Filter Coffee #040

On Fools & Serendipity

Dear Readers,

I am quite pleased with the feedback I got on 🔗 FC #030 “Personal Reasons”. Shahji was inclined to believe that when people cited personal reasons, it would make others feel that there is something fishy about the situation. He also helped me understand why Good Friday is not a festival but a day that venerates the death of Jesus Christ. Thank you Shahji. Another reader held the view that whenever someone cites personal reasons as the reason for their action in any context, corporate, societal or familial, people should see it as a request for privacy and not pry or speculate any further. I quite agree. “Personal reasons” should not be seen as a shroud of secrecy but as a veil of discretion.

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🤪 Fools’ Day

German automaker Volkswagen's US operations issued a false statement on 31st March that claimed it would change its name from Volkswagen of America to Voltswagen. Later, the company said it will not change its name to Voltswagen and that in the spirit of April Fools’ Day, the renaming was announced highlighting the launch of all the electric ID.4 SUV. 

Google launched Gmail on the eve of April Fools’ day, and everyone thought that it was a prank due to its unbelievably good features! But the company really launched the mail king on April 1, 2004!

Taco Bell tried to trick the world with its announcement that the company planned to buy the Liberty Bell and rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. It took out newspaper ads saying that the company was purchasing the Liberty Bell  in an effort to ease the national debt. Six major newspapers at the time ran the announcement. Some senators were also taken in, until it dawned on everyone that it was a joke.

In 1760, among the earliest English speculations about the origin of the holiday is purported to have appeared in Poor Robin’s Almanac:

The first day of April, some do say
Is set apart for All Fools’ Day
But why the people call it so
Nor I nor they themselves do know.

The most famous of all the theories of how Fools’ day got into our lives is when Pope Gregory changed the calendar from Julian to Gregorian. The change meant that the New Year would begin on January 1st, rather than in April. France quickly adopted this change. However, the people who knew nothing about the new calendar continued celebrating New Year’s Day on April 1st. The ones in the know started calling them fools, and this became April Fools’ Day!

As kids, in good old Mysore, which was then still a princely state, we used to stand on the road and fool people. Our favourite target was an elderly person cycling. One of us would go near him and say, “Sir, your rear wheel is rolling forward”. The unsuspecting man would get down to inspect and then he would realise he has been fooled. He would then mount the cycle and pedal away but not before cursing us even as we laughed.

Here’s another anecdote: A guy was quite smitten by a pretty girl. As luck would have it, he comes to her house on the 1st of April and she sweetly offers to make him a cup of tea. He is delighted of course. She brings the tea and Oreo biscuits with toothpaste, in place of the original filling. She starts sipping from her cup and remarks, “Good tea, no? Please have a biscuit before tea”. Our man bites into the biscuit and with a puzzled expression he sips the tea and he can taste salt in the tea! After seeing him squirm the girl asks him, “What is the date today?” His reaction is left to your imagination.

Readers, please share April Fool anecdotes, particularly from your childhood days. Let's take the opportunity to go down memory lane and laugh at all the silly things that we did to fool others! I will share some of them with the readers in my next edition.

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🍀 Serendipity

“The occurrence of something by chance in a fortunate way”
- Oxford English Dictionary

Did you know Serendip was an archaic Persian name for Sri Lanka? According to Merriam-Webster, the coining of the word is credited to English writer Horatio "Horace" Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford (a village with historic town status in Suffolk, England). Walpole was inspired by a fairy tale called "The Three Princes of Serendip," an adaptation of the famous Persian poem "Hasht-Bihisht." (the Eighth Paradise) written by Amir Khusro around 1302 AD. The fairy tale is about three princes who by chance find a camel in Serendip. 

It is quite clear that Horace Walpole coined the word serendipity, as he explained his creation of this word in a letter written on January 28th, 1754:

“This discovery of the camel, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavour to explain to you… I once read a silly fairy tale, called “The Three Princes of Serendip”: as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of… now do you understand Serendipity?”

The word ‘Serendipity’ was obscure for a long time. It was rarely used until the 20th century, and there is no evidence of the adjectival form of the word, serendipitous, in use until 1910, when it appeared in a book on fishing:

“With good luck, you may catch a three-pounder, with very good luck a four-pounder or a  serendipitous catch of a five-pounder.” 

Happenstance, stumbling upon, fluke and blessing are some of the synonyms of serendipity. If you want to use it in a sentence you could say, “It was sheer serendipity that Shahji stumbled upon a family heirloom while spring cleaning the attic.” Another example could be, “It was serendipitous that he bought a lottery ticket out of pity from a street vendor and it turned out to be the winner.”

Can serendipity be equated to fate? Serendipity is the phenomenon of finding something valuable or agreeable even though not sought for. Fate is something that happens to a person. Fate could be an adverse outcome but serendipity is about the pleasure of chancing upon a thing not necessarily in one’s contemplation. Luck and serendipity may have some similarities, though serendipity is about finding something unexpectedly whereas luck could be to get something expected. But please remember that there’s something called bad luck, but no such thing can be said about serendipity.

Finally, there was also the movie ‘Serendipity” - A  story of a man and woman who had met once before, meet again by chance after 10 years. 

There are also two songs both titled Serendipity - One by Korean group BTS and the other by Albert Posis. I shall quote a few lines from the latter which give the essence of serendipity :

You came out of nowhere
caught my eye by surprise
and I think that you'd been heaven sent
there might be people
who just don't understand
how two could fall for each other simply by chance
I just wanna be with yah
girl this ain't no accidental
yeah, it's serendipity.

Hope you enjoyed reading. Is it not serendipitous that I should surprise you with a treatise on serendipity?

Please take good care of yourself, the worst is not over yet. See you next week!