DilliMeriJaan

  My birthday is round the corner and I can sense the tense atmosphere at home. Hurried huddles and suppressed whispers between the daughter and her dad. Thoughtful silences. Because getting me a gift is possibly the most stressful exercise ever. Anthropogenic activities, and not natural cycles and other things we can shrug responsibility off of, are responsible for that fire raging next door, unbearable heat waves a little ahead and devastating cyclones, floods, hurricanes all around. Not to mention zoonotics like COVID 19. Through our actions, we have ensured that the earth has warmed beyond a point of return – unless we drastically cut emissions, which is only possible if we drastically cut consumption. Now you see why you can’t buy me a gift. It is laden with carbon emitting processes and soil, air, water contaminating materials. So here are what I’ve received in the past and why they made sense. 1.         Books. Paper sourced using Responsib...

  Sir Attenborough can’t be in all the wildlife films in the world, so this one has Stephen Fry. The dry humour and crisp tones intact. This film, available on Netflix, is 51 minutes of colour and sheer beauty. The storyline is simple. How do you get yourself a mate? Feathered beauties of tropical rain forests, show you how. And HOW. Technique 1: Pole Dance. The 12-wired Bird of Paradise of New Guinea, sits patiently on his pole, waiting to display his dancing skills to a prospective mate. He is already quite a looker, with unique 12 wire-like filaments emerging from his wings. The moment a female shows some interest, even in passing, he whips his filaments about and does the most impressive pole dance that you will ever see. The female watches in awe and enjoys getting a couple of whacks from the wires – or maybe they are caresses. Technique 2: Team work . Lance Tailed Manakins of South American forests, work in pairs. The ‘wingman’ (pun intended) does a series of vertical ho...

 Imagine a scene out of Ray’s ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’. Only replace the Mirza Ali and Mir Ali with my grandfather and dad or uncle. Weekends were spent avoiding this chess playing group, while Ustad Aamir Khan or Bade Ghulam Ali played in the background. I must be a 100 years old if this is how I grew up. Almost there almost there. But the point I am making is how music in the house I grew up in, was serious business. The world around me may have been in raptures over slithering Sridevi and floundering Rishi Kapoor but no music of theirs was played in our house. If vocal classical was getting a bit much, we could listen to Ustad Vilayat Khan on Sitar. Even here there were mysterious rules. Vilayat Khan was great but not Pandit Ravishankar. Bhimsen Joshi was applauded, Jasraj was not tolerated. I think there were some reservations against Kishori Amonkar but I am beginning to forget the intricacies of our music listening. Rabindra Sangeet was BANNED. Did we want to sing in flat tone...