Believable thinking

I had to think a few things this weekend, which prompted me to write this blog with no need of much thinking.

Early morning the motor stopped working. The one which makes lots of noise while increasing the potential energy of water that is lying low in the underground sump by pumping it into the overhead tank. Two things came to my mind – one, getting hold of a plumber is not that easy – two, whenever  he comes, it would be a matter of a half an hour for him to fix things which would cost a few hundreds.  I was wrong in the first count, the plumber was at my door-step in 10 minutes. I was not lucky in the second count as well; it took much more toll on me than I thought. First he replaced the foot valve, poured some water into the pump. Then he removed the pump and took into the nearby mechanic shop. He removed and tightened some nuts/bolts here and there and finally the motor started working after switching it off and on for several times. It didn’t end there. He volunteered himself to clean up the sump to remove all the dust to avoid any future problems. By the time he completed all the work, half day had elapsed with my wallet lighter by many more hundreds. 

When will my thinking stop, rather when will I start believing what all I think? I wanted to see how the water is falling into the overhead tank and by what force. Seeing is believing right? Without thinking too much I climbed that 8 foot tall platform where the tank was kept using a flimsy temp wooden ladder. Once I saw that everything was fine, then only I started thinking of climbing down ! My legs started trembling even before the  ladder started shaking ! After reaching at the bottom, I learnt one thing – better to believe certain things which you strongly think of.

Assume you are taking a class. You have given a complex problem to the students and asked them to think well before arriving at a solution. Somebody will start scratching his head. Somebody will bite the pen if not his own nails. Somebody will close one eye and look up in a slanted fashion. Somebody will close both his eyes. All these gestures are done primarily to stimulate the thoughts. The secondary aim of displaying this strange behaviour is to make you believe that they are really thinking.

When I was young my thinking was that I would grow tall. I worked towards it. In the absence of "Complan" like stuff, I over-ate whatever was available to have a “complete planned food”. I ran, jumped, hung twice a day from a tree branch. All attempts went nowhere, I didn’t grow anywhere! Those who know me or at least who have seen me know that I am not that tall. Those who had not met me for years together, just for your information, I haven’t grown taller an inch since then. If you have never seen me, and if you are an average human being, then you would never want to call me a  tall person ! Then I started believing and stopped thinking. Hitler was short. Sachin Tendulkar is short.  A R Rahman is short. Alexander the great, no idea but he must have been short!

This is a true story told to me by one of my friends. If you think I will not exaggerate this, you are absolutely right. If at all you think that my friend had exaggerated this, please don’t believe that either! He was drinking a cup of tea in his house, when they heard a loud noise, something had fallen. He ran outside. It was a coconut fell from one of their trees on to the road and a “rowdy” like person had picked it up and started walking. He very well knew he would not match with that rowdy in any of the parameters, still he shouted “hey, return that coconut to me. That belongs to us”. He thought his uncle who was also inside the house, who was on vacation from his job in armed forces would support him. Army uncle just sat inside while all this commotion happened, as if he was waiting for an order from his superior. My friend thought further provocation to the rowdy would cost him more than the cost of a coconut, which was damn cheap unlike these days!  What happened next was not at all in line with what his thinking was. “I found this near that culvert I will put it there only” saying this, the rowdy just came back a few yards, dropped the coconut there and vanished! 

“Don’t believe everything that you think” some great thinker has told this. Believe it or not, please do think well. But, if more and more people stop believing in the way you think, it is high time you changed that portion of your head which you normally scratch while thinking!