Mental Excursions

San Francisco: A City of Surprises                                                                                                     -Anupama S Mani When the staircase has a story to tell. Heavy gold jewellery, intricate wood work, gilded masks, delicately painted anthropoid sarcophagi —all beautifully preserved and sitting right in front of my eyes — shocked me out of my poor knowledge zone about ancient Egypt. In the windy morning with the sun still uncertain about how it wanted to behave, as it often does in San Francisco, we headed to the de Young Museum to enjoy the Treasure of the Pharaohs , an exhibition of 130 exquisite works spanning 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history, showing significance, aesthetic sense and values associ...

Trust the Frog, Not the Forecast                                                                                                       - Anupama S Mani In this age of technology, we have rovers on Mars, teachers use plagiarism-checking software for homework, smartphones track our heartbeats, AI invents fake data with absolute confidence. Yet, the moment the skies turn grey, and the first Sawan raindrops fall on our heads, our entire several-thousand crore meteorological infrastructure quietly packs its bags and leaves. The weather site, with a bright, cheerful sunflower emoji, predicts a hot, humid, sunny day. Outside your window, however, a minor typhoon is currently editing the weather forecast. Strong gusts of wind are howling, r...

Horn OK Please                                                                                                       - Anupama S Mani I stopped driving several years ago and, shamelessly embraced permanent passenger status. A passenger does not have to focus solely on the road. I am free to look— at activities in other vehicles, two-wheelers trying to snake through impossible gaps, autorickshaws sticking their snouts into tiny spaces, lethargic traffic policemen, and billboards still announcing last year's grand inauguration of a jewellery shop. Quite unexpectedly, I acquired a new hobby—listening to India's largest free musical performance where scooters play the flute, cars attempt the trumpet, autorickshaws believe they are percu...

Words That Disagree Beautifully                                                                                              - Anupama S Mani It is ‘awfully good’ and ‘terribly nice’ of you to have stopped here. I hope even if the week gave you problems, you remained in ‘comfortable misery’ ‘experiencing a joyful sadness’ and stayed ‘cheerfully pessimistic’. As the week ‘grows smaller’ into the weekend, perhaps your plans are still a ‘definite maybe’, your confidence is powered by ‘artificial intelligence’, and you are hoping for a few ‘minor miracles’. With luck, by Sunday your troubles will seem like ‘ virtual reality’, or at least become ‘seriously funny’. If you think I am being ‘gloriously stupid’, hold that thought, you have ‘ clearly misundersto...