Porcine Pearls

There were a number of things big and small in America that impressed me a great deal.  One of them, perhaps you might think it is trivial, was, get ready for it, comic strips in the newspaper.

You didn't see that coming, eh ;)

I was blown away by an entire page of the newspaper with nothing but comic strips.  And then on Sundays, a special supplement in which the cartoons were in color.  Boy was in heaven!

In India, Tamil magazines had cartoons.  And I loved them, especially the ones by Madan.  And there were comic books.  But, comic strips in newspapers with the same characters wisecracking day after day?  America was truly the land of plenty!

After barely looking at the top headline on the front page, I started turning to the funny pages to begin my newspaper reading in the morning.  Among all the cartoons, my favorite was Calvin and Hobbes.  The humor, the social commentary, the sarcasm about adulthood, they appealed to me a great deal.  (Some day, I will blog about The Far Side)

Then one day, Bill Watterson signed off, and Calvin and Hobbes became history.  What a disappointment it was!

Over the recent years, I have started enjoying Pearls Before Swine, though it is quite a few rungs below Calvin and Hobbes.  No fancy drawings, simple names of the characters, and often self deprecating humor.  Like this recent one.

Until yesterday, I hadn't thought much about the title of the comic strip--Pearls Before Swine.  I assumed that the cartoonist had to title it, and because of the pig character, well, he threw those words together.

But then I learnt something new.  There is always something new every day.  It is amazing.  How do people ever go around like they know it all?  Confident idiots they are.

I returned to reading Segu after taking a break to do what I know not.  (It is a coincidence that in my post on Segu a month ago, I had embedded a Pearls Before Swine strip.  Check it out.)  One of the many subplots in Segu is about the diffusion of Islam and Christianity.  Two French missionaries feature in the pages that I was reading when I came across a "pearls before swine" reference.

I wondered if it was a real Christian thing.  I turned to the oracle that knows it all--Google.

Sure enough, it is a biblical reference:

Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. (Matthew 7:6)

It is from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

There's an equivalent moral instruction in Tamil: பாத்திரம் அறிந்து பிச்சை போடு  It advises us to be fully aware of who the person is who is asking for money before we decide to help out.  Because, not all are worthy, and even worse they might not understand the value of our contribution and might abuse it.

You didn't expect a post on comic strips to end on this philosophical note either, right?