Hello!
Week 3! Birthday week! As a ritual, I spend some time walking down memory lanes to figure out things that have stood out for me - things worth talking about again.
While the last year has been mostly about chilling, and doing whatever the reverse of getting burnt out is; the last couple of days have been hectic.
Mainly because of operational issues with the business that my wife and I run - we have a set of serviced apartments that people love in JP Nagar. Our elevator stopped working recently, and we've had issues getting it repaired.
Anyway, I'm excited about this edition of the newsletter - a wave of nostalgia coming up!
-Teej
🥗 Plate full of sunshine
It's pouring now in Bangalore—the perfect weather for a perfect meal - street-side masalepuri.
Spotting a shop isn't difficult - they're ubiquitous - a 4-wheeled cart, with a cool white LED light these days. A cart with plastic covers full of fried puri, the usual suspects of onion-tomato-carrots, boiled potatoes, vessels with masala and peas - interchanged onto a stove to keep both hot and a pot full of spicy pani. A blue tarp keeps the rain out these days, a few plastic stools or chairs for their patrons to sit on, and a couple of buckets for people to keep their plates once they're done.
"Anna ond masale", and the vendor buzzes into a frantic one-person assembly line.
Cracks a few maida puri into a white ceramic plate, spoons a ladle of peas, and another of the green (or brown) masala usually made of a potato-onion base spiced with pudina, adds a spoon full of finely chopped onion-carrot salad and diced tomatoes, pinches of chat masala and salt, and teaspoons of spicy green chutney and sweet-tangy tamarind chutney. Tops the entire plate with some sev, garnishes with coriander, and serves with a steel spoon.
I honestly think masala puri is a perfect meal - if made at home. It has all the carbs from the starches, fats from the oils, and enough protein from the cooked peas.
But... It never stops with one plate of masala puri, does it?
"Anna, ond panipuri".
What is your go-to snack?
👨🏼🏫 Meeting an old teacher
This was 2015 and is a story that answered all the "did you get thrown out of college" questions on FaceBook.
A few friends and I got into a random water fight in my pre-university college.
For those who don't know, I spent a couple of years at Deeksha, which we proudly declare was a prison of sorts for high-achievers. I was in the 3rd batch and the college management was still getting a hold of things and how students could co-exist in the space. The place was quite strict about dressing and essentially tried to keep the focus on studying, and less on the teenagers-having-fun bits. Students carried tomes of textbooks, and sheets of homework, while all dressed in pinstriped white and blue shirts and blue pants that made us, unfunnily look like inmates. The college too, was in the middle of nowhere, at Thalekettpura Talaghattapura.
After, I-don't-remember-how-we-got-into-a-water-fight, we tried going back to class. My friends were slightly faster than me, and I missed slipping into class before the lecturer came in. While I was waiting to get in, the principal spotted me as he was angrily walking upstairs - I reckon to yell at someone else. He asked me to wait, and wait I did.
It felt like an eternity, and we heard him yell at other hapless teenagers. Imagine a gunshot dispersing a flock of birds - but a human-voiced gunshot.
The principal finally came down, and "spoke" to me. He took me to the gate of the college and told me to not come back.
While I was trying to figure out my options, the student counsellor came out of his corner office in the library and said, "How will you go home now? Come sit under the fan in the library."
This core memory came flooding in, on my way to a run, when I saw this person in a flat cap, fumbling with his phone near my home.
We spent some time catching up and reliving this story.
BBB and chips kind of birthdays
I grew up in a quarter - an apartment of sorts, where at least one parent shares the workplace with every other kid's parent. Birthdays were meticulously planned and executed by my parents - and this was something I looked forward to at the start of the school year, to call all my friends home and celebrate it.
Amma baked a cake a couple of times, and Appa was amazing at the decor, they would reuse the paper streamers, and confetti from the previous party. Amma would make a big batch of bisibelebath - a rice-lentil dish loaded with veggies - truly a one-pot meal, and Appa would bring salt and spicy potato chips from the local All Hot Chips. We would make some Rasna together, and move the furniture so that the TV isn't the centrepiece of the living room but one small table with the cake and me behind it.
Friends of all ages. Many from the quarters who I played with daily. Loads of photos in old analogue film cameras. Good food - one can never go wrong with BBB, chips, and juice; and cake.
Birthdays seemed so simple back then. And this menu seemed so universal (for a Kannadiga family).
Epistemology and managing what you know
Epistemology - the theory of knowledge.
Farham Street is an amazing resource for topics that make you think.
The question of how you know that you know what you know (not even paraphrasing) is detailed here. This is something I've pondered about a lot.
Sure, there are textbooks, and notes you've made as a child - to know what you've learnt. But as an adult, this slowly fizzles away.
Sure, there are books in your library (or an anti-library), to know what you've read about (or what you're willing to read); but does this get distilling into your knowledge somewhere?
A lot of the knowledge we acquire is via the lens of our experience - and subjective to our perception. This borders on solipsism, but it's important to think about knowledge as a social agreement of mutually consistent comprehension of things. For example: an apple is red because most people in society would call that colour red - and someone who is blind to the colour wouldn't be able to differentiate between the red everyone calls it and let's say orange. This is because all our perceptions stem from the same physical world, and hence there's room for consistency in understanding things as a group.
Tying this into knowledge management, there's a great idea of zettlekasten - a personal library of notes of what you've come across.
I've tried building this for myself - and I've kept falling off the bandwagon for ages. Mostly because I never thought I had an end goal for these ideas.
But I've found a way to give them a fresh lease of life - most of what's written in these newsletters comes from my zettles - my notes about others' thoughts.
Would you be interested in reading more about this meta-framework?
Kids these days
The world is in constant flux - with every generation having it easier than the previous one.
I remember my father's stories of how he had to man up and shoulder his family when he was still a teenager - something I've been lucky enough not to go through at the same age. My mother told me stories of how she wanted to support her sisters before she could get married herself.
But this doesn't mean being a kid is easy.
With everything being so connected and accessible - it's a lot tougher for kids to break out of their shells, to get out of their comfort zones, to face the world while just being silly.
I remember cycling on empty streets, slipping on sand, and returning home with bloodied calves. I remember climbing guava trees and hanging upside down, just because I could. I remember fighting with my best friend and returning to being besties the next day.
Now, all of this is a lot harder. Children aren't allowed to explore what their bodies are capable of, in fear of getting hurt. With the advent of digital media, there's a permanent record of what was said, and kids are trained to become editors of their own thoughts, to remain politically correct at a very tender age. The youth aren't just allowed to be silly and stupid anymore.
All this limits their chance to grow. To explore their minds and bodies. To experiment and make weird choices. To distance themselves from their immature selves. To just kid around.
Errata & Updates
I'm thinking of switching to a daily schedule for code.with.teej instead of the current weekly version - more because I feel like there's more that can be done with a faster cadence. Rasika.life is live, and we're adding features slowly :) Let me know what you think!
A lot of you loved the garadimane post - places are teaching how to work with mudgars, gada etc too. One I go to is Tagda Raho, more for their structured way of teaching over the community-driven one at my garadimane.
Some of you reached out empathising with the curry leaf plant. This batch too shrivelled up and died.
There were a few questions about how I record the podcast version of the post - I use Apple Voice Notes and edit in Garageband. The previous post had 200+ umms and aahs that I cut out.
End Note
If you've liked this post, I'd love it if you could share it with a friend. You can get them to subscribe here
I do my best to have 5 "fun" things I've been working on every week hopefully on Thursdays. I'm stoked you're here on my journey and would love to read/hear about what you think. If you think there are other things we can look at, do them my way!
If you enjoyed this, give the previous post a read too!
Thanks for being here, and reading all this. See you soon!
Teej
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