On The Ning Nang Nong

Declutter the house

It is crazy! I need to throw or donate half the stuff. I hate when the house gets cluttered up.

I am thinking ...what was I thinking even when I bought this ...nevermind ..chuck it.

So I have five bags of clothes and soft toys and chappals and shoes and whatnot to clear away. Why so many chappals for one person? Running shoes and office footwear is enough. I have no interest in soft toys. Clear! I don't wear those skirts and jackets and those dresses. Just few easy-wash and regular wear is enough. Purge!

The big clearing is the souvenirs from travels. What the heck was I even thinking ...buying delicate souvenirs and bundle them carefully and haul them home. I hardly look at them or cuddle those precious souvenirs. Some of them are still unwrapped from a decade ago. Chuck! Across the years, donated and gave away the collection. There is no need to demonstrate that I have traveled. I can talk through my travels. And those pans! I will go crazy. No need of four pans. Just two enough. From omelette to roti to fry to saute everything can be improvised. Chuck!

Downsizing to bare essentials. I am still decluttering ...catcha later.

 

I will get back to you in few hours after my house is 20 kilos lighter.
Argh! I loathe clutter.

 

I am bowled over by the breakfast spread.
That's a lot of variety. Very appealing slice of Japanese cuisine!

Kaze is known from the more popular verbal import kamikaze.But I sense your kaze-no-kaori too.

 

A Necklace divided

In 1947, when British India was partitioned into Republic of India and Republic of Pakistan, not just land and people but the cattle and machinery and typewriters and heritage was also partitioned. How to partition heritage?

I was browsing the podcast of Museum of Lost Objects last night when I chanced on the necklace that divided two nations.

I searched for a more comprehensive narrative and landed at ..

The Partition Council in October 1947 had resolved that museums would be divided on a territorial basis. It decided that when the territory of a province was partitioned, the museum exhibits of the provincial museums would also be physically divided. So, the exhibits in the Lahore Museum which belonged to the United Province of Punjab before Partition, were to be split between East Punjab (in India) and West Punjab (in Pakistan).

More complicated was the fate of objects that had been sent on temporary loan to places which, on August 15th,1947, happened to be on the wrong side of the border, far away from the original museums to which they belonged. In its wisdom, therefore, the Partition Council ruled that all objects that had been removed for temporary display after January 1st, 1947, were to be returned to the original museums.

This created a real problem with regard to the antiquities of Mohenjodaro. This is because on the day of Partition, as many as 12,000 objects from there were in Delhi. Since Mohenjodaro fell within the territory of Pakistan, the objects should have fallen in its share. However, India’s negotiators maintained that these rightfully belonged to India because they had not been removed after January 1st from the original museum (which was at Mohenjodaro) but came from Lahore.

In order to make things difficult, the West Punjab government postponed the actual handing over of East Punjab’s share of the Lahore Museum holdings until such time that India handed over to Pakistan its share from the central museums. And a final decision on the central museums remained pending till the Mohenjodaro matter was sorted out.​

Amidst the chaotic and ruthless division of artifacts was a jade and gold necklace from Mohenjodaro which was claimed by both the nations vociferously, so vociferously that it had to be cut in the middle and made into two separate necklaces.



Whilst still reeling from the dismantled necklace, let me introduce Kanishk Tharoor, the host of the MoLO radio podcast. The surname was familiar, lo!, he indeed is the promising heir of Shashi Tharoor.

 

I had to watch a YouTube clip to follow the Bikkuri craze!

Donkeys are special as steak emblems and also as wine creators. The extra virgin olive oil from Crete is pristine because the traditional stone press is driven by a donkey. Had it been a horse or a mule, nah!, no bikkuri element to it.

Reminds me of a firangi man during my travels who, whilst unprovoked, bared his shoulder tattoo for me to read on knowing that I was of Indian origin. Tell me, read it, what is it, my ex-girlfriend's name, got it tattooed in India.

In my groggy sight, I read that as 'Shadika' ..

He gasped! Then I blinked and read again: 'Radhika'. He was happy that a street inker immortalized his love at bargain price. For the mickey of it, I should have insisted it was Shadika to trouble these firangi hipsters who take to fashionable Eastern cults.

 

I painstakingly tried that transfer in the past then I realized that I am filling up my house back in India with the Silk Route stockpile. Too much clutter there also now! I want to refrain from buying new stuff. May be, it is just a phase but I am averse to hoarding stuff now.

I want to dispose of memorabilia that I hardly revisit with nostalgia. Fondly look back at these souvenirs and recount my days of travel ... but that never happened for a decade. A zen practitioner teased me that if I don't repeat an activity in the next six months, there are good chances that I would never repeat that in my life. It sounded funny then and prophetic now. Just a strange feeling that I might not desire these trinkets ever.

I was a reckless dine-out beast earlier then my alarming waist dilation set me on home cooking rejuvenation in an attempt to claim my waist back from a now-sack to a future-amphora. The fried stuff is ridiculous! But, I loved it. I cannot take up another weight loss challenge at this age and temperament, hence wary of eating out.

Oh-i-see!

Twain and Hemingway are already studied or prescribed for study in academia. I recommended marginal and offbeat books that endow personality more than credentials. Like Hermann Hesse and Siddhartha are a must-know but I prefer Steppenwolf, coz s/w is incisive and brazen. Also, slightly jaded of the oh-so-nice writers like Henrys and Hemingways. They must be read for the age and era. I suspect kids today would hail crisp and meaningful writing over contemporary and intense writing. I am jaded of thoughtful and cute writers who write sense across. I prefer deranged and misshapen writers who fitfully declaim weird insights in their cockamamie garble.

Mind you, angel hair pasta.

A zealous UFO hunter (we have at least two amidst us: Agent Hope and Agent Ira) might spin that to angel hair falling from the sky.

 

English Attention: Goose

The noun form of "goose" is dull but the verb form is chirpy.

As verb:

poke (someone) in the bottom.
give (something) a boost; invigorate.

"the government's desire to goose the tired housing market"

But that poke in the bottom is chirpier. Where did I come across? In the Love and Death movie, in the scene where Woody Allen as the meek Boris Grushenko is clumsy with his sword.

Who is this attractive and mysterious soldier?
Sorry. I goosed that lady.
He has quite a sensitive face.
That's the part of me that shows.

 

Our saviour: Purgatorius

I was reading the essays of Stephen Jay Gould in Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes which is the third installment of curated essays from his writing in 'Natural History' magazine.

In one of the essays, he mentions that we should be indebted to a resourceful and gritty mammal called "Purgatorius" which survived the KT extinction that annihilated the dinosaurs. This shrewd mammal later on flourished and is considered to be the progenitor of all modern primates, which includes humans.

I wondered, why such a resilient creature was named "Purgatorius" as if it occupied a cell or a circle in Dante's vision.



I searched for the etymology of that taxonomy but for a vague reference to a surviving teeth and jaw in fossil, I found no revealing footnote on the origin of its theological-dooming name. Purga didn't perish like other doomed mammals so it must be named after a bright and Gloria Gaynor survivor motif.