Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Bread stick is another fanciful food lore. What is wrong with bread slices that we prefer to harden them into a non-chewy bite. Your friend mistaking one stick with another only demonstrates his repugnance for such silly contraptions. The only use of chopsticks is to clear a sink and the only use of bread sticks is to powder and drink them. I don’t see any other altruistic hope for them.

Bhima is a macho name but Nala is slightly effeminate, er. Hmm, would restaurateurs be sensitive to these unfounded vibes while naming their beloved undertakings.

I had once been to a restaurant named “Bhima”. I enjoyed puris there. I am finicky of eating puris outside home because of the deep-fry in blackened oil. But I must tell you that his particular Bhima restaurant served fluffy puris that tasted like they were fried in fresh milk. In India, in that every other road called “Mahatma Gandhi Road”, you will find a “Bhima's Mess” in every other corner. Bhima’s Mess is the remedial appeal to the ravenous hunger in you.

 

On Deepika Padukone

I too like Deepika. I admire her for her discipline and grace. Her foray into films had begun even before she was twenty. For someone of that tender age, she held her esteem and calibre quite high with a lot of self-assurance. She comes across as a hardworking artist. Moreover, she didn’t have any filmy aprons. Show business is as such dicey, therefore, to make one’s mark with no ancestral ties in the industry is a remarkable feat.

Sadly, politics and motion arts have always contested for public’s attention. In an aggressive turn of events, politics is now encroaching on motion arts.

I still don’t understand the notion of slight and disregard of religious sentiments in fictionalized works. If I understand correctly, Padmavathi is an adaptation of a fictionalised medieval poem based on a fictionalised character. The poem might have been abstruse whilst couched in lyrical notes for anyone to protest back then, but today falsely armed with twitter and facebook, every zealot is administrating a bounty on Deepika’s head. The persnickety state of affairs in this modern age of free expression and artistic flourish is deplorable.

 

On Tourism

I mustered some form of worldly round-up when I was young. These days, I hardly venture even to the adjoining city on a pleasure trip. I prefer solitary pursuits away from the hissing crowds. My tastes and preferences have greatly altered. I am no longer teased or drawn out by glamorous locales. I like a certain mysticism and uniqueness in my hotspots. When I say hotspots, I mean not the touristy trails but the departmental stores where I buy groceries. You may inquire, what mysticism and uniqueness in unexceptional marts? Well, you see, I take great pride in shopping nothing for hours as I read and recall the labels and brands and savour the bottled colours and smells of the ubiquitous stuff. So, I ensure to saunter away in huge marts with towering aisles wafting in oriental and mediterranean and our native sambar and spice scents that compensate for a tropical getaway. (That's one reason why I never order online. I prefer my grocery strolls.)

I have attained that status earlier than you. There is a time in every one's life for onward discovery and then a time for inward dalliance sourced from earlier discoveries. I think people satiated with onward discovery move on to inward dalliance sooner than later for that inner indulgence is the most stable and restorative form of happiness and contentment.

 

On Penance

This reminds me of the mating habits of the animals. In one kingdom, we have our machismo sea lion who fiercely gurards his harem of wives. Then in another kingdom, there’s sorority of matriarchal elephants who after being seeded abandon their male spouse and wander away in a nomadic trance. But, we humans of the modern age take after the penguins and voles who practise monogamy. Our morals and holdouts are conditioned. If polygamy is the norm in few years time, then we would spread literature that denounces the narrow-minded practices of the ancestral monogamists. And if monogamy endures, we would continue with our broadside against the ills of the lurking polygamy.

The portrayal of infidelity in literature from the yore is eye-widening. The French had their Madame Bovary and the Germans had their Effi Briest and the Russians had their Anna Karenina. But it is the English who toppled all those hussies with Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. Not any cramped Moll Flanders but a novel richly titled with a giveaway and recapitulating scaffolding as “The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders Who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Years a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her brother) Twelve Years a Thief, Eight Years a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest and died a Penitent”.

....dies a penitent! Every novel had to end with a remorseful awakening from the unsavoury past and claim penitence. I cannot recall that American novel which challenged the rules of the game by depicting a lead woman who was not ashamed of her debauched life in the end. Until then dramas and genres were replete with repentant women but that American novel bore a cross through such draconian flagellation of the soul. That genre-defying novel with a defiant anti-heroine was a sleeper hit. Grrh! I cannot recall the name or the author, not one of those Henry James’ works. Arrgh!

Ok, let’s park that thought and move on.

Chastity is deemed as a sublime virtue that can only grace the utmost moral fibre. When a woman or man swerved from this chaste path, they were moral criminals. Today we may be more tuned to listen out to deviance and ascertain marital transgression in an open hearing.

Infidelity is treated with contempt as a rule in literature and also in real life. However, with the runaway existential crisis I witness in the urban populace of today, the therapist of Madame Bovary would be sympathetic to her needs and testify for her rather than against her: “Well, she was leading a bourgeois life and all she wanted was a bit of romp and attention in life to cure her morose. So, I prescribed something organic on the side to charm her and make her feel desirable with no opiate overdose.”

(At times, I get confused if I am arguing for or against something then I realise that nonsense takes no sides.)

 

Gods can also commission a separate appellate court to hear boons rejected from the lower courts. This is the only way for the Council of Gods to withstand and also oppose the Asuras through peaceful means. The prevailing rough and tumble situation where a God can grant a boon at will with little or no thought to his own racial supremacy is unnerving.

A modafinil-doped Asura prays, God is pleased, a bonfire is performed, God is pleased, a salver of laddoes, that too made of artificial flavourings and colorings, God is pleased. At this rate, every boon will be exhausted and the Asuras would walk over the ruling party of Gods.

The only viable technique is to enact contingent bylaws and unsurmountable rules and regulations to thwart and confuse the boon-seeking Asuras.

Asura demands: “Give me immortality”.
God quips: “Your insurance premiums will double.”

There you go!

 

On Today

There are days when I am baffled by my own calcified head.

Ok, here we go. Everyone commits a mistake or a regret or something in between that glaring spectrum. And learn and move on. However, I commit a mistake and giggle and commit it again. I have staunch hope in committing the same mistake expecting a different outcome. Now, I am baffled. Do I not realise the shame of such a mistake or the cycle of such inevitability. Why do I let myself to commit the same mistake again and again? Why don't I stay away from that hopeless mistake?

Today, I resolve to take pride in blundering along other adventurous mistakes and refrain from indulging in the worn-out follies. Don't repeat, don't repeat that mistake. I chant like a wandering cricket in the night. Commit novel mistakes, burn other fingers.

The beginning of the month is a good time to take stock of the resolve and look forward to squeaky and never-before-seen mistakes and shed the stickiness of the same boring mistakes. I have to resist the temptation that draws me out to endure the same folly innumerable times.

Yes, I have to get rid of the burden of the repeat follies as they almost have predestined outcomes by now.

 

On Tumburu

Finally, I caught up on Tumburu and started reading his tales. First ..

Tumburu is described the son of sage Kashyapa and his wife Pradha. Among the sons of Kashayapa, his four Gandharva sons Tumburu, Bahu, Haha and Huhu were renowned for their sweet and pleasant speech. –Wikipedia

What a lyrical brood -- Bahu, Haha and Huhu are his siblings. I am in love with this family already. Tumburu has faint resemblance to Orpheus in Greek mythology. They are both exemplar musicians who played divine music. Thanks for introducing Tumburu for me. I could not find any tale relating to his horse-head. I looked for other similar horse-headed celestial beings and came across this page. That page only has a passing reference to Tumburu and no mention of the genesis of the horse-head incarnation.

There is another horse-headed being in mythology. His name is Tumburu and he is a Gandharva and a musician. He is often depicted standing near Vishnu and Narada. He often vied with Narada for the position of the world’s greatest musician.

 

Storylines are intensified and darkened for the masses. As a kid, I knew Batman and Superman as super-heroes with colourful undies roughhousing their mortal enemies. Look at them today. These super-heroes have shades and inner conflicts and therapists on the go. Who would have envisaged that these comic heroes could evolve into dark knights with surreptitious past and questionable morals. Every hero is laced in a vulnerable dark side and every anti-hero with a redeeming upside. You cannot even sift who is who in such blended portrayals. I miss those good ol’ days when heroes were champions of unsullied virtues even in those silly slacks.