Collateral Thinking

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A couple of decades ago there was this buzzword in every other intellectual mouth at KGP:

"Lateral Thinking"

I never asked its meaning nor googled for it anytime later.

That is one of my strong points...never go for the popular.

Don Quixote shares this streak with me. He says that he never read '5 point someone' nor a trio of them idiots.

Both of us want to be 'different'.

Anyway this blog is about 'Collateral Thinking (CT)' as you might have guessed.

I define it as: "Looking at something but seeing something else".

For instance, I hope all of you have seen this Charlie Movie, Gold Rush, in which there is this supreme example of CT where the hungry hunk Big Jim keeps looking at Charlie but sees a flitting fattened chicken...more like a rooster.

DB told me a story in which a well-fed poet goes into ecstasy looking at the full moon but sees a disk of gold, and asks this hungry beggar what it reminds him of and gets the reply:

"Roti"

One of my sisters, V, is a romantic The other, P, is worldly. Both of them were watching a pigeon on the window sill. V goes poetic and asks P what Anubhuti (divine feeling in Telugu parlance) she gets on looking at that pigeon.

P replies: "Saanubhuti" (sympathy in Telugu).

Every famous theoretical physicist is blessed with CT in tonnes.

Newton looked at a falling apple and saw the orbiting moon.

Einstein looked at a kid jumping down from the balcony and saw gravity vanish.

Bohr looked at the hydrogen atom and saw the solar system, while Thomson saw a plum pudding...must have been hungry.

When I look at an apple I am reminded of the i-pod; and Macintosh reminds me of a raincoat.

Whoever christened the hand-held pointer a 'mouse' is a genius in CT.

Here is a real-life story (no gul) of CT in our Faculty Hostel at KGP:

One of our inveterate talkers was a half-shaven sardarjee, Prof X: he just kept a Mephistophelian pointed beard which he would constantly tug at while speaking.

Once there was a 'one-off guest', Prof Y, whom none of us knew. And he arrived and sat on one of our lawn benches as Prof X was narrating a gripping story of a goat.

And as soon as Y heard the word 'goat', he laughed aloud, and pointing to X, exclaimed:

"Look at him...he talking of goats!!!".

All of us were dumbfounded at his insolence but kept quiet...we were exceedingly well-mannered {;-}.

Taken aback, but not to be browbeaten by an utter stranger, X continued and as soon as he returned to the word 'goat', Y repeated his guffaw saying:

"Look at him...he talking of goats!!!".

After three attempts, X went back sullenly to his room and Y to his triumphant 'suite'.

All puns belong to CT.

And so on...

My spell-check is blessed with a heavy dose of CT:

Whenever I type my name Sastry, it comes up with the suggestion:

"Pastry"

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