Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Conversation with daughter- 13

Why does my daughter insist on working on her maths homework, parked on the sofa, in the drawing room, in front of the TV, with assorted books and notebooks strewn all around her ? Why can’t she do it in the comfort of her study room, which I have done up at considerable expense, believing that she needs peace and quiet to be able to concentrate?

Fifty years back, Orson Welles had inserted these famous lines, in his screenplay of Graham Greene’s “Third Man”:

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder,bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace -- and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

So, coming back to daughter, I have realized that disorderliness fosters creativity and provides the right kind of ambience to lick a few problems in calculus, whereas a sanitized environment seriously inhibits the functioning of her grey cells and results in zero output. Now, all I need to do is to figure out a way to introduce the right degree of messiness in the examination hall, when daughter is handed the question paper.

As I have said before, be messy, be happy.

Incidentally, some people confuse Graham Greene with Gunter Grass, arguing that Grass is Green. This is not correct; Grass is Grass whereas Greene is Greene.

3 comments:

rajeev said...

Very well put. I look forward to your posts for all the humour and insights . Thx for sharing.

Sunita Venkatachalam said...

That does it. Be Messy Be Happy is my new motto :)

Raj said...

rajeev, thanks.

poppins : That's the way to go.