Author: Swati

For some reason, someone decided that the best way for a person to perfect English pronunciation was to hone their skill in tongue twisters. 

After all, what other way to royally mark your rite of passage to the world of fluent native speakers than:

1. Being able to give a perfect account of a lady selling seashells on the seashore.
2. Being scared of the neighborhood Betty, who loves to buy better butter.

Seashell lady and I haven’t had much trouble. She has always been very kind to my tongue and tiny brain. She is also not intimidating. She is some mysterious creature somewhere, and I have very high hopes, if not absolute certainty, of never running into her.

Betty isn’t the same, though. There is something supremely familiar about her personality. She means business. She is here to solve problems. She is also there to haunt your second language lessons for all eternity i.e., if you let her.

Don’t know Betty? Oh how I envy you! Once the dust settles, Let me explain. With a convenient rhyme, hoping you have come across at least some version of it.

Betty bought a bit of butter
But she found the butter bitter
So she bought some better butter
To make the bitter butter better.

Betty is the epitome of creativity, an innate problem solver. 

As you can see, Betty accidentally bought bitter butter. She could have stopped right there. But she is a curious soul, a butter connoisseur, so naturally, she tastes it.

She finds it bitter. 

She does have the option to discard it, But where’s the fun in that? She devises a very well-thought-out plan to solve the problem- throw good butter after bad – to make the bad mildly better than bitter. 

You can see that she is human because she gives in to the same fallacy as the rest of rational humans. She surely doesn’t abide by the golden rules of gambling – never throw good money after bad. Or maybe the rules of money don’t apply to butter.

Betty and butter get along very well.

Butter and I get along very well.

So per syllogism, do Betty and I get along well?

You know the answer.

I have been watching a lot of crime/investigation shows lately, and it has been messing with me. 

No, it’s not the rampant gore that gets to me, thanks to my palms-to-eye coordination. Those babies are always on standby, deployed efficiently, at the slightest cue from the suspenseful background score.

It’s the doors. 

Yes, you read it right. I did mean doors.

So, here is how it rolls, someone gets some actionable intelligence, and they head to bust somebody- at their temporary residence or some rendezvous point. Now, this temporary meeting point could be a dingy apartment, a fancy house, a dilapidated house in the country, a stellar spacious condo in a high rise… you get the point.

What almost inevitably happens is that someone breaks through the door – mostly without so much effort as a kick. One kick, and bam! – the door comes off!

It does not matter if the person kicking it was a teenager, an average young man, or a mature adult, so long as they are the hero in the scene. 

The debris from that kick is quite a sight to behold, it makes me question all the science I thought I knew growing up. All those memorization nights with “force equals mass into acceleration” come to taunt me. They laugh at me. 

One kick, that’s all it takes. Really?

But then I switch back to my art lessons. What fun would it be if you are armed, with a bunch of officers following you, you wait for the ‘dangerous and armed’ criminal to answer the door for you?

That would probably switch the scene from intense suspense and thrill to comedy-esque. Maybe?

I look deeper and realize it’s just plain old jealousy. Just because I can’t smash a door by kicking it hard once doesn’t mean everyone else can’t. Maybe an average person does have it in them to bring a door down with a simple power of a kick. After being driven up the wall with all this door business, I have an epiphany. 

When life gives you lemons, just kick the door. The closest door you can find.

And preferably at midnight when everyone is fast asleep, for sweet vengeance. 

Time and again, I find myself returning to the age-old humor classic Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. I have sometimes wondered why that might be but have not pursued that train of thought for long in a desperate attempt to avoid paying any cognitive taxes. 

I must admit that it has been life-transforming. Wait, I lie. I have always lived my life that way- avoiding work every chance. 

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that I like almost every sentence written in that book. But on every other re-read, some new wisdom catches my eye.

The following was the highlight of my most recent re-read of the book: 

How good one feels when one is full – how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented, but a full stomach does the business quite as well and is cheaper and more easily obtained.

Good indeed, no denying that. This might have to do with the fact that I read the book in self-imposed solitary confinement, avoiding all world distractions (food included) as if they were the plague. 

But that aside, the sentence did leave a good aftertaste. I wondered about it during and after many meals and felt even more strongly that a full belly is a prerequisite for sustainable happiness. 

Yes, you can be happy without a full belly if you have a clear conscience, but I guess at some point, the grumbling of your stomach will overpower all other senses and thoughts.

Full disclosure, my belief in my ideas isn’t as steadfast as I would like.

So naturally, I resort to the public library’s reference section for all the true wisdom out there. 

This search was quite the workout – moving around in the Psychology, Philosophy, ancient wisdom, and theology aisles- to name a few. A common theme was conscientiousness as the foundational brick for any sustainable human happiness. 

Out comes Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, where physiological needs (satiating hunger in this case) are considered key to a satisfied human. 

And Bam! 

I see him and Mr. Jerome in my daydreaming mind, shaking hands, hugging, and having drinks at the local bar close to my place. I decelerate my imaginary speeding car and come back to the reality of my own experience.

The only times I remember having had trouble sleeping was – if I had a presentation at work the following day that I am sure would bring shame to my professional existence, OR I only had a green salad and a soup for dinner. 

Oh, how powerful hunger is, how accomplished at keeping me awake! 

Literature tells me love has the same power. Love can make you lose your sleep and your appetite. I thank my stars that I never came across that kind of love (with loss of appetite and sleep, what good would that be to me anyway?)

This is not to undermine the importance of conscience. Not in the least. Literature worldwide is replete with advice and means of keeping a clear conscience. I wouldn’t comment on my level of conscientiousness; objective self-assessment isn’t my strong suit. 

But I like to believe that I am reasonably conscientious.

Now the fun part is, I found myself obsessing over the first part of Mr. Jerome’s sentence, completely ignoring the second:

“…but a full stomach does the business quite as well and is cheaper and more easily obtained.”

I can only speak for myself when I say that eating dollops of cream cheese, tzatziki, and a veggie burger gets me tangibly closer to happiness every day than mental cleansing – conscience or otherwise.

Ogden Nash, from the local library’s fiction aisle, had a terrific insight laid right out: 

“There is only one way to achieve happiness in this terrestrial ball, and that is either to have a clear conscience or none at all.”

I have not lost all hope.