TIL

Back in year 2000, a children's show used to be aired on Sony(as far as I can remember) called Heidi. It was an animated series based on the namesake book.

I was quite grown up by then, in my mid teens and I was IN LOVE with the series. Everything about the show was awesome. I strongly feel that it provided me with a sense of calm in my otherwise stressful years of 11th and 12th, the acad rigor and then the earth quake aftermath. 

I loved the slow European rural mountain life depicted in the show - the cattle rearing, cheese making, curd churning life. 

So today I learned two things:

> This genre is referred to as "Cottagecore".

> The opening sequence of the show was done by none other than Miyazaki !!

And thats why Arietty reminded me of Heidi :)

So far

 So a week ago, K and I got tested and  were found COVID positive.

Horrible, I know. But by the grace of God, we are doing fine now. The fever has gone along with the body  ache.

All the symptoms that they talk about on the internet are there - the fever, body ache, lethargy, pain behind eyes, loss of taste and smell.. But there are more weird ones. A strange taste in the mouth all the time, the throat feels choked and a very dry nasal passage.

Loss of taste and smell makes cooking very difficult. But then neither of us can actually taste anything, so its fine.. lol

I am just angry at everything thats going on. Please bhagwanji.. Make things right. We need the world to go back to normalcy. 

Huh

 I am so hungry right now.

And a bit angry, at myself. For not packing enough food. Damn it.

I still have loads of work to be finished before I can go home.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Poets also love butterflies

Who doesnt love butterflies?

 

They are dainty, fluttery, ethereal and just overall pretty. It is difficult to remain sad in the company of butterflies. I guess.

 

So for the last few days, while driving to work I have observed just thousands of butterflies flying east. 

Yup, they are flying in herds from west to east. I had never read/heard about butterfly migration, let alone witness it. Its so beautiful. And easy to miss if one doesnt know what to look at.

 

A little digging around and I found the name of these pretty things - pieris brassicae.

 

Never too late to learn something new :)

 

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Poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.

~ William Faulkner ~

The county of thorny babools

 As with everyone, as a family we are yearning to go out and have fun. Most places however, are teeming with other people who are (most probably) experiencing similar yearning (!). Most places, except for our trusted bio-diversity park. Thank God for other people's stupid choices.

The park has taken a new avatar this year. Specially at this time of the year, it is trying to grow into a full fledged jungle it seems. 

These walks bring the much needed respite from everyday routine. A chance to breathe in fresh air, listening to hidden birds and insects, spotting colorful(and dangerous) spiders, running, jumping and just being us. 

daal daal aur paat paat

So recently I learned that the word "daal" does not technically mean pulses. 

Daal literally means any grain/seed that has been through the process of "dararna". I can put it better in hindi - jise dala gaya ho, use daal kehte hain. So while tuwar, moong, masoor are the pulses, tuwar ki daal stands for split tuwar. So, sarso ki daal is a thing! And sabut moong is not a daal at all !

I love words.

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Also my new food love is chunky peanut butter sandwiches with fired chillies. Truely addictive.

For dealing with the devil

We have sold our souls for money. We are not stupid, perhaps. K and I both have taken up new assignments requiring higher time commitments. It is making us happy, i guess. tired all time time, but happy. Isnt it?

We talk everyday about how little time we have left for each other during weekdays. And weekends are spent cleaning and restoring the house (upto a certain degree), huge loads of laundry, preparing stockable snacks (have become a pro at this lol, even managed doughnuts!!), sorting innumerable books and toys lying everywhere, grocery shopping, cleaning the veggies ... the list literally never ends.

I miss the days when lives were simpler. And yet, somehow I cherish these times when we are doing so much. It is an amazing feat. Now easy to let go of any me-time. 

Kids have adjusted well in this regimen. So far they have invented new games and rearranged all furniture in the house so that it resembles a jungle gym. They keep bouncing all the time. Our couch has nearly given up. There is an unspoken consensus in the household that furniture and wall fixtures are going to be collateral damage to this situation.

V has started reading. Yay! Meanwhile, T has been eyeing my Harry Potters and I dont know. Isnt he too young to be exposed to that? 

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It has been raining. Finally. There has been a situation with the roads here. But nothing too unmanageable. 

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I wish there was more positivity. And people were more hardworking, less lazy. More open and less regressive. 

The joy of painting

Ever since I have stopped watching stuff from streaming platforms, I have had some time to pursue things that actually make me happy. And by things that make me happy I mean learning watercolors.

Long ago, I did dabble a bit in water colors. But then ever since I took up oil/acrylic, watercolors were forgotten. Can you blame me? Oils are easy, and forgiving. When Bob Ross said, "there are no mistakes, only happy accidents", he was painting in oils. :) lol. I love the guy.

And now, I am learning again. Feels good. Really.
So a couple weeks ago I made this

Was really pleased with this.

There are some brushes I want to buy, but have been putting off going to the craft shop. I should.

Homegrown peaches

I have this song stuck in my head today - I am not a princess, this aint a fairy tale.. 

But its almost not true. Also fairy tales are mostly sad. Make us want to focus on the outcome rather than the journey. So also misleading. 

But I do love the song. Its catchy and old. Kind of like us lol.

Yesterday the boys found one of my old journals while rummaging around. It was from the third and fourth year of college (they understood nothing and found it rather boring of course). 

Quite frankly, the journal shocked me. First of all, it was meticulous. An entry for every day. I liked that part. But the contents, ohh.. made me cringe !! The "me back then" from my memories isnt so stupid. But it turns out that I was, we all were. I wish I could go back. I would spend some more time actually studying rather than roaming around. 

:)

So I told this to K yesterday. He has no regrets. But he still gets to study, keeps up with the tech. And I have lost touch. Sometimes, I forget I was trained to be an engineer. 

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I remember fragments of a conversation I had with a classmate (yes in MNIT). He was determined to prove that girls shouldnt come to engineering colleges because "they waste a seat". He argued that most of us were not going to be in the mainstream core jobs and so shouldnt bother taking admission in the college. He said a boy could have occupied the seat if I hadnt been there, and he could have had a career. 

I was furious of course. The guy was of course an a******. And wrong.

There werent many girls in our college (about 7%). And on an average, the girls have faired better. Not many are there in the core engineering fields, that much is true. Most of us moved on to other fields. But the engineering degree hasnt been wasted. Education is not about gaining information, no. That is rote learning. True education teaches "how to think". 

And that stays with you forever, and is useful in any field.

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Blue bus

The other day, I was reminiscing about old times, really old times when I was a little school girl of about 6 - 7. We used to take the school bus(thoughtfully provided by ONGC) to get to school. Now that I think about it, we were surprisingly independent even at that tender age. 

Our school was far, about 16 kms or so. Sometimes, in the evening, some of us sued to miss the bus and then had to get home by taking the municipal buses all by ourselves. I don't remember it being difficult. Cumbersome, yes.We saw it as an adventure. I distinctly remember the ber tree we crossed while getting to the bus stand. Some days we used to collect the leaves and small thorns to craft small plates out of the leaves. Just for fun. In those days, municipality bus conductors were kind to little school kids, and rarely ever charged us. 

Our own school bus conductor, was an old, kind and a little fat person. The school bus and the regulars had developed a separate ecosystem of sorts. We, the littlest kids, didnt count. There was an unwritten rule that we were supposed to occupy the first four rows only, the back rows were for the "bade bacche", who must have been 12-14 years of age at that time. Oh, but to us they seemed so big and old. We were careful not to step on their toes. Some older girls took us under their wing(so to say). Sounds dramatic, doesnt it. It was, trust me. They used to let us read their library books while on the bus. I remember some of the names, but none of the faces. 

I guess that is what happens. 

A little here and there

I need a vacation. 

And because it is impossible to take one now, I want it even more !!

So instead, I am trying to go to all those places in my head - I can almost feel the cool breeze and hear the loud silence at the valley once more, see that giant turquoise starfish (and the snake !!) again, walk across the ancient town full of temples, see my wish of rain come true instantaneously, eat those yummy dishes.... the list goes on.

But then, what is vacation? A break from the ordinary. 

It just so happens that the quality of vacation is not proportionate to money spent at all. Its the little things that linger with us, for years after, and maybe forever. The waves come and go, the shacks disappear, flowers wilt and ramshackle roads get lost.. But they stay undisturbed in our memories.

And memories are all that remain.  

I am actually proud of this

Side effects of eating lunch alone at the desk are sudden bursts of wisdom. One was the short story I wrote the other day. Today, I got this gem:

Ironman is Female

How?

Iron is Fe

man is male

Hence, Ironman is Female

QED

Short Story - Atmaa Nirbhar

So being an employee of you-know-who I have started going to work on alternate days. Being at work in these times is both irritating and hilarious. One of the funnier things is the long hair of all these guys. Poor them, I shouldn’t make fun of this but then there isn’t much else to make fun of. So here is a short story.

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Billu barber was a poor guy. Born in poverty, he grew up poor and was happily comfortable within his poverty. At 17, he realized the lost opportunity of completing his education that he had foolishly traded for playing gully cricket with his other truant friends.

The pressure of earning his own bread loomed heavily on him and so he decided to become the neighborhood barber’s apprentice. Between fetching water for his boss, cleaning the floor and listening to his constant complaints over the dirty hair of his customers, Billu picked up the skills of the trade. So much so that by the time he turned 21 he had his own barber shop – a chair and a mirror under a tree. Nevertheless, he did well enough to feed himself and have the occasional bottle. Content in his existence, he grew up to the ripe old age of 35 when tragedy struck in the form of a truck accident.

Death came suddenly and rapidly. He didn’t have time enough to come to terms with his death. So as per the policies of the Great Upstairs, his soul or the aatma was doomed to roam around on the Earth till he grew comfortable with his sad demise. And Billu did just that. But instead of coming to terms with his state, he grew bored of just roaming around but he didn’t know what to do. There are not many ways for a bhatakti aatma to be useful.

However, just around that time, he noticed a sudden surge in the number of inhabitants in his middle world. These souls were also shocked, surprised and largely angry with their sudden deaths from some coronavirus thing(what was that anyways??). But the thing that irked Billu most was the state of hair these guys had. Such long hair which looked like they haven’t seen the insides of a barber shop for months. When asked, the souls mumbled something about lockdown which Billu didn’t understand. But he did know that he had found his purpose. Armed with this knowledge, he promptly sought the necessary approvals from the Great Upstairs and opened up a barbershop for these unfortunate souls. He called the shop – aatmaa-nirbhar.

To words, for words

You know the feeling when you keep looking at a word long enough that it ceases to mean anything at all. I dont know if there is a word for that. I dont even know if it is an experience that others have. Do they?

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Words that made me think in the past week:

Melancholy - People often mistake melancholy with sadness. But it is seldom so. True sadness necessarily has a worldly reason. On the contrary (at least as far as I understand), melancholy involves a feeling of disenchantment and non-attachment. Its is not rejection of but rather not wanting to be involved with the surroundings. In my opinion very poetic and one of the more mature emotions. Is there any Hindi word for it?

Synecdoche - That along with antithesis started my journey on figures of speech. I wish I could take that class again. I forgot the context of my recent encounter with this word. But somehow it is stuck in my head. How do I get it out?

Post truth world - I dont even want to talk about it. The phenomena is just sad and the fact that this is a thing is truly depressing.

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For a long long time I had confused foreword with forward.

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Are we moving? It feels like we are going to. Gosh, being a grown up is hard.

I cant believe its May already !

It is almost 2 months since the beginning of the lockdown. Things are supposed to be coming back to normal but I dont see how.

If this is going to be the new normal, as a society we will have to learn new ways to be normal. This will require tremendous effort on the part of businesses, policy makers, politicians, law enforcement and above all - the people. Everybody will have to collectively decide to set aside their individual greed to be able to function as a collective. Because, as we have just discovered, individual health is a function affected by several collective (!!) parameters.
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There is a lot of uproar from people from all over the globe to ease the lockdown, to let them be. I am not talking here about the people hit by economic hardship. I am talking about well to do people who are bored in the confines of their homes. And although I do not agree with them, I understand their plight. Human beings are supposed to be social animals. In-person complex social interactions are what set us apart from rest of the animal world. You know there are studies which say that we developed such a large brain just to be able to have conversations. Solitary confinement is considered to be the harshest (non capital) punishment.
Hence the argument that such impositions are not humane may be true to some extent. But then, every mistake asks for repentance. We have erred as a society, we pay the price as a society. It is as simple as that.

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So far all my cucumber flowers have been male. :(

Since there was no chance of having a fruit, I made the most of the situation. Which was dipping them in batter and deep frying ;) Yummy.

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There is a report which I hate. I hate it that I have to work on it and finalize it and get it approved. I hate everything about it. But I still have to do it. This is life, this is what being an adult is all about. Being able to work on things while hating them.
I miss being young and stupid enough to believe otherwise.

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Of cucumbers and corona

My cucumbers have flowered, so has the bhindi (okra). The cucumber flowers are all male till now. But I am hopeful. If nothing else, I will make pakoras out of the flowers.

I want to live in a small house, with a backyard where I can grow whatever I want to.
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The uncertainty has begun to bother me. I know its wishful thinking, but I hope someone just knew when the world would become normal again.

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I used to shield the boys from Shin Chan because I thought it would be bad influence. Now I want them to watch it because I think it would be a good one :|

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I understand conspiracy theorists a little letter now.

Rants of the frustrated kind

Isolation has never bothered me. Most of my topmost fantasies involve having a quiet quaint life in a mountain cabin, a farm with a big yellow barn, a small village on an island(this one comes from the Country of the Pointed Firs). I actively envy people who homestead successfully. So I am quite okay with being isolated now as well.

But its the larger scenario which is worrisome. Many people are dying, many more are suffering out of fear. Fear of the virus, fear of joblessness, fear of poverty. A society made up of people who are afraid cannot function properly. Even when the restrictions are lifted, the gloom shall remain. And this is a realization that is slowly dawning on us.

I am a little angry and mostly just sad that we have brought this calamity onto ourselves. The root cause of such wide spread of the disease is greed. Hear me out-

There have been far more deadlier contagious diseases in the past, killing a larger fraction of people. But, the spread was usually limited to a province, country or continent. Never ever has it touched everyone. We (or rather the social, political and economic forces of the world) have allowed this disease to fester because it originated in you-know-where. Had such a disease originated in a smaller, less financially strong country (pick any one of the smaller poorer south east Asian or Latin american countries of your choice), that country would have been properly cordoned off by all other countries right in January. Boycotted, borders sealed, maybe nuked.. Believe it or not, but this pandemic is a direct result of globalization and centralized mega mass production of cheap non-essentials.

Stop blaming the food habits of certain people. That is not a new phenomena. Those people were eating anything that moves for centuries. Its the spread which is new.

I also understand that there is nothing that will be done about it. Nobody is going to stop buying stuff that they dont need. Nobody is going to shun manufacturers who produce cheap goods because they can afford to keep their workers starving. Nothing will change.

Sorry.

About the plants

I guess I have mentioned the fate of my Bhindi(Okra) saplings before.

Miraculously, 3 of them have survived.  Even more surprising is that they have sprouted buds. The saplings are tiny, and yet they have sprouted buds. I dont think you can see them in the pic.

Meanwhile, I have succulent sprouts, lots of cucumber and a rogue date palm peeking through. Little V has also planted a potato.

I had pruned the mogra and the curry plant rather mercilessly, but they seem to be thriving nonetheless.

I noticed some aphids yesterday. I plan on using neem oil this time to get rid of them. Shall post about the effects.

Quarantine day 14

We have gotten used to the new "normal" now. Things are great as long as I dont switch on the news. Because then it is horrible. For once, I want to live in a bubble. I know its stupid and immature, but here I am.
Uncertainty does not suit me.
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I need to be more inward looking, practice what i preach.

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Surprisingly enough, house work does not seem like a burden at all. I actually like cooking all meals, planning and prepping. It is satisfying for now.

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I pray to God, please set things right. Please grant us maturity to see where we went wrong and strength to do what needs to be done.

WFH

Day 3 of the Quarantine:

My younger son is singing - "Buttery Butt, butt, butt, butt" -over and over at the top of his lungs from the balcony.

The boys have also drowned my cucumber saplings.

For washing hands constantly

The times are weird. It is eye opening (and deeply saddening) to see and realize that the fabric of modern society and social systems are quite fragile. Normalcy is a myth, a facade that we choose to believe in and invest in.

At some level, I believe Human Beings crave stress. But in our day to day lives, we (and I am talking about the privileged lot) are far removed from real conflict and pain. Hence, we have created ingenuous systems to keep the stress levels high. I understand that some stress is beneficial, even necessary from evolutionary point of view. But those reasons are long gone. We no longer have to worry about our next meal, so we worry about the next bonus. Although there are numerous research finding proving that after a certain point, additional monetary benefits do not bring any additional joy, we still chose to be inspired by the same reasons that inspire everyone else. The futility of most social and economical incentives is truly comical.

By sheer chance, I also happen to be reading The Black Swan since the past month. So far, I have managed about 30 pages. :D
Must read.

This and that

This time, we started the year with a vacation. And a quite ambitious one by our standards. But thankfully, the kids co-operated and it was a success. I found a new love in the form of home-stays. It was a wonderful little place. I should take this opportunity to thank our hosts who really went out of their ways to accommodate our noisy family.

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People lead all sorts of lives. We are usually reluctant to see the value in the lives of people who have taken a path different from ours. But doing this deprives us of the numerous possibilities that may still be within our reach. If not for myself, then maybe for the kids.

In any case, it is advisable that we keep an open mind. Practice being non-judgemental. Respect all those who are trying to lead honest lives.
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Wisdom: Usually, we spend our lives seeking it. And if we fail, life shoves it down our throats anyways.
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So as I must have said before, every now and then I pickup an Agatha Christie. It is like my guilty pleasure, like cheat days on a diet. But over time, in my head, I know her. In a way that I can usually guess the culprit when she is introducing the characters.

But the last one I read was different. For a first, she dedicated it to Wodehouse !! I had never felt they were contemporaries. Well of course i knew, but it didn't feel that way ever. (I couldn't imagine Jeeves meeting Poirot. It would have been fantastic though.)

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T (at our last pizza outing, eyes closed, mouth full of pizza)- "I love this pizza so much, I can get married to it."
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V - "ahhh... friday.."
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K - "I need more sleep"