Suresh Chandrasekaran's Blog, page 61

Meet and Greet?

It is not enough that you have to learn your so-called three 'R's (And, no-one has given me a satisfactory explanation for why they call Writing and Arithmetic 'R's, when they so clearly are not) and, then, muddle through college, picking up desultory bits of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and other such obscure pockets of knowledge..no, it is not! Leaving the educational system, happy with

Dressing decently

Give me an instruction manual with clearly defined rules and I am comfortable. Something like "If he kicks you in the pants, he does not like you' and I know where I stand. The problem, though, is when things get imprecise. People, more often than not, are more like "Sometimes, he will yell at you. Sometimes, he will smile and walk away. Sometimes, you can keep talking and he will gaze over

Boys will be boys?

The world is a perplexing place to live in, as more intelligent people than me (which is about all of the rest of the world's population) have found. For men, the world of women is not merely perplexing, it is downright beyond comprehension.



Since times immemorial, men have clearly indicated their fascination with the fact that the chests of women are shaped differently from those of men. By

Winning

Did I ever tell you the only time I ever voluntarily entered a foot-race - as opposed to the times at school when you were coerced into doing all sorts of unwanted activities? I have? That's all right, you will survive hearing it once again.

This unnatural activity happened during my brief stint at SPIC, when I was masquerading as a chemical engineer trainee. When they announced that all

Confused

I have always been a very confused sort of person. (You knew that always? The things you already know, after you have been told!) Since school I have found myself weltering in a morass of doubts when my peers seem to be seeing things through crystal clear glasses.



For example, I had always harbored the opinion that West Bengal ought to be in the west. If it were not, why call it 'West'

Scratch my back, please

As it often happens with me, I was in dire need of advice. There was this friend who was supposed to be wise in the ways of the world and I went to him.



"I have a problem, dude! This world of blogging is full of back-scratchers. More often than not, I get comments on my posts only when I go and comment on others' posts. How do I get genuine comments?'



"Be the change that you want to see."

Proverbial cliches?

The problem with people is that they label some things as cliches and think that, therefore, they are useless. A cliche becomes a cliche ONLY because it is true and, thus, you ignore it at your peril.



Take "The Boss is always right", for example. Most people seem to think of it as a joke. Why, the damn thing has morphed into so many humorous sayings like "I am the Boss in this house and I

Truncated Proverbs?

What a proverb actually has communicated can only be ascertained from the results upon Society. If a proverb purports to describe Society, then what it describes can be known from the realities of the society it describes. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. (Hmm! That this proverb should have been said in the days before Facebook is surprising. It is a truly amazing indication of

Proverbs requiring interpretation

Then there are those proverbs that really yield no meaning unless you spend time on interpreting them. Probably invented by the sort of people whom we all know. The sort who, when asked for advice, tell you something so ambiguous and esoteric, that you certainly feel that they are wise but have no clue about the wisdom that they have imparted. Like those books you proudly proclaim to have read

Proverbs of convenience

Sometimes, it seems to me, that a person pushing his case using a metaphor ends up creating a proverb. Like a certain Goebbels is reputed to have said, 'Keep repeating a lie and it will be taken to be the truth' or some such thing. So, what may have started as a self-serving statement ends up becoming received wisdom due to constant repetition.



Apparently, people believe that "Too many cooks