Nimbupani has an interesting post on “are they us“?, which is still having some active and lively discussions. Very many years ago, I used to have a very simplistic exclusive view to what Indian means. “If you live in India, you are an Indian”. period. One fine day, I had to fill in an application…
Category: Musings
Adieu
Today morning, I woke up to the unusually loud cries of Tweety. Tweety is a fellow resident in my apartment building and has her nest just outside my bedroom. Because she reminds me of Tweety in Jamba’s ringtone ad and because I am rather unimaginative when it comes to christening birds, shes called Tweety. Tweety…
Am back!
I am back – back home. Its nice to feel my own bed, drink my home-made coffee and shower at my leisure in my warm shower. Also waiting for me is a whole bag of unopened mail, most of which are in German, which means I have a long date with my dictionary and the…
The Handshake and such
Some cultural nuances dissected, with not much of reverence or tact. “A handshake is a universal token of friendliness here. Be it in office, or at home or in the street when two cab drivers greet each other. Something that may not be done even in offices back in Trichur.” I came across this at…
Of Whipped Potatoes and Adventures of the Spud
An easy recipe for whipped potatoes, and then the story of potatoes. I had no idea how easy it is to make whipped potatoes! Peel and cut, say 6 potatoes, put them in cold water, cover the lid and boil.After the water is boiled, remove the lid and continue boiling for about 15 mins or…
Is versatility dead?
Are we conditioned to believe that if you know something about everything, you probably know nothing about anything? Is true versatility a thing of the past? What do you want to be when you grow up is a question that we might have been asked or have asked ourselves when we were growing up. Some…
Think More, Act Less
All the answers you seek are within you. There are limitations to what human beings can do, but there are no limitations to what we can achieve through the strength of our minds. What makes us different from the rest of the living forms is our intellectual prowess. The answers to the deepest questions of…
Why do we appreciate art?
We enjoy art. We try to produce art. We collect art. We admire those who create art. What is it that makes us so drawn to art? Art welcomes us a to new realm full of new ideas, new concepts, new ideologies, new possibilities. We suddenly find ourselves in the inner world of a fellow…
Languages or Dialects?
When I tell people that my mother tongue is Malayalam, first they look at me like I am playing a tongue-twister game and then a good % of them follow up with ” Oh, so that is an Indian dialect”. And I ever so patiently try to explain that Malayalam is not a “dialect”, it…
The future of the future teller
Background: Rednova recently publised an article, ‘Can This Black Box See Into the Future’ about a new machine developed by the scientists at Princeton that can predict future events. It relies on two main things : random number generation and the power of the collective human conciousness to ‘influence’ that random number generation. This is…