Sunday, March 18, 2012

Quotes!

When I was a kid my father used to tell an interesting story. Let’s start with that. Once upon a time there was a wise king. He had a daughter of age 18. The king was thinking of her marriage and like all fathers he decided to set up a quest for a wise and knowledgeable life partner for his daughter. After one week of thinking he came up with an interesting idea. He declared anyone who would be able to answer his two questions would be chosen as Princess’s life partner. So many princes from neighboring states showed up for the quest but apparently none of them had any luck. The king himself starts thinking if nobody can answer his questions, how can he find a perfect match for the princess. After few weeks a janitor showed up to took the challenge and surprisingly he passed! So the entire kingdom became puzzled about the knowledge of the janitor. The king declared he is going to accept the janitor as his daughter’s groom and ordered to start preparation for the wedding.

 But then minister had a different idea and he went to the janitor and asked about the two profound questions that nobody was able to answer. The janitor replied, “Oh! That was easy. When I entered into the room the king showed me one finger and I showed him two in return. Then he showed me three fingers and I showed him my thump finger in return.” The minister got confused and asked, what that first finger means? The janitor replied, “Oh! That was easy, I have three wild hogs and the king was demanding for one.” The minister further asked what your reply was then. The janitor said, “Well, since he is the king and ask for one wild hog, I was ready to give him two, so I showed two fingers.” The minister went on and asked what the second question was then. The janitor replied, “Well, then he asked for three of them and certainly I can’t give him all of them and so I showed him my thump finger.” The minister was kind of surprised and went to the king.

He went to the king and asked about the interview with the janitor. The king replied, “I showed him one finger which means, Allah is one and he replied me he replied me with two fingers which means Mohammed is his messenger. But when I showed him three fingers means who is the third he replied nobody by showing thump finger.” Then the minister explain everything to the king and bla.. bla.. bla..

I hope you all kind of get the idea what was the précis of the story. Seeing and perceiving are two entirely different process. The same thing may bear entirely different meaning to two different people. Human language is ambiguous and therefore whatever we listen we process them based on the knowledge we have so far. The context of any information is very important to process information. No two people understand same thing from same sentence. I have a quote page in my blog. I guess those quotes don’t mean the same thing as do to me. One of my friends was once telling me he used to look at the favorite quotes of any person to know about him. I think a single could be misleading unless I put thought about it. So I think I need to explain those quotes in context of me. Let’s see how it goes.

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