Most of the books I read during the (first?) COVID-19 lockdown were textbooks. As in, non-fiction. Try not to hate me for that; I have always consumed a wide gamut of literature. Figured I should make the best of a bad situation, using the downtime to learn a few new skills. For the inevitable moments when I felt like banging my head against a brick wall, be it from writer’s block, the fate of nations or a particularly troublesome bug in some app I was building, it was Netflix to the rescue.
The other night I happened across some animated series from India (presented in the original Hindi with no dubbing whatsoever, which I appreciated) depicting the hypothetical wacky adventures of Ganesha as a boy. A kids’ show, obviously. But kids’ shows are (more often than not) the shit after a couple of bong rips, so I decided to check it out. At first I found Bal Ganesh endlessly fascinating. I was being offered a glimpse into what kind of Saturday morning cartoons I would’ve been watching had the Fates decreed I be born on a different continent. Subsequent episodes impressed upon me that this was exactly like one of those gawd-awful religious shows my cousins used to watch when they were kids (if you have never heard of Psalty the Singing Songbook, consider yourself blessed), only with a Hindu angle to it. Once it dawned on me that every episode of this series basically has the same plot, the fatal flaw in its premise became abundantly clear to me; a flash of insight which I immediately tweeted…
the hero has to have weaknesses in order to make for a compelling story. hence any cartoon where the main character is a god tends to lose its lustre after three episodes #amwriting #writerslife #netflixandchill #SaturdayThoughts #420blazeit #staylifted #Mmemberville
— X. Jupiter Hart (@x_jupiterhart) July 11, 2020
Five and ¾ Senses 