Tintin is not a comic book that is very common in the USA. Although, Steven Spielberg did make a movie out of it. In India (or for that matter, anywhere in Europe too), Tintin was part and parcel of growing up.

The protagonist was ably supported by the warm-at-heart (a big part of the heart warmed by his penchant for whiskey) Captain Haddock (of the “ten thousand thundering typhoons” fame), the well meaning, hard of hearing but brilliant scientist Cuthbert Calculus (with his pendulum and “westwards, westwards” refrain), the bumbling twin detectives Thomson and Thompson (“to be precise, with a “p” as in psychology and without a “p” as in Venezuela” is the way they would clarify) and of course the ever faithful dog Snowy.

With Natasha back in her home and Nikita out with her friends, Sharmila pulled up a book to relax in the evening. And I pulled out the “Red Rackham’s Treasure”.

You would think that after 45 years or so, I would not find it as interesting. But you would be wrong. That is the brilliance, I sense, of the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi.

While as a child I focused on the story line, these days, at my age, I focus a little more on the creation itself – how the cartoonist is telling and drawing the story.

One of my favorite pictures is the one in the inset. The quick background is this: Before our favorite team would go out on a treasure hunt, the story was leaked in the Daily Reporter. Which infuriated them no end and caused a great deal of inconvenience.

When they came back, the same reporter accosted them with all sorts of questions. Captain, taken by surprise, was livid to see the reporter again. But on second thoughts, he came up with a cunning idea. He introduced Calculus as his secretary and let him take the interview. If you remember, Calculus was very hard of hearing. So the conversation – if you can call that, more like two independent monologues – that ensued is hilarious. The ever increasingly agitated reporter would ask one more pertinent question. And Calculus would invariably answer a completely different question with absolutely no bearing to the real context, whatsoever.

The end of it is seen in the inset. Calculus walks away very satisfied with the interview. The journalist was left in a complete tizzy. But the best part is the smug, mischievous smile on the impish Captain’s face all the while listening to the conversation peeking from around the corner. You can almost see him chafing his palms!!

That was a good read!!

Written by two journalists – Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren – this book will intrigue you if you care to understand how poorly we all think. The self-conviction we have about how clearly we think (albeit with some humility that we might be wrong at the edges) could not be more misplaced.

The authors fairly comprehensively cover the various variables that often cloud our thinking – yes, simply feeling hungry (or hangry as the authors say), make people make very different decisions. This has been proven by multiple researches.

It gets into how your thinking is influenced by what you eat (thru the gut), what language was your first language that you learnt, simple marketing tricks… about 29 such factors.

In the end, you will realize that you are not one uniform identity that thinks and makes decisions consistently. Far from it. We are all social beings that change our thinking or decision based on who we are with. Or who we were with.

I have to admit that while reading the book chapter by chapter, I found no “flow”. It was like moving from one independent variable that affects your thinking to the next one in a very disjointed way.

But in the end, you realize that – that is the exact point the authors are trying to make. Our thinking is not a smooth one – it gets affected by different variables and circumstances at different times. At least this helps you understand what is likely making our thinking murky even if we do not realize that.

I think the following excerpt from the book sums it up well…

“Despite what countless other books will tell you, positivity and optimism come with plenty of pitfalls – not least that they can make you overconfident, blinkered and gullible – and the relentless pursuit of happiness will likely only make you miserable. Nor is a high IQ the foolproof solution it is claimed to be – it doesn’t make us immune to bias, prejudice or mental illness, and it won’t automatically make us challenge our own thinking. To make the most of our intelligence, we also need intellectual openness, flexibility and conscientiousness as well as emotional stability and intelligence. And if you believe love will clear your head, think again. We all know how muddled and mindless that can make us.”