This and That

Cream cheese (Malai Chaska) and crackers, carrot soup and pomegranate for lunch. I haven't been much of a fan of the colour orange, but carrot-colour and the dark, almost blood-red of pomegranates suddenly look very attractive to me, side by side like this. I have to have some blue in everything, though.

food stylist: Lourdes Mary

I was listening to the music of Swadesh, a new Hindi movie. It has a bhajan, a hymn to Ram, which includes the words 'Manse Ram jo nikaale Ram unke man men hain.' I made a mistake in translating it: the verb nikaalna means to take out, bring forth, or remove. I thought the line meant, 'even those who remove Ram from their hearts -- i.e., those who reject Ram -- Ram is in their hearts also.' But Ramesh said that it means 'Those who utter the name of Ram -- i.e., those who bring forth [the name of] Ram -- Ram is in their hearts.' No matter how much I think I understand, I still make such apparently elementary mistakes.

[update: I really shouldn't translate lyrics I listen to in the car, and then post them on this blog! Luckily, alert reader Sankalp pointed out that the lyric should actually be 'Manse Raavan jo nikaale Ram unke man men hain.' Raavan is a demon, Ram's adversary. I confirmed it -- it turns out that the CD has the lyrics tucked inside. So we go back to my original translation of nikaalna as removing something: Those who remove Raavan, i.e., evil, from their hearts, Ram is in their hearts. I have to say that I like my original (wrong) version much better. And I note that Shivani confirms that in my original wrong hearing, Ramesh's translation would also have been correct. So that takes care of that, I guess. *covers her scarlet face with her hands*]