KOCHI: Gimel, zayin, yud. These were the three Hebrew consonants engraved on King Solomon’s ring. They stood for the ancient Jewish maxim “Gam zeh ya’avor” or “This, too, shall pass”.
According to legend, a sultan once asked Solomon, considered the wisest of monarchs, to come up with “a sentence that will always hold true, irrespective of the ebbs and flows of humanity and its struggles, to bring him joy in his deepest miseries, and ground him in sadness when he is elated”.
“This, too, will pass away,” Solomon replied.
Another Jewish fable says Solomon found the aphorism to be a literary elixir in his battle against the blues. “King Solomon once searched for a cure for depression. He assembled his wise men together,” goes the tale.
“They meditated for a long time and gave him the following advice: make yourself a ring and have thereon engraved the words ‘This too will pass’. He made the ring and wore it constantly. Every time he felt sad, he looked at the ring, whereon his mood would change, and he would feel cheerful.”
Be it tumult, trauma or triumph, the pithy statement this, too, shall pass holds profound import.
And it is one common dictum found in several schools of wisdom: Aetahdapi gamishyati in Sanskrit; In niz bogzarad in Persian; and Bu da geçer yahu in Turkish.
In the modern era, English poet and writer Edward FitzGerald reintroduced the adage in his 1852 story titled ‘Solomon’s Seal’. Seven years later, Abraham Lincoln popularised it during a famed speech in Wisconsin ahead of his election as the 16th US president.
Personally battling a devilish, debilitating medical mystery that’s been gnawing at my soul, I have decided to get this one tattooed for life as part of Mission 2023.
Now, as we skate on thin ice into a New Year, another apt saying pops into my mind: Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Hope is what has propelled humankind through the worst of times. There is nothing more dope than hope to clutch onto while contemplating life at rock bottom.
The line is picked from English poet and satirist Alexander Pope’s 1733 classic An Essay on Man, in which he writes:
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”
The brilliant poet-philosopher was known for many epigrams that later became popular proverbs, such as: “A little learning is a dangerous thing”; “To err is human, to forgive, divine”; and “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread”.
Life had been harsh to Alexander. “At the age of 12, he contracted spinal tuberculosis, which left him with permanent physical disabilities,” notes the Poetry Foundation. “He never grew taller than four and a half feet, was hunchbacked, and required daily care throughout adulthood.”
Britannica notes that he was a “lifelong sufferer from headaches, and his deformity made him abnormally sensitive to physical and mental pain”. He, however, used his pen to vent existential ire. But Alexander seldom resorted to vitriol; he chose satire instead.
Revisiting Alexander’s works is part of Mission 2023, too. Another ace satirist author who recently hit global headlines is George Orwell. Reports say his 1984 has emerged as an online bestseller in Russia, following the war with Ukraine. The book published in 1949, notably, had been banned in the erstwhile Soviet Union until 1988.
A satirical masterpiece that “warned” against totalitarianism, 1984 was perceived by many as a literary blitz against Joseph Stalin and the dictatorial tendencies of communism.
Though many critics point out that the book lacked humour, the mainstay of satire, the work is lauded for Orwell’s creativity in presenting a riveting “dystopian social science fiction”.
Orwell contributed several new terms to the English lexicon as well. Here are some examples highlighted by the Center for Arts at George Mason University:
Big Brother: “the personification of the unseen monolithic leader of the Party of Oceania [fictional totalitarian state]”.
Doublethink: “the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct”.
Slogans used in 1984 are prime examples: “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”, and “Ignorance is Strength”.
Memory hole: “A small chute leading to a large incinerator. Anything that needed to be wiped from the public record (embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts) would be sent into the memory hole.”
Newspeak: “A purposefully ambiguous and confusing language with restricted grammar and limited vocabulary used in Oceania, according to Orwell, ‘to diminish the range of thought’. For example, in newspeak, the term plusgood had replaced words better and great.”
Thinkpol: “A newspeak word to describe the secret police of Oceania, who are responsible for the detection, prosecution, and elimination of unspoken beliefs and doubts that contradict the Party.”
Unperson: “Someone whose existence has been excised from the public and private memory in Oceania.”
Those planning to read or revisit 1984, pick up the Orwellian gem, Animal Farm, too.
Quality satire is something that society seems to lack these days. We are getting way too serious. Even our films flounder while attempting political satire, often ending up as an agenda or propaganda medium.
One anonymous tweeter, however, recently caught my attention. Amid all the acrid political diatribe that froths in social media today, this guy chooses wit to pummel rivals.
And he goes by the username ‘Kotappally’. Though, apparently, a ‘Sanghi’, he offers a refreshing deviation from the usual political trolls and seems to be well-liked by the commies as well. In fact, it is an old college-time comrade who sent me screenshots of Kotappally’s hilarious tweets.
To me, this Twitter avatar of the original ‘Sakhavu Kotappally’ is probably a tribute to one of the finest satirical characters of Malayalam cinema, written and enacted by Sreenivasan, in the evergreen film Sandesham.
It’s been 31 years since the film was released. It still stays relevant and delivers a heavy political payload, without getting under anyone’s skin. Going into 2023, let’s take a cue from Kotappally, and be a little less serious. Let’s rejoice and regale more, not rage and rail anymore.
Okay, time for me to go add the final touches to Mission 2023. Wish you a wonderful New Year brimming with hope. And, remember, this, too, shall pass!
A kernel of hope: “A tiny amount of hope or optimism that exists within an abundance of doubt, skepticism, or pessimism”
Hold out hope: “To maintain hope that something will happen or be the case, especially when it does not seem likely”
Hope against (all) hope: “To continue to hope for something even though it seems unlikely to happen”
Hope deferred makes the heart sick: “Waiting for something that one wants can cause distress”
On a hope and a prayer: “With the hope of a positive outcome despite little chance of success”
Be beyond hope: “To be unlikely to change for the better”
Ray/glimmer of hope: “A single minute indication that something may improve, succeed, or turn out for the best in the end.”
Where there’s life, there’s hope: “As long as someone or something has not completely failed or ended, a bad situation still has a chance of getting better”
All hope abandon, ye who enter here: “A message warning one about a hopeless situation from which there is no return. The Italian version of this phrase appears in Dante’s Divine Comedy as the inscription on the entrance to Hell. The phrase is most often used humorously. More commonly translated as “abandon hope, all ye who enter here”
Hope for the best but expect the worst: “To have hope that a positive occurrence will happen, while simultaneously readying for a negative outcome”