On The Ning Nang Nong

Blink of the Day

People intercept at various times and locations in our lives. Some are vaguely curious about our existence, some linger around to point us in the current of our interests, whilst many recast us into something incredible. The last kind are invaluable and startling. They astonish you with the unseen in you. They transform you into a sustainable phenomenon. When you find such people, don't confuse yourself with too many questions ...how on the Earth did we meet in the most unusual circumstances ...but tug on to their fanciful tether for having met them at the right corners of your life. More than books, anecdotes, and ruminations, the power to uplift you vests in your favoured mates. Give people a chance.

 

Rakhii is watching the second season of Baudelaires,
which is the continuation of the unfortunate affairs.
No reprieve in sight,
for Violet's fight.
No glorious trick,
of Klaus's mind so slick.
No unbind,
to Sunny's grind.
Baudelaires go through more trouble
with little or no happy pickings

Rakhii: Wait, 'trouble' does not even rhyme with 'pickings'!

Ira: Yes, it does not. But I am Iravati. I - R - A - V - A - T - I S - P - A - T - S , you cake sniffer!

 

The Myth of Sleeping Beauty

The article is plain and forceful. Should we be reasonable and not sentimental about our hopes?

Link: A fate worse than death

...popular culture encourages us to think of a prolonged disorder of consciousness as exciting and romantic. Television dramas and crime novels are full of people in comas. The plot hinges on whether they will or won’t wake up and spill the beans. Usually they do, and if they don’t, they die and there is a funeral. It is all far more clear cut than the reality of caring for someone in a persistent vegetative state.

Sleeping Beauty could slumber for years and be woken with a kiss that makes her sit up and smile. The people missing from her story are the ones who have been cleaning her teeth, and turning her so she doesn’t get bedsores. We never see the physios who would be working to reduce the spasticity in her limbs. Who is opening the cans of liquid food—it looks like baby formula—for Sleeping Beauty so she can by fed by tube? Who is emptying the urine bags? She is probably constipated, because that’s what happens when a body doesn’t move in any intentional way. Who is putting the suppositories up her bum? Who is hoisting her body into the shower trolley to keep her clean? I can tell you something. Sleeping Beauty isn’t beautiful anymore and the people looking after her may well be in deep distress.

Coincidentally, I had stumbled on the thoughts of Barbara Ehrenreich a week before I chanced on the linked article. Intense, straightforward though not dry reads on an inevitable culmination of life itself.

 

Scientific Romances and Flatland




I always tell my friends, you don't have to scramble to read every fascinating book as even the meagre awareness of what exists out there propels you into a gainful thinking. Both these books (ref: 'what is the fourth dimension' in Scientific Romances, further explored in Flatland) are on conceptualisation of higher dimensions.

This is not a physics post but a personal anecdotal post.

There was a time in my life when I was headstrong and opinionated in arguments. I would chow down an opposing head on ill-disposed views. Er, they were ill-disposed views to me and not objectively wrong-headed. I would have people chide me that I was being "illogical" and "non-sequitur" and "fallacious" in my reasoning and I would resist to beat down my obstinate stance. I don't care if it is illogical, I like the sound of my argument.

It took few temperate souls to crush such defiance in me and ply me with the bolts and nuts of reasoning. Read these books and learn these fallacies and techniques.

Though I was largely reluctant to stretch beyond my myopic reasoning, despite their counsel, I promised to look up their recommendations. As I gradually took to these principles in cognition and syllogisms, I inferred that I failed to grasp their well-intended counter-arguments as I was bisecting into their high dimension from my lower dimension. It's a circle, what do you even mean by a sphere?! These folks are enormously well-read and sentient than me. They were analysing and explaining things from an inconceivable viewpoint of my own lowly bluff.

I wonder, what did they think of me back then or now. Rather than condemning me, they only reprimanded me of my disinclination to broaden my style of thinking.

It isn't a spiritual or cathartic turn of events but a gradual clearing of the obfuscation that induced charitable armistice on the virulent altercations. People examine differently from a higher or lower or parallel standpoints and nothing untoward. Today, when I am disputing in naive amazement with anyone, strikingly impressive in tone and language and not necessarily epistemic grail, I am conscious and forthcoming to concede that I am in a flatland with limited reasoning and having difficulty grasping their contrariety in their tertiary reasoning. All I need to do is stop being a pig-headed fool and honour their well-voiced reasoning. I am holding on to a circle whilst they are only trying to tell me that it is also a sphere.

 

Glutton and Gormenghast

Late one night, while I was slumbering to Gormenghast, the wayward glutton in me rumbled. I was peckish. Holding on to the dramatization playing on my phone, I sneaked into my kitchen and rummaged through the drawers for leftover crumbs to eat. I found none. I usually don't stock up snacks also. I was sympathetically greeted by a collection of cheese in the basket on opening my fridge. O! I love cheese. I grated the cheese and microwaved the veggies and made a cheese pancake. Ta da!



I have realized that almost all my telephonic conversations invariably converge on food. Did you watch the news coverage of ...after five minutes is derailed to cinnamon cakes. I think James Comey's book ....after two minutes becomes mushroom and risotto. Damn! I redirect every conversation into a food panel. Recently a friend even warned me as soon she picked up the phone that she would disconnect me if I were to wheedle her into biryanis again. She is trying to lose weight for weeks. And I? I am trying to lose since years. Phumm! Despite our mutual protocol to shun topics on food, by the end of the call we both were enthusiastically prattling on how Indian kichdi and Greek tzatziki and Mexican guacamole form a trinity of tastebuds.



And now the crowning highlight of the week. I was thrilled when I rolled a round roti. My rotis have their own mind and take to errant shapes against my directed cajole. Finally, a shapely roti. Ordinary folks may roll a perfect roti each time, but extraordinary apprentices like me have slim chances of roling a roti that resembles a roti. When that happens, I click a picture and parade it with excitement for having summoned the exacting proportions of Apollo Belvedere in that magnificent roti.




Also, culinary mediation of the week -- Indian curries desiring sweet or ripened flavour taste best with Italian tomatoes. Undoubtedly! Indian/salad tomatoes lack the ripened flavour, hence the balancing sugar or cream to infuse richness into the gravy. Instead choose those on-the-vine tomatoes with strange and vowelized Italian provinces to add the zest and sweetness alike in Indian curries. Paneer curries taste creamy and rich with Italian tomatoes.

 

Do men dance?

.....no. Er, do men dance spontaneously with no talent or inducement? No. While women would dance away to any sound, men are conservative with their dancing hips. This was a much-teased and surveyed topic in my circle last week on why women bop to every music unabashedly whereas men are painfully shy to thump their hooves. Women can dance in sticky towels, they can dance to opening themes of Star Trek, they will wiggle to all kinds of dame tu cosita lead-up but men ...tsk tsk.

Unless a man matches the manly grace of Hrithik or Shahid, he is reluctant to dance in public or private but women have no such inhibitions. They will jiggle to music like a fish takes to a swim. Women play loud music in their homes and bounce in a frenzy or soft music and sway to a melody. Men are befuddled that women could dance unfazed. Women hardly care for the song, or the unsynchronized music with their dizzy spins and swirly feet. They just rapturously dance!

 

Nai arey, all my food musings are my interior waffle with absolutely no scholarship on legit insights. Heh!

You inquire five dim-witted people like me, each will come up with a fantastic and presumptuous reason for adding cream from melting flavour to tranquilise sourness.

I avoid cream because it impairs the colour. My happy poppy-coloured dish turns pale chrysanthemum. I love vivid colours in food. Once Lufthansa served me white aloo curry in yogurt, I whimpered, but ate it. Aloo curry should be bronzed. More later, the wonder and curiosity of the world at large beckons me.

 

In plain sight but I never checked

The pieces are stylised and admirable!