REMINDER :Got to read this 4-5 years hence.

[ Following is the transcript of a dialogue I recently had with an online acquaintance of mine. The subject of the dialogue was - " greatness" and "should it be a necessary criterion in liking someone ? "

The reason I am posting it here is that the person with whom I had that dialogue had asked me to Not delete my replies to his queries. Instead, save them somewhere and read them 4-5 years hence. The idea appealed to my senses so I decided to entertain it. Now, what better a place to preserve a dialogue for eternity than this virtual space. After all, hard discs aren't so reliable these days and the traditional medium i.e " paper " doesn't seem that durable an option to keep such dialogues intact for such a long period as say, 5 years. Posting it as a blog entry on my blog seemed to me to be the best available option. So here's the dialogue as it happened..]



TH*-Glad to see you here,Mr.Eastwood** :)

( *TH- The Highlander= Profile name of the person I had the dialogue with. )

( **I had the picture of Clint Eastwood as my display pic. on my profile at that time. )

SS*-Same here, Monsieure Iconoclast** :)
* Doffs the Hat *

( *SS- Sudeept Shrivastav= Your's truly. )
( **Iconoclast is the "handle" The Highlander uses on Orkut. )

TH- So you like Chankakya ? What is so great about him ?

SS- You mean Chanakya ? Well, I do like Chanakya-The tele-serial. I have the entire serial in DVD format. It was one of the best historical tele-series I've ever watched on small screen. Very well directed technically,as per the existing technical standards in those days. Equally well acted. An honest and sincere attempt on the director Dr.Chandra Prakash Dwivedi's part.

As for Chanakya- The person..Well, not too sure if I actually "like" him in that sense but yeah I do find him pretty interesting and fascinating. As far as his "greatness" is concerned, history establishes him as THE finest prime minister any Indian King ever had, besides being the second finest politician & KINGMAKER in the entire history of India after Shri Krishna ( of course, assuming he actually existed & Mahabharatha actually took place. )

I personally consider him as a good teacher, a knowledgeable economist, an able administrator, a ruthless politician and above all -A foresighted visionary.

Having said that, L'emme make it clear that I don't endorse all his views. Particularly his Neetis regarding women.

On another note though, Is "Greatness" a necessary criterion for one to like someone ?
The way I see it, it isn't.

In any case, I don't like a person because he is great. It's actually the other way round i.e. He is great because I like him ;-)

TH- If "Greatness" ( in one sense or the other, to some degree or the other ) isn't a criteria to like someone for you, then what is?


SS-First things first- Pray pardon me for being so late with my replies. I am a l'il busy with some work these days and hence haven't been able to be online as much as I would have liked to.

Coming to your question, I beg to disagree with the way you structured your question-

-"If "Greatness"(in one sense or the other, to some degree or the other) isn't a criteria to like someone for you, then what is?"-

Sorry but you can't just put it as nonchalantly as that ( re:portion in bold ). The whole cache, the whole point of - Greatness not being a necessary criteria to like someone for me - lies in the "sense" of it only.
Greatness is a subjective term. It depends upon how an individual defines "Great". What looks great to me might not look so to you. And viceversa. For instance, my Ma could be the greatest cook in the world in MY eyes but that doesn't mean the world, too, should agree with MY view regarding her culinary skills.

So..what's the point of talking in terms of something as subjective as greatness ??

When I used the term "greatness" in my previous scrap, I obviously meant it in the popular sense of the term OR, in other words- as the world in general defines "greatness". And it's this popular sense of the term greatness which I don't consider important enough to deem it as THE criterion for me for liking someone.

And frankly speaking, I don't have very lofty standards when it comes to likes and dislikes. There's absolutely no need for anyone to be "great" ( in the popular sense of the word ) in order to be liked by me. Just being "good" will do. I can certainly manage with just a l'il goodness only.


I hope I've made myself clear THIS time round :)

TH- Don't delete these scraps that you wrote to me. Save them somewhere and read them 4-5 years hence.

SS- Done.