Volume 5 · The Great Indian Bazaar · Essay 277
Thin Slice Judgements
There are ideas that shout. Thin Slice Judgements is not one of them. It waits quietly until the day you need it.
It is worth keeping in your pocket not because it is always right, but because it is always available. A tool you carry beats a perfect tool you left at home.
Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.
Stand at a tea stall during a big cricket match and you will see a hundred strangers become one family in an evening. The same crowd, given a different match, can split over a surname.
Society is a long conversation; the only question is whether you are listening or merely waiting to speak. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.