Old greetings for new times

PS:  MY HANDS AND SHOULDERS WERE TIRED AND I USED DICTATION MODE AND --HENCE THE MISTAKES.  FIXING THEM NOW. 

Folks, pardon the last post, it was a bit (more than) messed up.  While I was writing the new one, I realised I had written on with the same theme, nearly a decade ago. I wanted to combine them. But still could not bring them together in a cohesive and coherent manner. Mainly because of time. I left it at that and hope to fix that post.

But I did not want to miss a Friday.

Here comes another one.  I do not want to comment on the current news about India and the crisis. I stopped watching news many years ago .  Now the news comes to me. People keep asking me if everything is okay and if it is as bad as the media tells. 

I'm terribly sorry for the loss of those who have lost.  Even one life lost is one too many. And I do not want to play the number game. Anyone who understands statistics, should understand ratios, and also understand proportions. What we need to keep in mind is that India is 1,300,000,000 people.

Now think of that with regards to 'small' population nations, say 30, 40, 100 or even 300 million. 

And what about changes in life style and things to consider --during this pandemic.  How we behave and how we greet???

Those things were a part of Indian lifestyle from centuries ago.  The greeting of NAMASTE --which is now restricted to yoga studios--is the most sane way of greeting in this pandemic.  Sadly, even the young in India do not say that to each other--. So namaste, is actually a very smart greeting.  You bring up your hands together and bow--bowing to the divinity that lies within each of us--also doing so without ever touching the person you greet. Makes complete sense in warm and humid environments to prevent any exchange of sweat and germs.

I noticed that that manner of greeting is also used in Thailand, Nepal, Bali, Sri Lanka and many Asian countries.  Did it travel from India or was it created because of the climate, or because of an intense spiritual culture.  Not sure.  

But here you can read all about Nameste, (click here) and learn a few more interesting facts about why that greeting is useful, beneficial for all.  There is a reason Hinduism is called 'Sanatan Dharma" meaning the law, the way of supporting the world, -without a beginning and without an end.  No prophet, not one book...but many, many...books and many messengers and ongoing...meaning...'there is no only, or last prophet, we keep getting them, and so we have Swami Vivekananda (early 20th century) to Sadhguru and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (20th and 21st century).

It is also important to know the physical benefits of Nameste and many other Hindu traditions. 

And finally, I leave you with another reading, of how different, pre-hand-shake and hug greetings are useful in today's pandemic ridden world. 

Cuisine and Its Commercialisation: Indian Raita

Picture taken at ICA--Swedish Walmart...

Raita: Simply a yogurt dish.  Yogurt/milk curd base-made with common spices found in any Indian kitchen and fruits and vegetables.  Mostly vegetables.  The most common one is made with grated cucumber and yogurt.  Add salt, roasted ground cumin, a little amachur (dried mango powder) and top it with fresh coriander leaves.  Simple.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BUY A PACKET--which in my opinion ultimately tastes bland and stale.  And produces much garbage because of its packaging.  And imagine how many other similar things that are 

Go natural, go simple.  Here are a few recipes for Raita...make it at home, experiment with different spices, create your own version.  DO NOT BUY THESE PRE-MADE PACKETS....They bring no creativity to the kitchen.  The greatest thing about Indian cooking is 'anumaan' --an idea, an estimate.  Unlike western cooking, Indian cooking never relies on 'exact' because, nothing in life is exact...experiment learn and create your own family recipes....and yes, in that follow tradition too. Something created just for the market or just to be innovative are really not good for you. E.g. Tumeric Latte, as sold by Starbucks.  We grew up drinking that --especially in winters.  It should be had in a certain season, cooked with black pepper (which gives a taste that is not for everyone)----don't just copy any old eating habit and absorb it without understanding that foods created for one region may not be the best in another region.  E.g. Mediterranean cooking, hailed for hits light-weight recipes and low calories --is  best for coastal climate...Not recommended for temperate!!  

Here is the recipe.....  I would drop the powdered coriander---just and make sure to roast the cumin before grinding it.  Do not use cumin seeds.  Also, let it stand at least a half hour before serving, so that spices have the time to soften and blend--better for flavour.  This is the simplest and the most common one.  Here is another one, but you have to buy the boondi (fried and crisp, chickpea flour batter)--or make it--and this is the second most common one. Others such as onion raita etc. that are popularised and sometimes sold at Indian restaurants are not that popular...often times onion and milk products are not mixed.  Traditionally, it is not respected. Milk is considered a complete food and even divine food (sorry vegans, more on that later)

Try it and then share your experiences!! 

The New Village Idiom

So, the image has nothing to do with what I am going to add here, and its more for me, than the readers.  But the readers are welcome to read.  The article New Village Idiom, written by an Indian economist is trying to explain how India is not as rural or as backward, as it has been made out to be. Granted about 70% of Indians live in rural areas, primarily involved in farming, compared to nearly 21% in the US, but looking at definitions of what it means to be rural or urban....the author, Prof. Bibek Roy (also a prolific author on culture), highlights that villages can be further classified and that larger villages perform pretty much 'like urban towns'--thereby blurring the lines between rural and urban.  

A Short Break--but some Deep Information Processing

Much is going on.  Since the middle of May I have been to Oslo--back to Sweden, Prague--back to Sweden (for a conference), then London (for a symposium), then to India (for family, some dental work, some data collection) and then London (for family and some data collection) and now Sweden. 

It has been hectic, many things still remain. Many questions.  Both Prague and London brought many questions, on condition of being a human being, friendships, love and how most of us live on the surface.  Most of us are afraid of real conversations, we wave flags of our existence on Facebook and shout out our love for others, but what it truly means, no one has the time to consider.  

A picture taken from 4th floor of our department's building.  Sometime May 2018. Rainbows are always welcome. 

So I am going to provide a few links for people to view and ponder on.  One is by Nicholas Carr on what the internet is doing to us.  I heard it a long time ago, when the book was first published but needed to get back to it now, for research and for own self--developing and seeing why I choose to be away from certain social media.

The other one that I am still in the process of listening to, and find it absolutely interesting is on Hinduism and Ecology. But mostly, it also talks about how our world, though supposedly moving away from religion, has become quite monotheistic, one of its latest avatars being Marxism.  

However, since April there have been two nice comments on my blog, indicating there are still readers.  So, this quick post is to those who still read and engage on this site.  

Will be back again.  Till then, take care of yourself and I need much contemplation, before I post some interesting pictures from my travels.

Old Thoughts and New Technologies

Technology alienates those who depend on it and live by it. It deadens their human qualities and their moral perceptiveness. Gradually, everything becomes centered on the most efficient use of machines and techniques of production.” — Thomas Merton, 1967

Hit Nostalgia, and they are Back!!

Remember these?  

Or may be you don't because even for me, this is a stretch.  I remember the transistors and the boom boxes.  Then I remember the clock radios.  Now, not even that.  Since clock radios are ancient!!  

I have a computer. One gadget does it all. Clock, television, word processor, radio, and a newspaper.  And of course a computer.  We are tired of this multifunctional, all available, all time in business gadget!!

We want a life, and we want simplicity that we can control.  

When a radio is a radio, and a word processor is not a calendar reminding us it is our day to go to the grocery store...

So, when I saw this, I realised how bad we have wanted these back.  And when they do come back, they do not do so in hybrid version, they come back in the 50s and the 60s style, where we just look at them and sigh, and rush to get our friends to come and have a look.......'look..' and there are 'awww' and the 'oohs...''

And then....there is the that old familiar sound of the 'static' which we hardly hear now...'things not going smoothly', us tapping and hitting our favourite gadget so it would work...for a short time both of us are human ---us and the gadget, we give it a personality....it is tangible, not just an app, but uni-function gadget!! We can touch, feel and hit!!

I know for sure, as a media analyst, that this is a fad, but I think this fad will stick, as a fad for a while.  More so I think new and multifunctional gadgets will arrive imitating the simplicity--only in appearance, but being 'smart' in many other ways.

We will choose them for their practicality ....it is the rich, however, who will have these old and single function gadgets. For they are the ones who can afford the money, time and space to buy, enjoy and gather all the clutter.

For us ordinary folks though, their appearance and that famous static will always be something that we will narrate our old stories around....

And from time to time think about bringing these back into our homes, but mostly we will sigh and say, 'yeah, someday when I have a bigger house, more time and space, will I buy that old fashioned radio, that costs much less, is a single function gadget, and allows me simplicity.  When I am rich enough, free enough, cut off from the world enough, I will invest in simplicity!!'

Nostalgia Nearby

The first time, when something as unholy as a phone was brought to our homes, it stayed in the hallway, in a small separate room for itself.  In hindi they were called 'alla'.  Also used in old time to leave a burning oil lamp, even after people had electricity at home.  Since lighting a lamp in the evening is considered sacred in Indian homes (I would guess all ancient societies).  

General Knowledge points for telling naming these things...I have written later in the post.  I was amazed as well.  But there was a shop that sold vintage stuff--and I could not resist walking in.  Karlstad, Sweden, 2014.

One of my earliest memories of using the telephone is trying to climb up the sofa, and reaching the phone sitting in a little box like hole in the wall between our bedroom and living room.  It had tiny 'doors'  that hung down when you opened them to access the phone.  I remember whenever I was punished for not finishing my homework and made to sit in the bedroom to work, because the living room had television, I would try to sneak a look from this hole, hoping that the other side of the door was down as well.  

Having doors on both the sides made the phone accessible from both the rooms.  Phone was important and an expensive commodity.  I remember when we grew older we would put a lock on it because sometimes guests would make phone calls and make a habit of never asking to cover the costs.  As is the case in India, no one ever asks, and we would have huge phone bills.  I remember making a little note with sketch of a phone booth--also going extinct now--that said, 'please keep it short'.  

I also remember we were one of the two families that had phone in the neighbourhood, which meant ,we often got to deliver messages.  Mom would send me, 'go run to Vijay uncle's house and let him know his uncle from the US will call in two hours.'

Ah, the days of trunk calls.  

It was an ongoing party, at least for us kids. We would get sweets when we delivered the messages, and if and when people had to accompany us back, then mom would make tea and bring out nice snacks for the guests, who chatted while they waited for the phone calls.  

Well, gone are the days.  In the next two decades most people would get phones, we saw the transition from phone 'dials' to phone 'punch'--where instead of dialling you would punch the phone numbers.  

I left home, and while in Africa I would walk for about 15 minutes to get to the closest phone, in the US, phone could get connected by a phone call. That simple!!

While in the beginning I paid via check that was mailed it, I quickly to paying via credit card soon as I had one.  I remember when I got my answering machine, what a joy it was. My second year in the US.  How fun it was to change the answering message.  A few years later, I had one for every season!!

And then major shifts started to happen, one that was quite ironical for me was a flat rate--now for a flat rate every month you could make unlimited number of calls to the US and Canada.  But now, I had little time.  When I had the time there was no money.  

I kept avoiding cell phones, because I did not want to be accessible.  But the move to Fiji changed it.  I was back in the world where getting landlines was time consuming and I really needed a phone.  I remember once using a public phone to call within Fiji and it seemed to me that the call had gone through the US....to connect back to Fiji.  

Mobile phones became a necessity ---as much as I detested sending texts, I relied on them for so much communication.  

But now with the instant messaging, mobile phones that are more like computers---our way of conducting ourselves is different.  What is feasible is different.  Now we do not walk to deliver messages, we actually text before we visit to ask if it is ok to visit....we are constantly glued to screens, be it computers or phones.

A moment of recognition came when a year before I owned a cell phone, on a visit to India, I was in a  room where everyone but I was on their cell talking to someone else, while all of them had come to visit me, since I had not been back in a while. 

I am not going to engage in conversation about what cell phones have done and what they imply for the material on that is rich and available.  

I want to talk about what happened about a week ago, that made me think of not only the phones but simplicity of living in towns where people are generous and trusting.

I walked into this store that was selling some vintage stuff. I wanted to buy a container just to store lentils. Nothing special about it, but the color matched other containers I have --so I picked it up and walked inside--right into nostalgia lane. There were these old things some which I recognised, others I didn't but I knew that it was a store selling old things, that now will be considered relics!!

Music the owner played was from the 1970s as well.  

And what is that--I pointed to these little benches, that I thought were probably writing desks to be used while sitting on the bed.  Öh, those were used for keeping phones and then he pointed at some old phones.  I smiled.

When I handed him my card, he said his machine was not working and that he required cash.  But I didn't have any.  And then he waived his hand and said, 'Oh, just take it'

No--I protested.

No, please, and he smiled.

Ok, I will bring back the money, I live close by. 

Not to worry.

I walked out cleansed of nostalgia --and the pain that comes with it, because in the present, he had shown a value that today seems forgotten.  

But I guess, kindness will always be in fashion!!