapons cannot kill it and fire cannot burn it. 

What is the dirtiest topic in the world? Sex. But without it the human race could not survive or propagate. So, dirtiness is essential in this world. 

I hope I have made you feel better about not doing any cleaning this Easter weekend. 

Loved and Lost but Why?

Shakespeare has this famous quote (among his many quotes) "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Other than the general principle that having experienced something is better than not (not always true) have you ever wondered why it's better to have loved and lost? I will tell you. 

If you have never loved than you would not understand 100% of the world's songs, plays, music, TV shows, novels, stories and films. Okay, I might be exaggerating by about 1.7% but generally it is true that if you have loved, ever, you can understand how a character behaves, in real life or in a fictional world. No matter how stupidly a character behaves you would be able to understand why they are doing it. You may have done that exact stupid thing in your life when you were in love or maybe something even stupider. My money is on the latter. 

By having lived through that kind of intense emotional experience you can understand how someone can be so short-sighted, petty, jealous, insecure, unreasonable, illogical, or loyal, committed, determined, selfless and devoted. You may or may not agree with their logic, but you get it. 

These days I am totally in love with this Hindi TV show called "Mere Dad Ki Dulhan" (My Father's Bride). It's the story of a father and daughter - Amber Sharma and Niya Sharma. They lost her mother 8 years ago and now they have the most co-dependent, emotionally stunted co-existence two people ever had. After a few preliminary incidents, Niya becomes convinced that her father should marry again so that he can be happy and they can both be emotionally independent.

Varun Badola and Shweta Tiwari are in the title roles with Anjali Tatrari playing the daughter. Because of the star cast, you know right from the beginning what the end is going to be. But it's not in the destination, it's in the journey. And the journey of this show is delectable. The beginning episodes can be a bit frustrating because of so much fighting and emotional drama going on but there are quite a few good scenes and episodes in them also, and the show gets better and better as it progresses. I found it on Youtube and watched it all the way through. It took a three months' break when the Covid-19 lockdown hit India, but I found the show after it had already finished so I didn't have to wait for those three months. Those episodes have a lot of gaps because it's a Sony show and they cut out all the scenes where there was copyright music playing. Lots of editing jerks, noticeable. Fortunately, I found it on their website Sonyliv.com and now I am able to watch the full versions of the episodes. Yes, it's worth watching, again and again. 

So back to my point. There are many, oh so many scenes in the show where I scream "Amber Sharma, don't do that, man!" at the screen but even when I am telling him not to do something, I can understand why he is doing that or what he is feeling. I would not have known that if I had not felt and done similar things in my own life. Loved and lost.

I might do more posts on this show to discuss some of my favourite things from it. But I already highly recommend it. 

What parlez-vous do you speak?

 

 

Recently I received the Census 2021 form in the snail mail. It said right on the envelope that I was legally bound to respond to it. Don’t you love it when they send you a letter with that text right on the envelope? Well, at least it was not a traffic ticket. But I did go on Google to check that they were telling me was truth and not like the TV licence thing. Oh, that’s a different story altogether.

 

Anyway, I know census is important and I expected that they would be doing this online this time, so I didn’t mind filling out a form. It was slightly longer than I expected but not too bad. I struggled with the educational qualifications bit, no, no, I did go to school, honest. I went to school in India though, and they didn’t make it easy to map it to the British education system on this form. I had to search around a bit on the web to find out which options to choose for that and I am still not 100% sure that I clicked the right buttons.

 

The biggest issue was the language question. They asked what was my primary language and I got stuck. French and German were out, while I do know a few words of those, at most I can say my name and that I am hungry. Spanish is even less of a candidate as my favourite sentence in that has something to do with a tomato that’s reserved for the soup.

 

At the moment I speak English most of the time but then I live in England so why wouldn’t I? But I was not born speaking English. No, even though I was born in Delhi, I wasn’t born speaking Hindi either. My first words were probably “ma” and “da” like most children but after that I did learn Hindi because it happened to be my mother tongue.

 

But that was years ago and since then things have changed a lot. In addition to learning English in school, I fell in love with the habit of reading and Enid Blyton, Ian Fleming and Arthur Conan Doyle contributed to my education as much as my English teacher, Mr. Kaushik. Add to that my love for the action movies in English - James Bond, Mission Impossible, Broken Arrow - and you can understand why I am as comfortable in English today as I am in my mother tongue.

 

And that was my problem. The question didn’t call for my mother tongue or any kind of official language but “What language do you use most at home?” So, I tried to sort this out with a few questions to myself.

 

What language do I think in? Both. Depends on which topic I am thinking about but these days is 80-20, 80% English, 20% Hindi.

 

What language do I dream in? Again, both. It depends on the characters in my dream.

 

What language do I speak at home? Hmmm, considering that I live alone that is covered by the thinking language, but let’s say what language do I use with my family? That depends on the family member I am speaking with but the family members I speak to most are bilingual and which language we use depends on which language we start speaking in.

 

Ultimately, I answered Hindi based on the last two questions.

 

What language do I curse in? While I do curse fluently in both languages (and a couple more) when I am genuinely pissed off and need heavy curse words that would be unprintable, I resort to Hindi.

What language do I do my calculations in? I can do maths in English and I can count to ten in French and German, if you gave me a column of figures to add and I had to it in a hurry I would have to use Hindi numbers.

 

Problem solved. But it was quite an interesting analytical trip down the labyrinth of my brain. I usually enjoy those.

 

So, what language do you parlez-vous in?

 

Blowing Your Own Horn

 Some things are so obviously good or bad that they become universally accepted as such. Like humility. 

In the Hindu epic Mahabharat there is an instance when Yudhishthir, eldest of the five brothers, tells his younger brother Arjun (who is the basically the hero of the whole piece) to put down his bow called Gaandeev (yes, they had names for all their bows, these superarchers) in the heat of the battle. Later Arjun is in distress because he had taken a vow to kill anyone who tells him to put his bow down. (Don't ask me why.)  

Lord Krishna who is friend, philosopher and guide to the five brothers comes to the rescue and tells Arjun to speak rudely to the elder brother because to use the word "thou" to an elder is equivalent to killing him. Ok, so that's what Arjun does. But then he wants to kill himself because he spoke rudely to his elder brother. Again, Krishna pitches in with great advice. He tells Arjun to praise himself because according to the Hindu scriptures he who praises himself is as good as dead. Crisis averted. 

This is how bad self-praise is in the Hindu culture. But then look at the Urdu culture. In Urdu poetry, a ghazal is not considered good poetry if it contains an element of "khud-shanaasi" which means self-praise. 

For years, this is what I used to deal from. But while it is good to have a modest, self-effacing outlook in life, (it's crucial for stand-up comedy), it doesn't go so hot in job interviews. I can't tell you how many job opportunities I have missed because I answered the questions from a realistic and more modest mindset. It took me a while but I finally understood that when I used a modesty scale to assess and portray myself in front of potential employers, my humility got transferred to them as fear that I would not match up with their requirement. Once I understood the problem, it was easy to implement the solution. I simply started answering the same questions with 110% confidence instead of my original dose of 80%. 

The moral of the story is - not everything is good and bad in clear contrast, you need to apply a grain of intelligence even before using a concept as inherently good as humility.