Two sides of a coin

How important is it to lead a clean life when you are celebrity. Sparked off this thought from the recent Tiger Woods episode. Even though, I am a mug with golf, I have seen people speak highly of him and that he was a true champion. One of our management gurus used to quote Tiger on how a successful pro should be. The quote was an excerpt from an interview which goes like this,

Interviewer (I): What are you going to do in the off-season
Tiger: Work on my game
I: Which part of your game
Tiger: Every part !

I admired Tiger for this answer above and also that he is regarded high by someone who I regard the highest among sportsmen—Roger Federer.

Another classic example is Kamal Hassan. I am a big admirer of his acting, thoughts and views. But his personal life is much criticised (must say that one doesn’t give due consideration to his side of the story).

On this topic, nearly fought with one of my friends. So don’t want to speculate too much into it. I am tempted to say that in a country where people are largely not very educated and not very matured, people get carried away and take clue from their idols. But this is a very imperfect argument and so would leave it at that.

Interpretations gone wrong

Often, it happens to me that I misinterpret things.
Would like to give a couple of examples:

In cricket, there is something called "sight" screen which basically helps the batsman focus only on the ball and the bowler and not get disturbed by the crowd behind the bowler. For long, I was thinking it’s side-screen.

Another thing was with American Football. Used to wonder why the game is called so when very little of foot is used. My uncle in the US explained me the right reason. It’s called so coz the ball measures a foot. Funny isn’t it.

Similarly, in a Tamil song—Kallai mattum kandaal…from Dasavadharam, the lyrics goes as--Saivam endru paarthal dheivam theriyadhu..My interpretation was—just being vegetarian, it doesn’t bring you any closer to god. But the actual meaning is Saivam here refers to one of the two large sects of Hinduism. It actually fits perfectly with the context of the song where the saivists n vaishnavists would be up in arms against each other. My friend laughed so much at this dumb interpretation of mine. :-(...booo

I am sure I am not alone in this. One of my friends, had interpreted the song Vaanathe paarthen (from Manidhan) as follows: Kurangilirundhu pirandhana?....kurangai manidhan petrana..yaarai keLvi ketpadhu…Yaarum illaye..
but in actual it’s Kurangilirundhu pirandhana?....kurangai manidhan petrana..yaarai keLvi ketpadhu…Darwin illaye....the difference is Darwin instead of Yaarum. :P

Think of situations where you would have thought of a different use for an item (eg., napkins served on dining tables).

One common factor I see in all these examples is, we think of alternative words or uses only if they fit in.