The Buddha took a deep breath and declared: “Ok, from now on, I’m no longer giving you advice on how to manage your affairs. I’ve noticed how you’ve already compiled all of my responses to your incessant whining. That thing is more than a thousand pages long, big enough for you to beat each other senseless with it.” As he was leaving, he stopped mid-stride and added: “You know what? Forget all those rules I gave you. Just use some common sense and you’ll be fine. Have sex if you must.” Upon saying these words, he retired to his hut.

Here ends the Vinaya. The Pāli manuscript has a line running across the entire excerpt translated above. A line in the margin says: “Mahāsāṃghika heresy. Do not copy.”

I’m working on my Hinduism comprehensive now.

And then the methodology comprehensive.

And then the dissertation proposal.

And then 9 months of research abroad… probably Taiwan.

And then writing the dissertation and defending.

And then back in the workforce.

This is not a jab at my teachers. I do think however that Western pedagogical theory too strongly devalues the role of memorization in learning. It does seem that at some point there was too much emphasis on rote memorization. Judging by the way my parents and grandparents describe how they learned various subjects at school, such overemphasis seems clear to me. An history class for instance would just consist in memorizing lists of facts without also engaging in reflection upon the meaning of those facts. A readjustment towards more reflection and less rote memorization was certainly desirable. However, it seems that the pendulum has swung too far away from memorization.

This is particularly problematic in language classes in general and especially so in Sanskrit classes. Memorization of texts is an integral part of traditional Sanskritic learning. If we are aiming at understanding the people who were raised in such environment, then we must also engage in memorization. If nothing else, memorizing verses forces my intellect to process the language, to integrate the structures of the language to my thought structures. I am convinced that it is making me better at understanding not only the verses I am memorizing but also unfamiliar texts.

This weekend: uttappams. (Nothing new, I’ve made some before.)

It was an instructional book about Mormonism. It’s been my experience that recognizing English words transliterated in Hindi is pretty hard. Unfortunately, I don’t have to read such transliterated words very often. Here, I had a big fat clue in the ardhacandra but I’m reading much more Sanskrit than Hindi these days and even in the Hindi I read from time to time, the ardhacandra is not very frequent. So it initially slipped my mind. In general, Hindi transliteration of English words is done to represent how the English word sounds to the ears of native Hindi speakers. Hence, it requires quite a bit of mental gymnastics for a reader thinking in English to totally flip perspectives. The reader must no longer be an English language speaker looking at Hindi as a foreign language but must become a Hindi speaker looking at English as a foreign language. Arguably, the same gymnastics sometimes has to be performed with French for instance but because English and French “grew up” together, so to speak, and use the same script, the mental gymnastics involved are usually trivial.

A few days ago, I came across a site that hosts video recordings of people showing how to perform various recipes. They did not have anything about dosas but I figured that somebody had probably taken a video and put it online somewhere. So I found a video, watched it and learned what it is I was not doing right. The key is that after putting the batter in pan, you must spread it with your ladle. I had tried it several months ago just out of a desire for experimentation but I found it hard to keep the dosa intact while spreading the batter because the batter tends to stick to the ladle. So I abandoned the idea of spreading the batter. But there’s no way around it: if I want a normal looking dosa, I must spread it. I just have to learn to spread it correctly.

Last night I put this discovery to the test. My spreading technique is not perfect yet but my dosas now look much more normal. My dosas were rather unequal last night but one of them was the best looking dosa I’ve ever made. With a bit of experimentation with cooking instruments and learning how dosa batter behaves I should be able to get better.

Terry Dolan, professor of English at University College Dublin, said: “It’s a very eclectic language. It seems to choose elements at random. It brings in a whole wealth of different language forms such as Anglo-Saxon, Hindu, Welsh and, I think, Siberian Yupik as well.”

Repeat after me: Hindu is not a language. Hindu is not a language. Hindu is not a language. Possibilities for this mistake:

1. This is just a typo. Yep, it is pretty easy to type Hindu instead of Hindi. Typos slip through all the time.
2. The reporter who took down Dolan’s comments does not know that Hindu is not a language. Dolan said Hindi but the reporter recorded Hindu.
3. Dolan himself made the mistake and no one caught it. If this is the case, in the future, someone else than Dolan needs to be interviewed for questions of language. Really.

I hope the first possibility is what actually happened in this case.

By the way, Hindu is a religious denomination.

मेरे ख़याल में भारतीय खाना सब से स्वादिष्ट है। इसलिए अक्सर भारतीय खाना बनाता हूं। लेकिन भारतीय खाना बनाने का कार्य मुश्किल ही है और सच पूछो तो सुस्त हूं। अच्छा, अभी मैंने झूठ कहा है। वास्तव में बहुत मेहनती हूं लेकिन मेरी कार्यसूची में खाना बनाना महत्वपूर्ण नहीं। पकाने से कई दूसरे काम करने हैं मुझे (जैसा हिन्दी लिखने का अभ्यास करना)। मेरे लिए पत्नी खाना नहीं बना देती क्योंकि वह मांसाहारी है और मैं शाकाहारी हूं। (वह मेरा खाना बना सके लेकिन यह बोझ उस पर मैं नहीं डालना चाहता। यह स्थिति पारस्परिक है – आम तौर से मैं उसका खाना नहीं बनाता।)

तो ज्योती, गित्स और दूसरी कंपन्यों से मदद लेता हूं। कभी कभी मुझे भारतीय दुकान में जाना है क्योंकि कुछ ज़रूरी चीज़ें सिर्फ़ वहां बिकते हैं। तो भी पहले से अधिक भारतीय खाना आम दुकानों में भी मिलता है। अंत में आसानी से भारतीय खाना बना पाता हूं।

Quoted from a store selling papads:

If you have the opportunity to visit a traditional Indian village you may stumble on a scene where some women have got together rolling stiff dough into thin circles (sizes vary) and drying them in the sun.

A scene? A scene is organized action put together with the intention of giving a show to someone. Did those women decide to roll dough for the benefit of giving a show to visitors? I doubt it. Maybe for a tourist normal daily behavior on the part of the natives is always a scene. Here’s a nice reversal:

If you have the opportunity to visit New York you may stumble on a scene where a man comes out of the subway.

It seems to me that to a New Yorker there is no “scene” there. Yet coming out of the subway in New York is just as natural as rolling stiff dough in the traditional village. No, it is the eye of a foreigner that those actions turn into scenes.

I am reminded of a class at Penn in which one author we read cautioned his readers against the use of the word “costume” to talk about the clothing of ethnic groups being studied. A costume is something worn usually temporarily for a specific occasion. What people wear all day long are not costumes, yet there is a tendency in academic (and para-academic) literature to label the clothing of other ethnic groups as “costumes”.