Wisdom by Hindsight
We have enough complications in our life as it is and it is fascinating to learn of people deliberately going to find ways to complicate their lives.
Here is a story that would cause merriment to some and wonder to others. To me, all it did was to create a desire to find out what exactly the advertisement said, and how the process was concluded.
This is the original Allen Jones chair on which Dasha Zhukova sat for the photoshoot. The copy on which she sat shows a black mannequin but that is what I would call artistic liberty,
I personally would not buy it or sit on it as I think that it is in poor taste and I doubt very much that it will be comfortable for me.
But to call it racist just because the colour of the back rest, seat and parts of the bottom is black, I think is absurd. It will be equivalent to calling me racist for wearing a pair of black shoes instead of say brown. Or, perversely, sitting on exactlty the same chair with white as the predominant colour with the mannequin being white.
Being politically correct is getting to be absurd.
I hope that you enjoy reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where six of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic was chosen by Shackman. The five other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, gaelikaa, Maxi, Paul, Shackman, and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!
That is how I always start or finish my LBC posts and this time around, I am posting after due date. I was away from base on a very pleasant Pongal vacation touching base with my family in Chennai and introducing my daughter in law to them too. I simply did not have the time to post from there using a digital device that I did carry with me and with which I could have written the post. I offer my apologies to my fellow LBC bloggers and my regular readers a couple of who wrote separately to ask if I am alright! Thank you. I am in great shape and fully recovered from excess family hospitality.
To answer this question, I must share some of my life style with my readers. I live a retired person’s life and have created a comfort zone in my home with comfortable sitting and sleeping places with all accessories near at hand. It makes me quite lazy and reluctant to get up and be active unless it is for something that I am habituated to. Among the daily routines that I follow is the reading of four news papers, two of general news and two of business and economics. After I finish reading them, I solve all the crossword puzzles in them and get up for coffee around mid forenoon only after I finish that routine.
I have tried to solve crossword puzzles online and did not like the experience. Doing it using a newspaper is far more satisfying. I do read news online but there too I find the experience less satisfying than reading hard copies.
So, for me personally news papers offer much more value than digital devices. In India, the newspaper business is a growth business with many regional and local newspapers appearing and flourishing regularly. This happens side by side by with TV news channels and it is expected that FM radio will also soon debut with news channels.
In India I think that the newspaper business does have value and prospects at least for the next decade or so.
I hope that you enjoy reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where six of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic was chosen by The Old Fossil. The five other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, gaelikaa, Maxi, Paul, Shackman, and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!
This is a tough nut to crack. But since at various points of time I have been called Popeye by admiring fans, I would fail Conrad, who I suspect thought up this title just to get under my skin if I abdicated.
Popeye’s understanding of Being is very simple.
One does not need to elaborate does one? Typical of the character of the man. A fellow full of contradictions, sometimes soft as he can be with Olive Oyl or Sweepea or brutal as with Bluto. intellectual as he can be with Wimpy. Inconsistent as humans tend to be and therefore endearing. And what holds it all together is his sense of his self.
You take him or you leave him. He is what he is and that is his understanding of his Being.
For me, he will always be the greatest brand ambassador for spinach despite the scientists proving that while it is a good green, it is not a great green.
But it is not easy being Popeye. I will let him explain.
My sister in law Sudhira died last Sunday in a hospital in Chicago. She had been in hospital on a support system since the 18th of December. I was kept abreast of her hospitalisation and death by her daughter Nina and other relatives in India who too were getting bulletins.
I had known Sudhira longer than I had known my late wife. Sudhira married my then best friend Kittu in 1961. I was present at the birth of Nina and Nina was the first infant that I ever carried in my arms.
Kittu and Sudhira were also my great support system during my bachelor days at Hyderabad and naturally, all my friends knew them as well. Among them was a group of four sisters who were all part of my life then and about who I shall write another post some other time. Without me being aware of it, Sudhira had been in touch with two of them all these years though I lost touch with all the sisters from around 1964 when I had shifted to Madras now known as Chennai.
One of the sisters, now living in Canada had come to know of Sudhira’s death early yesterday morning and had rung up one of the sisters in India to pass on my phone number obtained from Nina with a request to call me and tell me about Sudhira’s death. So that sister Theresa, rang me up from Kerala and spoke to me after almost half a century and we caught up with all the news about our marriages, children, grand children, careers, etc and also about the where and what-abouts of our respective family members.
For me it was like a flash-back in cinemas taking me back to my youth and a time vastly different to what it is now. It took me the whole day yesterday to recover from that surprise reconnection.
The death of a loved one and modern communication devices put two old friends back in touch with each other after half a century!
I offer this piece of news without comment.