Volume 5 · The Great Indian Bazaar · Essay 181
PHAG
There are ideas that shout. PHAG is not one of them. It waits quietly until the day you need it.
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.
The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.
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. A word is a lamp. This one is now yours to carry.