Friends of Words

Author: Swati

  • What Happens When You Say that “Gray” is Your Favorite Color?

    What Happens When You Say that “Gray” is Your Favorite Color?

    “What’s your favorite color?”

    This is probably one of the most commonly-asked questions on the planet. Thanks to its simplicity and sophistication, it finds a way to get into the lives of toddlers, teens, and adults alike.

    I distinctly remember being asked this question in my school admission test for Grade 1. So the examiner picks up a piece of paper with small squares painted in different colors and keeps it in front of me.

    How many colors can you name, sweetie?

    Weeks of rote memorization came in handy (my tireless Mom had a huge role to play in that).

    Impressed, probably more by my enthusiasm than my answer, she gave me a sweet smile and asked me the following question:

    Can you point to your favorite?

    I didn’t know what favorite meant, but I knew what ‘point’ did. I picked the very first color square. It was black.

    The teacher probably had not seen many children picking black as their favorite color, going by the expression on her face. 

    On the walk home, I asked my mum what ‘favorite’ meant. 

    Something that you like the most, she said.

    I now knew the word’s meaning, but I realized I still didn’t know the answer. I liked red, yellow, green, pink and blue. I did not have any favorites. Black, I guess, was a better answer than an utter and complete freeze.

    As I grew up, I noticed that it became easier to pick favorites, and I liked probably every color in the spectrum at some point in my life.

    However, the best entertainment I have gotten out of a choice of favorite color has only come in adulthood, especially when I mention, “Favorite? Oh yeah, gray’s my favorite color”.

    The best part about that answer is that the follow-ups don’t last long.

    Gray has been a certified conversation killer, at least in the experiences that I have had. I only assume that’s because it’s difficult for people to fathom how it can be anyone’s favorite color when it is usually (mis)understood to stand for everything dull.

    My reasons are more utility than choice. 

    Sure, I would choose white if it weren’t for my being a massive klutz. I think wearing a white shirt to work is one sure-shot way to make my day stressful. My shirt or dress would stay white for precisely 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Wine glasses, orange juices, and plates of freshly baked quiches have a special affinity to anything white. No matter how elegant the color is, it can not be mine—too high maintenance for poor ol’ me.

    I tried going with black for a while, with its magical powers to make me look thin. But I realized soon enough although it saved me from orange juice and the Californian red wine (to an extent), it also signaled to the mosquitoes of the world that I was available as their feeding ground. Also, black and a head full of dandruff don’t go together. 

    You know from all the anti-dandruff shampoo ads out there, even if you are lucky enough not to have any.

    Gray conveniently came to the rescue- with its capability to combine the best( and worst) of both- to a dulling degree. Guess you can call it boring. 

    I kid you not; there are color tests for personality profiling. 

    Which color are you? They ask.

  • Miss Temptation by Kurt Vonnegut: Summary and Review

    Miss Temptation by Kurt Vonnegut: Summary and Review

    Kurt Vonnegut’s short story Miss Temptation was first published in the 1950s by Saturday Evening Post. It also appeared later in an anthology called Welcome to the Monkey House. 

    Miss Temptation by Vonnegut: Summary and Plot Analysis

    Miss Temptation, if the name doesn’t give it away, revolves around a temptress, a young actress named Susanna, who lives in a small village one summer while performing in the nearby community theater. The beautiful woman is the object of villagers’ attention, most of whom are aware and look forward to her daily routine – which involves a barefoot sensual walk through the village. 

    She is polite to everyone but rarely ever talks to anyone but Bearse Hinkley, an elderly pharmacist, who supplies her with the city newspapers.

    One day while buying her newspapers at the drugstore, she is confronted by Corporal Norman Fuller, who has recently returned home from a tour in Korea. It was the first time he had seen her, and the experience was too overwhelming to digest. 

    He criticizes her, calling her ‘a great American actress’, not realizing it was her actual occupation. Initially thinking this is a compliment, Susanna thanks him but soon realizes it was meant as a taunt. 

    Fuller storms out not long after, making his disgust at her and for the tendency of women like her to make people like him feel ordinary and lonely. 

    Shaken by this sudden, unexpected outburst, Susanna runs back home.

    Later, the focus briefly shifts to Fuller’s life, where he is shown having dinner with his widow mother. Her mother tries to initiate a warm and light conversation with Fuller by talking about his friends and connections, but that makes Fuller sulk even more. 

    Most of his friends, if not all, had married or moved on since he left, leaving him completely and utterly alone. The conversation dies soon after him mentioning his interest in divinity school and the earlier episode of belittling Susanna.

    Fuller and Hinkley have a conversation later that night. Fuller goes on to explain his earlier stance with Susanna again, pinning his outburst on the way he had been treated by beautiful women growing up, including the ones from high school that seemed to think they were extra special. 

    Hinkley sympathizes, having been on the receiving end of such treatment in his days of youth. He later reveals that Susanna had skipped her theater performance that night. Fuller is pleased to have had any impact on a woman like her.

    The next day, as people wait for Susanna’s daily appearance and her walk, they are surprised to see a truck pulling up in front of the firehouse. 

    Susanna seemed to be moving away with her things. 

    When Norman begins her rant about Susanna again, Hinkley accuses him of being frightened of her. Fuller rejects the claim but reluctantly agrees when challenged to prove it by delivering Susanna’s papers that day.

    Norman goes to Susanna’s and finds her dressed conservatively; her room which he expected to be fitting that of a seductress’ lair, was anything but. 

    She confronts him about the outburst, demanding an explanation, at which he reveals he had no intention of chasing her away. His treatment at the hands of beautiful women like her had been a harrowing experience, which got the better of him. 

    Susanna went on to explain how quick people had always been to judge her, given her beauty, ignoring the fact that she was a human being, too, with a beating heart.

    They reconcile their differences eventually, and Fuller steps out for the village walk with Susanna on his arm.

    Miss Temptation: Review, Quotes and My Thoughts

    I went on reading the story with the preconceived notions in my head, assuming poignant sexuality as the only theme. While it was one of the more stark themes in the story, it offered way more than just that. 

    Fuller, who stands in for the lonely, not looked at twice kind of a guy, doesn’t criticize Susanna just because she is pretty; he does that also because he thinks that his bitter experience of being ignored gives him the reason. 

    At some level, it’s his deep insecurity not to be able to deserve the affection or even the attention of a beautiful young woman.

    Look at the colorful phrases used by Vonnegut to describe the characters – 

    Susanna, the golden girl of a thousand tortured daydreams

    Fuller the lonely, Fuller the homely, Fuller the bleak.

    I know it was not meant to be comedic, but my first instinct was to laugh when Susanna thanked Fuller for calling him a wonderful American actress. 

    But I was soon overcome by guilt, feeling my heart warmed by her naivete. 

    There is a gamut of emotions flying around. Fuller’s pent-up resentment against the beautiful kind, his biases apparent: 

    You do everything you can to give lonely ordinary people like me indigestion and the heebie-jeebies, and you wouldn’t even hold hands with me to keep me from falling off a cliff.

    Hinkley‘s life which was quite similar to Fuller’s in terms of the treatment meted out to him by the fair ladies, is now merely an exercise in reminiscence:

    All my pleasures are looking at what used to be pleasures.

    And then there is Susanna. Having suffered judgements of all kinds on account of her beauty.

    All through high school, people like you would look at me as if they wished I’d drop dead. They’d never dance with me, they’d never talk to me, they’d never even smile back.

    It is easy to focus on one side and completely forget the other! How mean is it to hold the biases dearer than a fellow being? How easy is it to judge and even easier to be a hypocrite?

    Susanna would probably have been the last person I sympathized with, coming into her story. 

    But that would be before my walk with Miss Temptation.

  • After Visiting 20+ Countries, What’s the One Thing You Remember the Most?

    After Visiting 20+ Countries, What’s the One Thing You Remember the Most?

    I was watching The Graham Norton Show the other day. It seemed one of the older ones. That little episode featured Jack Whitehall, Jennifer Lawrence, and James McAvoy. One clip from that episode became somewhat famous, where Mr. Whitehall had a funny anecdote about poop. 

    Jennifer Lawrence burst out laughing when he was done. So did I, all the while being disgusted by my imaginings of the scene.

    That episode reminded me of something rather than someone -a friend from the past. Although his story was much less disgusting, it was fun, nevertheless. I could hardly even call it a story. It was a fact of his life.

    A little context before I jump in: many a time, an icebreaker question that people ask is, “If you get X million in a windfall gain, what would you do with the money?”

    The response could be many things, but ‘travel the world’ usually features in the top 10 of almost every list I have ever come across, including my own.

    Same with this gentleman. Travel was # 3 on his list.

    I later found out that traveling was a passion for the guy. He had already been to around 20 different countries. I was intrigued. 

    He recounted his adventures from being in a variety of different places in Europe, Australia, and Africa. Beautiful places, all. 

    As he entertained requests to point out peculiarities from each of his visits, I imagined myself in all those places, experiencing the culture, the food, and the natural beauty. My imagination had been doing a terrific job of replacing him from all the pictures by me. It was fun visiting all these twenty countries in my head.

    Threatened by my wild imagination, my brain kicked in. He was the hero of these stories. Not me. And I started paying attention.

    Spain was beautiful, the language, the romance, the culture. It was amazing. The hotel that we stayed at had great washrooms.

    Italy has the best food I have ever had in my life. Those people really know how to live. We lived in budget hotels there, but they were spotless. The bathrooms were spick and span!

    .. and so forth

    A curious thing dawned on me. Every time he described a place, by the third or fourth sentence of every description, he would come to the washroom, water closet, powder room, the dunny, or some other version of it. It was becoming evident that clean washrooms were a significant part of his successful travel playbook. 

    Don’t get me wrong; I like clean rooms, washrooms, and everything. My childhood was especially marinated in the ‘Cleanliness is Godliness’ philosophy. Thanks to working parents, who could use more hands cleaning up the mess than making it.

    But it mattered more to the gentleman going by his mention of washrooms at least 30 times in a conversation about 20 countries he visited. 

    It made me question my priorities. 

    Maybe I am not as clean as I am supposed to be. But the lazy being that I am, I was quick to settle on the following: 

    He is way too clean; maybe a freak! He must have some early onset of germophobia or something.

    I let my imagination run wild again. Wilder this time. 

    I imagined getting my hands on his photo albums from all his travels and one photograph after the other – they were all pictures of the loos he had visited. 

    From the most basic to the most exquisite. But all undeniably sparkling clean. 

    No mountains, no beaches, no sunrise, no sunset. Just the loo.

    And then I forgot all about him. 

    Time can do that to you until one day, far from my apartment, loaded on two liters of water with an urgent need to go. 

    I never realized I had a photographic memory until that day as the images from that guy’s photo album played in my head.

  • Mammon and the Archer by O.Henry: Summary, Analysis and Review

    Mammon and the Archer by O.Henry: Summary, Analysis and Review

    Mammon and the Archer is one of the more popular short stories by O. Henry. Published more than a century ago, the story is about wealth, love, and time and how one of those enables the others. 

    It is centered around a wealthy businessman who, by means of his wealth, creates circumstances for his son to propose to a woman who will soon leave the States for Europe.

    Mammon and the Archer: Summary and Plot Analysis

    The story opens in the library of Rockwall mansion. A retired soap manufacturer Anthony Rockwall – the owner – worships ‘Mammon’ (Hebrew for Money). He lives with his son, Richard, in a fifth avenue New York mansion, served by an apparent army of servants.

    He calls for a servant to send for his son. When the young Rockwall shows up, he is gently reprimanded about his frugality before the conversation turns to what money can and can’t do.

    Richard’s opinion that there are certain things money can’t buy is troubling to his old man. After all, he is a Mammon-worshiper, and all his life hasn’t been able to find one thing money can’t do.

    Noticing his son being off for the past few weeks, he enquires about the reason behind his torment and soon learns that he is in love with a woman who’s soon to be leaving for Europe.

    Richard hasn’t been able to get a chance to reveal his emotions or ask for her hand for want of time with her. Even millionaires, he says, can’t buy time.

    Richard’s Aunt Ellen values love over money and even reprimands Rockwall Senior for being so materialistic. She goes on to hand over his wife’s ring to Richard, for it brought luck in love, and he was to give it to the woman he loved.

    As if the gift ignited something in him, he slipped the ring on and ordered a cab right away to meet Miss Lantry.

    He picks her up, and they head to the theater. On the way, he accidentally drops his mother’s ring and stops for a minute to pick it up. During that time, however, there is enormous traffic congestion, and Richard and Miss Lantry are stranded in the cab.

    Fast forward a few hours, Aunt Ellen tells Anthony that Richard proposed, and Miss Lantry accepted amid the holdup. She proclaims the power of love, and Anthony does nothing to refute her argument. 

    It is later revealed that Anthony engineered the holdup with the help of a man named Kelly for a paltry thousand dollars and change. 

    Mammon and the Archer: Review and My Thoughts

    While most of O.Henry’s stories celebrate love over riches, in this one, you could see him leaning on the Mammon’s side. Anthony considers money a powerful tool, and his belief in it is steadfast. At the same time, his son Richard isn’t as thoroughly convinced.

    Here’s Anthony’s take on wealth and its power

    Said the rules of power couldn’t be bucked for a yard by a team of ten millionaires.

    I bet my money on money every time. I have been through the encyclopedia down to Y looking for something you can’t buy with it; and I expect to have to take the appendix next week.

    And here’s Richard’s –

    No, dad, this is one tangle that your money can’t unravel 

    We can’t buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people will live longer.

    Richard’s aunt Ellen, is the same as Ricaard when it comes to matters of the heart. We do hear from her:

    Love is all powerful.

    But in the story, proud denunciation of her brother’s materialistic worldview is in contrast to the final twist: money actually can buy you time. And that was why Richard could afford the tete-a-tete and the resulting proposal. Only in part, though.

    Money wasn’t the only reason.

    Anthony Rockwell, unlike his neighbors, is a self-made man and a caring one. His interactions with his son and his sister reveal that he loves them, despite being a money worshipper. His love for money hasn’t corrupted his emotions for human beings. He spoils his son, gently reprimanding his son for his moderate expenses despite his wealth – 

    You have got as much money to waste as any of them, and yet you stick to what’s decent and moderate.

    At the same time, he doesn’t shy away from solving his son’s problems and affording him time using money.

    While Ellen and Richard are oblivious to Anthony’s part in enabling the proposal and reiterate the Love Reigns theory, he doesn’t feel the need to correct them. Which again speaks to the truth of his love for them.

    That goodness of heart, however, doesn’t stop him from making a wry comment to Mr.Kelly about a kind of naked fat boy, shooting arrows at people- who was nowhere to be seen when the proposal took place.

    Mammon (money), not the fat boy (cupid), was responsible for bringing the lovebirds together.

    Or you might say Anthony Rockwall played cupid.

  • Do or DO NOT; There is No Try: Yoda

    Do or DO NOT; There is No Try: Yoda

    This character from Star Wars can be seen on T-shirts, Legos, games, soft toys, and miniature figurines, just to name a few. Now, I know a bunch of characters will come to mind, given the popularity of this movie series. But what if I told you, you had to pick the Ancient Wise one? Who will you be taking with you to the meditation/yoga retreat?

    Yoda, I hope.

    Yoda from Star Wars

    There is a reason why Yoda is everywhere. An epitome of wisdom, an inspiration to all Jedi warriors. Look beyond his grammar, and you will find that brief quips are loaded with deep, timeless wisdom.

    Do or Do Not; There is no try.

    To refresh your memory, this is something he says in Dagobah, part of the last instructions to Luke Skywalker, in a bid to make him more committed to the cause. It was all or none when it came to commitment, and the sooner Luke learned that the better, if not easier, his journey would be.

    We have seen the all-time greats constantly marking genius as someone who can distill the most complicated concepts into simple consumable nuggets. 

    Einstein, Feynman, and Shakespeare were all fans of simplicity and simple explanations to drive complexity home.

    Back to basics: 1 or 0. 

    Yes or No. 

    On or Off. 

    You are either in it or out of it. You only have one option.It is as simple as that. 

    You are either getting a 100% on the test , or you are failing. 

    There was a fascinating TED talk by Salman Khan, founder of Khan academy, where he spoke about honing expertise by aiming for a complete wholesome understanding than targeting a certain pass percentage in tests. Isn’t it intimidating to be 100% on everything you touch?

    Needless to say, it is. 

    The Jedi Master was a harsh taskmaster. He wanted it done. He wanted the Jedi masters to be in it. Clear head, clear commitment. 

    The simplest of chinks in the armor can take the greatest warriors down. Luke couldn’t afford it, and the sooner he accepted that, the better for him.

    It might not be hard to digest that there might have been some influence of the Yoda philosophy in James Cameron’s advice when he said:

    “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

    Frankly, there is no other way.

    How do you, my dear reader, feel about that? Is there really no try, just a “do or don’t”?