Peaks of Himalayan folly

What's in a name?” wondered William Shakespeare’s Juliet Capulet. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” We Indians, English-ruled and mostly English-schooled, would agree.

- R. PRASANNAN

Not the Chinese. A sage told them 2,500 years ago that “if names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish.”

Got it? Won’t blame you if you didn’t. The sage’s name is Confucius.

Rendered in plain English, all that the wise guy said was, call a spade a spade. If you call it a hammer, you may use it to drive a nail when you want to hang a picture, and all the mud would splash on your wall. Simple, isn’t it? Look how wise guys of the ancient world complicated things, as do many of our motivation speakers. They dress up simple things—good old sayings, maxims, proverbs, Panchatantra tales and the kind of things that our grandmothers told us—in complicated style and present them as nuggets of their wisdom.