#TwoBits: Do you enjoy Kipling?

My parents were voracious readers and encouraged their children to adopt the habit from very young.

Saturday mornings were not complete without a visit to the Natal Society Library in Longmarket Street, Maritzburg, where we loaded up with a week’s worth of reading.

Between The Famous Five at age 8 and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in my teens, I grew to enjoy short stories of the folk tale variety.

The adventures of Sinbad the Sailor in The Arabian Nights, Mowgli and the gang in the Jungle Books (Joke – He: Do you like Kipling? She: Ooh yes, I love to kipple!) and, in particular, a lovely collection of African short stories named The Long Grass Whispers written by a woman who lived in Malawi a long time ago.

The other day I chanced on a picture of the book’s cover (see below), which brought back a flood of memories of the stories about animals, always with a moral and beautifully written: Kalulu the Rabbit, The Iguana Who Was Always Right, the Monkey and the Hyena and so many more.

All through the African day men and women, children and animals, on their way to the maize gardens, to the water holes, to the hunting grounds, to the forests, pass through the long grass.

What happens there to beast and men cannot be spoken of in the daylight. But at night, around the flickering fire the grandmother tells how the animals live and talk.

It reminded me of another tale I heard somewhere else about the Donkey, the Leopard and the Lion.

One day at the watering hole, the Donkey and the Leopard were talking.

The Donkey declared, with great authority: “The grass is blue.”

The Leopard replied: “No it’s not, it’s green!”

The discussion became heated and the two decided to submit the argument to arbitration.

So, they approached the judge Lion.

As they approached the Lion, the Donkey brayed: “Your Highness, we are having an argument you must settle. Isn’t it true that the grass is blue?”

The Lion replied: “If you believe it’s true, then the grass is blue.”

So, the Donkey said excitedly: “The Leopard disagrees with me, contradicts me and annoys me! Please, punish him!”

The King then declared: “The Leopard will be punished. Three days of no hunting.”

Well, the Donkey jumped for joy and went on his way, content he was right, repeating “The grass is blue, the grass is blue!” to anyone who would listen. So, the Leopard went to the Lion afterwards and asked: “Your Majesty, why have you punished me? After all, the grass is green.”

The Lion replied: “You have known and seen that the grass is green.”

So, the Leopard asked, why was he being punished?

The Lion said, “Listen here, that has nothing to do with whether the grass is green or blue. The punishment is because it is degrading for a brave, intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with an ass.

“And on top of that, you came and bothered me with that question just to validate something you already knew was true.”

The moral of the story is that the biggest waste of time is arguing with a fool, a fanatic who doesn’t care about truth or reality, but only the victory of his or her belief or illusion.

Never waste time on discussions that make no sense.

There are people who, for all the evidence presented to them, do not have the ability to understand.

They just wanted to argue.

Others are blinded by ego or hatred and resentment and the only thing they want is to be right. Even if they aren’t.

The saying goes: “When ignorance screams, intelligence moves on.”

* * *
Do not buy the iPhone13.

They developed it in just one year.

The first iPhone took billions of years to make.

What’s more I hear it’s full of microchips and GPS tracking software.

It’s also got 5G.

How can we trust an iPhone that was developed so fast?

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