On Appreciation

24 April

2:10 A.M.

Yup, you read it correctly, I am making this unexpected entry at this seemingly odd hour. Its unexpected since, as will become clearer by the end of it, the motivation behind this entry doesn't come from a strong conviction to express something substantial related to critiquing human behaviors and current socioeconomic system. Its also different from the rest since I have not endeavored to spend some time to properly organize my thoughts before expressing them here. I have a train to catch at 5:50 A.M. from Kanpur to New Delhi (I am going home for a short visit... finally) and have booked a taxi which will pick me up at 4:45 A.M. and I am beginning to feel sleepy. And I know that if I do not write it now, I probably won't be writing it afterwards. 

As for my reasons for consideration of it being worthy of a blog post - just a while back, sitting in a toilet (Indian style - to make the already gruesome imagery more vivid :D ), my thoughts, while flying randomly, somehow began to hover over a point of view about a topic which I had discussed with a friend some time back and I was able to make its connection to some of my recent experiences, the result of which seemed pretty neat. I can not recall having seen this point of view being expressed elsewhere explicitly and I suspect it will be seldom prevalent. So, in the spirit of this blog's title I thought of writing it. 

Once, sometime during the late summers of last year, while me and my friend were sitting in our hostel canteen and watching football on television, we started having a discussion about the biased sense of Indian people's interest in cricket. Then, as I can now recall, after thinking about it for sometime I proposed two reasons (1) its a cultural phenomenon which gets propagated down the generations with significant contribution from the media (2) most of the people haven't played a sport other than cricket or haven't played it to the extent of learning it as technically as one learns to, say, play some musical instrument.

Its point (2) that I intend to elaborate here and, if it has elements of truths in it, sketch its broad consequences and significance. My rationale for (2) came from my own personal experience. A few years back, I was reasonably good at playing table tennis. And when I say 'reasonably' I am comparing it with national level players' competence, so that, obviously, I was much more skilled at it than majority of Indian people. I am now, as I was at the time when the discussion with my friend took place, pretty much out of touch with it. However, this (had/has)n't prevented me from not enjoying watching a match between two good T.T. players. And the reason is that I am able to very much appreciate all the great strokes that a player makes. To me, every great stroke is an indication of the amount of time and energy that has gone into mastering it with such a perfection. The difficult the stroke the harder the labor has gone in. And to behold it in this light is a thing of beauty ! Clearly, a person who hasn't played T.T. even once or has not tried to master its difficult techniques would be far less able to appreciate an ongoing T.T. match between two good players in the sense that I have explained than a person like me would. So, I thought (and still do maintain) that there was a sufficient reason to believe that (2) is a good explanation.

By extension it has interesting consequences in many spheres of human activities which demand a specialized skill and which, indeed, need not be physical in nature. It may well be possible that many of the great scientists derive their source of pleasure from research work because of their tremendous appreciation for the work done by previous great scientists, which probably won't be appreciated by someone who's not into mathematics and science. This can be extended to arts and literature as well.

Very recently, I watched some excerpts of a short documentary on Richard Feynman. In that he's asked whether he finds it easier to have a good conversation with people from scientific background like him than with people who do not have such kind of background, for example, artists or musicians. His immediate reaction is an affirmation and he starts justifying it, only to stop in the middle, and after reflecting on it again, says "I take all of my words back". Then he cites an example of a well-renowned artist with whom he had a great conversation and concludes that provided the person has excelled immensely in his field, regardless of the field, he would be able to have a scintillating conversation with him. 

I think the above view of Richard Feynman, when taken in conjunction with point (2), may possibly provide certain clues as to what attracts someone's attention and whether its possible to make something interesting enough for someone, and if so, how to do so. In a more subtle way, this possible knowledge also behooves us to be more tolerant for other people's likings and interests and have more rational reasons for appreciating or criticizing some skill other than that resulting from complete or partial ignorance about it.