The Cerne Giant drinks beer! Ganpati drinks milk!

The Cerne Giant on his Dorset hillside

The Cerne Giant (pictured above) is one of England’s most cherished icons. He is a chalk figure etched into the lush Dorset countryside, just above the village of Cerne Abbas.

The Cerne Giant stands tall. At one hundred and eighty feet, he is about as tall as a twenty-story apartment block. His erect penis also stands tall; at twenty-six feet it is a big as the Giant’s head. He wields a big knobbly club with which he could clearly do some damage.

While the Giant’s origins are not well known, (this New Yorker article is the source of my fundas about Cerne Abbas and is guaranteed to improve your weekend) what is abundantly clear is that the Giant is relevant today.

Volunteers maintaining the Giant's chalk markings

The villagers of Cerne Abbas take take care of their Giant. He is in such good shape because hundreds of local volunteers, fortified by tea and cakes, turn out every year to keep the Giant’s chalk outline clear of weeds. The Giant reciprocates with good karma. Cerne Abbas was recently voted “Britain’s Most Desirable Village.”

Cerne Abbas has a local brewery, as a desirable village should. When the Cerne Abbas Brewery develops a new beer, the owner Vic Irvine, and his business partner Jodie Moore, climb the hill at night – often with friends – and hop the fence surrounding the Giant. Then they pour some of the beer into the Giant’s mouth “as a libation”.

Jonathan Still, the vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Cerne Abbas, also serves as the Spiritual Director of the Cerne Abbas brewery. He joined the brewers on one night-time climb to the hilltop. Irvine and Moore had brought plastic jugs filled with their latest brews—an offering for the giant. “It was a clear night, about half past twelve, and we could see the whole valley in the blue moonlight,” Still recalled. “It was freezing cold, with the smoke curling up from the chimneys below. We sat up around the giant’s head—which is totally illegal—and we tasted this one, and that one, and we poured some into the giant’s mouth.” After about an hour of sitting and drinking, Still said, an extraordinary thing happened: “We poured this beer into the giant’s mouth, and we saw his Adam’s apple go up and down as he swallowed it.”

I’ve heard this story before. 

I remember hearing it on 21 September 1995, when India came to a standstill to observe "Ganpati drinking milk”.

Neivedhyam in front of Lord Ganesha

Actually, I’ve heard it hundreds of times before. It’s the same thought as neivaidhyam, of pausing before a meal or celebration to offer one’s food to the Gods in thanksgiving.

Actually, it’s the same thought as leaving carrots and cookies out for Rudolph and Santa on Christmas night. The carrots and cookies we left out for Rudolph and Santa always got consumed. That proved that Rudolph and Santa actually, really brought our presents home.

I hope Santa takes some cookies for the Cerne Giant this Christmas. Or some crackers. To bring out the flavour of the new Cerne Abbas brews. The Giant behind Britain’s Most Desirable Village surely deserves some Christmas cheer. 

And I hope the vicar of St. Mary's Church leaves some carrots and cookies out for Rudolph and Santa on the hillside on Christmas night, for when they bring presents for the Cerne Giant.

Cerne Abbas Brew
As Preferred by the Giant

Is The Umbrella Academy a remake of The Sound of Music?

The Umbrella Academy - Now on Netflix

The Sound of Music - circa 1965

Spoiler Alert

Season 1 of The Umbrella Academy is great. It features seven gifted children growing up in an exquisitely beautiful house. The children don’t have a mother. They’re being raised by an emotionally distant tyrant of a father who addresses them by serial number rather than by name.

The father is obsessed with the coming apocalypse. He has foreseen this terrible event by virtue of his unique insight. His only agenda is to forge his children into instruments of war who can prevent this apocalypse.

Through many adventures the children discover themselves, each other, and even learn to understand their father. They realise that their destiny is to prevent the apocalypse.

At the end of Season 1, they don’t quite succeed. They can’t stop the apocalypse. But they do escape from it. They live to fight another apocalypse on another day. Which, doubtless, will be the story of Season 2.

I was haunted by a sense of déjà vu through Season 1. I’d seen this story before. Until finally the penny popped – The Umbrella Academy is The Sound of Music, with the children rather than Maria as the central characters.

- Seven gifted children, check.

- Super-wealthy background, check.
- Distant tyrannical father, check.

- Looming apocalypse (the rise of Nazi Germany), check.
- Betrayal from within (Rolf the Nazi Postman), check
- Narrow but defiant escape from the apocalypse (Climb every mountain…), check.

The parallel is not perfect. By its logic, Maria would be a programmable robot, which is a bit harsh.

But the parallel also throws in relief what The Sound of Music didn’t show. Were the children really supposed to be pretty props singing along with Maria? What was it like to be Louisa? Or Brigitta? Did Friedrich ever hate his emotionally absent father? There is room for some creative reinterpretation...

The Von Trapp Family Singers

The Hargreeves Family Crimefighters

Can writers actually write together? Evidence from Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and the Aussies called Alice.

Can writers actually write together? Can writers jam together the way members of a rock or jazz band might, to create something better than any of them could have produced working alone? 

One very good writer, Anthony Lane of the New Yorker magazine, doesn't think so. I discovered this while flipping through a back issue of the New Yorker where I found his review of The President is Missing, a thriller co-authored by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. In his assessment:

“Writing, like dying, is one of those things that should be done alone or not at all. In each case, loved ones may hover around and tender their support, but, in the end, it’s up to you.”

Anthony Lane’s snarky and thoroughly enjoyable review (available here outside the paywall) has no doubt that the mediocrity of The President is Missing is further evidence that writing is, ultimately, an intensely personal and private craft. All this stuff about "creative collaboration" is nothing more than marketing fluff.

Yet further on into the same New Yorker issue I encountered Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s speechwriter. Rhodes' story offers a counterpoint, an example of one man elegantly and effectively channeling another’s thoughts:

“The journalistic cliché of a “mind meld” doesn’t capture the totality of Rhodes’s identification with the President.”

And how was this mind meld achieved?

"(Rhodes) came to Obama with an M.F.A. in fiction writing from New York University and a few years on the staff of a Washington think-tank…

he joined the campaign as a foreign-policy speechwriter in mid-2007, when he was twenty-nine…

he was sixteen years younger and six inches shorter than Obama…

he became so adept at anticipating Obama’s thoughts and finding Obamaesque words for them that the President made him a top foreign-policy adviser, with a say on every major issue…

he rose to become a deputy national-security adviser; accompanied Obama on every trip overseas but one; stayed to the last day of the Presidency; and even joined the Obamas on the flight to their first post-Presidential vacation, in Palm Springs, wanting to ease the loneliness of their sudden return to private life….”

This mind meld doesn’t seem like a creative collaboration, which suggests some sort of parity between the collaborators. Ben Rhodes has intentionally muted his own voice to amplify that of his master. This can’t have been entirely easy for a smart and ambitious young man like Ben Rhodes, however much he admired President Obama.

“(Rhodes’) decade with Obama blurred his own identity to the vanishing point, and he was sensitive enough—unusually so for a political operative—to fear losing himself entirely in the larger story. Meeting Obama was a fantastic career opportunity and an existential threat.”

Tversky and Kahneman in the 70s

A more successful model for a creative partnership between equals may be Dan Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the founders of Behavioural Economics.

They were close friends. They had sharply contrasting attitudes and styles, there was never any question of a mind meld. Tversky was extroverted, optimistic, hyper-organized, a wise-cracking military hero before becoming an academic. Kahneman was a worrying, bespectacled, introverted pessimist who couldn’t find his way around his own office. But their differences made their work better. Tversky’s optimism gave them resilience and Kahneman’s worrying gave them rigour.

Their partnership worked, but at a cost. Here is what Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein had to say:

“The low rate of output was one of their strengths, and is a direct result of their joint personality traits. Kahneman’s constant worry about how they might be wrong combined perfectly with Tversky’s mantra: “Let’s get it right.” And it takes a long time to write a paper when both authors have to agree on every word, one by one.”

But the eight papers they published between 1971 and 1979, working in harness in a period of extraordinary creativity, won Kahneman the Nobel Prize, and would change their field, and perhaps the world, forever. (Amos Tversky tragically died of cancer at the age of fifty-nine before he could share the Nobel).

BTW…I’m reading The Undoing Project, Micheal Lewis’ book on Kahneman and Tversky. It’s going well. Right up there along with Money Ball, Liar’s Poker, Boomerang or The Big Short.

The most successful creative collaboration I came across while Google-researching this post is someone I’m much less likely to have read than Micheal Lewis, Dan Kahneman, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. This is Alice Campion. Her widely acclaimed bestseller is called The Painted Sky.

Alice Campion is actually a group of Sydney housewives called Jenny Crocker, Madeline Oliver, Jane Richards, Jane St Vincent Welch and Denise Tart. 

Their writing adventure started when their book club (Booksluts: We’ll Read Anything) went on a weekend away. After much vodka had been consumed, they made a pact to fund the Booksluts' tenth anniversary celebrations by writing a novel about a city girl who inherits her father’s farm in the outback, meets her rugged, handsome cattle-farmer neighbour, and sparks fly! 

To their own surprise, the Booksluts did come home to Sydney, wrote their novel, sent it to a publisher, got it published and watched it climb to the top of the bestseller charts.

They describe their creative process as a genuine collaboration, without any one Bookslut doing the heavy lifting. They actually experienced mind meld. 

The Booksluts behind Alice Campion

This mind meld happened partly because of how well the knew each other; e.g. their initial plan to write the sex scenes individually and mail them into the group anonymously didn’t work because everyone instantly knew who had written each passage. They knew each other too well for anonymity. 

And in the process they seem to have a had more fun collaborating than the Clinton-Patterson, Obama-Rhodes or even the Kahneman-Tversky duos. Cheers to the Booksluts!

I might just get out of my comfort zone and pay Rs 1,967.69 to download The Painted Sky onto my Kindle.

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!