Watson

Thank you @Iravati.

You words just blessed both of us. We are not 'Duo' but 'trio' in the journey . Please look for @GeetaKashyap 's media as well. She has many variations from South to North. And not to forget that her gojju ( spicy sauce) recipe is the one many IL's have tried and appreciated a lot. She is a champ . She is a multi talented face on IL. You cannot appreciate her drawings enough. I have been a fan of her on IL. Please treasure your kind words on her as well .

Thanks again for highlighting me and Nandu here. We are thankful.

Geeta's posts:
Gojju (spicy Sauce)
Kothimbir vadi | Indusladies
Batata vada | Indusladies
Paddu (in Karnataka) | Indusladies

 

Thank you for introducing me to GeetaKashyap. I have not interacted with her so far in IL. But I will look her up.

I will definitely explore her recipes and drawings. Sweet of you to link her recipes here. Highly appreciate that.

 

She can surprise with her nomination because she is always a woman to me with lot of surprises.

Mind you, I have never asked her for advice but here it is on the record that she would be the only woman from IL I would ever seek for advice, if needed, because she isn't rhetoric and textbook and poster talk. She is gritty and practical. Real world, and NOT mocked up problems, require real-world solutions. Not many can think on their feet like the way she does weighing in real-world practicalities. Life is not a simulated Ender's Game for facile solutions. It is real and now! You got to think fast and sharp!

Let me put it this way. It takes so much energy and devotion and untold idle time to rankle or resent for eternity. And more time to defuse that. Buoyant Watsons rather prefer to invest their energy and time and devotion smartly and cut through that frost with a simple gesture of unaffected and resumed camaraderie. Hey you; hey, hey you! And the Giver Watsons would prefer it that way with no pomp and stretch. Win-win!

 

Yes dear @Iravati i second archu.... @GeetaKashyap is a wonderful and a multi talented woman, be it her writing skills, her pencil sketches or cooking, she is class apart and a perfectionist in that....
Love the way she explains the recipe....

 

I am very curious now with such high praise from you both. As mentioned our paths never crossed, so we never got to interact or even bump into each other, may be because I am mostly occupied elsewhere rambling in IL, but that is no reason to not look her up now and explore her work since both you and Archana have spoken so lovingly about her. I am sold! I will check her blogs and report back. Thank you for introducing her blogging in IL to me.

 

If one starts preparing index, it will exceed the number of mails and the same mail may come under various indices.A kadhamba ( mixture) garland has its own beauty.
Jayasala42

 

Mr Campbell had written a book and titled it decisively as The Hero With A Thousand Faces. According to him, there's only one hero in a monomyth who splits out in thousand ways before collapsing back into the originating hero. Similarly, QPQ only has one monolithic credo of ramble which enfolded into a thousand discrete reflections on how to ramble.

2016 was a marvellous year! And I hurriedly assumed that it would impress upon me as the most memorable year (I know: I claim that about every year, what can I say, my life is such a suspenseful life, and now for something completely different). But the following year provoked me to re-evaluate when the oncoming year has demonstrated to me the cornucopia of possibilities in life despite the indeterminacy of life to swing and crash you and the ensuing scramble to withstand that force majeure and still aspire in the midst of such chaos drawing fortitude from unremarkable beginnings.

Joan Didion would have asserted such experience as a year of magical thinking. I would be content with labelling the year as a whimsical year. There is no magic but only hovering and speckled hopes in the efflux of time to hop onto and drift away to the unknowns as the life itself drifts. I can trace when Quid Prod Quo cracked open into one such chance and hope for me, but it is fuzzy to pinpoint when exactly the sustained QPQ emerged out of that crack.

A year of movies, actors, animation, books, Berkeley, Berfrois, monkeys, llamas, monks, okapis, pangurs and horns and tails, mythology, folklore, science, anthroposophy and anthropocene, salt fleurs to cauliflower florets, Elias Canetti to Émile Coué, gym, no-gym, stations, galleries, cafes, airport lounges, bakeries, hospitals, illnesses, aches, sprains, revivals, birthdays, cheer, icing, stand-offs, setbacks, wit, wallow and rava dosas across continents, over headlands, in shifting time zones, in swapping roles within QPQ has catapulted the year into Annus Mirabilis to be reckoned with. I have rarely indulged in anything with such passion and force and voracity and rapidity in my life. The QPQ ping-pongs were spontaneous and uncut at the onslaught of entwined themes. The thread itself juddered and ceased to restrict itself to a specific indulgence or adhere to any known order or magnitude. The thread continued to trundle and cascade into something broader and deeper that none of us has foreseen.

I was reading the other day about Peter Medawar and how he not only survived his two debilitating strokes but also thrived, whose recovery is no less than a miracle in the annals of medical fraternity. There is no miracle. Behind the veil of miracle is that man's willed and unsparing aspiration to endure the ebb and flow of life with a curious and hearty spirit. There is no seemingly Didion's wishful magic and Medawar's benedicted miracle, but only a flash of nearby opportunity or a slim window even in the staggering bleakness through which we squeeze and lead forth to turn around our now disarrayed lives into yet another transformed and meaningful existence. You conquered your upheaval with aplomb in broad daylight, and I transcended my introspection in the guise and twilight of your combative spirit.

I have never posted in QPQ out of courtesy or imposition. I was attracted to the nonsensical phenomenon as much as the phenomenon had chosen and prevailed upon me to execute itself on. I don't know what is in store in 2018. But, by the looks of it, I know the year would tease me, rip me, tickle me, reform and provoke me in ways that are unobvious until these isolated and formative ripples intercept by way of events and people who cross paths with me in an opaque and scant moment which later reveals itself and builds into an unusual and endearing alliance, that I could never anticipate nor can reproduce elsewhere. It is too unique and prodigious for me to aspire again with another kindred soul!

Dr Seuss quoted, "We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutually satisfying weirdness". That mutually satisfying weirdness is also known to me in another form called QPQ. A year of extravagant nonsense let loose on a man who held forth and matched the volley with equal zeal and insanity that refused to stack into any visible coherence. That prolific weirdness has touched and reshaped every aspect of my life for a year. And it continues to do so ...(the unbridled tongue rests her case).