‘Father kills son over a small argument in suburban Madippakkam’.
‘Son kills father with kitchen knife in suburban Madippakkam’.
‘Notorious bureau puller nabbed in Madippakkam’.
So..Madippakkam is truly the crime capital of Chennai….
Never mind that the above items are page 3 headlines-on different days- of the ‘police blotter’ column of a tabloid. It is comforting to draw conclusions.
So let me guess away…from the ingredients in the much touted corner shop pav bhaji to the worth of Jacqueline Kennedy-in diamonds and platinum of course. But the in between areas are the most interesting and rewarding: who financed x’s duplex flat? Why did Ydivorce? I always suspected Z had some strange habits…A, B and the rest are not begging to be spared either. After all there is no intellectual property dispute in this land of surmises and speculation, conjectures and guesswork.
Blame it on the ‘hidden agenda’ quotient…with competition for everything, from kids to countries, who doesn’t have a secret axe to grind? Strayed Intelligence has created mythological mega-wars and historical guillotines; from gauging a virus’s power to raiding another country for suspected weapons and terrorists, isn’t everything one big Guessing Game? Both hit back when and where least expected… If scientists can experiment on unsuspecting guinea-pigs-applying creams, feeding them all kinds of crap-and from there make statements for humans…only to eat their own words some years later, we, the lesser mortals can do so too, without making mice, our poor little endorsers. Make a U-turn when inconvenient…did I say so? Speculation abound in other areas of study too. Consider this: ‘infants as young as 18 months old will spontaneously comfort those who appear distressed. Chimpanzees will do the same, though not so reliably, which has led scientists to speculate about when exactly humans began to ‘out-nice’ chimps! If they did zero in on say, BC.2003, would it serve us any the better? Would we others even be able to verify it?
Most of us may not be blessed with a German Shepherd’s detective nose, but nosy parkers abound…carrying wisps of facts, bits of reality and loads of in-between material, see them generously generate genial generalities… ‘I hear extra noise in the neighbour’s living room..he must be throwing a party ( why am I not invited?-I always suspected he was biased..) ‘most people of this city are unhelpful’...my call went unanswered. she thinks I am not worth the trouble’. ‘all this traffic consists of office-goers’...’most people prefer to buy a Swift rather than an Alto’ .’salaried people prefer to invest in mutual funds’ ’90%inter-caste marriages don’t work’…’People of so-and-so community behave in such-and-such way’. Sounds like the results of elaborate surveys. But who needs those anyways, when we have been blessed with the conjecture gene, on the one hand and the gullibility gene on the other. For speculation to thrive, listeners are important! Not only listen, but embellish and pass it on, like a game of passing the parcel. Superstitions are an offshoot of the speculative propensity of man. ‘send this letter to 8 people or face bad luck’…don’t we try to append a certainty weightage to the unknown by nailing it down with such ‘truths’? Astrologers are ace speculators. Keep predictions fuzzily vague; if his past doesn’t tally with yours, YOU are ignorant of the ‘deeper’ reality, if true, he is fantastic! where and how they germinate can be interesting speculative material too.
Logic and conjecture share a grey boundary. What is logic to one can be speculation to another. Have we not felt it when trying to thrust a reluctant number in a Sudoku grid? Thinking four moves away with perfect logic is a grand master’s expertise, and deducing to the power of X from half-given data is anyone’s. Just as we humans cannot perceive all wavelengths of sound and light, understanding different ways of living and thinking is beyond the average human mind. ‘We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are’ said a thinker. How true! So, when my sincerely written e-mail to a long lost friend goes unanswered, I attribute reasons within my realm of thinking and feeling, not hers. Each one of us is a microcosm and processes inputs as per the Intelligence Wing of his/her small universe.
Imagine a speculation-free life…if humanity decided to believe and act on just what stood before its collective vision, what would we be left with? Media reporting just facts would grow anemic, jobless bookies would have to turn into farmers, while farmers would probably turn into hunters. Rags to riches stories would end-after all, are dreams not conjecture too? Possibly, probably, maybe, could be, would take a back seat while simply not, surely, certainly, of course and their assertive cousins would noisily drive the car…life would be a picture of certitude, a vector of rectitude with uniform attitude in all latitudes. Mole-hills could never aspire to grow into mountains, a tea-cup would brew nothing more than tea, guinea-pigs would breathe free, chimps would be happy just monkeying around instead of reading and writing, neighbours would live in antiseptic harmony, communities would not suspect each other of fratricidal intentions, …space would be spared littering by spy satellites and earth by nuclear wastes; defences-from state-of-the-art weaponry to sturdier latches and grills-would go redundant.
Now, now…if THIS is not speculation, what is? And if randomly galloping thoughts don’t oxygenate my brain, what will happen to it?
A picture stares me in the face. ‘Grill sawed from kitchen window, jewellery worth
Rs 50, 000 robbed.
You too guessed it!
Madippakkam!
