I have a knack for getting into coincidental situations that are utterly immaterial. Yet they sometimes leave me spooked beyond my wits. One such situation presented itself on my flight to Colombo from Chennai. Since this was the first time I was getting into an Indian Airlines plane in 3 years, I decided to browse their in-flight magazine (it was called "Darpan" or something to that effect). It had an article titled "Animal Farm" that talked about a wild life reserve - a little corny given the fact that Animal Farm also happens to be a famous political satire by George Orwell (no points for guessing that Orwell chose this title for his 1945 novel first). Also, unlike this article, Orwell's Animal Farm did not have Elephants or Leopards (enough nitpicking!). It felt slightly quaint because I was carrying Orwell's other famous political satire - Nineteen Eighty Four for reading during the flight. Just when I was about to dismiss this "Orwellian coincidence" as invention of my own fertile imagination, I saw an editorial on relevance of Orwell in today's world-order in Financial Express, being read by gentleman next to me! If there was a secret message somewhere in the planetary configuration at that time, I failed miserably to read it, but this triple whammy did have me transfixed for a few seconds!

I doodle a lot. The harder my concentration levels, the more intense my doodling. Its my way of assimilating information being thrown at me (people chew pen caps, scratch hair, pull knuckles - I doodle). This seemingly harmless habit has drawn me into trouble since childhood - at work (i.e. at school several years ago) as well as at home. While during classes doodling was taken for lack of attention (which often led to rebuking by teachers), at home I was reprimanded for sorry soiled state of my text-books. Times have changed, classes at school have now been replaced by corporate presentations, but my fondness for doodling is pretty much intact. During one such presentation (one of those despicable self-emancipation management workshops), when Harsha Bhogle was explaining how to install pride in one's team, I was scribbling incomprehensible junk. I reproduce here parts of it for its relevance in context of this blog (don't try to read too much into the following - remember its doodle, claptrap, merely an instrument to help me focus better)

Nike + Alfred Hitchcock = Spiky

(illustration of Nike logo becoming bristly when it comes in contact with Alfred Hitchcock).

I would have doodled and forgotten, except for the fact that I was doodling this on 11th August, while 12th August happens to be Alfred Hitchcock's birthday (which I realized on 13th)! Now am I reading too much into things here, or things like this happen to all of us!?

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