Bad Luck Stories Can Do A Good Turn

Superstition is justifibiably dismissed as regressive and rooted in unproven beliefs. How can walking under a ladder or having a black cat cross your path bode Ill? Hanging lemons and chillies- or those blue and white turkish talismans- to ward off the evil eye are equally swiped from the ruins of Pompeii 15 years ago because of the bad luck that had apparently beset them ever since, indicates that superstitions can sometimes prove beneficial. Unlike the tomb of Tutankhamen- whose opening in 1923 supposedly activated an ancient curse that led to the deaths of many associated with its excavation- or even the malediction attached to the Kohinoor diamond, there has been no long-standing, well-known hex on Pompeii and most other ancient sites. That ciuld be why shards, fossils, artifacts and other remnants have been filched from historical sites with impunity and continue to be stolen. But the bad luck narrative associated with Pompeii resulted in some 100 conscience- stricken visitors returning their purloined mementos over the years. So those charged with protecting archeological sites elsewhere - including in India— could consider floating a few cautionary rumours as a low cost but effective method to prevent pilferage.

Comments

Women are, Indeed, The Fairer Sex

Fairness has been coloured by its association with creams, lotions and discrimination against darker skin tones. However, the word does have several other non-racial connotations, and in that context it is heartening to note that the findings of recent research in the US corroborates that women - Regardless of ethnicity- are indeed the fairer sex. And the difference is more than cosmetic, as among the 3.3 lakh people surveyed in 67 countries, women outnumbered men on prioritising fairness, purity(of intention, that is ) and compassion when it came to taking ethical decisions. While the finding makes a case for putting more women in places where fairnessvl counts, the fact that the divide between the sexes on this matter is more pronounced in the supposedly more gender-equal western nations comes as a surprise. After all, the conventional wisdom is that shades of opinion on fairness are more fraught in developing economies. Another recent study conducted in the US concluded that w...

Europe's plague Joke Renaissance

Laughing at the face of coronavirus is getting contagious in that continent With much of Europe abd Britain getting back under lockdown covers with Covid relurking, the cradle of dodgy pandemic jokes is having a renaissance. The chaps who brought the world the Teutonic Bubonic Plague Jokebook— the Black Death supposedly the prime reason for Germans losing their sense of humour — are already guffawing with fear. The strategy this time seems to be any dearth of mirth will be the birth of death. So, as cracks like the corona virus also keeping their versions of pub and restaurant timings —it's rule-abiding Europe for the critters too, you see— go viral, who knows, one may even have a new healthy obsession with Eros and Thanatos, rather than a prolonged taste for organic food and EU Rules of Origin Laws. Remember, this is the continent of the original Coveni, Covidi, Covici( I came down with Covid , I saw Covid, I conqured Covid), not to mention the very name ' Coronavirus...

Simple Solutions For No-Fly Zones

The unfortunate incident last week of the main in France who had a narrow escape when his house burned down because his attempt to swat a fly with an electric racket ignited a leaking gas cylinder underlines a the dangers if complicating simple tasks. If not an old-fashioned swatter, a rolled-up newspaper could have accomplished the deep more efficiently with considering the fate of that fly remains unknown. The efficacy of old-fashioned methods to deal with annoying flies has been immortalised in the Brothers Grimm 1812 tale, The Valiant Little Tailor, who dispatched no less than 'seven at one blow' and leveraged that feat to eventually become a king. An American cartoonist named Rube Goldberg became a by-word for the propensity to invent convoluted contraptions to perform simple tasks because of his sketches bon the subject. His cartoon Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin, published in 1931 has become a meme for complex contrivances; but nearly a century bof techno...

Shakespeare &Sainte

Search This Blog