Filter Coffee #068

On Placeholders

Dear Readers,

On this day in 1979, Mother Theresa was conferred the Nobel Peace Prize.

🔗 FC #67 On ‘Pain & Suffering’ fetched me some nice comments, which I must acknowledge by quoting some of them.

• Tarun thought I had taken some pains to post FC 67 and so he said ‘no pain, no gain’. 

• Shereyar Vakil said, “I used to be thin-skinned but now I do not feel as hurt as I used to because I treat hurtful comments as 'water off a duck's back’.” 

• My dentist Shailaja says “Over the years I have realised that hurtful comments made by someone have got nothing to do with the person they are made against. In many instances the persons hurling the comments are unknowingly holding a mirror to themselves!” She goes on to add mirthfully, “I have had patients tell me that they can go through labour pain multiple times but not through a root canal/extraction.”

• Murali Nelakantan, my friend and an excellent lawyer found it an uncanny coincidence that my post coincided with the tweet by the celebrated author Pico Iyer, who tweeted, “It's seldom our actions that hurt us so much as our thoughts about them. And seldom the actions of others that wound us so much as the judgments we make about them.” Murali thought this may not be exactly what I said but it does move the conversation on the topic.

• My other dear friend S G Murali recounted something he had read about Ramana Maharishi. When he was unwell and required surgery, the doctor asked the Maharishi “Are you suffering because of the pain ?” Shri Ramana Maharishi responded by saying “I do not suffer at all. The body may be feeling the pain.”

• From Perth, my dear friend Peter wrote, “Last week's FC on the topic of Pain and Suffering was particularly relevant to me and provided the necessary boost required!!”

Thank you all, I feel rewarded for my efforts.

Dear Readers, I almost skipped posting FC this week as I was in back to back meetings all week. I then decided to post post-haste what is called a ‘placeholder’ by discussing what that word means.

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Placeholder

In Mysore, which is the Malgudi of R K Narayan's novels, there was no concept of reservation and it was either first come first served basis or survival of the fittest. Consequently, whether it be a cinema theatre or any other place where there was a performance, it was imperative that we rush in as the doors opened, grab a few seats and place a kerchief or a bag for the friends who could not ‘rush’ like some of us. The kerchief or bag served as a placeholder in that context.

I have been in Bangalore for long enough to have experienced ‘free seating’ at most of the theatres for performing arts whether it be Chowdiah, Prithvi or Ranga Shankara. The crowd at these places are certainly not those who muscle their way in but they position themselves at the entrance and as it opens, the nimble-footed scamper down the aisle and place handbags or backpacks, or at times, two of them sit keeping reserved seats between them. The bag, the backpack and the guys all qualify to be called placeholders.

There are hired placeholders who will, for a price, stand in the queue for you until it is time for the doors to open and you can take his place. I have seen this happen before the US Embassy for Visa and also before the school gates when admission forms are being issued. My travel agent in Mumbai, Rajesh Rateria never once let me wait long in a queue. He used to send one of his men and then I would take that person’s place at a given time.

I am told that New Yorkers will wait in line for just about anything — pastries, Supreme t-shirts, designer collaborations, iPads — but given the chance, few would prefer to pay someone else to do it for them. In the US, placeholders of this kind are referred to as ‘line-sitters' or 'line-standers" depending on how long the wait might be. Professional agencies like taskrabbit.com and ‘same ole line dudes’ offer such services for a fee, particularly when a new Apple product is launched. It has become a legitimate money-making business. Please see for yourself here.

There's loyalty among these people paid to stand in line. No one's going to say, "You move your feet, you lose your space." You just say, I'm going to the bathroom, and find the nearest Starbucks and get back in line at the same spot.

In rural India and some parts of urban India, a line of buckets and brassware pots become placeholders in front of a municipal tap or as they await a water tanker to come and distribute water. I have seen, many years back, gasoline tins being used as placeholders as people waited for the kerosene tanker to distribute the oil. Placeholders also come in handy while standing in a queue for rations.

In official parlance, an ‘acting officer’ or ‘in charge officer’ are placeholders for someone who may be regularly appointed to that position. If you have watched on Netflix a serial called ‘Designated Survivor’ you will find that in the event of a catastrophe consuming the life of both the President and the Vice-President, a person who has been designated becomes the President of the USA.

Proxy, badli and substitute are other versions of placeholder. These persons make way when their principal returns. Similar is the case with an Alternate Director on the board of a company. They will hold that office until the original director returns to India.

Lorem ipsum is the shorthand term for the most popular placeholder text in history, used for decades by graphic designers, web developers, and the publishing industry. It comprises a set of garbled letters having no meaning at all. Here’s what a paragraph of lorem ipsum looks like: 

Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

An easily understood example of the purpose of lorem ipsum is its use by graphic designers. They design a complete layout with all the design elements and instead of inserting the actual copy given by the client, they insert lorem ipsum with the clear objective of highlighting the visual elements as otherwise, the client would focus on the copy and not appreciate the design.

If you are a geek or keen to know more about the meaning of lorem ipsum as a placeholder, please visit: Lorem Ipsum: The Internet's Favorite Placeholder Text.

On a more morbid note, an unidentified body could be tagged as John Doe or Jane Doe, depending on the gender, as a placeholder until the body has been identified and the actual name is tagged.

In a legal context, it is customary to draw up a contract and then insert placeholders like xxx Or [-] in places where parties would eventually insert the agreed price or date or any other parameter relevant to the contract. The use of placeholders by lawyers is to ensure that the commercials are kept under wraps when drafts are being exchanged among parties.

I think I have run out of steam and have nothing more to say. Let me use a joke as a placeholder. If you have read it before, you could still smile at my efforts to fill the space up.

Someone asked: “Why do they send a woman astronaut on a space mission which is manned by male astronauts?”

Quickly came the reply: “If the men were to lose their way, the woman would ask for directions!”

I second that.

Dear readers, I managed to put together this placeholder post in a day’s time and I hope it receives your usual attention. If you know of a placeholder, please share.

Until next week, please take good care of yourself. Ciao.