THRILL!

I got my Learner's Licence todayeeeeeeeeeee!

But quick backtrack: Day Eleven, I was introduced to the reverse gear -- for all of fifteen seconds -- but wottheheck. Day Twelve, three flyovers. Day Thirteen -- i.e., today -- two flyovers and some heavy traffic.

Some of you may be surprised to hear that I've only JUST got an LL. Well ... when I signed up at the Seven Star Driving School I asked about the need for a licence and they pooh-poohed the very idea. But of course, the truth is, everyone on the roads is SUPPOSED to have a licence and basically I've been driving around on the wrong side of the law all these days. I tried not to think about this too much, once I knew, which was after a week's lessons.

The School offers to procure licences for their students for the modest sum of 1700 roops(around $35), which works out to just over three times the actual cost of the licence. So I didn't feel like forking over the blue notes. Believe me, I didn't feel like spending a morning sweating at the RTO either -- I have a middle-class person's neurotic dread of going anywhere near Govt. offices of any kind, and in particular the kind that issues licences. But one of the results of learning to drive, I told myself, was having to face up to such gruesome realities as standing in queues and jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops placed between licence-seekers and the seek-object.

I have an errand-person whom I shall refer to as R who fetches and delivers stuff for me. I had despatched him a week ago to get me the registration form. It's been lying on my desk all this while, unfilled until just last night. I had to use the poison-tipped cat-o'nine-tails to force myself to crank up my muscles and get the thing filled -- yes, filling forms is one amongst the many ordinary everyday tasks that I absolutely abhorr. I managed to put off sticking on the photographs till I was in my taxi and en route to the RTO (I had taken the gluestick with me in order to perform this task. And was carrying my passport and voter ID card in a little pouch strung from around my neck -- a black pouch, which was hard to see against the black-and-white kurta I was wearing -- in order to foil the pickpockets who might want to rummage in my backpack). I located the photocopies of my passport and I.D. card at the very last minute before I left. It is ever thus that I approach all my interactions with Govt. offices -- in a grey, bumbling fog of unwillingness, resulting in NOT getting everything together and thus having to do whatever it is at least twice over.

R had not only got the form for me, but he'd also discovered there was a written test to be done. No-one I'd spoken to about getting a licence had mentioned the need to do a test for the LL. When I asked R about the test, and where I would get the information I'd need in order to do it he said, as if it were as obvious as the sky overhead, that all I needed was to know how to identify road signals. "That's all they ask about," he said, "road signs".

Ahhhh well. I'd already been-there-done-that, hadn't I? In Vermont? And failed?

I went on-line, found the Regional Transport Office's web-site and located their manual. That was last week. I glanced through the material, finding it both depressingly familiar and also, confusingly NOT: for instance, it was a surprise to see that there were separate road signs prohibiting (a) Handcarts (b) Bullock-carts (c) Tongas (horsedrawn carts) and (d) Bullock- AND Handcarts. What about Camelcarts? Elephantcarts? Not to mention Autorickshaws, Tempos, Auto-tempos, Tricycles, Hyundais ...

However, I could not force myself to read through the whole manual. Reading the Vermont manual was as much as I could do in one life. I kept putting off the RTO visit until this weekend, when I realized I might put it off forever unless I forced myself to go. And when I got there, after 2 whole weeks of procrastination ... I found it was quite painless after all.

Though it was 10 in the morning, the endless stifling queues had not yet formed: there were only five or six bodies between me and the front of the counter -- though of course those bodies could not dream of forming a line, but had to bunch up like puppies in a basket, all in one spot. But at least there weren't dozens of counters, and after the first one there was the doctor's examination which consisted of going to a small room in which sat three youngish men, one of them in dazzling white. He was the doctor. He gave me a penetrating glance and said, "Can you see? -- good -- Can you hear? -- good --" whereupon he ticked off what ever he had to tick off on the form, stamped it with his stamp and sent me back to first counter.

Then I paid my fees and proceeded to the Hall of Examination. Prior to entering the hall, I asked for and was given a cog-sheet of road signs to study -- they had been reduced to the size of miniatures but I sat on the seats outside the Hall and did my best to commit the tiny symbols to memory anyway.

The hall was semi-filled with young lizard-types concentrating hard on their "papers" -- and soon I was one amongst them. Shades of Vermont -- ah the multiple-choice questions again! Ah the laminated question-sheet! -- but I took my time filling in the squares in the answer sheet and ... half a day later, I got my licence. I am now a bona fide learner, yayyy!

They didn't tell me how many of the answers I got right or anything. And the man who handed out the examination sheet, before I sat down to do the exam, insisted that I HAD to make an entry under "identifying mark" on my form. I don't have any blemishes strong enough to be worth recording so I asked him to say what would be acceptable. He looked up with an embarrassed expression (it is, after all, rude to stare, particularly at females) but nevertheless located a tiny spot, he said, on my right temple. So there it is, on the record, now and forever.

Identifiable and enabled to LEARN TO DRIVE a light motor vehicle on the roads of India, for the next six months ... woohoo! It's just a bit of paper with my photograph stuck onto it -- one page of the form I filled the night before -- and I'll have to be sure to keep it safe between plastic for however long it takes before I am confident enough to apply for the permanent licence.

Also, for those of you who plan to follow in my footsteps, let it be known: the test is NOT exclusively about road-signs!! It's also about such imponderables as whether a pillion rider must (A) wear a helmet (B) wear a scarf (C) wave to his/her friends and relatives (D) pick his/her nose; the reasons why a driver should be especially careful while approaching pedestrians at a zebra crossing when it is raining; the proper etiquette for motorists entering a roundabout. No doubt the answers to these and other questions are in the manual, but since I didn't read it, I can't be sure! I replied as best I could, but as I knew from bitter experience, that doesn't really help with multiple choice questions. I really wasn't sure, when I returned at 3.30 pm, whether or not I'd get the LL.

Let it also be known that the man who handed me the above-mentioned cog sheet with the miniature symbols, confirmed what R had told me, i.e., that the road signs were all that I needed to know for the test. Well, he was wrong, and so is anyone who tries to tell you that you won't need any preparation for the test.

I have two more lessons at Seven Star. Today, being a Tuesday, is their day of rest. I'm wondering what challenges remain in the final hours of instruction. My guess is: parking.

Day Ten of Driving Class and --

BLOGS ARE BACK!! Phew. That was nasty while it lasted, but many blessings upon the heads of those who established alternative routes to our little acre of the web, here in Blogistan/Bloganahalli/Blogipur/Bloganam. And so quickly too! Now that I think about it, I was barely inconvenienced -- Friday to Sunday, that was it, I think. On Monday pkblogs had swung into place, followed swiftly by others. There be angels amongst us! Thanks be to them.

And now we return to our regular broadcasts re Learning To Relax At The Wheel Of A Weapon of Minor Destruction. Today was the tenth day of this epic journey from crawling pedestrian to superhuman internalcombustionenginewallah and friends: it's not happened yet. The transformation, I mean. I continue to be a crawler except that I just happen to be sitting in the driver's seat of an infernal machine for 20 minutes in the morning. I may even be regressing, because I feel less and less competent with every passing day.

Oh I have my brief spams of competence! I mean, I am an EXCELLENT buckler of seatbelts and I've really got the art of ... err ... igniting the engine, shall we say, down pat. I can do it with skill and grace. I can release the hand-brake and I can push the gear lever into Position Uno! Yep. I can do all those things. Then Mr Moccha tells me to ease my left foot off the clutch -- to which it is of course welded -- and then the sorrow begins.

We start to move and all the ghouls of the motorway leap out of my dreaming subconscious to dance upon the dashboard. No-one else can see them but THERE THEY ARE -- a conga-line of tiny dancing terrors, singing out in chorus, straight to my brain, a song which goes a bit like this: "Brush them, crush them/ Turn them into motor kill! You have the power/To turn off their liiiiiights!" That's the theme, you see: the thing that beads my brow isn't my personal death, but the many bloody encounters that I could cause if I just forgot to look in my rear-view mirror or lost control of my right foot.

I continue to feel mute with envy at the ease with which all the other drivers on the road seem to just sail along, completely unaware (or so it seems) that they could be mowing down families of innocents at every zebra/giraffe/buffalo crossing. Whereas I feel the lives of DOZENS of people pass before my eyes, as I pass them on the road, my shoulders hunched, my eyes averted, trying desperately not to feel guilty for the crimes that I have yet to commit through a moment's inattention.

Ay me.

It is hard to be a driver.

A Message for Our Times

My friend Viji Ghose forwarded a message to me from a friend of hers, Indrani Robbins. I don't know Indrani, but I wrote to her immediately asking if I could post her heartfelt e-message on my blog, and she very kindly agreed. I have not changed a word of her e-message, but I have added a space between the first and second paragraphs because they ran into one another after being pasted here.


hello my friends: i received the following from
another friend and it sort of disturbed me. no one can
disagree with the problem here, but the solution. ah
the solution. well, given all this hoohaa about
democracy and me a citizen of the largest democracy,
etc. (who of course has never voted because one might
have attained the age but attaining a ration card or a
voter identification card... that's another epic
heartpour), i thought i'd present my pov on this prob
of our times.

why am i doing this to you guys? this long laborious
email? this rant about a situation that we seem
powerless to do a thing about? to the point that we've
almost stopped caring? because i'm disturbed enough to
want to talk about it, write about it, and being my
friends you gotta suffer. lots of love
indi/pupli/indrani/didi

POV 1: this is what i received

QUOTE
"I am an Indian citizen. One among 1 billion of us.
When somebody bombs us we die. Just like Americans did
when the Al Qaeeda drove their planes into the WTC.
Just like Londoners did when terrorists attacked the
city last July. But while Americans have the right to
retaliate and bomb Afghanistan off the face of the map
because the terrorists HQ was based there, we Indians
have to negotiate, talk, send peace buses, and "build
confidence" with the government across our border -
the Pakistanis who are supporting the terrorists with
money and explosives.

The world applauds how resilient we are in the face of
our tragedy, how quickly we go back to "normalcy".
Ironically we ourselves applaud our resilience. The
fact is that the world expects us to be less than
human - hey you fella, so what if you lost your
colleague, friend, partner, husband, wife or brother,
get on with it old chap, that's it my boy! No time to
mourn. No time to fume and rail at the injustice being
meted out, no time to even call the terrorists the
filthiest of names, no time to give incompetent
politicians and policemen, intelligence agencies and
the powers-be a piece of our mind. (Shivraj Patil, our
honourable defence minister said something to the the
effect that we knew that an attack was planned but we
didn't know the time and place.

Really! What did he expect - a phone call from the
terrorists giving him the details of the local trains,
timings and compartments in which the explosives would
be kept! We also have to prove to the world that we
are RESILIENT. Be happy with Musharraf's "quick
condemnation" and go back to the business of dealing
with old betrayers. After all we cannot "change the
region's positive course", as LA Times' editorial put
it. So what if a few hundred Indians die - Indians who
are not into big time negotiations. Indians who just
want to earn their living and return home to their
families after a hard day's work. But well no,
Musharraf and his terrorist friends will deny them the
luxury of going back to his family because en route
the train blows up! And our incompetent politicians
and policemen will let terrorists do their horrific
jobs and launch a hunt post-facto...

So Bombayites died for a cause: for the peace of the
region! As did Delhi-ites last year before Diwali. As
did people in Bangalore when Pakistan-supported
terrorists hit the city. As did Indian tourists who
had gone to Srinagar for a holiday....And as many many
more will die...Wow, that's some consolation! If you
feel as angry about what's happening to us, please
feel free to pass this on. If your reaction is: "hey
nothing is going to change - this is India," feel free
to delete the mail! "
UNQUOTE


POV 2: here's what i'm thinking.

i was born in what we call independent india. my
earliest memories include hiding in darkened corridors
in our home in duliajan, assam during the '65 war with
pakistan (earlier of course, my mother along with me
and my 2-month old brother had to be evacuated from
assam during the "chinese aggression", while my father
stayed back to blow up the oil installations and
storage tanks in case the chinese marched right up to
them. needless to mention he and a handful of his
colleagues were prepared to sort of die in the
process). then came the '71 war, the creation of
bangladesh, memories of rushing out of the car on
parliament street, new delhi to take shelter as
pakistani bombers flew low over us. later, in 1980 we
lost our father in the midst of yet another strange
sad war between two peoples of this independent india.
what was stranger re the last incident was that our
fam didn't raise a cry of "badla badla badla" a la all
good hindi films one had ever seen. all my mother
wanted was to raise us in peace.

but even before all this, i think my subconscious
picked a word that i'm today struggling to bring into
a more visible, conscious place. and the word is,
"partition". no this is not a nice kashmiri walnut
wood screen. this is what happened to, dare i say
these words? guess i will: my land, my people. why it
happened and how, we could again go on and on about.
but to whom it happened. to our grandparents'
generation, our parents', yes, but did it end there?
the madness, the mayhem, the hatred that starts at the
bottom of our being, almost genetically coded: muslims
are bad bad bad, hindus are kaffirs, sikhs are this
parsis are that. did it really end there?

i am told more than 90,000 people have died in the
kashmir tragedy. we know people die every day in our
country, thanks to the unfriendship we share with
pakistan (and bits of bangladesh). and yes it is
bloody unfair that the americans can do what they have
to any place on earth they've ever felt like doing
anything to. i know we are always uncomfortable when
we meet a pakistani, sometimes even a bangladeshi. i
keep hearing the "pakis" are our enemies, no doubt
they believe we're the original baddies of the world.
so what should we do? let's go to war. again. let
people die. again. let bbc and cnn make money. again.
let's not solve the problem. sorry for this tautology,
but yes, again.

or. take a look at that word we say so easily:
partition. take a look at what it did to us. how it
hurt us, all of us who live in our fabulous
subcontinent (c'mon guys, eat the food of our nations
and you'll know no mean small culture could have
thought up that stuff). feel this word, yes feel the
sadness that was and is "partition". swords, knives,
blood, trains filled with bodies crossing borders,
fathers beheaded, sisters raped, daughters abducted by
the "other" and forgotten by their own, lahore never
to be visited again, dilli gone forever, goodbye
mymensingh, farewell kolkata, mindless anger, flaming
red rage, miles of tears, not a single smile anywhere,
what a time it was that time. only 59 years ago. yet
to most of us on my mailing list it's just a word. a
fact. the begininning of lifelong enmity.

my mind keeps saying it is time to look a "paki" in
the eye and feel our real feelings. we are one people,
torn asunder, still bleeding. time to heal. time to be
intelligent and strong. not with guns. but with
ourselves.

it's time to seek forgiveness and forgive. "partition"
needs closure (yesyes i don't like this v irritating v
american word, but in this case, i think it works
beautifully, so ta america). and it's only after that
we can really start talking. without clutter and
confusion. no we won't be able to resolve all our
probs, some yes, the others we'll agree to disagree on
and carry on as most friends do, with differences but
not mindless hatred.

and it's definitely time to stop looking to our
politicians for any kind of anything.

so what's going to happen if three or two or one of us
feel this way? how will it change things? i don't
know, just this something in my head heart gut that
keeps saying these things. it says war is yesterday's
thinking. anywhere on earth.

once upon a time there was undivided india. today we
are pakistan, india, bangladesh. three nations, could
one day be three great nations.
if we are truly independent india, let's free
ourselves of our baggage. here's to all of us.

The On-Going Peeve

... I still can't access my blog! This isn't, for me, a major loss of life and limb because I'm not a working blogger and I'm grateful that I can (a) continue to post new items as well as edit old ones and (b) keep track of comments on account of comment moderation. But I CAN'T post new comments -- which must seem a bit rude to the few faithful commenters who leave messages here -- and I can't SEE my little patch of the internet! Most annoying.

My more energetic and web-savvy friends Zigzackly and the Babu (of Kitabkhanna) are out there and waging battles with the powers that be -- who may or may not be responsible for the blockage. No doubt, if you visit their blogs, you'll find more information.

Ah well. As far as driving updates go, today was the weekly holiday so, no class. I used the time I would normally spend browsing blogs to catch up on my museum visits ... yes, courtesy ALLAN SEALY, whose recently published book RED features a real world visit to the HERMITAGE, I was able to visit that wonderful museum in Leningrad, online. His book includes the web-address -- but lucky you! here it is for your delectation. I had to download the Java applet which allows the very cool panning and scrolling visit that the site is set up to provide, but if you've already got it installed, you won't even need to wait 10 minutes before you're in and jogging through the rooms.

Of course, being lazy, I only visited the MATISSE ROOM and that too, entirely on account of Sealy's book (ohhh -- okay! I visited the PICASSO ROOM too! But only because it was right next door). If you want to know what the connection is, you'll just have to buy the book and read it and love it. Well parts of it: I didn't love ALL of it, which saddens and distresses me, because this is one author whose writing I admire unreservedly ... really and truly. I think his FROM YUKON TO YUCATAN is one of the best travel books I have read. So perhaps, keeping in mind the Persian concept of the crooked line, a blemish-free book is to be avoided as it might mock the perfection of creation.

I've already bought and given away three copies of the book (besides keeping one for myself) so I guess it's clear I don't mind a blemish or two ...

Wherein I Fly Over

Yes, today, during my sixth driving lesson, I Flew Over. It happened in the same dreamlike way that all the driving episodes have happened so far -- nothing I can actually believe in. Not only that, but I even overtook someone -- admittedly, it was a tortoise of a vehicle, one of those limping, rattling, three-wheel jobs which crawls about in the fast lanes of roads like an arthritic hermit crab, so over-taking it was really at the level of a snail over-taking a pebble -- but STILL!!! It was a personal first. And then after that, there was another flyover and a couple of major roads.

Being unable to believe I am at the wheel continues to be a problem though. It's as if every morning begins with a dream, a rather tiresome and grimy dream in which cyclists and autorickshaws veer towards the car I'm in, and motorcyclists buzz me like curious hornets, then buzz away again when they realize that I'm some insane short-haired granny-type, attempting to learn to drive on their private Grand Prix racing strip, hahaha -- they're basically so juiced at the mere idea that they don't bother harassing me -- and half an hour later the dream ends with me waking up at the gate of my house. Weird. I am very good with speed-breakers in this dream, and I meekly turn left and right when told to by Mr Moccha. Back within the home colony, I drive one circuit around the little park in the centre and bring the car to a very friendly little halt at my gate.

But is this real life? I think not. Aside from being soaked in sweat once I'm back in the house, I don't consciously feel anything, neither fear nor pleasure, while driving around. Practically the only new bit of knowledge that has entered my waking life is the realization that other drivers, just like me when I'm at the wheel, can apply their feet to the brake pedal. Until I understood how easy it is to control the car (i.e., until I realized that a car will NOT behave like a startled horse and therefore will NOT rear, snort and charge down the road with the terrified driver clinging to its wheel) I wasn't even aware that this image (of the horse) was in my head. Now that I know it, I feel more benign towards drivers in general -- they are still crazy, incompetent and rash, but at least I understand a little more about how they negotiate the maze-in-motion that is urban traffic.

I'm even -- dare I say it? -- a little dazzled. There they are, these reckless motorists, slaloming about the roads, every day, playing their arias on their brakes and accelerators and all this while I had NO IDEA HOW THEY WERE DOING IT!! It's like being a blind person who has lived in a museum all her life and now suddenly can see -- yes, it's a wild museum, and chaotic, and the cause of many deaths (one a day, in Delhirium, I believe) -- but still: a kind of mad spontaneous public art.

The fact that the dream occurs every morning just after 8 probably explains why it's not nightmarish yet. Mr Moccha assures me however that next Sunday the final lesson will be in mid-afternoon and through traffic. But for the time being, well ... toot-toot, parp-parp and tallyhooooooo! Ah'm jus' chasing mah dream.

Wherein I Learn To Use Gears

-- but before I get to that, I'd like to pause a moment to acknowledge the sadness that overtook me two days ago, upon hearing the news of the bomb blasts in Bombay. I have long since stopped caring who/what is responsible for grisly public tragedies: it matters only that there are at least 200 families whose lives have been shattered by the deaths caused by the blasts and many hundreds more who will remain incapacitated by the serious injuries of those who survived.

This might not be a practical suggestion, but: if the media and the world at large could cease to publish the names/organizations/nationalities of terrorists and focus exclusively on healing the wounded and caring for the bereaved -- if, in short, terrorists ceased to get attention through the use of terror -- maybe they would be forced to find more acceptable methods of addressing their grievances.

I suppose that's a vain hope.

Ah well.

Back to the driving lesson.

I had my third one today. Tuesday, like I said, is a day of rest for the August Academy and Wednesday it was raining hard. Today, at eight o'clock, on the dot, there was the little red chariot, with its two occupants -- Mr Moccha and the silent young woman who is my co-student. I must correct a peculiar misconception: apparently the car I've been using does NOT have that triangular contraption on its roof! I seem to have manufactured it in my imagination, when reconstructing the lesson from memory.

Anyway! Today marked my transition from illiterate invertebrate to gear-using primate. I will admit that for the two days since my last lesson, I have been practicing changing gears by imagining what it might feel like, in my head. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, this IS how I navigate the by-lanes and cul-de-sacs of reality -- by imagining as much as I can of the path ahead in advance. It's a very cumbersome, resource-intensive approach, because it means I virtually relive everything that happens in my life except for the tiny bits of experience that occur unexpectedly(these are nearly always the nasty bits. I try very hard to imagine every type of nasty bit just to be fair and balanced, but -- wouldn't you know it? -- there are always very many more of them than I can possibly dream up).

As a result, it was almost fun, today. I won't bore the readers of this blog, nearly all of whom are drivers (only because most people who can turn on a computer are equally adept at leaping into cars and driving off into the sunset) with the details -- but I was quite surprised to find it didn't stress me out. Of course, Mr Moccha kept telling when to make the changes, but I think one element that has made a big difference is that I have finally realized that I can unhook my left foot from the clutch. Wow! What a relief. I am sure I've been told this many times over, but it has only now really got through to me that the brake is what I need in order to go fast or slow until there's a gear-change to worry about.

And the reason it got through to me now and not for all the 53 years before this moment, is that I finally made the effort to watch E's feet while sitting in the passenger seat day-before-yesterday, as he drove around the block to a friend's house. That's when I saw that his left foot sat quietly to one side while the right foot danced about -- stopping, starting, stopping, starting ... quite a busy little character, that foot!

This leads me to wonder whether left-handers feel uncomfortable, using their right feet for all that below-the-ankle-level activity? Since handedness is connected to the separate spheres of left/right brain activity, surely it should affect the feet to the same extent (gt -- are you reading this?)?

So we got home after a peaceful ride all the way through the mayhem of 8.00 a.m traffic -- busses parping, cyclists tinkling, school children leaping out in front of the car, all of that nonsense, and I was no longer wholly white-knuckled. A little, sure -- but less than the previous two days.

There's the reverse gear to be faced, of course, and parking and ... well, it's much better when I avoid thinking of the farther shore of competence and just stick with what I have today. Which is: 2nd, 3rd and 4th gears, yayyyyy!

A demain ...

15th July

Here's a grouse: I can't seem to log into my blog!! No idea why. Can't log into ANY blogger pages, so I'm not feel personally insulted. But it certainly cuts into my daily road-warriorette saga. Today was the fifth day of my transformation-to-be and what can I say? At one level, yes -- I can sense fundamental changes occurring in my DNA -- I feel a desire to change gear, and I no longer have that sense of lateral vertigo -- the combined dread/desire syndrome -- of fearing that I will crush every cyclist and motorist that comes within ten feet of my car. But at another level, I continue to feel utterly detached, as if there's someone at the wheel but it's not me (... PINK FLOYD ref, yes).

*sigh*

The Adventure Continues ...

... and so it came to pass that on the 9th of July 2006, I enrolled at the SEVEN STAR DRIVING SCHOOL. Well, to be quite accurate, I enrolled on Friday the seventh and after a bit of cheerful banter with the man at the other end of the line, during which he tried to convince me that rush hour on Delhi's roads was THE ideal time to sit behind the wheel of a car, we agreed that eight o'clock Sunday morning would mark the dawn of my new life as a driver.

The office of Seven Star is about six minutes by foot from my house, along the busy thoroughfare that leads towards Jamia Millia Ismailia from Mathura Road. It's a booth-type office, crammed into the corner of a decrepit building. There's a chai shop on one side and a dirty lane on the other.

It has a desk right up front. At the desk sits a man who looks as if he's been fashioned out of river clay, in thick lumps that were never quite cleared of pebbles, weeds and earthworms before he was baked into existence. In front of the desk are three metal folding chairs on which several other men sit, but when I appear, these others leap up and wriggle away -- all except one, who remains in order to open registration books and flourish receipts in the manner of a well-trained flunky.

Registering is childishly simple: I pay Rs 1400 (i.e., less than $30) and enter my address in their register. There is no learner's licence -- Mr RiverClay almost sighs when I ask about it, as if the question reveals the depths of my naivete. "There's no need of a licence when you're with Us," he says, grandly. I ask to be collected from my residence, a luxury costs me an additional Rs 200. And that's it.

Sunday morning, after staying up most of Saturday night to watch the World Cup third-place final between Germany and Portugal, I set three alarms to ensure that I'll wake up really early (for me, that is) -- at 6.00. There's no clear reason why I needed two hours prior to my Appointment With Destiny: it takes me only half an hour, max, to get showered and dressed, to make tea for me and E and to go online to check for e-mail. Nevertheless, I DID wake up at 6, got myself together and then, with a whole hour to spare, meditated upon the path that was opening up to me.

Yes, of course, I'd been backing and forthing up the driveway of our friend's home in Vermont. But that was on another planet of experience. Here, now, I was in Delhirium -- nightmare traffic capital of the world -- home to some of the most manic individuals known to the internal combustion engine. Answering the "why" of my desire to become a driver under these circumstances is the reason, I realized, that I'd woken up earlier than necessary. It's how I take any decision: first I have to imagine myself doing the thing that I want to do and if I can create an efficient virtual construct of the experience, I am ready to face whatever it is.

But an hour later, when I heard the latch on the front gate, that signalled the arrival of my tutorial coach, I had not succeeded in forging a clear picture of me in my new avatar-to-be. My mind was blank as I opened the front door.

My teacher turned out to be a short, moccha-coloured man who had the strange distinction of being both dour and cheery at once -- as if he knows he has a thankless and possibly life-threatening job, which he has to approach optimistically all the same, in order to be good at it.

The chariot was a postbox red Maruti 800, bearing the school's name in huge letters on the elongated-cone-shaped contraption on its roof by which all instructional cars here announce their presence -- after all, they need all the warning colouration that the paint industry can endow them with, to avoid being pulverized by every public bus, truck and SUV driver on the roads.

I was surprised to see a young woman sitting at the wheel. She was just finishing her lesson -- but seeing her being instructed as she drove the short distance towards her residence was reassuring for me, besides allowing me a few more minutes of normal breathing before it was MY TURN.

Short pause here to say: AAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGH.

For the next half hour, sitting at the wheel of that bright red Maruti 800, I dodged between cyclists, pedestrians, handcart-wallahs, snorting buses, more pedestrians, cycle-rickshaws, autorickshaws, cars, trucks, buses -- and did I mention, pedestrians? My mouth was open, I think -- I don't quite remember -- and nothing seemed very real. Mr Moccha had dual controls and changed gears for me now and then, while telling me to press the clutch, apply brakes and "-- SLOW! SLOW! SLOW! -- right -- give accelerator -- show indicator -- GO! GO! GO! -- " etcetera.

Here's the strange thing: I wasn't afraid. Not even slightly. I think I know why -- it's because I didn't believe what was happening. It was like a dream, and after I got home, I spent another hour lying down in bed, trying to convince myself that I had reallyreallyreally turned onto the Ring Road and then onto Mathura Road and then at the traffic light, back towards my home, all with DTC buses garrumphing at my back and other motorists hopscotching about and kamikaze pedestrians throwing themselves under the wheels of any vehicle willing to kill them for being criminally vulnerable.

SO ANYWAY, today I had my second lesson. Once more, the other girl was in the car when the chariot arrived, and this time, she sat at the back while I climbed into the driver's seat. Once more, my mind disengaged from the events taking place, as we puttered around the colony and out the gate! It is REALLY bizarre: I knew I was physically present and doing stuff, but mentally, I was no longer my own familiar self. I was an imposter version of myself, and that imposter was apparently driving around with other actual wheeled entities containing soft-bodied bipeds competing for space on the roads.

Today, after dropping the girl off at her destination, we -- or "I", rather -- progressed smoothly down the long road that passes alongside Jamia, and it was a little teeny bit like being in a land-locked sailboat, because there were speed-breakers every ten feet and I got the little red car to negotiate each of them with a smooth, rolling motion, just like forging forward through a line of mildly boisterous waves on the ocean. My tutor was still changing gears for me -- he told me to press the clutch each time and explained the finer points of why he was doing what -- but I was mesmerized by the road, the other vehicles floating about on either side of me and the deep desire to just push through this stage of consciousness to some OTHER one, preferably one that included a recognizable version of myself.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is Seven Stars' off-day and since the rains have started, it's possible there won't be classes until we have a dry morning. Mr Moccha told me that my problem areas are: not releasing the clutch, causing the engine to overheat and gripping the steering wheel too tight. I could have added that the worst problem of all was this out-of-body experience that occurred the moment I sat in the driver's seat of the car, followed closely by the fact of living in a ferociously overcrowded city with manic traffic. But my language skills do not stretch to that limit. Mr Moccha speaks to me in pidgin English and I reply in kind -- which is all for the best. If I could talk to him normally, I would spend the whole half hour explaining the metaphysics of why I was clutching the steering wheel, rather than steering the clutch (okay, okay, silly, pointless meaningless pun, but ... you get my drift) -- and never get around to driving. This way, he ended today's lesson by saying, in Hindi, "Why are you scared? DON'T BE SCARED -- as long as I'm in the car, nothing can go wrong." And that was that.

Later in the day, having recovered from the lesson, I visited my friend S. at her press. She's been championing my desire to learn driving for several years. Today, she spent a good two hours giving me a pep-talk about Just Doing It. She has a standing offer to take me out on test-drives and for touch-up courses whenever I'm ready. I plan to take her up on her offer some time next week. While talking to her, I said that the real challenge for me was to STOP thinking of myself as a driving-challenged person and reconfigure my mind so that I could see myself in this NEW! IMPROVED! light.

But I suspect it's going to take a while. All through the lessons so far and regardless of what I'm doing and how well or ill the car's faring, inside my head, there's a little person sitting with her face buried inside a cushion and screaming, very softly, AAAAAAARGGGHHHHHHHHHH ...

POST SCRIPT: Zig sent me a link to the piece he wrote about his experiences as a LearnerDriver in 2003 -- interestingly enuff we have both used the word "kamikaze" to describe street elements. Hmmm. Probably means something deep and potentially disturbing, but I'm too lazy to work out what it might be.

Dept. of Minor Amusements

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Got this from the incomparable Ziglacious One (I have a permanent link displayed in my list of favourites to the right) -- but I imagine you can go to the site and find out which great leader YOU are by just clicking the picture.

Birdy!

It's my 53rd -- the same number as my birth year. Weird, isn't it? I never thought I'd make it to 40 never mind beyond fifty! Amazing.

Well, the main event of the day was taking my Mum to the hospital to get her stitches removed. The hero of the day (and of the surgery) was my cousin Khi, who made the appointment, arrived at our house with her driver and her Hyundai at 1.30 to collect Mum, Mum's day-girl attendant and moi. Apollo Hospital is an extraordinary place, a cross between a railway station, a 3-star hotel and an asylum -- there are crowds of crazed people milling about and noise but ... the floors are clean and the place functions, despite all. We had only a ten minute wait, and then another ten minutes before Mum was out again.

She wore a sari for the appointment, the first time in two months and looked fresh in her crisp cotton burnt-orange ensemble. She was tense all the way, until we had arrived and she saw that there were wheelchairs right at the entrance to the hospital, with young attendants always on the hop to transport new arrivals away. She had no fear of the procedure, having had enough surgeries to know that this is the least of the problems. When she was done, the young doctor attending to her told us that the wound had healed well -- it was a small incision, a key-hole -- and that she needn't return for a month. So we went home feeling a great sense of accomplishment. She wanted only to lie down, and of course all movement is slow and painful but ... it's not the pain that wracked her for two months before the surgery, so she's very grateful.

And moi? Well, for some years now, I've been following an idea that no-one else is interested in, of not taking birdies very seriously. I mean, sure: I'm thrilled to acknowledge another anniversary of my existence! But I don't mind or care very much if no-one else is, or if it's forgotten. I'm glad for what there is in the way of good wishes and gifties -- I got a great one, this time in spite of my efforts to fend it off when it was suggested to me earlier: a new cellphone which all but brushes my teeth for me! I tried to resist it, saying I had JUST bought a new phone, like three months ago, the day of my departure to the US (because my previous instrument was a terminal case and it is precisely while arriving/departing on journeys that one wants one's instruments of communication to wurk!) and though it was the India's Best model -- i.e., super cheap -- it worked very well and -- and --

What can I say? It's VERY NICE to have a cutting edge model -- oh, of course NOT the fanciest, most expensivest one! -- which is yet within the range of mere mortals, with a wee camera and a radio and COLOUR ...

So yes, there was that, and there was much cake too -- one baked by my sister G, who alas was not in Madras for the birdy, but left for Bombay early in the morning and another sent by M, a lusciously chocolatey one, fresh from the Chola Sheraton! And flowers from my sister S, all the way from the US (of course the flowers themselves are local) -- pink roses and cream-white orchids -- and good wishes from various friendly corners of my world, including, most thrillingly, from VERONA in Italy! Where an intrepid friend/nephew Sumant is currently enjoying the staging of Midsummer Night's Dream for which he created a fabulous set.

At night Mum, my brother-in-law GCD and my niece M and I had a pleasant dinner downstairs, of aloo-ka-paratha and cake and red wine (a very smooth and likeable Merlot). MaiTai, my little niece-let was buzzing about industriously, and Mum's night-nurse, her cook and the upstairs cook were all having a small get-together of their own, watching the downstairs TV and eating their cake.

It was good.

Elsewhere once more

It's been awhile ...

And I'm no longer in the same sector of the galaxy as the dandelion featured in the picture. I got back to Delhi earlier than planned and am currently in Madras, having flown in on Sunday the 18th. My mother had surgery to fix the terrible back-pain she's had for the past couple of months and though I'm no Florence Nightingale, there was a general feeling that it would be good if I could be here while she's recovering. So here I am. And she is recovering. Every time there's a medical episode in the family, we're all reminded of the fragility of our lives and the complex web of chance that dictates so many of the most crucial decisions we take.

In this case, for instance, my mother would probably not have had the surgery if my cousin Khi hadn't visited her just as a young doctor was leaving the house, having paid a visit which was part-professional, part-friendly. He was upset enough from seeing Mum in pain that he talked to Khi, a complete stranger, about getting a second opinion from her orthopedic surgeon. My cousin had been trying to suggest this course of action for some time, but the conversation with the doctor at the gate gave her the confidence to go ahead and call her surgeon -- who just happened to be in the neighbourhood and thus in a position to stop by for an impromptu house-call. It all just fell into place -- and a week later Mum had her surgery. She's 87 and so of course the recovery is going to take a while but: the wound has healed well and though she says there's still a lot of pain whenever she gets up from a reclining position or stands on her feet, the fact is, she can now walk using her walker and before she could not.

My main contribution here is to be encouraging and companionable. She has two young women who take care of her physical needs, one for the day and one for the night, and also a live-in cook. My sister G and her family live upstairs and are always available for help and company too. But there's no real limit to how many people can be on hand to cheer her along, or to eat her meals with her so ... well ... here I am. Doing that.

I expect to be back in Delhirium on the 28th.

Meanwhile, I've been reading at a furious pace -- on the aircraft I had a volume of McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of ASTONISHING STORIES edited by Michael Chabon to keep me entertained and the moment I landed (or thereabouts) I plunged straight into both volumes of Ruth Reichl's highly entertaining food-centric memoirs, TENDER AT THE BONE and COMFORT ME WITH APPLES. She writes such extraordinarily vivid descriptions of flavours and textures that I have been putting on weight just reading about all the food she's eaten in the course of her highly active, productive and well-nourished life. I am told there's a third volume but I'll probably need to go out for a quick jog before I start on that one! I wish I could understand how food writers and professional cooks avoid looking like blimps but I suppose they burn off their calories with the sheer intensity of their devotion to food.

Reading books like this reminds me of an odd truth about myself: though I do sincerely enjoy eating, I'm not in any real sense, a connoisseur (-euse?). The reason is simple: my taste-buds are not capable of making fine distinctions, no doubt because I have a meagre sense of smell. I cannot, for instance, make out the difference between types of meat -- not unless it's really extreme, say ham versus beef steak or chicken and shrimp. But I don't notice the difference between mutton and beef (for instance) and it always amazes me when people know at once when they're eating one or the other. I used to think people who could take one mouthful of curry and say: "not enough ginger!" in the same way that I might say "not enough salt!" -- were just play-acting. All I can manage is the knowledge that something is curiously pallid or else that it's alive with flavour, without ever being able to identify what's missing or over-used.

I've improved slightly over the years; it's got something to do with recognizing that cooking is like painting, but with a palette of tastes and aromas, rather than colours. I realize that good cooks REALLY CAN tell when there's a pinch of rosemary missing from a stew and I can, just at the outer periphery of sensation, understand what it adds in the way of dimension to a dish. But when I read a book like this, written by someone who lives in a world dominated by virtual Himalayas of taste, flavour, texture and fragrance I can only stand back and applaud. And drool a little.

Weather Update

This cartoon was drawn about three weeks ago -- and at that time, temperatures were lurking in the lower brrrrrrs -- but believe, even now, for some of us tropical flowers it's not exactly summer. I don't know about Suki, but I am wearing, at this moment, aside from underwear: a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved tee, a camisole under the tee, tights and -- as a surprise, because I dressed in a hurry and didn't pay close attention to what I was doing -- a pair of cotton pajamas between the tights and the jeans!! You can see that the weather has had an effect on my attention centres. So -- THREE layers of legwear and TWO layers of upperwear -- and IT'S SUMMER!!!! Oh -- and socks with closed, water-proof shoes with warm lining.

Needless to say, everyone else in VT is wearing one layer or less (those who are wearing less are generally children. Or else very short adults). Sz routinely wears no shoes -- but she does that in all weather conditions so I have told myself that she has superior circulation and her feet apparently don't NEED the same kind of temperature control that mine do. Sometimes my feet get so cold I begin to understand what it must be like to be a reptile -- i.e., a creature that actually CANNOT heat itself up without external aids. Maybe I am partially cold-blooded? Sort of like a mermaid, but a land-model only, and with no scales?

Well. Anyway. It's all due to end. Tomorrow ... I leave for warmer climes, i.e., sunny BOSTON. And then Pennsylvania. *sigh* I'll be able to sing mournful songs about missing the green, green (c)hills of VT!

Eau de Joy

That title is NOT about a variety of perfume. It is supposed to be pronounced OH THE JOY and is a reference so obscure that I can't bring myself to mention it (except in brackets. Here it is: Many eons ago, when my niece M was a young thing of 17 and had recently returned from Australia, she had with her a cassette filled with cheery Aussie songs. On some occasion, when she, I and my sister G were all stuck in a car, in Madras's Pondy Bazaar, and M was in a towering bad mood, the three of us were all made to suffer a continuous loop of Aussie songs, in the sweltering heat -- and the one we all remember from that time was some ghastly thing with the refrain "Oh the Joy ..." in a powerful kangaroo accent)(so -- got it? OH THE JOY refers to something BEASTLY UNPLEASANT which is also idiotically funny).

Anyway, so here's the thing: I took a written test to get a Learner's Licence to drive -- and FLUNKED. Aarggh. Aargh. Guh-fooey. YUCK. And so on. This is NOT the Driver's Licence Test which most people fail at least once -- this is just the every-dumb-twit-can-do-it test for merely getting a LEARNER's PERMIT and I was assured that it was so simple, I could do it with my eyes closed. Well ... I couldn't. It is especially annoyingirritating because poor Sz (this is to distinguish her from St, my co-host in Vermont) had to detour from her son's piano lesson to get me to the location of the DMV (Dept of Motor Vehicles -- and I probably don't need to add that it is HALF AN HOUR away, in the direction of the piano lesson, but still NOT actually next door to it) where I could take the test and wait while I flubbed out. It is somehow immeasurably worse to tank at something if it means that another person is going to have drive me out to that location YET AGAIN next week. And she was supremely kind and unbothered by it! There ARE saints amongst us.

I have kicked myself so thoroughly, I am feeling a-glow with masochism.

And because I am helplessly inclined to look for reasons-to-be-grateful (I'm convinced it's got something to do with neuro-chemicals. I believe I have a chemical mix in my brain that ensures a sunny disposition REGARDLESS of my actual circumstances. This is not really a good thing, though it sounds like it might be. It means that even in the ultimate hell of the Inferno, I would be saying something like: well, it could be worse -- I could be in a better place but living in terror of being HERE!) I've decided that it's really for the best coz ... ummm ... most things come so easily to me that I don't value them. In this case, for instance, I glanced at the questions and thought, Ooo! I can DO this! Whereas now, on account of this ignominiosity the next time around I'm going to be crazy with anxiety!!

Right. And now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to that nice warm whip ...

SUKI in Vermont!

Well, and for those of you who have been wunnering about how I pass the time in Vermont, here's proof that it's not all fresh air and emus ...

Yep. I felt Suki needed to be taken out for a run amongst the lush hills and fields of the Green Mountain state. She seems to be enjoying herself! I plan to upload fresh strips every couple of days. I wanted to add screens to this one, but it was proving too much effort to wrestle the image into AppleWorks so I thought I'd just go ahead and post this as-is and maybe if I'm feeling energetic I'll edit it and re-post latah.

Those of you who are feeling especially alert will notice that there's a slight change in my signature ... I'm experimenting with the notion of adopting "Magnolia" as my nom-de-web. Comments welcome.

Meanwhile, in other news, I've been dying to post a message about a GREAT restaurant we all had dinner at (exactly one week ago today!! Just shows you the current rate of time-lapse around me) -- called RAINBOW SWEETS, it was a haven of wicked deliciosa!! The owner is Italian, ex-Brooklyn (NYC), been in business for the past 31 years. The restaurant looks like a small private home just by the side of the road. You enter a warm interior, scented with bakery fragrances and Bill (the owner) greets you like a horde of hungry Huns! His appetite for customers is infectious: quite aside from wanting to eat because the food's good, you begin to want to eat to please HIM! He's part of the experience -- this is one place where it WOULDN'T work to take the food home because then you'd miss Bill's inimitable commentary.

He and his family go away to Europe for two months every year and always (so I am told) come back with wonderful tales of their travels. This year it was Croatia: so -- history, geography, architecture were all part of the evening's dishes! And the dishes were just OOOOOZING. He keeps the desserts out where everyone can see 'em and it doesn't matter WHAT you eat for the meal, you've just GOTTA have dessert by the end of it! I had a succulent Greek spinach pie and avocado salad, and for dessert, two sugar-glazed profiteroles smothered in fresh Vermont cream -- collectively entitled Johnny Depp's B**ls!! If you're a diner of the male persuasion, you get Gina Lollabrigida's B**ls ... just so you know.

ANYHOW! That was last week, right? So this morning, I woke up in an absolutely gleaming-sparkling mood coz I had a dream in which -- despite many obstacles and terrors -- I pushed through and came out smiling!

The dream involved being somehow stranded in Chandni Chowk -- not the REAL CC, but a sort of make-believe nightmare place in the vicinity of the Red Fort. Ruined buildings competed with crowds of Haryanvi rickshaw pullers and sleazy snake-charmers (all right, all right -- turn those Freudian laser-probes off!) and herds of wandering cattle to make my search for a taxi in which to get home utterly impossible. HOWEVER, in the course of the dream, NOT ONLY did I successfully find taxis, but I also (instead of just going home) CHOSE to wander into the heart of the old stone building which appeared to be a haven for snake-charmers and tourist-trapping cobra-wranglers and instead of being oppressed by them, relaxed, was friendly, and was shown their secret methods of frightening the weak-hearted -- which, once they were shown to me, no longer frightened me, of course.

It was a very long dream, so I'm not going to be able to go into all the various details, but I came out of that place not only with no bites, but one of the snake-charmers gave me a (he said) traditional ornament, like a kind of ring/bracelet, which looked as if it had been made from tissue-of-rubies(a kind of pastry-layered gemstone). Towards the end of the dream, I was showing this object to some friends who were knowledgeable about traditional crafts and one of the girls confirmed that it was indeed a very rare and old-style jewel -- not especially valuable, but precious for the craft.

It isn't unusual for me to direct the events of my dreams -- I hardly ever have really bad dreams coz I usually manage to force out the nasty bits before waking up -- but the thing that made this dream especially satisfying was that it didn't require the usual effort. There were the scary bits and then an easing of the fear followed by a calm, philosophical acceptance of whatever-happens-is-okay. And it was (okay, I mean).

And yes, yes -- I am STILL learning to drive ... am STILL struggling up and down the driveway ... But the trees are looking a little more relaxed. Maybe the dream was a message from them??

Cellular Help ...

THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW YOUR CELLPHONE COULD DO...

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.
Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for
survival. Check out the things that you can do with it: -

EMERGENCY


The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find

yourself out of coverage area of your mobile network and there is

an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing

network to establish the emergency number for you, and

interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is

locked. *Try it out.*


Have you locked your keys in the car? Does you car have

remote keys?


This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone:

If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call

someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your

cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your

home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end.

Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to

you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away,

and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your

car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk). Editor's Note: *It

works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a cell

phone!*


Hidden Battery power

Imagine your cell battery is very low, you are expecting an important

call and you don't have a charger. Nokia instrument comes with a

reserve battery. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will

restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50%

increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge

your cell next time.



>>> And to all this, I just have to add: ... if only I could find my cellphone!!!

FINALLY ... here is the emu that I've been trying to upload all these days. It turns out Internet Explorer doesn't function well on Macs and AOL doesn't function well on anything. So: while using the iBook which I borrow from my friends when I'm at the "office", I haven't been able to upload on IE. And at home, using my own ThinkPad, and dialing up via AOL, no action there either. But all is changed -- because this office iBook has now been installed with FireFox -- and ta-daaaaa! Emu surprise.

All good.

Meanwhile, on other fronts (mentioned in the title), I am learning to drive. Okay, okay -- no hysteria in the audience, please -- better late than never and all that ... so it's been a stressful time for all the young trees along the driveway at my friends' home, where I am gaining valuable experience, and losing much sweat. S, the particular friend who is teaching me, has shown enormous reserves of patience, wit and serenity as we rattle up and rattle down the driveway, scaring goats and dogs and occasional (no doubt) field mice. It's only been about 10 days and there are faint glimmerings of understanding appearing in my cerebral cortex (or wherever. My liver, perhaps. I don't know where the Driving Gene is located).

The reason I am making this effort, after nearly-53 years of non-driving existence, is that I am tired of being a sort of animated parcel, in the US, always having to be collected and delivered from one location to the next. It is an immensely humbling experience, to suddenly be immobilized for lack of taxis/scooters/camels/dog sleds in which to move around. Also, when one is living in a rural area in the US, it becomes positively dangerous to be actually UNABLE to drive -- it is so much taken for granted that every normal adult has this basic skill that it could cause panic and riots if it were to be commonly known that I am Automotively Challenged.

I am discovering all kinds of interesting facts. Such as: I have two feet -- and ONLY two feet -- rather than the three most people seem to have, or SHOULD have, so that they can rest one appendage each on the Clutch, Brake and Accelerator pedals. Such as: there is such a thing as slipping backwards into oblivion when the parking brake is released. Such as: some cars DO NOT HAVE A (functioning) PARKING BRAKE. Such as: yelping and letting go the steering wheel -- mysteriously -- does NOT result in the car coming to a dead halt. Such as ... ohhhh. Never mind. I think I've said enough.

But I haven't yet actually hit anything. Which seems to me to be a good sign. At least till my next lesson ...

98 or 2? Which one r u?

At the end of this message, you are asked a question.

Answer it immediately. Don't stop and think about it.

Just say the first thing that pops into your mind.


This is a fun "test"... AND kind of spooky at the same time! Give it a try, then e-mail it around (including back to me) and you'll see how many people you know fall into the same percentage as you. Be sure to put in the subject line if you are among the 98% or the 2%. You'll understand what that means after you finish taking the "test".


Now... just follow the instructions as quickly as possible.



Do not go to the next calculation before you have finished the previous one.



You do not even need to write or remember the answers, just do it using your mind.


You'll be surprised.



Start:

How much is:



15 + 6

























3 + 56



























89 + 2

























12 + 53





































75 + 26




































25 + 52





























63 + 32

































I know! Calculations are hard work, but it's nearly over..



Come on, one more...




























123 + 5






















































QUICK! THINK ABOUT A COLOR AND A TOOL!
















































Scroll further to the bottom...






















































A bit more...























You just thought about a ... (okay people -- unless I see a minimum of three responses here, I'm not posting the END of this amusing message that came to me by e-mail. Just follow the instructions and post the FIRST RESPONSE that comes to mind.)


---and a mere half day later, five responses -- CONGRATULATIONS, people! You've just proved something to me -- i.e., that there are many more 2%ers than the original testers thought there might be! Here's the end of the message:


You just thought about a red hammer, didn't you?







If this is not your answer, you are among 2% of people who have a different, if not abnormal, mind.



98% of the folks would answer a red hammer while doing this exercise.



If you do not believe this, pass it around and you'll see.



Be sure to put in the subject line if you are among the 98% or the 2% and send to everyone, including the person that sent it to you.

Emusements

I have been trying to post the photograph of an avian friend for several days but the various computers I have at my command (? did I use that word, COMMAND? I wonder what it means ...) have been misbehaving, each in its own way. Currently, I believe I have uploaded a pic, but at this moment, cannot see it anywhere. Maybe it will be here, magically, when I click *publish*. And then again, maybe it will not ...

I have discovered much further information about the Emus since I first became fascinated with them. For instance, I now know that the person who owns them keeps them for THEIR OWN SAKE. Not for food, not for emusement, but just to give them A Room Of Their Own. Maybe I should apply for a home? Wearing an emu-costume of course.

Emu-factoid for today: their eggs are a gorgeous deep green colour. I have not yet seen one (egg, I mean) but the lady across the road from Emu Heaven told me.

A Many-Flavoured Feast

We’ve been in Vermont for just over a week now. The weather is brisk-going-on-cold. We’re living with our friends S & S, their two children E & T, aged 8 and 4 respectively and their two dogs Lobo & Skylar (the reason I’m naming the dogs while leaving the humans only initialed is that I’m guessing that dogs have fewer issues about privacy)(I may be wrong here, of course).

Amongst the varied pleasures of being here is (Amro, take note …) the food. S, who is a passionate believer in food-as-medicine-and-as-joy cooks only with organic ingredients, sometimes plucked from her own herb garden or vegetable beds. An excellent meal we had the other day is worth mentioning – but I should stress that it’s been one of many. I am singling it out for special mention only because I happened to make a note of the recipe (but I didn’t write it down so if I have mis-remembered it when I reproduce it here, that will only mean that some of you will have to try it out, realize something has gone wrong and then write furious comments to me, cursing my poor recall) – Star Pasta with Mussels in Scampi Sauce. You begin (of course) with the Mussels. Four tablespoons of butter, melted with olive oil – enough to just cover the bottom of a medium-sized pan – into which you add the mussels – S used canned baby mussels, three tins of about 400 gms each, including the water. She added a fistful of fresh-plucked chives, three medium-sized heads of garlic (peeled and crushed) and a cup or two of white wine and maybe three-quarter cup of lemon juice. Add salt to taste (though the brine in which the mussels are canned provides quite a bit of flavour). Cook for about 15 minutes and voilà. It is done and delicious.

The Star Pasta was something I’ve not had before. It’s just pasta, like any other, but shaped into TINY little stars – looked at edge-on, a cooked star looks exactly like a grain of rice – and when served, looks like a mound of grains except that they’re NOT grains. For some reason, the starry character of the pasta enters the mind and imagination of the diner – well, this diner, anyway -– so that the act of eating becomes quite ravishingly twinkly. I cannot describe it any other way! T in particular, caught quite a number of stars in her hair, on her elbows and on her cheek and whereas spaghetti similarly distributed about her person would have looked ridiculous, the stars looked frankly delightful.

Well! That gives you an idea of the kind of stay this is turning out to be. Marked by unusual thrills – which aren’t really thrills so much as daily life experienced through the prism of being an outsider to them. Another example: down the road from the house, there’s someone who maintains an emu farm. There are at least 12 or 15 of the creatures prancing around their out-door enclosure. They are about as tall as I am (when they stretch up) – i.e., five foot five – and extremely curious. As soon as they catch sight of someone walking by they trot towards the fence with a jerky-hoppy motion, their brilliant gamboge eyes glittering, their dark beaks closed and their long necks coiling this way and that, snake-like. They are covered with iron-grey feathers which look more like a pelt of long, stringy fur and where it thins out a bit on their throats, the skin shows beneath it, coloured a delicate shade of cornflower blue. From within those serpentine necks and despite the closed beaks, there comes an eldritch BONG! sound … Quite remarkable.

It’s fairly cold, even though it’s the end of April – and just in case you’re inclined to think I might be exaggerating let me inform you that yesterday afternoon, the mild rain had the cheek to turn into snow!! Not very serious snow, to be sure – it did not so much as remain on the ground – but it certainly turned the air into a fine blade, with the wind using one’s nose as its whet-stone.
This morning the puddles of rain that remained from the day before had frozen over, then cracked into muddy shards that looked exactly as if someone had broken a plastic dish and then thrown the pieces carelessly out into the yard.

I am pleased to say that, despite the many distractions, I have even managed to do a bit of reading. Over the weekend, I demolished a book called NOT BUYING IT, by Judith Levine. It’s definitely a must-read item even for someone like me – i.e, someone who doesn’t especially like to shop. The author has published four books besides being a free-lance journalist. She and her partner Paul live half the year in New York and half the year in Vermont (yes … there IS a connection … all will be revealed soon).

As she explains in the preamble to the book, it was while struggling to complete her Christmas shopping in late 2003 that she was suddenly overcome with disgust at the sheer overwhelming chaos caused by Homo Consumerensis. Instead of merely brushing aside her sense of unease at the volume and urgency of the shopping frenzy in which she and her fellow shoppers were wallowing, she chose to do something about it – by deciding to write a book about one entire year during which she refuses to spend money.

In the hands of a less honest, determined and conscientious author this might have been a dreary compilation of temptations resisted or obsessions revealed. Instead, it goes from the early days of 2004, during which Levine experiences real pangs of withdrawal from an activity she knew she enjoyed but had never before considered especially obsessive, to a greater and deeper awareness about the philosophy of runaway consumption that she and others like her are immersed within; about the impact upon the planet of such an attitude; about the echoes she sees in it, in the political realities of the US, particularly in the days just before and then following George W. Bush’s election victory at year end.

By the time her year of denial has come to an end, she is neither especially relieved to know that the “ordeal” is over nor does she truly regard it as an ordeal, now that it is almost behind her. She has learnt to appreciate economies that she hadn’t seen the value of before and she has discovered the painful bald spots appearing in the once healthy and vigorous public domain of America – the libraries that are pitifully over-used and under-funded, the public services that are running down.

During her stay in Vermont, she and Paul become involved in a protest against a proposal to build an unsightly cell-phone tower not far from where our hosts/friends S & S live. They had become intimately involved in the protest. Believing as they do in the urgent need to re-think economic priorities with ecological sanity and the planet’s best interests in view, they were of course passionately opposed to the cell-tower. Levine refers to them in her book – which is of course a powerful incentive to read the book for a guest living in their house! – and by the end of the year, the tower, though sanctioned, is down-sized so that it is less of an eye-sore. It has not yet been built (it may never be) and so, to this day, we do not have cell-phone reception here. But the phones work perfectly well, and so does the Internet and in all truth, without traffic jams to be stuck in, or a social round to maintain, the lack of cell-phones hardly matters AT ALL. And that’s from me, a gadget-lover and SMS-fiend.


In a sense Levine’s book formed an interesting – might I go so far as to say piquant? – counterpoint to the book I had JUST finished reading, called Julie & Julia (I mentioned it in my previous post but didn’t get around to posting a link) which was, by contrast, entirely about consuming – food, that is, of the richest and most gourmet kind. Julie Powell (the author of that book) also created a year-long programme for herself and wrote a book around it and became something of a celebrity too – though it is unclear whether she will go on to sustain her place in the sun with more books. It’s silly, of course, to compare the books, because they really have very little in common and would probably not be mentioned in the same context except for the fact that I read them one after the other. Still – since I DID do that – it interested me to hear echoes from one book to the next. The powerful allure of food and eating in the first book, the way that it connects so many people to the thirty-year-old author’s personal aim of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering The Art Of French Cooking and the powerful siren-song of the shopping plaza sounding in the ears of the second author, as she struggles to resist the urge to buy herself new clothes or see the latest films or buy an unnecessary trinket as a present for her niece upon her Graduation Day from University.

If it isn't already obvious, I strongly recommend both books. Dunno if they're easy to find/order in Delhirium, but I expect The Bookshop, Jorbagh and also Strand Bookshop in Bombay would be able to order them.

Arrived and on the move!

So ... my recommendation for THIS year is AIR FRANCE. We boarded our flight in Delhirium at 1.00 a.m. and were greeted at the aircraft's entrance by airhostesses wishing us "Bon Soir Madame/M'sieur!" -- it was a great start for any Francophile -- and the rest of the flight confirmed that first impression. Yep. By the end of it, E and I were chattering away in French, like a pair of parrots that have been taught a series of stock phrases, and are eager to try them all out!! I don't know what it is about the french language, but being immersed in it makes the immersee feel supercool, elegant, sophisticated, pleasantly perfumed and even (at a stretch) slender.

The result of this was that we wafted out at Boston's Logan airport in a haze of gaulic good-humour, buoyed up by TOTALLY OUTSTANDING FOOD (are you reading this, Amro?) -- not too much, not too little, but fresh and tasty and even the trays weren't too fussy or the little packets impossibly difficult to break into. Red wine both meals, and a nice, smooth dry one it was. There was a scheduled six hour wait at Paris' Charles de Gaulle and that was a bore, but the flight after it was just as good as the one that preceded it so ... like I said, we arrived in very good humour. We were out in the mild spring sunshine within minutes -- literally, I think it took about 20 minutes from the time we left the aircraft -- and that even includes the surreal 15 minute wait between the aircraft and the interior of the Immigration Hall, with all 300+ passengers backed up in one long, bewildered line in front of a locked glass door, coz SOMEBODY forgot to open it and let us in. My niece's partner L collected us in his car and took us to my niece D's sweet, pretty and pleasant-scented apartment in Arlington.

And yes, Amro, we had a GREAT dinner, cooked by my niece, of angel-hair pasta and excellent salmon. Delicately herbed and very tasty. MMMmmm.

I am not going to extend this much longer coz I actually have a life that I need to get back to right about ... NOW. But before I go, I need to say a word about two books I've been reading: one is Irwin Allen Sealy's RED -- which I found so charming, unusual and mind-tickling that I gave it away to D before I'd finished reading it, so keen was I to share it with someone else! More about it in my next post. And the second book is one that I read about in Zig's post about the BLOOKER awards -- it's called JULIE & JULIA by Julie Powell and I'm enjoying it thoroughly. I would've preferred it to have included every single recipe that the author talks about, but even without them it IS, as the backcover blurb promises, a delicious read. All about the joys of cooking -- something I know nothing about, but am constantly hoping to just acquire someday without REALLY TRYING. (If you're reading this, Hurree, I hope you're feeling pleasantly jealous!! I promise to lend you my copy if you haven't got your own by the time I return ... chucklechuckle)

Preparing to Make the Jump to Light-Speed

So -- yes -- once again, we're gathering up our forces to make the Jump. It's an odd feeling, EVERY SINGLE TIME. I never reallyreallyreally believe I am going to make it through all the tiresome hoops and rings of fire that lie between me and the disembark-destination. I always assume that there'll be trolls and were-tramps all along the way, whose only aim in life is prevent me from achieving my goals.

At this moment, I am three-quarters-packed, not yet feeling the panic of wondering what vital items I have left out but already sensing the dwindling of space and time as the hour approaches. *sigh*

More later ...

Young Iraqi Ballerinas

This is going to be a slow rambling post about ... well, to begin with, this photograph. It appeared in the Asian Age, Sunday April 2nd 2006 on page 16 "Newsmakers" of the DELHI AGE section. It's an AFP photograph but has no other captions or credits and when I searched for it online couldn't locate it on the AFP site. So ... here it is, scanned from my newspaper in all its grainy glory.

I found myself gazing at it several times all through the day. I don't know whether your screen rez allows you to see the painterly texture of the image, the wonderful Degas flavour of it, echoed in the painting of a ballerina displayed on the back wall of the stage (I don't think it is a Degas, but it has the correct mood to be one). The colours, the expressions on the faces of the little girls, the curious suspension of life and reality beautifully symbolized by the pair of dancers behind the row of girls in front, of a slightly older ballerina supported on the arms of a male dancer, whom we see only from the waist down. She is all pastel and pink, her cruelly dainty shoes -- can't you just feel the tender toes cramped and bleeding within the tiny wooden cage of that unnatural footwear! -- raised in the air, while he ... well ... he's just the muscle in the picture and yet, in his uniqueness, he stands out. We don't see his face, yet we can guess that he is strangely handsome, that he lives a life that most young men only dream of, immersed up to his bobbing Adam's apple in acres of virginal semi-clad female flesh.

It is hard to know what story or moment is being depicted here. What exactly is the meaning of those tender, underdeveloped limbs, just one for each of the young girls, raised up at that ungainly angle? Are they in the midst of a dance movement or was the photograph posed, frozen for the camera? There is something so thrillingly familiar about the expressions on those very young faces -- the combination of boredom and solemn engagement, the prim sweetness of the wreaths around the heads, the flushed pink skin, the glistening eyes, the half-opened mouths. There is, about the picture, a hushed breathlessness, just as these girls' lives, one senses, are also hushed, breathless, half-open, paused: until ... time's little switches get turned on one by one; they blossom and grow full; the weight of womanly Otherness transforms them; that sweetness is gone -- replaced with other flavours, for sure --but never again that intense, that pure, that unconscious sweetness.

It is very odd for me to have these thoughts.

I have seen lots of pictures of ballerinas before; one of my schools offered ballet as an option and therefore I saw many versions of these young dancers performing in real life, and can still see them in my memory. I used to get Girls Own annuals with endless photo essays of ballerinas and their costumes, hopes, tears, triumphs. Yet none of these remembered pictures evoked in me the confused thoughts that this picture did.

Is it because I know that the girls are Iraqi and that their performance takes place against the backdrop of the war that has engulfed their world? Here's what the text says: Life goes on: Young Iraqi ballerinas perform on a Baghdad stage on Saturday during the opening ceremenony of the First Festival of Child Theatre in Iraq. The 11-day Festival started despite the death of two actors who were to perform in one of the plays in the festival. Their bodies, riddled with bullets were found last week in the war-torn Iraqi capital. The festival is dedicated to Iraqi children and aims to revive happiness among the children, who witness daily bloodshed in their country. (AFP)

On the one hand, I feel what (perhaps) the festival organizers would like everyone to feel -- that it is a remarkable achievement to be able to produce a full-fledged ballet in a country that has seen the kind of upheaval that has been the stuff of front page news for ... oh ... three years already? On the other hand, I feel it is bizarre and inappropriate for little girls to be paraded in this way for all the world to gawp at. I feel quite guilty harbouring such thoughts. But there you are: with one part of my mind, I feel that this kind of display of little girls is exactly what leads, through sad and twisted pathways, into crimes against girls and women.

With these thoughts still twitching and fidgeting in the back of my mind, today, I accessed this link sent to me by Zigzackly. It's a must-read blog-post and it makes reference to two very shocking incidents -- one that occurred in Vietnam, at My Lai, and another that occurred out of media view, to the blogger herself.

In case it seems as if I'm leading up to a grand general theory -- I am going to disappoint you -- coz NO, I'm not. I just wanted to present two very different images of reality, and leave you with the task of working out how we manage to live with both of them side by side(-- okay, not physically, but certainly juxtaposed through the magic of media) in the same world.

And that's all for today.

More Linx

It must be a sign of galloping senility that I find this funny ... (CAUTION: sound file alert -- if there are children/co-workers/sane people in the room with you, do NOT click)(if there are cats, go right ahead).

Learning about Nangla

Over the years, there's been one team of documentary film-makers who interacted with me for whom I have only praise: they call/called themselves RAQS Media Collective. I used to think of them as a three-person unit, but they are in fact (surprise!) three separate individuals, all three highly motivated, very bright, industrious and creative. Their names are Monica, Jeebesh and Shuddhabrata and amongst their several achievements is the establishment of the media resource centre and lab known as SARAI.

I'm posting below a message sent out by Monica about NANGLA MAACHI a community in transition/dislocation, in Delhi.

Dear friends,

Over last 35 years we have seen many an internal dislocation of habitations and life worlds within the city of Delhi. This is something that started with high intensity from the early 70s. Now the process of this internal dislocation has become intense and harder.

Nangla Maachi is a 30 year old habitation. It was made by its inhabitants over this period. It is along the river bank and next to Pragati Maidan (Progress Grounds). It has now become valuable real estate as it is prime land for new urban development fairly close to the centre of the city.

The process of its dislocation has, therefore, begun.

In Nangla Maachi Sarai/Ankur had set up a cybermohalla lab two years ago. Many practitioners have been through the lab.

Over these two years, diaries have been written by the lab practitioners and many of the entries have been about life in Nangla. These diary entries are also a way to stubbornly remind us all that Nangla was made into a
lively, heterogeneous habitation by countless people's efforts, and needs to be remembered for this creative act of making and finding ways of living together.

A recent entry reads - "Packing up and leaving from Nangla has begun." The diary is now a record of a contested terrain of the violence of dislocation.

We have set up a blog in both English and Hindi, to share with a wider public the various diary entries of the practitioners. Do visit it, read it, circulate it, share it and link it further. Your comments and stories will be very valuable.

English language blog


Hindi language blog

More posting from the practitioners will be made. A countdown to yet another disappearance of a self-organised urban space has begun.

best
Monica

Silly Joke Alert!

Okay, if ya hate silly jokes involving Persons of the Blonde Persuasion, read no further. There. I warned you ... This one's from my niece, M.


Blonde - Painting
A blonde wanting to earn some extra money decided to hire herself out
as a handyman-type and started canvassing in a wealthy neighborhood.
She went to the front door of the first house and asked the owner if
he had any jobs for her to do. "Well, you can paint my porch, how much
will you charge?" he replied. The blonde said "How about $50.00 ?" The
man agreed and told her that the paint and ladder were in the garage.

The man's wife inside the house, heard the conversation and said to
her husband, "Does she realize that the porch goes all the way around
the house?" The man replied, "She should, she was standing on the
porch." A short time later, the blonde came to the door to collect her
money. "You're finished already?" he asked. "Yes, the blonde answered
and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats". Impressed, the man
reached in his pocket for the $50.00.

"And by the way," the blonde added, "that's not a Porch, it's a Ferrari".

Another joke ... ... not about blondes ... sent to me by cyber-bud Chuck.

A guy walks into a bar, notices a very large jar on the counter, and sees it's filled to the brim with $10 bills. He guesses there must be thousands of dollars in it.

He approaches the bartender and asks. "What's up with the jar?"

"Well, you pay $10 and if you pass three tests, you get all the money."

The man certainly isn't going to pass this up. "What are the three tests?"

"Pay first, those are the rules," says the bartender.

So the man gives him the $10 and the bartender drops it into the jar.

"OK," the bartender says. Here's what you need to do: First - You have to drink that entire gallon of pepper tequila, the whole thing, all at once...and you can't make a face while doing it. Second, there's a pit bull chained-up out back with a sore tooth. You have to remove the tooth with your bare hands. Third. - There's a 90-year old woman upstairs who has never reached orgasm during intercourse. You've gotta make things right for her."

The man is stunned. "I know I paid my $10, but I'm not an idiot! I won't do it! You have to be nuts to drink a gallon of pepper tequila, and then do those other things..."

"Your call," says the bartender, "but your money stays where it is."

As time goes on and the man has a few drinks, then a few more, he asks, "Where ez zat tequila?" He grabs the gallon with both hands and downs it with a big slurp. Tears streaming down both cheeks, but he doesn't make a face.

Next, he staggers out back where the pit bull is chained-up and soon the people inside the bar hear a huge, noisy, scuffle going on outside. They hear the pit bull barking, the guy screaming, the pit bull yelping and then silence. Just when they think the man surely must be dead, he staggers back into the bar, with his shirt ripped and large bloody scratches all over his body.

"Now," he says, "where's the old woman with the sore tooth?"

Joy!

COMMENT moderation rocks! I am having such a great time zapping the lice just at the point when they dangle their little suckers online. YOW! It's toooo much. I get so energized that I've even been enjoying backing into the archives to zap the resident spam-lice out of existence -- KA-CHOOOONG! Zowie! zappapapapapaZAP! Ka-BLOOOOIEEEEE!! Great sense of empowerment. Highly recommended.

Alas, I have also managed to lose one of the legitimate comments that was posted at the site. That's what happens when an over-ardent comment-moderator hits the zap-button too often. Sorry, and I'll be more careful da next time.

Also highly recommended, Bembo Zoo, sent to me by my friend Anvar -- if your eyes have been starved for candy, this site offers a feast of clever dainties. Please note, that's BEMBO, as in the typeface, and not BIMBO as in a species of nubile human.

The New Racism

An Indian friend reports that he's been facing discrimination while on a house hunt. He works for a well-heeled Australian multinational company and has recently been looking for a place to stay. The landlords to whom he speaks on the phone sound very enthusiastic. When he goes over to meet them and they see that he's Indian, they turn him down without a blush. He's been told in so many words, "We don't rent to Indians."

And where is this happening? In our glorious capital city, New Delhi.

So the next time you hear some recently returned NRI complaining about Westerners being so racist, help them wake up to the realities of their motherland by telling them this story. Me, I believe Indians can out-racist anyone, when we put our five-thousand-years-of-civilization-selves to the task. Sure I get "raced" at when I am abroad -- but it's hardly very different to the various forms of discrimination I am exposed to right here, in Delhirium. Reading the International Women's Day posts at Zigzackly's place in reference to so-called "Eve-Teasing" I am reminded of the years for which merely being a woman resulted in virulent gender discrimination.

I don't face that stuff any more, but on the rare occasions I go walking to the local market, I feel uncomfortable just because I can sense that for the street elements, I am "different". It's no longer anything very specific -- I'm not a bimbette, I'm not obviously rich, I'm not a foreigner -- but my hair's very short and I don't dress in the manner expected of middle-aged middle-class women. This is enuff to cause the local fauna to react in subtle ways -- it's nothing very obvious, just a slight flinching and clearing of throats, often accompanied by a release of spit, a bit like dogs scent-marking territory. It's not racism, so much as an instinctive dislike of anyone who doesn't conform to received notions of "normal".

By contrast, when I am away from these fabled streets, I am merely a brown-skinned "other", who is accorded a neutral space, neither fond nor unfond. Most of the time, I pass unnoticed and am often, I believe, mistaken for Latino. I find this neutrality very comfortable to live with. Sometimes I can see a clear-cut race-based reaction. On such occasions, I just remind myself of what it's like back in the motherland and feel ... well ... the familiar DIScomforts of home!

Meanwhile, on the COMMENTS front, I am enjoying the relief from spam. I hadn't realized how annoying it was until I turned it off. Like having an infestation cyber-lice. Yech. I am also finally getting around to clearing the unwanted posts out of the various little pockets into which they've inserted themselves. I am going to experiment with turning comment "moderation" on now.

Spam

COMMENTS are off for the moment -- and maybe forever -- on account of spam. There was TOO much building up. Also I've been slowly turning over in my mind, my response to the blogging experience in general. The other day, when some young journalist called up to ask questions about "celebrity blogging" these thoughts came to the fore. One of the questions she asked was, "What do you feel about exposing your personal information to the whole wide web?" Of course I had to laugh: my experience has shown me that there's about as much real exposure on a blog as standing naked alone in a desert.

On the few occasions when there IS high traffic, it is nearly always of low consequence. For instance, there was a surge of visits during the performance of my play in California last year. But the calibre of responses consisted almost entirely of emotional garbage that no-one really needed to either read or write. If I'd turned off comments then, the results would certainly have been cooler all around: maybe a few people would have e-mailed me with their furious remarks and I could have chosen which ones to present or not. But the high temperatures that suddenly flared up at the time would simply not have had the easy outlet that they did, and we'd all have had more time to spend on pleasanter pursuits.

Of course it's sad (now, in this commentless atmosphere) not to hear from the few regulars whose responses I welcome here (like Amro and gt, f'rinstance). But the irritants are in greater abundance. The only other time when it was really fun to have a blog was when the SUDOCRITTERS game was in progress. That was cool! And I can see from the traffic stats that SudoCritter continues to be a powerful magnet for one particular search engine in Europe. There is a continuous speckling of hits from France and Holland, every day. However that also means that the relentless spam-parasites (spamasites?) target those posts and fill 'em up with rubbish. I haven't been bothering to remove them, coz it's too much effort. I know about them only because they show up as e-mail.

So ... why do I blog at all? Because it continues to be worthwhile to put out a trickle of news about my patch of turf. It's a bit like sending out a newsletter -- without having to send it out. I know that friends and family visit here in order to confirm that I'm (a) still apparently alive (b) still have the use of my hands and am at least solvent enough to have access to the internet.

I also get to share my most recent amusements. For instance: this mindless-fun game, which I got from Dave Barry's Blog. And one more site, for those who are interested in serial killers ... (sent to me by e-mail by my ComputerVine buddy Chuck aka Slipshod).

Neem News

Last week my mother (who lives in Madras) had a close call with diabetes -- she went into a low-sugar coma just before lunch. She was shifted to the nearby hospital by ambulance and revived in the ICU the moment she was given a drip, and seemed in good cheer when I spoke to her on the phone that evening. The reason I'm sharing this news is that the substance that apparently triggered her brief coma was half a glass of neem-leaf infusion. She'd been told it was a well-known Ayurvedic method of reducing high-sugar levels in diabetics. Maybe her blood-sugar was already normal or perhaps unknown to her it had dipped lower than usual. But the point is: if neem leaves boiled in water can result in a coma-inducing drop of blood-sugar in my mother it sounds like something worth checking out as a low-cost alternative to the normal treatments and drugs that diabetics use. Of course, when you consider the night my mother spent in the ICU, that made it an unusually EXPENSIVE treatment ...

Meanwhile, a friend sent me the following link to an article about the opening up of a new frontier in outsourcing. Reminds me of a certain play I wrote ...