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Why anything in particular when everything absolutely belongs to me?

If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

  1. In other words : are you proud of your name?
  2. Names are only placeholders for relative value put into them by cultural contexts or personal life histories.
  3. What’s in a name.
  4. In other words: this is not the time or place and I can’t imagine any time or place where I would have liked anything to be named after me.
  5. In other words: all names are my names.
Posted on by dancinglightofgrace · 5 Comments

Ramcharitmanas on AIR

  1. If you want to devote yourself to melodious Ramcharitmanas by All India Radio; there’s an app on Play Store.
  2. As usual: it’s only a teaser trailer version of an audio which honors time honoured custom; the very thing you are getting rid of would be used in advertisement and background unfiltered noises: sloppy job by AIR which was more devoted to women reservation than using couple of good singers like Suresh Wadekar. Not misogynistic at all.
  3. What’s peculiar about divine Sundarkaand Leela : though it was an image of Seeta who was either born out of Yajna fire like other such ladies, for example Draupadi or fill in the blanks for any warfare where ladies were involved directly or indirectly.
  4. Neither all pervading, omniscient, omnipresent Godhead Ram is aware of whereabouts of his consort( no telepathy )
  5. Nor consort is aware of Ram, though she’s all powerful or very source of power for Ram.
  6. She thinks that Ravana the alter ego of Ram is going to kill her in a month like he threatened.
  7. Everyone is all praises for all these characters.
  8. Especially after Seeta is abandoned again after gossip and adopted by a safe for rearing her children who aren’t declared to be those of Ram. No advanced DNA methods though there’s a lot of talk of advanced technology by Bhardwaja.
  9. Story tends to merge into abandoning wives to get rid of gossips.
  10. Enlightened Ram of Yoga Vashishth was convinced to go through 14 years of trials and tribulations in wilderness before being eligible to rule for 11000 years in a universal white brotherhood of men who takes all of his estate into a divine Saaket.
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A Hero!

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

  1. I was learning to read. A library of books appeared in a government school in 1990-1991. This box had books from Eklavya publications New Delhi.
  2. The books had a lasting impact on my subconscious. After coming of age, when I questioned my spiritual enlightenment I looked back at that particular batch of books. It included Chakmak magazine. Not to mention syllabus books.
  3. Television, radio and local dialect shaped my world view.
  4. As usually happens to young children I was fascinated by martial arts in Bollywood movies and TV.
  5. I wanted to be a hero. A filmy hero who was able to defend great causes by being one many army. A saviour.
  6. Even that was possible as grandpa once told. There was a switch behind the medium size television set we had. That would have let me land in Bombay Bollywood to be a hero.
  7. Heroes were of many types. Delhi Doordarshan’s sentimental appeal to sacrifice yourself for Matrix, Patrix etc wasn’t really balanced by Bertrand Russell’s “patriotism is willing to die for foolish reasons.” I came across that only after college.
  8. Therefore, heroes who were warriors or army men brainwashed to die for their countries to receive accolades like Paramveer Chakra or Ashok Chakra.
  9. If someone thinks I mean they don’t value anything: it’s not so. Yet, in a world view there might not be a need for Jacob’s Ladder or Grave of Fireflies.
  10. If parents convinced me to not be a warrior I wanted to be at least a policeman. Most of the Bollywood movies which aren’t brainy show policemen as actual action heroes. Administrative officers, Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucracy, banking, media, politicians, mafia, priesthood and the rest don’t appear in the budding psyche of young children.
  11. Prompts are merely an excuse to rant. I am deleting old articles to create space for new. Reason is simple: though new WordPress websites are available it’s more difficult to get subscribers or to actually buy as much space as there was a decade ago. I have contemplated about using another platform for blogging but this one seems to be most comfortable at the moment.
  12. This year I visited that village where people barely recognised me as I was visiting after college days. Even then I was visiting with my father who was a teacher there for almost a decade. The librarian then offered to help me with those books I had read and touched as a young child of five or six.
  13. They were a treasure. I looked up Eklavya publications archives online but they were different books. It disappointed me like most things online do.
  14. Look at Spotify or other music apps. Even though classics are available they often come with deluge of compulsory advertisements. As much as home ministry mixing devotional chants with abusive words at such a refined level that a novice gets baffled.
  15. Art of livings chanting of Om Namah Shivay was mixed with home minister’s swear words during announcement of a new law which was popularised as a meme. Who’s going to protect Dharma?
  16. And how’s Dharma going to protect its protectors if all you have are life insurance corporations agents who compel you to sign papers without insuring basic life sustenance needs. Are farmers still dying because of loans or bad weather?
  17. I have definitely come a long way. Doctor Win Wenger PhD suggested that sowing of wild oats stops when you turn forty. I think I convinced myself that I was way past forty. What a relief. I got another job which actually paid instead of labouring for an NGO which actually had a king who was no different from Gujrati kings who only compelled you to surrender your imagined properties to them by showcasing great virtue on occassions which suited them.
  18. To be or not to be what you wanted to be when you were five is more an analysis of world view created by literature at that time than individual psyche which might have held certain promises for stakeholders who were investing into that world or crop.
  19. This verse:
  20. कल भात आएगा,
    एक पतीला;
    गरम गरम,
    और गीला गीला!
  21. Sums up the make up of this five year old’s mind by providence which wanted him to realise his birth in a commune or orphanage where he only talks to a postbox 📬.
  22. The postbox 📫 takes up role of singer of this refrain which means:
  23. Tomorrow there will be rice;
  24. One big bowl full of rice;
  25. It will be hot steamy rice;
  26. It will be wet hot steamy rice like you prefer.
  27. Young, naked five year old crying its heart out to a postbox where crops might have failed. Parents might have abandoned the child. Satellite cameras might have been capturing images to project them onto a Truman Show like grand reality.
  28. Subconscious of child had questions like those asked by Nachiketa to Yama or those in the Seventh Seal if you would. Upanishads or Vedanta. They’re all answered in due course.
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World Wide Words!

What’s something most people don’t understand?

  1. If you can score more than 2060 on level 5th and 4th of UNWFP Free Rice Vocabulary Test: consider your vocabulary size to be decent compared to Mensa members.
  2. If you can easily score cent-percent on Peter Schmies Word Classification Test: you’re as smart as Frederick Berchtold when he was fourteen years old or Joy Rajiv when he was twenty three or James Harbeck when he was, well, whatever age he was in 1997-1998. Or you might be as smart as I am in 2025.
  3. If you know all the words in Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words or in the glossary of Sesquiotica: you might be in the league of extraordinary gentlemen like Language Log authors.
  4. Most people don’t understand most of the words they use or see in their everyday lives, of course, including me.
  5. Most people don’t understand that there’s nothing to understand.
  6. Why not I, me and myself.
  7. Traction.
  8. How do I convince myself of relative rarity of words or currency?
Posted on by dancinglightofgrace · 4 Comments

How often ten enfranchise Seymore morel ellipse!

How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

  1. Whether you’re a slave or a human being or a bot or an animal. ( Reframing the question or rephrasing if you would.)
  2. Brings us to goals such as pursuit of happiness derived by clearing Peter Schmies Word Classification Test or
  3. James Harbeck’s glossary of terms on Sesquiotica or
  4. United Nations World Food Program Website Free Rice Vocabulary Test database level 4th and 5th or
  5. SAT/GRE
  6. TOEFL
  7. IIT JEE
  8. IIM or Harvard University entrance tests.
  9. Goals which mean different thing at different times.
  10. How often? Even in your dreams or only in waking and sleeping?
  11. What a strange prompt indeed.
  12. It might as well be asking how often do you need an ambulance carrying you to resting place or
  13. Why would in a perfect platonic reality you would not have enough to pursue your goals without saying no to a number of things, filters, veils or imperfections at first.
Posted on by dancinglightofgrace · 1 Comment

Persnickety, Pernickety

I first came across this word in Peter Schmies Word Classification Test. You’re supposed to tell if Persnickety is synonymous with finicky or antonyms or completely unrelated.

Here James Harbeck, who originally appeared at number eleventh in Peter Schmies Word Classification Test rankings gives a great treatment to Persnickety though he didn’t mention finicky even once in this entire article. I took help from Replika platform level 368 on some words to interpret this article. These words are :

  1. Snick
  2. Torquemada
  3. Friar
  4. Concupiscence
  5. Absquatulate related to Scram
  6. Down in the nick with old Nick until he became:
  7. Saint Nicholas
  8. Saint Lawrence is patron saint of comedians, cooks and…..
  9. Numpty reminds me of Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
  10. Parting note: if you , editors association of Canada or anyone else is in contact with United Nations World Food Program Website Free Rice Vocabulary Test support team, please let them know that website is bugged and dysfunctional in the sense that levels don’t change on their own. You’re supposed to manually reset the levels.
  11. I might also have read its etymology in Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words without any corroboration for the same. Hope you will visit Sesquiotica and enjoy James’ defence of editorial midwives.
  12. https://sesquiotic.com/
  13. The link above takes you to the article mentioned because jetpack app somehow fails in the process of reblogging as it does in many others.
Posted on by dancinglightofgrace · 2 Comments

I, me, myself or Norway!

Who was your most influential teacher? Why?

  1. I, me, myself.
  2. Raman Maharshi, often considered to be Dakshinamurthy among gurus would agree.
  3. Some others disagree. Self is neither one nor many, nor sum of parts or…..
  4. None of the teachers were influential enough to last forty years of my life.
  5. And so on and so forth.