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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker
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Rodin's 'Thinker' always set me thinking about that poor chap mounted and bending as if on his toilet seat. For, that is about the only place that is consistent with nudity and introspection. Many of the paras in my Ph D Thesis (then) and blogposts (now) have been composed there although I never twisted myself like a contortionist...try pressing your right elbow on your left thigh, folding the right hand and supporting on it the enormous weight of your thinking skull and placing your feet, not on the floor, but on the slippery porcelain base of your thinking seat.
Again, I am not too happy...remember this is just a blog and not a learned critique...with the unlikely combination of brain and six-pack abs. One either grows his brain or brawn, no time or both. The chap looks more like our late lamented Dara Singh than, say, my Guide SDM, the only Thinker I ever saw too lazy to do his calculations with his leaky fountain pen on paper:
My wife was a wordsmith like most ladies describing other ladies. In our previous apartment block near Banjara Hills, we had a stout new watchman in the Rodin's Thinker mold. His wife was tall, wiry and comely but was always seated on the steps of the backyard as if lost in thought (if I were Rodin I would have chosen her as my model). After watching her for a week, my wife told me how she looks as if she had misplaced her necklace and was always trying to recall where. Unfortunately it turned out that her husband never gave her a necklace other than his brawny arm round her neck when he entered her room fully 'lit up' late night...and her eternal worry was how to dispose of the body after strangling him with the help of her teenage son and daughter when he duly went to his boozy sleep.
Had I asked my wife what Rodin's Thinker was thinking, she would have been sure that he was worrying how to get out of the toilet after he flushed the key of the toilet door which got dropped in the commode along with its contents.
Finally, I am amused that it was the foundry workers who named their look-alike as "Thinker". I am sure it was the nickname of one of their fellow-workers who liked to 'think' than 'do' his hard work.
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Some critics believe "The Thinker" was originally intended to depict Dante at the Gates of Hell,
pondering his great poem. However, there are "questionable" aspects to
this interpretation, including that the figure is naked, Dante is fully
clothed throughout his poem, and that the figure, as used, in no way
corresponds to Dante's effete figure.[2]
(In the final sculpture, a miniature of the statue is waiting atop the
gates, pondering the hellish fate of those beneath him.) The sculpture
is nude, as Rodin wanted a heroic figure in the tradition of Michelangelo, to represent intellect as well as poetry.
This detail from the Gate of Hell was first named "The Thinker" by foundry workers, who noted its similarity to Michelangelo's statue of Lorenzo de Medici called "Il Penseroso" (the Thinker).[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker
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Rodin's 'Thinker' always set me thinking about that poor chap mounted and bending as if on his toilet seat. For, that is about the only place that is consistent with nudity and introspection. Many of the paras in my Ph D Thesis (then) and blogposts (now) have been composed there although I never twisted myself like a contortionist...try pressing your right elbow on your left thigh, folding the right hand and supporting on it the enormous weight of your thinking skull and placing your feet, not on the floor, but on the slippery porcelain base of your thinking seat.
Again, I am not too happy...remember this is just a blog and not a learned critique...with the unlikely combination of brain and six-pack abs. One either grows his brain or brawn, no time or both. The chap looks more like our late lamented Dara Singh than, say, my Guide SDM, the only Thinker I ever saw too lazy to do his calculations with his leaky fountain pen on paper:
Had I asked my wife what Rodin's Thinker was thinking, she would have been sure that he was worrying how to get out of the toilet after he flushed the key of the toilet door which got dropped in the commode along with its contents.
Finally, I am amused that it was the foundry workers who named their look-alike as "Thinker". I am sure it was the nickname of one of their fellow-workers who liked to 'think' than 'do' his hard work.
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Coming to more mundane matters like cricket, I read it said of many bowlers as 'thinking' bowlers. I never played cricket but I am inclined to agree...bowlers have a lot of time for thinking, especially if they are pace bowlers with long run-ups, unlike their victims who have a fraction of a second to decide what to do with the damn thing speeding towards their helmet. At IIT KGP there used to be friendly cricket matches between students and teachers of the Physics Dept...limited to 20 overs. The problem for the students was how to make their teachers win (since the captain was in the final year and needed good recos). At first they thought it would be ok if they sent up lollipops in the air for what they called dolly catches. But if their target was Prof MSS who was a 'thinking' fielder wondering about the ballistics of the ball in flight against viscous air-friction, he would be lost in thought and they had to ultimately adopt the hit-wicket strategy.
Chess is surely a 'thinking' game which I and SDM always avoided. I blithely recall the joke forwarded by Aniket long long ago:
In a park people come across a man playing chess against a dog.
They are astonished and say: "What a clever dog!"
But the man protests: "No, no, he isn't that clever. I'm leading by three games to one!"
Chess is surely a 'thinking' game which I and SDM always avoided. I blithely recall the joke forwarded by Aniket long long ago:
In a park people come across a man playing chess against a dog.
They are astonished and say: "What a clever dog!"
But the man protests: "No, no, he isn't that clever. I'm leading by three games to one!"
It is indeed a frightening sight to watch a chess game...unlike watching a prize-fight in the ring. But so much thinking can be addictive. Aniket is a true "santranj-ke-khildi" constantly complaining he never has leisure enough for the chess-bull-fight.
I recall the whole world going crazy about the 1972 prize-fight between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky...it was more a mind-game rather than a mere thinking game, with all sorts of off-the-ring antics.
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India is said to be a 'thinking' nation rather than a fighting one. Here is an appropriate quote from RKN:
Purna (the chap who forwarded RKN's maiden manuscript to Graham Greene and thereby launched him), who used to float in and out of this group constantly, suggested puckishly, "Why not call it (the publication) 'Indian Thoughtless'?"
"Let us call it 'Indian Thought,' which will amount to the same thing," said another.
Feynman was scared that drinking would destroy his thinking apparatus:
One day, about 3:30 in the afternoon, I was walking along the sidewalk opposite the beach at Copacabana past a bar. I suddenly got this treMENdous, strong feeling: "That's just what I want; that'll fit just right. I'd just love to have a drink right now!"
I started to walk into the bar, and I suddenly thought to myself, "Wait a minute! It's the middle of the afternoon. There's nobody here. There's no social reason to drink. Why do you have such a terribly strong feeling that you have to have a drink?"--- and I got scared.
I never drank again, since then. I suppose I really wasn't in any danger, because I found it very easy to stop. But that strong feeling that I didn't understand frightened me. You see, I get such fun out of thinking that I don't want destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.
No such worry here, Boss! The tiny machine had already been screwed up long long ago...ask my mom if you don't believe me.
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