April 8, 2012
The consumption reports for the weekend continue in the newspapers. Manorama says today that 150,000 ducks were sold in Chengannur area alone. Besides the popular runner species of Kerala, ducks from Tamil Nadu were needed to supply the massive demand for duck roast on Easter. For us at home, the special for the day was Bamboo rice payasam. This is the bamboo rice we had bought from Babu chettan's hotel right outside Kuruwa island in Wayanad.
Bamboo rice was the cause of the feeding frenzy of the jungle fowls that we had encountered while driving through Thirunelli reserve. The final seeding of bamboo before it dies. In payasam, the bamboo rice doesn't take on the sweetness of jaggery like the regular paddy rice or gram tends to do. So the syrup remains sweet while the rice kernals remain chewy. It is a different payasam experience.
Afternoons have become torturously hot nowadays. Any attempted nap results in sweat-drenched t-shirts. I had somehow managed to slip into a heat and sweat induced coma yesterday afternoon assisted by some rereading of Sukumar Azhikode's Tatwamasi. Out of the blue, I dreamt of squeaky little mice. An army of them. Then the squeak grew intelligible. They were speaking in Malayalam. Sooner they were no longer mice. A brigade of over a dozen boys had showed up in the street outside with an improperly inflated football.
As is usual with games played in Indian neighborhood street, there is more arguing and less playing. In fact, art of debating is what Indian kids excel in. Young Manus and Chanakyas forcefully insist on their own laws and rules, no matter what game. I went to gate to take a better look at the players. I couldn't recognize most of them. School vacation means more kids being dumped at their grandparents.
"Where are you guys from? I ask.
Sudden silence.
"I am just asking so that I know which house to come to when you break something here and run away," I continued.
Looks of surprise, fear, irritation, disdain, irreverance circulate in the group.
"Yes?" I wait.
"A-34, Poorna" one of the goalkeepers reluctantly have a house address.
"Thanks, but why don't you go and play there?" I said and went back inside.
The voice level in the converted football field dropped significantly.
An element of care had been introduced. With that the game was no longer enjoyable. For over a decade, since our house was unoccupied, the street in front had become the preferred playing area for the kids around much to the relief of their grandparents and parents. Now, I had disturbed the scheme of things.
In the next 15 minutes, the goal posts moved progressively, in increments of a couple of meters at a time, back up the street, away from our gate.
I have become one of them killjoys whom I had hated all my childhood. Damn!
Jonah Lehrer has written a wonderful article on insight in the religiously secular Guardian. I can't help think that the Easter weekend timing of the publication is rather appropriate. The thrust of the article is all the latest neuropsychology research that underlines the existence of the depressive, disappointing phase that always precedes spontaneous, delightful insight.
The right half of the brain kicks in to make incredible connections only after the left brain reaches a point of frustrating saturation. In brain scans, it is the region above the right ear that lights up as intuition strikes. Close to that spot most of us tend to scratch naturally when stumped by a problem.
Lehrer presents Bob Dylan as a great case study. Dylan hits upon his almost free-form lyrics composition technique only after he had decided to give up on music.
Glorious, inexplicable, life affirming insights appear only after dark, depressing, deathly frustration of the mind.
Resurrection...takes time....needs death.
To find that which is totally fresh and new, one must die to everything that is known before.
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