Author: Kasturika

I tell stories - of people, places, and ideas - through words and visuals.
Designer by profession, Writer by passion, and Storyteller by accident (or is that a cosmic conspiracy?)
Digital Nomad, Slightly Eccentric

Categories
Musings

Finding Joy in Digital Decluttering


In the very first company I worked for, I had a colleague who was obsessed with a clean inbox. Only things that need immediate attention should remain in the inbox, he explained to me. The rest should either be archived or deleted. He mercilessly deleted emails even as he spoke. I was shocked.

The Hoarder’s Dilemma

In school, our teacher encouraged us to keep newspaper clippings of things that interested us. It was a fun activity, and I retained those notebooks long after I’d completed my schooling. Recently, as I was clearing out an old shelf, I discovered these notebooks, the newspaper clippings now yellow, and some of them quite amusing. I thanked my younger self for keeping them.

Over the years, I’ve kept things for posterity. Some of them are reminders of good times. Like tickets to the Davis Cup match from 2005, and the tennis ball that a player lobbed into the crowd after winning her match during the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

A tennis ball, along with tickets to a Davis Cup match from 2005 and the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

Then there are mundane, but important things—payment receipts, warranty cards, service contracts…

Every once in a while, we review what we keep and what we discard. Such cleaning is necessary in households where space is finite. The old must make way for the new. What was relevant once may now be better dispatched to the kabaadiwaala (scrap dealer) for recycling.

For sentimental folks like us, this sort of cleaning can become challenging. For example, when I discovered a yellowing piece of paper with some handwritten Tamil script, I couldn’t bring myself to discard it—perhaps it had been written by one of my grandparents. That paper magically made me feel connected with them. I gently blew the dust away from the paper and filed it away.

I did manage to locate some things I could throw away, but not before I took pictures of the items I was discarding.

An old newspaper clipping from my school notebook. The article, “Brown Woman’s Burden”, is from The Times of India, dated 30 Jan 2003. If you’re interested, you can read the digital version of this clipping on the TOI website’s archive.

Then: Lost and Found

Back in the day, it was easy to lose things. Photographs, phone numbers, notebooks, drawings, clothes. They could get damaged during relocation, be eaten by insects, or simply be carried away by the wind. We’d feel sad for a while. But then we’d find ways to fill in the void. We could make new memories or connect with mutual friends to catch hold of lost ones. Our minds were as new and fresh as our cupboards.

And then there was the hidden joy of rediscovering items while decluttering.

Now: Never Lost, Never Found

With digital storage, however, things are different. We don’t lose things anymore. Things stay with us forever. And we never go back to look for anything either. Our virtual shelves barely distinguish between the old and the new.

We’re no longer limited to the 36 photographs of a reel. So we take hundreds of them that we otherwise may not have bothered with in another time. Case in point: the picture of the newspaper clipping above. While we occasionally flip past the old physical albums at home, when was the last time any of us looked at our digital photographs from 5 years ago?

Our phone books never get filled, so we don’t migrate to a new one. Thus, we don’t need to weed out irrelevant numbers with the fresh book. Why are there so many people in my contacts list?

We don’t bother with our personal emails. They are far too overwhelming to look into.

We gather virtual items—sometimes consciously, but mostly without paying much attention. They don’t take up physical space in our homes. So our hands aren’t forced into taking action to routinely prune what we own. But they do take up space in some remote server, guzzling electricity to keep our trash alive.

Digital Declutter Mode Activated

Over the past few years, my inbox has been warning me that my space is about to run out. Finally! There is now an incentive to do some digital housekeeping.

Why do I have so much stuff in my inbox? And why should I have to pay to keep all that trash? And so, I began on a slow marathon to actively make space. I recalled how a dozen years ago, my colleague ruthlessly cleaned his work email. And I went to work.

Over the past several months, I’ve been rummaging through my inboxes and taking split-second decisions on what deserves to remain as an archive and what needs to go. I started with the latest emails first. The earlier we take decisions on incoming traffic, the easier it becomes to maintain later on.

Happily, I have now found joy in this activity. Visiting my personal, spam and notification-filled inbox has now become quite a satisfactory pastime. Seeing the number on the notifications badge reduce feels like a game.

Where once, my screentime was dominated by social media algorithms and games, I now spend some swiping left to delete, or discovering interesting reads.

I began with 8000+ unread emails across all my inboxes. Today, I’m looking at less than 500 on the tiny badge on the email app. My ultimate goal is to come down to as few unread emails as possible, deleting them as I finish reading them.

Levelling Up: Discovering A Forgotten Civilisation

Having managed to declutter two lesser-used inboxes, I have now begun exploring the archives to see what else I can clear out. Much like physical decluttering, digging through the archives unearthed curious bits from a bygone era.

An email notification from Microsoft, encouraging users to switch from Messenger to Skype.

In early 2013, Microsoft sent me an email asking me to upgrade Messenger to Skype! I couldn’t help but smile. A dozen years later, Skype has now been replaced by Teams. It reminded me of the ephemeral nature of the digital world. When digital products can evolve and fade away, why should we hold on to clutter? The verdict on the email: Delete.

An email notification from YouTube about a new comment.
A comment on YouTube from 2017. The Lost Sultanate was a short documentary I’d made as a student in 2010.

I found a series of emails from YouTube, notifying me about comments on the videos I’d posted. I read and deleted them one by one. Until I stumbled into one from my late aunt. My aunt had been quite enthusiastic about my adventures in digital storytelling, always finding time to read my blog and watch the videos. That comment was a digital remnant of her constant encouragement and a reminder of the void in our lives since her passing. The verdict on this one: Keep.

Panel of graphics from a comic strip titled: What I think I'll do during the "Shelter in place" order vs what I'm actually doing. One panel reads: What I think I'll do—Finally read all of those epic novels. What I'm actually doing—Obsessively refreshing the news app every 30 seconds. The second panel reads: What I think I'll do—Learn how to bake. What I'm actually doing—Stress eating peanut butter cups.
A comic strip by Gemma Correll during the initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic. To see the whole panel, visit The Nib’s publication on Medium.

Ever since I began this trip down my archives, I’ve encountered surprises. I rediscovered publications I’d forgotten (like The Nib), and email courses I’d signed up for years ago, but never got around to reading (example: a course from the now non-existent InVision).

My inbox feels like a wonderland again. Every trip feels like an adventure. What other surprises hide inside my archives? I can’t wait to (re)discover.

You can watch the documentary, The Lost Sultanate, on YouTube.

I wrote about the struggles of making the video, The Lost Sultanate in Getting the monkey off my back.

Categories
Hobbies

Sambaar Podi: Our Family Recipe


I’ve not been very fond of sambaar, especially the ones served in restaurants, which seem to serve something quite ghastly. My husband, on the other hand, loves it.

In traditional TamBrahm households, each meal typically consisted of three courses of rice. Course one, sambaar with rice, course two, rasam with rice, and course three, curd with rice. Every course has its share of accompaniments (poriyals, pachidis, pickles, appalam etc).

That’s all great during wedding festivities, when there’s an army of cooks to prepare (and serve) such elaborate meals. And of course, one must earn the right to enjoy such meals through intense calorie-burning activities.

In our mostly sedentary modern city life, so many courses and elaborate meals are both unnecessary and impractical. My mother adopted a very practical approach: two courses and one vegetable accompaniment. She’d make rasam (which I always preferred over sambaar), and include the lentils in it. Thakkali sambaar (tomato sambaar) we’d always tease her. The second course remained the universally enjoyable thayir saadam (curd-rice).

The Family Sambaar Recipe

I never learned to make rasam or sambaar (or any dish, for that matter) before I got married. It wasn’t for lack of trying on my mother’s part, but rather my rebellion at being forced to learn “womanly” skills to be eligible for marriage. Fortunately for me, I did find the most suitable husband who knows how to cook! So I learned to cook mostly from him and his parents. Unfortunately, he also loves sambaar, and being a North Indian, has no idea how it’s made!

Over the years, I’ve attempted to make sambaar at home with varying degrees of failure. Each time I’d call my mother to ask for her recipe and note it down somewhere, only to misplace it and call her again the next time.

My latest attempt, however, seemed moderately successful. And funnily, it seemed like an absolute breeze, which convinced me to make it more often. So, this time, I’m saving the recipe here for ready reference.

Step 1: The Sambaar Podi

The key to sambaar lies in the powdered spice mixture, aka the podi. Once ground, the batch lasts a surprisingly long time. Given how infrequently I make sambaar, my batch has easily lasted a few years, but I wouldn’t recommend keeping it around for that long!

“Take note of the order of these items and it will be easier to remember the proportions,” my mother advised.

“One of Urad,
Three-quarters of Toor,
Half of Chana daal,
Half the quantity of Chana daal for Pepper, and
Half the quantity of Pepper for Methi.
Take three of Dhania.
Roast everything, cool and grind to a powder.
One spoon of sambaar podi is half this powder and half red chilli powder.”

Sambaar powders available in the market typically include red chilli powder. But my mother’s sambaar powder skips it so that she can reuse the same mix for both rasam and sambaar! In our household, it helps to not add red chillis so that we can tweak the spice level for my in-laws who aren’t comfortable with red chilli powder.

Here’s a detailed table with the proportions and ingredients.

ProportionItem (Tamil)Item (Hindi)Item (English)
3Kotthamalli VithaiSabut DhaniaCoriander seeds
1UlanthuDhuli UradSkinned Black Gram
3/4Thauram paruppuArhar daalSplit Pigeon Pea
1/2Kadalai paruppuChana daalSplit Chickpeas / Bengal Gram
1/4MilaguKaali MirchBlack Pepper
1/8VenthiyamMethiFenugreek

The sambaar podi is as simple as roasting these items till they are aromatic, and then grinding them to a powder. Store for use later.

Step 2: Prep the Elements of Sambaar

The essential elements of sambaar are (for 1 litre):

  • Arhar / Toor daal (3/4 cup)
  • Tamarind water (use 1 medium-sized lemon a reference for the quantity of tamarind)
  • One vegetable (aka the taan). Potatoes, Moringa, Capsicum, Okra, Eggplant, Ash Gourd, Radish. Anything goes. Heck, if you like the restaurant variety, use beans, carrots and onions. Just don’t serve that to me.
  • The spices (1/2 spoon of sambaar podi, 1/2 spoon of red chilli powder, a pinch of asafoetida, a sprig of fresh curry leaves)
  • The Thalippu / Tadka (1/2 spoon mustard seeds, 1-2 dried red chillis)

The key to making sambaar fast is multitasking. Let the multiple gas burners do the heavy lifting by simultaneously doing the following:

  1. Pressure cook the Toor daal with a little turmeric powder.
  2. If the cooker is big enough, you can place the hard vegetables in the same cooker. For soft veggies that cook easily, pressure cooking may be a bit too much. You can add those in later.
  3. Boil the tamarind in water for a bit and let it cool.

With everything already partially cooking, and while you’re waiting for the tamarind water to cool, you’re free to prep any other dish, or perhaps do the dishes, or just take a little nap.

Step 3: Bring Everything Together

  1. Once the tamarind water has cooled enough so that you can touch it, extract the juice/pulp and remove the rind and seeds, if any. Mash with your fingers or use a spoon and a sieve.
  2. To the tamarind water, add the sambaar podi, red chilli powder and a pinch of asafoetida. Boil this solution for a couple of minutes.
  3. If your vegetables haven’t yet been cooked, add them to the tamarind water and cook them.
  4. Once the vegetables are cooked, add the cooked toor daal (with the water). The daal already has turmeric, so no need to add that in.
  5. Add salt.
  6. Pinch/crush fresh curry leaves with your fingers and add them in right at the end.
  7. Finish the sambaar with the sizzling, satisfying sound of the tadka: Heat 1-2 spoons of oil/ghee and add the mustard seeds and dried red chillis. Once the seeds crackle, add them to the sambaar.

And that’s it! Making sambaar involves several components, but proper planning makes it an easy dish to prepare.

Bonus Recipe: Rasam

Rasam is typically a thin, almost clear soup. The steps for a regular rasam are very similar to those of sambaar. The key differences:

  1. Instead of vegetables, we add tomatoes (usually cut into quarters).
  2. Instead of adding red chilli powder, we add black pepper powder and cumin powder. So, along with the sambaar podi, my mother keeps a separate powdered mix of black pepper and cumin.
  3. Instead of using the entire cooked toor daal, use only the water of the daal. That’s the “proper” way. But if rasam is your only protein source, as was the case in our household, just go ahead and add the whole cooked daal and make a thicker rasam.
  4. Instead of curry leaves, use fresh coriander leaves.

Every family has their version of the sambaar and rasam podis. And of course, there are variations of each dish too. Depending on what vegetables go in the sambaar, the recipe changes a little. The most notable one being a special fresh coconut-based bitter gourd sambaar.

Then there’s melagu rasam or milagu tanni (which the British famously appropriated as mulligatawny), which is a spicier variation (and for me, an absolutely soothing one!) There’s also a tamarind-free lemon rasam. Of course, I don’t know how to make any of these, but in my journey to learn our culinary heritage, I’ll hopefully get there soon. Let’s make one recipe at a time.

Categories
Musings

The Language Wars


When we were in school, we were taught 2 languages till the fifth grade. Those were English and Hindi.

In middle school, from sixth to eighth, we were introduced to a third language—Sanskrit. In the ninth and tenth grade, we were allowed to choose between the second and third languages, so that we only had two, and in the eleventh and twelfth grade, we were left with just one—the medium of instruction, English.

Coming from a Tambrahm family, I struggled with Hindi. So when the time came to choose, I picked Sanskrit. Sanskrit had logic and made sense. Hindi was just too arbitrary and if you weren’t a native speaker, it was virtually impossible to grasp. Besides, I was waking up to MS Subbulakshmi’s renditions every Sunday. At least I could now start to understand what it was that I was listening to.

A few of my peers switched schools during that time and I learned that the fancy schools offered French and Spanish instead of Sanskrit.

Years later, during a casual conversation with a colleague, the topic of languages came up. I mentioned something along the lines of how unpatriotic it was for those schools to not teach Sanskrit, and instead, teach a foreign language.

My colleague calmly replied, that if he had that choice, he’d also get his daughters to learn a foreign language. I stared at him in horror. And he said, it’s just practical. What use is Sanskrit to anyone?

It took some time, but it finally dawned on me, how near-sighted I was. I felt betrayed that someone would call Sanskrit a useless language. But my ideologically-coloured vision had missed the point entirely.

The Sanskrit we learned in school was entirely based on rote. Could any of us genuinely hold an impromptu conversation or pick up the Vedas and understand a verse, let alone appreciate the poetry and wisdom? Sanskrit is a beautiful and scientific language. And the literature—the wisdom of ancient scholars and philosophers—written in Sanskrit is phenomenal.

But few people can truly make use of it. Those who’re cleaver, neatly package a few select verses and profit from it—the masses couldn’t be none the wiser. And that’s what made learning Sanskrit useless. It wasn’t the language itself. It was the way it was taught, and the little practicality it offered in a land where people didn’t speak it at all.

Elsewhere in the country, Tamil Nadu has fought tooth and nail to keep Hindi out of its schools on ideological grounds. To a certain extent, I understand where that comes from.

Consider this. All languages are made up of the following:

  • form: the sounds (or alphabets), root words (eg, to write) and different versions of those words (eg wrote, written, writing).
  • content: how those words combine to create sentences (grammar).
  • use: how local usage and context varies from say, formal to casual or the use of metaphors and idioms to communicate ideas.

Side note: Language experts use the terms phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics to describe these. But I’m no language expert so the above components are my understanding/interpretation. I’ll be happy to fix it if I’m wrong. Please let me know in the comments.

On top of these, I’ll add script as the fourth element.

Hindi and Sanskrit share the same script and the same sounds. Since Hindi originated from a mixture of Sanskrit and Persian, many root words are the same. The grammatical rules are somewhat similar as well. Inspite of these commonalities, Sanskrit is hard for someone who knows Hindi!

I know this because in the ninth grade, only a quarter of the students in our school ever elected Sanskrit in the ninth grade, despite Sanskrit being an extremely scoring subject with a much simpler question paper. As I mentioned earlier, the Sanskrit we learned was introductory or juvenile, compared to the more advanced Hindi that students had to tackle in the same grade.

Now consider someone who has to learn a language that doesn’t share anything in common with their native language. New sounds, new script, different grammar. That’s what someone from Tamil Nadu would face when learning Hindi as a third language. It puts students, who are already burdened with a highly competitive environment at a disadvantage. Perhaps, if North Indians chose to teach their children languages that didn’t use the Devnagari script, they’d be more empathetic.

The other ideological reason doing the rounds is the threat to Tamil culture, akin to an invasion by foreigners. I’m perhaps not the best person to weigh in on this argument because I didn’t grow up in Tamil Nadu. But as someone who hasn’t truly felt at home either in the north or the south, I may be in a unique position to offer an objective perspective.

The Imposition Angle

We complain about the British colonising India and nearly destroying us (their contribution to our conflicts is still actively destroying us from within).

The reason English is as common as it is today, is because a handful of foreigners imposed their culture on to the rest of the world. They just went everywhere and stayed, and forced locals to adapt to their ways.

Something similar is happening now, with a lot of migrants moving to the southern states. The southern states offer plenty of opportunities for those seeking work. Every time I visit Chennai, I see more and more North Indians and even Nepalis working in the service industry. Would it be fair to ask the local population to adapt to the migrants?

Indians bend over backwards to learn French and German in search of opportunities. Can we not offer the same courtesy and respect to our fellow brothers and sisters?

Indeed, while many city-dwelling North Indians complain of Tamil being a difficult language, the service industry workers—who hail from small towns and villages—pick up the language fairly well. The white-collared folks manage to get by with English, not even bothering to learn Tamil. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised to hear many of service providers in shops and restaurants speak decent Tamil.

On the flip side, just as North Indians barely understand classical Sanskrit literature, I wonder how well do Tamilians understand classical Tamil literature—which is as vast and rich and old as Sanskrit literature. And Hindi or n Hindi, spoken, practical Tamil is very different to the language of the great Sangam Epics and the Thirukkural.

The Diversified Angle

I grew up in a cosmopolitan environment, safely insulated from the politics of religion and caste. That’s a luxury a defense service officer’s (fauji) family gets. A luxury I didn’t know I had, until it was gone.

My school had students from all over the country and from different castes. And none of us knew the difference. But the one thing we did know, was which state we belonged to, and the languages we spoke. Language is a critical aspect of our identity and culture.

There’s a bit of a stereotype about Tamilians and Malayalis being particularly good at maths and science and Bengalis as being good at arts. And none of us good at Hindi! That stereotype did play out a fair bit in our school too.

My struggles with Hindi were shared by others. But that didn’t particularly hurt anyone socially. Perhaps interacting with people from different cultures at a young age gave us a broader perspective. We learned to appreciate each other’s strengths instead of ostracising anyone based on their community. Perhaps there wasn’t a mob or majoritarian mentality because—to borrow an investment advisor’s phrase—we were so well diversified.

I wish everyone in our country had that sort of upbringing. When my father eventually retired from the Navy, reality hit hard. Having grown up in our little bubble, I learned much later that everyone else grew up in their own little bubble—albeit a homogeneous one. My struggles with Hindi today pale in comparison with my struggles with understanding how so many Indians are ignorant and unwilling to accept differences.

Advantage: Multilingual

Language shapes our world view. As some studies suggest, there are communities that simply do not see the certain colours, because no word for it exists in their language. Similarly, I have heard about umami, but I have no idea what it tastes like. MSG is tasteless to me.

Tamil has a particular word called “thuvarppu” (துவர்ப்பு) which considered one of 6 tastes (the others being sweet, salty, sour, bitter and pungent). It translates to “astringent” in English, but I don’t know if the larger word treats astringency as a taste, or as an unpleasant feeling. Until I began writing this post, I didn’t know it had a Hindi equivalent, because no one really uses that phrase.

Research suggests that multilingual children tend to develop better cognitive abilities than monolinguals—and given these other examples of how language shapes our worldview, it makes sense. Multilinguals experience more nuances of the world. This is why teaching multiple languages at a younger age is advocated.

There isn’t much research on whether being trilingual is more beneficial than being just bilingual, but if those school stereotypes showed anything, it was that the multilingual kids tended to be at the top of the class.

There are plenty of trilingual countries, where people are fluent in three languages, and I don’t see one language replacing another—unless it is done so with that specific intent, as the British did. And even then, it’s likely that most of us who are brought up in the English-speaking system probably do not know how to pronounce “W”.

There are allegations that highway signboards have been removing Tamil names and replacing them with Hindi ones. If true, that certainly is colonial.

I don’t know if Hindi or Sanskrit will eventually be taught in Tamil Nadu. Perhaps it will be as juvenile as the Sanskrit that’s taught in the North. But if it is, it might provide Tamilians a greater edge in their professional life.

I certainly attribute my professional success to my multilingual upbringing (as well as sound grounding in classical music, but more on that in another post). I see problems differently and can connect dots that others miss. This has won me clients through word of mouth alone.

I am, today, fairly fluent in Hindi—I dare say, even better than native speakers. I only wish I were as fluent in my native language. Having grown up in the North, interacting with my grandmother in Tamil is the only reason I can now still understand and perhaps even survive in Tamil Nadu. But I wish I’d learned it more formally.

The three language policy gives North Indians an opportunity to learn a third language and broader their children’s horizons.

It gives children of migrants an opportunity to connect with their roots—an opportunity I didn’t have.

The question now is whether North Indians will be willing to take that challenge, or cop out and stick with Sanskrit.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to learn Spanish on Duolingo, and that’s revealed a thing or two about what practical, living languages are about. Read more here.

Categories
Hobbies Musings

I’ve Been Around the “W”


I’ve been speaking English my whole life. But it wasn’t until recently that I realised that I cannot pronounce the letter “w.”

The ghost of YouTube algorithms once suggested a short video from a Vietnamese woman who now lives in Germany. Uyen Ninh‘s videos poke fun at the cultural differences between Germans and Vietnamese, and through her perspective, I’ve learned that Indians and Vietnamese have a lot in common.

Scrolling through the comments section of the videos, I learnt that people and cultures around the world have remarkably similar belief systems.

It was in one of these videos that I heard her German partner exclaim, “I cannot pronounce ‘W’!” As with most of her videos, I scrolled through the comments section. Many people agreed, and understood that non-English speakers pronounced the first syllable of “Valley” like “Wallet”. And that’s when I realised I couldn’t tell the difference.

A Medley of Languages

At home, my grandmother spoke to me in Tamil. So whatever little Tamil I now know is thanks to her. My parents alternated between Tamil and English. And growing up in Delhi Cantonment, I was surrounded by people who spoke English fluently. Hindi, however, was a very different ball game. I struggled terribly and couldn’t wait till I reached the ninth grade, when I was allowed to drop Hindi from my curriculum and elect Sanskrit as my second language. In a TamBrahm household, Sanskrit is much easier than Hindi!

Eventually, though, I had to move out of this bubble. What my school couldn’t teach me, interacting with (and getting married!) outside my community, did. My only regret is not knowing my own mother tongue Tamil very well, especially reading and writing. So whenever someone in a family WhatsApp group types in Tamil, I try my best to read it—it takes forever, but that’s about the only way to stay connected to my roots.

I find Uyen’s playful skits on living with cultural differences extremely relatable. Everyday decisions like what to eat, what to wear, how to talk and how to celebrate festivals becomes tricky. However, Uyen reminds me that my struggles are tiny compared to hers!

Let’s get back to the “W” that Uyen’s German partner couldn’t pronounce. I did what anyone else would do and searched online. Here’s what an AI generated response told me:

The key difference between the sounds represented by “v” and “w” lies in their articulation: “v” is a voiced labiodental fricative (bottom lip lightly touches top teeth), while “w” is a voiced bilabial approximant (lips rounded and slightly protruded). 

I stared hard at this explanation, and tried to say ‘V’ and ‘W’ a few times. Wait. How does one say ‘w’? When we learn the English alphabet, w is pronounced “double u.” How on earth are we to know how to pronounce it? So I tried a few words that started with ‘w’. I tried listening to the sounds on the internet, but they sounded the same as ‘v’! So, I gave up. As long as the person I was talking with knew what I was saying, how did it matter whether my lip touched my tooth or not!

The key here is that these letters sounded the same to me, but not to a native speaker. This is perhaps how most of the world feels when they hear sounds like ‘zh’ that are exclusive to Malayalam and Tamil (well, technically, it’s Tamizh). My husband tries hard to learn the sound, but he eventually ends up saying ‘ra’ instead. For reference, here’s what it sounds like:

Each language has its idiosyncrasies. A family of languages tends to share some similarities. But what if your native language is entirely different from someone else’s?

Someone who understands Hindi will probably be able to grasp 20-30% of Bengali or Punjabi, since they originate from Sanskrit. Tamizh, a Dravidian language is said to have completely different roots.

That Tamizh and Hindi have very little in common is something I can attest to. Hindi was (and still is) hard. The grammar and the script is completely different from English and Tamizh.

Learning a New Language

A little under a year ago, I began learning Spanish on Duolingo, quite by accident. One of my clients told me Duolingo had a great onboarding experience, and so, out of curiosity, I signed up. The app made learning Spanish fun, and I got hooked. As of today, I’m on a 332 day streak. What can I say, that owl is persuasive!

What’s more, I found Spanish fairly easy. For starters, the script is the same as English. The only difference lies in the accents that I’m still trying to figure out. But unlike English, it is phonetic, so pronunciation is a breeze. And the best part, no need to worry about w, or even k!

English, Hindi and Tamizh have very different grammar rules and scripts. Each also has different sets of sounds, not found in the other language, giving a multilingual person like me an edge while learning a new language. Apart from sounds, it also offers a broader vocabulary to refer to, to form connections.

Many English words are the same in Spanish, with the addition of suffixes. For example:

  • Usually becomes ususalmente, normally becomes normalmente.
  • Fantastic is fantastico, perfect becomes perfecto, rapid becomes rapido.

As for inanimate objects having a gender, that’s there in Hindi too. In fact, some words in Spanish are nearly identical to Hindi/Sanskrit, including the gender:

  • Table (English) = Mesa (Spanish) = Mez (Hindi)
  • Shirt (English) = Camisa (Spanish) = Kamiz
  • Room (English) = Sala (Spanish) = Shala (Sanskrit/Hindi)
  • Orange (English) = Naranja (Spanish) = Naranga (Sanskrit)

And, I recently found out the word for rice (arroz) comes from the Tamil word arisi.

The Spanish consonant ñ exists in Sanskrit/Hindi and Tamil.

I’m sure if we dig further there will be other similarities.

Finding Common Ground

There is a lot of ongoing debate about which language is older, Sanskrit or Tamizh. As this fascinating video from Storytrails points out, that question is often seen from an ideological lens.

When it comes to culture, everyone wants to be the oldest! It seems to be some sort of ego-massage to claim that something came first. But honestly, who cares? If anything, a language that’s extremely old is likely dead. That we speak English—a language that has constantly evolved and incorporated words from several languages is proof that to be relevant, it must work. The idea of language is, after all, to communicate.

Language and culture cannot exist in isolation. If we must go back in time, then we must also go back to a time when people exchanged and adopted ideas. The similarities we find today between different cultures is because of ancient trade. Ironically, in a globalised world we’re increasingly becoming resistant to such evolution.

A few months ago, we visited Mexico and I tried to practice some words at the resort we stayed in. The locals were extremely appreciative of the effort I was putting in and encourage me to speak. It turned out, many of them were learning English on Duolingo too!

It will be quite a while before I can get truly fluent in Spanish—that would need real world practice, but for now, I am happy discovering the surprising similarities between languages and cultures around the world. (Apparently there is a lot of similarity between Tamil and Korean!)

Categories
Stories

Indian Ink


Growing up in a newly liberalised India, I watched a lot of American sitcoms. Most shows were reruns of old seasons. The exception being the last season of Friends which aired only a day after the US release. It was through these shows that I learned to associate tattoos with a certain persona. And that persona was not remotely Indian or tribal.

It was only after I left the bubble of the community in which I grew up, that I learnt how tattoos were commonplace in rural areas of the country—especially family names and religious symbols like ॐ (aum). But it wasn’t as glamorous as the tattoos I saw on foreigners.

A few years ago, I learned about the Māori practice of Tā moko through a wonderful (and particularly rage-inducing) podcast titled Stuff the British Stole. Tā moko tattoos looked beautiful. That they held deep meaning and weren’t just superficial marks to look cool, made them even more majestic. No wonder the tattoo artist was considered sacred.

It’s funny how I was more aware of tattoo practices outside India than our own. Fortunately, that changed recently, during the India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale 2023.

Much like the Polynesian countries where tattooing different parts of the body holds meaning, tribes in central India too ink themselves with meaningful patterns and motifs.

Godna: Digging into Tradition

Godna is popular in tribal societies, particularly in the areas of Rajanandgaon and Surguja, Chattisgarh, Dindori, Madhya Pradesh and Madhubani in the Mithila region of Bihar.

My investigation into Godna led me to this short film by Shivam Vichare that shows the materials and motifs popularly used in the Baiga tribe in Dindori.

Using kajal (soot collected by burning herbal oil) and needles, ladies mark their bodies at various stages of life. Girls from the community must have their foreheads tattooed as preteens to be accepted into the tribe. Tattoos on the chest are made post marriage and childbirth.

Mangala Devi explains the meaning of some of the motifs—a form of prayer for the individual and family’s wellbeing. One pattern for the chest represents the beehive. Just as the beehive is dripping with honey, so may the home be full of nectar. Diyas on the knees signify light in their lives. And the bull’s eye is for the wellbeing of the cattle, so that they may plough the fields.

Like the Baiga Tribe, the Bharia, Bhil, Gond, Kol and Korku tribes hail from central India—home to some of the world’s oldest prehistoric cave paintings.

Many of the motifs used in Godna and other folk art are elements from nature. Expressed in simple line art, these symbols were created by the earliest graphic designers.

On display at the Biennale were some patterns from the collection of Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (also referred to as the National Museum of Humankind, or Museum of Man and Culture) in Bhopal.

I don’t fancy myself ever having the courage to get permanently inked, but these patterns are beautiful and definitely worth ogling over. Enjoy!

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Studio Perfect

Somaya Sampat Studio

Packaging cartons collapsed into sheets line the lofts in our apartment—set aside for that dreaded day when we’ll eventually have to move out. Little nooks and corners stare at me. Some of the empty spaces immediately scream at us, “Look at how much space is wasted!”

Living in a rented apartment, we have little control over what modifications we can make. Certainly, with the way rents are rising, we wouldn’t spend our money revamping someone else’s home! But that doesn’t stop us from dreaming.

We snap pictures of ideas we like and save Instagram posts related to sustainable home improvement. Whether we’ll ever use them is anybody’s guess!

The Samatva pavilion at the India Art Architecture and Design Biennale 2023 was one such inspirational visual feast. On the outside, the pavilion was a stony medieval building. The entrances to the rooms within seemed to have been renovated in colonial-style arched doorways. But the exhibits within had a warm, welcoming feel.

Of the entire exhibition, spanning 7 pavilions, Samatva was the one that was the most intentionally designed, explaining to the layperson what the terms mean.

Site: an area of ground on which a building is constructed, historically occupied by male architects, contractors, workers, etc. but women have neem challenging this status quo.

“This side has day care facilities along with housing for construction workers.”

Studio: a space where an architect, artist, designer, etc. works, and that is often found in a state of disarray but always creatively stimulating.

“Our studio always smells of coffee and fresh ideas!”

And yes, of course, there was a map!

Binding all the exhibits was a common design element—the red dot.

We saw aesthetically set up studio spaces with glimpses of architectural work-in-progress. Intentionally messy, but true to their word, stimulating.

Below are some pictures we saved for later.

Hopefully, one day we’ll have a space we can call our own—when we can finally free up some loft space and get rid of those packaging cartons. A time when we can drill nails into the walls and put up all our artwork (and the two guitars we now have).

Will we find these pictures when we need them? Only time will tell!

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Space Matters

3D architectural site plan as a wall display from Somaya Sampat's Studio

For the past few years we’ve been looking to buy a home, and we’ve looked at numerous fancy flyers by builders. But nothing has ever caught our imagination. Year after year, all we’ve seen are towers of concrete, embellished with heat-trapping glass. These so-called modern constructions conveniently ignore the realities of climate change. The prospective home buyers are effectively going to live in ovens, necessitating the use of air conditioning, further compounding the problem.

We love open, airy spaces with ample natural light, and yet, these townships pack houses like sardines. Projects these days claim to include rainwater harvesting, just to hop on the green bandwagon. But few even venture close to recycling grey water from kitchen sinks. With every house invariably keeping RO water purifiers, it makes sense to collect the waste water from these appliances for sanitation use. There is also immense opportunity to use rooftops for solar energy. None of these ideas are earth-shattering. Indeed, many of them have been implemented in other parts of the country. But the big builders of Delhi-NCR seem to lack inspiration to truly innovate.

If only they’d hired (or taken inspiration from) the architects of the calibre featured in the Samatva pavilion of IAADB23.

The Sustainable Eco-Literate Architect

Revathi Kamath’s treatise on the sustainable eco-literate architect.

The pioneer of mud architecture, Revathi Kamath wrote in her treatise on the sustainable eco-literate architect:

The architectural mind needs to be aware of the mathematics of complexity and geometries of nature—Mandelbrot sets, Julia sets, Berkhoff’s bagel, Koch curves, Buddhist and Hindu Mandalas—the list is constantly growing. The immense beauty that is latent in the use of these conceptual tools needs to be appreciated and replace the simplistic dogmas of the “cleanlineists,” the functional packaging of commercial space in boxes, the squares and rectangles on Vaastu and Feng-Shui pandits, layouts of military camps and cantonments, imperial palaces, administrative centres and corporate parks.”

Humanity must seek inspiration from nature and build to sustain, instead of merely using and dumping resources indiscriminately.

Take Kankana Narayan Dev, for example. Hailing from Assam, the architect takes inspiration from traditional, sustainable methods of construction in her work.

Furniture and building blocks that incorporate bamboo.
One of Kangana’s homes made with bamboo.

While Kankana works primarily with bamboo, Goa-based Tallulah D’Silva‘s material of choice is mud.

Tallulah D’Silva’s homestay that incorporates mud for construction
Revathi Kamath’s studio featuring a hand-crafted mud wall.

Sustainability wasn’t the only theme of Samatva. So was social inclusion and designing with empathy—something commercial builders could learn from.

One project that caught my eye was Sandhya Naidu Janardhan’s slum redevelopment work.

Building With Empathy

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan’s design process while working on slum redevelopment.

While on our home hunting spree, we visited dozens of construction sites. We sat in lavish sales offices, browsed through glossy brochures, walked inside heavily decorated sample flats and watched the brokers point at realistic scaled model of the buildings. The sheer amount of marketing glitter around these projects was mind-boggling.

But when you’re redeveloping a slum, it’s not as glamourous. You likely won’t have access to the kinds of resources the builders have. It would have been easy for Sandhya to have just drawn some cookie-cutter plans and got them approved without anyone batting an eyelid. But she chose to involve the community in her design process. The hallmark of a good designer is to understand the needs of the user—in this case, the people who would eventually live in the spaces she’d design.

Low fidelity models made with paper and wooden blocks.

By far my favourite exhibit was the small models made with paper and wooden blocks. Proof that one doesn’t need fancy photorealistic models to communicate a vision. What is needed, though, is the willingness to perform sound user research.

Would any big construction company ever care for their customers as much? We’re yet to find one that does.

The image at the top is a display from Somaya Sampat, formerly Somaya & Kalappa Consultants (SNK), at the Samatva Pavilion of IAADB23.

This post is a part of a long-ish series on the India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale 2023.

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Shaping the Built

Design in Bharat

India’s cultural history dates back to prehistoric days. Yet, when it comes to design, the world seems to consider Europe as the centre for excellence.

The India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale 2023 (IAADB23) was a welcome initiative by the Ministry of Culture to show the world (and more importantly, to Indians) what they’ve ignored (or perhaps wilfully tried to destroy, almost succeeding at it).

The initiative captured public imagination. From quirky installations to mind-blowing paintings, and from replicas of temples to modern art, there was something for everyone.

The Red Fort, with its sprawling lawns and numerous barracks was an appropriate choice. To house the cultural history of a nation as rich and diverse as Bhaarat, would have taken nothing short of a small army.

The entire showcase was divided into seven pavilions, each with appropriately beautiful names:

  • Pravesh (Doors of India), Rite of Passage.
  • Bagh-e-Bahar (Gardens of India), Gardens as universe.
  • Sampravah (Baolis of India), Confluence of Communities.
  • Sthapatya (Temples of India), Antifragile Alogrithm.
  • Vismaya (Architectural Wonders of Independent India), Creative Crossovers.
  • Deshaj (Indigenous Design), Bharat x Design.
  • Samatva (Women in Architecture and Design), Shaping the Built.

While the installations at Vismaya and Pravesh made it to Instagram reels, Deshaj was the one that I was looking forward to. But the pavilion that ultimately had the biggest impact on me was Samatva.

Samatva: Shaping the Built

Inside the Smartva pavilion, a signboard reads, “Caution: Women at Work.”

Curator Swati Janu introduced Samatva thus:

The root of the word Samatva (Sanskrit: समत्व) is sama (सम) meaning ‘equal’ which forms the essence of this exhibition and the reason why we showcase women architects here.

Historically and even today women have not been given the same opportunities and recognition as men in the fields of design, architecture and planning, be it in pursuing the profession or being widely published or invited to speak at panels.

Even before we entered the pavilion, we saw these graphics reminding us about the poor representation of women in architecture.

The information visualisation nerd in me, however, couldn’t help but appreciate how beautifully well the information was presented. Using nothing but coloured dots, the series of graphics showed the gap in gender participation in architecture. Yellow dots represented men, while red ones represented women. The saddest visualisation was entirely yellow.

Graphic depicting the gender gap amongst Presidents of Council of Architecture.

Since 1972, there hasn’t been a single non-male president of Council of Architecture.

As architect Amrita Nayak puts it, “Often women have to work harder to be ‘listened to’ by senior leadership, in comparison to men with similar expertise or experience.”

I have been fortunate to have been heard in my work environment. But Amrita’s experience is all too familiar in a social setting.

The picture gets somewhat better when it comes to recognition of women in architecture, with 12 red dots against 88 yellow ones. The Pritzker Prize is an international award given annually to recognise the contributions of a living architect.

“It took 26 men winning the coveted Pritzker Prize for Zaha Hadid to become the first female winner in 2004.” – Sonali Rastogi, Co-Founder and Principal Architect, Morphogenesis

Graphic depicting the gender gap amongst Pritzker Prize winners.

One reason why so few women have been awarded the prize is because there are fewer women who practice. 20 red dots to 80 yellow ones.

Beside the visual, another eerily relatable observation by Amrita reads, “As a practising architect, one often finds oneself walking into a room (or a site) where you are the only female present.”

Graphic depicting the gender gap amongst practising architects in India.

“As architects, we are meant to build inclusive spaces. Why did we not make an inclusive framework for society?”

– Jaya Nila, Architect and Founder, The Architecture Place, Bengaluru

Amongst this sea of yellow dots, one visual represents hope. On the graphic for the number of students of architecture in India, the sixty red dots outnumber the yellow ones—a fraction short of forty. A tiny fraction of blue comes in too, to represent the transgender section of society.

However, as academician and architect Rajshree Rajmohan points out, “One is studying/practising and at the same time grappling with social impositions and gendered expectations.”

Graphic depicting the positive gender gap amongst practising architects in India.

Equanimity is a concept that is rooted in Indian culture, but centuries of colonialism slowly eroded it. But hope springs eternal, and there are some signs of revival. We have a long way to go to rediscover our roots and I hope initiatives like IAADB don’t get restricted to quirky social media shorts but spark genuine conversations around design in Bhaarat.

This is the first of what will likely be a long series of posts dedicated to IAADB23, as I have just stumbled upon the treasure of memories in my digital archives. Stay tuned for more!

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The Drum House

Entrance to the Red Fort, Shahjahanabad, Old Delhi, India.

If you’ve seen Hindi movies or plays set in the Mughal era, then you’ve heard that familiar refrain, “Azeem o Shaan Shehenshah…” An announcer describing the arrival of royalty.

At the Red Fort in Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi), musicians would make announcements from the Naubat Khana, or Naqqar Khana (Drum House), letting the public know that the Emperor or a royal dignitary had arrived.

Announcements were a tiny part of the musicians’ job description. The Mughals were great patrons of art, and musicians would perform five times a day at chosen hours.

As is apt for any hall that houses artists, the Naqqar Khana is elaborately decorated. Unlike Islamic architecture in other parts of the world where motifs are strictly geometrical, Mughal architecture heavily incorporated natural themes, particularly flowers, in addition to traditional calligraphy.

Here’s a closer look at the intricate details of the Naubat Khana at Red Fort.

The Naubat Khana or the Naqqar Khana inside the Red Fort, Old Delhi, India.
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The Bazaar Under the Dome

Chhatta Chowk, Red Fort, Old Delhi, India.

My only memories of the Red Fort are from school trips. And while India Gate, Qutub Minar and the Baha’i temple made quite an impression, I couldn’t quite remember anything about the Red Fort. Except that there was a very crowded market at the entrance that was a nightmare to get through.

So, when we learned that the India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale 2023 was held inside the Fort, I got excited. Finally, an excuse to fill in the memory gaps. 

Turns out, there really wasn’t much to fill in!

Entrance to the Red Fort, Old Delhi, India.

The Fort looked plain, barren and empty. A mere shell, in comparison to the mighty and rich forts of Rajasthan. The only exciting part of the monument: the bazaar! 

Called Chhatta chowk (translation: covered bazar), the 17th century market had the typical souvenir stalls. Glittering jewellery and carved statues, fridge magnets and stoles. Each shop full of shoppers examining the items with keen eyes.

As we moved closer towards one of the shops, a long line of school students crossed our path. Holding hands and forming a file to ensure no one gets lost. None of them was one bit interested in the wares.

As we waited for the students to cross, my thoughts went back to our school trip. It was boring and tedious for us, but it must have been a hundred times worse for our guardians—the teachers who accompanied us on those trips.

Originally posted on Instagram on 1 April 2024, this post is part of a series where I attempt to reverse social media—to reclaim my life from other platforms.