OSAMA AND SWAMIJI

OSAMA AND SWAMI OBVIOUSANANDA

There is this gem of Murphy’s law that everyone knows—if something can go wrong it will. A derivative of this law says that if you have applied butter to one side of a slice of bread and this slice slips out of your hand the buttered side would hit the floor .

OSAMA AND SWAMI OBVIOUSANANDA

Now it so happened that a guy was doing exactly that one morning over breakfast and the slice fell down. But wonder of wonders it was the non- buttered side that hit the floor. He was flabbergasted at this exception to the law and decided to investigate. He consulted ballistic experts, miracle workers, gurus, godmen etc none of whom could answer his question—how did this rare event occur? Finally he approached a creativity teacher—like me !!- who gave him the insight he sought.

‘It’s obvious my son’ said the guru ‘You have buttered the wrong side’.

On another occasion Sherlock Holmes and Watson went to the hills for ‘ R and R’. At nightfall they erected a tent and went to sleep .At midnight Holmes wakes Watson up and asks him to describe what he saw.

‘Oh the sheer vastness of the sky, how insignificant we are…look at Venus there..look at the bear here .’ and so on

Holmes lost his patience.

‘It ought to be obvious to you my dear Watson that someone has stolen our tent’ said the great man.

As a student of human behavior and especially of thinking habits I never cease to marvel at our ability to miss the obvious.

I once was asked for advice by a friend of mine who ran a Small business .His problem—how to keep official secrets. It seemed someone hacked into company computers, someone else could open the safe etc. My friend was desperate. I gave him an advise that seemed to me to be obvious.

‘Anything that you want to keep secret post it on the notice board.’

There is this story of a rich man carrying lots of cash travelling by long distance train from Delhi to Mumbai. As night descended he realized that a co- passenger was a shady guy and was worried his cash might be stolen. He did the obvious.

Next morning the sheepish looking shady guy admitted he was after the rich man’s cash.

‘ I could not find the cash , try as I might, all night ’ he said shamefacedly. ’Where did you keep it ?’

‘Obviously at a place you would never suspect.’

‘Where is that?”

‘Right below your pillow’

That brings me to Osama Bin Laden .The best place to hide in Pakistan for Osama was exactly where the Americans found him after years of search.

Right next to the Army Academy. But that wasn’t safe enough as it turned out.

Someone says that there is an even more obvious safe place—in India. Ajmal Kasab will agree. Isn’t that obvious?

I wrote a book titled THINKING BETWEN THE LINES [ST PAUL’S MUMBAI] . I gave myself the additional name SWAMI OBVIOUSANANDA .The reason?

It ought to be obvious!

K.R.RAVI