GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELPS THEMSELVES

Countless is the number of meetings I have attended in my career spanning over three decades. Before every meeting, the secretarial staff place a pencil before my name plate on conference table. When I see a pencil, I MUST have it. I do not know if you will brand me a klepto, but I confess: one thing that I cannot stop myself from is acquiring – beg, borrow or steal I will – pencils.

So, at the end of every meeting, I invariably take the pencil and put it into my pocket. I do not feel guilty about it because I know that the pencil is meant for me.

Likewise, I am not, for once, smitten by the pangs of conscience when I recall after checking out of a hotel room that I could not resist the temptation to ‘steal’ the pencil they keep next to the scribbling pads on the bedside table, the writing table and the toilet. (Why one in the smallest room, I have always wondered. Maybe the brightest of ideas spring forth in the loo, as good old Archimedes demonstrated in the third century BC.)

I have my collection of Parkers and Sheaffers, Crosses and Watermans, DuPonts and Mont Blanc Meisterstucks, oodles of them, but I love pencils. Why pencils, you may ask. That is a million-dollar question.

Coming to think of it, it is not just the pencil that catches my fancy. I like those scribbling pads too. I jot down ideas or thoughts that flash in my brain, in the scribbling pad which doubles as my organizer. I want to use these ideas later . I always have a scribbling pad nearby, to note down phone numbers or messages, or a list of things to do the next day. This pad is where I arrange my daily life.

I am not partial to these items: I love the entire range of hotel stationery – letter paper and envelopes. I like to impress my mother by sending a letter in the thick manila envelope containing a missive written on the letter paper of a five star luxury hotel.

How can I forget toiletry – shampoo and hair conditioner, moisturiser and talcum powder, soap and disposable razor which I help myself to? I do not lay my hands, however, on napkins, bath towels or bath robes. Some hotels pin a notice on the bathrobe exhorting the guest to contact the front office if he (or she) would like to ‘buy’ the bathrobe. Clever guys, aren’t they? Ditto with the luxury leather folio in which the letter paper and envelopes are placed.

As long as they do not attach such labels on pencils, stationery and toiletries, my inner voice won’t hold me back!

A SEA-FACING ROOM FOR THE BOSS

Mr Niyogi loved the good things in life – rich food, fine clothes, a game of golf, and the like (which implies a lot). Whenever he visited Bombay (It was in the 1970's, not Mumbai yet), the epicurean wanted to stay at the five-star Taj. And he wanted a sea-facing room which had premium rates.

According to his service conditions, he was not entitled to a room of that category or hotel, but he would ask Mr Borker, the Manager of the local branch, to arrange a room of his choice. Mr Borker could not afford to incur the wrath of the boss. If he did not oblige the boss, he would find himself posted in Cochin or Calcutta, Hyderabad or Ahmedabad. A transfer from Bombay was the last thing he wanted. So he somehow obliged the boss by accommodating this requirement.

I do not know how Mr Borker met the difference between the bill and the amount the boss was entitled to, but that is not one of our concerns for the present. Let us assume that it was by some sleight of hand which I am not privy to, but the fact is that Mr Borker kept the boss happy.

Mr Borker was at his wit’s end when the boss announced a visit at short notice. It was a Wednesday and boss was arriving on Friday. The test match was on and the Aussies and the English team were in town. The hotel was booked. Not a room to spare even in the neighbouring Hotel Diplomat, leave alone the upmarket Taj.

With no choice left, Mr Borker booked him in another hotel, I think, The Classic or The Paradise Hotel, beside the Diplomat. He persuaded the reservation clerk to earmark a sea-facing room for the boss.

Come Friday, Mr Borker felt jittery as he received the boss in the airport. During the small talk, he brought up the topic of the Test match and prepared the boss for his stay in a hotel other than The Taj. The boss was not too pleased and made no secret of his displeasure.

‘But sir, it is a sea-facing room,’ Mr Borker tried to assuage the hurt.

Once inside the hotel, he followed the boss who followed the bellboy who led the way, hauling the luggage. The room was on the third floor.

After the bellboy left, the boss growled at Mr Borker, ‘Where is the sea, Mr Borker?’

Whereupon Mr Borker opened the door to the toilet, climbed on to the throne, and, twisting his neck at an awkward angle, peered through the gap between the leaves of the exhaust fan. Craning his neck further, he spotted a small patch of blue, and with a sense of victory, he announced, ‘There, Sir, the sea is there!’

SARTORIAL PROPRIETY

I was undergoing Head Office training – the last lap of the induction of a Probationary Officer into the Bank. As many would testify, this is the best part of one's life – no grappling with the ledgers and books, no balancing to do, no responsibility, no accountability. All you have to do is to thumb through the files maintained in the different departments and learn what you can about procedure and correspondence.

Thus it was that I chanced upon a file with the label 'Surprise Inspection Reports of One-man Branches'. For the uninitiated, establishment of one-man branch was an experiment that banks toyed with in the days of Social Control (pre-Nationalisation). Set up in unbanked areas, these branches would undertake limited transactions – deposits and small loans. To keep the overheads low, it was decided that there would be no joint custodian for the cash and valuables. The officer-in-charge himself would handle cash and the gold pledged as security.

This arrangement made it necessary to have more frequent inspections of these units because the credo of bankers is ‘Trust, but verify’. Free from the fetters of joint custodianship, the officer-in-charge could play with Bank’s cash and land both in trouble. Therefore surprise inspections were prescribed. It was also stipulated that not more than a fortnight should elapse between two inspections.

I went through many such reports. The verification had exposed nothing untoward on the official front, but a sentence in one of the reports cried out aloud for attention: ‘The officer-in-charge is advised to be properly attired while in the branch during non-banking hours.’

I was intrigued.

I located the signatory of the report. He was a middle level officer then (a few years senior to me). I button-holed him and asked him the circumstances in which the comment was made.

“It was a one-man branch located in a suburban coastal village. Looks like my boss has forgotten that a surprise inspection was due because the fortnight was ending that day. It suddenly dawned on him that if inspection was not done on that day, there would be violation of the stipulation of fortnightly inspections.

“So he called me in the afternoon, assigned me the task of surprise verification and asked me to rush to the branch.

“It was past banking hours when he reached the branch. That was the time the officer-in-charge was to write up the accounts for the day. "When I went in, he was seated in his chair, legs resting on the table, wearing a thin towel around his midriff and anointing himself liberally with balaaguluchyaadi oil."

"TRUST ME, I'M, LIKE, A SMART PERSON"

 "TRUST ME, I'M, LIKE, A SMART PERSON"

You don't have to be an Einstein to guess who spouted the above words: Donald Trump, that paragon of sagacity. "The trouble is that in the modern world, the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt," said Bertrand Russell.

***

Ailments can prove to be blessings in disguise, at least sometimes. Being confined to the bed for over a week helped me catch up with some reading. One of the books I read was an incredibly slim (96 pages including the title page, foreword, publisher's note, introduction, blank pages between chapters, a few charts and all that.) I guess it can be compressed into all of eight A4 sheets, 12 point Times New Roman, double space. In fact, the 9-chapter affair is a short essay.

Titled "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity", it has been written by Italian economic historian Carlo M Cipolla (1922-2000) and translated into four languages, clocking half a million copies. This Fullbright fellow and Professor of University of California postulates a moral definition of stupidity: a stupid person is one who harms others without procuring any gain for himself.

In his foreword, the redoubtable Nissim Nicholas Taleb (author of Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, etc) describes the work as a 'masterly book'. He says that the book starts like a satire and then swings between the serious and the satire; he adds, thoughtfully, 'because economics is boring (by design) and this is fun, playful to read'. That sums up what the book is like.

According to Cipolla, though the actions of the stupid person would not benefit him in any way, they can cause a lot of damage though they have no interest in the survival of the system. (Methinks one could replace 'though' with 'because'!)

***

Rather than dwell more on the book, I will reproduce the whole of Chapter VII on the third of the five laws he enunciates.

"It is not difficult to understand how social, political and institutional power enhances the damaging potential of a stupid person. But one still has to explain and understand what essentially it is that makes a stupid person dangerous to other people – in other words what constitutes the power of stupidity. .

Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behaviour. An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit's actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account, All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit's actions, his nasty manoeuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defences.

With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy.

Because the stupid person's actions do not conform to the rules of rationality, it follows that:

a) one is generally caught by surprise by the attack;

b) even when one becomes aware of the attack, one cannot organise a rational defence, because the attack itself lacks any rational structure.

The fact that the activity and movements of a stupid creature are absolutely erratic and irrational not only makes defence problematic but it also makes any counterattack extremely difficult - like trying to shoot at an object which is capable of the most improbable and unimaginable movements. This is what both Dickens and Schiller had in mind when the former stated that with stupidity and sound digestion man may front much' and the latter wrote that against stupidity the very Gods fight in vain."

***

Haven't we came across such persons in the history, day-to-day life, workplace and politics whose decisions harass people for no reason, for no advantage to them, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places?

Three such instances spring to my mind. How about you?

PORTMANTEAU

(A rehash of a piece I had written for a column for children)

What is common to the words smog, brunch, fantabulous and mizzle? They are all portmanteau words. The French word "portmanteau" means a travelling bag or a large suitcase with two compartments. Can you guess why these are called portmanteau words? They mash together the sounds and meanings of two diverse words.

These words often result from the need to have just the right word to describe something. Those who have lived in north India would have seen the fog in wintry evenings blending with the smoke from the coal-fired chulhas. That is smog, a combination of the words 'smoke' and 'fog'. Even so, a midmorning meal served after breakfast time but before the lunch hour is called brunch (breakfast + lunch). Now, you know why portmanteau words go by that name. Sometimes, the best way to convey an idea contained in two words is to combine them into one!  

Some portmanteau words paint vivid mental pictures, such as mizzle. This word, first used by Jane Austen in her novel Emma, is a combination of the words mist and drizzle. It is a perfect word to describe very fine rain. So perfect that when you chance upon the word, you can almost feel the weather condition that is being described! Mizzle is indeed a fantabulous (fantastic + fabulous = marvellously good) word! 

It is not always that the word coined follows the same order as its constituents. Take, for instance, the word infomercial (a lengthy commercial chock-full of product information). You might not find several of the portmanteau words in the dictionary because some are almost nonsensical. Also, many have only recently become familiar. Others, like mizzle and dramedy (drama and comedy) make perfect sense but are used only in some regions. 

Many portmanteau words are labelled as "slang", but many, like smog (smoke + fog), guestimate (guess + estimate), infotainment (information + entertainment) and chortle (chuckle + snort) are accepted. Several brand names like the card game Pictionary (Pictures + Dictionary) are portmanteaux. If you are a Lewis Carroll fan, you will have encountered many portmanteau words. In fact, he is widely accepted as the person who gave the name 'portmanteau' to these blends. 

While many portmanteau words can be "figured out", some of them really challenge one's imagination. How would you decipher the Carroll word "slithy"? How do you make a portmanteau word? Let us hear the master. In The Hunting of the Shark, Carroll says, "Take the two words fuming and furious. Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it undecided which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards fuming, you will say fuming-furious; if they turn, even by a hair's breadth, towards furious, you will say furious-fuming; but if you have that rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you'll say frumious." 

Why not try making up your own portmanteau words? Is there some thought you've been trying to express that's really two thoughts in one? Are there two words that just seem to flow together well? Be serious, silly or totally off the wall. But most of all, be creative.