Quid Pro Quo and Equivalent Trade

Get out of my head! That's right! I know what you're trying, you sneaky, adroit pseudo-psychiatrist.. you're trying to peek between the lines and into my head aren't you?

Oh... you're not my Mom? Still... can never be too careful.

My mother claims that a lot of things are revealed in a person's blog. As in apart from his/her vocabulary. Personal things. Like how many crazy ideas you get, your reading material in the loo, how much of a sociopath you are... if she's to be believed, those blokes at NSA and ISI and CBI and the VO2IA's (Various Other Overpaid Investigating Agencies) can trade in their cool black suits for beachwear, kick back and just monitor Blogger.com.

But that, of course, is for another day. Today we shall concern ourselves with the concept, an admittedly strange one, of equivalent trade. Rather, I shall concern myself with this singular, utopian dream and its impracticality, while you shall concern yourself with twiddling your thumbs while I ramble.

Any exchange, and by extention relationship, is ideally equivalent. Works both ways... you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Don't like it? Lets go our seperate ways, scratching our own backs till we find someone else to. Something like that. The problem, of course, is when one person prefers a pat on the head to a scratch. Understandable, really. There are as many types of humans as at least the number of canines, and I know at least one canine that calls each of those types his alma matter.

Anyway, who is to say how many pats makes a scratch. Or alternatively, how many scratches makes a pat. And then there's the question of the weather. You'd prefer a scratch in summer and a pat in winter. Or even a nice big hug. Sigh. Too confusing.

Anyway, the point being, that when two dissimilar people get close to each other, the concept of equivalent trade is as logical as this semester's Trical grading. Which, my roomie will tell you, is as logical as selling marked-up-then-discounted ice to an eskimo. A clever man will ripost that that's exactly what foriegn brands have been doing in Tiripur for the last fifteen years. But we Indians aren't exactly logical in matters of the west. Some vaasthu problem, probably.

Some people are made to talk, and others to listen. Like some are cheery and other glum. In such a case, you really wonder sometimes what keeps such people on talking terms. Shoudlnt they first be pulled towards each other, whiz to and fro under Inertia's idlying hand and finally explode in a brilliant white light? Not to mention give out gamma rays...

Some argue that the problem with equivalent trade is that it's too childish. Emotions, likes and dislikes are far from normalised. To say this is good and this is bad is positively kindergarden. The truth, though, is that everything IS equivalent trade. The cost of course, is defined by you, and you alone. Nothing path breaking or revealing, but it'll do us all a world of good to remember this. In the end, the most simple thing to remember is that you put something positive into a relationship and you'll get something positive out of it. As you sow, so you reap. Quid Pro Quo.

To cut through all the crap, don't be an idealistic little kid and complain that you always cheer up the other person when they're down, why can't you be dealt a bit of that hand. Remember that somwhere else, when you didn't notice, you were allowed the long end of the stick. In the end, it all evens out. Quid Pro Quo. Equivalent Trade. But only if you can look at the larger picture.

Of latex chudidhars and flailing hands...

Some guy just moved the high court to ban medical college students from wearing Chudidhars.
And he wasn't talking about the guys.

Welcome to Chennai.

Now, before speculating what insanity prompted a media-person to cover an event of such intangibly minuscule magnitude, led me proceed to reason the reasons behind this waste of a citizen's F evening. Besides, the insanity in question isn't really surprising. After all, he was a Sun TV media-person. They tend to be a bit off in summer. Must be the weather. Usually they're off by a mile.

The first thing that struck my flailing hands was my Dad's nose. But having assured him that I was flailing them for a reason, rather, the reason, and stepping a few arms lengths away, the second thing that struck me was that I was an idiot. Not only to have tuned into a channel tat reminded me why people called TV the idiot box, but to actually recall my 8th std lessons and read the strip that scrolls at a rather brisk pace at the bottom of the screen. Predictably, it required 4 cycles of the strip for me to read the entire thing. An absolute waste of ten minutes that could have been spent counting sheep, whistling or taking a bathroom break, twice.

The third thing that struck me was that the noble citizen in question was probably a miffed cinema-goer. Trisha, a terribly attractive pediatrician (in the movie Sarvam), makes a fashion statement with asphyxiatingly tight chudidhars thro' the entirety of her screen time. A pretty clever comment by your's truly that she was liable to cause more deaths than prevent got more applause than the entire second half and half the first combined. Not too random a comment, considering the Geriatric wing is pretty close to the Toddler area, and an old man's heart cant bear watching a lissome lass like herself walk past in latex chudidhars every now and then.

T'was when I was grappling with this thoroughly confusing problem that another snuck up and got me right on the head. That of course, was Sleep, desirous of my merry company, (But equally could equally likely have been my Mom, sick of the same) and while I seemed to have given him the slip for now, I'd rather not risk him restoring the symmetry of my cranium. It is thus, with some slight difficulty of balance, and tottering like an alchoholic in an earthquake, that I grant you freedom. Ciao!

The importance of being honest...

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation"

Thus spake Oscar Wilde, one of the most multi-talented literary minds to grace the world, with a wit so ready, dry and vicious that, had his residence not been a nation where sarcasm was (and is) the national pastime, might have been outlowed. In fact, the Brits may have actually debated it over high tea (and on higher moral horses)

"I say! That chap Oscar... mighty indecent with his tongue!"

"Spot on, old boy... I would put that down to his Irish blood!"

"Well said, old chap, well said. Such high-handedness and condescency... no Englishman would indulge in it"

But well, the English are forgiven their ego, for they've given the world Cricket, English, Machester United, and Kiera Knightley.

Anyway, Oscar Wilde was referring, probably, to the oldest religion that mankind has been burdened with, that which installs another mortal as god. Imitation, they say, is the best form of flattery. Somehow the word flattery seems out of place when not in a romantic novel.

Or so popular perception goes. c'est la mode!

Who can claim here to be wholly genuine? What is man if not a product of his surroundings, and what are surroundings if not the product of the man that came before this one? In parts, everything is but a copy. This is particularly true of art, or anything creative in fact...

Of course, this doesn't excuse the multitude of Indian directors who say their winter releases are inspired by certain Hollywood blasts of the summer past. Or the prime time shows on Sun TV of which about the only safe assumption we can make is that they have worse costume designers than the ones on Vijay. Faithful reproducers all, but something always seems lost in translation.

That something, of course, is Inspiration. That is the proverbial spark to the cauldron of swimming, murky colors that is experience. We see, we imbibe, we not fully understand. Some things affect us more than others, and those are the first to go aflame. Any person, who in all innocence believes an idea to be genuine, says only because he cannot remember where he has seen its numerous, interwined parts before. The masterpiece, the piece de resistance - it is nothing but the most optimal permutation of ages past.

I believe that people are better off knowing they are not creators, but improvers. To do so takes a great deal of pressure off you, and gives you the freedom to experiment without limitations. The truly creative is one who has genuinely forgotten from where his work is inspired, for only by forgetting who we aren't, can we discover who we are.