Crap

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead & rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.

- Benjamin Franklin

Well, the reason why I am quoting this line is not that I am fond of these lines or Benjamin Franklin. It’s just that when I was in IIIrd Standard, or may be IVth, my teacher, English teacher obviously, told me that it’s always good to start an essay with a quote. That’s the only reason I am quoting Benjamin Franklin. Rather I should say, I am quoting a quote. I think I am just quoting. Not sure if it’s a quote. I think so though.

By the way, why did they ever bother to tell these things in school? I mean the Teachers. Is it because they expected every student to write a book or an essay some day? Or its because some of the teachers knew, that one of the students, probably me, which I am sure they never thought, may want to write a book.

It hardly matters to me whether the quote above is by Benjamin Franklin or Benjamin, Winston Benjamin, the West Indian Cricket Star. And I am pretty sure; almost half of you know who was Benjamin, the cricket star. When I say was in the previous line, I don’t mean that he is no longer no more, its just that he no longer plays cricket. I am also sure that half of you who don’t know who Benjamin, the cricket star is or was, also don’t know who Benjamin Franklin is or was? And those who knows, who was Benjamin, the cricket star, you might be wondering, was he really a star. No he was not. He scored 298 runs in 85 one-day matches. I repeat, “he just scored 298 runs in 85 one-day matches”, I love repeating such things. His average is 7.45 runs per match. However, he managed to score a century though. I mean he was lucky enough to grab 100 wickets in, obviously, 85 matches. I don’t want to mention his test average here. I think his one-day matches record is enough to prove that he is not a Star. I like to address every cricketer a star. For me, even Parthiv Patel, one of the spectator cricketers of the Indian cricket team is also a Star. Spectator cricketers are those who don’t get to play in the field because they are not part of the playing eleven or twelve. However, they get a chance to watch the entire match as a spectator sitting not in the stadium but in the dressing room, because they are a part of the sixteen-member team. I think they are not better than one of the ten thousand spectators watching the match.

Based on my knowledge of records of a cricket star like Winston Benjamin, some of you might be thinking that I am one of those cricket maniac who would not sleep the entire night to watch even Ireland play against Pakistan. No I am not. Its just that I googled the keywords “winston benjamin cricket average” and got the above average in one of the links. Well google can sometime throw encouraging results. I mean encouraging for Winston Benjamin. The site found 76,900 links when I keyed in “winston benjamin cricket average” and that too in only 0.55 seconds. Even Winston Benjamin will be proud of himself when I mail him the search result. But I wont mail him, as I don’t have his mail ID. And even if I had, why would I mail him. I don’t think that I will take this much pain for a West Indian cricket star, or any cricket star for that matter. Moreover, I don’t think that it will please him if I write that he scored only 298 runs in 85 matches. But one thing that will please him will be that I took the pain to atleast google him. I guess I am the only person in the world who might have googled Winston Benjamin, the cricket star.

There is something about google that I never understand. What’s the use of throwing 76,900 links, when you don’t even surf not more than first three or four links out of those.

Anyway, the other reason why I have quoted Benjamin Franklin to start with is that his is the only clean book, I mean dust free, that’s currently lying on my bed and I didn’t feel like flipping through other books, more than hundreds that I have and which are lying on my bed wrapped in a thin or probably thick layer of dust. Even if I spread all my books on my bed, there is enough space for me to sleep there. Its not that mine is a double or triple bed. It’s just that if there isn’t enough space there, I could sleep on the floor, which I have been doing for many months now. For a while I also thought of flipping through entire pages of this autobiography to look for other suitable quote. But I didn’t. I am not lazy. It’s just that I don’t feel like reading his book. I mean page-by-page, line-by-line.

I don’t know who put his book on my bed. When I say his, I don’t mean that Benjamin Franklin lent me his book personally before his death in 1790, which would mean that I should have been atleast 216 years by now, which I am not. Its not that I like to hide my age, like most thirty plus girls. It’s just that I am not that old. If I were a Tortoise, I would have written the last sentence as, “It’s just that I am not that young”. I hope you understand what I mean. If not. I can’t help it.

I am not very fond of this book or any autobiographies for that matter. By quoting Benjamin Franklin, I don’t want to show that I read autobiographies. Its only because someone, probably one of my friends who did not like the book, having read it after I recommended it to him, wanted me to experience the same level of torture and pain that he, or probably she went through while reading the book. I think he was a he and not she. Sometime I am confused because, my memory is not very good when it comes to remembering whether the one who borrowed a book from me was a he or she. More so because they hardly return any book back, until the book really piss them off.

That’s why, when I am not sure whether a book is worth reading or not, I volunteer to give the book to someone. If it does not come back to me, which means that the book did not pissed him or her off, it’s an indication that I need to purchase the book again. As I already told you that I am not good at remembering whom I lent the book to, so I don’t bother to ask my friends in case they have actually borrowed some books from me. I don’t want to feel embarrassed and don’t want to embarrass them too. Either way, the result is the same; I end up losing a book. I will rather loose a book than a friend. I think it’s a lie. I will rather loose a friend than a book. I don’t know why. Books are my best friends. Only friend.

Well, as I told you, I didn’t read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was that I got it back from a friend, I don’t remember whom. I know it may sound a little strange. But that’s the way I am. This does not mean that all of more than hundred books that’s lying on my bed, are crap, one that were returned back to me by my friends because they didn’t like it. I already told you that I give only those books to my friends, which I am not sure of whether they are crap or otherwise. The other books, I mean the books that I never gave to my friends, because I knew they were not crap, I have most of those with me, i.e. more than hundreds lying on my bed.

By the way, is “not crap” a proper opposite word of crap? I know any good Oxford or Cambridge dictionary would have the answer to this crap, I mean this question. The reason I have used the adjective ‘good’ before the word Oxford or Cambridge dictionary is not that there are ‘bad’ Oxford or Cambridge dictionary also, its because, the city I live in, every other streets have a book vendor selling Oxford or Cambridge dictionary for prices, which really creates a doubt in my mind whether its really an Oxford or Cambridge dictionary.

By the way I don’t live in Oxford. I don’t live in Cambridge though.

Its not that I liked the book The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin so I purchased it. It so happened that once in an Airport bookstore, Bangalore probably, I happened to bought and read a book titled The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.

I don’t live in Bangalore.

I purchased the book only out of my curiosity to find out why would a monk sold his Ferrari. More than that I was curious to know where did the monk got the Ferrari from? Was it gifted to the Monk by one of his followers? Or, he happened to just bought a Ferrari because it is rare for a monk to drive a Ferrari and that he wanted to be different than other monks.

Well I don’t think that book has answer to any of the above questions. Even you know this if you happen to read the book. I could not read more than three or probably four pages of the book, when I realized that it was just another type of self-help type crap. However, the book managed to get my attention at one of the pages. One of the pages in the book, that I discovered while I was flipping through the pages in my flight to Mumbai, had a list of books that the author recommended one should read and probably re-read in his lifetime. And one of those books was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin written by none other than Benjamin Franklin.

By the way could someone else write an autobiography of someone else?

Well, the answer is no.

And if you really read the sentence above with five words and a comma and a full stop in it to figure out if someone else could write an autobiography of someone else, there is really something wrong with you.

Well, for those who are still wondering who Benjamin Franklin really is or was? Let me tell you.

Its not that I know a lot about Benjamin Franklin. I am not one of those English honored, who has done his Masters in English, who has crammed every damn literature written by every damn writer. I know some of you re-read the sentence to find out if its honoured or honored. I don’t have an inclination towards American English nor do I prefer American English to Queen’s or British English. It’s just that while I typed honoured and did a right click to find out what the correct spelling is, I got honored as a result.

Let me come to Benjamin Franklin and finish this issue once and for all. As I told you, when I reached Bangalore, or Mumbai, may be, after that flight mentioned above, I googled Benjamin Franklin.

I guess I purchased The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari at Mumbai Airport and not Bangalore Airport and that the flight was traveling from Mumbai to Bangalore and not Bangalore to Mumbai. These Airport bookstores, they all look the same. So I don’t exactly remember whether I bought it at the Mumbai Airport or Bangalore Airport.

By the way I don’t live in Mumbai.

Anyway, before I google the title Benjamin Franklin, I thought Benjamin Franklin might be a rock star. I don’t know why, but that was the first thought that came to my mind. I thought the book would be a kind of those typical rock star autobiography or biography though, which would start with how he, I mean the rock star, went on to become, what else, but a rock star only, even though he was thrown out of his high school. By the way, is there any other option left, if one is thrown out of a high school. Thought one could always become Bill Gates or founders of google, if thrown out of high school, but I don’t want to comment on this.

By the way, I later discovered it later only, and, that to through a google search, that Bill Gates and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of google were not thrown out of school. I mean that they were thrown out for sure, but not schools. They were thrown out of colleges or Universities. Harvard and Stanford may be.

By the way why the hell they went to Harvard or Stanford. Was it only to get thrown out of it? May be it looks good in one’s resume if one is thrown out of prestigious Universities? Will someone ever give a damn if one is thrown out of a school, lets say, Kushal School? Well, Kushal School is situated in my native place, from which one of my close friends was thrown out of. I will come to this later.

That’s why I like google. I mean, you cannot write a lie. The moment I have a doubt on anything, yes any damn thing, living or non-living, I just google he, she it or they. When I say any living or non-living thing, it has to be either of the four, isn’t it? He, she, it or they. I don’t think that there could be other categories of things besides living and non-living, because these were the only two categories, I was taught in school, anything or everything will get classified in. And I think that’s right. How true it is. But we human beings have discovered and invented so many different things out of what was supposed to be only two things, living and non-living things.

I wish google had some feature that would tell me if the day, I mean the night, I was flipping through the pages of The Monk who Sold His Ferrari, whether I was flying from Bangalore to Mumbai or Mumbai to Bangalore.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Great Leaders of United States of America. That’s it. Don’t expect me to write anything further on Benjamin Franklin or the author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. I know if you are interested, you will google it, or probably scan the Biographies and Self Help Books section of any good bookstores.

I googled and googled but could not find out the opposite of “crap”. I asked one of my colleagues yesterday and she told me that it’s “good”. What’s the opposite of “bad” then? I don’t think that one word could be an opposite word of two words.

I asked this question again to a different colleague of mine, who is sensible than the one mentioned above. She replied immediately it’s “sensible”. I think it makes sense.

Let the opposite of “crap” be “sensible” till I discover a more sensible word that makes sense.

By the way, I live in Delhi.

But I don’t belong to Delhi.