Memories haunt!

 Certain memories! How they haunt forever! Usha. She was my junior. May be, we were almost the same age because I have completed my post-graduation at a very early age. I had helped her with her French, and with the contents of her essay in a contest which won her a French trip. 

Naturally she cared for me. The Eiffel Tower paperweight she bought me from Avignon is a keepsake. After she got married, our rôles changed slightly. Hers was a love marriage with a Tambram. 

She was a Telugu Brahmin, and a very close relative of a very very powerful leader. She had adjustment issues within the marriage, and I was the counsellor who tried to convince her how minor disagreements with in-laws could be silly misunderstandings. 

Here was a quite funny situation, a Maharashtrian high caste Brahmin girl trying to explain the Tamil symbolism to a Telugu girl. Yet the underlying civilisational cultural bond seemed to carry us through, thereby making us better friends.  

Unfortunately, she died within a fortnight of her baby's birth. I still cannot forget that small infant, an exact replica of his late mother, wailing away even when the poor grandma was trying her level best to comfort him. 

The haunting bit, however, is still more vivid. Her husband, we had not met much, but he knew me as Usha's best well-wisher, was obviously overcome with intense grief. 

Tearily he announced to the dead body. "Usha, see, Pratima is here!". I am ready to swear. Her body, tied to that pier/wooden stretcher, literally tried to get up! My other friend, who had come along, too, was shocked beyond words, mentioned it later, too.

I had never seen a 'body' before. The whole night I could not sleep. Yet this incident has forever convinced me that life might go on(!?!) even after the body dies!?! Why then, for the sake of your weird notions of fun, hurt, harm n harass human beings, when alive?

Much more, I understood what post-partum depression may do. Hence, however much feminism may be mocked, yes, there ARE certain, in fact, very many, womanly sensitivities that DO need deep considerations, and beyond all the shrill n empty sloganeering by n of career feminists.

Most important of all, the incident has made me forever grateful to Aai who was down with high fever when she was eight months pregnant with me, yet in the ninth month, she travelled in a meter gauge train some six/seven hundred kilometers, while the late April sun beat mercilessly. Within a week of reaching her parents' place, a small town, she walked to the hospital for a normal, non-Caesaurian delivery, while the nurses were brutal, and doctors indifferent! What a mother's love can bear!

Pratima@Well, tragedies cannot last forever, and often have a funny end. Well, Usha's husband had asked me to inform a Tamil professor, all of them, unlike me, were in to Linguistics, about Usha's unfortunate demise. It was the week-end. So I decided to inform his colleague who lived on campus so that the message would reach him.                                                                                I had no idea that the lady was sweet on him! First she obsessed about finding out if I had called him up. After convincing her somewhat hopefully that I knew neither his phone number nor his address, she calmed down on that account.                                                                Next followed a simply wow conversation, with monkeys chattering madly overhead, hidden in the canopy. She was insisting that it was a murder.                                                                          I tried to politely point out that it might not be so, at least because Usha was closely connected with very powerful people. Then she started haranguing about how the need for such a murder (why, a 'son' was born, no?) is like the desire for sex!                                                  Thereafter, I did what all students are excellent at, obediently stand in front of the teacher, head bowed down, eyes half open, ears and brain completely closed, tightly shut indeed! Feminism sounds fun, if n when shallow!

Quote of the day:                                                           "Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” Wise 'saw' as ever by Oscar Wilde!

Word of the day: postpartum depression               Postpartum depression (also called perinatal depression) is a medical mood disorder that can happen during (late) pregnancy or after giving birth.

Nuggets@ Know thy Humanities

 Translation takes various forms. One of the seminal modes is 'transmuting' a text in to a film. Of course, bibliophiles look down upon the process as a demeaning of a book, and we have pj's of the "donkey grazing at the corner dumpsite preferring a book over a film, as it is in better taste'', et al, variety.

Who is the linguist-scholar who theorised this process extremely interestingly and elaborately? Which term did he use to describe this process? How did he define this process? 

Pratima Agnihotri

Fear(-n-)some Future!

 Yes, I am absolutely of the opinion that one should forever be a learner. Indeed, at no point, can one say that one knows everything about one's chosen area. Surely not, given the information era! 

Yes, it is better to be a jack of many subjects and a master-cum-student in the area you love, which you have chosen as a passionate pursuit that lasts a lifetime. 

Well, currently, however, the AI seems to question these very (basic) premises. It seems to be progressing at a supersonic speed. You complete a course, quite a basic one for sure, you feel now I would practise it to perfection, and, voilà, in that zilch second, the AI industry springs a new surprise on us, the poor innocent unsuspecting world! 

At times, the changes are minor. Often, they are yet another quiver for the same bow! Yet these arrows are quite life threatening because, in no time, across the world, that area, Montessori to M.D. (incidentally, currently, a Ph.D. doctor is, well, less said, the better!) gets saturated to excess. And, so on, and so on, ad infinitum! 

Honestly, one pities the GenZ, Gen alpha beta kappa, et al, given such a future. Sure, in a lifetime, one should wear (n tear) a few professional hats simultaneously. One must multi-task. Yet, given the speed with which the AI shifts gears,  in the future, one's crown would sure be sans hats, sans hair, sans brains! Any wonder at all that the GenZ protests are hare-brained!!?!!

Pratima@ Very soon I would re-write the seven (st)ages Shakespeare immortalised! Yes, would sure share them on our blog, too.

Quote of the day:                                                           "When we think we're multi-tasking we're actually multi-switching. That is what the brain is very good at doing - quickly diverting its attention from one place to the next. We think we're being productive. We are, indeed, being busy. But in reality we're simply giving ourselves extra work," argues Michael Harris. Yes, indeed! 

Word of the day: hare-brained                                  Hare-brained means crazy and unlikely to be successful. 

Nuggets@ Know thy Humanities

 Journalists can at times coin concepts and related phrases that may define an entire discipline. An example of this phenomenon, which academics would typically love to hate and look down upon, is Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov's fourfold process.

Bezmenov was a Soviet journalist for the Novosti Press Agency. In 1970, he visited New Delhi as a member of the Soviet mission. During that tour, Bezmenov defected to the West, and the U.S. re-settled him in Canada as per an arrangement between the US and the Canadian security agencies.

May be, such turns and twists in his career helped him define how a political system, nay, the country itself, is brought in to the fold of the powers that be. 

Name the four stages Bezmenov talks about.  The discussion might help many understand the turmoil brewing in the countries neighbouring India. Critics may accuse the CJP of being a stooge of the Deep State, et al, trying to thus disrupt India itself. 

Pratima Agnihotri

Lies lead ....?!?

 I would not know about you. Personally though, I love fairy tales and folk tales. They have such a wealth of wisdom. One such story is Pinocchio's. Yes, he is the boy whose nose grows longer n longer when he lies! Good that it is just a story about a fictional wooden puppet, and it was created by the Italian writer Carlo Collodi in his 1883 novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio."

If the Pinocchio phenomenon were real and operational right now, havoc it would create! Look at our poor Dipke. Yesterday itself, our blog sympathised with his grievous loss, right? Well, there is a proper video wherein the police are gently and repeatedly informing him that every possible help would be extended to him, given the unfortunate circumstances. And, yet, huge propaganda goes on and on about the dictatorial government that ignored deaths of dear n near ones! Let us not even mention the Gurudwara lie by the CJP which is so very irresponsible, in addition.

How about Elon Musk who declared that the Indian Prime Minister is M/S Ambani! Unlike certain characters hereabouts, he  seems to have forgotten the rhyming Adani! Well, the hard truth about why he is grumbling about not getting the portion of the pie, eh, the huuuuuge number of Indian internet users whom he would so kindly like to serve, is hidden in the forests in North-Eastern India. If you were to read up the details, you, too, would agree that lies lead to, luckily for the twenty-first century not to Pinocchio noses, but to a loss of credibility.

Career politicians in our country who are lusting after Lady Power, too, seem to have never read the fairy tale during their school days. Otherwise, they would have, like the common indian, celebrated the ISRO mission EOS-05 which would help avert large scale destruction due to natural calamities, not to forget, the excessively friendly border activities by certain neighbours!

Why lie through the teeth? It entertains the audience who chuckle at your mendacity, and at your loss of credibility which, in the long run, is sure to take you away from your 'power'-ful ambitions!

Pratima@ Lies, lies, every where!/How any truth to find?

Quote of the day:                                                              "I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."  So summed up Friedrich Nietzsche the after effects of what lies lead to!

Word of the day: propaganda                                          Propaganda is information and ideas, that may be false or exaggerated, but which are used to gain support for a political leader, party, and so on.

Nuggets@ Know thy Humanities

 These two Brothers  were academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors. It is often argued that their work in folklore, linguistics, and literary scholarship shaped the development of modern folkloristics. It contributed in a big way to the expansion of their mother tongue as well. 

  During their  University days,  they developed a lasting interest in medieval literature and the cultural history of their country. Thus saw the world the first ever collection of folk tales and fairy tales.

A clue: We have, all of us, as children loved the tales they told in the collated version. As we grew up, the sub-texts of these stories made more sense. 

Pratima Agnihotri

Goddess greetings!

 Today begins the Sharadiya Navratra. Impossible it is to translate "Sharadiya" in to English, because like all the other European languages, English, too, has neither the monsoon nor the 'Sharad' season. In India, however, it occupies a central position in parlance. In a way, such a linguistic usage is inevitable because India continues to be an agrarian economy.

True, right now the talk of the town, eh, of the world, is the way America has "cut off the head of the snake" as the Sonderling saying goes. Yet we all know that the real grouse is the Indo-American treaty regarding the agricultural produce, and the related livestock and fisheries businesses. 

Some proof this tariff trough is of the fact that the agrarian sector matters the most to us. The Shardiya Navratra is a celebration of this primacy. The Kharif crop is almost ready for harvesting around this time. True, this year, the Niño effect has ripped off reaping. 

Yet the seasonal cycle is unmistakable. The bounty of nature is beatific. Hence its symbolic representation as the ever prolific goddess. Beautiful, just like this underlying signification are the 'strotras' extolling the goddess. 

She is the holiest of the holies, she is beneficence itself, she is the daughter of the mountains (the Himalayas from whence begin five rivers that have enriched civilisations and cultures for centuries), she is the parent principle, she is strength, she is the intellect, she is the spirit, she is the soul. Hence her adulation! Happy Navratri! 

Pratima@One of the items in my basket wish list is visiting Kolkata during the navratri. It has to be what Ganesh Utsav is to Pune. Well, with a Bengali friend, I did attend the "pujo" pandals in Hyderabad. But it was not mere nostalgia nor fomo when she insisted that it was no patch on "amar shonar" Debima for whom the only supplication would be "Bhalo bashi"! 

Quote of the day:                                                         "The goddess is the great nurturing mother who contains all things, gives birth to all things, and ultimately reclaims all things back into her cosmic womb." Yes, Carl Jung.

Word of the day: beneficence                                  Beneficence is the ethical principle of acting with kindness, charity, and an active obligation to promote the best interests and well-being of one n all.