Doppelganger!

A lady with whom I have a nodding/smiling  acquaintance accosted me on my walk this morning.

'I haven't seen your mom around for a while,' she said.

'It's been five years since my mother passed away,' I told her.

'Aren't you an artitect (sic)? She had said that her daughter's an artitect. She looks exactly like you.'

Much as I would love to be an artitect/artytect, I respectfully declined.

But there's someone in our complex who's a dead ringer for me!

Maybe I can be a good  'arty'tect.

Especially since I painted a couple of oil paintings in recent months.

Number Love!

The fact that I did not do particularly well in the last maths exam that I appeared for several decades ago does not mean that I do not appreciate the beauty of numbers. I was delighted to learn that my friend Riti Prasad has written a fun maths book for children ( age10and above) and was very pleased when Mango Books (an imprint of DC Books) sent me a copy to review.

Some famous mathematicians find their place in the first chapter of the book- there are brief notes about the ancient Greek mathematicians from Thales, Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes and Erastosthenes, the Indians Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta, Bhaskaracharya, Ramanujan and Shakuntala Devi, British contributors such as Ada Lovelace, Bertrand Russell, G.H. Hardy, and Andrew Wiles, as well as Egyptian, European and Iranian mathematicians.I would have loved more details and stories about some of these personalities, such as the legendary Bhaskaracharya lessons to  his daughter Lilavati, and the friendship between Hardy and Ramanujan.

Riti then narrates several delightful stories in which numbers play a central role. "Who Is The Brave Man?" is based on an African folktale. A Liberian folktale forms the basis for the next story, "How Do They Add Up."
A simple and systematic account of Fibonacci numbers makes the beautiful numbering patterns of nature extremely clear.
We have the famous chessboard reward story from India next, as well as a story that involves dividing chapatis!
Another famous story, "The Father's Will", is used to illustrate dividing into fractions.
A Chinese legend illustrates the concept of a magic square. Time cycle and rhythm in Indian music essentially apply the principles of magic square. It also forms the underlying principle of Sudoku and the Rubik's cube.
Each chapter narrates an interesting story about its central concept. There are puzzles and quizzes after each chapter, and the answers are explained clearly and systematically at the back of the book.

It is a compact book with a lot of subject matter. I personally feel that it could be printed in a bigger format, with more illustrations, and in colour. It was extremely interesting even for someone of my age, and helped renew my appreciation of the magic of numbers.

You can order it at: http://www.mangobooks.net/book_details/8345/mathematics_fun,_facts_and_fiction

Of the grandchild and brinjals!

My aubergineous article for AntiSerious: http://www.antiserious.com/2015/01/12/case-exploding-eggplants/

Games weather plays!

Weather in the NCR (National Capital Region) is weird, to say the least.
It has decided to play tricks on me!
(I'm egoistic enough to take it personally).

We had planned to go out last Sunday morning, though the RE wasn't very keen to begin with. I woke up at seven, (planning to wake up the spouse by eight), and peered out of the bedroom window, to see fog so dense that nothing but fog was visible. We have a tall building across the road from us, but there was no building, no road, no compound wall, no green belt: only a dense whiteness. The 'view' from the sitting room window was no better: the neighbouring block of flats had disappeared as well. The maid, however, did come in, a little past her usual time.

We remained fogbound till almost noon.

Mr. Sun, please do not vanish on your day. How can we have a Sunday without you?
Monday was foggy too.

There were very few morning walks happening.
On the last morning of the year, though, a good friend called and we went for a late-ish walk.

I resolved to start the new year with a walk, and I did, although it was grey and cold. (Had a nap later).

We celebrated the first day of the New Year, we had lunch with our kids and their friends at the delightful Cafe Lota. Mr. Sun remained on leave. I missed him.

On the morning of the 2nd, I was up early and got ready: jacket and woolly hat and scarf and all!

I stepped out and was about to lock the front door, when I heard what sounded like shuffling footsteps. I looked out of the lobby window, and it was suddenly, sneakily raining. There went my walk. It was miserably cold and soggy and bleak all day, my least favourite weather.

This morning it wasn't raining, though the road was wet. A few minutes into my walk, there was an almost magical misting of my glasses, and I brushed moisture off my jacket, from the tiniest of miniature droplets, enough to make their presence felt, yet soundless and almost non-existent.

I'm quite enjoying these weather games- I wonder what tomorrow will bring!

Happy New Year, gentle readers.
May we all be blessed with a climate of kindness and compassion, and thankfulness for what is.
As Shakespeare wisely said,

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
  Thou art not so unkind
      As man’s ingratitude.....

A Tale of Two Cities (+ Mixies) aka Things I've Never Been Able to Understand - VII

Although I've been married for ages and been a householder for the longest time, there are certain material objects that I have come to buy myself only in the relatively recent past. The particular object I speak of here is the ubiquitous kitchen blender, what we desis call a 'mixie'

The first one we possessed was, I think, a Moulinex, which my husband bought in Hongkong, before I joined him in our brand new household in Thailand. I have very little recollection of that appliance: it performed its functions well and ultimately conked out after a couple of decades. While I was thinking of buying a replacement, my sister very kindly gave me a spare one that she had, which, though small, was adequate. Once again, while I was thinking of buying a larger, more powerful one a couple of years later, I was pipped to the post by our sons, who presented us with a beautiful Philips Juicer Mixer Grinder on our anniversary. This particular blender was bought in Noida, where we were then stationed. (I found the juicer taking up too much space, besides not being very user friendly, so I packed it away). This beauty served me well for several years, the motor never gave me a single day's trouble, minor repairs of the stainless steel grinding and chutney jars were made at the company's service centre in whichever city we  moved to. Some nine years or so later, however, the large plastic blender jar, source of countless cold coffees and lassi and salted buttermilk and aam panna, disintegrated in my hands, a stream of buttermilk flowing all over the kitchen floor. I trotted down to the trusted service centre, hoping to find a replacement jar, but the ever helpful staff said that the new model jar would not fit my nine year old machine. ( This was not true,  I discovered later).

Summer in Kolkata requires the consumption of plentiful cool and nourishing drinks: salted buttermilk was a breakfast staple, and I had absolutely no desire to use an old fashioned mathani to make it every day. My trusted helper was very pleased at the thought of inheriting my old mixie.
I went to the department store and looked at all the blenders on offer. ( Going to New Market seemed like too much trouble in the heat. South City is air conditioned). After much pottering around and comparison of prices and features, it seemed to make sense to simply replace my old Philips with a new Philips. Which is what I did, and which is when the fun started...........

Brand new blender brought home and unpacked. All jars given to the happy house help to wash and dry, while the old machine and its two surviving jars are packed up and given to her.
The big plastic jar is used the very next morning.It so happens that the steel jars are not immediately used. And then, just a couple of days later, I see an almost inch-long crack on the edge of the larger jar. I rush to the service centre with my three-day old bill. They do not have a replacement in stock, but will inform me as soon as it's available. So Jar No. 1 is eventually changed.  But can the little one be far behind? In a few more days the chutney jar also develops a crack near the rim. This theatre of the absurd continues for the next couple of months: replacement jars one and two are re-replaced.
I also suffer one ridiculous visit from a service engineer who is determined to find something wrong in my treatment of his precious jars- maybe I'm dropping them from a height, or hitting them deliberately with a sledgehammer. My trustee maid and I are both most miserable: she offers to return the old mixie, with its long lasting, intact jars. Of course I decline.

In the meantime, Life happens. We relocate to the NCR. The cracked mixie jars remain on the fringes of my consciousness. I still have a few months of the one-year guarantee period. I write to their head office, and am directed to their Noida service centre. They don't have the jars in stock but will inform me as soon as they arrive.  A few days later they call. The chutney and grinder jars are replaced for the second and fourth time respectively, on the 11th November, 2013. More than a year later, they are, thankfully, both intact.

Basement musings

Freshly cleaned cars
in the basement parking area
with wipers upstanding:
the antennae of strange beasts
our present day steeds

And this car,
our post-retirement baby
registered with a number
oldly, oddly familiar:
my childhood
telephone number!

I vividly remember
that first telephone,
trying to dial our own number
and my father rarely speaking,
but listening to the phone,
endless conversations
interspersed with his 'hmmms'
Sis and I trying to count them
but giving up too soon.

He couldn't remember, of course,
when I asked him, decades later
To whom the 'hmmmms '
had been directed, a lifetime ago...

I see him chuckle, wherever he may be
at how his memories seem to pervade
things he's never seen, and how, for me,
he will always be a part of this car!

Till next year, then.

It seems unreal, now.
The feel and weight of her.
Her chortles and gurgles,
yells and raspberries,
all manifested, suddenly
in her last few days with us.....
Our solemn, observant,
quiet little infant
now crawling around
at top speed
with sound effects
and bum wiggles,
trying to copy her mother's
yoga poses
and nearly tumbling over,
while sitting
with arms outstretched,
our resident clown!
Little hands,feet and knees
(and clothes) grubby
as she crawls and crawls
as long as she's awake.


Each meal ends up
with a face decorated by her
attempts to feed herself,
little hands grabbing the spoon
An independent spirit
at all of seven months

A dining table jugalbandi
with her father,
both of them drumming the table
and yodelling away
with her taking an occasional chomp
at the table's edge.


At the airport, after an endless drive,
she sits in her stroller, looking around
nonchalantly holding her toes,

Too small to wave goodbye....


The furniture is all back
where it belongs,
her high chair dismantled
and put away till next year,
The rattles and teething rings
lying in her wardrobe
with the tiny clothes
she has now outgrown,
all to be given away
A phone full of photographs
and movie clips
A house back to 'normal'
the television on once again

And now we see her,
at the other end
in a royal blue jacket
and a new stroller
under the brilliant auburn
and golden leaves
of an American fall.
Once more in two dimensions
untill we meet again.