Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

I was on Facebook earlier but no longer. I had been for a month then away for 3 years and then for a month and now been away for almost 2 years. I have an on and off thing like that of a philandering lover with FB.

I am confused: what I am supposed to do on FB. Someone advised, you are supposed to show how happy, prosperous, cared for, travelsome your life is. My life isn’t that grand so there’s nothing to shine in FB on my pale and quiet existence.

That should read my status in FB.
No Facebook. No Mind.

 

And groomed my hair with many thoughts and reflections on QPQ pointers. Can’t wait to get back and follow up on the ramble. So much to talk.

 

I have often felt same. Why the hesitation in me to resume FB? Then I think, I don’t want to upset the steady and fulfilling aspect of my life. I find the current non-FB activities more satisfying as the time spent on scanning FB though induces pleasure is guilt-ridden. I feel guilty at whiling away time at random and remote updates.

Also, I might fare poor in FB. The greatest compliment I pay is “nice” which could pale in comparison to other fulsome compliments like “you are out of this world”.

If someone is out of or orbiting this world, they must be competing with the Moon for Earth’s attention. I would rather not duel with Moon for undue credit in FB.

 

My Mom is often puzzled when I am uptight at her place and talk about returning to my home. She inquires, what do you do at your place that makes you miss it so much?

I don't know. I just miss my home I tell her. There is nothing spectacular I do here but I terribly miss my place and I must be the only happy face at the airport amidst the other teary farewells. Mind you, my family is the most loving for they bear my antics and eccentricities alike.

On my return flight, I was planning, writing down ingredients and working out ...what went wrong last time ...

As I swung the doors open, I headed to the kitchen to work out the recipe with the gusto of a scientist who just returned to his lab to perfect his formula. Ok, so last time I didn't roast the coconut. So this time I roast it. Roasted Coconut + Mango + Tomato. I meticulously rework the recipe and whip about the same pacchadi again.

As a teenager, I never indulged in cooking but occasionally my Mom would ask me to stir the ladle or flip the omelette. Till when? She would invariably reply: Till the dish is saturated with colour. I wondered, what kind of shoddy cooking is it where colour is used as an indicator. Today, with the passion that rivals Yves Klein's colour preoccupation, I authoritatively rely on colour to indicate the finesse and taste.




Hmm, tastes better. I wonder how would it be with roasted sesame thrown in next time. I never had rice (full meal) for breakfast for a long time but when the pacchadi is so tasty, I might as well relish it with proper rice and daal. I missed QPQ. My Mom is worried about my obsessions and quirks. She complains that I don't have interests like that of any woman of my age. Thank the stars that she does not know about QPQ. If she were to, she would sneak in a tannis root in my luggage to cure me of my nonsensical ramble. Will catch up with posts after I brush my teeth. Woah ...don't judge me for eating without brushing my teeth. You know that I scrub my teeth for an hour, chewing on the bristles and ruminating on all things wild and wonderful.

 

On Flute

In the beginning, I could not hear anything then something rumbled, then something burped. I adjusted my volume and then realised what you meant by a sore throat. Such a prodigious feat rendered garbled to my donkey ears.

I told you that I was doing an art course so you will be hammered with all kinds of art trivia. I learnt something while reading about Titian which is related to our flute discussion. Mr Titian painted a gruesome narrative from Ovid's Metamorphoses called The Flaying of Marsyas. How Marsyas is related to flute?

The story is from Ovid, and it is one of great and sustained cruelty. Though we catch it at a particular moment, we know that this flesh will be long in the stripping and the unpicking. Here is how this monstrous scene came to be. A contest has taken place between the satyr Marsyas and the god Apollo. Marsyas had discovered a set of reeds abandoned by Minerva. He learns to play them so well that he is foolish enough to challenge the god Apollo to a musical contest. Apollo agrees – but on condition that the victor will be able to inflict such punishment as he chooses upon the loser. Predictably enough, Marsyas loses, and Apollo inflicts his gruesome punishment, which is to flay Marsyas alive, stripping flesh from bone, inch by meticulous inch. More here.

That devastating reed lead to the beginnings of the musical instrument we now know as "flute".

 

This is interesting! Why only Brahmaputra is assigned a male sobriquet (son of Brahma)? This is unfair. We need more rivers with such intuitive description and non-discriminating names. May be rivers being the source of civilizations right from Nile to Tigris are treated with maternal reverence. That said, men should fight for their rights too. I searched for the etymology of the name "Sutlej" to verify whether it was named after a man or a woman but there is no intel on the Net on this river's naming origin. Sutlej ...sounds alien for Indian landscape.

 

On Contests

Multiple choice questions are confounding. You are confident of the answer when a question is asked with no prompts, only to be thrown into a doubt when another option is offered. This or that? I don't easily win prizes. Even my baggage on the carousel emerges as last but one arrival. So, I stay away from all kinds of contests with such rotten luck.

Sudoku players are apparently non-social. They twirl the pencil and squint their eyes with such devoted immersion that you dare inquire about the train route with them. It is a ruse to thwart any social encroachment from a bystander. How would you ever approach them to inquire the route when they behave as if their life depended like that of Katniss Everdeen on winning the cruel game.

Sudoku reminds me of sangaku, another playful indulgence of the Japanese. In sangaku, patrons or devotees write up geometric puzzles and hang them in shrines. Numbers are so Japanese obsessions I tell you! Once a while they should pursue alphabet instead so that they don't strain their overwrought brains with juggling numbers.

Of the world's countless customs and traditions, perhaps none is as elegant, nor as beautiful, as the tradition of sangaku, Japanese temple geometry. From 1639 to 1854, Japan lived in strict, self-imposed isolation from the West. Access to all forms of occidental culture was suppressed, and the influx of Western scientific ideas was effectively curtailed. During this period of seclusion, a kind of native mathematics flourished.

Devotees of math, evidently samurai, merchants and farmers, would solve a wide variety of geometry problems, inscribe their efforts in delicately colored wooden tablets and hang the works under the roofs of religious buildings. These sangaku, a word that literally means mathematical tablet, may have been acts of homage--a thanks to a guiding spirit--or they may have been brazen challenges to other worshipers: Solve this one if you can! For the most part, sangaku deal with ordinary Euclidean geometry. But the problems are strikingly different from those found in a typical high school geometry course. Circles and ellipses play a far more prominent role than in Western problems: circles within ellipses, ellipses within circles. Some of the exercises are quite simple and could be solved by first-year students. Others are nearly impossible, and modern geometers invariably tackle them with advanced methods, including calculus and affine transformations. More here.