Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Death by books

People should now take out insurance policies against dictionaries and directories. If any meditated death is engendered by these books, then the publishers should pay out the indemnity. Firearms and daggers are boring! A perpetrator should heave a large directory and find his victim and subsequent weapon in the same hefty book and blame the publisher for enabling him with this malevolence.

The ‘wrong number’ trope has slaughtered many a clueless victim. One day a jolly fellow is watering the plants in his balcony and the next day he is found slain with no conceivable motive. A stray directory tossed in those plants will only upset the detectives who are now supposed to haul it back to their station and investigate why AJR Melpomenus entry is circled in the book. This ‘wrong number’ trope also foreshadows quite early in the plot in the form of a swirling book and telephone chord in the opening credits. You know straightaway that someone is going to get into trouble over a false lookup in a telephone directory.

Hehe! That “degree” is a clever pun! The Chinese have something called Lingchi (‘death by a thousand cuts’). The Dumfries must name their ministration as Degchi (‘death by a thousand degrees’).

 

On standing upside down

Jhanak Jhanak thrusted the indian classical art form into mainstream entertainment. I watched the movie long ago. I vaguely remember the storyline but the dance form catapulted every known swing and bend into an incredible posture. Did I tell you, I dabbled in kuchipudi and left it partway. One has immense regard for things that one has dropped off from because it is challenging to perfect such art even with indefatigable passion.

All yoga teachers dispense that ‘blood’ flow’ instruct. My yoga teacher too did that. I was not in meditative yoga but aerobic yoga class. If I had been in meditative yoga, then I would have desired more blood flow to my poised head to think deep. Tell me, why tumble all the way upside down instead of a manageable bow. Wouldn’t touching the feet with your arms outstretched reverse the flow of blood in the body and sluice through one’s vacant head? Why should the blood gush all the way down from your hoisted feet? Somehow, the blood redirected from your abs in a generous bow is not potent enough to rinse one’s head. It has to be the blood emptied from the feet.

 

splendidophoropherostiphongious

I am revisiting this post because I had a conversation with my mate last night. He has an inkling that I babble somewhere and spew my nonsensical repartees onto equally nonsensical opinions. He teases me that only another unhinged person tops can bear me as a crowd will disperse soon with my obscure antics. I squealed, “actually, there is only one person who bears me”. Suddenly he turned grave and said, “you are so fortunate that you are able to find and connect to your madness even if that is limited to just one head. It adds lot of meaning and value to life”.

I was zapped. He is not one of those “kind-worded” mouths. ‘Meaning’ and ‘value’ and such honorable take on my nonsensical outpour is hitherto unheard from him. That remark made me think, do I take my life so much for granted. Am I mindful and immersive of this happiness? I love screaming away here to all random topics. Would I have felt the same level of happiness if I had pursued a solitary indulgence in my private diary.

I am conscious of this impetus in my life that has added more meaning and joy to my ramble. May be there are goofy souls out there who are unpaired and are still searching for someone to lock into a lively conversation. For me to have found someone to share this mutual interest is a memorable phase in the makings of a steadfast rambler. When Edward Lear lacked words to express his sentiments, he made up words. I am lazy. When I lack words, I borrow his expressions. This accidental undertaking has indeed been a splendidophoropherostiphongious initiative in my life.

 

A skunk cabbage not only looks but also behaves like the LIC logo if we were to go by Thoreau’s reasoning. The defiant cabbage provides the warmth of optimism during cold spells.

If our irreverent Winston Churchill were to describe Chennai, he would say, Chennai is a beast that stands on a hot plate and squats on a geyser.

The Amarnath valley and shrine pictures are beautiful.

It begins with a 43 kilometres (27 mi) mountainous trek from the Nunwan and Chandanwari base camps at Pahalgam and reaches cave-shrine after night halts at Sheshnag Lake and Panchtarni camps.

I am not a trekker but the mountain views are so glorious that I am ready to believe that the knee-aching trek just happens while one is distracted away by the breathtaking surrounds.

 

I haven’t seen any of her films. Only composite footage in documentaries. I think there was a documentary on centenary celebrations of Indian film industry in which her montage was flashed. She does appear hearty in her larger-than-life depictions in films. I also read that in the film Rangoon, *Kangana Ranaut played the role of an actress modelled after our Hunterwali. I don’t how whether that movie is a straight biopic or adapted from kindred daredevil forays in the tinsel town.

(*): My auto-correct was proposing “kangaroo” each time I tried to type Kangana Ranaut. My AI butler is no all-knowing Jeeves!

 

I have been inspired by some of our talks here that I signed up next an Indian philosophy course to learn the basics of Vedic philosophy. It will take time to finish all the lectures. I am aiming to finish by March at the rate I am being distracted by the line-up of Marcello’s movies.

My Mom thinks that I am slightly retarded in the upper chamber watching and reading bizzare stuff when women of my age should dress up well and socialise and hunt for a cute man. The common lore! But how do I tell her that our Unsinkable Molly has possessed me.

 

Sometime ago, I was wondering about this. Say there are roadside hawkers who do brisk business and make a lot of money, but pay no taxes. Have no food licenses etc but make do with bribing the machinery. For their business to prosper even further, they pray to God. So if the business flourishes (due to the prayers), is it correct to say God is increasing criminality ?

Specifically, I see this with South Indian hawkers where they wear mala (Become a 'swamy' and pray to the God in Sabarimalai). A lot of people say their businesses got really established after they became a swamy for a little while. So shouldn't the temple hosting the God in Sabarimalai be made to pay penalties if and ever this hawker got audited ? After all there was an increase in fraud due to the blessings of the God. Of course, if the hawker establishes a restaurant and does things by the book, then the Lord just assisted this hawker by slightly increasing fraud in the society.

 

@Cheeniya

When Buddha buried his teeth-cleaning twig in the soil, the stick developed into a wisdom tree. I read this somewhere in a dentistry article. I don’t know what will sprout if I bury my shaggy toothbrush. (I am brushing my teeth and thinking.) Today’s brushing has regularised my trip because I was able to brush at regular morning hours having conquered the prolonged jetlag. Then, while chewing up my tooth brush some more, I wandered off to the circadian cycle and how our bodies get used to the new time zone, and incidentally this research won the Nobel Prize in 2017.

Our physiology is regulated by an internal clock that generates daily rhythms known as "circadian", from the Latin circadiem, meaning "around one day". Circadian rhythms are ancient and exist in all forms of life. Life on Earth is adapted to the rotation of our planet, and the internal clock anticipates day/night cycles, helping organisms optimize their physiology and behavior.

Our story begins in 1729, when French astronomer Jean-Jacques de Mairan took a mimosa plant, which leaves are open during the day but close at night, and placed it in constant darkness. He observed that the leaves still opened and closed rhythmically at the appropriate time, suggesting an endogenous origin of the daily rhythm. Physiology is controlled by genes, and the biological clock is no exception. In 1971, Seymour Benzer and Ron Konopka isolated mutant flies that had alterations in their normal 24h cycle of activity. Fifteen years later, Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash, working together at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, and Michael Young, at Rockefeller University in New York, isolated the mutated gene, called period.


As instrumental as this was, however, the isolation of the period gene did not tell very much about the mechanism of the biological clock. It was a remarkable series of discoveries made during the 1990s by this year's Nobel Laureates that finally elucidated how our biological clock ticks. The basic principle, first proposed by Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash, is deceptively simple. The period gene produces a protein that accumulates in the cell and, after reaching a certain level, blocks the gene and hence its own production. As protein levels subside, the gene becomes active again and the cycle resumes. As many things in biology, however, the devil is in the details; as it was still unclear how the period protein can be stabilized long enough and then enter the cell nucleus to inhibit its own production. Michael Young discovered two additional genes, he named them timeless and doubletime, that partner with period and together contribute to the generation of robust oscillations of approximately 24hs.


The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Presentation Speech


I finished my brushing with the lingering thoughts on the trio of “period” and “timeless” and “doubletime” genes and the role they play in regularising our metabolic activity. Such deceptively simple names!

Back to my toothbrush lead thought. As I stepped out, the aroma of brewing sambhar tingles my nostrils. It must be idli or dosa today for breakfast. I will think more about the toothbrush after I gobble the breakfast. But leaving you with the thought .. unlike Buddha’s wisdom tree, what do you think will sprout if you and I bury our toothbrushes in soil?