Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

On Musical Instruments

This topic is timely because I am doing a course on musical instruments. The course delineates the harmonic math behind the melody of the instruments. I was thrilled to learn about the techniques in converting one instrument to another instrument by modifying the length of a pipe to shift the pitch and timbre. The math is not complicated but I am surprised that such knowledge of the harmonics in musicology existed from ancient times. In fact, Pythagoras was the first man to discern the mathematics behind the music and he raved about the natural order of things in the universe based on his musical findings.

Have you noticed that a slight letter change renders varying meanings to the word like Tumburu (muse), Tambora (drum), Tambura (stringed instrument).

There is so little background on the Web on this instrument. I wonder if this was Dumbledore's muse.

 

Drumroll! dum dum da dum damadam dambora! It was kamarkat last month. Here is my home-made burfi made with ricotta cheese and ground almonds and dates and cinnamon for you.

I am sitting on my dining table munching on these burfi slabs and tapping away. For a change you don't have to picture me leaping from my sofa today.

 

Waiting for Godot

Easy chairs were designed to encourage superior idle-gazing. Wall-gazing is mundane. You are only amused with scuffs and cracks which hardly inspire you to compose poems. But ceiling-gaze will behold you with the wonders of the cobwebs and leaks which will invoke the gothic writer in you. When Horace Walpole authored the genre-defining The Castle of Otranto, I am sure it was an unexpected ceiling gaze that spurred the macabre writer in him.

Back in the day on interstate travels, I loved watching the advent of nightfall from a train window. The stars gradually pick up on the brightness and by 7 PM they shine brilliantly. The train cuts through pastoral lands and the sky is clear and bright in villages compared to cities. Also, the haystacks. I used to wonder, why no one is reclining on those ricks to enjoy such a panoramic sky. Today, due to light pollution in my city, even if I gaze hard, I could barely see even the pole star. Very soon, even the moon might be obscured in this light pollution plaguing the night skies. Few years ago, I registered for sky gazing in a local amateur astronomy club. I snoozed the invite too many times and never made it to their weekly sky wandering. I wish I had ...

Nonsense is wild! Anything that does not fit in a standard model is deemed nonsense. When I typed "nonsense" in Pinterest, the below image popped up. I was baffled. I was surprised on the classification of such ingenuity. Why is this nonsense? Then I realized that nonsense has no pretensions. It may sound mercurial yet it is outright and unequivocal. Nonsense should be introduced as a compulsory subject in schools with ramble as a master's elective.



What better way to demonstrate nonsense than write up a post with irrelevant title.

 

On Crosswords

You remember, we discussed how friendships are forged amidst a predator's attack in a jungle or shipwreck. Those are life-defining moments which bring together two people. This is one such profound moment. Though this is no Jumanji or Robinson Crusoe styled stand-off with hostile destiny, yet this moment will be etched in history as when Ira clasped her mouth and uttered, "Life is not going to be the same ever again". Your shudder and loath are sufficient for me to draw up a pact with you that hereafter we shall never summon that abominable word "Crossword" in our conversation. That mention is too traumatic which will necessitate a therapist to recover from those unnerving memories of quiver whilst holding The Hindu paper.

Numbers and words should never be mixed up. They are immiscible. The bane of crosswords is the intermingling of these forms. That should instead read: "Buddhist school is of little value (starts with Z, ends with P, Q in the middle, W flanks the Q, Y before that W) across". All you have to do is insert those letters in the boxes and tidy up the grid. Jeez! Which moron invented a game of words with confusing numbers.

 

The 800th Post

Age of the correspondent is never factored in my writing. If I am conscious of your age, then I might unwittingly get deferential and conciliatory in my writing. Age is beguiling. It will activate my good sense and compel me to flatter you or gratify you. Both are demeaning to someone of your stature. I treat you as an adult [not young or old] and interact with you with fondness more than adulation for it helps me to banter away with no inhibitions that may have arisen had I ceded to the generational gap.

These conversations are organic and addictive because they are devoid of honorifics and puffery. I have learnt more from Cheeniya the rambler than Cheeniya the elderly maven or Cheeniya the wizened gent. Being able to hold one's own from timeless wit and not from developed authority is the trademark of your unimpeachable charm. I never paid much attention to the senile side of you as your ramble is not an outgrowth of your age but is your innate constitution just like my ramble is my unalienable possession that never erodes or hardens or alters with age. You are you, just like I am me with humour as our anchor and curiosity as our armature that connects us and dissolves the disparity in age.