ok-c-moron

Cheeniya's genius has been excelled and that too by no entity other than Cheeniya's genius itself. I used to consider his invention of a new animal called the "IT" as the pinnacle of his taxonomic achievement. But that record stands shattered, now that he has endowed the English language with what appears to me to be a new figure of speech.

I feel tempted to call it an "ok-c-moron". The "ok" part (pronounced "awk" rather than "oak") is easy to catch, for that is what Google Glass named me, defying my earlier baptism (the Christian equivalent of the Hindu ceremony of "namakaranam", or whatever it is that it was called before the Muslims invaded Aryavarta) as "oj". So, "ok" is the person who discovered the gem, like Livingstone discovering the Victoria Falls. The "c" points without a doubt to Cheeniya, the creator himself, in glittering glory. Which leaves out a "moron" in solitary gloom, though it is best to ignore it (not to be confused with IT mind you). Unless chance passersby insist on viewing it as ok the asinine himself.

But I am digressing. I was speaking of Cheeniya's "ok-c-moron". I struck him, he says,

I have rarely been accosted by anything as obfuscatingly transparent as this line. Obfuscating, since the qualifier "meaningful" could have been applied either to the man or to his purpose, and that is exactly where this latest Cheeniya's genius lies. Like Plato, he creates space for a dialogue. As for transparency, I suppose Cheeniya's obfuscatory ability is as clear as the waters of the Ganges prior to the pollution age. It is an ability he reserves for the chosen few, including, I strongly suspect, yours truly.

The seraph, I fear, will object now, for he did throw in a hesitating clue about the solution to the puzzle. The hesitation was expressed as a monosyllabic "er", but scholars from every corner of the universe appear to be arguing over the matter now. Did he mean "err" rather than "er"? If he did, then this was a mere typo argues one school of thought. Proceeding along these lines, one is invariably led to the adage "To err is human". A man or at least a human then means someone who errs. The moron under discussion too, otherwise known as oj, and still otherwise as ok, is an object that errs. The man that I am is then an "err-er", and a purposeful one at that.

A second school of thought, the lexicon school, insisted on checking up a dictionary. I saw much to commend in this and did try to find the meaning of the word "man" in several dictionaries of repute. And one of these, the Merriam Webster, came up with the following:

I tried my level best to follow this through but I have a suspicion that my efforts will need to be stretched further, possibly towards the end of eternity. But I did not miss the last bit in the definition! I could well be an extinct hominid. And purposefully so again, according to the Merriam Webster Cheenia anthology!

I have always entertained doubts about my existence of course. I had even tried to make the point as forcefully as I could in I Ghost. If I do not exist anymore, then the problem is solved, in the sense that it need not be solved at all, dinosaurs notwithstanding . What happens however if I am a living hominid though? A purposefully living one and Cheeniya hasn't even told us what that purpose consists of. For he watched me for a month he says, purposefully gyrating in Chennai, but the purpose failed to send out any meaningful signal towards him at all. He is obviously hiding something here. Did I not wipe my sambar stained fingers on his milk white shirt? He had probably seen in this nothing more than a method in madness. Or, who knows, this loving, innocent action might have led him to conclude that my purpose lacked any meaning at all!

I am afraid this is not taking us too far. The deeper you delve into the matter the more uncomfortable you'll feel. What indeed is the meaning of a man? The only answer that readily comes to my mind is that he is not a woman, or an orangutan perhaps. Even the Bard had failed, somewhat miserably in my opinion, to educate us on the subject. All he had to say was

The Bard needs to be shunned without a doubt. He sang his paean to man without telling us what man was supposed to mean. Nor has Cheeniya told for that matter. Nothing at all. Perhaps he never will either.

With this Milord, I rest my case.

 

Dear GG,
Thank you for your kind fb. I will try to write as you have advised me to. But feel that something is missing. To borrow terminology from Cheeniya, this is probably an example of a meaninglessly purposeful endeavour. A piece of writing that had to be completed simply to ensure that I don't stop writing. It didn't flow effortlessly. One can discern traces of the impossible demands imposed by the protagonist of the story ojaantrik on his car which had stopped running. One need not worry of course. Sooner or later everything turns into junk. That's what mortality is all about. I think it's time I changed my name to o-junk-trick. A trickster who passers off old unusable stuff for new. Doesn't make me sad. One should learn to laugh at one's approaching end.
ok

 

Dear Viswa,

Thanks for your thoughts. As I have just written to Google Glass, I am not particularly pleased with this snippet. It appears to me to be a the closest thing to a cardiac massage to resuscitate a person who's stopped breathing. Sorry for sounding pessimistic, but I cannot help being critical of my efforts to produce. I realize that after all they are just words, words, words. They don't bother me. But words without content do. Like that "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Best wishes for the festive season.

ojaantrik

 

Dear Sri,

What a pleasure it is to interact with you! Especially so, when you try to help me emerge out of the gloom surrounding my mind at its unproductive worst. Come on Sri, you know that I know that you know that I know ... this snippet was a piece of empty nothing. You are too intelligent as well as sensitive to discover something in the middle of vacuous nothingness. And I, though not as intelligent as you, can at least make out that you are deliberately creating "out of airy nothing a local habitation", simply to rescue a friend from remaining trapped in Sargasso Sea.

Regarding the qualifier "meaningless" I still retain my doubts, with all due respect for the pundits. Not about the manner in which you used the qualifier, but about God's intentions. The more I think about it, the more convinced I feel that all creation is quite meaningless. But it does have a purpose I suppose. Or else, why should people jump to the tune of the rise and fall of the sensex.

Look at it the way Oscar Wilde had described things. If God was the ultimate creator of what Shakespeare in his gaga-est best elevated to the rank of 'a god', then presumably the creator was an artist of sorts. Perhaps. I am not sure. Never met God. But if God was/is indeed an artist, then Wilde wouldn't accept his artistry unless his creation was useless. "All art," said he, "is quite useless." The word 'useless' is dangerously close to meaningless. Not so close to purposeless. People do engage purposefully in useless pursuits. Or so I think.

oj