Life’s just a bowl of cherries

It is in the air. You cannot miss the palpable excitement associated with the birthday of somebody in the family. The aroma of special dishes being dished out starts wafting from the kitchen since early morning. For, there can be no festivity sans food. It plays a starring role in any celebration. Right up to the cherry on the cake. So it was this week as my sister dressed up in a new suit for her big day. Yes, clothes too, figure high on the agenda. A new outfit is the icing on the cake. But what takes the cake as far as enthusiasm for a “birthday” is concerned is the high-energy gusto exhibited by a child. Though one stops counting the years after 16, my little niece’s countdown for the bash begins days in advance. And while we elders look on indulgently, she is the one who gets to cut the cake… and pick the cherry on it, too.

Well, cherrypicking is not exactly such a smooth affair, but it’s close. Cherrypicking is to choose in a highly selective manner the most beneficial or profitable items, opportunities, etc from what is available. As, how lucky are the ones so brilliant as to be able to cherrypick the university they want to go to!  

Cherrypicking comes from the idea of picking the best cherries from a tree. The word cherry is from Middle English cherise/cheris, which was mistaken for a plural and a singular cheri made from it. In French, a cherry is still une cerise. 

When it comes to cherrypicking students, Anand Kumar, the mathematician from Patna, seems to have cracked the code of selecting the best pupils from among the poor and then tutoring them free of cost for admissions to the prestigious IITs in a way that is fair. That it is the brainchild of a teacher who himself could not make it to Cambridge due to poverty lends the programme an inspirational value.

Since 2003, his Ramanujan School of Mathematics, now a trust, has been holding a competitive test to select 30 students for the ‘Super 30’ scheme. Around 5,000 students from economically backward sections, including children of beggars, hawkers and autorickshaw-drivers, take the exam. He prepares the 30 intelligent ones so selected for the Joint Entrance Examination for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). The children are provided with study material and lodging for a year. His mother cooks for the students and his brother takes care of the management. In 2010, the whole batch of Super 30 cleared the IIT-JEE, making it a three in a row for the institution.

Anand Kumar accepts no financial support for Super 30 from any government or private agency. He prefers to manage on his earnings from the Ramanujam Institute. In contrast, we have coaching institutes that cherrypick the crème de la crème of students and then pay special attention to their “coaching” even as the poor average ones are given second-class treatment.

But if you cherrypick data to suit a hypothesis, it’s called quote mining. Quote mining is a form of cherrypicking in which one selects only that evidence which supports an argument, and rejects or ignores contradictory evidence. The practice of quoting out of context (also referred to as "contextomy" and quote mining) is a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning. Contextomies are stereotypically intentional, but may also occur accidentally. Arguments based on this fallacy are typically found in politics. Celebrities who put their foot in their mouth are often seen defending themselves with the “quoted-out-of-context” routine.

Who said life is just a bowl of cherries? It is tough. The cherry on the cake (a special treat) goes to just the lucky few. For, how many can you spot with that desirable perquisite (perk), a Mercedes, with their job? But accept life happily with what it offers. Follow the Irish proverb: Neither give cherries to pigs nor advice to a fool. Meanwhile, read the book “If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries What Am I Doing in the Pits?” by Erma Bombeck for a bite at the cherry (opportunity) of laughter.

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