Physics Phriday - It is a Time Machine

From Jack van Ryswyck:
You know it's funny you should mention that. The other day I suddenly saw Mike vanish before my very eyes, desk chair and all. Left in his place was a box shaped area of seemingly totally empty space, filled with absolutely nothing but some strange looking radiation.

Two seconds later Mike suddenly reappeared, looking very normal. In fact, looking rather exactly like he had at the moment he vanished. He then looked at me as if I had done something totally strange.

He told me that he had not seen anything vanish at all, but to him it looked like I instantaneously had shifted position and facial expression, as if I were an old time movie that had skipped a few frames. We then noticed that the atomic clocks that we had coincidentally been carrying were inexplicably off by 2 seconds. We had just synchronized them earlier that morning, but now his was 2 seconds behind mine.

Some time later a very similar thing happened, but this time a part of his desk chair stayed behind when Mike and the rest of his chair vanished. The remaining part of his chair just got cut clean off and fell to the floor. Mike and the rest of the chair reappeared two seconds later, though the chair did not reassemble. He said that he saw part of his chair suddenly teleported to the floor instantly.

Then the other day Josh and I were passing juggling balls when the same thing happened again. Suddenly everything in the box shaped area vanished, and many copies of a juggle ball appeared, all moving in a parallel direction. I then found myself tossing a juggle ball into the box. Oddly enough it happened to have the same colour as all the copies, and by some mysterious coincidence it was moving in just the same direction. Two seconds later all but one of the balls disappeared, and everything else reappeared. At the far side of the box, one juggle ball flew off. The net effect was just as if I had thrown the ball across the box incredibly fast. Impossibly fast really.

The next time it happened I saw the empty box appear filled with many copies of about one-third of a juggle ball. All but one of them were moving in a parallel direction away from me, but the nearest copy seemed to be moving towards me. In self defense I grabbed the juggle ball nearest to me, which happened to be the same colour, and as a makeshift missile defense system I threw it against the partial juggle ball that was moving menacingly towards me. They collided. The partial ball got knocked into a trajectory parallel to all the others. My defense missile ball got nudged back towards me. Then all the partial balls disappeared, except one that flew off at the far side. My defense missile ball was suddenly missing about a third of it. The remainder fell to the floor. The part that fell to the floor on the other side of the box seemed to fit it exactly.

Weird.

Friday Night Epiphany

Most Private Thing I'm Willing to Admit Dept.

No matter how explosive the sex, no matter how available they were tonight and might be in the future, no matter how horny you were nor that you had just wanted to fuck and had imagined a long night of mutual pleasure, no matter that for a day or two it might help you avoid pining over someone or something unattainable - sex with someone who seems not to like you is just deeply unsatisfying.

Ask yourself, did you want to fuck them a second time?

New Relics

We'd cleaned up the kitchen together after putting the girls and the baby to bed and I sat down at the table, wanting to be by myself before going upstairs. I telethought my spouse that I would come up in a bit. I felt the reassurance come back, and then turned the telepath off. My sister was asleep in one of the girls' rooms and Jess was downstairs in the study.

At the final moments of the atomization, I'd cried, my sister had cried, even Jess – his intimate from the last few years – had cried, and I'd found it strange that my mom hadn't. If there had been nothing else there, there was that bond through me, but perhaps she'd hardened herself long ago to potential loss.

I walked up to check on the girls. I never do that, but today, I just felt the need, to see them, with whom he'd spent more time lately than I'd been able to … neither with them nor with him. Some nights, if he was here visiting us when the girls got home with their father from swimming lessons or cello practice, he'd drop whatever we were talking about (math) or arguing about (math) to go be their toy. Surprisingly, he never once tried to teach them math, leaving that work to me and keeping his questions and inquisitiveness about my work for when the girls weren't around.

I'd wiped the tear stains off both the girls, but they were still a little puffy eyed. I am sure other parents, as the girls' aunt certainly did, would think me cruel for having taken them with us to the atomization. Now I found the younger one had crawled into her older sister's bed, pulled the blanket off her and cocooned herself. Just like my sister used to do to me. I spread the blanket out and covered them both up again - once they were sound asleep they would be fine, all the tussling took place early at night.

It struck me that as a child I'd never woken up cold. Did Dad cover me up at night when sis and I were asleep?

I suddenly wanted to hold him again, to feel his physical presence, to clutch him to myself - protection, protectiveness all jumbled together in this tangible vacuum that sat across from me as if forever. Milk seeped from my breasts and I realised I hadn't yet fed the “sleeps-through-the-night” baby but my body still felt too wracked to go up and do so immediately. I rebraided my hair, a single short braid I've worn since 5^th grade, this time using generators of B_5, for which I'd had a soft spot ever since my discovery of their relation to conformal matrices had caused a small resurgence of interest in Strings.

On a sudden recollection I pulled open the wall behind me and there beneath the tabletop controller I found the only remaining physical vestiges I had of him. I lifted out the little plastic canister, the less-than-an-inch wide black body about the length of my pinky, the grey top with faded “IMLI SEEDS” written on it. Dad had had a few of those when I was a child - film-roll containers (from his childhood?) that he'd managed to hold on to through multiple international moves. I flipped open the top with my thumb and spilled the contents out on the kitchen table.

Nails. His nails. Both he and I had laughed when my sister had insisted on collecting these, “People collect hair and nails. Dad collected mine!”, she'd protested. “Only baby hair and nails, when they are soft!”, I'd sniggered. But she collected them anyway, that one time, and borrowed one of Dad's canisters which he used for taking spice mixtures on camping trips. She'd cried then because I'd made fun of her, but a few years ago she divided the contents with me, for safe-keeping. I opened the telepath and sent her a thank you, for morning delivery, and recalled her tying my half of his hair with a rubber band. I stuck my finger in the canister and sure enough there was a tuft of hair, with brittle pieces of broken rubber band sticking to it. The hair was a couple of inches long, grey. I sniffed it, painted my face with it, rubbed it between my fingers, desperately wanting to believe in re-incarnation, in a higher power, anything that would bring him back to me.

I carefully put the hair back in and looked at the nails. He'd been cutting his nails, we the three of us had all been cutting our nails before he took us climbing that day, and I remember that day because it was when I first climbed a 5.9, and then tried a 10a and he'd smiled and hugged me and said, “You already out-run and out-swim me, is there nothing you will leave me, not even climbing?”

.......................................

What have you left me, Dad?

Review - The Wind-up Bird Chronicles

Review of “The Wind-up Bird Chronicles”, by Haruki Murakami

Murakami seems to be a very popular author with women on the dating websites, at least with the women who interest me. As preparation for the battle between the sexes, I wanted to read what they are reading. I could have armed myself by reading “Think like a man, act like a woman”, but while the movie was funny, I don't know if it was particularly edifying and none of the other BASPs with whom I watched it found it worth commenting on afterwards. Besides, having been a full-time male mom for 8 years, I'd already thought like a man and acted like a woman, and well, here I am.

So Murakami it is. Now, if you want a regular old book review, look for one on the web.

A few lines I wish I would have written: “Which is not to say that I didn't have any distinguishing characteristics. I owned a signed copy of Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. I had a slow resting pulse rate: forty-seven normally and no higher than seventy with a high fever. I was out of work. I knew the names of all the brothers Karamazov. But none of these distinguishing characteristics was external.”

Now for the feelings the book aroused in me: mostly it left me very disturbed, there is palpable occult-like evil, but it is so unexplained and unmotivated, and only tangentially personified, that I could never really grasp what it was. This is mostly carried out against women, and the violations are mostly more mental than physical. There is gristly, bloody, gruesome, slow, pit of the stomach violence and detailed empathetic pain. This is mostly against men. The scenes seem gratuitous, except as mysterious and near mythical events in the past that explain future senses of deep connection. The women survive, the men don't.

I suspect that one of the reasons women like this book is because it is a singular example of a book with anticipated, prolonged, detailed descriptions of infernal physical violence on men and of violations of males bodies on a mass scale. Does it make women who like this book man-haters? Perhaps, but only in the sense that men who like Paul Auster's “The Book of Illusions” (in which 8 women are gratuitously and violently killed off) or indeed who like any of the numerous books and movies in which gratuitous or non-gratuitous violence against women is lovingly portrayed, are woman-haters.

As the accompanying diagram shows, the book has numerous loose ends, vestigial characters with no development that play a repeating, non-minor role but remain completely disconnected from any other character other than the protagonist. I was never even able to understand whether they were the shades of some other characters. These are the dangling characters in the diagram. They seem superfluous in the sense that the book would not have been essentially different without them.

Now for the diagram. It is a map of the main characters, a few key non-human objects and their interconnectedness. I had hoped that drawing it would show me the center, and was motivated to draw it when the protagonist sketches out some of the interconnections (as a circle) and wonders what is at the center. However, circles needn't have centers in the space they belong to: while the rim of a flat dish has a center, what is the center of the rim of your coffee cup? Or the center of a circular orbit around a black hole? And indeed, I haven't found any obvious center in the Wind-Up bird network.

In the diagram, green characters are founts of positive energy, red characters of evil. Green arrows indicate positive, life-enhancing acts, passive or active. Red arrows indicate life-draining actions. Light blue characters are carriers of energy of undefined sign. However, almost all the characters are in some way contaminated by this “energy”, whether positive or negative, except for May, who in the end seems the most real of all the characters.

Other comments or unanswered questions:

1. Nutmeg's father has a blue stain of the same shape and color on his cheek that Mr. Wind-Up Bird acquires and loses. But there is no other connection: the former is a birthmark and brings no special powers or heat, the latter is acquired on a parallel world excursion, is connected with and is a source of this mysterious energy and is lost towards the end of the narrative.
2. What happens to Noboru Wataya the cat, and what is his connection to Malta Kano, if any? What is the significance of his tail and whether it has the same bend or not as before?
3. Why is the wind-up bird audible only to males? Is there any associated mythology with this ill-omen?
4. WTF with the connection between Lt. Mamiya and Creta? This is an instance of the author getting tired of writing the book towards the end, and puts these two unrelated characters together to tie up two ends.

Answers for "Man from the South" probability questions

Links to Dahl's  "Man from the South"

The questions are repeated in this post.

Preliminary answers

Q1. What does American Boy think is the probability of his lighter lighting during any single attempt?

Most people accept a bet when they think the odds are at least 50-50. Since Man from the South and American Boy have had time to negotiate the terms and think about it, both think they can win it. So as neutral observers we can consider the probability that the American Boy will win the bet to be 0.5.

So what does this tell us about what he thinks is the probability of the lighter lighting on any one attempt? Let this probability be p. The probability that he will win the bet, i.e. that it will light N times out of N trials, is p^N. We just decided that this is ½, for N=10. So,

p¹⁰ = ½

I was driving and couldn't very well use my laptop (my phone is not a very smart phone), leave alone the log tables, slide rule or abacus in my back seat. And I can't do powers of 1/10 in my head, not in general. But I can calculate powers of numbers near 1! So let's calculate q=1-p instead, which is bound to be small since the boy is so sure of success.

½ = (1-q)^N ~ 1-qN, so for N= 10, q=0.5/10 = 0.05.

Which gives us our first answer: p = 95%, which we know is a bit of an overestimate. (The exact answer is 93.3%.)

But this is like focusing on conversion ratio and not on cost-per-action.

Q4. Were there to have been a 9^th attempt, and were American Boy to have failed in it, what would he have lost?

A: His left pinky, those were the terms of the bet. So American Boy is staking his pinky every time! All but the last time, if he wins, all he wins is the right to stay in the game, if he loses, chop-chop (and the right to play!)

So this is kinda sorta like conversion attribution: every bid-request we (RFI) win and then every impression we serve only gives us the right to stay in the game, in the sense that if we don't serve the impression we certainly won't get attribution credit.

Q2. How many fingers to a Cadillac?

On the face of it, it would seem to be one finger to a Cadillac, C = F, since if he loses, he loses a finger, and if he wins, he wins a Cadillac. But as we saw above, the American Boy stakes his one finger 10 times and thus faces 10 opportunities to lose his finger vs. one opportunity to win the Cadillac. So,

10F = C

After the eighth successful attempt, 

Man from the South's wife surprises them and ends the game. She sends American Boy away empty handed.

Q3. How should he have been compensated, if at all?

Aha! “How to distribute the spoils in an interrupted game?” The very question that my colleague Jack pointed out was the leading cause of the rise of probability theory!

The way I think of this is in terms of “vesting”. Each time they play and American Boy wins, he wins a 10^th of a Caddy, but, BUT, he only gets to keep his winnings (the entire Cadillac) if he keeps his head (figuratively) and finger (literally) for 10 trials. American Boy can't get cold feet and walk out after say 5 trials and demand half a Cadillac – so really he can get cold feet and walk out but he can't drive off. So there are two possibilities. Under one, the Man from the South gets cold feet and decides not to play anymore. In this case he forfeits his Cadillac, which was held in escrow by the narrator. Under the other possibility, the “authorities” intervene. Since neither party has broken their terms, in this case I think American Boy gets to keep his “unvested” winnings, which would be 8/10 of a Cadillac. Now since the Cadillac wasn't the possession of the Man to begin with, but belonged to the “authorities”, … this isn't a math problem anymore. (By the way, who intervened and broke up Cardano and Pascal's poker game?)

Legal opinions? Aji, Joanne?

Q1 (Re-evaluated). What does American Boy think is the probability of his lighter lighting during any single attempt?

Most people accept a bet when they think it is a game with at least a zero sum in their favor. Since Man from the South and American Boy have had time to negotiate the terms and think about it, both think they can win it. So as neutral observers we can consider the game to be a zero-sum game.

What does it mean for this to be a zero-sum game? Winnings * probability of winning – losses * probability of losing = 0! Which yields:

p = 1/(W/L + 1). (Check: if W are high, p is low; if W are nearly 0, p is nearly 1 and if W=L, p =1/2.)

In our case the winnings are the Cadillac C, the losses are the finger F and the probability P of winning the entire game is P = p^N, where p is the probability of the lighter lighting in a single trial. Combining things we have

C*P – F*(1-P) = 1, or P = 1/(C/F + 1)

Putting in C/F = 10,

p¹⁰ = 1/11

1/11 = (1-q)^N ~ 1-qN, so for N= 10, q=1/11 = 0.1.

Which gives us 78.7%.

Really? Would you play that game with a lighter which only lights less than 80% of the time? I think that the Man from the South has fuddled the American Boy into undervaluing his finger, by making him think he is wagering a finger vs. a Cadillac, whereas really he is wagering a finger against a 10^th of a Cadillac.

Some preliminaries

If you aren't interested in the nuts and bolts, skip them, but this is so anyone can check my work.

Notation: Sum[i, 0, Infinity] f(i) is to be interpreted as the sum of the function or series f(i) over the index i from i=0 to i= Infinity. Then,

Sum[n,0,Infinity] pⁿ = 1/(1-p)

Sum[n,0,N] pⁿ = (1-p^N+1)/(1-p)

and

Sum[n,1,N] pⁿ = (1-p^N)*p/(1-p)

Look at the following table of outcomes of consecutive tosses and the overall probabilities

W ← 1 → L

1: p (1-p) (End)

2: p² p(1-p) (End)

3: p³ p²(1-p) (End)

…

So after n trials, the probability of winning all is pⁿ and the probability of losing any is

(1-p)* Sum[i,0,n-1] pⁱ = (1-p) * (1-pⁿ)/(1-p) = 1-pⁿ = 1- prob(Winning). Which is good since it indicates I can still sum correctly.

Back to the problem, to get a handle on 

what if anything AB deserves when the game is stopped.

From making the last, Nth, trial a zero-sum game, we know that

p^N = 1/(C/F + 1). We've assumed that AB wins 1/N th of a Cadillac (virtually) when his lighter lights. So assuming the first trial is also a 0-sum game, we have:

p*C/N = (1-p) *F, which resolves as

p = (C/NF + 1) ^(-1).

Can these two equations be solved simultaneously for both C/F and p?

Yes, but the solution is i) independent of N and ii) meaningless:

We have (1+C/NF)^N = (1 + C/F), but the RHS is simply the first two terms in the binomial expansion for the LHS, so the equality holds only when C/F = 0 and p =1.

So one of our assumptions above is wrong. 

Let's try another tack. 

Assume that at the nth trial, AB wins some unknown portion of the Cadillac a(n)*C. (When Ari and I were talking about this last week, Ari guessed, “Wouldn't it be some quadratic or increasing portion that he wins?” Ari's motivation was to take into account the wearing out of the flint, the gas running out, the thumb getting tired, AB getting nervous etc. Dahl, spends an entire paragraph describing the care and attention to detail taken by AB, after each light, he blows on the lighter, closes the lighter, waits a few seconds perhaps for gas pressure to build up again, re-opens it and then flicks it once. ) What we know is that

Sum[n,1,N] a(n) = 1, over the course of the entire game, if he survives, he wins the entire Cadillac. So at every trial, AB stands to lose not just his finger and the right to play, but also the “won but not vested” portion of the Cadillac, and he stands to win some portion of the remaining.

At the last, Nth trial: W : L

p : (1-p)

a(N)C : F + (1-a(N))C

Using the 0-sum equation, we get:

a(N) = (1 +F/C)(1-p).

Great, so now we have ONE equation and 3 unknowns: a(N), F/C and p. But we also know that if the game is 0-Sum over all: p^N * C = F*(1-p^N),

which yields:

0 < p = (1+C/F)^(-1/N) < 1. So now at least we have two equations for three unknowns, and the solution for p is valid. This doesn't guarantee that 0

If we knew C/F, we could solve the problem. However, clearly, C=F is no longer valid. C = 10F could be used for AB's assumption. We also have another source of information: The Man from the South's wife explains that he has lost eleven cars and taken forty-seven fingers. Assuming that he considers these equivalent, we have 11C = 47F

so,

The fraction C/F is the ratio of the value of one Cadillac to the value of one Finger.

But all this hasn't answered the question of 

what AB deserves when the game is interrupted. 

Also, we've assumed that the entire game is 0-sum and that the last trial is 0-sum. Can't we make use of the assumption that 

every trial is also 0 sum 

to see if we can figure out the intermediate non-vested winnings?

Recall that at the nth trial, AB stakes his previous winnings and his finger for a chance to win a(n)*C portion of the Cadillac. So the 0-Sum equation for the nth trial is:

a(n)*C = (1/p -1) *(F + C* Sum[i, 0, n-1] a(i)). The resulting recursion relation is for a geometric series!

a(n+1) = (1/p)* a(n),

whose solution is

a(n) = a(0)/p^n.

Note immediately that a(0) != 0, so AB has to stake (even if only virtually) something more than just his finger. 

We find a(0) 

by using the fact that the total portion of the Cadillac gained over 10 trials is 1:

1 = Sum[i,1,N] a(i) = a(0) * Sum[i,1,N] (1/p)^i = a(0) * (1/p^N -1)/(1-p), or

a(0) = (1-p)/(1/p^N – 1)

For the first trial (note that this is independent information since so far we have used the recursion relation and established a(0) using the “normalization”, but we haven't yet used any 

“initial conditions”):

a(1)*C = (1/p – 1) * ( F + a(0)*C), which yields

C/F = ((1/p)^N -1)/p, which is a different relationship between C/F, N and p than we had previously. I am not sure I can invert this to yield p(C/F), but it can certainly be numerically solved.

Let us also calculate the virtual winnings after each trial:

W(n) = C*Sum[i,1,n]a(i) = C*a(0)*(1/p^n -1)/(1-p), which simplifies to

W(n) = ((1/p)ⁿ - 1)/((1/p)^N - 1)

So given p we could calculate C/F (or vice versa), a(0), a(n) and W(n)

Working on the “wife's numbers”, we see that the American Boy should be compensated with 66% of the Cadillac when the wife interrupts the game after the 8^th trial.

How do the winnings increase as the trials proceed:

Winnings in units of "Cadillacs"

 

which look like

Levenfeld curve

Conclusion and final answers:

Q1. What does American Boy think is the probability of his lighter lighting during any single attempt?

About 80%.

Q2. How many fingers to a Cadillac?

In American Boy's valuation based on his behaviour, 10 fingers to a Cadillac.

After the eighth successful attempt, Man from the South's wife surprises them and ends the game. She sends American Boy away empty handed.

Q3. How should he have been compensated, if at all?

With 60 or 66% of a Cadillac. I would go with 66%, which is based on the Man from the South's experienced equivalence between Cadillacs and fingers.

Q4. Were there to have been a 9^th attempt, and were American Boy to have failed in it, what would he have lost?

Ah, his finger, of course, and, his virtual stake, which is 3.9 % of a Cadillac. How could he have lost something he never had to begin with? Well, for the bet to proceed, AB would have had to ask the narrator to spot him 4% of a Cadillac, or its cash equivalent, or its (OUCH) finger equivalent, which is 17% (3.9% * 4.3 F/C).

If AB's lighter fails during the game, he loses 1.17 fingers since he would have to sell 0.17 fingers to the Man from the South to pay off the debt to the narrator. If AB's lighter doesn't fail during the game, he simply returns the cash or Cadillac equivalent from whoever he borrowed it, and is ahead one Cadillac. 

Why did I ever think of approaching the problem this way, with a “virtual stake”? In particle physics, one can borrow virtual particles from the vaccuum in order to simplify calculations. It is all halal as long as the virtual particles don't violate any conservation laws for quantum numbers and the mass-energy of the particles exists for a short enough duration of time that Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle is not violated. The really interesting thing is that these virtual particles have real effects: A pair of uncharged conducting plates will attract each other because a virtual charged particle – anti-particle pair will come into existence from the vacuum for a brief time, and the effective dipole and its images will cause the plates to experience an attractive force. Don't believe me, look up the Casimir Effect.

What happens if you grab those particles and forcibly separate them from each other and prevent them from annihilating each other as any decent particle-anti-particle pair should do? You end up creating a Black Hole-White Hole pair, which you can then use for superluminal transportation and as a time-machine! (Okay, I just made that up, but is it really any crappier than “The Secret” or Deepak Chopra?)

Back to reality: The Man from the South's wife explains that he has lost eleven cars and taken forty-seven fingers.

Q5. What does Man from the South think is the probability that American Boy's lighter will light during a single attempt?

86%.

Q6. How many fingers to a Cadillac does Man from the South figure?

Th ratio of the values is C/F = 47/11.

Q7. Do your answers to Q3 and Q4 change?

Yes.

Added on 16th Nov. 2012

What was Fermat and Pascal's approach? Instead of looking backwards, they looked forward and calculated the probability (on the condition of the current circumstances) of winning or losing the game and divided the spoils accordingly. So if AB has a probability of p of lighting the lighter and has already done so 8 times, the probability that he will then do so 10 times is simply p^2 and the probability that he will lose is (1-p^2). According to this approach, AB wins p^2 of the Cadillac and loses 1- p^2 of his pinky. I think this is close to Jon's suggestion, who strongly felt that since the game hadn't finished AB would have to lose part of his finger in exchange for part of the Cadillac.

Probability questions from "Man from the South"

The Man from the South (see earlier post) and the American Boy negotiate terms and make a bet: If the American Boy lights his lighter 10 times in a row he gets Man from the South's Cadillac. If the lighter fails to light during one of those 10 attempts Man from the South immediately cuts off American Boy's left pinky, and keeps it.

Think about the following questions in any order. You can make any assumptions, come up with an approximation, an estimate, a minimum or maximum.

Q1. What does American Boy think is the probability of his lighter lighting during any single attempt?

Q2. How many fingers to a Cadillac?

After the eighth successful attempt, Man from the South's wife surprises them and ends the game. She sends American Boy away empty handed.

Q3. How should he have been compensated, if at all?

Q4. Were there to have been a 9^th attempt, and were American Boy to have failed in it, what would he have lost?

The Man from the South's wife explains that he has lost eleven cars and taken forty-seven fingers.

Q5. What does Man from the South think is the probability that American Boy's lighter will light during a single attempt?

Q6. How many fingers to a Cadillac does Man from the South figure?

Q7. Do your answers to Q3 and Q4 change?

I don't necessarily have answers to all the questions, but here they are.

Probability and "Man from the South"

A few nights ago I read Roald Dahl's "Man from the South", which brings to mind Dahl (surely no relation of Borges' Dahlmann) as a combination of Poe, Borges and O. Henry, and surely no writer of children's books. A RocketFuel colleague, Ari, pointed out a Hitchcock movie based on the story, which I might get around to watching some nice and bright sunny Saturday morning. To tranquilize myself after reading the rather macabre tale at night, I fell to thinking about some rather interesting probability questions based on the events described.

I want to give you the chance to read the story first, and I really hope, post your own questions, before I raise my questions in a blog in a couple of days. Then, a few days later, I'll give my solutions, which, because of possible differing assumptions, may be different from yours. I'll also add the takes of people who talk to me about it.

Yet another RFI colleague, Jack, referred me to a wikipedia article and pointed out that I was not the first to start thinking about probability motivated by games of chance. Late by a whisker again, Jeeves, dash it all!

This ain't no climbing saga

Or,

STONE-COLD LOVE

The hot shower makes me suddenly aware of the cuts, bruises, scrapes and general bloody spots ("gobies", Orlando called them) I've accumulated over the last two days. I have no clear recollection of how I came by them, not even the major ones. Only at the end of a route do I occasionally attain realisation – dark red drops appearing suddenly on shoes or on the rope as I untie, or a partner's comment, “Left a sacrifice for the rock gods huh?”

I have mixed feelings about showering at the end of a climbing trip. The heat soothes away the soreness and muscle aches – most acquired not from a heroic climb up some horrendously strenuous and unrelenting crack but from sitting cramped and huddled for hours in a van strewn with gear or wedged awkwardly in a car on the ride home. The flow of warm water is a comfort, but it is with regret that I watch the slightly grey water –sometimes muddy brown– flow off my body, washing away the rock, sloughing off the entire weekend experience as it carries away the little bits of sand or gravel that have been trapped in my hair for days. I have become accustomed to the dirt and rock-dust insulating me from … my own imagination? Perhaps, but in any case I am loathe to come out of this shell and re-enter whatever real world I happen to inhabit.

This smell on me, not just sweat –stale or fresh– but the smell of the earth on me. A while back, when I would return from climbing trips, my ex-cat (ex-girlfriend's cat?) would sniff my fingers and lick them, then sprawl on the mess of climbing gear spilled on the living room floor, purring and happily sniffing the metallic, rusty rock smell on stoppers and webbing, her nose on my climbing shoes, pink tongue parting her jet black face to tentatively flick over the leather. Her favorite rocks –sensed remotely in this way– were the pink gneiss of Little Falls and the pegmatite of the Gunks. She didn't care much for the Adirondacks, too licheny I suppose, and her probable love for the plentiful smell of blood (from jamming forgotten-to-tape-too-late-now fingers into cracks lined with sharp quartz crystals) was insufficient to overcome her dislike for the vegetation.

Lovers, even those whose profiles mandated “daily showers and fresh scents”, have eventually reveled in these rock-smells on me, welcomed me to Sunday night bed with warm naked bodies, demanding that I postpone my shower till the next morning. Non-climbers themselves, perhaps their bodies desired at that moment not really me but some long-forgotten connection with the earth, vicarious though it might have been. Can a protective carapace sometimes be flypaper?

Two days ago, I'd left during a period of tension, my lover and I both in need of a break from each other. That much had been clear, but not much else besides. I needed to think, to be alone, and where else can one be alone but on the sharp end of a rope – the feeling of mastery, the complete control, before the whole world explodes into understanding as the rope sings you to a stop, the slamming crescendo of stoppers, hexes and carabiners. In the brief void following the fall, my empty mind would have its epiphany.

However, as with most other climbing trips, this one too has been bereft of any clarifying visions; there were no moments of comprehension, no resolution of problems greater than that of the next move.

… At this point forty feet up, the crack flares sharply, as if a corner on one side has fallen off, and six inches deep, it narrows to a parallel sided hand crack. There are no edges or holds on the face that I can use. Past a bulge a few feet above me, I see some big bucket holds, the angle eases there, more features have been carved out of the rock – pockets, larger edges etc. But to get there …

I am on “Fantasy”, the first pitch of a well-trod trad route at the New, not hard, but very aesthetic, a beautiful hand crack in yellow sandstone tinged with red. It starts with a right-facing dihedral off the ground. Comfortable stems, made easier because of some edges for fingers and outer-foot placements, get me a few feet up this till I am under a half-roof topping the dihedral, split by the crack. Leaning out on a right hand jammed vertically up under the roof, I step left onto the arête, and using an in-cut edge off on the face for my left hand, I work my feet up till I can reach with my right hand over the roof and back into the crack. Standing above the roof, one leg stemmed wide, the other foot solidly jammed vertically in the crack, the weight supporting ankle twisted wickedly starts hurting, the pain causing my lower leg to shake a bit; but at least I don't get full-on “sewing machine leg”. I take too much time placing pro – I've lost my eye for sizes after half a season pulling on plastic – I fumble and drop a set of three or four hexes before I get something in. I've never dropped anything before, and for a few seconds I worry about whether I'll need them higher up. Then, as I did with the hexes, I drop the worry, without fumbling this time.
The next few moves are bomber hand eating crack, but the section is short. I discover an edge inside the crack which allows me to layback the crack up to a finger lock and then I reach a stance on edges formed by the weathered outer crust of the sandstone. It would be desert varnish but this is West Virginia. With a friend in place where I could have used one of my dropped hexes, I contemplate the next few moves...
At this point the crack flares sharply, as if a corner on one side has fallen off, and six inches deep, it narrows to a thin hand crack. Shimmering my fingers across the smooth contours of the rockfaces on either side, searching for a hold, I can feel the warm graininess of the rock gently abrading my skin. I fail to find anything – not even a quarter-thin sidepull nor a tiny nubbin. Past a bulge, a few feet above me I see some big bucket holds, and see that the angle eases there, with more features carved out of the rock – big pockets and large edges.
But to get there – the only way is the crack. Off a low two-finger lock with my left hand, I reach up and slide my right into the crack, thumb-up. The crack is parallel, and slightly wider than my flat palm. As I pull my thumb back, into my palm, the mound at the base of my palm widens, jamming me solidly in. I walk my feet up in the crack, unconscious of the immediate pain that must have been in my stacked and twisted toes, with my full weight on them. I savor my position for a few moments. The hand-jam is comfortable; secured by the pulled-back thumb, I sit back, weight on my feet, dangle and shake my left hand awhile, and then dip it into my chalk-bag. On this day, on this rock, the chalk is superfluous, force of habit only. The air is warm and dry, and unlike the granite-like ancient Tuscarora sandstone at Seneca, the hard sandstone here breathes and absorbs moisture off my palms.
Standing up, right hand low, I secure another jam with my left. This one, for some reason, is thumb down, and therefore I will not be able to reach up high over it. But that doesn't matter now. Leaning awkwardly, almost barndooring – swinging open as if I had been poorly hung – since all three points of contact are in the straight line of the crack, I fit my right hand not far above my left, reach over it with my left to the big jug and clamber to the narrow ledge. Above this the crack widens, I get sideways fist jams, feeling the forearm muscles contract and bulge as I clench my fist. A short while later, replaying the climb while setting up the belay, I am pleased that I have not worked my biceps as much as my shoulders and back muscles.
Later yet, on the ground, my legs are tired from the long day climbing, and I have a map of the crack in the loose, tension-free aches in my upper back, in the bloodied knuckles and in the bruises flowering on the back of my hands.

Returning home late, I look forward to sprawling alone, unhampered by the confining comfort of my sleeping bag. Not between clean fresh sheets though (Who has time to do laundry and make beds before a climbing trip?) but with my head on a pillow that has long strands of other hair on it, and lying between sheets stained with my lover's anchovies and ripe-brie, hint of rust wetness, inhaling the sheets, sniffing for a missed connection.
I will call her, tomorrow, maybe.

OccupySFMayDayBrickDonate

This appeal for donations is in the spirit of "Disaster Tourism" and "Macabre World Event Mementos". Lots of people paid a lot of money for bricks from the Berlin Wall, and there were probably hundreds of thousands of them. The following item is UniQuE!

I have in my possession the (yes THE) cinder brick that was thrown at the police by that idiot on the roof of the OccupySFCommune Building at 870 Turk St. As you know from my previous post, the brick smashed an Occupy supporter's nose.

Lying on the sidewalk where it landed.

Close-up with victim's blood, still fresh, but beginning to coagulate.

I picked up the brick at precisely 40 minutes to 5 o'clock.

Please donate, the highest contributor will win the brick.
Occupy Oakland
 OccupySF

You can also donate to any other activist social justice cause of your choice. You can just e-mail me or leave a comment with the amount you've donated and the organization name. You can also donate to the victim's medical bills, since ObamaCare has apparently failed to cover all residents of the US.

I will then mail the brick to you. Currently it is in my freezer in pristine, bloody condition. I'll be happy to clean it off and restore it to its pre-geodesic-deviation state before mailing it to you. As proof of authenticity, I'll e-mail copies of the above photos (high-resolution, suitable for 8X10 and framing).

The request for donations is serious, but please note that the post should have been backdated to 20th April.

OKupyCupid1

Mel,

You wrote to me. Asked me to look at your profile. So I did.

In that first message, you said you'd liked what I'd written in my profile, that I was very direct, that I defined and declared myself and my tastes so I didn't seem to be appealing to a broad spectrum, that I “came out” as feminist, atheist and progressive. You contrasted that with “spiritual but not religious” and “middle of the road” that, seemingly, a lot of guys declare themselves to be. That I said nothing about “going from hiking boots to a tux in ten minutes”. That I seemed to be someone whose company you would enjoy, and would I mind taking a look at your profile to see if you interested me. 

So I did.

I mean, you wrote to me. Not that many women do. Not that many even favorite me. Plus you are very attractive in your photos – hair falling to the side of your face, as well as swept back, both photos do you honour. Then I looked at your profile, in some detail. Sure, you were a match (liberal, agnostic, right age, education, liked dogs, a foreign language, open to a range of ethnicities, little TV, Mervyn Peake (!), conscious food, no shopping etc.) but you already knew that, perhaps the GYMBII algorithm had suggested me to you. You came across as intelligent, unafraid yourself to distinguish yourself from the crowd, with a sense of humour about yourself and your expectations from web-dating (I have to say that there seems to be a lot more web-match-making going on (fifteen a day?!) than possible web-dating, though that feeling might just be a result of sour-grapes.). You were straightforward as well, without the earnestness and sincerity that just bores the hole out of me sometimes. And Mervyn Peake?! Seriously, I don't know anybody else who has even heard the name, other than Takla, who lent me the books in college, and the Englishwoman at the end of the affair. Also, no pretense about yoga! No humble but super-honed inverted postures at the edge of Half Dome. If all the women on the dating sites who claim to do yoga actually did so there wouldn't be enough space to do ek-padasan in the studios –you know how much space Americans need to be wunnn with the universe– leave alone one of the postures where you are on your palms, your forehead nearly kissing the ground, one leg extended back and the other over your elbow with your foot in your neighbour's underarm, don't you wish?

I wrote back to you. I asked you about your hiking (five to six times a year) and we exchanged emails about the kinds of hikes and landscapes we liked (all). I asked about your social justice work and you told me about your involvement with PP rallies, local Green candidates, food banks, water security and your current involvement with the local Occupy movement, which you said was very active. I said I was quite involved as well, though in a supporting role, taking food there for distribution to the homeless and hungry as well as for their General Assemblies every other weekend that I had my young daughters with me. You were curious that we hadn't noticed each other, you were there almost every weekend, with or without your tween, usually at the left front of the gathering as one faced away from the memorial to Cesar Chavez.

Memorial to Cesar Chavez? How had I missed it? That's when it occurred to me to look at your headline. But you are twelve hundred miles away from me! When I pointed that out, you checked as well, and oops, you'd thought I was located in the city you are moving to next month. I'm flattered, and you should be too, that we both got so carried away with each other over a few emails.

Mel! (I don't yet know whether it is Melissa or Melanie.) Stay! Don't go! 

But what am I saying? That I am offering or asking for a commitment without our having met even once? Based on a “match” determined by a third party? Based on physical, not even chemical attraction? Without knowing what sex –which, going by the sensual nature of your descriptions, I suspect is as important to you as it is to me– would be like?

But I've tried that before, an arranged marriage fifteen years ago. “Everything matches!”, my aunt had said, “Caste, economic status, education, family background –they are related to my Akka through the father's side– family outlook, the grandfather moved from a village in Mallapuram district but they have modernized quite nicely by now, they have dogs too, you know, family is Malayali but they speak Tamil as well, she is willing to move to US, one cousin-brother is already there, and the family is willing to overlook your age, I was so worried when you insisted on waiting till after your PhD, but no matter now! It's okay. Just take a look at the photos na! And read the ad., see if it interests you.”

So I had. And look where it has gotten me.

climbert8

OccupyEggs4

Did someone donate these dozens and dozens of eggs? “No, you could say they were remaindered. I rescued them from the garbage, one of the grocery store's dumpsters had a caseload, there must have been upwards of 25 dozens. None of the cartons, none of the eggs were even broken. But Josh and I smelt them and we broke open a few to check and they smell fine. So as long as you cook them thoroughly you'll be fine.”

But she hadn't cooked them fully, considered cooked yolk a waste of her own cholesterol allowance, so sunny-side up the first time in the Occupy Kitchen, then deep fried in super-hot oil, the white crusted, the yolk warm but uncooked, and later fried whole in their shells, the white rubbery, runny and the yolk again warm and uncooked, pasting the insides of her mouth with that full yolky taste so rare in American eggs or even Indian ones, these days.

With the deep-fried eggs, she'd struggled single handedly, alternating the scissors and her fork in her right hand to cut the egg and bread and red peppers and then scoop it all to her mouth, until she realised with the last bite that for some length of time now she had been looking only at her plate – the yolk cascading down the bubbled and crisped egg-white, the red bell peppers with their flecks of black skin and bits of chopped garlic embedded in the flesh, the multigrain bread now soaked in the liquid from the peppers and the oil and yolk, she hadn't been reading the book still propped open in her left hand.

OccupyEggs3

Unlike Rutherford and rainbows, Hemingway had not analogously ruined fried eggs for her, nor even art, perhaps because artists didn't take on fried eggs on a plate in the way they took on fruit in a bowl or fish skeletons on a plate or a rainbow in the sky. Since she hadn't already gotten sick from these eggs, which she'd first eaten three days ago, she thought she would be okay. She'd delivered, to the OccupyHungerOakland kitchen, 

OccupyOakland Food drop 11 March 2012

 the sunchokes they'd given her the previous week, cooked with her homegrown fenugreek leaves, 

Add chopped methi and mint leaves to the fried onions.

Sunchokes with methi leaves.

 rapini sauteed with garlic and salted-yogurt chillies,

Sauteed rapini.

 a salad of blanched broccoli tossed with garlic, salt olive oil and vinegar,

and two gallons of rajma dal with rice.

Rajma dal over rice

She picked up produce to cook and bring back the following week 

Produce pick up

 – potatoes, tomatoes, a half bushel of kale, 7-8 dozen mandarin oranges

Delicious remaindered mandarins

(rejected as blemished and donated to OccupyHungerOakland, she'd found only 1-2% were unusable, she and her girls had eaten a dozen or so, and the rest she'd made into Melancholy Mandarin Marmalade)

Melancholy Marmalade, yes it is bitter-sweet.

and some lettuce for herself. Then she'd stayed, to help Fiesta, the Occupy Kitchen coordinator, yes the name suited her, and she herself had not yet dared ask whether Fiesta had chosen it herself or whether it had been chosen for her by one of her possibly hippie-throwback parents.

She'd stayed to help since she didn't have her kids that weekend, and it helped her to hang out with other people, younger people with so much energy that they could devote some of it to others. She helped Fiesta process all the rest of the produce – apples, tomatoes, papayas, watermelons, all either donated as “blemished” or de-dumpstered by Fiesta herself. She showed Fiesta how to fry the tomatoes, 

Cooking in the OccupyHungerOakland kitchen.

a few percent of which were beginning to get pale squishy spots with occasional mold, and not let them just cook or stew. Then she helped cut the apples. What was wrong with the apples? “They have spots.” Can't people just eat them, so it saves us the trouble of having to cook them? “No, it is sad, in this country, even the poor and hungry are picky about their food and won't touch an apple unless it is blemish free.” The watermelons looked bad, most had rot on the outside – black and white mold and softened outer flesh. But when Fiesta cut them open, the thick outer part had protected the pink inner flesh almost entirely, only one of the 8 melons had needed to have pink parts cut away. Fiesta chunked the melons and froze them, for later use in aguas frescas at one of the community outreach picnics.

She looked at the papayas, 

Papayas with outer rot...

they were just about beginning to show some moldy spots, but the rest of the flesh was still hard. She mentioned that in her house she would put these papayas back in a paper bag for another week, then cut them open when the flesh would be that beautiful pink-orange. 

... and inner beauty.

 And these were being thrown away? It was true that Americans did not know how to eat tropical fruit, unless it was canned of course. Indians, on the other hand...

Still, she felt that many Indians could cure their feelings of rootlessness in America by eating beautiful, locally grown seasonal produce from a CSA, perhaps even work at a CSA to plant or harvest.

After all that work cooking, she'd gotten hungry. That was when Fiesta had offered her some eggs and “resprouted” bread – resprouted from a dumpster of course. She fried them and ate them with some of the simmering tomato sauce right there in the OccupyKitchen, before she had to leave for her late date that night.

Back at home, a few days later, she considered the irony of having taken $3.89/doz. eggs from the Occupy kitchen, to bring them back and eat them in her home, bought and paid for, no danger of eviction. But Fiesta had insisted she take a dozen, “God, yes, I still have 6 dozens left, and I've given away a hundred eggs each to two community kitchens here already. You liked them, and you bring us food every week, we are giving these away, and other produce, distributing them to our cooks to prepare and bring back for feeding the homeless or for the GAs, or just for their families. So go ahead and take them.” Did someone donate these? “No, you could say they were remaindered. I rescued them from the garbage, one of the grocery store's dumpsters had a caseload, there must have been upwards of 25 dozens. None of the cartons, none of the eggs were even broken. But Josh and I smelt them and we broke open a few to check and they smell fine. So as long as you cook them thoroughly you'll be fine.”

But she hadn't cooked them fully.

OccupyEggs2

OccupyEggs1

Why she liked Hemingway, DWM, misogynist because of all the women he'd loved who hadn't loved him back the way the rivers and seas and mountains did, she couldn't even begin to explain why she liked Hemingway. She'd never read him in school, none of the girls from school had, only certain and very few geeky and wannabe macho guys she knew had read him in school. In the Women's Studies course in college, he was their first assignment, and it was painfully easy to do a feminist deconstruction, and it was all over in a few seconds. Yet there were certain passages that had become ingrained in her brain, and fried eggs were forever associated with Hemingway the way rainbows were forever associated with Rutherford.

She'd learned Rutherford's analysis and explanation of rainbows in her third year in college, in a new physics class she'd taken as an elective, after her women's studies phase and after she'd gone back to her geek roots. Her artsy friends spoke as if science and understanding ruined one's love of nature, but Rutherford had not ruined her appreciation of the beauty of rainbows. Like Hemingway had increased her appreciation of fried egg sandwiches, after Rutherford she now gazed at rainbows for longer, observed them in all their nuances, in their environment, looking for all the features they could have but only sometimes displayed, and always just-so, the order of the colors, the geometry, the astronomical atmospheric effects. What Rutherford had ruined for her was her appreciation of “rainbow art” - the meaningless paeans to the “beauty of the rainbow”, telling without showing, without knowing, and the landscapes with fanciful rainbows, most of which got wrong the most elementary observational facts about rainbows and which, to her, indicated a disdain towards nature on the part of the artists. But Hemingway had not analogously ruined fried eggs for her, nor even art, perhaps because artists didn't take on fried eggs on a plate in the way they took on fruit in a bowl or fish skeletons on a plate or a rainbow in the sky.

OccupyEggs3

OccupyEggs1

OccupyEggs0

She'd cracked the first egg on the edge of the frying pan, but as she'd held it over the oil it had fallen out of her hands when she'd tried to pry it apart. It had been a bitch to get all the pieces of shell out of the hot oil, but it had been worth it just for the idea that had occurred to her – to deep-fry the egg, whole, in its shell. Of course it had cracked in the hot oil, but what oozed out of the crack coagulated and sealed the rest of the egg. She'd let it fry, rolling it around for about a minute before taking it out. Now, with the shell cool enough to touch, she tried to peel it, but that pesky inner membrane stuck fast to both the shell and the egg. So she lopped off the top and scooped the egg out with a spoon, holding the egg in her hand, just as she used to do with soft boiled eggs as a school child. Of course, she'd known even before tasting it that the white would be rubbery, egg proteins have to cook slowly to avoid that texture. But she liked her eggs best that way – unevenly cooked, the outer part of the white rubbery, the inner part runny and the yolk warmed but silkily fluid. It handily beat the fried-egg sandwich Hemingway ate over the course of a paragraph in a bar in Florida. She couldn't fish, couldn't play a bull, and her mountaineering days were long past, but she'd outdone him, Old Hem, at last. If she could only avoid sticking a double barreled shotgun in her mouth, she would outdo him forever, outlast.

Why she liked Hemingway, DWM, misogynist because of all the women he'd loved who hadn't loved him back the way the rivers and seas and mountains did, she couldn't even begin to explain why she liked Hemingway. She'd never read him in school, none of the girls from school had, only certain and very few geeky and wannabe macho guys she knew had read him in school. In the Women's Studies course in college, he was their first assignment, and it was painfully easy to do a feminist deconstruction, and it was all over in a few seconds. Yet there were certain passages that had become ingrained in her brain, and fried eggs were forever associated with Hemingway the way rainbows were forever associated with Rutherford.

OccupyEggs2

OccupyEggs0

OccupyEggs = Insemination? Would only a guy have thought of that? Why had she thought of it then?

Reluctant to put her book down for even a few seconds, holding it in her left hand while the BookEasel © lay unused within easy reach, she tried to cut into the deep-fried egg with the fork in her right hand, using its edge to press the egg down, but the fork couldn't cut through the crusty, brown parchment like egg-white. The roasted bell peppers –she'd marinaded them overnight in olive oil, salt and garlic– squeezed out from between the egg and the holy numbered 9-grain X 12-nut bread, the bread itself crumbled pastily and finally she had the browned egg-white with its back to the plate, and still the fork wouldn't cut through it. She grabbed the kitchen scissors which happened to be on the table from cutting open the packet of “lonely” seaweed soup –if she'd had company, she would have served dal or squash soup or clam chowder, not seaweed soup– and used them to cut the thin leathery egg crust. Now she could scoop up part of the warm yolk, the egg-white, the bread and the peppers.

As she mashed the yolk against the roof of her mouth, and felt that sunny explosion of salt fat sticky coagulating tooth coating creamy yellow in the inside of her mouth, she was reminded of afternoon sex during the early days with …, and of Old Hem, of course, always Old Hem. Fried eggs and Hemingway like rainbows and Rutherford. Then she wondered if she would die of salmonella poisoning from eating free range, organic, cage-free, all-natural, vegetarian fed, family farmed eggs. Her concern arose not from any of the above, but from the fact that they were past their expiry date. She smiled at herself, she'd been about to think “due date”, had in fact thought “due date” before correcting herself –as she'd been doing with the date on egg cartons ever since she'd become pregnant with her first child.

She ate the two eggs she'd deep-fried sunny-side up like her soon2BX husband used to like them until he started worrying about his high cholesterol and its effect on their non-existent sex-life, and turned to her experiment. She'd cracked the first egg on the edge of the frying pan, but as she'd held it over the oil it had fallen out of her hands when she'd tried to pry it apart. It had been a bitch to get all the pieces of shell out of the hot oil, but it had been worth it just for the idea that had occurred to her – to deep-fry the egg, whole, in its shell. Of course it had cracked in the hot oil, but what oozed out of the crack coagulated and sealed the rest of the egg. She'd let it fry, rolling it around for about a minute before taking it out. Now, with the shell cool enough to touch, she tried to peel it, but that pesky inner membrane stuck fast to both the shell and the egg. So she lopped off the top and scooped the egg out with a spoon, holding the egg in her hand, just as she used to do with soft boiled eggs as a school child. Of course, she'd known even before tasting it that the white would be rubbery, egg proteins have to cook slowly to avoid that texture. But she liked her eggs best that way – unevenly cooked, the outer part of the white rubbery, the inner part runny and the yolk warmed but silkily fluid. 

OccupyEggs1 

MY FAMILY IS OTHER ANIMALS

MY FAMILY IS OTHER ANIMALS, AND SO CAN YOU!

The resort sits on the eastern side near the end of a south-tending peninsula, which defines a shallow bay north of the Konķaɳ. The cottages are dispersed in a eucalyptus grove in a hollow somewhat protected from the mid-day sun. The grove looks very alluring when you get there in the middle of the day, only later do you recall the deathliness of eucalyptus outside Australia. Its fresh leaves provide no sustenance, the fallen ones allow no plant or tree of any other kind to grow, the straight trunks provide no foliage cover till about 10' high. No birds nest in its branches, there is no animal life, no plants, not even grass. No Indian butterflies have use for it and not many monarchs migrate from Mexico to Maharashtra. Its wood is useless as building material, seeing use not even for scaffolding. However, we see village women who collect the fallen leaves in giant baskets and carry them off - to burn them and then to spread the ashes on the rice fields. This exposes the incipient runnels down the hillside and the footpaths – you can imagine them eroded to deep gorges in a few years time.

The restaurant is on a promontory and overlooks the bay, with its skeletons of dying mangroves. The last bit of the footpath leading to the restaurant consists of crushed shells that glow white in the moonlight. The surrounding hillside is littered – Minute Maid (TM) juice boxes, plastic Bisleri (TM) and Aquafina (TM) water bottles, the ubiquitous plastic bags. 

As we sat for lunch, a few stray dogs and a stray cat came around. The cat, after miaowing from under the tables, came on to the table. In an effort to impress us, the head waiter, Krishna, an immigrant from the Nepali foothills, came charging out with a broken wooden table leg and thwacked one of the dogs, who took off yelping. Another dog limping around we had already noticed keeping its distance. A waiter grabbed the cat, dangling her 20 tense, sharp points out by her tail at arm's length. Krishna took a swing at her and missed, but Maya, our 6 year old, born and brought up in the US, saw him and started bawling, “What are they going to do to her?”, terrified for the animals. In turn, Elsa, her younger sister started crying for Maya. While their mom tried to calm the two of them, my sister, protector of nieces as well as of stray cats, jumped up infuriated and started berating the waiters. The Indian nieces and nephews – immune perhaps to displays of violence towards animals – sat unfazed through the whole thing, even the 3 year old, who looked mystified at her older cousin's upset.

After that, at least in our presence the waiters left the animals alone. Our one felinophobic cousin left the next day, and the rest of us accustomed ourselves to the animals, mostly ignoring them, except for my sister, who talks to the cat; and Elsa, one and half years old, who squeals, warbles and trills and bobs her head while making calling gestures with her hands, almost throwing herself out of my arms in her efforts to interact with the dogs, cats and crows.

A couple of days later we had fish for lunch. Maddened by the smell, the cat miaowred hideously through our meal. The moment I finished and sat back, she jumped on my leg and onto the table without scratching me, hunkered down and started eating the fish bones off my plate. I pulled the cat off the table with her jaw full, by her scruff but not in the correct immobilizing hold, and she nicked me, drawing blood.

“You are the second one to be scratched by that cat – the other day Papi was scratched too!”.

“This cat?”

“And what about that crow that pecked Nima on her head?”

“Where did that happen?”

“Arrey here only nah.”

“Yah, lucky for us the chipkali fell on the dining table before our food was served.”

“This place is filled with animals, I found a frog in the bathroom.”

“A frog! That's nothing, you won't believe what I found in the bathroom.”

“What?”

“I had been shaving in the bathroom, when I heard a rapid ghasar-pasar near the window and a chipkali darted in, the head of a snake an inch behind it when the gecko managed to climb around the frame and escape along the wall to hide behind the water-heater. The green-brown snake, thumb thick and 3' long, slithered in and out again immediately and I thought it was gone for good, but it climbed the window slats on the outside, coiled its hind part around the top slat, levitated itself off that and swayed two feet into the bathroom, looking for its recently escaped prey. I had been petrified and now futilely waved a plastic mug in its direction. The snake noticed me, coiled back and reptated back outside.”

Now people noticed that the cut was bleeding and suggestions started: “Rub some salt on it.”, “No, no! That will sting, just squeeze some lime juice on it.”, “Just crush some of that raw onion, that will also work.”. Then the suggestions left the immediate vicinity of the table and expanded outwards to the kitchen and the larger world beyond: red chilli powder, cumin powder, haldi, neem leaf, calendula and everybody's favorite ayurvedic or homeopathic remedy. I squeezed a couple of more drops of blood out, as my dad suggested, rinsed it and, since I had had a tetanus booster recently, forgot about it.

I imagine the same scene in the US, people discussing the relative antiseptic merits of relish and ketchup.