The ball pit

He was placed in a strange world. It had walls, but you couldn't see them. They were just glass, but the boy didn't know that. The walls teased the little boy, showing him life-like images of his mother, smiling at him. But when he tried to go to her, the walls pushed him back like an invisible force-field. They forbade him from reaching her, from returning to her familiar arms where he had oft found solace. After a couple of tries, he came to see that the wall was relentless. He stared longingly at his mother, whose image just continued to smile at him as he tried reach her. It was no use, he realized. 

He turned around, suppressing his despair, remembering the last instructions his mother had given him. 
"I will have to leave you here for a little while. You must not cry." 
He examined the strange world again. It was like nothing he had ever seen. Although he had never experienced anything like those walls before, they weren't the most absurd thing in that world. No, it was the ground. The ground was not flat like the ones on which he normally walked. Rather, it was composed of large equally-sized spheres, each larger than his hands, which formed the undulating ground, like sand dunes in a desert. As he stood, his legs were sunken deep within these spheres. He could not see his toes, but it comforted him to know that he could pull his legs out if he wanted. The spheres were of various colors. He strained his mind, trying to remember all the different colors that had been to taught to him, but it was hard to think under these unfamiliar circumstances. After some tremendous mental effort, he remembered their names: red, blue, green, yellow and white. But the effort took a toll on his energy, and, feeling exhausted, he let his knees buckle and fell on the strange floor. 

The experience was like nothing he had ever felt. As he fell, the spheres seemed to be clearing the way so that he could sit comfortably. They tickled his legs as they squirmed and popped above the ground, while he fell down. He landed comfortably, pleasantly surprised at their politeness. These spheres were friendly creatures after all. Making himself comfortable, he decided to pick up one of his new comrades, and found they were light and pliant. He threw one a little distance from him, and within a second he forgot where it was, as it camouflaged with the rest of the ground. He picked up another and threw it further. Invigorated by this new experience he stood up again and threw another sphere. All thoughts of his mother had, for the moment, left his head, as he played with his round, colorful friends. He did not even realize how much he was smiling.

Just as he was going to throw what would have been his thirtieth sphere, he heard some movement on the other end of the world. A familiar female voice rung through the world, calling the boy by name. The world was not done giving the boy surprises. In one part of the world, the hand that belonged to the voice reached through a new gap in the wall, an exit, beckoning the boy. The boy had mixed feelings. He was relieved that the wall's power could be surmounted, but simultaneously extremely sad to be leaving this new place. It was a long time since he had been as happy as he was here. With great sorrow, he waded through the floor, clinging tightly to one blue friend in his hands. As he reached the world's exit, however, he was told to put the "ball" back. It was not his. He had to be told three times, before he put it back with stifled tears. Again, something he loved was being forced away from him. He bade farewell to his friends as he left. 
"Come on. Time to go back to the orphanage," said the orphanage matron, as she held the little boy's hand. 

The bane that is the benchmark

This was an essay I wrote for the following prompt:

Name one concept, idea, or invention that the world would be better off without and tell us why.

Certainly, the concept of a universal benchmark!  Let me explain.

Which of these is the coldest? Melted wax, campfire or lava? What is cold? It is simply the absence of heat. It is relative, because there is no ‘line’ that demarcates cold from hot. Everything in the world is relative and nothing is absolute. Also, which is the fastest, a fish, an eagle or a rabbit? It depends on where they are racing. There can be no absolute decision. When nothing is absolute, I do not see the point in taking these comparisons as seriously as we do.

Just as Usain Bolt’s speed can’t be compared with Michael Phelps’, neither can the ability / worth of any two people or organizations. They can only be contrasted if they have had the exact same opportunities, skill sets and preferences, and this is extremely rare. Therefore, there is no point in agonizing over whether someone is doing better than you.  It is far wiser to gauge your progress by comparing yourself to your own past performance and potential.

Mark Twain famously said, ‘Comparison is the death of joy’. So are benchmarks. A benchmark causes unnecessary pressure and discontent. People feel insecure because they are too short, or fat, or not rich enough, or good enough at something. A man who loses a kilogram in a week may feel upset that his neighbor lost two, and the ‘ideal weight’ is still twenty kilograms away. Why compare at all when, in reality, the two individuals’ bodies are different, and are not designed to lose weight at the same rate.  All that ought to matter is that the person was healthier than he was one week ago.

As a student, I know the pressures that my peers feel. I have seen friends become severely discouraged and demoralized simply because they did badly in an exam. Their worth was being gauged by comparing their grades vis-à-vis another’s. Why does it occur to people that they can use such a small parameter to gauge success and generalize the results? To quote Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”.

I dream of a world without a universal yardstick, where people are judged only on how far they have come from where they were. There, goals would be set sensibly taking their context into account, and progress measured only against these goals. You are your best and only touchstone, and your primary objective should be to continuously be better than yourself, not some external benchmark.

Familiar Waters

This was an Opinion/ Editorial piece that I had written in my first semester at Purdue.

Have you ever been thrown into a swimming pool and been told “Swim!”? My dad did something of that sort to me, which led to one of the greatest joys in my life. When I was 12, my father threw me into the metaphorical sea of the works of P G Wodehouse, leaving after giving me the elaborate instructions, “Read!” While I initially paddled about awkwardly through chapters, hanging onto my dictionary like a float, I slowly befriended these strange waters. It was only a matter of time before I became extremely attached to his writing style, and proclaimed this my favourite water body, an opinion that has not wavered despite years of reading other authors. Here, I shall try to explain my admiration for this writer.

Wodehouse was a 20th century British writer, who, as he mentions in some prologue, started writing at the age of 5. Wodehouse was no activist. He wrote not about wars and prevalent social evils (even though his era was that of the World Wars), but more about silly, droll lives of British aristocrats. His works were predominantly humorous, and his language and vocabulary were stunning.

Wodehouse was, I believe, a pioneer in humorous writing. Wodehouse had an incredible way of stringing and placing sentences together, which is what won him his audience. I enjoy how Wodehouse employed very subtle humour, seldom using innuendos or puns. His humour arose from his descriptions and dialogues, and the clever juxtaposition of words and images, that have never failed to make me giggle with glee. For example, to imply that a gentleman was standing very quietly, he described his comportment as “a perfect impersonation of someone who wasn't there.” Or to say that he came out of the room very fast, “He went in and came out so quickly that he nearly met himself going out." (Very Good, Jeeves)

Reading Wodehouse is a great way to work on your vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure. Each time I read a book of his, I learn some half a dozen phrases, many referring to English culture, and easily 20 to 30 new words, some including imbroglio, escutcheon, nolle prosequi, preux chevalier, and gruntled (“if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”, Code of The Woosters). Also, the variety in the kind of sentences he used, and the way he changed his jargon and style of speech according to the character, is mind-blowing. In fact, I can guarantee that a new reader’s substantial improvement from reading just one of his books, will outdo that of an equal amount of time on any English textbook.

Wodehouse created an incredibly simple world where an Earl’s greatest problem in life could be that his pet pig is not fat enough for a fattest-pig contest. With an assortment of aunts, uncles, cousins, Dukes, impersonations of these people, policemen, policemen’s helmets, and unimaginable criss-crosses of lovers, Wodehouse sets the stage for extremely intricate, complex and hilarious plots, as seen in some of my favourites, Full Moon, Picadilly Jim and Uncle Freddie in Springtime. And, using the magical swish of turning a page, we read time and again of how he eliminates every single problem with a single blow, so that it’s win-win for everyone.

I would love to live in that world. I would, rather than worry about the various problems of life, deal with much sillier and happier problems. In Piccadilly Jim, he even features this Jim, who, due to a complicated series of circumstances, has to impersonate himself! In a world currently diseased with a billion problems, are we not, to quote Stephen Fry, “in need of this remarkable healing spirit, this balm for hurt minds?” Undeniably so, I say. And if we cannot ourselves live in that utopian world, we can very well experience it by burying our noses in his works, and living it vicariously through his splendid characters.

On the whole, I find huddling up with a Wodehouse to be one of the ultimate mood-lighteners. I strongly advise anyone with even a fleeting desire to be happy to pick up any one of his books; they will not be disappointed.

To put it simply, there are 2 types of people in the world: those who like Wodehouse and those who have not read his works, and I can say this with unflinching confidence. After all, he was regarded by some as merely the greatest writer of his time, and by others, the one true master of the English Language.