Feast for Thought

  Grow out of my arms   Grow out of my arms – my son – my baby,             Grow up a man well loved to be, Go out into the arms of the wide-wide world             Grow out of my arms – my son – my baby.   Stride ahead with firmness of step,             Put forth your hand to aid and help, Be it a friend, be it a foe,             Jus’ remember – goodwill - it needs a hoe.   Take out the venom, put in the honey,             Lay the sweet open, for all to see, Water a plant, pick out a weed,             Look to the sun – and place a seed.   When I could gather all of you to me,     ...

 

A transferable job is a boon and a bane. One gets to live in different places, but it also means ever-changing neighbourhood and schools, besides repeated establishment of home infrastructure. As part of a sixth move (this time to the great NCR) in a period of 11 years , I just started on the job of classifying household things into "needed" / "give-away-when-usable" / "recycle". If you are a 'goal-oriented minimalist' trying to de-clutter sincerely, you will find good company in efforts such as - "How to Live With Just 100 Things". As for us, the single dominant motivating factor is the comfort that we (sincerely try to) practise anti-consumerism, and this alone should, I hope, help us meet the challenge of fitting all packable household stuff into ten 2X2X2 trunks. (I hear horror stories of some family's 75-box inventory - what a morale-booster!) For those who need inspiration to declutter, whether "physical, emotional, even ...

" Kipple  is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around,  kipple  reproduces itself. "  Kipple seems to be a combination of entropy and capitalism. I don't think past civilizations had the resources to produce so much packaging to hold our stuff until we buy it or consume it. Don't forget the First Law: "There's the First Law of Kipple…'Kipple drives out nonkipple'." Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more. No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot. From  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , by  Philip K. Dick . P...

Note: This was written in early 2014, in the context of KSRTC issues in Kerala's capital city Thiruvananthapuram. One is extremely disturbed - to say the least - to read about the woes of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), and the woes caused to other road users by KSRTC buses. The organization is the lifeline for ordinary citizens. Unfortunately though, it is not a thriving venture at present; and it seems that its buses are culpable in a tragically large number of road accidents. In this “blessed” state of India, where villages seamlessly transition to towns, most roads other than national highways and a few stretches of bypasses, are too narrow to accommodate heavy vehicles. One is often bemused and amused to watch C segment cars, luxury sedans and enormous SUVs flow out of palatial premises to occupy unfair amounts of road space. Most streets and alleys seem to have been designed with only processions of the political kind in mind. After all, ...

Recounting a fortuitous journey from 6 years ago. The longing to revisit will persist forever! Visual Recap  

Mangoes gala Woman goes gaga!

 Using jaggery, NOT sugar! Certified 'good' by the resident critic!

If you are blessed with 32 sweet teeth - like me - you may not care much for drinks that are not sweet enough, except perhaps sugar-free coffee. So when SA, our neighbour in Annanad, (Trissur district, Kerala) offered some wine during one of the neighbourhood rounds (that are such a pleasant and customary part of hometown visits), i gave a tentative nod. i even managed to sip it, and savour it as slowly as i could, resisting the urge to assume an air of being a connoisseur. Ha ha SA then generously shared the recipe in detail, complete with cautions and warnings. Here's the recipe, courtesy SA and her sources. Ingredients: Ripe (or overripe) Palayankodan bananas Jaggery, powdered (the unsalted variety) Cardamom Cinnamon Cloves Air tight jar Recommended sitting time: 41 days. Wash or wipe clean the bananas. Chop / slice the bananas, along with the peels. Crush the spice mix. In a dry jar, place a layer of jaggery, followed by a layer of chopped banana pieces. R...

Next time you hear anyone resort to 'conscience', or even if you are tempted to resort to your 'conscience', on matters that, well, matter, think about this -  " Why is conscience called one's "manahsaksi"? Conscience is fit to be only a witness(saksi), not to be a judge. A witness often gives false evidence. The mind, however, doesn't tell an untruth - indeed it knows the truth of all things. " There is no deceit that is hidden from the heart(mind), " says Auvvai. Conscience may be regarded as a witness. But nowadays it is brought in as a judge also in dharmic matters. As a witness it will give us a true report of what it sees or has seen. But on the basis of it we cannot give on what is just with any degree of finality. "What I think is right, " everybody would try to satisfy himself thus about his actions if he were to be guided only by his conscience. How can this be justified as the verdict of dharma? We often hear pe...

Jerry Pinto's review of the book 'Smritichitre' by Lakshmibai Tilak (English translation by Shanta Gokhale) convinced me that i should buy it, and i did. Indeed a wonderful account of the people and the circustances in familiar places of Maharastra, the book covers the period from the last couple of decades of the 19th century, and the first three of the 20th century. Experience the author's angst as her spouse hastens steadily from one faith to another, and she ends up treading the same path. In the same newspaper edition as the review, i got to read another fascinating account  of one man's beloved collection of Tanjore paintings. " The gods and goddesses in the iconic paintings often have “stark staring eyes”. This is because, Singh suggests, in the Indian tradition of  darshan , you do not just look at the deity but the deity looks back at you. The box frames are a three-dimensional representation of a shrine. The religious cannot be disconnected from ...

"....reminds us of the persistence of primal floods rising to punish human beings for their greed. Most often, the stories tell of a giant fish rising to save humanity. We have our own version in ‘matsya avatar’ with Vishnu taking the form of a fish to save Manu, the designated survivor of humanity. The Sumerians’ tales of Gilgamesh talk of Sage Utnapishtim, who takes his family, his animals and enough grains, to start all over again after the deluge. Then there’s the Aztec myth of a couple that climbs a tree with two ears of grain to save themselves from the flood. And the Norse myth of Odin and his brothers who kill Ymir, an ice-giant, the frost in whose veins melts and floods the earth. Maybe our own Ichthyosaurus is a reminder of the fragility of all life forms in the everflowing flux of time. Or how closely connected we all are by our myths and heredity. Surfacing as the oceans begin to rise, the Ichthyosaurus of Kutch lives again." Source   So once again, let us re...

1. "Climbing Australia’s giant red rock Uluru to be banned" "The rock’s traditional Aboriginal owners’ connection to the site dates back tens of thousands of years and it has great spiritual and cultural significance to them." Source 2. "Tribe rejects plan to build tram, hotel in Grand Canyon" "Members of the Navajo Nation Council have rejected legislation to build an aerial tram to take paying visitors to a riverside boardwalk in the Grand Canyon in the U.S. Critics showed up to urge lawmakers to oppose the project. They have said the area is sacred and that the proposed development would mar the landscape". Source 3. "In the dim past what we call Hinduism today was prevalent all over the world. Archaeological studies reveal the existence of relics of our Vedic religion in many countries. For instance, excavations have brought up the text of a treaty between Rameses II and the Hittites dating back to the 14th century B. C. In this, t...

All NGOs work for some cause.  And their funding is under scrutiny.  The government or its designated department gives approval after ensuring the legitimacy of the cause.  At the time of registration, let the govt provide a seed fund, open the NGO's account in a chosen bank, and announce that the NGO can seek funds from anyone who wishes to support the cause.  The funds would be routed through only this account. Can't transparency be ensured this way?  And political parties also can be considered non-governmental organizations! Quoting from  NGOs’ foreign funds and a trust deficit "....  foreign funding of NGOs is dwarfed by other foreign money coming into India. Of this, the amount used for potentially questionable purposes is about 13 per cent. Let us look at another set of issues. All organisations working in society need to be transparent and accountable, including NGOs, whether domestically or foreign funded. The RTI tries to do t...

A few years ago, living in Thiruvananthapuram and watching the city -  a lovable overgrown village really -  burst at the seams, these were thoughts that i had shared (see  Stop the cloning of cities ) -  Indian cities have been trying hard at developing into clones of big cities across the world, and succeeding. (Aside: In the matter of solid waste management they are just clones of each other). Bangalore was a laid back garden city till about a couple of decades ago, even though it was the aerospace-cum-electronics hub of India. If we put together all the pros and cons of living comfort, standards of living, and quality of life, we will find that the present Bengaluru has unfortunately lost its overall charm.  We have let globalisation and technological revolutions invade our urban spaces and our mind spaces so much, and at too fast a pace, that entire sections of urban residents have forgotten to pause, look around, smell the earth, and think of whole...

Some amazing facts here -  From Jellicut to jallikattu   " It is only the Jellicut (identified as Pulikulam ) that has been described scientifically (between 1870 and 1930) as a “small bull specially bred for bull-fighting/taming in the Tamil region“, according to the Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh. " i read the piece with great interest. Scientific management is one logical route to protecting native breeds and all of the so-called IP, though i prefer to term it knowledge base instead. One experiences mixed feelings on learning that a few other countries have recognised the unique traits of native Indian breeds, and taken efforts at tapping the preferred qualities for better results; beginning with the fact that “American Brahman” is “the first beef cattle breed developed in the US”.   Here are a few questions that occurred to me as a layperson, following the dismaying developments of the past few days 1. Are there clear indications abou...