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shahana dastidar
Thursday, 27 August 2009
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain..
...except death and taxes."
Benjamin Franklin (1705 - 1790)
On Monday evening my grandmother passed away. She was my last surviving grandparent, and even though she'd been ill and bedridden for many years - it was still a huge shock. The pic below is of her and my grandfather shortly after they got married. That was sometime in the 1940's I believe. I bear a strong family resemblance to her as does my mother; although when I was at her age in this pic, I weighed about 100 kilos more.
So CLEARLY, this Blogging business has yet to become a habit since its been a week since I last wrote - and I was hoping to post every day. So I'd just like to give a big thanks to everyone who's been leaving comments - on the website and by email.
Hi to Eltee, hope you're writing down all your ideas. Also thank you very much to the Anonymous reader who let me know that the Qawwali is on Thursday and not Friday. Hello hello to the Duck Designer. And thank you Mr.Stamina for letting me know that I'm a 1000 times funnier in writing than I am talking. :) I'll just take that as a compliment. For those who don't find my writing very amusing, you can now accurately and mathematically guess the humour quotient within my conversation.
Anyway, now that I know at least 5 people have read or (hopefully) are still reading, I shall become incentivised or incentivated or whatever ....... and post more regularly.
Also part of the busy week, I start work on Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar in Punjab. Also known as the Golden Temple and one of the holiest sites (if not the holiest site) for the Sikhs. More on that as and when I start work. Didn't want to lamely leave you with another picture from Wikimedia Commons as I have been doing. I hope to post some of my own, if and when I visit Amritsar. Until then wiki it.
I sat down yesterday to watch some TV. To get my mind of things (kno' wha' I meen???!). Of course, it never works. And the effort was absolutely DOOMED to failure because the first movie that came on was 'Pretty Woman'. Anyone who's read my previous post on the subject will know about my extreme love for romantic comedies.
After a bit more flipping and surfing, I found 'Hitch' with Will Smith and Eva Mendes.
Then I proceeded to take a huge hammer and battered the TV to death. Some things just cannot be tolerated. And I don't care if that is domestic abuse.
I did see a very nice Hinglish movie this weekend called DevD. Hinglish is the urban Hindi-English mix thats commonly spoken in Delhi and Mumbai. Also look up Chin-jabi which is Chinese cuisine in the Punjabi style. Well it owes very little to China except the very heavy and cloying presence of Soy Sauce. Good stuff.
So there was a heavy dose of Punjab in this movie 'DevD' - which was a quirky re-working of Devdas, the classic tale of the tragic lover who drowns his sorrow in wine, women and song. And pines away for his lost love. And basically just Dies. Which is what all tragic spurned lovers should do really instead of moping about so much.
DevD is a quirky enough new version that I hesitate to label Bollywood. And the quirkiness sort of did away with the tragic ending with no loss. Also it had a lot of Delhi in it. The schoolgirl MMS scandal, the incidence of the BMW running over the pavement dwellers, delicious momos et al.
Of course almost anything would be an improvement over the previous version of Devdas. Why does Shah Rukh Khan still exist? Why has he not been recognized for the great big HAM that he is, sliced, shrink-wrapped and sold. Bah
Again for all the non-believers out there
Portsmouth 1 - Arsenal 4
and what, you may ask, doth happen with the Champions League
Celtic 1 - Arsenal 3
Awesomeness.
This was their return match at the Emirates. If you remember the Gunners won the first leg too. Lovely stuff...... EXCEPT.....coming Saturday is the match against Manchester United which is not going to be quite so easy methinks.
Thanks to my most lovely friend Shel, I was fortunate enough to see ManU play Pompey (thats Portsmouth) at Old Trafford last season. Portsmouth had the wee little Peter Crouch then. Of course ManU won 2-0 but it wasn't a very convincing victory. Slightly more convincing than ole Cristiano's histrionics though....
Anyway I leave you with the shortest novel in the world (and a fairly sad one too) -
"For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn."
Thats it. Thats the novel. Its by Ernest Hemingway. It took me a few days to complete it but I must say I enjoyed it very much. Ironically people have been using it to justify the complete mindless babble that is Twitter. They say that 140 characters is enough to express one's most profound thoughts.
Only if you're Hemingway, mate.
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Romance can kill you
Candle lit dinners cause cancer.
I read it on the BBC.
The other thing that can kill you are romantic movies. The most disgusting misogynistic unfunny puke-making one I ever saw (and there have been lots) was the one that had Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore playing divorce lawyers. I'd rather someone stick a couple of red-hot pokers into my eyeballs than ever watch that one again.....
I have a treadmill in the north-eastern corner of my room. It stands there all day and looks at me. I hear its pleading voice. Walk on me, it says, Run Run Run. USE ME. I pretend I can't hear it. I avert my gaze. I ignore.
However yesterday, I succumbed. And today again.
I walked on it. I USED it.
A funny thing though. The monitor told me, as I walked faster and faster, that my pulse DROPPED from 82 to 51. I'm no expert, but isnt it supposed to rise with exercise? Anyway after about half an hour of walking (and getting nowhere) I was feeling faint. So I stopped and did the crossword.
Which was so exciting, my pulse rose and came back to normal.....
Mental
INTACH has started a new heritage walk through the Nizamuddin area of Delhi. This is an urban village and a really historic one. However I think I may go for the Shan-e-Nizam walk instead because they seem to be organised by the locals. Nizamuddin has the dargahs (tombs) of several Sufi saints and is named after the most famous one, Hazrat Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya. He's the guy who said - Dilli Door Ast (Delhi is still far) when he heard news of a conquering army on its way to Delhi. He prophesied well.... the army never reached.
To give you an idea of how old this settlement is, Nizamuddin lived during the time of the Delhi sultanate (i.e. pre-Mughal) and died in 1325 A.D. The present tomb one can see there dates to 1562 A.D.
Anyway, they have a 700 year old Baoli (step-well) there which was recently conserved and revitalised by the Aga Khan Foundation & the Archaeological Survey of India. Somehow the spring that feeds the well never got choked by all the garbage. When I go, I'll take a picture and post it on here. Until then, this pic is of another Baoli in Delhi in the nearby Purana Qila (Old Fort). Just for people reading to get the concept of what a Step-well is. At the bottom of all the steps is the actual well full of water.
Fridays I guess is the day to go explore Nizamuddin because they have Qawwali after the prayers. A Qawwali is a genre of music originating from the Sufi tradition and lies somewhere between folk and classical music. To me (and I'm no expert for sure), the singers appear to follow a question & answer format or an argument & rebuttal one as they debate and discuss matters of life and faith. Its really rousing stuff and the one at the Nizamuddin basti (village) would be every Qawwali lovers dream performance.....
If they were ever able to find the place the performances are held! The basti is a confusing winding maze of lanes and shops which is the reason I want go for that heritage walk.
But only when the weather improves.
Notes: Images are not mine but from Wikimedia Commons. I've seen both places years ago but never carried a camera. I hope to go for both the walk and the Qawwali sometime at the end of September or early October when the weather in Delhi is more suitable for outdoor activities. Yes I believe the Qawwali is outdoors, I'm imagining in one of the Dargah courtyards perhaps? Drop me a line if you'd like to join. I will probably take my parents who like this stuff as much as I do.
I don't think anyone
is reading this blog. But I'm going to try and write on it every day anyway, just to see if I can. To see if a person has something to write about every single day of their life!
Well that comment about how I managed to mis-spell every single Turkish word in my posts on the similarities between Turkish and Hindi. I think the idea (then....I can't completely remember what happened in that raki-saturated period 2 years ago!!!), the idea was to spell the words phonetically in English so that any Hindi-speaking friends I had would be able to recognise the word. However since the Turkish and English script is very very very similar, it just looked like I got everything wrong.
Hell maybe I did get everything wrong. Maybe I WAS actually trying to type it in Turkish and just screwed every single word up.......we'll never know. Its going to remain one of those unsoved mysteries.
Also I doubt any Hindi-speaking friends ever bothered reading it :(
I've started on my happy birthday stash :). Presently midway through The Ragazzi by Pasolini translated from the Italian. In the words of the immortal McD's - i'm lovin' it. I think I have a weakness for fictional books set in historical times regardless of genre. My favourite detective novel might be The Name of the Rose by Eco. Another one translated from the Italian. Hmmmm....maybe I just have a weakness for Italian
Or maybe not
In other news,
Celtic 0 - Arsenal 2
The Ultimate Duck
Monday, 17 August 2009lives in Nehru Place, New Delhi. Also known as the Baha'i Mandir or the Lotus Temple. This place is exactly what its name says it is. Its a HUGE LOTUS and its a TEMPLE. You're supposed to go inside this humongous lotus and pray. That's what it is. Not an abstraction, not a concept, neither the spatial quality nor geometric principles inspired by a lotus. Nope, the whole thing JUST IS a lotus. Which reminds me of what Robert Venturi said about all buildings being either a Duck or a Decorated Shed. Well this is the Ultimate Duck.
And the whole of Gurgaon, one giant Decorated Shed. Kilometres and kilometres of Decorated Sheds. Every phase of DLF a fantasy of candy pink neo-classical awfulness stuck on giant housing blocks with weirdly English names like Princeton and Trinity Court. We've come full circle in Delhi. We removed Connaught from CP to forget our colonial roots....and then went and brought Wellington back to Gurgaon. I think he lives on plastered somewhere in the pinkness of DLF Phase V.
Mental
Coming back to the duck. I love it. Part of the reason I do is because it lives in Nehru Place, the ugliest Place ever (with a capital P). The corridors and mazes and aisles and piles of parked, parked, parking and more parked vehicles, the smoke, the dust, the uniform greyness of crumbling buildings with rotting windows, a million generators growling and about a hundred million people trying to growl just a bit louder above them as they try to sell you printer cartridges. And in the midst of all this, this SHINING WHITE MARBLE TEMPLE. How on earth do they still manage to keep it white?!!!!
And Duck it may be, and every modernist's worst nightmare come true. And every deconstructivist's too. In fact every architect who was ever a something-ist's nightmare except the post-modernis-ist. So Duck it may be and Duck it indeed is - yet inside its lovely. And why is it lovely?
Because inside it is very,
very ,
very,
very,
very
quiet.
And everyone goes in and feels like being
very,
very,
very
quiet
too.
Notes: I didn't take this pic - its from Wikimedia Commons. In fact if any one's curious enough about the temple, you can look it up on Wikipedia. Also look up 'Nehru Place' and Robert Venturi's 'Complexity & Contradiction in Architecture'. There's a good explanation here about the Duck and the Decorated Shed.
Language thou art too narrow...
Sunday, 16 August 2009........and too weake
To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake;
Knew'st thou some would, that knew her not, lament,
As in a deluge perish th'innocent?
John Donne (1572-1631)
In the state of Delhi, female infanticide and foeticide (killing of female infants and female foetuses) seems to be on the decline. For the first time in recorded history, more girls were born than boys in 2008. 1004 girls per 1000 boys. Of course a few more girls than boys is a perfectly natural phenomenon seen everywhere else in the world. However in India, a tradition of killing off girl children whether as foetuses or as infants has resulted in some rather skewed ratios. In 2007, for example, Delhi registered only 848 girls per 1000 boys.
The government credits this increase to a new scheme wherein parents are paid Rs.100,000 when a girl turns 18. Basically, they're paid not to kill their daughters. But the effectiveness of this scheme is being doubted because....."Ironically, the 2001 census clearly showed that the sex ratio is worst in middle class and upper middle class localities, including Punjabi Bagh, Greater Kailash and Malviya Nagar."
I happen to live in Greater Kailash myself.
Anyway for the first time we have 2 states in India, Delhi and Kerala, that have a natural or normal gender ratio between baby girls and boys.
2 states out of 30.
One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.
It could be worse I guess. In Punjab there were areas with only 600 odd girls for every 1000 boys. That amounts to about 400 dead girls every year.
There's a Monkey on the A.C......
....and it's looking at me. I was reading the newspaper and looked up to find it sitting on the Air-Conditioning unit - the bit that dangles outside the house. I'm just going to ignore it. I don't like monkeys. They're vicious feral creatures that break TV antennas, bite babies, slap dogs and carry rabies. Perhaps I may be accused of extreme species-ist prejudice. I don't care. There's a Monkey outside my window and I want it to go away.
....and it's looking at me. I was reading the newspaper and looked up to find it sitting on the Air-Conditioning unit - the bit that dangles outside the house. I'm just going to ignore it. I don't like monkeys. They're vicious feral creatures that break TV antennas, bite babies, slap dogs and carry rabies. Perhaps I may be accused of extreme species-ist prejudice. I don't care. There's a Monkey outside my window and I want it to go away.
So I'm reading the news and I discover that the drought in India is because the Chief Minister of the State of Bihar ate a biscuit during last week's solar eclipse. He was accused of doing so by an opposition politician. I completely believe the accusation because the article includes a picture of the Minister doing the deed. In the full-colour photo he is shown actually eating a biscuit. A Real biscuit. I don't need any more proof than that.
Elsewhere I read that women who drink moderate amounts of beer may be strengthening their bones (according to researchers from the University of Extremadura in Spain). The Spanish study showed that test subjects who were 'light to moderate' drinkers i.e. drank upto 5 units a day (!!) had superior bone density to non-drinkers. However, the UK's National Osteoporosis Society said that an alcohol intake of more than 2 units per day actually increased the risk of breaking a bone. How does one explain this contradiction?
- Perhaps 2 units a day cause your bones to break but once you reach 5, they start getting stronger.
- Perhaps 2 units a day cause women to fall down more contributing to higher bone breakage but once they reach 5, women just pass out where they are sitting without breaking anything.
- Perhaps spanish women just hold their drink better and don't fall down so much even after 5 units.
- Perhaps everyone should just quit beer and drink vodka like Real women do.
I brought the monsoon to Delhi. I take full credit for it. I just packed some of the rain from London. Its not like they'll miss it there. Yesterday was Independence Day here in India. So if its raining heavily and the whole country's celebrating independence, what do we do in Delhi?
We fly kites.
Flying kites is, of course, not compatible with heavy monsoonal rain.......nor a particularly solemn way of commemorating independence. The guy on the roof of my building is trying though. He's got a kite in the colours of our national flag. Or at least, he had one. He just lost it and now its fluttering away. I wonder why he let go. Maybe he saw the Monkey on the A.C! Maybe the monkey got him!! Yet another martyr for the nation. जय हिंद!
There's a list out - of the most burgled postcodes in the U.K. As some of you may know, the house at Fairbridge Road in North London was burgled a few months back and some of our laptops got stolen. I checked to see if our N19 postcode was on the list. It wasn't..........but neighbouring N8 (Hornsey) was. No.8 on the Burglary Hotspots List of U.K. Those burglars should really learn how to read a map and know where N8 stops and N19 starts. Idiots. I propose we blame Gordon for the illiteracy of British Burglars.
And for all you non-believers out there, I just have one thing to say to you.
Everton 1 - Arsenal 6
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