New Sense

Its amazing how when you are thinking of a particular concept or idea and the universe suddenly starts throwing things your way that echo your thoughts. I read somewhere that its a Psychological phenomenon, but its hard to believe that all that is psychology when it seems too ridiculous to be chance… Anyway I digress… This is a follow post to this post: At Stake…

A couple of days back I was talking about how sometimes ethics and helping someone might push you to an uncomfortable choice between them. I even gave an example of a story about a Barber who is driven to make a similar choice when the Dictator of his country walks into his shop for a shave. You can read that story here: Just Lather, That’s All

Today I got an wonderful example of the exact opposite situation. This one was thanks to a beautiful short story, The Missing Mail from the book Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan.  The televised version of the story is embedded below (If you cant see it, you can view the video here: Malgudi Days: The Missing Mail)

The story is about a postman and one of the families of Malgudi. The postman is a wonderful man and is present at every important instance of the life of Kamakshi, the daughter of the family. When its time for her marriage, he also helps in finding the perfect groom for her.

A couple of days before the wedding the postman sees that the family has a letter informing them that the uncle of the bride is critically ill. The next day he receives a mail that the uncle has passed away. Fearing the marriage might get postponed, the postman takes the call of not informing the family until the ceremonies are well past.

This again was similar predicament but handled in a different way, but the things at stake were different… Ironically in both stories(the other one being of the barber) the final choice seems more acceptable for the reader. I believe its in interest of the writer to work in favor of the reader’s sentiment.

If the postman had done his job and delivered the letter it wouldn’t have been a good story. In choosing a different path the writer suddenly added depth to the character and whats more gave the audience what they wanted.

Thats the important distinction between stories and life. Stories are sometimes over simplified to meet the reader halfway. In that simplification the writer makes the call as to what details are important to the reader but you don’t get that choice in life, all details are there and you make the final call.

So where does that leave us… In all the pondering on this topic the one certainty that I encountered was that its impossible to judge what is the best choice. Its also important to realize that the maker of the decision probably had different priorities than you…

Hemanth left a wonderful comment in the last post, there he says:

How you feel is relevant only to you, but what you do (even as a result of how you feel) is relevant to everyone around you ….. the hard truth. So i guess it comes down to saying,either … i am going to play this one for me, or…. i am going to play this one for someone/everyone else.

Its amazing how true and well put that is…

Sounds like a cool name for a show right? Apparently there is a show with that name. The Big Bang Theory creator Chuck Lorre uses vanity cards at the end of every show, they are like really fun blog posts where he scribbles off some of his thoughts. At the end of the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory he writes about a Belorussian version of The Big Bang Theory. (Yeah Belarus is the name a country).

He writes in the card:

Belarus does have a bustling TV production industry. One of their most recent hits is a sitcom about four nerdy scientists who live next door to a beautiful blonde waitress. The characters are named Sheldon, Leo, Hovard, Raj and Natasha, and the show is entitled, The Theorists. Each episode begins with a rapid-fire montage of images which takes us from the dawn of time to the present moment.

Here is a video clipping from the show:

Ps: I have been a big fan of the vanity cards for a while now. You can read them here: http://www.chucklorre.com/

If you didnt know, I happen to have a huge media collection. Everybody has Giga bytes of music and maybe a few episodes of their favorite tv shows. I have that and about 80 unwatched movies on my comp at any given time

For me one of the biggest problem was to decide which movie to watch next. Normally what happens is that, I read a review of a movie or someone recommends one to me… I get my hands on the movie and forget about it. Months later I browse thru the names and wont recognize the movie… I am too lazy to lookup IMDB each time so that basically means I wont watch it for the next few months as well.
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One of my colleagues asked me yesterday who Ekta Kapoor was and what her serials were like! It took us a few mins to recover from the shock that he hadn’t heard of her, more importantly that he hadn’t heard a joke about her serials

So after making sure that he wasn’t exactly trying a late April fool’s joke, we explained to him the television phenomenon that hit Indian television in the early to mid 90s. The brilliance that is the twists in her stories and the number of records her serials end up breaking(mostly related to no. of episodes and no. of times a character gets married).

Now its not that everyone should know who she is. But considering that he watched a decent amount of tv (at least thanks to his family) and is very often(understatement) on the internet, it was only fair to assume he had encountered the ‘phenomenon’.

Anyway jokes aside, how many of you read the first line and googled “Ekta Kapoor”?

I just finished reading Volume 1 of the Mahābhārata known as the “Adi Parva“. Mahābhārata is one of the two greatest epics of India, the other being Ramayana. The epic has Eighteen Volumes, each of about 300 pages of Sanskrit Poetry. The english translation I am reading is about 850 pages in length.

As most of my friends I have spent a lot of my childhood listening, reading and watching stories from the Mahābhārata. I remember waking up early on Sundays when I was a kid to watch an hour of the TV adaptation of the book (That TV show apparently holds the record for the most watched show ever!). The characters from the book, let it be the famous Arjuna or the divine Krishna or the giving Karna or the brave Abhimanyu or even the cunning Shakuni, were characters we knew even as kids. We grew up hearing their stories and understanding their greatness. In every sense, Mahābhārata has been and will always be a huge part of me.
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