encyclopedia of indian proverbs

Proverbs of Haiko Supermarket

Of a truth many shelves shall be desolate, without inhabitant.

Sales clerks are fruitful, and multiply, and creepeth amongst the aisles offering unbidden assistance in the purchase of simple wares, but woe to him that desires a hurried checkout, for shoppers shall be placed alone in the midst of unmanned registers.

For every item upon the shelves shall have a bar code, and no bar code shall be refused its scan, not even when thou buyest fourteen of the exact same item.

Woe unto him that expecteth unsweetened vanilla Almond Breeze to still be there next week.

Let your moderation be known unto all men. He that desires a reliable supply of broccoli or mushrooms is but greedy and foolish.

Are not two bags of dried chickpeas sold for a farthing? Yet good luck unto him who wishes to purchase canned beans.

For every receipt shall be viewed with hatred, and not allowed to pass through the gates to freedom, before it is sanctified by the word DELIVERED impressed upon it in blue ink, for to do otherwise would be to upset nature's order.

What shall a man give in exchange for a reasonably priced box of soy milk?


Proverbs of the apartment

The water of the faucets drips as honey, and its temperature is cooler than ice; But in the end it is as bitter as wormwood, and you'd better remember your antibiotics.

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Build ye houses, and dwell in them, but do not expect the electricity to work.

Happy the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, the man who can get the hot water to last more than 45 seconds!

Who payeth for an internet connection, yet eateth not the fruit thereof? I have news for thee: get used to it.

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night, not unlike the occasional large cockroach.


Proverbs of life in general

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, and yet the sacred cattle shall be seen to eat the garbage of the sewers.

Woe be unto them that wish to cross the street unharmed, for the tender mercies of the drivers are cruel. Shun it, cross it not, turn aside from it and pass on.

How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that defecate right there along the side of the road?

He that ploweth should plow in hope, and after that should find a different path than to walk his wooden cart amidst the thoroughfares, for I need to get home to watch Nigella for fuck's sake.

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, and also because the answer in India is always No.

And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh some seriously nasty air pollution.

Consider the elephants of the field. And yet I say unto you, then why the hell are they wandering in traffic?

Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness of paneer tikka to his house, for him the Lord shall smite with ten extra pounds before he even knows what hit him.

They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, will still have to drive through slums to get anywhere.

For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul, and also that which congeals underneath a dead chicken covered in flies that can be yours for rupees 40 only.

For the Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from the snare; but still you must watch where you step, for reasons I prefer not to describe in detail just now.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless it's that adorable elephant god with the extra arms.

How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! The feet of the rickshaw drivers...not so much.

snack attack

I am not a fussy eater. I mean, yes, I try to stay vegan, which means there are a lot of things (namely, any and all animal-derived products) I don’t eat, but it’s not because I am fussy about eating-- it’s because I have made a choice about not eating those things, and the choice has nothing to do with taste, texture, Germanic childhood memories of tongue sausage with gleaming white chunks of fat floating amidst the blood pudding filler (I’m not making this up), etc. That is why it makes me crazy like a drunken David Hasselhoff whenever I see, for the eleventy-gazillionth time, hostile comments from trolls on vegan/vegetarian sites asking why we think it’s perfectly OK to eat mock meat when we are supposed to be all, like, you know, anti-meat and stuff, and isn’t that totally hypocritical or beside the point or whatever? Dear troll: I do not eschew bacon because I think it tastes bad. Everyone knows that bacon is the crispy nectar of the gods, but unfortunately it also involves the extremely unpleasant life and death of a pig, and that is something I am not willing to condone just so I can have a cracklin’ good breakfast. Your ethical mileage may vary, but stop giving me shit about my own choices, and judging me for enjoying tempeh bacon or seitan chicken--because much like that unfortunate pig, you do not have a leg to stand on.

Anyway, so when I say I am not fussy, I mean that if something’s vegan, I will eat it. No “Eww, not green bell peppers!” or “Mushrooms are gross!” and so on. But this country is trying my patience, despite its large vegetarian population. Allow me to introduce to you the four Indian vegetarian food groups:

Plain yogurt
Mysterious green vegetables swimming in oil and spices
Yellow legumes swimming in oil and spices
White rice

Oh, and flour mixed with water and fried, sometimes also referred to as bread. So, five.

Since I can’t take this anymore, and because our kitchen equipment both sucks and blows (what’s that dark fleck? Oh, part of the “non-stick” coating! I guess I shouldn’t actually stir my stir-fry), my daily food intake for the past few weeks has consisted almost exclusively of some combination of the following:

Apples
Toast
Tofu
Peanut Butter
Bananas
Cereal with almond or soy milk
Vodka

There are two kinds of vodka here, by the way: locally produced versions of bottom shelf name brands (Smirnoff, e.g.), and Out of Your Price Range (a.k.a. Drinkable). Misti and I bought a bottle of local citrus Smirnoff last month and put it in the freezer. You know how vodka gets sludgy but not frozen, because of the alcohol content? Well, Indian vodka freezes. Solid. And to make up for the almost nonexistent alcohol content, it tastes like shit.

OK, I haven’t actually been drinking vodka for dinner, mainly for the reasons noted directly above (because otherwise I’d be totally on it). But it added a little pizzazz to the list, didn’t it?

Home in 8 days.

what i did on my sunday vacation

I don't even bother leaving the house anymore. This was a ball of yarn this morning.

nigella, i wish i could quit you

One of the three or so tolerable TV stations we get here at the apartment is Discovery Travel & Living, and all I have to say is that if I hear this woman say "juice" or "juicy" ONE MORE TIME I think I may have to go on a murderous rampage:



I'd heard of Ms. Lawson before, of course, but I'd never seen her show till the other night when Misti and I caught the tail end of an episode that was all about craving sweet carbs at midnight and whipping yourself up a quick pan of Doughnut French Toast. At first we thought she meant she was making French toast OUT OF DOUGHNUTS, which made us shout at the TV, "Why don't you just EAT THE DAMN DOUGHNUT IF YOU'VE ALREADY GOT IT?!" But then it turned out the point was you were craving a doughnut, but it was midnight, so you had to make due with doughnuty-tasting French toast. Or something like that.

Anyway, now I am on Nigella like white on rice, except in that trainwrecky "don't make me look no wait don't make me not look!!" sort of way. I love her voluptuous bod, but I hate her vocal mannerisms. I don't care for the decidedly vegan-unfriendly nature of the show (for example, a few minutes ago I had to endure the sight of her stuffing bacon into the cavity of a chicken), but it's not like here in India I have the ingredients or equipment to do any real cooking anyway (granola bars for dinner again?). Perhaps I should just hit the mute button and enjoy her silently delicious hips.

things that well and truly suck

Last night, having reached my annual limit on the amount of information I require about the functioning of the Panama Canal, I switched away from the National Geographic channel, and an advertisement I surfed by caught my eye. It showed a little pink knitted baby bootie, which then started coming unraveled, with ominous, pounding music in the background. I thought to myself, WTF? Then three women's hands entered the shot and piled up on top of the unraveling bootie, stacked in "go team" style. The bootie re-emerged, fully knitted again. It was in Hindi, so I couldn't tell what it was about until the final frame came up and it said in English:

FEMALE FOETICIDE IS A CRIME

Here is an article that goes into depressing detail, including this:

In Salem district, for instance, signs posted in towns reinforce the societal message: "Pay 500 rupees and save 50,000 rupees later," a suggestion that aborting a female fetus now could save a fortune in wedding expenses in the future.

arrested developments

So, we're having a bit of political unrest here in Bombay this week. I don't pretend to understand all of it, but I believe it boils down to this: Raj Thackeray, a local politician who is the nephew of another, very famous politician, Bal Thackeray (aka the Hindu nationalist, Marathi ethnocentric would-be dictator who changed the official name of this city to Mumbai, even though good luck finding anyone here who calls it that), has today been arrested on charges of violating the Indian penal code to the tune of dividing people along ethnic lines and inciting riots. This move has divided people along ethnic lines and incited riots.

It seems Raj T. feels that the North Indians are polluting! our! local! culture! here in the state of Maharashtra, and thus they shouldn't be welcome in Mumbai. Never you mind that they comprise something like 30% of the population here, many of them in the form of taxi drivers. They need to be driven out by force, and if you can burn their businesses and throw rocks at them while you're at it, more's the better, because in Maharashtra that is how we roll.

The Indian Mr. T has also been on the case of Bollywood mega-actor Amitabh Bachchan, who is from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh but has made his fortune here in Bombay. Raj T. thinks Amitabh should be, you know, like, more grateful and stuff and never support any causes in his home state but rather funnel all his cash into this, the most prosperous city in India.

While doing some research on the guy just now I discovered he is exactly two months younger than I am, to the day. This creeps me out a bit. I just have never really thought of myself as possibly being within the same cohort as, howyousay, totally batshit crazy right wing populist leaders.

By the way did I mention this guy is also a big fan of Hitler? People, I think we can all agree it just doesn't get any more awesome than that.

HAWKING, now with photos

Once again this country has made me feel like I need to provide photographic evidence of something and insist, "Seriously, we don't make this shit up."

Edited to add: Oh dear, I only just realized that it is the hawking MENANCE we are worried about, not the hawking MENACE!

HAWKING WILL DESTROY OUR LIVES

Recently Dan and Misti were out on a walk and they passed by a school that had a piece of letter-sized paper taped up on its gates that said "SAVE US FROM HAWKING MENACE."

Hawking menace? What in sweet holy hell could this possibly mean, they asked themselves, and, later, me. There are sometimes raptor birds in the neighborhood, so perhaps they had been attacking the children? Pooping in the schoolyard? Bullying the kids for their milk money?



And then a day or two later we all walked by the school together and on a different gate was a different sign that proclaimed "HAWKING WILL DESTROY OUR LIVES." Excuse me to please?? Further speculation ensued. Were they possibly talking about Stephen Hawking? Had there been some sort of mutant astrophysicist rampage that escaped our notice, buried in the New York Times among the Britney Spears meltdown coverage?



WHAT WAS THIS HAWKING AND IN WHAT WAY WOULD IT DESTROY THE SCHOOL CHILDREN'S LIVES?????

The next day Dan consulted Google and figured out they were almost certainly referring to street hawkers. (And yet still...DESTROY OUR LIVES?)

The article at the above link mentions that street hawking in Mumbai has been illegal since 1985. To put this in perspective, this is like claiming that fog has been illegal in San Francisco since 1985, or that killer whales have been illegal at Sea World since 1985, or that bad hair has been illegal at the Trump Tower since 1985. IT MAKES NO SENSE, PEOPLE.