Croutons for Chicken Soup for the Soul

Well, I am unique, just like everyone else, and so is my life. But this post is about something else:  My Life is Average (MLIA) is a very interesting site. Here are some examples:

Today, I got an F, I really, really, dreaded getting an F but I knew it was inevitable. That’s just how Scrabble works sometimes, though. MLIA.

Today, my girlfriend told me on the phone that we were breaking up. I went outside and the signal improved. MLIA.

Today my step brother and I were arguing over who would do the laundry. We played rock, paper scissor and I lost. I found $10 in his pants. I win. MLIA.

Many of the “best of …” selections made me laugh out aloud.

It’s definitely worth visiting once in a while. Although a warning – it can be addictive – I started talking in MLIAlese after a single exposure.

The Alchemist

After reading bestseller The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, I wondered what all the fuss was about. Maybe the problem is with me, or maybe the English translation doesn’t work well (original was in Portugese), or maybe it is meant for very young children. But I would instead recommend The Emperor and the Maula, by Robert Silverberg, as a superior example of how old fables can be elegantly recycled.

Its also interesting that several titles of Coelho’s books can be put together in a single sentence:

The alchemist made a pilgrimage to the fifth mountain with the witch of Portobello, the devil, and miss Prym, met the valkyries, found his maktub in eleven minutes by the zahir and when Veronika decided to die, said, “by the river Piedra I sat down and Wept, but the winner stands alone”.

Indeed. After reading the Alchemist, I sat down and wept too.

Crack’d Pindi Walking

A nice black shivaling lay just outside the door of my neighbor Atul’s 4^th floor apartment. As I walked past his door on my way to the office one morning, I couldn’t help noticing the two-inch tall shivaling right next to the ten-inch garbage pail.

black shivaling

“Odd,” I thought to myself, “they seem to have thrown away a perfectly good pindi”, and then continued down the stairs to my car (a shivaling is also called a pindi).

Next morning, the shivaling was no longer there, although the garbage pail was, as usual. The garbage man must have taken the shivalinga away yesterday. I continued down the stairs. But just one floor below, there was the black shivalinga, placed on a ledge in the stairwell. I looked carefully at it. It looked quite sound, and clean, and I had a fleeting thought of rescuing it. But perhaps somebody had placed it there, to take it away later. So I continued my descent.

On the third day, the shivalinga was still there on the ledge, but a big piece had fallen off from the tip.

“Aha,” I said to myself, “It was broken, and that’s why they put it out. But I wonder what it’s doing on the ledge”.

A few days later, the shivalinga was gone from the ledge too. I walked down the stairs and reached the parking lot. Strangely enough, now it was by the wall, next to my car. The shivalinga seemed to be following me. I remembered the horror story about a set of bloody footprints following the victim, coming closer day by day, and a little shiver ran down my spine. After a few days, the bloody footprints were trailing the guy by just one step. Next morning, the victim was found dead.

“What is going on here with this pindi?” I wondered. “I better get to the bottom of this on the weekend,” I promised myself.

Well, it turns out to have been an interesting case of a collision of ‘sanskar’ (mores, upbringing, tradition) with modern living.

The shivalinga used to be kept in Atul’s pooja room. A few days back, when washing it, it slipped from Atul’s wife’s hands and a piece got chipped off. Although she stuck the piece back on, she was in a quandary – one is not supposed to keep a broken idol at home. At the same time, it cannot just be thrown away in the garbage – it has to be immersed in a river with the proper incantations. And that is precisely where the situation collided with modern living. They did not have the religious training to dispose off the idol in the proper way, neither did they want to go to the trouble of calling in a priest to do the immersion. So they put it out, hoping somebody else would take care of it. Unfortunately, the garbage boy was too religious to dump it in the garbage too. So he just moved it to the ledge on the lower floor. Next, Atul noticed the pindi wasn’t going away peacefully, so he put it in the parking lot, hoping that somebody would then take it away. And that is how the pindi appeared to have ‘walked’ down all the way from fourth floor to my car.

Grating Cards

There have been greeting cards of different kinds for many years now – birthdays, marriages, birthdays, promotions, humorous, condolences, etc.

But it is interesting to learn about a “dysfunctional” category in greeting cards – reminded me of the successful book titled 1001 insults.

Here is the link.

Mumbles 9607

Another mumbles, mon ami!