Volume 11 Issue 9 September, 2021
I admired an elderly lady who is otherwise a shy and mundane homemaker but mentally lives in a world of newspaper crossword puzzles in secret. Another gracious rich woman had too many maternal responsibilities to pursue her school life passion for painting. When life thrust her into the role of a financially distressed caregiver in an empty nest, she could only revert to painting in the form of embroidery works to deal with her constant stress. Similarly, when the migrant labourer gets teary-eyed on seeing a beautiful Ram Leela performance, there is no escaping that human beings cannot tolerate too much of reality.
Art by Dr Jaydeep Nandi
Cheap computers are replacing sophisticated mental capabilities like accounting or chess playing. On the other hand, elementary abilities (like learning the mother tongue, grasping a simple tool) remain elusive to the smartest of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Moravec’s paradox can be exemplified with doodling, too, which is a childhood skill but appears to be out of bounds of AI, and hence there is no immediate threat of it being obsolete as human passion. Three other points regarding doodling that are worth pondering:
First, No famous artist will sketch you or your loved ones. They will happily draw a ‘Monalisa’ for the millionth time but won’t knock at your door with their sketchbooks. So self-help is the best help in this regard.
Second, Your grandson or granddaughter may read your will but not your peer-reviewed publications. On the other hand, a doodle might help them delve inside the mind of their rich granddad.
Third, Nature is infinitely beautiful. It is sufficient to humble our megalomaniac self and heal our humiliated egos. Doodling can be an excellent medium to let nature work on our souls.
Neil Gaiman once said: The world always seems brighter when you have just made something that wasn’t there before; what better to say.
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