Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

What Changes?

How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?

What changes?

Don’t you think that fourth and fifth world war already took place?

If, after fifty years, Russia-Ukraine and Israel Palestine are taught as fourth and fifth world war, who’s going to awaken them? Nobody.

Posted on by dancinglightofgrace · 5 Comments

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.
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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.
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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.
Posted on by dancinglightofgrace · 3 Comments

Puneet Saxena

What is one word that describes you?

  1. When I was a friend of Brijgopal and Rakesh, I used to see Puneet as a carefree young boy in our class.
  2. Rakesh left the group and Puneet joined it.
  3. We used to roam around carefree. Unit tests in Maria Mata Convent School Chhatarpur were both a blessing and a curse. I had scored three marks out of twenty five, he had scored zero. Miss Anuja Rathore punished us both with a bamboo stick on palms of our hands.
  4. Puneet moved on when I joined Kuldeep Shukla to help improve my scores on unit tests.
  5. Puneet was well built, athletic and later developed fondness for memorizing entire songs like “Aati kyaa khandaala.” Had amazing memory which he seldom employed to memorize lessons.
  6. We used to play a rugby like tournament during breaks. Teams were fond of having Puneet on their sides because such players ensured victory. The game was a superhit.
  7. I was trying to develop a martial arts school which was obviously super flop because we had to wash our school dress, not just Rugby but also fights between giants like Avadhesh and Puneet used to render our shirts torn. We were not well respected at our homes.
  8. He never liked his nick name given to him by our maths teacher “Punnee-laal Parathe Waale” as he frequently used to bring paraathe in his tiffin.
  9. There was an author named Padumlaal Punnalaal Bakshi in our syllabus, therefore some of our classmates used to annoy him with such names.
  10. When we met decades afterwards during COVID years: he again insisted on how annoyed he was with such nicknames. His actual nickname was Robbie.
  11. He used to fervently tell about how he used to burn RGPV copies when review requests used to come. He wasn’t fond of making money. He said he loved his friends but he wasn’t fond of listening to advise. He had a big ego and he was an achiever too.
  12. I still remember how he came to my house once after school bells with other friends to collect a notebook. Notebook belonged to a girl. The notebooks were cross distributed by our maths teacher who wanted to promote Mohabattein in a monastery.
  13. Puneet, along with Avadhesh and Abhishek ( Rajpoot) ensured that I wasn’t focussing on studies. They used to create nuisances all the times.
  14. When Puneet met me during COVID we discussed eschatology. His house was one of the first few houses in that colony when we used to play during childhood. He showcased some strange device in 2021-22 to me, some hidden project he was working on. Needless to say the project was way ahead of my understanding of technology at that time.
  15. Yesterday I heard that Puneet is no more.
Posted on by dancinglightofgrace

I think it’s a trap and I might be paranoid, only thing is: it’s a trap and I am not paranoid.

What was the best compliment you’ve received?

I can tell you about compliments I gave. There are absolutely no compliments which can save your life, your day or your future.

All epics are full of those though. Actually it’s swear words people use as compliments these days.

I give myself compliments, in order to motivate myself, it’s done by comparing myself with myself in space and time ( to quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge.)

The best achievement was clearing Peter Schmies Word Classification Test after so many trials and tribulations.

Now I am struggling to clear this test on United Nations World Food Program Website called Free Rice. It’s an archive of archaic words at level fifth and fourth.

If I clear this test: I might be able to flawlessly score everyday. Flawlessly score at least 2060 everyday. This would be an achievement enough to save myself from embarassing teenagers I come across everyday who throw temper tantrums to register themselves instead of actually doing anything meaningful for community or themselves.