Panchatantra with a twist : The Turtle and the swans

It was a drought year and the water in the pond was disappearing. Two swans, Sankat and Vikat, were worried about their friend - the turtle, Kambugriva - who lived in the pond. The turtle suggested that the two of them could hold opposite ends of a stick, while he held on to the middle of it with his mouth, and ferry him to safety. The swans agreed and the plan was carried out. When they were flying, people saw the sight and commended the cleverness of the birds. The turtle opened his mouth to respond to them, fell to the ground and was killed by the people.

* * *

So, you thought that it was all about keeping your mouth shut, when speech is dangerous? That's because you do not know the real story.

"Look, bro! There is a turtle in that drying pond. If we capture that, my cook can make a delightful dish of it."

"Listen! The turtle is saying something to those swans."

"Get a stick and you two hold opposite ends of it. I will hold on to the middle with my mouth and you can carry me to safety."

"Hey Bro! Let us rush in before the swans carry the turtle away."

By the time the duo reach the pond, the birds had started flying.

"Let's follow them in the jeep, bro! I have an idea."

"What?"

"Remember Ravi? That idea for the ad campaign for the new deodorant?"

"Yeah! He screwed himself up royally, didn't he? The boss was telling HIS boss how he always knew that Soumya was a great talent, and she had proved herself with the idea for the campaign when Ravi pipes up and says that it was HIS idea."

"It WAS his idea. BUT the idiot should have known that telling it then would screw him up with the boss. YET, he could not keep quiet."

"Yeah, but why are you telling this now?"

"Some people cannot keep quiet when someone else is given the credit for their ideas. Even if it kills them."

"So...? Ah! I get what you mean."

The two of them yelled loudly, "Ah! How clever of the birds to have thought up this idea to save the turtle."

The turtle could not bear to see the birds praised for what was, after all, HIS idea. Even if they were helping him. He opened his mouth to say that it was HIS genius; fell to the earth and ended up becoming turtle stew by the night.

Yes, getting due credit can be real hazardous!

Words of Importance - Downsizing

The importance of jargon, in any science or social science, is normally to serve as a shorthand for concepts that would consume too many words to put across. In the nature of things, jargon also comes in handy to make things palatable - nay, scientific, logical and even inevitable - when saying it in common words could raise a storm of protest and vilification. As far as I know, there is no area of human endeavor that mostly uses jargon for the latter purpose - or, merely, to make things sound more important than they really are - as management.

If one were to start hunting for jargon of this sort, one need not go far beyond 'down-sizing' for an example. The simplest set of words for 'down-sizing' would be 'chucking out employees' and, you will certainly agree, that the latter does not sound very palatable, leave alone half as important. The HR guy, who is handed out the job, would probably feel like the public hangman if he had to say that he was 'chucking out employees'. Why, his family may hold their noses and step aside when he came by. On the other hand, he can say that he is busy with 'down-sizing' and everyone will be proud of how he is contributing to the company's efficiency.

What, then of the top management? Could they really say, "We made a mistake in assessing our employee requirement and every mistake has to be paid for. So, now, you will have to pay for our mistakes"? Easier by far to say, "In the interests of more efficient performance, we are down-sizing the company." Even better if you can pay a chunk of the scarce money that you have to get a management consultant to say so. It is always easier when you get an outsider for a hangman.

What, then, if the top management has changed and NOW they are 'down-sizing'? Well, really, you are pretty naive if you expect this lot of guys to say, "My incentive depends on improving the performance of this company. It is easier for me to do it by reducing the salary bill, than by increasing the scale of performance of the company to utilize its employees optimally." Naturally, 'down-sizing' comes in handy, indeed.

Then, of course, if someone takes this company over, he is not likely to say, "The other guys made the mistake of over-staffing this place. Why should I carry the can for it?" You guessed it - downsizing.

This word, though, is one of the few that has got caught in the political correctness thing that plagues a lot of words. It has acquired such unsavory connotations that people have had to invent a more politically correct term for it - "Right-sizing". Like all those politically correct terms, it is only the bottle that is new. The wine is the same old, same old.

Some time soon, someone is going to catch on to the fact that saying "Right-sizing" would automatically mean that the organization was 'wrong-sized' before and THAT would directly mean that the management was wrong - not a very palatable thing if it is the same management doing the 'right-sizing'. Soon, they will be inventing another term for it.

Or, have they already?

Panchatantra with a twist - The Blue Jackal

A jackal, Chandaraka, driven to seek food in a town by hunger is chased by a group of mongrels and hides in a vat of blue dye and ends up getting dyed blue. Later, when he returns to the jungle, he finds all the animals - including the large predators like lions, tigers, panthers and wolves - fleeing from him in fear, since they had never encountered a blue jackal. Seizing the opportunity, he claims to be a special creation of God sent down to rule them. He is duly accepted as King and appoints various animals to various posts. He banishes all the jackals from the jungle. One day, a distant pack of jackals start howling and Chandaraka joins the howling. Recognizing that he was but a jackal and not a special creation of God, the other animals pounce on him and tear him to pieces.

* * *

Actually, you know what, there is an inside story to this tale. Or did you really think that a jackal, no matter how blue it was dyed, could think on the spot and make use of its color to become the King of the Jungle? This is how it really happened.

Chandaraka poked his head out of the vat and peered around fearfully. The mongrels were gone. Before they could come back, he jumped out of the vat and raced out of town. The jungle lay invitingly in front of him but...

"Hey! You look kind of different. What are you?"

Chandaraka turned in a flash to see a human clad in what they called a three-piece suit. Considering that it was forty degrees celsius in the shade, there was only one species of human who would walk around in such hot apparel - and it was most certainly not hunters. And that thing hanging in front - tie, humans called it. They must be ashamed of having lost their tails and were trying to do it artificially, but why hang it in front, instead of back and lower where it belonged, Chandaraka had never understood.

Feeling less fearful than he had felt with the mongrels, Chandaraka turned to the human who he was sure was some sort of management chap.

"I am just a jackal. I jumped into a vat of dye and now I am this color. The mongrels chased me out of town and, now, I am sure that I will be torn to pieces by the animals of the jungle. You know how it is - we beasts do not tolerate anything different. Can you suggest a way to remove this dye?"

"Are you mad? Here you have a Unique Selling proposition (USP) and you want to get rid of it?"

"I don't have any Un..Uni...whatever. I only have this useless dye on me."

"THAT shows you have no sense of marketing. It does not matter if it is useless. All we have to do is to use it to create Brand Equity for yourself."

"Bra..Brand what?"

"Look! What is the issue, here? You are blue and look like no animal ever seen in the Jungle, right?"

"Y..yes!" said Chandaraka doubtfully, not knowing where this was leading.

"Well...instead of thinking of it as a flaw, think of it as a unique attribute."

"AND I will be uniquely dead", said Chandaraka, showing a dash of humor.

"Stop being pessimistic. All you have to do is to make it SEEM special. How would it be if...hmmm...ah! You can just claim that God made you specially this way and sent you down."

"Uh! Sent me down for what?"

"For the salvation of beast-kind, maybe? No...no...that sort of thing sells only with humans. Sometimes I think that THAT is the sixth sense we guys keep talking about...say, why not to rule the jungle?"

"Uh! You will just get me slaughtered by the lion"

"Hush! You are too pessimistic. You just do not know the advantage of adding the word SPECIAL to anything that is unique to a product...huh...person...uh...beast. We marketing guys have made people believe that someone who wears the right clothes is fit to run a company, so why cannot a jackal dyed blue rule the jungle?"

"And sold yourself, too, on the idea, going by how you dress" thought Chandaraka. "No wonder the human race is going to pot, if they are really being run by clothes dummies"

Aloud he said, "What if the beasts do not think like humans?"

"What have you got to lose? You will only get slaughtered, then. But that is what will happen if you try nothing."

THAT was convincing logic. Chandaraka started trotting to the jungle, when the management chap gave some parting advice.

"Don't ever let on that you are only a jackal. Nothing kills the magic of the USP faster than it being considered ordinary."

AND you know the success of the marketing strategy. Alas, that Chandaraka failed to remember the parting advice and destroyed his USP by displaying his ordinariness.

Have Opinion, Will Speak

You know what? There are really surprising people in this world. People who really think that, even if you have an opinion, it is not always necessary to spout it. I mean, really, how stupid can you get? What is the purpose of having an opinion if you cannot tell it to the world? And what is THEIR opinion about why people bothered to create Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram and what-have-you, if they did not want all people to start spouting their opinions? It is astounding that such people know enough to keep breathing.

True, there are some people in the world who ought to be prohibited from having opinions. Even if they are permitted opinions, they ought to be prohibited from expressing them. (Freedom of speech? You think that applies to the other guy as well? What rot!) THAT, of course, cannot apply to me. I am such a scintillating thinker, with absolutely original ideas and opinions, and a clear understanding of any subject. Naturally, I could not be so selfish as to deny the world the fruits of my genius.

Anyway, what am I doing wasting time thinking about fools, sitting in front of Facebook? After all, did the poet not say, "The world abounds in fools. Search for one and you will find a thousand. Even if you are not searching, they thrust themselves into your notice. (Duniya mein bewakoofon ki kami nahin hai Ghalib; Ek doondo hazaar milte hain;....mat doondo phir bhi milte hain). Time to attend to more important business.

"Women prohibited from staying late in office and working on holidays"

There is a link attached but just who has the time to go through all that? Anyway, it is obvious that this employer is an anti-woman dinosaur. I click on the comment bar and write

"As long as these sexists exist, this country is never going to develop. It is exactly this sort of attitude that leads to suppression of women and, in extreme cases, crimes like rape."

There, now! That should teach the world how to treat women. I scroll down, scattering likes to my friends - especially the status message that said that Virat Kohli would have smashed a double century, if only Anushka Sharma had not gone to Australia (Yeah! Correct! To people who have been liking my own status messages. So?). Another message catches my eye.

"Managers prohibited from keeping women late at office and calling them to work on holidays. Is this not discriminatory?"

My God! Where does this idiot live? Does he not know how unsafe any city in this country is for women?

"What nonsense? How could you even consider risking women staying late, when their safety is threatened in every city. Is this an off-day for you or do you always live in cloud-cuckoo land?"

I put up this measured and polite response and move on. Ah! There is the photograph of my friend. Makes me happy to see that there are a few who have bulged more at every seam than I have. I comment, "Wow! Do not look one bit different from our school-days. You could slip into the school uniform and walk into school as a student", while thinking that there was no school uniform ever made that could hold ALL that mass inside without splitting from the strain. Then, I see I have received a new message from one of my FB friends (as opposed to friends, who have seen me in person and still choose to keep in touch).

"Hey! Do you realize that both those statuses relate to the same thing? You oppose it in one and support it in another"

"Nonsense! The first is about a sexist organization discriminating against women employees. The second is about a sexist fellow complaining about an organization that cares for its women employees."

"Dude! The organization, and the action by it, is the same. It has just been described differently."

How dare this idiot question my perspicacious opinions? There is no point in continuing this discussion. I use the polite form of 'Piss Off': I put in a smiley, close the message box and continue with FB.

"XXX calls for ban on sensitive film made about the infamous rape case."

This is the sort of thing that keeps India in the dark ages. They will want to brush under the carpet everything that shows the warts in Society. If a mirror is not shown to Society, how will it ever improve?

"When will we ever be free of this 'Khap Panchayat' mindset? It is time that we stopped hiding away from reality or Indian Society will never be safe for women"

There, now! THAT should tell Mr.XXX what I think of his antediluvian ideas. I scroll down and see another thought-provoking status.

"British documentary portrays all Indian men as rapists."

God! Will the British never get over their colonial mindset? They just cannot allow India to be seen as a modern country, soon to be a super-power.

"When will the West wake up and see that they cannot keep India permanently in the dark ages? We should not be allowing these documentaries to portray this erroneous picture of India."

THAT should tell them. No sooner than I had smiled in satisfaction than I see another incoming message from the same FB friend.

"You do it again! Both these statuses are about the same documentary."

My God! What sort of FB friends do I have? It is nice to know that someone follows you but is it really necessary for him to be following me, like Mary's little lamb, to ALL the statuses that I comment on? AND trolling my comments? Do I really need this guy for a friend?

I unfriend (Huh! Has it not become a regular word yet?) the guy immediately, but my simmering rage still needs an outlet. I click on my own status and type

"Some people are never happy unless they troll others. Thank God for the 'unfriend' option. #LeaveMeAlone"

I look at it. It does not seem enough. I add a #IrritatingNuts, #CyberStalkers and #DeathToTrolls and put it up. Within five minutes, I get some 34 likes and 20 comments agreeing with me (No! I have not yet reached the 'thousands of likes and hundreds of comments' levels, but I am working on it).

Another good day on Facebook!

P.S : This post owes its origins to a status update on FB made by a friend and a post by Beloo Mehra on thinking.