Irony thy name is...

The note posted in the ACJ hostel today (I'm still wondering whether to link to it or not - it's been taken down since) warrants a counter-rant, so here it is.

The note, essentially a complaint against some of the dysfunctional electrical infrastructure in the hostel (microwave ovens, ceiling fans), is most upset about the fact that we've been asked to mind our electricity usage. "Irony thy name", notes the letter-writer.

Um, entitlement, thy name...?

I may be in a minority here, but I've been perfectly happy with the usage of our (yes, very high) fees. Most of all - there are over 8 labs with mostly functioning computers, and staff to check on it; we've never had a shortage of infrastructure in terms of teaching; there's a beautiful library...There's also a canteen which - so sue me - serves up mostly-delicious food.

I know it's really cool to hate authority and all. And yeah, there may be problems with some of the offensive/aggressive measures taken to keep people in check (I should admit that I don't know of these). But malfunctioning microwave ovens do not grant us license to therefore dismiss directives to be careful in our usage of energy. Why take such offence?

The note also seemed to be affected by a variant of Murphy's law - in speaking about irony, the high costs of ACJ and whatnot, it was sadly replete with basic spelling errors.

Brown sugar

"If you find the bus, take it, whether you want to go or not", my parents would joke, especially when they would see a bus to Koramangala or something.

I seem to have inherited the same attitude, but for baking items - when I see the hard-to-find Trust brown sugar, I just buy it, irrespective of whether I need it or not.

A bit of a problem, yeah. But brown sugar is so useful, both in recipes calling for chocolate and fruit. I've made my favourite cookie recipe again and again only with granulated white sugar. It works fine, but the grains sometimes show up in the final cookie - not nice.

So right now there's a batch of dough, brown sugar version, resting, ready to be baked. Excited!

Something new

I've been confined, more or less, to one room over the last two days, and I suspect this will continue till about Tuesday. This is new, and interesting.

I've often wondered what it would be like to “do nothing” for a couple of days, and I'm getting a good idea of that. I have all my necessary gadgets – laptop, phone, hard drive, notebooks, books – which means I can keep myself intellectually occupied.

But I've still been – shame, shame – yawningly bored at times. It's doing strange things to me. In moments of laziness, I'll just zone out and play endless games of tetris or watch Modern Family. When I'm a bit more aware of the opportunities this thing presents to me, I'll focusedly read/write/think about something.

So the new thing is this sort of confinement. Which is, overwhelmingly, more positive than negative. But it's also allowing me to learn about myself, about how much I depend on things like ACJ and the Internet for stimulation, and how much I depend on that stimulation for my overall mood and so on.

Bhupen Hazarika

1926-2011.

Two of his most memorable songs are below.

**

A lecturer at college would probably criticise my selection and urge me to push beyond, and look for his more folksy tunes. And I will.

But for now, these two songs, because I have the strongest connections to these. I heard the Rudali song as a very young girl, of about 6 or 7 I think. It still makes me heart-clenching sadness, and simultaneously intoxicated.

Then there's Ganga. I remember watching the video with my mother (whose birth name was Ganga) and childishly trying to hide how moved I was by the song. I remember buying the cassette from a store in 9th cross, Malleswaram. We probably still have it, I should look for it.

**
The "Ganga behti ho kyon" version that became popular a few years ago:

Dil Hoom Hoom Kare

Something old

I can't believe I've gotten old enough that my keyboard is old. Of course, there are other old things I've been in touch with: my father's frayed copy of Of Human Bondage, which I consumed eagerly as a fourteen year-old; my mother's old saris; report cards from class 1.

But my keyboard is a bit more personal than that, especially because I begged for it. Uh, it's another matter that I've slipped in and out of playing it of late.

It's nearly ten years old now; my father gifted it to me one day in 2002, after the toy keyboard he had bought me from Netherlands became insufficient for my growing musical ambitions. There was the school prayer part to play and practice for, for one, and I had been sulking (in some grandiose terms like 'lack of support for talent' and all, I am certain).


The thing I like about it is that it's not fancy. It's a wonderful keyboard to learn to play: it's not for an accomplished keyboardist. It's for someone who's fascinated, a bit obsessed – enough to pick up a song from the bank by watching the visual keyboard guide built in to it.

The first thing I learned on it was Pachelbel's Canon in D. Today I'm sick of the tune and how overplayed it is, but as a girl of twelve or thirteen, it was quite the best thing in the world. Simple, easy to pick up, easy to impress people with (a couple of friends were so enamoured of the piece that they would say I should 'play it at their wedding').

I still sit at my CTK-481 once in a while and play a couple of chords. Over the years, my exposure to instruments has grown: I've heard real grand pianos, uprights, and very good electric pianos. So the sound of my keyboard does strike me as a bit harsh. But you know. That's the thing about old, unpretentious friends: you keep returning to them.

Speaking ill of the dead

Steve Jobs, in this case.

But cut through the initial irritation, and you'll get the strongest criticism of the man:

"Jobs has also been Darth Vader to the open-source movement by giving us hermetically sealed products. You can’t tweak ’em. You can’t fix ’em. You can only use software that Apple will profit from."

Full post here.

On the fare at the Shatabdi Express

"Just got those twigs of breadsticks and I refused them triumphantly. In some parts of the world people use this condiment as a choostick for strengthening teeth and gums. In other parts of the world, they lodge this stick vertically inside crocodiles' mouths to keep it open..."

[K]