Monty Python's The Life of Brian. (Almost) Starring Jiddu Krishnamurthy

Jiddu Krishnamurthy was the chosen one. He was the messiah.

He had been anointed as the messiah, as the World Teacher, the new Maitreya, by his adoptive mother the very powerful by Dr Annie Besant. He was fourteen at the time. He had no say in the matter.

Jiddu Krishnamurthy tried very hard to stop being the messiah.

As an adult, he repeatedly declared that he was no messiah, that the only guidance he could offer was for us to find our individuality, to strike out on our own, to find our unique paths to the truth. He dissolved the large organization that he helmed, that was dedicated to celebrating him.

Yet, despite Krishnamurthy’s clear and consistent denial of his divinity, to his dying day he couldn’t avoid people treating him as if he were the messiah.

When I was telling my daughter Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s story, I couldn’t help noticing that it perfectly parallels the narrative arc of Monty Python's The Life of Brian (available on Netflix).

Monty Python fans will recall that this is the story of Brian Cohen of Nazareth, now living with his Mum in Jerusalem circa 32 AD, who is mistaken for a prophet when he descends from the heavens (because the rickety balcony he is standing on to escape from the police breaks).

Brian of Nazareth,
at his Mum's window

His simple words are understood as divine revelations:

BRIAN: Good morning.

FOLLOWERS: A blessing! A blessing! A blessing!...

BRIAN: No. No, please! Please! Please listen. I've got one or two things to say.

FOLLOWERS: Tell us. Tell us both of them.

BRIAN: Look. You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!

FOLLOWERS: Yes, we're all individuals!

BRIAN: You've all got to work it out for yourselves!

FOLLOWERS: Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!

BRIAN: Exactly!

FOLLOWERS: Tell us more!

BRIAN: No! That's the point! Don't let anyone tell you what to do!

But, no. Brian’s denials don’t work. The devout, the crowd, the mob, is having none of it. They continue to deify him until he is crucified.

Was J Krishnamurthy crucified? Well, I found this online article describing him as “Indira Gandhi’s guru”, and therefore bracketing JK with Dhirendra Brahmachari…

Lamenting the loss of Kalami, Scramoge and Scackleton, while celebrating the triumph of Hextable, Scraptoft and Corriecravie

This blogpost started as an elegy for words from The Meaning of Liff which are no longer relevant.

Consider Kalami: The ancient Eastern art of being able to fold road maps properly.

Or Scarmoge: To cut oneself whilst licking envelopes.

Or Scackleton: horizontal avalanche of CDs that slides across the interior of a car as it goes around a sharp corner.

It’s been at least a decade since any of us were folding maps, licking envelopes, or stacking piles of CDs in a car. These things are no longer a part of our material culture.

However, it turns out that some The Meaning of Liff words have been amplified even if the material culture around them has changed.

Consider Hextable: the record you find in someone else’s collection that instantly tells you you could never go out with them. A Spotify playlist is now a perfect Hextable, even if vinyl records played on turntables are no longer a thing.

Or Scraptoft: The absurd flap of hair a vain and balding man grows over one ear to comb it plastered over the top of his head to the other ear. Who would have thought an American President would be the world’s #1 Scraptoft?

Or this set of corrie words:

Corriearklet: the moment at which two people, approaching from opposite ends of a long passageway, recognize each other and immediately pretend they haven’t. This is to avoid the ghastly embarrassment of having to continue recognizing each other the whole length of the corridor.

Corriedoo: The crucial moment of false recognition in a long passageway encounter. Though both people are perfectly aware that the other is approaching, they must eventually pretend sudden recognition. They now look up with a glassy smile, as if having spotted each other for the first time (and are particularly delighted to have done so), shouting out “Haaallooo!” as if to say “Good grief!! You!! Here!! Of all people! Well I never. Coo. Stap me vitals,” etcetera.

Corrievorrie: Corridor etiquette demands that once a corriedoo has been declared, corrievorrie must be employed. Both protagonists must now embellish their approach with an embarrassing combination of waving, grinning, making idiot faces, doing pirate impressions, and waggling the head from side to side while holding the other person’s eyes as the smile drips off their face, until, with great relief, they pass each other.

Corriecravie: To avert the horrors of corrievorrie (q.v.), the corriecravie is usually employed. This is the cowardly but highly skilled process by which both protagonists continue to approach while keeping up the pretence that they haven’t noticed each other – by staring furiously at their feet, grimacing into a notebook, or studying the walls closely as if in a mood of deep irritation.

Cellphones have made it easy for the whole world to corriecravie without being suspected of cowardice.

Moonballs from Planet Earth would like to propose that the magical powers that cellphone screens seem to have is not because of their hypnotically glowing pixels, but because they save the world from the torture of Corrievorrie.

BTW…one pleasure that I did not have when I first encountered The Meaning of Liff was googling up the places that lend their names to these words. 

The Women’s Institute of Hextable picture is especially evocative. I wonder what these WI members have in their record collections/ Spotify playlists?

Kalami Beach, Corfu

Scramogue, Ireland

Scackleton, Yorkshire. In Winter

Hextable, Kent. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Women's Institute

Corrievorrie, Scottish Highlands

Finding Malgudi in the Mediterranean, with Victoria Hislop

Since I can’t physically holiday on the Mediterranean this summer, I’m doing the next best thing and reading about Mediterranean holiday locations.

I reread The Last Dance, by Victoria Hislop, a collection of short stories I’d picked up while travelling in Greece many years ago. I’m loving it. Because these vignettes of Greek village life could so easily have been set in RK Narayan’s Malgudi.

These are stories of a simple, happy people, living among friends and family members they have known for generations. They sometimes get into fracas with each other, but these frictions are quickly and happily resolved.

There is a story of the Malkis brothers who fight over an inherited street café, split it down the middle, but then make up and reunite. There is the story of Claire from Yorkshire, who is engaged to Andreas the Cypriot, who learns about her fiancé’s family and to feel at home in this place where it is really hot even at Christmas. The title story is about Theodoris, who shares a dance with his one true love on the night they both are getting married to others. Fortunately, this collection doesn’t feature any deeper tragedy or pathos.

Sometimes reality does intrude on this idyllic world. The anti-Euro Athens riots make an appearance in one story, sort of like the Indian independence movement makes an appearance in Swami and Friends. But for most part, this collection evokes a simple world that carries on despite these intrusions, like Tolkien’s Shire, or Asterix the Gaul’s indomitable village, or RK Narayan’s Malgudi.

“I am often asked, ‘Where is Malgudi?’” wrote RK Narayan in his introduction to Malgudi Days. “All I can say is it is imaginary and not to be found on any map…”. So, Malgudi can’t be found on a map of the Aegean. But it does have kindred spirits on those rocky islands.

From Malgudi Days

RK Narayan with his wife Rajam

Victoria Hislop with her husband Ian

Paul Kennedy's Book Cover - The Fine Art of Being Wrong

This has to be one of my favourite book covers of all time:

That illustration on the bottom right so crisply summarises how easy it is for erudite intellectuals to be completely wrong.

Paul Kennedy’s 700+ page magnum opus was published in 1987 (when I was in college). This was the year that Japan’s per capita GDP overtook the USA’s for the first time. This was months before the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, a couple of years before the Berlin Wall fell. 

The tectonic plates of history were shifting. Harvard’s learned Professor Kennedy had understood history’s tectonic forces and had foreseen the shift. 

I remember the buzz this book created when it came out. Being able to quote fluently from Paul Kennedy was the hallmark of the undergraduate intellectual, the ultimate kunji for fundae-baazi. I bought a fat paperback copy for over Rs 600, gamely ploughed through about 250 pages, and felt guilty for at least a decade as the remaining 450+ pages mocked me from my bookshelf.

And now it seems Professor Kennedy hadn't quite worked it all out.

The future didn’t belong to Japan after all.

To be fair to Prof Kennedy, he is a historian not a crystal-ball gazer. He didn't make any specific predictions in this book. And his forward-looking subsequent book Preparing for the Twenty First Century was so anodyne it couldn't be wrong.

But I still love that illustration of Japan rising!