Welcome to another edition of my newsletter!
I once spent an evening with friends who were watching games of Bobsleigh and Skeleton. I’m not really a sports person, and I held back most of my comments, but not my surprise that these were recognised sports. Mercifully the gathering eventually moved to the TV-less terrace, but I began wondering why we even play sports. Isn’t it a bunch of people performing a seemingly useless task better than their opponent? Yet it provides as much entertainment as a soap opera, and requires just as much emotional investment. I asked a sport-lover friend, who passionately said that sports creates a sense of community and belonging, and keeps morale high.
The definition of sports:
all forms of physical activity that contribute to physical fitness, mental well-being and social interaction. These include: play; recreation; organized, casual or competitive sport; and indigenous sports or games.
So would a game of Who Can Spit The Watermelon Seed The Furthest be classified as a sport? Who decides what's a sport and what's not? Which sports are to be taken seriously and which are not?
Going over the lesser-known sports at the Olympics, I came across race walking and dressage. If you’re looking for a pick-me-up, here is dressage, at a glance.
Have your thoughts ever strayed to how our ancient ancestors entertained themselves? It’s believed that the oldest musical instrument was possibly made by Neanderthals, from the femur bone of a bear. I imagine a Flintstones-esque character in their cave somewhere in modern day Slovenia, playing this sort-of flute. Now fast forward to the modern world. Sonification is the process of converting data to sound - like this musical representation of the spike protein structure of the COVID-19 pathogen.
Ziiiiip through the centuries, the incredible journey of thousands of years, of everything that happened between that ancient one playing an animal bone and someone coding music on their computer! I personally like the idea of it more than the actual music, but if you want to know what data music (also known as algorithmic music) sounds like, you can check out this Spotify playlist made by my friend Raghav, who introduced me to it.
I stumbled across Ruchika Nambiar’s The Dollhouse Project, and it was so… funny and strange and intriguing and detailed. She made a miniature version of herself, an alter ego called “Little R”, and recreated her own home life down to tiniest of details like the food in in the fridge, the print on the newspaper, the artwork on the walls ... She even had a “dollhousewarming” with miniature invitations! This miniature version of herself lives out a parallel life on her interactive Instagram page, and it has fascinated me ever since I saw it. Take out the functionality of an everyday activity or object, and it becomes art - through her miniature dollhouse, Ruchika Nambiar has made an art museum out of a replica of her life.
I am a big fan of large meals with a lot of people at the table, crammed elbow-to-elbow, talking loudly and over each other. So of course I was very excited that my piece about Sunday lunch feasts at my Aai’s place appeared in the latest edition of Potluck Zine. If you love food, and stories about food, and food illustrations, and everything food, check out Potluck! You can read my piece, which is a glimpse into an Odia lunch, here. If you wish to support independent magazines, you can always order a copy of Potluck.
The other day, I was recording a voice memo and left the recorder on my phone running by mistake. When I finally noticed and turned it off, it had picked up almost half an hour of ... nothing. Listening back to it, I marvel at the fact that I lived through those 20 minutes. I can hear myself sipping coffee. I can hear myself sighing. I can hear myself humming. A tap runs. A door slams. I hadn't noticed that it was a windy evening till I heard the wind chimes in the recording. Those twenty minutes, where I was listening back to the previous twenty minutes, was a very strange experience, like I was scrubbing back on a timeline of my life. It felt odd - like when you look at baby pictures of yourself, and feel a complete disconnect to that person. It’s as though as soon as a moment has passed, you are no longer the same person. Every passing moment leaves its imprint in you, and changes you. You are no longer the same person you were an hour ago. From The Curtain by Milan Kundera: “But each little event, as it becomes past, loses its concrete nature and turns into an outline... the true face of life, the prose of life, is found only in the present moment”. Or am I reading too much into a chance voice recording?
Not one, but TWO of my friends told me that they have been watching excessive amounts of videos where women, like the one behind Lilly the lemon, pack lunches in bento boxes for their husbands. Yes, husbentos is a thing, and it has many fans.
I tried to analyse and understand what makes watching this mundane task of packing lunches so engaging, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I just know that it’s very very addictive, and although my friends don't want husbands for marriage right now, they do want husbands for whom they can pack lunches. For now, they are making do with packing lunch for themselves.
“…and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so”
From You Can’t Have It All by Barbara Ras.
With much love,
Nitya