Musings on the Human Condition

  Photo by yours truly in front of our house garage. A bounding track describes the gait (how the animal moves), not the foot. In a bound , the animal moves in little “launch and land” jumps: It pushes off with its back legs. The front feet land first . Then the hind feet swing forward and land ahead of the front feet (often side-by-side). That landing order makes the classic “bounding” track pattern seen in the photograph above: two prints in front (hind feet) and one or two behind (front feet, often overlapping). Animals that commonly leave bounding tracks: rabbits/hares, squirrels, weasels/stoats, mink, otter —basically critters that hop or lope rather than walk with evenly spaced alternating footsteps. The above picture, taken today while shoveling fresh snow in front of my garage, is most likely that of a rabbit. What you’re seeing: The two longer prints side-by-side in front = the hind feet landing ahead of the body. The single rounder print behind ...

Most of us grew up reading some samples of what was considered good literature as part of our prescribed syllabus at school. Tom Brown's School Days was one of the books I recall from that list. I believe Charles Dickens was also on the list. Thankfully Shakespeare was not. At the time, I despised history because it seemed like an exercise in memorizing weird names and meaningless dates. But that changed later in life. During weekends and summer holidays, I occasionally had the option to choose what to read. I mostly dabbled in what I could grab from my father's bookshelves. I was primarily attracted to non-fiction. For example, books on chess and The Way Things Work , which I would endlessly page through and must have read many times over. No teenager can resist going through raunchy titles like Tropic of Cancer , which I borrowed from father's bookshelves for the sole purpose of finding hot passages. When I actually read the book la...

  My dadiji (paternal grandma) moved from Peshawar to Dehradun in 1947 during the Partition of British India. She used to make sukki (dry) sevviyaan, thus named to distinguish them from the milk drenched version that I did not like as much due to my aversion to milk developed after moving from Canada to India (a story for another time). This was one of my favorite desserts growing up, so I have to write about it. Knead atta (flour) or sooji (semolina) for extra bite into a sturdier variety of firm, non-sticky dough (oddly, there's really no word for dough in Punjabi). Pinch off large-marble-sized pieces from the main dough and roll them between your palms to make 1-2 mm thick imperfect sevviyaan (noodles or vermicelli) about 6-8 inches long.  Break off 1-1.5 inch pieces from each sevviyaan to create these mini-sevviyaan and place them onto a tray to dry. Make a sugar and cardamon chashni (syrup) and boil it until it's thick Drop the sevviyaan into the chashni on medium heat an...

  Parasites of Heaven by Leonard Cohen I want this blog post to be a placeholder (similar to the previous one on Sneaky Pete) for writing about my favorite music. I hope to return to this page over the years and add to it as I feel inspired.  This is going to be a very special list (the ones in  bold ) while the rest will be acknowledged in  italics  or not at all. I can only speak to my formative influences, which would likely be different from yours. Leonard Cohen.  Poetry has never come easily to me, except when I hear it in the soothing, booming voice of Leonard Cohen. My baba had a copy of Cohen's  Parasites of Heaven  (poems) on his bookshelf. I called my dad baba, the word for dad in Bengali, a touching tribute from him to the language of his professors and colleagues at his alma mater IIT Kharagpur. Had it not been for that, I might never have given Cohen's music the chance it deserved. That's what upbringing can do. My dad also introduced...

THIS IS A GREAT SERIES! This short series is totally the kind of content I would watch again, and again. Sort of like the movies Pulp Fiction or Sholay (for Bollywood fans) with their impregnable dialog and theater.  It's kryptonite for a geek like me. The series discusses a whole slew of cons and I can barely keep up. For example, Huckleberry Jones versus the little sister Sadie Jones. What? My goal is to watch and rewatch until I can list most or all of the cons, roles, and metaphors mentioned in the series. Here's a start. I hope to return here many to time to keep updating this list. If you know some that I missed, please add them to the comments. Safe Mr Success The Roll Over Coyote is always hungry The Spanish Prisoner Lady Macbeth Painting houses Justified Captain Whale Mechanic Rope Mark Huckleberry Jones Sadie Jones

I grew up in a family where we didn't feel comfortable going to our parents for help . My hope is that I wasn't that kind of father but I'm sure I was, at least to some extent. I can count on one hand the times I reached out to my baba (dad) for help. Perhaps there were more and I just remember the more memorable ones? But overall, I think my dad didn't excel at commiseration. I generally felt like I was being talked down to. One of my vivid memories is going to the living room where my dad used to sit in his standard spot on the couch and asking him to help me with the equation for a straight line. He certainly helped clear a lot of my doubts and explained what y = mx + b really means.  Not to bore you to death, but briefly, y is the vertical position of any spot on a line and x is the horizontal position of that spot (aka point for math junkies). If you assume m=0 and b=0, you get y = x , which means you get a 45 deg...