The internet has open many new vistas, not least of them is an opportunity to explore the rather very esoteric and obscure interests that some people seem to have.
Take the Wodehouse society in the UK for example. I am sure only the most deprived would not have had a chance to experience and enjoy his inimitable wit and depth of characterisation. Most are content enough with that, but some it seems rather patently are not. For Wodehouse society runs a (apparently) successful quiz where pits the abilities of Woodehouse enthusiasts against each other-in a hotly contested match to remember the most trifling of details from the great man’s work.
To appreciate how truly singular these competitions are, an extract from round, round 211 is attached.
The world of High Finance and Big Business has been known to intrude on the idyllic world of Drones and the Idle Rich. Can you identify the principals in the following examples?
1. Nevertheless, as he breakfasted on the morning of the fateful match, ___(A)____ was conscious of an unwonted nervousness. He was no weakling. In Wall Street his phlegm in moments of stress was a byword. On the famous occasion when the B. and G. crowd had attacked C. and D., and in order to keep control of L. and M. he had been compelled to buy so largely of S. and T., he had not turned a hair. And yet this morning, in endeavouring to prong up segments of bacon, he twice missed the plate altogether and on a third occasion speared himself in the cheek with his fork. The spectacle of ___(B)___, so calm, so competent, so supremely the perfect butler, unnerved him
Currently, people around the world are bent over their omnibuses, peering through their catalogues looking for the answers to quiz 221, from the January 2005 round. They follow in the proud footsteps of many others like them, who have done the same over the past almost 20 years that this has been taking place.
My narrative may seem (faintly) deriding, but I assure you, you mistake my wonder and honest incredulity for derision.
My amazement and fascination for eccentrics-of whom the Woodehouse society is probably just barely a fringe member- probably results from the almost complete lack of similar exhibits in Pakistani society.
For some reason, while we as a nation may be deeply and incorrigibly idiosyncratic- on a personal level, you almost never find anybody walking around completely at odds with norms and the expectations of the milieu.
I’ve often wondered why, is it because of our deep-seated intolerance? Or because of are inability to leave well alone, that long tires even the most hell-bent of eccentrics to conventionality and trite orthodoxy? Had Einstein been born in Pakistan, just merely his coiffure would long have ensured that every iota of fresher thinking and innovation was pummelled out of him.
This, I wonder, but of one thing I am sure- we do certainly pay our price for it.