A CULINARY JAUNT (or The Wrath of the Spices)

India is a diverse land with a huge variety of cuisines.  The range is mind-boggling, although only a handful of them have earned reputations across the world.

It is also the land that lends credence to the word “pure vegetarian”, in the sense that if you order “pure vegetarian” food, you will get “pure vegetarian” food… whatever that means, because I am yet to fathom what “impure vegetarian” food means.

And the range is mind-boggling… If one were to divide India into four regions – North, East, West & South, one could easily allocate fifty-odd dishes, unique to each region, at initial count !! But I am sure that list is much longer….

That is unlike many countries where they cannot think of such stuff. They would perhaps serve you “pure vegetarian” fried kang kong (water spinach) initially boiled in beef broth. Or only vegetables stir-fried in pork oil. They say it “adds to the taste”.  Then there are places where if you order vegetarian food you will get sea food – say, vegetables and lobster in a tasty concoction served in lobster shell…. The logic is simple…. Anything from the sea is “vegetarian” !!

Spicy food in any part of the world is MILD compared to the fare available in this country. Mexican food is hot in parts – but that is due to red chillies. One of my European friends, who came to India for the first time, spent two months here, tried the local cuisine, has promised never to tell anyone that he is OK with spicy food; the tastes here, as per him, are just too strong.

The only exception perhaps, is Thailand… I remember ordering a spicy soup in Bangkok once that made me cry and hit the roof, and thereafter never made the mistake of ordering the “hot” stuff there.

Indian vegetarian food, refined and evolved over centuries, is all about vegetables and spices, so much so that all you get to taste is spices in different combinations with vegetables struggling to make their presence felt. Sometimes they float in oil, like those poor creatures did after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill…. This is fairly uniform across the country’s restaurants. All those invasions of India down the centuries only served to add more spices to our cuisines. Some of them fit for military arsenals.

And then there are the non-vegetarian dishes with almost similar spice combinations. Kolkata, my  home town, permanently set amidst the ruins of development that resemble a war zone, has its own range of spices for meats and fish, and a vast array of sweets that explains why so many of us are diabetic. But then, here we use mostly green chillies and mustard…they sting, but do not render you speechless. Party fares here too, resemble the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, while the “float-eratti” could be anything from vegetables to meat and fish.

As you wander south, the spices and chillies get stronger – I think it has to do with the proximity with the equator. Two specific cuisines, those of Telegana and Chettinad deserve special mention… their spices and chillies are weapons-grade… (If you want to experience solar flares on earth, then that comes close). Restaurants that serve those cuisines should be located beside rivers, lakes and fire brigade stations. But they are not, and you are not forewarned, so beware !!

If you are visiting India and have escaped the wrath of the spices somehow, here is a word of caution; while travelling in India, learn to use water like the Indians, instead of toilet paper …..

Toilet papers are not made to withstand Indian chillies and spices… they could catch fire.

THE CITY

Back to the city after ten long years,

The city of fines and unknown fears.

Tall glass buildings that cast long shadows –

Manicured gardens, lawns and meadows.

Sun-kissed days and neon-lit nights;

Computer-controlled traffic lights.

Goodies in shops under bright white light –

The tourist and the shoppers’ delight.

Deep green trees on every side

Adding beauty to a timeless tide.

Wide, paved roads and glitzy malls;

With soul-less souls, like clockwork dolls.

- composed :4/June/2015

DEMENTIA

She was a small, frail, but proud woman.  They were two weeks away from their fifty-sixth wedding anniversary when she became a widow. Not that it was a surprise, she knew it was coming ever since he was diagnosed with cancer. He was pushing ninety and at his age, conventional cancer therapy was almost a no-no, he was put on palliative care, and in such care, he remained until his last breath.

She bid a silent farewell to the body of her companion of more than half a century as the hearse left the house on his final journey. Some close relatives kept her company while her son and other family members performed the last rites for her husband at the crematorium. But she did not cry.  All she said was, “He’s gone.” Then kept quiet.

A few months earlier, when he had been hospitalized for the first time, and she had gone to visit him, he had told her to get used to living with her son. She found that paradigm shift too hard to digest. The proud woman that she was, she had, till then, always fiercely held on to her will to stay in her own house, away from the children and grandchildren, live life on her own terms, and have periodic meetings with the family.

There comes a time in a person’s life, when living alone is impossible, and one has to have a support system built around oneself. Her son tried to build one around her; after her husband passed away, and she had to come and live with him and his family in the apartment in the city. He hired a couple of nurses to take care of her night and day. She resented them – saying her “bouma” (daughter-in-law) and grandchildren were good enough company. But he insisted, and the nurses continued.

She hobbled around the apartment with a walker and spent her days reading books and newspapers, and sometimes, when perhaps, her memories came flooding back, heaved a sigh, and kept on reading. Her grandchildren always made her smile; she would recite Sanskrit slokas – slokas that her son had heard from childhood… most of them extolled the virtues of being a mother, some talked about righteousness, while the rest were about mundane everyday events.

Her short-term memory began to fail. She would have lunch and then ask for it again, vehemently arguing that she was yet to eat. By and by people noticed that she would keep reading the same page in a book or news item over and over again, throughout the day, and if that piece of information caught her fancy, kept telling it to everyone in the house. Over time, her long-term memory too, began playing tricks. One day she said that she had seen snowfall – in an area where no snow had ever fallen in history. When her son said that it was not possible, she retorted that it was before he was born.

At the prayer meeting on the first anniversary of his father’s death, she attended the ceremony and asked her son, “Is it one year already ? You must be joking… check your calendar.” When people explained that one year had indeed passed, she said, “I thought he was still in hospital.”

One day her son asked her, “Do you remember Dad always saying that he built the house in the suburbs so that the grandchildren would have a place to play ?” She responded by saying that she wanted to visit that house in the suburbs once again, where she had spent the last thirty years. That weekend they all trooped down to the place, and then emerged a crisis of sorts when she steadfastly refused to leave. “You can take my dead body out,” was her firm reply. No amount of requests, pleading, threats was working. Her son and his family had to leave her there that night, with the caretaker’s family for company.

The next morning came a desperate phone call from the caretaker; he and his wife simply could not make her eat, or sleep the previous night, and given her frail health, things could get serious. Her son took leave from office, and went down to the house – she had to be physically carried to the car and brought back to the city. Curses flowed freely – she cursed her son for the abomination, and said she never thought this day would ever come…she said she would write a letter to the world telling them of the “torture” she was being subjected to by him.

Back in the apartment, she once again entered into a shell, reading newspapers, watching the birds on the trees around, and uttering the slokas…. Her memory went from bad to worse… she would go into the toilet in the morning and forget to come out… over time the nurses had to prevent her from locking the door from inside, and sometimes they had to physically carry her out after the morning’s ablutions.

He talked to the doctor who was attending on her, asking if a few days in hospital would improve things. His response was a clear “no”, and he stressed on the point that dementia patients should not be put in hospitals.

And then she started falling over, sometimes on her back, sometimes on her face, even with a walker around her. One such fall was particularly bad; her face remained swollen for days.

“Do you remember Dad ?”, he asked her one day with great trepidation.

“Well, I am angry that he left me and went away, the only good thing is that it has not been for long, just a few days.” This was more than four years after his death.

Six weeks before her eighty-third birthday, she woke up one morning and said she was not feeling well. She asked her son to check her blood pressure, as she was moved to a chair beside the bed. And, while he was doing so, she passed away, silently. Just like that. Sitting on the chair. Small, frail, but proud, as she always had been.

***

Dementia, to my mind, is perhaps as much a curse as a blessing in disguise.

***

When the Internet broke down…

Like a host of middle-class families across this vast land of farmers, politicians and scandals – both financial and otherwise, including ones involving fly ash and the humble broom  – and of course, industries, we own an internet connection.

It was really as an afterthought that we took one a few years ago – more to address the needs of our kids’ high school projects of the time, rather than anything else. Over time, this internet thingy began to spread in our lives like molten cheese on pizza in an oven. Staring at the computer screen graduated from a need, to a diversion to while away idle time, and then to an obsession where that activity of sitting at the computer table has begun to contribute to body weight and blood sugar. And we hardly have time to watch television; its 99+ channels and 24x7 programs notwithstanding.

A young genius, figured out a way to make money out of people’s idle time, and what a discovery it has been !!! He is now a billionaire !! Most importantly, if a fraction of that idle time was used productively, then the global GDP would have doubled or trebled before you could say “GDP”…. But alas, it merely wobbles and trembles with numbers that actually make no sense – either to the economists who crunch them, or to us.

Life has developed a whole new meaning with the internet ramblings. The spread of SARS, Ebola and their partner viruses are like perfume puffs in comparison to the spread of selfies or “like-i-titis” or the “plus-one-itis” in the virtual world. Ancient Greeks had only one Narcissus. We have them in shiploads.

Amidst all these floating viruses, our internet access broke down – suddenly. It was not one of those wholesome, fit-for-family-type breakdowns, that typically occur on Fridays, where the ADSL phone line goes dead for the weekend because a crow happened to polish its beak on an exposed wire joint, or the wire-junction box fell off its precarious perch on a lamp-post - the weight of a sparrow being the proverbial last straw for the rusted bolt. Neither was it the kind of fault where the world-wide-web becomes the world-wide-wait for minutes on end while the browser goes around in circles.

This one happened in broad daylight in mid-week, right in the middle of a skype-teleconference across three countries, with the ADSL light on the modem going off and staying off. I logged a call immediately, then after about an hour, went down to the local telephone exchange to complain a second time. They called back in three hours to say that they were shifting us to a new network – a new DSLAM – for enabling better service.

For the uninitiated, a DSLAM is a set of trays with blinking lights, and large fat cables coming out of it in all directions like an octopus with genetic disorder. It alone determines whether you are on the Net with a bunch of followers, or slammed into oblivion. Forever. Hence the name.

They did not have the courtesy to inform us beforehand of this major operation – almost a heart surgery in telecom terms – and were unable provide a time line for completing the exercise. Disaster ! Chaos !! We realized once again, after a long, long time, how heavy time is, especially when it hangs on your hand. Almost unbearable.

That evening, we had nothing else to do other than watch television. Like many couples across the world, in a decades-long marriage, we have over time, developed a healthy loathing not only for each other’s favorite television programs, but the favorite channels as well. And were now forced to watch TV. Together.  There were ads and ads and ads, with small breaks in between, for a film.

I, true to my genetic code,  wanted to flip channels, while she true to hers, wanted to watch the ads – soap, shampoo, cereal and all, with portions of film in between. What was worse was that we needed to converse !!!  The art of conversation, we realized,  had forsaken us a long time ago when kids and television entered our home. Now, it was not just lost art, it was a serious archeological challenge.

Those three hours can be described as a spate of nightmares as we watched ad after ad on channel after channel only to return to the film in which “tors” and “tresses” simply talked and walked about this room and that like addle-pated mannequins.  (I mean I would have called them actors... If they could act, that is.) Dinner was taken in merciful silence, a silence that reigned till next morning. The pent up like-it’s and plus-one’s were taking their toll.

The exchange called up at around mid-day to say that their job was done and we could get cracking once again on the Net. And lo behold !! We had only half the access….. that is to say, some sites were accessible while the vast majority was not. I rushed back to the Exchange to complain once again. They provided alternate DNS addresses. Same result. Contacted them again. They said “tomorrow”.

Yet again, we were forced to watch television. TOGETHER !!! And converse. The strain was beginning to tell.  We took turns at rushing off to a cyber café to relieve ourselves.

On day three, a fellow arrived from the exchange to check. He said they had never encountered this kind of problem before. I said, “ditto”. He plugged in his modem and connected to the internet straightaway, then told me that he would send a replacement modem on Monday. That meant we would have to spend an entire weekend internet-less, save those couple of sites that were accessible. Wow !!!

The forehead wrinkled, the brow creased… the lips snarled, conversation was more like machine-gun fire, staccato included. Luckily for them, the couple of visitors who had planned to drop in during the weekend, called it off at the last moment.

More TV, more ads, more machine-gun fire. With staccato. In desperation I called up my hardware supplier and asked him to replace everything – the modem, the router, the works.  He too said, “Monday evening”.

On the great Monday, this fellow from the exchange turned up around lunch-time with a re-conditioned modem. He plugged it in. The problem did not go away. I asked him to go away.

That evening, my hardware vendor arrived with an integrated modem and router. After conducting some tests to satisfy himself that the equipment really needed replacement, he did it. Within fifteen minutes, our internet access was back on again, in full regalia. The router was the culprit – busy doing a bit of the job and ignoring the important and functional piece. Pretty much like a government employee in these parts.  I packed it in a plastic bag and sent it off with him. Relief at last !!!

The smiles are back, sans conversation, of course.  We are still catching up on five, almost six, lost days’ worth of like-it’s and plus-one’s.

Our marriage has survived this cataclysm.

WHY DO WE INDIANS HONK SO MUCH ?

The first time I went to a driving school, some thirty years ago, the “Masterji” – a toothless, old geezer with a white handle-bar moustache welcomed me with these words, “Horn bajana sikho”, (Learn to blow the horn)… That was even before I had inserted the key into the ignition switch for the first time.

And then the lessons continued in an ancient Ambassador car with no side view mirrors, barely visible dashboard dials, blistering hot air flowing on to my feet from the engine compartment, and a gear-stick in the throes of permanent orgasm. I had to literally shoot my hand out to catch the gear-stick in mid-motion to use it.

Turning right meant I would have to stick my hand outside the window pointing to the right; turning left meant I would have to stick my hand out again and make large circles like a flailing duck in mid-air; stopping meant I would have to raise my right hand up towards the sky outside the window for all to see. And honk.

The reason ? Cars are not supposed to have side blinking lights or brake lights – they drain the battery. Honking takes care of all that jazz.  Horns run on Cosmic Energy.

“Blow the horn even before you start moving”, was the command of Masterji.

I kept failing his little tests throughout the course because I was required to grapple with an orgasmic gear stick and an arthritic steering wheel, blow the horn, and flail my right arm wildly outside the window for every act of self-preservation. And, Man – I only have two arms.

Just when I thought that driving was not for me, after having failed to wave for the umpteenth time and bit my tongue in the process, Masterji said I was qualified to appear for the driving test.

And what a test it was !!! I was at the wheel of a relatively new Ambassador car, where the gear stick merely shivered at the thought of the vibrating engine, with seven other blokes, all examinees.  The Police Sergeant, standing at a safe distance, with Masterji in tow, yelled, “Move forward”.

“H-O-N-K” – I let out a lusty blast, moved into first gear and had barely moved a couple of inches when he yelled me to stop. 

“H-O-N-K” – I let out another lusty blast, raised my right hand outside the window and kicked the brake pedal. Forgot to use the clutch and the gear stick – the engine gurgled, sputtered, and stopped with a lurch. The fellow in the seat behind me banged his head against mine.

Masterji walked towards me – his smile was unnerving. “You passed – with highest marks”, was his happy remark.

“Highest ? I was the first examinee….”

“Never mind… go home now, and meet me in two weeks’ time to collect your licence”.

”WOW !!!

***

In a career spanning a few decades, Masterji, and  thousands of his ilk, have trained millions of drivers like me. The first and last lessons being, “Horn bajao”. (Blow the horn..)

And driving tests being what they are, one can very well imagine the quality of drivers on Indian roads. Which brings us once again to the question, “Why is there so much of honking in India ?”

Observing people, discussing with people, and inferring from conversations, and ignoring the permanent chaos on the roads, I have come to these deductions :

·         Honking before starting to move – Masterji effect

·         Honking while stopping – Masterji effect

·         “Beep…… Beep…… Beep” at precisely twenty-two second intervals on a perfectly empty road in broad daylight – the nervous twitch of the thumb – Masterji halo effect

·         “Beep…… Beep…… Beep” at precisely twenty-two second intervals on a perfectly empty road at night means, “be careful, I have only one headlight on to save battery, but I am driving a four-wheeler”.

·         “Beeep… Beeeeeep” – a literal blast – means “what is wrong with you ? Hell, I AM driving, and you better get out of the way before I hit you”… (Which I jolly well can, because Masterji taught me to do so many things before the car can be stopped…)

·         A furious “Beeeeeeeep” while driving at medium speed is used to get the casual stray dog, cat, cattle, hens, ducks, pot-hole or man-hole out of the way.

·         “Bepeep.. Beep… Bepeep…. Beep….Bepeep…. Beep” means “I am in a tearing hurry, but not driving with headlights on, as those would drain the battery….” – applies to ambulances with no siren, and police cars with a big boss inside…

·         Random beeps while all vehicles are moving at uniform speed mean “I have my side view mirrors closed to avoid damage, and am blind to certain things”.... There are many cars in India even today, that come without side-view mirrors, and people buy them because so many mirrors are not needed for a “good” driver - Masterji halo effect again.

·         “Be..pe..pe..pe…pe..pe..pe.. Be..pe..pe..pe…pe..pe..pe.. Be..pe..pe..pe…pe..pe..pe…” – applies to buses where the driver wants to tell the passengers that the road ahead is chock full of cars, so that he can drive really slow to pick up as many passengers as he can….

·         And then of course, there are the two wheelers, who have more decibels than speed, and use the horn as a sort of aural weapon – “Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep” – to clear the path ahead or scoot in between two stationary cars, only to knock back any side-view mirror that happens to stray into their path….

It requires an exemplary moron to put up speed limit sign boards side-by-side with three different speeds, for three different kinds of vehicles running on the same, lane-less carriageway.  We have them – in Kolkata, and many other cities as well. Naturally, honking is the only way forward.

Railway locomotives in India are equipped with what is known as “cattle-chaser” horns…. A single blast can render one tone-deaf for weeks, allowing one to appreciate the melody of rap music.

They say there is a first time for everything in life…. The other day I was being taken from the airport terminal at Kolkata to an aircraft, in a bus, across the almost empty tarmac. The driver honked thrice…. First, as we started to move away, then when he spotted the plane, and finally, as we stopped.

I had, till then, never heard airport vehicles honk, even in India…. (I seriously suspect airplanes in India have horns too…. though I am yet to hear one).

Long Live Masterji !!!

***

India's 68th Independence Day

Today is India’s 68^th Independence day.

The concept of a nation so diverse in terms of language, ethnicity, social customs, religion, natural resources, geographical spread, would not have been valid in the history of our civilization had it not been for the phenomenon that is India.

Amidst all the warring and strife that is tearing this world apart today, I wish to share with you the words of one of India’s most famous sons – the “warrior prophet” or the “militant mystic” as he was known in his time – Swami Vivekananda.

Take this, for example :

“Strength is Life, Weakness is Death.

Expansion is Life, Contraction is Death.

Love is Life, Hatred is Death.” 

Or this :

“The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.” 

Food for thought – and you are free to draw parallels.

More than 120 years ago, Swami Vivekananda – then an unknown wandering monk - had delivered a speech at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago (1893) – a speech that captured the hearts of all those who heard it. And, still relevant.

I present a few paragraphs from that speech :

“…….I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth……..”

“…….I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to the southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation….”

“……Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now….”

“…..But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal….”

***

More than a century later, we have landed people on the moon… we have landed spacecraft on Mars and plan to do so on a comet…

 We have an orbiting space station that sees the world as one blue planet… And yet… That last paragraph has remained a dream – not a prophecy that came true.

We are yet to see one calendar week without strife, killings or persecution taking place in the name of ethnicity or religion, in some part of the world or the other.

On this day – the 68^th Independence Day of India – I pray – for world peace.

***

Sources :

http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/news/index.php/2013/09/vivekanandas-speech-to-1893-parliament/

http://www.ramakrishna.org/sv_sa.htm

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/bCxLFO6mXEnWV5jYzweoII/Vivekanandas-120yearold-911-speech.html

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/80592.Swami_Vivekananda

The numbered world

These days a normal person goes to office with :

1.     Mobile phone

2.     Wallet

3.     Driving Licence

4.     Credit card

5.     Car keys

6.     Home keys

7.     Office keys

8.     Sunglasses

9.     Reading glasses

10.  Ball-point Pen

11.  Wrist watch

12.  Loose change (coins)

13.  RFID card for office

14.  Customer site Identity Card

15.  Handkerchief

Some carry two more:

16.  Cigarette pack

17.  Lighter

Life has become so incredibly complex (and numbered)…..

There was a time in our lives when we did not even need to wear anything – jumping around in our birthday suits was considered de rigueur – life was so simple and exciting !!!!… And then it all started building up.

If you look around today it is numbers, numbers all the way….. You have on an average at least 3 credit cards with 16-digit identifiers followed by a 3-digit authentication code. Each has its own “T-pin” number about 6 digits long, which you need to memorise. Each month you get three bills and need to verify those bills against all those numbers….

If you need to raise a dispute on any card bill, you will have to respond to an emotionless, automated voice, punch in your card number (16 digits) and card-specific T-pin number (6 digits) on the hotline and hope you can talk to a human being at the other end. If the call falls through for some reason, you will have to repeat the process.

I must confess - I lost this battle; threw out the T-pins and never raised a dispute since. If they send wrong bills I simply do not pay – till they call up, and then I voice my opinions.

Then, of course you, have the ATM card and another 6-digit access code to memorise – and only 3 chances to get it right with the ATM machine !!! Not fair at all, or rather impolite, if you ask me.

Go to your drawing room and you have a TV set with 92 channels and about 31 buttons on the remote. 60 of those channels show runs and re-runs of very similar soap operas – with 7 base variations of 4 basic plots. 70% of the faces and about 80% of the ads are common.

A villain in one serial is a do-gooder in another and a dying man in a third. And his wife in the first serial has just died in the second. How do you know what to follow ? That is one losing battle – with total confusion reigning supreme….

There was a time when I watched cricket on TV – but that was before the game reinvented itself as the International Cricket Circus and those guys in the field actually played cricket instead of vending biscuits and motorcycles….

Then there is the stereo / home theatre set with 27 control buttons, multiple types and multiple formats of CDs…..  The music too, has changed – you either get the loud jackhammer class of music with someone screaming like a donkey being given the treatment with the jackhammer or you get re-mixes of old lovely songs sung afresh to that same jackhammer music. The single remote can control the Stereo unit, the TV and….. I am so confused that I have never used it….

Go to your workplace and you have to not only take care of 25 server passwords – you have to change them every quarter !!! Then you have more 6-digit access codes for your own office, your customer’s office and your vendor’s office. Then of course, there are other passwords – e-mail, workstation, applications and so on…

They gave me a new phone at my desk after installing the latest digital PABX. This one needs a 9-digit access code before I can dial a 12 or 14 digit international number !! How often can one rattle off 21 or 23 digits from memory ? It apparently has a voice-activated redial facility – but simply refuses to accept my voice command. That is going to be another losing battle, I am sure…..

The other day I forgot my ATM access code in a foreign country, after having spent a month in India and using the access code for my ATM card there. I knew I had only three chances to get it right, and only 10 dollars in my pocket. The ATM machine spit out my card with the first two tries… I gave it up – went home, changed into a comfortable pair of shorts and vest, switched off the TV, darkened the room and had a l-o-n-g swig of whisky. No luck – numbers raced through my mind like a torrent – but I knew they were not the ones I wanted… A couple more swigs – and I realised it was hopeless. Returning my card meant the Bank would give me another set of numbers to memorise….

Next morning I borrowed some money from my colleagues…. Two days later I tried again…. Same result – two tries – two sets of wrong numbers – and I did not dare a third attempt. That evening I tried the same exercise – a few large pegs of whisky in a darkened room. The only difference was that I kept holding the ATM card in my hand and staring at it while a Tagore song played in the background.

Three pegs and five songs later it came back to me – I remembered the code. Finally. I drove over to the bank immediately – and – what a relief !!! I could, at last, withdraw some money……

There was one a time when I dreamt beautiful dreams – last night all I dreamt about was 6-5-0-8-9-3-4-8-2-1-7-4-6-3-2-0-6-4-1-1-0-0-7-6-6-7-9-6-5-4-3-6…. They came at me like an infantry moving forward, armed with guns and spikes – I was running and they were chasing…. Chasing till I woke up….

I have been dreaming numbers for a long time now…..I wonder – where will it all end ? What will happen when my memory starts failing me ? You tell me…. If I want to jump around in my birthday suit once more I’ll have to join a nudist camp – right ?

**********