ten things special guest: my dad, Rocky

Posted by Joel's secretary at 16 Feb 2008
Categories: ten things
  1. “Everybody has a water buffalo.”  -Larry the Cucumber
  1. When visiting another culture, it’s always a pleasure to see a drum.  Like a joyful chance encounter with a familiar friend-of-a-friend whom you’ve never actually met but feel you know so much about.  After a tentative introduction the familiar touch/feel/sound/response is quickly established.  Music, and rhythm in particular, is surely the common language of Creation.  I never met a drum I didn’t like.

           

  1. The side-to-side Head Wag, used frequently by Indians and always bewildering.  According to my host, it means Yes.  It means No.  It means I Don’t Know.  It means I Hear You but Cannot Agree, or I Don’t Understand English, or Your Request is Absurd.  It means Whatever.  So You Figure it Out.
  1. Not one single snake.  Thank you, Lord.
  1. Children have so much in common in every culture: brilliant smile, cautious of a foreign stranger yet eager to perform, packed with potential yet sadly tragic.  They tug at the heart after the briefest contact.  Why?

     

  1. “He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy.  And that personal despair could never be desperate enough.  That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation.  That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance.  Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity.  Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent.  Nothing mattered much.  Nothing much mattered.  And the less it mattered, the less it mattered.  It was never important enough.  Because Worse Things had happened.  In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.” –The God of Small Things
  1. Tea, yes.  Coffee, no.  And a double order of garlic nan.
  1. Masala chai.  In a bag, nothing special.  But prepared with careful attention from scratch right in front of your eyes, it’s an exotic liquid banquet for the senses.  The wondrous stick of gum in Willy Wonka that was an entire compact three-course meal in disguise?  This is the real deal.
  1. Delhi traffic as a metaphor for society as a whole – “barely controlled chaos”.  Everyone manages to stay slightly out of the others’ path, avoiding disaster by centimeters.  I know there are Rules, just not ones I recognize.  But as long as everyone follows the Rule to some degree, no one gets hurt.  Or not seriously.  Or not often anyway.
  1. Bollywood movies are subtly addicting.  And really no goofier than Hollywood films when you think about it.  Contrast with “Rambo”, the current American entertainment there.  This is how the world sees us?
 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this post
  • Trackbacks are closed for this post.
Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Leave a comment

 Enter the above security code (required)

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.