On The Ning Nang Nong

Made in India

People complain of pollution, climate, traffic and other visible annoyances in India but skip the finer observations in an Indian trip. Below are not annoyances, but observations.

If there is no airbridge connecting the gate directly to the plane, there's always a shuttle to transport the passengers from the gate to the plane. There's a shuttle even if the plane is at a pebble's throw and the passengers could walk to the plane. Why do domestic planes have shuttles for such short distance? I mulled on it for some time. The crew is afraid that passengers will get lost in that few metres distance. The crew thinks that passengers will queue at the wrong plane in spite of a friendly signboard. Why a shuttle for such short distance boggles me?

On purchase in a store, you are asked your mobile number for billing. Why mobile number? Isn't mobile number a private detail? Since when did mobile number become a key identification in billing even in grocery stores?

I inquired, why mobile number?
Mam, it is mandatory.
But why?
We will send you promotions.
What if I don't need.
Still, we need your mobile number as it is a mandatory field in billing.
But why?
That is how our software is designed.
What if I am reluctant to provide my mobile number?
Mam, it is compulsory.
What if I don't own a mobile?
Everyone has a mobile these days.
Say, I am a monk from Varanasi who renounced material comforts.
Then, we have a dummy number to key.
Why don't you key that for now then.
Ok.

I understand that mobile contact is used for unique lookup to refer to a purchase or service in their system and also that pesky marketing but I always assumed it was optional. Unless you press upon, they don't reveal that, yes, indeed it is optional.

There is no service tax for eat-in in bakeries and small restaurants. "Take away" and "food to go" are not universal terms, they are prevalent only in urban restaurants but at quaint restaurants, it is "parcel". I like that. Give me biryani for parcel.

Abroad, you will find an aisle saturated with toilet rolls suiting every fussbudget with various options of plies and quilts. You will find cute kittens and naughty dogs luring you to buy those fancy brands. In India, unlike kittens and dogs abroad, you will find plain and dignified brands. Cats and dogs are yet not competing models in Indian toiletry markets.

In hospital and pharmacy forms, you find questions like "Do you smoke", "Do you drink", "Are you married" Whereas abroad, the equivalent questions are "Do you smoke", "Do you drink", "Have you had sex". We say, we are progressive and modern but for that modernity to displace the ingrained puritanism would take several decades.

You still find instructions on how to use escalators and washrooms in India. With proliferation of escalators and western toilets, you assume such instructions are a rarity. On the contrary, even major airports have the friendly instructions. This tells that we are yet to fully outgrow our fear of alien imports.



These are not annoyances or put-downs. Just observations of an idle mind at airports and general stores.

 

In popular culture, Voynich manuscript was relegated to those late night paranormal shows to insinuate its extra-terrestrial origins. I am glad that the manuscript has of late sustained grounded scientific backing, misleading or otherwise. The entire manuscript is available for download from Yale University's Beinecke Library. I haven't followed the twitter rebuttal on Gibbs' theories. But the bizarre pictures do have a faint resemblance to pregnant women bathing in green herbal slime. Gibbs' revelation that the book is a medieval rambling on sanitary upkeeping of women is not far-fetched. Say, if someone like me drew those sketches, then one's imagination is employed at full-hilt that even a dull bamboo will be recasted as a carnivorous plant from Tatooine. The Latin snafu on syntax is interesting! No one even knows if the manuscript is coded (to decipher) or written in a new language (to discern). Re: Historian and 'history researcher', looks like they are interchangeable. As the story is reported across various outlets, I have seen few citing "historian" for Gibbs.

 

On depiction of women in philosophical writing

Fred's amusing views on women are only a scratch but the poke is another German philosophy, that is, Arthur Schopenhauer's deep analysis of the psyche of a woman or a lady or how he distinguishes a lady from a woman. He is funny! He is vitriolic! Nevertheless he is sincere in his outlandish views on casting women as the scourge of the society. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are the layman philosophers, as in, you can read their translated works with ease. I read Schopenhauer's Parerga and Paralipomena in English as Essays and Aphorisms. Take a look here. This is accessible to learn about the man's theories in a distilled form though his other book The World as Will and Representation is more popular. The chapters in E & A are reflective and witty (atleast to me). There's a chapter titled "On women" in which he writes ...

"As the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practise dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all."

"Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies. Even when they simply pass in the street they look at one another like Guelphs and Ghibellines; and when two women meet for the first time there is clearly more constraint and pretence involved than in the case of two men: so that when two women exchange compliments it sounds much more ludicrous than when two men do so."

"Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex: for it is with"

"One has only to observe how they behave in the theatre or at operas and concerts, e.g. the childish unconcern with which they go on chattering away during the most beautiful parts of the greatest masterpieces. If it is true the Greeks refused to allow women into the theatre, they did the right thing"

These are the passages I highlighted at that time. Our Arthur may not be outwardly charming with two hair buns and an inborn scowl but he was a philanderer who took upon himself to examine women at close quarters. With such vehemence for women, no wonder he never settled with one and preferred a poodle named "Atma" (inspired by Eastern philosophy) as his faithful companion. Google honoured him as he would have preferred to be remembered, no women please.

 

Khuda kare ki qayamat ho! Aur tu aaye?

That means let a catastrophe like Irma ravish and then Ira come.

Wah wah, what a kind welcome. I should wait for a Gomorrah or Galveston to wreak havoc and then make entry. Even with no knowledge of Sanskrit or Urdu hermeneutics , itna to samaj aata hai. And they say, friends say nice and sweet things to each other on return.

Meena Kumari in that intezaari song is wearing a kurti, a palazzo, and a duppata. Coincidentally, I have seen the return of such ethnic wear in India. Palazzo were last time wore with long kameez but now they are wearing with short kurti. It is difficult to catch up with Indian fashion trends. They are effervescent. I still wear my unfashionable dresses from a decade ago rolled and stashed in places that need a step ladder to reach. I wish there was an informative couture website that captures the timeline and expiry of fashion trends with alerts. Something like, please throw away your patiala salwars, they are out of fashion from this season.

 

More later, but for now...Do you like the smell of my potato fry? Cabbage with grated coconut? The aroma of curry leaves crackling in olive oil for sambhar tadka? Egg burji/scramble? Anything that smells of plain white rice. Are you smelling what I'm smelling?

Hour of reckoning for our amity.