The Ingular Doctrine

As I was going through the latest huffpost couple of days ago, my eyes caught attention on an ad about the latest attempt by Microsoft to unseat Google - Bing.com. 'You are defined by the choices you make' - said the catchphrase. An intelligent but simple ad, much better than the Seinfeld-gates attempt which reeked of antiquated humor.

From then it was a predictable journey wherein I began thinking on length, breadth and height of that statement. I looked back and thought of some choices made by me and people I intimately know and pondered over their implications over future. And there in, immersed in the pool of those interluding thoughts I realized the fallacy in that statement. I am of course talking about 's'. Now I know some may say 'Not Again'. 'Not another war with another alphabet'. I know you may also throw your arms up in the air and say, its a simple alphabet, what harm can it possible do, Leave it alone. But as I have mentioned previously, DO NOT EVER TAKE ALPHABETS LIGHTLY. I know its used everywhere, heck I am using it right now in my words as I speak. But see the thing is... the thing is... s is only as good as long as WE control it. Its a whole different ball game when s starts to control us. See, I believe that the world would be much of a simple place if there were no plural (do u notice, i have cunningly removed s in the end?).

Choice and Choices

Chance and Chances

Car and Cars

Imagine. You had a piece of bread. Any intelligent man would know what to do. Eat it.

Now imagine, you had breads. You can eat one or may be two or three. But what do you do with rest of them? Do you store them? Do you share it with your incessantly annoying brother? A whole Pandora's box opens up with so many options, and so much processing required. As I say if you gotta think over something, you better outsource it to the call center in Delhi. Do you see what I am talking about? I eventually would need a call center to tell me what to do with that bread. All that nuisance just because of an extra s.

The power of one s has been befuddling me. And there in lies my core belief - that all good things come in singular. War has habit to become Wars but there is only one Peace- no Peaces. May be people won't kill or deceive each other if they knew that they had only one choice of being good. May be we won't waste paper if we knew all that paper comes from just a tree.

Now I imagine there will be these radicals who will voice that its this s and that the gift of choosing is the greatest gift bestowed upon mankind. To them I say 'you are wrongs'. I know these people will argue that all species make choices but none can process information as eloquently as us humans and its this processing which makes our daily mundane life a tad bit different tomorrow from what is today. To them I say again 'you are wrongs'.

Here is my argument: The Universe spiraled into what it is today because it had only one choice. It had to bang in a big way. What could it do? Burst like a pop-corn. That is for wimps. What kind of starting would that be? It would be so simple that even a caveman could write a book on origins of our universe. Then where would all our नाड़ा theorists (string theorists) go??? Could there be any other choice other than nuclear fusion to make stars, galaxies and our milky way (suck up nuclear fission!). Does black hole have a choice in deciding whom it should eat and whom it should spare? Answer to all of these is of course a resounding NO.

Then why must we not follow what our billion year old wise universe has been telling us. Why must I decide every morning when I wake up: should I apply butter or fruit jam on my Sara Lee 100% Wheat bread?

No I don't fault you for believing that having options is a good thing. It is because we have evolved ourselves to believe that way. And that is another problem given birth by s - Evolution. Single cell bacteria evolved to multi-cellular organisms, which evolved to make fish, which evolved to make amphibians, and the dinosaurs, then the big G (the God) realized 'holy crap, I ordered humans not dinosaurs', so he sent an asteroid to clean bowl them over. And then he put up a new bid and apes formed which evolved into humans.

All this because Evolution had choices. Now imagine if it had not gone that way. If DNA had only one choice to decide our fate. We would be like Mr. Phillis Dexter

Mr. Phillis Dexter

Would that be so awful?? That we all humans/species look like him. There would no fights, no ego problems, everyone would be Mr/Mrs Universe. We would be living in a Utopia. And is that not what all aspire for?

But I know people will not realize the gravity of this situation. They think s as simple and harmless. People who have played 'finding the word' in a map would appreciate that sometimes the most difficult word to find is the one which is 'just there' - big, bold and even italicized perhaps. We spend our time to find that word hoping it has been perhaps written in font size 7, and that is why is invisible. But No. The brazenness of that cunning word lies in hiding itself in plain sight. That is exactly what this s has been doing. Sitting silently and watching the world ruin itself.

If it were up to me, I would urge UN to ban s from the world. You wake up one morning and all words with s gone. Puffff. Just like that. Try speaking following lines

Mom, can I get ome ugar for my milk??

Excue Me, you hould not take your hoes in temple. It i acred.

And in forms you will have to fill 'Ex: Male/Female' (now would that not be interesting question to answer :D)

Wa it too hard?

I know its a long shot. The way s has penetrated in our daily life is so deep that we might never be able to free ourselves from its slavery. But we must rise against the tyranny and hegemonic leadership of s. At least at the minimum we must immediately stop it use in all suffix. We might need to retire it before it retires us and substitute it with some different alphabet. Perhaps a Q or a Z. Both of them have been under appreciated in our culture. May be its time to bring them to limelight.

But until then, may I be bold enough to pray for you to live life one choice at a time :) And may that choice be easy to make....