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shahana dastidar
Sunday, 25 October 2009
the Efficacy of Pizza in curing Dengue
is something that needs to be researched. It seems to have worked wonders on the brother of mine. Perhaps we should try it on my poor old antique dog as well...
And speaking of old stuff (I seem to be mired in it), valiant and concentrated work continues on this topic. The question of the moment - why bother to keep old stuff? Throw it away. Demolish everything. Make new stuff. Its a valid point. And, in fact, conservation architects seem to demolish more than normal ones. I mean most architects just start with a blank slate, conservation folks usually start with some selective demolition.
So about this selective demolition-ing.
Who decides
what to remove,
what to keep,
what is pretty,
what is useful,
what is pretty useful, prettily useful, usefully pretty, neither pretty nor useful
Artistic, aesthetic and frequently historical values are highly subjective stuff. But of course the fact of the matter is that age gives an artefact value that cannot be argued with. Antiquity makes it indifferent to praise and criticism from us, trying to place a value on it today. Its value at the time of its creation could have been something very different. Who knows really?
Ever read The Picture of Dorian Grey? Oscar Wilde writes in it, 'the one charm of the past is that it is the past.' So that's putting it clearly. It is valuable because it is old. However, considering the fate of the unfortunate Mr. Grey, perhaps what he meant was that one should leave the past alone. The charm lies in the fact that it has already happened. Its done. Its gone.
So what to do?
photograph it and demolish it?
preserve whats left of its charm from a bygone era?
actively recapture its charm from a bygone era?
or do what we indians do best - figure out how this bygone era charm stuff is going to make us rich.
Next up: Making money off bygone eras.......
But before that I'm going to feed some modern day pizza to my historical artefact doggie. She's neither pretty nor useful. But she's absolutely got ALL her charm. Sometimes one keeps old stuff just because one wants to, you know. No rationale no logic no reason no shit. Reading for this week - The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
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More adventures wiv Mouse
Wednesday, 14 October 2009very very dead Mouse.
Yeah the semi-electrocuted Mouse shuffled off its mortal coil thing recently... thank god! It had been creeping around with glazed eyes in a half-dead mousey-zombie fashion for ages. And then next I know, there's this AWFUL smell in my room
That's the problem with Dying Mouse. Eventually it is Dead Mouse. And it chooses mouse-like places to die like behind cupboards, under desks etc. One doesn't ever notice or come across a dead mouse. One is alerted to it by the whiffy odour that emanates from some inaccessible corner of the room.
So after moving loads of furniture around - the corpse was located and duly chalk outlined. Actually that's not true. Mouse had died in a particular gruesome manner. So gruesome, I couldn't bear to go anywhere near it. It was lying in a huge puddle of coagulated blood, bloody entrails leaking out of its body, body soft and deflated and decomposing, decomposed limbs hanging loosely, gnawed on perhaps by a fellow mouse..........I nearly threw up.
Then picked up a pillow and evacuated to a couch in the living room for the night. I can catch, pick up, pin and dissect live mice. But the smell of a dead one makes me whimper and run away yelping with my tail between my legs.
Well at least its dead.
One down and four to go
On a happier note, Arsenal's been doing alright - wins against Birmingham City 3-1, Blackburn 6-1. In fact Arsenal's won all their Premier League matches except for THAT absolutely DISASTROUS trip to Manchester. Captain Cesc's been out of commission with serious family problems but apparently they won't affect his club fixtures.
Speaking of serious family problems, my poor little brother has Dengue fever. Well he isn't so little. But he was in hospital last weekend and has been running fever like 101-102 deg Fahrenheit for a week now. What's that? 38-39 deg Celsius? I don't know. A LOT. His lips are all blistered and dry and his cheeks look sunburned. But his platelet count isn't falling fast enough that he needs to get re-admitted to hospital. Of course, if it does start falling fast enough - he'll need blood transfusions ASAP. So all he can do is have water and paracetamol.
Bah paracetamol.......there's got to be something stronger!
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mouse
in the house
doom
in my room
on menu - internet cable
the legs of my table
the mains after appetiser
some choice electrical wire
electrocution!
its in shock
no its recovered
and run off
ah well, c'est la vie
BUT hopefully lets see
next time mousey may not be
just quite so lucky
Clearly my poem was inspired by real life events and I'm not ashamed to admit it. It is just these little metaphysical occurrences of everyday life that inspire me to poetry. It also inspires me to other stuff. Every time I see the cute little thing now, a fit of homicidal mania overtakes me and I ACHE for a poisoned harpoon that I can spear it with. If it had stuck to chewing on the woodwork, I may have been more understanding. But the internet cable......my tolerance only stretches that far.
Anyway this is just part of my ongoing travails with wildlife. A recent trip to Shimla was like a sort of Horror movie meets Sci-Fi fantasy meets Discovery channel. The name of the movie would be
Invasion of the Plastic Snatchers - The Environment Strikes Back!
Shimla and, in fact, the entire state of Himachal Pradesh (and for all I know the entire Himalayas) is infested with a breed of particularly vicious, aggressive, greedy Kleptomaniacal monkeys. They love us humans, primarily as a source of food. The clever little monstrous beasts have recognised the fact that humans carry food around in plastic bags. SO if you're out and about in the hills with a plastic bag (even if it just has some dirty old socks in it like mine had) - you WILL be attacked. They WILL nonchalantly walk upto you, grab your bag from your hands, examine it and casually keep what they like while tossing the rest over the steepest mountainside.
Farewell Old Socks.
Any attempt at retrieval or retaliation on your part will have the monkeys advance towards you baring their teeth and claws. Make no mistake. They can and do bite. Then its off to the hospital for some anti-rabies needle fun.
But like I said this is Mother Nature working her wonders in mysterious ways. Plastic bags are the bane of the environment. They are not bio-degradable, they clog water bodies/rivers/streams, cause wildlife to choke, are generally carcinogenic to the poor goats and cows that eat them - AND most importantly, enormously ugly to look at. It is the single worst visual pollutant of the countryside. Why countryside! Any side! Seaside, Urbanside, Ruralside, you name it.
And now the environment fights back. Through its chosen ones - The Marauding Monkeys! Fear of these beasts is going to force people to stop using plastic bags. Mark my words - this will single-handedly do more for reducing plastic pollution than any state ban can ever do.
But eco-friendly as I am - I still hate those monkeys. And mice. And while I'm on a rant - pigeons.
God, I hate pigeons!
Wanted: One Poison Harpoon. Any shape or Size. Instruction Manual to be included.
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Ok, Enough of this
misty green warm nostalgic fuzzy feeling shit. The party's over. I don't like it anymore. Its been raining since day before yesterday night and I'm sick of it. Traffic jams and chaos on the roads. The weekend's here and I don't want to be indoors waiting for it to stop pouring.
I've learnt a new word today. From Singapore. Yes lah, its 'shiok'. The Mutton Rogan Josh I had yesterday was Damn Shiok!
It warmed the cockles of my heart
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Its been raining all day....
and the forest behind my house looks lovely - misty and green. Its called the Jahanpanah City Forest (!). It's interesting this concept of a 'City Forest'. From what I can make out there isn't much forestlike bio-diversity, most of the trees are local thorny Babul (Acacia) - nothing particularly pretty or interesting .....or useful......except for the much needed green cover it provides to Delhi.
I like working indoors when its raining outside. I'm reminded of when I was studying for my Xth Board Prelims in Jan '95 when it rained a lot and was freezing and I was snug in my huge purple Razai trying to memorize Sanskrit Shabd & Dhaatu Roops.
For the Shabd (noun) conjugation of Man (Nar), the first lines go
Nar(uh) Nar(auh) Nar(aaah)
Nar(um) Nar(oh) Nar(aan)
Nar(en) Nar(abhyam) Nar(ebhyee)
forgot the rest (there's another 4 or 5 lines of noun conjugation in Sanskrit)
Somehow rain in London never put me in any sort of similar mood....except a sort of generally disgruntled grey one. But even that mood got muted due to overuse. One can't really get dramatically and violently disgruntled every day.
My brother met Gautam Gambhir at work on Monday, played cricket with him, got his autograph ... and hasn't touched earth since. Unfortunately I've been out of the country so long, I can't recognise the newer people on the Indian cricket team including Gambhir. So while I've been supportive to him in his joy, I haven't been able to work up quite that level of enthusiasm as perhaps I'd have for Tendulkar or someone.
And as I take root and feel the tendrils curl up between my fingers and wind themselves around my laptop binding me to it forever, I work tap-tap-tapping into eternity....and feel everything vanish. Has cricket restarted? Is India playing somewhere? What's up with Arsenal? Does Afghanistan really have a new president? Did Samoa really switch from American left-hand-drive to Aussie right-hand-drive? Is a South-African pigeon carrying a data stick really 96% faster than South African ADSL broadband?
And most importantly,
Did I really fall so sick because I quit drinking vodka?
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Some recycled poetry....
from me. To explain my absence from the blog yet again.
one lung withered shrivelled grey
one lung a mucusy miasma
lovely weather in delhi, a perfect monsoony day
but of course i have the bloody asthma.......
I think its a bit more than asthma this time. It seems to have evolved out of flu and then mutated into something quite nasty. Anyway at least the fever's gone down, the headache's eased up. Now the only issue is the breathing thing. Or lack thereof.
Anyway I see my last post was about the Onam meal that I had. I discovered Kozhambu (the zh is pronounced as an 'r' rolling it out from the back of the mouth) is Tamil and not from Kerala. However there was a very spicy Imli (Tamarind) chutney that I pretended was the same and treated with equal love. There was Payasam which is a sweetened milk dessert. In fact there were two versions! One was with rice, sort of similar to the Arroz con Leche that I believe is common in Latin America. And the other one was with Vietnamese Jackfruit! Awesome
I love Jackfruit. I loved it ripe and sweet with sticky rice that we had in Bangkok and Penang. And I love it raw and cooked like in the Bengali style. But its one of those foods you know - people either love it or hate it. And when I say hate it, I mean it makes them feel like throwing up. Ripe Jackfruit (like its nefarious cousin, the Durian) has a unique smell that some people (like me) find ok and some other people (like my mother) find absolutely vile, repulsive and vomit-inducing. If you are intrigued, I suggest you rush out to your nearest oriental/ Chinese/ South-east Asian grocer and get a whiff of either Jackfruit or Durian.......and then we shall know which camp you belong to.
Incidentally, it is for this very reason, that carrying Durian on public transport is a fine-able offence in Singapore and I think they're trying to ban it in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur as well. If they haven't already.
There are ten million pictures of both the Durian and the Jackfruit on the web so I won't bother copying those pics here. My only gripe is that most of those photos show no human scale. A fully grown Jackfruit is HUGE. One needs both hands to carry it like a baby.
Yesterday being unable to sleep, I switched on the TV and watched a few minutes of a movie called
Scary Movie
Part 3 (?!)
with Pamela Anderson playing a schoolgirl (??!!)
Dubbed in Hindi (?????????????!)
Fascinating as it was, I had to switch it off after a bit because it was making my headache worse and I'd started convulsing and frothing at the mouth. But some day I will see it in its entirety. When I am healthy and whole and FULLY PREPARED for it.
Will now push off and take some medicine or something to kick-start the breathing process again. I last took a breath about 3.5 hours ago and it really is time for another one.
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My heart is broken....
Arsenal lost to ManU last Saturday.
But we were winning first. Before goalie Almunia made a mistake and let Rooney score.
And then Mr. Abou Diaby made an even bigger mistake - A SELF-GOAL! CATASTROPHE!
And Wenger got so mad later with a disqualified goal that he was made to leave the technical area.
And Arshavin tore something during the match and is injured now.
awful
BUT at least Arsenal lost because of Arsenal's mistakes and not because ManU was any good. These mistakes are permissible at the start of the season so stuff can be sorted for later.
I just wish they weren't happening against bloody ManU!
The week just started so badly. First this Arsenal thing. Then yesterday we discovered that my dog has a cancerous tumour that is inoperable. She's 15 years old, that is 105 human years old......just too fragile to operate upon. So we're basically going to just sit here and watch her suffer until she dies
:(
Its one bad news after another.
Anyway
For everyone who's celebrating - Happy Onam!!
Onam is the biggest festival in the state of Kerala - a Harvest festival and a celebration of the golden age of Mahabali, the mythical Asura King who comes up from Patala (the underworld) once a year at this time to revisit his kingdom in Kerala. Also the time for the famous Snake Boat race in Kerala.
(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.......again........ I really do need to start clicking)
I'm having a traditional Onam lunch at my friend's place. I guess on a banana leaf as is usual. Normally it involves huge amounts of aviyal coconut milk stew and pachadi (raita) and sambar and rasam and kozhambu (wait is that from kerala? or tamil?) and rice and chutney and mango pickle and paapad and steamed plantains and dessert - maybe payasam?
Watch this space....
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