Do Frogs Fart and Other Philosophical Questions

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – Arthur C. Clarke

The scream pierced the Trivandrum night. He was holding this chest and screaming. His grandfather, a medicine man, had bequeathed him that ancient chest. The chest was called “Chest Z,” because right from ancient times people in Travancore were using English alphabets to denote variables and unknown parameters. Nobody knew what was inside the chest and the old man never gave a hint. He was in the attic holding Chest Z within seconds of his grandpa croaking, trying hard to open it. Nothing worked. He was going crazy screaming, when suddenly, another old man, probably a relative he didn’t know existed, appeared near him and told him the secret behind the chest.

The chest is locked with a magic hymn – a hymn that is made up of seven farts of a dodo bird in varying frequencies. Not only that, there is a secret sound in between, which certain trusted sources have said, is the wet fart of a gastric brooding frog.

“What the #$%&?! Where do I get these creatures and their farts? Who told you this?” he began panicking. The old man smiled and said, “There are books by NASA which cover this in detail, but they have kept it a secret. They stole from us, y’know. You have heard of Alibaba and the open sesame cave thingy, right?”

He nods.

“Same technology. Where do you think they got that from? Us!! Where do you think they got the knowledge to develop this voice recognition software and all?”

“That’s all OK, but where can I find this dodo and the brooding frog,” he wondered, but the old man had disappeared.

He had an idea. He flipped out his smartphone, which works like magic. You open up this thing called Google and type in “dodo bird” and you get all the information you need on dodo. How does it work? It’s f$%&ing magic. You can even say “brooding frog” and this nice-sounding lady will tell you everything about the frog in English.

And the information was shocking. Both the dodo bird and the stupid frog are extinct.

The old man mysteriously appeared again and told him, “Don’t open the chest. It will destroy everything here” and disappeared.

Possible, he thought, the f#$%ing thing is filled with farts. Must be toxic by now. Scream....

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Are we in frikkin 21^st century or what?

I sometimes sit and brood and some people think that I’m thinking deep philosophical thoughts. They’re right. I have questions all the time. “Do frogs fart?” was one such thought. Luckily for me, Google God gives me all the answers I ever need. It is magic.

Apart from the Google God, I have a thing for gods who protect their own asses. You see it quite often in the aftermath of a natural disaster. A god figurine that was left untouched by an earthquake, or a place of worship that survived a tsunami when all the blooming worshippers living around it were washed away, or a tsunami that bypassed the god and destroyed everything a few kilometres away. These are the gods I love. Parochial, territorial and selfish. Just like us.

Anyway, get ready to be destroyed, because the Supreme Court wants Chest Z…no Vault B of the Padmanabha Swamy temple opened. The court probably thinks it is a bar in a city, for which it gave permission to open. The question I asked in this post on Devaprasnam from 2011 still stands.

Is the lord going to destroy Trivandrum? Or, could it be the area under the erstwhile Travancore kingdom (parts of which the lord anyway ignored when the tsunami came) or is it going to be Akhand Faarath that is going to be destroyed if the Supreme Court order is carried out? Scary!

Amicus Curiae, or what?

 Every now and then a word pops up in the media which makes you go, “what the f$#k is that?” Over the past few weeks one such word has been bothering me. The word is amicus curiae, and everybody seems to know it. It rolls off the tongue of TV ladies effortlessly as if they were taught “A is for Amicus Curiae”, instead of “A is for Apple” in kindergarten.  Mind you, these are people who can’t differentiate between Malayalam letters such as ba and bha.

I found out through painstaking research in Google that the word means “friend of the court”, or a person appointed by the court to assist it in deciding a matter. Here the matter is what to do with Padmanabhan’s jewels (or Padmanaba, as the ladies say) hoarded in the temple vaults, at least one of which is guarded by killer snake symbols.  After weighing the pros and cons of a snakebite, the amicus curiae decided to become an amicus regius, friend of the royals. We don’t know what the court will decide. Hopefully, it will benefit the people, as the leftists hope, rather than a bunch of superstitious sycophants.

At the same time, the Hindu groups’ claim that the Left is targeting only them is also legitimate. There is quite a bit of pussyfooting by the Left when it comes to other religions. My hope is that one day a government of ours, left or right, will develop the guts to tax all these religion-related entities – the temples, churches, mosques, ammas, appas, babas, bhabhis, swamis and swaminis. Some small percentage will do, which could be used to develop the civic facilities used by these groups for festivals, etc.

Anyway, we have some breathing space till the court decides on what to do with the Lord’s jewels. If the Lord doesn’t like the verdict, get ready for snake attacks, thunderbolts from heaven and other means through which the Lord wreaks destruction. By the way, do you think the guys who did the divination with the cowry shells know how it is going to end (because the Lord must know how it ends and have told them, otherwise it doesn’t make much sense in being the Lord, does it)? The suspense is killing me.

Whether the Lord likes it or not, his land is now literally a stinking cesspool. The chief minister, while chitchatting with some German kids who pointed out the garbage problem, told them that there is no good model to follow to solve this. He told that to Germans! Germany is a country which even Japan looks up to as a model for garbage handling, recycling, etc. Pathetic. Can someone teach these guys googling? Only a few days ago, a group led by a minister went to China to “learn”, among other things, about garbage handling. There had been umpteen such expeditions before to all corners of the world, but we are still weighing all the options, lest something goes wrong. Perhaps he could go to Brahmapuram and see how it is done in Cochin before we all go down with dengue.    

In the meantime, the city Corporation held a convention with politicians from different parties, social and cultural leaders as well as regular folk. They took some kind of pledge (led by actor Suresh Gopi) about garbage with their hands held out. What more could we possibly ask for? A convention and a pledge! I have a nagging feeling that at least some of the guys who took the pledge had their middle fingers out.

P.S. Continuing with the theme of the previous post – A couple of weeks ago I went to a restaurant called Villa Maya near Eenchakkal. Very high-end, with an ambience that a few years ago would have looked out of place in Trivandrum, but now, doesn’t appear too odd. Signs again of the rising affluence of the city. The prices are five-star-ish and the menu is quite appealing and palatable to Indians. Their operation will need some tweaking as far as some of the dishes I ordered are concerned. First up, the steak. They never asked me how I wanted it. I got a too well-done steak, whereas I like mine rare, or medium rare, at the most. Next is the Quattro Formaggi pizza, a pizza made of four (quattro) cheeses (formaggi). Though reasonably good, it didn’t seem like it had four cheeses in it. It is a new place and probably lacks in experience, but on the whole I think it is a good addition to the city’s dining scene.  

 

Daivathinu Oru Prasnavumilla – Devaprasnam, Padmanabhaswamy Temple, Etc.

It has been a while since the “treasure” was “discovered” at the Padmanabhaswamy temple in Trivandrum. After the initial flurry, there has been a lull in the news surrounding the temple, as the Supreme Court has put a hold on the activities for reasons known only to the court. I fervently hope it is not due to an “unholy” fear of snakebites.

We can only guess the motives of the former royals in keeping this “discovery” a secret, and in resorting to medieval superstitious rituals aimed at issuing fatwas on anyone who even dares to take a peek at the treasure - a generous pile, I presume, the lord has kept aside for his retired life. Well, I was not too excited about the story in the beginning. My interest, however, was piqued when I heard the news of the devaprasnam. Wow, that was a pretty ingenious way to browbeat the courts and the politicians. Who do you believe; the “My lord” in the Supreme Court or the Real Lord?

Anyway, a group of astrologers were brought together to ask the all-important question to the Lord – “Why are we here?”

“No? I can’t ask such philosophical questions?"

"Oops, I didn’t know that. Sorry, my bad.”

How about, “Could the Lord be gracious enough to smite the unscrupulous builders who use New England autumn foliage backdrops to sell their flats instead of the actual coconut trees-flex boards-utility lines-pot-holed roads background?”

“No? He won’t do it, or he can’t do it?”

“Oh, I can’t ask such frivolous questions either.”

The question you are allowed to ask is specific. “Can we open vault ‘B’ or not?” A simple yes or no answer would suffice.

But then, the Lord moves in mysterious ways and, as expected, the answer was cryptic. There were bad omens cropping up all over the place with each passing day. A crow made doo-doo on the pond – no, I made that up; crows don’t make doo-doo on ponds, only people do. Anyway, the question was conveyed to the Lord and all these things were conveyed by the Lord to this group of guys through – believe it or not – a set of cowry shells, leaves and other stuff you won’t ever dream of when you think of communications.

“How did you convert the English alphabet ‘B’ to cowry-shell lingo? Did you use something like the ASCII-EBCDIC converter?”

“What? I have exceeded my questions quota? OK.”

 Well, after lengthy acks, naks, timeouts, handshakes, data transfer etc., the answer came forth. The Lord will unleash untold miseries on not only anyone who opens vault ‘B’, but the entire land. Scary stuff. Must be some skeleton in the Lord’s vault!

“Did the Lord…”

“I can’t ask any more questions? Well, I’m not asking the Lord, but asking myself. Is that OK?”

Did the Lord mean the original Travancore kingdom or just Trivandrum?  Maybe, he meant all of India? (What more untold misery can he unleash now?)

Could there have been some miscommunication?  You know, noise, echo?

Have these guys ever tried conch shells instead of cowries? Perhaps it would offset the echo you hear whenever the Lord speaks (you must have seen it a gazillion times in movies) - “I I I shall ll ll destroy roy roy you you you you!”    

Why would the Lord take such extreme steps for a minor misdemeanour like opening a vault and counting some gold coins? And that too, in an indiscriminate way. It is always like that, isn’t it? Floods that wipe out whole regions and people, at least some of whom might have been innocent. Doesn’t sound very benevolent or compassionate to me.

Well, that is where things stands now. Be scared, very scared. Whether the Lord loses his rag or not and your house is flooded with seawater solely depends on the Supreme Court’s decision now, if you believe this ancient ritual. How ancient can it be? A few hundred years? A thousand? Tops. And, the earth has been here for, what, four-five billion years. Go figure.

P.S.  A benevolent ruler would use such wealth to help his/her subjects. You don’t have to distribute it or sell it. A museum, as proposed by many, would be a great solution. There are some excellent heritage buildings around the temple. A palace and other buildings on the south gate, where a bank and some other offices operate, and the post office, etc. which occupy the buildings on the north gate side of the temple come to mind.

Ideally, it would be great if you could demolish the ugly add-ons and re-develop the area as a heritage museum zone, including the agraharams around the temple. The state should provide some assistance to the residents to maintain the original façades of their homes, clean up the streets, bury the cables, build nice foot paths and it will be a real solid cultural attraction. And perhaps there will be a modern, progressive entrepreneur type among the residents who would turn one of those we-own-only-two-walls places into a B&B.  If properly done, I’m sure tourists will be ready to pay top dollar for the experience.

One shouldn’t forget the existing Kuthiramalika museum either. Currently it is managed shabbily and is infested with mostly ignorant guides having brain cells made of bird poop (mentioned earlier). They need to be educated and the place needs to be cleaned up and professionally managed.

Hope ultimately good sense prevails over superstitious bovine excrement for the good of the city.