There he is, Li'l Scrawny, standing bravely at the helm of his nest (and looking rather blurred. I took half a dozen pix, each one worse than the one before. This was the pick of the jitter). I took this on Sunday mid-afternoon, a day filled with crises and near-crises for the tenacious little varmint. I don't expect to get any more pictures because he's moved out of the nest now, and isn't likely to get back in. As of Monday (30th May) evening, he was alive and reasonably perky. Earlier in the afternoon, he finally did what we'd been expecting him to do all of Sunday, i.e., fall out of the bamboo. But E collected him (against the strenuous protests of his flutteringly frantic parents) and put him back inside the nest. He promptly reared up and fell out again, but was returned just as promptly, and this time, a hand was held over his head to prevent him from popping straight out again. After this trauma, he remained pretty much glued to the tree -- outside the nest, however -- until nightfall. He's been stretching his wings and standing tall on his toothpick-thin legs and preening what little he has in the way of feathers. The last I saw of him, he'd tucked his tiny head under his tiny wing, and was apparently asleep. One miniature pompom of White Eye fluff, asleep under cover of darkness.

Li'l Scrawny still lives ...

... as of the afternoon of Sunday 29th May. We are keeping a close watch on him. His parents are still feeding him, but I believe they're not keeping up with his appetite. He's spent most of the day perched at the edge of the nest (pic will follow later today), his head occasionally drooping. He has a little habit of resting his chin on a nearby twiglet, which looks very sweet but is perhaps a sign of terminal fatigue and hunger. Sometimes he chirps quite energetically, othertimes, it's a barely audible little cheeee ... He did preen himself at one point, which is a great sign, but he's still rather bedraggled to look at. Hardly any head feathers to speak of, smaller than the siblings (who have flown to the bamboo in the front garden) and very unsteady on his feet. I am unwilling to intervene directly by e.g. feeding him -- besides the tedium of having to run around catching insects (not something I am skilled at doing) I fear that any interaction might put his parents off stride and that would be a disaster. *sigh* It is all so DIFFICULT.

Little Scrawny's Last Stand

Of course he looks like an iguana here, but in reality that small pink head an yellow beak are about the size of my thumb-nail -- okay, I might be a giant -- the size of an apricot pit.

Some Good, Some Bad

The bad news is, I wasn't able to take any more candid pix of the birdies. The good news is, it's because they developed so quickly that this morning (i.e., three days after I took that picture) they were out of the nest and pumping their wings! It's absolutely miraculous that they could go from near-naked to almost fledged. However, there's more bad news: the littlest one didn't make it. Or won't, I think, by tomorrow morning.

All of today, we've been keeping a close watch (but at a distance; since the day I took pictures, we've not gone close to the nest). In the morning, we both noticed a hilarious sight: the nest would appear to be empty (from our vantage point, on the ground, through binoculars) until one of the parents approached. Whereupon -- POP! -- like tiny jacks-in boxes, three little heads shot straight up, peeping and calling!

Barely two hours later, when we looked again, two of the birdies were out of the nest and sitting on a nearby branch looking around themselves with interest, and preening their minature wings. An hour later, they had flapped and hopped their way further from the nest. The parents, meanwhile, were busy flying back and forth, feeding them as well as the one left behind in the nest. Already, it was beginning to look grim for the third one, now dubbed Scrawny.

The parents continued feeding Scrawny all morning, which looked hopeful. Around three o'clock, he (or she) actually hopped out of the nest for a breather. But it was very clear that he was woefully underdeveloped compared to the other two: completely naked head, no wing feathers to speak of. At four, I saw that he was back inside the nest, and looking out in a wistful way. As if recognizing that this wider world was not for him. A brisk breeze had caught the young bamboo in its grip and kept shaking it, so that the little nest was rocking like a ship in high seas. Nevertheless, I decided I had to take my chances with a picture of Scrawny while he was still alive.

I couldn't get close, the light was fading and the tree was in motion. I had my camera zoomed out to maximum and the result is rather blurred, but I captured this tiny little bird, looking out over the rim of his only home on earth, perhaps for the last time, in a manner that I found deeply poignant. I will try to post the picture here, but I had such a struggle the other day, I'm not confident of getting it done tonight. A small bony head and jutting beak, quite repulsive in its way, but in the upward tilt of its head, in the comfort it sought in its home, I see all that is ever-hopeful and perhaps naive about the life-force.

I know it's very silly of me, but I'm crying as I write this. Of course I know that little birds have to die now and then, and that this one was quite lucky after all that it will (probably) die in its own cosy home tonight. Knowing that doesn't make it less sad. Well, well, well. I better stop this ridiculous sentimentality and see if I can post that picture.

Yesterday morning I took a picture of three White Eye nestlings. They're about ten days old, I think. It's been about three weeks since we noticed the nest and the three tiny blue eggs inside it. The nest itself is a delicate little cup, the size of half-a-tennis ball, hollowed out. It's been built very cunningly at the end of a slender bamboo "branch" -- hardly substantial enough to be called that -- so that cats cannot approach the nest. The adult birds are petite and yellowy-green in colour, with a pronounced white ring around the eyes. I was afraid that my intrusion within their lives could cause them trauma, but they seem to have recovered. Will post updates as I get 'em ... 

Two More Blogs on My List

Featured in the list on the right, please find links to JABBERWOCK and DUCK OF DESTINY, two very entertaining and h'erudite blogs. I'll leave you to discover to whom they belong but can guarantee amusing and provocative reads. There are so many great blogs out there that it's tough deciding which ones to add to my list -- or, it WOULD be tough, if not that my inclusion criteria are fixed at: (a) those blogs that had something freaky-but-fun (such as the Subservient Chicken) and (b) those blogs that have been the source of visits to my blog (I know from the "referrals" at the site meter). No interest like self-interest, heh heh.

Elegant Ammunition

Here's a list of insults to impress your enemies even as you needle them!

"A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults." -Louis Nizer

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." -Stephen Bishop

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." -Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." -Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." -William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" -Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." -Moses Hadas

"His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open." -Howard Hughes (about Clark Gable)

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." -Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." -Paul Keating "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -Jack E. Leonard

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." -Abraham Lincoln

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." -Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." -Thomas Brackett Reed

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." -James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." -Charles, Count Talleyrand

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on?" -Mark Twain

"A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity." -Mark Twain

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." -Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -Mae West

"She is a peacock in everything but beauty." -Oscar Wilde

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -Oscar Wilde

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." -Billy Wilder

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts ... for support rather than illumination." -Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

-- time to do a mini-promo for Suki, the central character in my comic strip DOUBLE TALK, recently published by Penguin India (see column on the right for more details -- this is just one frame of a panel in which she appears in cabaret-drag). The strip (pun intended, in this particular case) used to appear in the Sunday Observer in Bombay in the 1980s. Aeons ago, yes! -- but I was always so far removed from reality, that the outside world barely appeared in the strip at all. Or ... well, that's what I think and there's a chance I might be a teensy weensy bit biased.

A Nasty Violent Thought

Today I had a nasty, violent thought -- so of course, I had to share it here. It grew out of the recent Sunday's instalment of "WE, THE PEOPLE" (a talk show on NDTV hosted by the excellent Barkha Dutt). The topic was the sharp rise in incidents of rape around the country.

One of the questions asked was, "Do you believe that capital punishment for rapists will be a good deterrent?" The audience was undecided -- but apparently the reason for their uncertainty was that it wouldn't make a difference when amongst the problems a victim faces is inaction on the part of the Establishment at the time she brings her complaint. One of the statistics quoted during the program was that only 14% of cases reported in [the country] -- I'm not sure now whether that number is for the whole country or just one of the metros -- reach the courts. When asked to discuss solutions, the audience seemed to be at a loss. The consensus seemed to be that women should arm themselves with pepperspray and be afraid, be very afraid.

My nasty violent thought isn't about deterrence or capital punishment(to which I am opposed). But it is about what to do about the psychological trauma that victims are left to deal with. I was wondering whether, as a form of therapy for rape victims AND as a suitable punishment for the perpetrators, the victims could be allowed to flog their assailants? Given that there's no way for a victim to recover her self-esteem, honour, etc etc -- how about letting her externalize her sense of outrage in a physical way? On the one hand, I imagine it would be powerful medicine for her damaged ego; on the other hand, it may be a more effective deterrent than the death penalty -- which, as we know, is no deterrent at all.

Yes, it does suggest a brutalized, barbaric, degenerate society. But so does the escalation in the rate of crimes. During the program (of which I watched only a couple of segments) I didn't hear any discussion of the possible causes for this rise in crimes against women. It seems to me that one very obvious cause is the skewed male/female ration -- which is, of course, only getting worse annually. According to demographers, what lies ahead for (Indian) women is the prospect of becoming further and further marginalized and commodified, subject to kidnappings, forced marriages, marriages to several brothers at once and other horrors. Given these facts, it seems to me, for those 14% of victims who get their day in court, the prospect of whipping their assailant (semi-naked? Forty lashes? Whatever) in full view of the court would at least have the benefit of permitting them a moment of pleasurable revenge and may go a long way towards recovering their self-esteem.

Sorry if this nauseates some of you! Gotta express my dark side now and then.

See the PREVIOUS previous caption (I thought all three pix would post one after the other. Wrong again, duh) 

Oops. See prev. caption. 

... and another three pix. All taken, BTW with my moron proof Nikon Coolpix 2100 -- all praise and credit go to the machine, coz all my pix before this camera have been of the kind that don't get shared. 

Monday morning: I and a friend spent an hour looking around the shrine at Nizamuddin -- I've lived in Nude Elly for the past 20 years and have NEVER visited the shrine. It was like stepping through a crack in the wall, straight into the past, about three centuries back in time. The sun, let me assure you, was just as hot then as it is now ...  

Limerix

I'm afraid I gave in to the urge to attempt limerix using the words designated in the lists (see below) of USELESS FACTS as being amongst the most difficult to create rhymes for. I can remember reading that "orange" is supposed to be the least rhyme-able common word in the English language but had not previously known that SILVER, PURPLE and MONTH were similarly handicapped.

I've not been especially successful in the way of rhymes, but I decided to post the results of my efforts anyway. I'm still working on "MONTH", but en route to it got one for its plural. (I displayed the one for SILVER in the "Comments" of the post before this one -- I know it's a particularly painful example of its breed, but *shrug* I didn't want to discriminate against it by dropping it from this group). Wince away ...

Orange
There once was a ruler of Orange
Who yearned for a tamarind lozenge
Alas! He found none.
So he sobbed in the sun
That sorrowful ruler of Orange.

Purple
A writer of prose that was purple,
Wed a glamorous sea-faring turtle.
Together they flew
From Bonn to Peru
Saying, "Thither and yonder we hurtle!"

Months
Our friendly neighbourhood dunce,
Wrote a five-minute canticle once.
We asked him how long
He worked on that song
And he told us, quite candidly, "Months."

Silver
A nervous young bandit named Wilbur
Asked a North Indian lass for her silver.
She rose up and spat
"I'm pregnant, you rat!
"Don't get me upset, or I'll dilver!"

(a day later) -- and here's that last one! (note: I realize it would be more logical to thpell ... uhh ... spell "oneth" as "onthe". But that way the pronunciation is less obvious, so I left it as it is)

Month
A lusty young lisper said, "Oneth
"I had thexth every day, every month.
"Tho avid wath I
"My lover went dry
"And that wath the end of my humpth."

B'golly and B'gosh, if it ain't ANOTHER ...

... 31 -- no, wait! There's a further list!! -- 62 completely useless facts

01. Scissors were invented by Leonardo da Vinci
02. The Great Wall of China took 1,700 years to build
03. Before the 19th century there were no separate shoes for the right and left feet
04. A syzygy is what happens when three astronomical bodies become aligned. (oh come on! EVERYONE who plays Scrabble knows THAT)
05. According to Judaic laws, it is officially sunset when you can no longer tell the difference between a red thread and a black thread
06. A jiffy is 1/100th of a second
07. There is no word to rhyme with Orange, Purple, Silver or Month (eh? Wot about "oneth" as in "Oneth ith not enough," said the lisping nymphomaniac.)
08. The Japanese word for sex is “sekkusu”
09. Pac Man was originally supposed to be named “Puck Man”, from the puck-shaped character. But the name was changed at the last minute for fear of mispronunciation, unintentional or otherwise
10. Before jets were invented, jet lag was known as “boat lag”
11. November 19th is “Have a Bad Day Day”
12. When a film-maker doesn’t want his or her name to be featured in the film’s titles, they use the name Smithee 13. A full moon always rises at sunset
14. The word “honeymoon” goes back to ancient Babylon, where it was the custom for the bride’s parents had to supply the groom honey-flavoured wine for one month after the marriage
15. The word “bogeyman” comes from the Bugis people of Indonesia, who were pirates feared by early European sailors
16. Breathing on a copper penny can make a breathalyzer test score zero
17. The origin of the term “Son of a gun” was this: in the old days, when women were allowed on board British naval ships, they gave birth behind a canvas screen erected near the midship gun. If the child’s paternity was uncertain, it was entered in the ship’s log as “Son of a gun” (and if it's a daughter?)
18. More Russians were killed in World War II than English, Americans, French, Germans, Japanese, Italians, Canadians, Australians and Indians, all put together
19. e.g. stands for “exempli gratia”
20. The slinky was invented by an aircraft mechanic who got the idea while he was playing with an aircraft spring 21. Until 1896 all the world’s diamonds came from India (Source: the Gemological Institute of America)
22. The game of badminton was originally called “Poona” (... and is now known as "Pune")
23. The term “the whole nine yards” originated with World war II fighter pilots, whose 50 calibre machine gun bullet belts were 27 ft long. If a pilot finished a belt on a target, he said that “it got the whole nine yards”
24. The most difficult tongue-twister, according to research, is “The sixth sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick” (make that "The sixth sick Sikh's sixth sheep's sick" for South Asian readers, maybe?)
25. The four suites of cards in a pack were named after the four pillars of medieval economy. Spades represented Agriculture; Clubs represented the Army; Diamonds represented the Merchants and Hearts represented the Church
26. The Sukhoi SU 34 is the first fighter aircraft with a toilet
27. The origin of the term “naked truth” was this: Falsehood and Truth once went for a bath. Falsehood emerged first and stole Truth’s clothes. Truth refused to wear Falsehood’s clothes and so came out naked
28. A ¼ inch silicon chip has as much computing power as ENIAC, the world’s first computer, which occupied an entire city block
29. Motorola’s first product was an automobile record player. And hence the name “Motorola”, because the most popular record player at the time was named Victrola”
30. In cookery, one “dash” is equal to four drops
31. The four kings on playing cards commemorate real, historical kings: The King of Clubs is Alexander the Great, The King of Diamonds is Julius Caesar, The King of Hearts is Charlemagne, The King of Spades is King David

Okay, some of these Factoms (-- which, BTW, I am considering renaming as FACTICULES. Wodja think? It seems to me the second name is more appropriate, seeings as it's based on MOLECULES, which are combinations of atoms. Course, I notice that a large proportion of those who visit this blog behave like students in an Indian classroom -- i.e., the huge majority NEVER put their hands up to answer questions when asked for responses, preferring to leave the entire burden of leaving comments ... errrm ... answering questions, I mean, to the one or two SMART, ARTICULATE and INTELLIGENT ones ... *sigh* Ahh, nemmind. Don't let it bother you. I visit other blogs and don't leave comments EITHER. --) have already appeared in the other list. Can't be helped. THIS list was sent to me by a friend from a completely different sector of my buddy-galaxy, someone I've known for at least 200 years, who has been circulating jokes since long before the Internet was invented. I will refer to him here as Unvarium -- because he is bashful and probably does not like being referred to directly.

The following list is also from him. Together, that makes 62. See? I can add and everything.


01. Coca-Cola was originally green
02. The F-word was first uttered on screen in the 1968 movie, I’ll Never Forget Whatshisname, (Marianne Faithful was the actor)
03. The words “assassination”, “bump” and “lonely” were invented by Shakespeare
04. Britain is the only country whose name doesn’t appear on its postage stamps, because it was the first country to issue them
05. Any Rubik’s Cube combination can be solved in 17 moves
06. The shortest complete sentence in the English language is “I am.”
07. Mickey Mouse was named after child actor Mickey Rooney, whose mother Walt Disney had once dated
08. Pokemon is short for “Pocket Monster”
09. Most people button their shirts from the bottom upwards (okay, now I KNOW I'm not a person! I button top down)
10. Mosquito repellents block the mosquito’s sensors, so it doesn’t know you are there
11. The average pencil draws a line 35 miles long
12. Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts
13. If Barbie was 5’9” she would measure 33-18-31 ½
14. KGB stands for Komitet Gozudarstvennoy Bezopasnos
15. A “walla-walla scene” in the movies is one where the extras keep saying “Walla-walla” to pretend they’re talking
16. The sounds F, P, T, D, S are the sounds that are the greatest spreaders of infection
17. It is easier for a Japanese speaker to learn Spanish than English. It is easier for an English speaker to learn Spanish than Japanese. (olé!)
18. According to research conducted in Denmark, beer tastes better when drunk to the accompaniment of a certain tone or frequency. The optimal frequency is different for each beer. For example, the optimal frequency for Carlsberg is 510-520 cycles per second
19. Brian de Palma’s Scarface had 206 F-words in it, averaging one every 29 seconds
20. According to the Bible, the chicken came before the egg (Genesis 1:20-22)
21. The last shot of the day in a film shooting is called the Martini shot. The second-last shot is called the Abby Singer.
22. Beer foam goes down if you lick your finger and stick it in the beer
23. You can throw an object further west than east … because of the earth’s rotation
24. The strength of early lasers was measured in “Gillettes”, depending on the number of Gillette blades they could penetrate
25. The ice-cream sundae was invented because back in 1875 it was against the law to serve soda on a Sunday
26. Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil (spoil what?)
27. The Bloody Mary was invented in Harry’s Bar in Paris in 1934 (why wasn't it Bloody Marie?)
28. There are 2,000,000 possible combinations from a Subway sandwich menu
29. A town becomes a city only after it gets a cathedral. Likewise, a hamlet becomes a village only after it gets a church (and a city becomes a metropolis only after it has a minimum number of traffic jams per day)
30. The most preferred bathroom reading in the USA is Reader’s Digest (read by 66% of people who claimed they read in the bathroom)
31. Bic pens were originally called Bich. The name was first changed for the American market, because of the fear that it would be mispronounced

Kurt Vonnegut, He Say ...

From the introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box (Vintage Books, Random House, 1999) this is Creative Writing 101, Kurt Vonnegut style (anyone out there -- if you know the correct pronunciation of this author's surname I'd be very greatful if you would tell me what it is. In the privacy of my inner ear, I pronounce it "VONN-I-GUT" to rhyme with BONNY NUT. However, a Dutch friend of mine confidently pronounced it FON-GOOT -- and I felt a deep uneasy stirring, because it seemed to me he had to be correct. Or ... ? Well, you tell me).

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Then he adds:
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.

I adore KV. Or his writing, anyway, having never met him. I think "Welcome to the Monkey House" is one of those short stories that should be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to pass the "Are You a Cool Human?" test.

New Book on the Block

It's been out since Monday, I think, but I've been too busy expressing my sloth genes to mention it here. So yes, here it is, the new Suki collection, this time from the Bombay years. Here's a link to the Penguin India page (in case your mouse is feeling lazy about hopping over to the column on the right): DOUBLE TALK. I hope the link worx! I had a struggle the other day with the BOOK CROSSING link and was too sleepy to attempt to fix it either then or later. I may be suffering from a form of web-allergy because I find I get sleepy almost as soon as I log-in ... *yawn* .. well, as you can see, it's happening again ...

FACTOMS

FACTOM: item of knowledge the same size or smaller than an atom.

The following list was sent to me by one my most industrious forwarder-of-jokes-friends, whom I know as CHUCK. Over the years he's sent me some great ones. Here's today's list. The remarks in pink/mauve are mine.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW (??)
1. Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton.(wow! I must be rich! I have tons of cotton!)
2. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
3. The dot over the letter i is called a "tittle".
4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
5. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
6. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
7. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
8. The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor, who had red eyes. He was an albino.(No, he was just drunk on something other than 7-UP)
9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents, daily.
10. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
11. Chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog.
12. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
13. Most lipstick contains fish scales (eeww).(Finally, I know why I don't wear any)
14. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
15. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
16. Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower' because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, 'lower case' letters.
17. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time (... hence, multi-tasking was invented.)
18. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
19. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
20. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan; there was never a recorded Wendy before!
21. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver! (I knew about "orange" but not about the other two. Darn. I know I'm not going to sleep tonight ...)
22. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips.(So I guess he DIDN'T invent lipstick?)
23. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.(Errrm ... there must be SOMETHING useful I can do with this information ...)
24. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
25. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar (good to know.)
26. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand (and you thought this list was completely useless.)(And once you've done that, you can starve to death, out there, alone on the quicksand)
27. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law, which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.(... and husbands can be beaten with anything at all)
28. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
29. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It's the same with apples!
30. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!(Yow! Great! I can retire my swimming goggles!)
31. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
32. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries. (I thought it was the HOLY BIBLE)
33. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages it
Arresting quote of the week: "George Carlin said it best about Martha Stewart ..."Boy, I feel a lot safer now that she's behind bars. O.J. Simpson and Kobe Bryant are still walking around; Osama Bin Laden too, but they take the one woman in America willing to cook, clean, and work in the yard, and haul her fanny off to jail."


Meanwhile, in other news I found a tiny confirmation that I wasn't entirely hallucinating about the Virgin Trains Easter Week promotion of MOUSE ATTACK -- I found a journal entry at a charming and fascinating book site called BOOK CROSSING -- if you see a link here, click for more information and then enjoy the site! http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/2659171

Dreams of Chocophilia

The reason I don't post so often when I'm away from base camp is, I believe, because I cease to be myself. It's been a constant theme in my life -- when I travel, I become someone else -- traveling isn't just a change of place, for me, but a change of myself. I mildly enjoy the changes, but then again, as soon as the change occurs, I become confused about who the "real" me is -- the dreaming-butterfly effect (that familiar old story -- You dream you're a butterfly -- which leads you to wonder whether you're a person dreaming that you're a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming you're a person) -- and if the trip isn't long enough for me to stabilize in the new place, I spend the whole trip in a suspended condition, neither wholly there or nor here (a cocoon dreaming that it MIGHT BE a cocoon ...).

Anyway, amongst the things I did in Madras was to read the latest Artemis Fowl book -- THE OPAL DECEPTION. Nice. I read it in one huge gulp, having raided that pearl of bookstores, GIGGLES BOOKSHOP in Madras' Connemara Hotel (part of the Taj chain, but with a character all its own, having been in existence since British days). The best part of going to Giggles is squeezing in through a narrow alley bounded entirely by books, towards the owner of the shop, the ever-effervescent Nalini Chettur. It always feels a teeny bit as if one is being swallowed whole by a supremely benign biblionic entity -- benign because at the end of the action, instead of being digested one is FED with books. Nalini not only remembers her visitors' tastes in reading, but always has New! Improved! selections of titles to offer.

For instance, I had no idea that there was a fourth Artemis Fowl book and was delighted to be shown this one. Amongst the books I bought (no, I am not going to walk back to my room and physically check the titles -- in me, laziness always wins out over the desire to preen): Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE; Alessandro Baricco's WITHOUT BLOOD (he wrote SILK, remember?); Best of 2004 Science Fiction Anthology; Arthur C. Clarke's TIME'S EYE; Bill Bryson's TROUBLESOME WORDS; Ian McEwan's SATURDAY; Philip K. Dick's WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE (a collection of which the title story was the basis for Schwarzenwhatz-hiz-tit's Total Recall) and an odd, unexpected Kurt Vonnegut's BOGAMBO SNUFF BOX (no idea what it's like; apparently a collection of his previously unpublished work -- i.e., previously unpublished in a collection) -- and okay, DARN, I confess I DID have to drag myself across the house to go and check on titles and spellings after all. And have probably made several mistakes all the same. This senility, I tell ya ...

The Artemis Fowl was good -- I remember feeling the last two were straining to bring off their effects towards the end -- too much magical event and coincidence for a comfortable suspension of disbelief -- after all, there's only so much disbelief that can be maintained in a literarily-induced suspension, rather like the very small bit of paper that can be attached to the end of the typical commercially available helium-filled gas balloon -- as soon as the weight of magical/fantastical detail exceeds that limit, I begin to feel I am reading a catalogue of special effects, rather than a story. As it is, the Fowl books suffer from a curious flippancy -- as if the author threw in certain effects and characters randomly when he wrote the first book, then worked in justifications later -- the centaur Foaly, for instance, and the dwarf Diggums: these two characters support a disproportionate weight of denouement-processing, yet are clearly odd-balls within the fairy system (for instance, no other centaurs are described or mentioned -- or if they have been, not memorably). But this book worked for me right from the start, I read it at a sizzling pace and threw it down with a satisfied burp at the end.

Other pleasures: I got my first copy of DOUBLETALK in hand, while I was still in Madras -- a short-lived pleasure, because my sister Surya and niece Divya were leaving for the US the same night and they smoothly snatched my newest-born from my hands (ah cruel, cruel! An artist/author's life brims over with never-ending loss!!) on the pretext that I would take months to get around to posting THEIR copy of the book, whenever I got the bulk of my ten author-copies. I will post a link to the Penguin web-listing of the book as soon as it appears, some time in early May, I assume (that's when it'll be in bookshops). I could say that it looks good -- but then I'm just a tad biased.

A heads up for you, gt: you were amongst the characters who featured in the strip in those distant days and your early persona is now impressed upon the stuff of eternity ...

Oh there was so much else that happened in Madras -- the hard work of being a great aunt for instance: my new grand-niece has more personality per ounce of baby flesh than a whole city block -- or is that just because I spend very little time in the company of young humans and so don't realize that they're all like that? Well I didn't actually pick her up (except once, to pass her to my mother) because I am nervous of small humans. But I appreciated her from a distance.

There were daily dramas of the domestic-help kind -- but I'm going to avoid describing them here. Socio-political horrow (= a word that combines horror and sorrow, to make a term that is somewhat less serious than either of the original words) of the worst kind does not translate to great web-fare. Dunno why. A bit like discussing bowel-movements -- thrillingly important within the confines of one's own body's internal memos, but utterly unlovable outside it.

And industrial quantities of chocolate were consumed. Speaking of which: I returned to Delhonius to discover that a parcel had arrived from the family who stayed with us last year, while one of its members struggled to recover from a shockingly unexpected (which, like the Spanish Inquisition, it always is) episode of Gillan-Barre syndrome -- and the parcel contained not only a marvellously devised and beautifully sculped puzzle-box made of wood, but a Greenland-sized chunk of dark, nut-filled chocolate. It had not survived the three months of mail-journey in its pristine condition, having melted into its enswaddling envelope of jumbo-bubblewrap plastic -- HOWEVER, the fridge had restored it to edibility, so I was able to chow down very happily. What are a few impression-dimples of jumbo-bubble-plastic to the serious chocophiliast after all? Nothing!

Away Team

Has anyone noticed how uncomfortable it is to work at someone else's puter-station? Even when it's a cosy space -- which it very frequently ISN'T -- it's sort of weird to step into someone else's hot seat. I'm sure it's awful for friends/guests who stay over at my abode in Nude Elly -- coz I am the original See No Dust home-owner. So there is a disgusting film of Delhi's finest atmospheric distillate coating every horizontal surface which isn't specifically being used (I mean, for instance, there's never a speck of dust on the actual keyboard of the puter, coz that's a high-traffic arena. But the monitor has a totally natural, organic, gaze-guard of silica particles). It only gets cleaned away when it has built up in dunes high enough that I actually feel threatened by them.

I've been long overdue with this post (i.e., a new post) despite several interesting events to discuss -- I saw the dogme film DOGVILLE recently, for instance and wanted to post about that -- and I travelled to Madras this Sunday -- and saw, in quick succession: THE INCREDIBLES (thrilling), MYSTIC RIVER (interesting but bad print) and David Cronenberg's CRASH (totally ridiculous -- so much so that I am reconsidering my opinion of his EXISTENZ, which I thoroughly appreciated at the time I saw it). But just this minute, having read the comment left behind by gt to my previous post, I am captiviated by the challenge he offers regarding ladybirds. As he points out, the name LADYBIRD must surely cause severe trauma to MALE LADYBIRDS -- and he encourages visitors to this site to think up further examples of such cruel, gender-insensitive nomenclature. Another example he offers is -- though he admits it's not ideal, coz it's a vegetable and hence, for English-speakers, lacks gender -- LADIES' FINGERS (whoaa -- I've forgotten whether that's LADY FINGERS or LADY'S FINGERS or ... ) otherwise known as OKRA in the New World.

So the challenge is to look for nouns, preferably in reference to living creatures, which express a gender bias. One that occurred to me right away was: SEVEN SISTERS -- don't the poor things ever have brothers? Also known as Jungle Babblers (maybe they're the brothers!). And of course, my favourite gender-insensitive word, but NOT an animal species is: MANHOLE. No way we can gender-sensitize that one ...

I'm not inclined to pay attention to words of the HISTORY/HERSTORY persuasion -- we're looking for words where there's a real and obvious problem with referring to the male or female individual belonging to a species which has been actually named to exclude one entire sex. Your move, gracious visitor ...

Did Another Week Fly By?

Immediately after posting last week, I (a) finished my drawings (b) enjoyed opening-day at Another Subcontinent's online exhib of my prints travels on an elepHAND and (c) finished reading Iain M. Banks's THE ALGEBRAIST. I've already pretty much talked about the previous two items, so that leaves the third one to discuss.

I've only read one of his books before and was very impressed -- THE PLAYER OF GAMES (it's a title I keep forgetting and keep being reminded of by the Babu-of-Kitabkhana's partner, DD). But I remember finding it quite difficult to get into that book. By contrast with this one, however, the first one was like reading a nursery rhyme. Literally -- in fact, I don't think I really got into it at all until I was practically at the end of it. And yet ... I'd recommend it. Highly.

Well only to science fiction fans of course, because this is the real stuff, the hard-core, rocketz'n'aliens stuff. But WHAT a grand scale. If I have to identify a single element that makes Banks's books so amazing, it's the level of detail he brings to the work, not as decoration but as structure. I think any other Banks-reader here will know what I mean -- his detail isn't merely surface-level, but miles deep into the narrative. In this book, for instance, the scale isn't merely galactic it's ... what word can I use? -- megachronometric -- I mean, it involves a scale of time that leaves poor little mayfly-species such as ourselves gasping in the slipstream of reality.

I will NOT pretend that I read every page of the book -- truly, it amazes me that I got through it at all, because for long pauses all the way through, I simply didn't WANT to up-load so much minutae about civilizations and planetary physics that I would never need outside the covers of Banks' fiction. And the story isn't really the kind the grabs the reader by the short hairs either -- it's about ... errrm, lemme see ... about researchers whose subject is a species of spheroidal beings living in gas-giant planets -- okay, so I've lost you already? But there's also a war being threatened and a super-nasty villain and -- I've lost you again, haven't I?

Okay, the book is amazing because it's written as if the reader is already wholly conversant with the times and events with which it concerns itself, while managing not to be utterly impenetrable. I can't quite explain what kept me going, skimming pages as I went along, trying to catch the thread of story, giving up, wanting to give up, trying hard to give up and yet ... going back for more. The main character, Fasin Taak, is just barely recognizable as a human being, though of course there have been changes to our type of being in the future in which the story is set -- 4034 AD, according to the description posted at Amazon. I basically ignored all attempts to keep track of the time-scale because it quickly made our own scale and time irrelevant.

The object of Taak's research is a species called The Dwellers -- they live in gas giants -- i.e., planets similar to our solar system's Jupiter -- and part of the book's fascination lies in Taak's fascination with these beings -- I couldn't decide what Banks had used as a model for them -- were they gods of the Greek era? Or the elite of our era? Or some combination tiger-elephant-bee society? They have a quality of magnificence and amorality and beyond-our-scale that is breath-taking and I suppose it was the desire to know more, understand more, about these beings that kept me reading on.

The formal "hook" is that Taak is on a mission that may help avert a catastrophic war, and then again, is apparently the CAUSE of the war and then again, will almost certainly catalyse a death-struggle if he succeeds -- and the mission is to find a ... something. It may be code of some sort or perhaps an actual artefact, a Rosetta-stone-type of thing that may or may not be in the possession of a Dweller who is mysteriously and annoyingly hard to trace ...

No, it's not an easy book to read and an almost impossible one to describe. But it left me feeling sparkled and starry, touched by infinity. (I haven't checked to see if the links work. Will return to check and fix 'em if need be, later)

A New Link

It's been a while since I posted any new links in the column on the right -- but there's one there now (or SHOULD be ... haven't checked yet) for ANOTHER SUBCONTINENT. Of course I've only just managed to realize that I should've posted a link long ago -- the reason I've realized it now is that AS has very generously offered to host an wwwexhibition of my prints at their site. It's not ready for visitors yet, but will be very soon -- another day or so, I think.

Since I've been working nonstop on the drawings for my little book, I've offered very little support to ARNAB CHAKLADAR, whose idea it was to have the show, aside from sending him a CD of the work(and I took forever to get around to doing that too ...). So what you see there, once it's up, is entirely due to the midnight oil expended by the team at AS -- I don't know if the "team" is actually just Arnab or whether there are others too, but the site works very smoothly and I'm delighted with the way the pix look.

Meanwhile, my illustrations are DONE -- they should've been done four days ago, but since last Wednesday we've had two very interesting live-in guests -- Ian, who was here earlier, but had gone away on a bike-back trip in South India, with his friend Inji (this is a deliberate misspelling of her Turkish name, but that's how it's pronounced) whom he had arranged to meet in Bangalore -- both flew in to India from Turkey, where they live. They've been great to have around and on Saturday night, made us a Turkish dinner -- vegetarian and delicious -- and left the following morning for the hills. They didn't do anything to distract me, but I quickly realized that there's more to life than just sitting at a desk ... Right. So I got distracted and finally finished work only last night. I am now erasing pencil marks, whiting out mistakes and wallowing in the pleasurable aftermath of one more job completed. The book (a Puffin pub) is called "UNPRINCESS!" (yes, with the exclamation mark) and should be out in May.

Assorted Freebies

After all the effort that went into planning the evening event of March 4th, I think it makes sense to (at the very least) note, one week later, that it went off very well.

If any of you recall reading the posts leading up to the event, you will perhaps also remember that my offering towards the evening was to get Billy's (i.e., Billy Arjan Singh, of Tiger Haven, tiger specialist extraordinaire and recipient of the 2004 Paul Getty Award for wild-life preservation) book A TIGER'S STORY reprinted in time for the event. It took every minute of two weeks to get the thing done -- but LITERALLY. I had 150 copies ready for delivery at the venue of the party at FOUR O'CLOCK. Nervous? O yes. But whatdya think of that timing -- 2 weeks? For a 300-page book, with colour-pictures?? Not bad, huh.

The event was built around the film THE LEOPARD THAT CHANGED ITS SPOTS that I'd seen earlier in Tiger Haven. It was much nicer, of course, to see it on a bigger screen (rather than on a TV) and also rather wonderful to see how the audience responded to seeing Billy in the film as a young man (well, probably in his forties)(but that's YOUNG, right?) playing with his leopard and tiger, while also being able to see him sitting in the front of the room (the basement of the West End Club), 86 years old, bent with age, but still bright with purpose. Many people were deeply moved and rushed up, to speak to him and to buy the book. And also to eat the very lavish dinner, spend a few minutes with Billy and get him to sign their copies of the book. All praise to Anuj Bahri and his production manager, Ravi Kumar, for getting the book out in record time.

Further to International Women's Day -- despite feeling annoyed, patronized and alienated by the observance -- I agreed to join dancer SHARON LOWEN at a lunch arranged by I'm-not-sure-who, at the NIKKO HOTEL, near GolDakhana post-office. The (to me unknown) hostess had invited a number of well-known women to the lunch, and had told THEM to invite three others of their choice. Hence my invitation -- Sharon's other two guests were Alka Raghuvanshi, journalist and Jane Schukoske Executive Director at USEFI. My only reason for going was that I like Sharon and felt that her company over a free lunch would make up for the irritation of IWD in a public place(and it did).

I've never been to that hotel and (of course) got there early. I never, NEVER remember that there's no point reaching any social event on time, because nobody else does. I was shown up to "CHUTNEY", a restaurant that looked like a pleasing though unlikely marriage of Arabian & Indian Nights and was immediately given a glass of orange juice. Sharon and Jane arrived 10 minutes later but they were still 20 minutes ahead of the rest of the ladies -- and Alka got in a cool 30 minutes after we'd begun to eat, since she had just gone in for a shower when Sharon called her at 1.00. Ah well. International WD or not, the majority of the invitees were certainly running on Indian Standard Time.

We sat in sets of four, at separate tables, which was a real boon as the other women at this event -- most of them hard-core Page Three glamourites -- were so raucous it was hard to believe they had not been penned up in isolation wards for the whole year since their previous IWD. The food was pleasant enough, easy to linger over and not so much as to produce that well-fed-anaconda feeling. The unusual feature of the menu was the number of unusual condiments -- about nine different sorts of chutneys (some of which leaned heavily in the direction of jams) made from such unorthodox materials as, for instance, apple and bamboo. Champagne and wine were flowing, but our table was restrained, since all four of us expected to be working after lunch. The conversation at our table was good too -- we managed to steer clear of Women's Topics and ... ooh ... gotta go! Will return later.

This is later -- I'm leaving in that bit about getting back, because it makes this blog sound up-to-the-minute and spontaneous -- which it IS. I'm writing this on Sunday night, which happens to be the time of week when my sister in Pennsylvania calls me and we have a chat to catch up on the week-that-was.

So yes, the conversation at the IWD lunch was good -- and we even managed not to be freaked by the TV cameras that came over and stared at us in that unbelievably intrusive way. It must be horrible to be a celebrity and to have to endure this bizarre presence, this camera-person lurking like a gigantic butterfly with its proboscis stuck practically down our gullets as we pretend to continue eating and talking, even as we realize that our mandibles might feature on the evening news, churning away like cement-mixers. I make sure I've rarely actually seen myself on TV, so that I don't die of self-consciousness whenever next I'm asked to be on.

Ever since that lunch, I've been working continuously on the illustrations for a book -- my own text -- about three rather odd and (I hope) funny girls. Well I began the illustrations about a month ago -- did around ten -- took a break and now I'm a little over half-done. Ninety pages -- it's a small paperback, and the drawings are ordinary blank/whites, not very detailed -- but every page is embellished. I'm enjoying myself -- it's been a very long while since I illustrated a whole book -- I think the last one was part of the series of six English Language text books I did in 1981, for OUP ... ooooh ... a life-time ago.

The illustrations I've done more recently for my own two MOUSE books hardly count -- they're just little bitty things, chapter-openers, nothing more. The ones I'm doing now are substantial -- some of them fill the pages edge-to- edge (with gaps, of course, for the text) -- to the extent that the book is going to look rather like a picture book with a bit of text to explain what's going on! I've mentioned in an earlier post that I'm doing the drawings FREE -- now that I'm almost through with them, I am more than ever amazed that I've been willing to to do them -- I can hear myself answering angry questions from other illustrators -- telling me that I'm "ruining the market" by working for free but ... I don't care.

I've spent a large chunk of my life now, NOT doing illustrations, because publishers have (a) offered such lousy deals that I wasn't able to afford to accept them (b) offered such lousy manuscripts to illustrate that I didn't want to waste my time and effort on them. However: I'm going to be 52 this year and already I can no longer draw as well as I used to, in my 20s and 30s. I'm still not being offered prices at which I can AFFORD to draw -- but I feel I'm running out of time! I constantly feel that I've got to scrape up whatever minutes and hours left to me, to do such drawings as are still within my reach -- I mean, I can see that the ones I'm doing now are far below the standards I set myself even 10 years ago, but this is all I can manage for free -- anything more and I'd miss my deadline (mid-next-week) as well as feel resentful. By doing these drawings for free, I can at least enjoy the sense of being generous rather than the much more familiar sense of being under-valued.

It's a curious thing: being paid for something coarsens the whole exchange, but if the price is high enough, the coarseness becomes acceptable -- yes, it's like that hackneyed old joke -- I won't even bother telling it -- there's some mystical number beyond which it becomes satisfying to be paid, rather than embarrassing and/or humiliating. For some reason I've never managed to make a living as an illustrator -- and eventually I stopped illustrating altogether because it used to get me seriously depressed to enter into yet another contract that was going to end with me feeling used and my drawings in the possession of someone who had paid too little for them -- and therefore didn't really value them.

I realize that wage-earners won't understand the issue here at all but maybe there are a few of you out there who know what it's like to be doing something that's normally a source of income, for FREE -- it's very odd, almost almost unpleasant -- after all, the reason is still the old one, i.e., it's STILL because publishers will not pay me a good price for my work, hence it's not really by my choice -- and yet, because I could just as easily have chosen not to do ANY drawings, I could have chosen to hold back and be practical, economical, cold-blooded and sensible -- it's good and heady to just fill the book with drawings ANYWAY.

Yeh. Good.

Women's Day Ho-ho-ho-hum

As will come as no surprise, I find Women's Day annoying and demeaning -- but then I remind myself that I'm only superficially a human female (in reality I'm an extra-terrestrial belonging to a species that doesn't reproduce at all -- we develop spontaneously as and when the cosmos calls us into existence. Thereafter we waft about the galaxy in our happy gender-neutral way until we feel it's time to die) and that makes me feel all better.

In order to cheer those of you who are feeling unusually gloomy at the prospect of "celebrating" the day during which one half of humanity gets a chance to express its humble gratitude for being given a WHOLE DAY to be yet more conscious of its victimhood and lowly status in the world, such that it needs to be patronized by having a day earmarked to itself -- a list of slightly altered words, with definitions to match. I believe I've seen some (but not all) the words before. *shrug* Whatever. They're good.

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year's winners. (None of them get through spellcheck)

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off these bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into yourbedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
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I would like to add:

19. Juoy: A happy buoy.

20. Gigolow: A very short male professional escort.

21. Cornivore: One who lives on silly jokes.

22. Serendipotamus: Pleasurable chance encounters with hippos. (this breaks the one-letter-only rule, but I couldn't resist. Another possibility: Serendipita: The happy coincidence of finding fresh Mediterranean bread on your plate)

23. Dalicious: The taste of one of Dali's melting clocks -- i.e., like raw eggs and thyme.

24. Gnuance: A subtle wildebeest.

25. Lingerue: Underwear that the wearer regrets wearing -- the scarlet lace thong the admiral wore on the day his pants fell off in full view of the entire fleet, for instance.

26: Origasmi: The bliss of folding bodies together.

Unusual Recipes Dept.

If some of you are astonished to find this blog offering a recipe, well keep your eyebrows flying -- they'll get up there anyway when you read what I had for lunch today! It's not disgusting, relax. But you'll have to wait to get to it, after I've got through describing a fascinating and very intense book I read the other day, galloping all the way.

It's called A PROFOUND SECRET, by Josceline Dimbleby (Jossy to friends). She's much better known as a creative and very popular food writer in England and is also my elder sister's Geeta's friend from about 20 years ago, when they met on a small boat in the Andamans. She and G and I were together on a (for us) historic journey by car travelling upwards diagonally across the Deccan Plateau, from Bangalore, having got there from Madras by train to Bijapur. Anyway, this is all besides the point, as the book is a very absorbing read and doesn't require anything in the way of historic journeys to make it worth acquiring. Alas, it is not yet available on the Indian market, but I hope it will be soon.

It's been described by some reviewers as similar to A.S.Byatt's POSSESSION but better, because true. In the way of nonfiction, it doesn't have the familiar satisfactions of a novel, but instead it opens up other avenues for enjoyment. For instance it provides the revelation, for those of us who may need it (me, yes), that there really are (or were, anyway) forms of passion that were wholly romantic and ethereal. The narrative concerns a romance discovered -- by Jossy -- between her great grandmother May Gaskell and the famous pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. It is followed through the medium of letters, mostly, and also through photographs. But WHAT letters, oh my goodness! So fresh, so passionate, so precisely detailed in their examination of the condition of love! By comparison, the over-cooked scenes we see in movies and on TV, or read of in today's fiction appear like hot vanilla fudge besides ... ohh ... a delicate champagne sorbet.

Alongside this story, another and more tragic one unfolds: that of May's beautiful daughter Amy. Jossy knew only that her great-aunt had died unseasonably young and perhaps as a result of a disappointment in romance, but had no further details. The book follows a trail of tantalizing clues until ... well, I won't spoil the enjoyment for potential readers, but I will say that I found the exposition warm and human, as we follow J's path through quiet libraries and inside gracious old churches.

Burne-Jones sometimes wrote five letters a day to May -- and there were seven posts, daily, for him to use as a medium for delivery! Seven posts -- ! This was in 1892-93. Do we really do better with SMS and e-mail? Even to ask the queation is ridiculous. It is really difficult to reconcile the wild intensity of these letters with the extremely strait-laced view my generation (certainly) has/had of the Victorians -- yet here they are, absolute testimony. They seem almost hysterical and yet these were people in their middle-years (he was in his fifties, and while she was much younger, she already had two children when she met him) and he was a highly acclaimed and industrious painter.

Not merely the quality of their love, but also the refinement that the people in this book brought to the whole fabric of their lives is what lingers in my mind as I think back on the book. A tremendous, hugely self-aware refinement, like the lace they wore around the necks and at their wrists, somehow heart-breakingly fine. Why "heart-breaking"? When I try to push myself away, looking for perspective, when I try to remind myself that these were also colonials, that their friends and relatives of the same era were involved in a gigantic socio-cultural operation out in the colonies -- I can only feel a kind of pain, that we as a species are so diverse and perverse that it's all but impossible to see around the thickets of complexity. So much sensitivity on the one hand, coupled with so much barbarism on the other ... what does it all mean? How do we make sense of it?

I cannot help thinking, as I write this, of my response to MAXIMUM CITY (which I finished reading a couple of weeks ago) -- where we see barbarism on a scale undreamt of by the colonials, described with exteme precision, like a surgeon exposing the entrails of a gigantic corpse, a corpse the size of a sub-continent, stinking with the filth of centuries. Truly, by the end of MC, I wanted nothing more than to close the book and throw it away and to purge its contents from my memory. It ends with a section on a family of Jains, father, mother and three children who take "diksha", renouncing the world and all their wealth. It is, perhaps, intended as a type of balm to set against the ghastliness of some of the previous chapters of the book. But -- as others have noted before me -- the renunciation was all of a piece with the brutality of the thugs and ghouls of Bombay's Underworld: it was so extreme, so without human dimension, so mechanical and grotesque, that it made a mockery of the intention -- i.e., of renouncing the sin-steeped world.

I don't know what to make of these contrasts and anomalies. All I can do, for the moment, is to note them, and to hope that writing about them is a way of sharing the disturbance they cause in me, and by passing that disturbance around, perhaps, smooth it out eventually.

... abruptly, and with only the briefest pause to apologize for the change of pace, I will now turn to the promised recipe.

I'm calling it FRANCIS' MYSTERY SOUP -- and the reason for calling it that is that if a diner were to be told the mystery ingredient, I believe he/she would immediately choke with scorn. Nevertheless, let me say I had this soup for lunch today and LOVED it. Okay, I have to tell YOU what the mystery ingredient is or else I can't write out the recipe: strawberries.

In case some of you are already grimacing let me say that Francis, Our In-House Chef, DID find an existing recipe in one of his mini-library of cook-books, for Strawberry Soup. However it called for "5 cups of port" -- which, with 1.5 cups of strawberries pretty much makes it into Port Soup. And might best be served after dinner, in small glasses, with cheese on the side ...

F's Mystery Soup, by contrast, is much simpler. He's used to making cold beetroot soup (totally delicious and such a gorgeous ruby-cream colour!) so I advised him to follow that route. He cleaned the strawberries, boiled them in water with a little salt and sugar, then put them through the blender after adding an equal volume of dahi (yoghurt/curds). He put the result away (about one-and-a-half cups of soup) in the freezer before serving it, chilled. He used about 120 g of strawberries and I can't imagine anyone is going to need more in the way of directions -- but tomorrow I have asked him to try the same soup, but with spring onions blended in as well, and served hot.

If it turns out well, I'll post a more precise recipe in "comments". If not ... well, I'll admit to that too!

Short Takes Part II

Amazingly, I forgot to mention the two most remarkable events of last week. The first is that we cleared up a room that has been in a state of chaos for eight years and the other was that my friend Sunita Paul became a grandmother for the first time, on Friday the 18th.

How odd it is that a date which towers over one when it is still in the future slips under and behind one like a gentle ripple as it enters the past ...

The clearing up of the living room was such a momentous activity, I can't quite take it in. Pause to rewind the facts: we moved into this house (actually the ground floor of a two-storey apartment -- in the US it would be called the "first floor" -- with us downstairs and our friends from whom we rent the house, on the first floor above us) in February 1998 -- if I'm not mistaken, it was on the 28th, the last day of the month. The circumstance of our moving was fraught with many tensions -- too many for me to even begin to describe in a blog -- but the most relevant of these is that three people were moving from a much larger apartment to a significantly smaller one, and also that the much larger apartment had been occupied continuously for about 20 years, and was therefore home to a vast collection of possessions, including about 3000 books. Packing the huge mass of all these myriad items, labelling cartons, cleaning up the spaces we were leaving behind, managing the move while the upper floor of the current house was still under construction -- all of this had taken several months -- and the move itself was like watching a building implode slowly upon itself, except in this case it wasn't the external building but its interior, its decor, its space, its lifestyle.

Since the house we are in currently couldn't contain us in the same manner as the old place, we had packed our stuff into cartons. Once we were here, the urgencies of setting up our lives here overtook us at once -- again, there are too many stories here for me to be able to encapsulate them -- so that we had just enough time to arrange the cartons -- around 400 all told, each one roughly 18"x12"x12" in size -- wherever we could park them, then fit the furniture in too, then squeeze ourselves in and tell ourselves how lucky we were to have a pleasant roof over our heads, and a small garden in front and a steady water-supply. It's a nice colony to live in, being unusually quiet by Delhi standards, with great security, because it's small and gated. There's a pocket-sized park across from our front gate and medium-tall trees everywhere.

But ... we were cramped when we moved and we've remained cramped ever since. The most obvious physical sign of this crampedness is that every room in the house -- two bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen and a smaller space which may have originally been planned as a TV room but for us became the only available living room, plus two bathrooms and a wash-room -- has had to double as a storage room. Aside from the kitchen and bathrooms, those cartons have remained firmly in place, having become a geological feature, part of the bedrock of the house. Even so, there wasn't place for all the cartons AND normal living spaces, so the biggest of the rooms, the original living room, was given over to being a storage space right from the start and has remained that ever since.

Whatever didn't fit anywhere else found its final resting place in the living room. From the very outset, the room resembled a warehouse, filled from floor to ceiling with all manner of merchandise, in cartons, plus the bits and pieces of surplus furniture. It was orderly at the outset but gradually began to deteriorate into a general dump-site. It was of course impossible to clean and so ... it wasn't. Delhi being an area of continuous dust-fall, that room became a type of interior desert, where the fine black dust, distilled out of our diesel-fume-enriched atmosphere, built up in weird dunes on the walls; it became a wild-life preserve for generations of spiders, a sanctuary for dust-mice and every other manner of neglect-related life-form. There were empty printer-cartons, filled printer-cartons, shoe-boxes, an old tyre, stacks of ply-wood, old shoes, dying towels, dead cloth rags, dusty prayer-flags, porcupine quills, used brownpaper envelopes, a set of darts, several suitcases ... you get the idea. Junk supreme, junk-to-the-power-ten, junk invincible.

E kept his hardware tools in well-built and well-ordered closets and the cartons ensured that whatever was inside them was dry and dust-free (because we'd lined them with plastic and sealed them with tape) but accessing anything became an ordeal that rarely seemed worth the effort.

SO! Given this background, the fact that we actually cleared up this area of unspeakable unusability last week -- for the very first time since we moved in here is ... well, it feels like sun breaking from the clouds after eight years of continuous storm. Of course, when I say "cleared up" I certainly do NOT mean that it would win any IKEA prizes, not even in the "warehouse" category, coz it's still full of cartons and it includes as part of its essential decor a foot-operated pump, motorcycle spare-parts, the indomitable porcupine quills, bits of lumber and The Tyre. But it's actually a recognizable room now: it has a bed, a framed picture on one of its walls, we can walk into the space and look around it and even breathe now and then. Light comes in through the glass doors along its front wall, crosses the room and enters the rest of the house. This has not happened since we moved in. It's like a benediction. I've re-discovered things that I'd forgotten I owned -- bamboo-handled paintbrushes, six bottles of black ink, a roll of pristine tracing paper. I've thrown away stacks of cassettes that had succumbed to age. I've thrown away old clothes, and stowed away new ones, reminded myself that I have a large number of old shoes and smiled fondly at my hoard of antique bow-pens.

In short, life and renewal have overtaken a tiny sector of the Universe.

This statement brings me to Sunita's grand-child. I have never been a baby-friendly person, and no-one who knows me expects me to be involved in child-rearing activities, but still, I was very glad for my friend, and for her daughter Sonal. The child is a boy -- Neel -- and two days ago, I visited Sunita at her press, where, over coffee, she gave me a beautifully precise description of what the newborn is like: his dignity, his miniature expressions, his good behavior, his already-appreciable habits and personality. Some time next week, I will pay a visit, fortified with advance knowledge of what it will be like, already knowing that I will enjoy meeting up with Sonal again, glad that she is recovering well. There are a number of babies in my life just now -- I get daily up-dates from Madras, when I call my mother in the evenings, about my niece's daughter, Maitreyi. And a Tiger Haven Society member is currently very happy on account of her grandson's presence in her house, his first visit.

It amazes me that newborns have personalities so absolutely, from the very first breath they draw -- and no doubt, for their mothers, even before birth: I know my niece was constantly aware of her unborn's needs, impatience, restlessness and perhaps a lot else that can't really be articulated. I am extremely grateful that I never had children. I could never have managed the extreme demands that would have been made on my very meagre emotional resources. Even at a distance, watching young parents with their children, I feel a kind of terror overwhelm me, at the enormity of it all. A whole new life ... eek.

It takes a lot of courage, huh? Thank god I don't have any.

Short Takes

So many things have been happening in the past week, I can barely believe it's been six days since I last posted. It feels more like a month. Mostly it's that the three previous weeks of frantic activity are gradually paying off in the form of Work Done rather than Work In Screaming Loony Progress.

Most satisfying perhaps has been the re-printing of my "Tree of Life" poster -- I named it "LET IT GROW" when I first printed it but everyone who saw it referred to it as "your Tree of Life poster" so who am I to resist? -- at my friend Sunita Paul's press. My main purpose was to print a special commemmorative edition for the Tiger Haven Society (about which more in a moment) but it's also been part of a scheme that Sunita and I have been cooking up for a while, to print cards and posters based on my designs. Since I have never managed to be commercially viable, yet have always WANTED to sell my designs in the form of posters/cards, having them printed by Sunita on her off-set machines was a dream that I hardly dared hope might come true. With the new Tree of Life it HAS -- and I will say without a blush that it looks gorgeous. It's smaller than the original edition, but printed in black against a soft metallic gold backdrop. The graphic (for those who don't have a clue about what I'm referring to -- most of my friends have seen this poster since the early nineties) is the silhouette of a vast tree, roughly raintree shaped, filled with animals, birds and fishes. The gold-background version is available only at a special price as a donation to the THS but non-gold versions are also available. I've not decided at what price, possibly Rs 150.

Aside from the poster, what also got done was Billy Arjan Singh's book "A Tiger's Story" -- he was very keen that it should be reprinted but the original publisher, HarperCollins, had pulped 106 copies of their edition (without prior notice to the author) and were disinterested in reprinting it. So I went to Anuj Bahri of Bahri's bookshop in Khan Market and asked if he'd like to take on the book -- he's been publishing a number of titles under his imprint TARA (also INDIA RESEARCH PRESS) -- and that seemed especially auspicious, because Tara was the name of Billy's beloved tigress, the subject of his book. Anuj most graciously agreed to take on the book -- and we were off, chasing after very tight deadlines. Anyone who knows about the book trade knows how many gaffes can occur between the start of a book-project and the end of it, many weeks/months later -- but this one absolutely raced to the finish-line: in literally about three weeks, we managed to get all the material together and it is right now under printing. According to Anuj, I should have the book with me this weekend. He is most fortunate in his production manager, a very quiet, but well-organized person called Ravi Kumar.

Okay -- the Tiger Haven Society: as may be recalled, I spent Christmas at the home of Billy Arjan Singh, near Dudhwa National Park, in northern UP. He is a wonderful and powerfully inspiring personality so it's no surprise that I was easily caught up in the desire to help him in his quest -- which is of course to save whatever we can of India's dwindling wild-life. The THS is an association built out of his family and friends, which aims to support and to continue his life-work after he is gone. It is as yet only a very modest association and at the end of next week (on the 4th of March) they are hosting a small fund-raiser, based around Billy's recently received 2004 Paul Getty Award. Invitees have been approached from amongst friends who are willing to be dined and entertained (with a short film and a chance to meet Billy) while being encouraged to donate a minimum of Rs 2000 at the event -- for which price they will receive one copy of my poster and will be able to buy Billy's book at a special (low) price. If this event goes off reasonably well, they plan larger versions of the same.

If this wasn't enough, I was also working overtime on getting pages ready for the May pub-date of the next Suki book -- this time based on DOUBLE TALK, my first strip, that appeared in Bombay's Sunday Observer in the mid-80s, as well as the cover for my children's short story collection (three stories, too short to be referred to as a trilogy!) called URMILA THE ULTIMATE, for Puffin. I don't know why it all came together during that one week, but it did. And FINALLY -- on Monday of the week (i.e., the 14th) I discovered that a vague deadline that had started up the previous week, had suddenly become a howling tornado -- I HAD to write a 200-word "letter" to the potential young readers of "MOUSE ATTACK" because there was a chance that the book would be part of a Virgin Trains Easter special promotion -- in which case 12,500 copies would be printed and distributed over the Easter weekend in late March-- by mid-week, i.e., Wednesday. It didn't mean much in the way of revenue to me, but it would certainly be amazing exposure -- 12,500! That's more books than I've ever published, I think, all my eight titles combined -- and I simply couldn't afford not to at least try to make the date.

Phew. So ... we succeeded -- I, my agent Kate and editorial assistant Hannah (both in London) -- with no help, initially, from Hotmail, which caused an unholy delay, initially -- ah,ah,ah, -- but it's over now and the book will be used.

Is this enough? But no, there's one more event! In mid-last week -- on the 15th, I discovered to my major shock, that a book-launch at which I'd been invited as the First Recipient -- was a month earlier than I THOUGHT it was -- in February, rather than March. OUCH! I would have missed it altogether, had not someone called me the day before to tell me they hoped to meet me at the venue (the IIC). I am terribly uncomfortable at public viewings, so had NOT been looking forward to this event -- had been fretting about it ever since I'd been requested to attend -- but it all went off rather sweetly. The book is about the work of cartoonist MAYA KAMATH who died four years ago -- it's very unfortunate, as she was a gifted cartoonist -- and that rarest of rare beings, a woman POLITICAL cartoonist, whose work appeared on the front page of the Asian Age -- and when her daughter Deepa got in touch with me to ask if I would agree to write a few words about her mother's work for the book, I was very willing to do so. That's what made it impossible for me to refuse to be present at the launch. Anyway, like I said, it all went off without a hitch, the book is interesting and well-produced and extremely well-priced -- Rs 750 -- called THE WORLD OF MAYA.

And now I must stop! I'll have to return to correct proofing errors at some later date ... they're there, I'm sure of it ... but not NOW, Kato, not NOW. (PS: I have now up-dated and corrected a few of the errors in this post, but I love making references to Kato, so I'm leaving that in. I suppose there ARE still a few people left alive who know what I'm referring to?)

St Gloomidor's Day

Well, this is what happens if you blog too much -- you begin to write bad poetry. I wrote the first of the two verses below at Zigzackly's blog some days back (guess the date?) and then noticed that a fountain of silly rhymes was starting to gush upwards and out. Not only that, but it occurred to me that in order to correct the imbalance in the Universe caused by an excess of WarmGushy Force following St Valentine's Day, we needed a day to commemorate the DarkIcky Force. According to the Britannica, St Valentine was most likely a figment of someone's wishful thinking, so it seems to me perfectly reasonable to create his logical opposite, St Gloomidor.

He was a shabby, hungry monk who wandered the middle ages groaning deeply, bathing not at all and worrying about everything. His symbol is a dark cloud and his trademark audio-signal is thunder. Though he is associated with all things mournful and shaded, the fact that he promotes rainful suggests that even he has his beneficial effect (rain, i.e., in case you were wondering.)

He is the patron saint of all depressives, singletons, hermits, self-abusers and others of that dismal but vast battalion of humans who do NOT celebrate Valentine's Day and, what's more, NEVER HAVE.

We need to find an appropriate date for him. If no-one suggests one, I WILL ... but I'll give yez the chance to try before proposing, seconding and passing by unanimous vote the one of my choice.

Meanwhile, here are the two worthless verses:

TOUGH LOVE
Won't you be my Valentine?
You'll be mine and I'll be thine?

I will bind thee tight in twine,
Whip thee with a cat o' nine,
While in boots and crinoline,
Thee will on these nails recline,
Drinking tender lilac wine --
Ah! My lovely concubine!

TOUGH LOVE(II)

Hit me soundly, hit me quick,
Hit me with a pointed stick,
And if I cry, "You went too far!"
Hit me with a choco bar.

---------------
Okay, and just to prove that I have flashes of normalcy, I'd like to share this week's Sun Bird Moment. It occurred yesterday morning. I was looking out through the glass door which leads from the dining room to the garden, when a tiny, jewelled sunbird, seeing only the reflection of the garden in the glass, flew towards the door. There he fluttered, shimmering, just a foot in front of my face, while I stood invisible behind the glass. We don't have hummingbirds here in the Old World, but sunbirds are excellent substitutes. They don't hover in the dramatic style of hummingbirds, but they DO resist gravity for brief periods, rowing the air frantically with their miniature wings before darting away and out of sight.

The Megapolis Horrorshow

When my friend Anvar Alikhan recommended Suketu Mehta's non-fiction masterpiece about Bombay, MAXIMUM CITY, by likening it to "... a cocktail of champagne and sewer water" my instant reaction was that I would NEVER want to taste such a drink, so why would I read the book? Several further recommendations followed but I continued to avoid the book. Recently, however, I took a sip from it in the form of an extract published in Nilanjana Roy's highly readable A MATTER OF TASTE, an anthology of writing about food -- and had to agree the writing was riveting.

So I'm currently half-way, having just emerged from the section called "Black Collar Workers". While trudging alongside Mehta as he trawls through the blood and filth of Bombay's underworld, the irreverent thought that kept recurring was Anvar's analogy about champagne and sewer water. I've been asking myself what proportion of champagne is required to make even a single teaspoonful of sewer water acceptable? One hundred litres? One thousand litres? I don't think I would knowingly drink such a brew no matter how small the proportion of s.w. to bubbly -- despite recognizing that, whenever we're drinking from glasses we haven't personally washed, we really cannot know what percent of the sewer has slimed its way in and clung to the inner surface of that glass.

So -- yes -- reading Mehta's book is an ordeal. He writes with the kind of cool detachment which makes me dislike him -- it's unfair, it's a shooting-the-messenger situation, and yet I feel the urge to pin my revulsion and distaste for what I'm reading on SOMEONE and he's the handiest person available. There's no point sparing any feelings at all for the thugs who form the protagonists in the section on Bombay's pus-encrusted crime-scene. The police are represented in exactly the same light -- there's very little to choose from, the criminals and the crime-fighters appear to belong to exactly the same breed of hyena-clones.

I have asked myself whether anyone would miss these peopel if they were all to be exterminated by one giant cleansing purge -- an earthquake, a volcano, a fire -- and I believe the answer is "no". According to Mehta's record, the villains belong to all and every communal and religious background (though only a sprinkling of Christians and no Parsis/Iranis appear to be represented). So far the only character who has kept himself above the gore is a police officer from an affluent family. And even he is immune only to corruption -- he affords his integrity by belonging to a more secure class of society -- but not violence.

It's simply not possible (for me) to care if such people think or feel pain or have orgasms or eat night-soil for dessert. Is this because they really are like that or because the author has not been able to show me anything but this dehumanized view? Are the Italian mafia exactly the same and is it only because their authors dress them up for us in an aura of dark glamour that they appear to be a better class of villain? Or are they really less repulsive than their counterparts in the slime-pits of Bombay? I don't suppose I will ever know.

Mehta's prose is strong on relevant detail and taut in the way of a well-edited documentary film. I have been trying to decide why I feel such an antipathy towards him. Is it only transferrence? Or is there something concrete to dislike? I have half the book left to go and so I don't know yet. There is a peculiar detachment that I find unnerving, for instance. We are encouraged to accept that without his detachment he wouldn't have succeeded in penetrating deep into Gangland. But it's distracting. I've been asking myself what I've learnt from reading about the underworld and I've realized now that it doesn't amount to much. I know now what I knew before: that vast numbers of people live under the oppression of ghouls in human form who operate in gangs; and the interrelationships between the gangs is complex -- and that's all.

We already know that poverty and deprivation can strip away a person's faculties to the point where they're just bundles of raw appetite. There's no explanation for how the ghouls are created, or why we as people or as a nation are susceptible to their creation and most of all, why we remain so strangely unmoved by the knowledge of these horrors that seethe and bubble around us. Perhaps what I'm responding to is the frustration of seeing that someone has exposed an atrocious view of reality and yet it's framed within that ghastly apathy, that complicity of inaction that makes the telling of these tales all but futile.


It's like being shown that we're surrounded by Auschwitzes and Buchenwalds but -- ooohhh dear! Can't do anything about it, can we? No, of course not -- because the easy polarities of WWII are behind us and it's become impossible to even the name the causes of our disease or to find cures for it or to request help to save us from ourselves. Nope. Our approach is to still our minds and hearts, sip our noxious sewer-champagne cocktail and tell ourselves it is only birdie-num-num after all.

Still and all ... I'm going to finish reading the book.

(W)rites of Passage

A thought occurred to me today (well, some time ago, actually, but today's when the the thought returned to the front of my mind) -- if, prior to the time when I will shuffle off this mortal coil, I am still a blogger, I fondly hope that someone who hears about the event will leave a "comment" to that effect at my blog.

I mean ... haven't we all wondered? About what's happened to a friend from whom we haven't had e-mail for some time? It's true that the news often filters around the globe through one channel or another, but those channels aren't always reliable. And I'd certainly like to think that blogs can function as news-posts at the time of a final exit. I can recall one early blog-like site at which one of the regular members suddenly ceased to post -- and a day later we all knew through the kind concern of the only person who had been in RL contact with old "Unicorn" (I think that was her handle) that she had moved on to a Higher Server. I was glad to know.

While we are on the subject of final journeys -- a subject that will, no doubt, only become increasingly fascinating as the months/years wear on -- I often ask myself how to ensure that the physical elements of my body are returned to nature with a minimum of fuss. It really annoys me to think that I will not be around to manage the situation for myself. I would, for instance, absolutely abhor to be disposed of with any traditional rites -- I say this even though I don't believe in an afterlife and therefore realize that "I" won't be around to either like or dislike what happens to "me". But I've noticed that, especially in India, in the lack of any alternative rites/ceremonies, a body is treated by its relatives in whatever way the relatives deem fit, which usually means, within the tradition to which the relatives (rather than the deceased) belongs.

Not that I've attended so many funerals of eccentric free-thinkers or anything. And certainly, at least two of the only handful of death-rites I've attended, were supremely (and attractively) fuss-free -- but that was through the agency of the surviving family members, who knew and respected the rights of the deceased. In my case -- since I have no children and don't expect or want to be cared for by my siblings' children -- I would expect to die alone and to have made some sort of provision for my mortal remains, assuming it happened in some anticipatable way (i.e., assuming that it's not a gas-fire, terrorist attack or other such calamitous end).

Yes, yes -- I realize it's supposedly morbid to look directly at the EXIT sign that shines brightly in the theatres of all our minds
-- but I've always held that one doesn't seriously appreciate one's life at all, so long as one remains unconscious that it will, after all end. That would be like watching a film without realizing that the end-credits must eventually roll -- can you imagine that? It would seem endlessly boring -- and perhaps, that IS why so many people seem to find their own lives dull -- because they imagine they'll never end.

So! I consider it completely normal to think about and make what plans I can for the eventuality, despite being mildly irritated that I can't really ever know for sure when it'll happen. It's like being packed for a journey that might occur at any moment -- for years to come. Of course it would be equally annoying and distracting to know the exact time and date -- as many authors/myth-writers have pointed out through their various speculations.

Still and all ... if I could have my way, then what I'd REALLY like is to be recycled in the manner of the ancient Persians and also not-so-ancient Tibetans. I don't mean the Parsi system, which focuses specifically on vultures, and requires a sub-caste of funerary functionaries to handle the remains -- I mean I'd like to die out in some location where a hungry bear/tiger/shark could enjoy a meal and perhaps live to survive another month or two. It would be, in my opinion, an ideal end to a life which has taken much pleasure from the flesh of other living things. Being gnawed at by rats and worms really doesn't do it for me -- I'd like to be absorbed by something big and hunky, which would do the job quickly and not leave remains to be picked over centuries from now.

I would particularly favour polar bears, Sunderbans tigers and hammerhead sharks -- i.e., any time after I claim to be setting out on a trek to the North Pole, Bengal or across uncharted oceans, having recently amended my will, is when this blog should be checked for end-"comments"!