In defence of Wormholes, Rabbitholes and other Cavties and Appertures

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Wormholes are great things. These tunnels that connect two points that are either very far, or are in different universes - you get the picture. Not like anyone one of us has actually seen one, but I'm sure them physicists know what they're talking about. In any case I'm not planning to argue with them, I just think the concept is really cool - if you stumble down one, you could emerge in a completely new universe (or an old one). This has of course inspired a slew of science fiction and speculative fiction set in alternate universes. My favorite in this line of thought is of course Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. I've talked about the lyrical quality of the prose earlier. 

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Coming back from our little detour, Wormholes are great things. So are Rabbit holes, like the one Alice fell down. Because half a century before Einstein got around to writing about the General Theory of Relativity, which laid the conceptual foundation for wormholes, the nerdiest writer of all time, Lewis Carroll (or Charles Lutwidge Dodgso, if you will) needed something to escape the banality of human existence. And so we had a curious Alice tumble down a Rabbit hole and emerge in a Wonderland. We also have a beautiful, enigmatic song by Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit, which poked holes in Censors' efforts to curtain freedom of expression. It is widely touted as one of the first songs to sneak drug references past censors on the radio. Here is a kickass cover by the absolutely badass Amanda Palmer. 

'Down the Rabbit hole' is now fairly common expression to describe what we do on the internet. You're reading something and you follow a link to something else and before you know it, you're reading about something completely different. Going down the Rabbit hole in Wikipedia is a genre in itself and gets it's own word - a wikihole. There are those who have explored the depths of these wikiholes and claim that if you keep going down one, you'll eventually end up on the page for philosophy.

I went down a Rabbit hole recently with some very curious results. I was reading one of my favorite bloggers, Jai Arjun Singh (whose blog is incidentally called Jabberwock - a Lewis Carroll character)

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interview author Jerry Pinto. I stumbled on this hilarious poem about an algebra text book written by Messrs Hall and Knight. It talks about how they conspire to torment little hapless little children.

'How hard it is', said Mr Knight, 'to hide the fact from youth

That x and y are equal: it is such an obvious truth!'

We'd put the problem well beyond our little victims' reach.

'It is', said Mr Hall, 'but if we gave a b to each,

- Dr E V. Rieu

I've been there and suffered through it, as have an entire generation of engineering aspirants (if not more). So I was pleasantly surprised to find a poet who shared my woes. I went on a trip of my own, down the memory lane (or hole, if you will). Speaking of memory, I'd like to sign off with a quote from someone who has mined the depths of memory like no other:

People claim that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselves that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years.

- Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Ink on Paper

Some would say that I've been neglecting writing and it's partially true - I haven't been writing new posts on this blog for some time now. But I've been traveling and I find I don't always have much to say to an impersonal audience. I've been writing letters to specific persons, sharing with them all the random thoughts I've been having. A fair criticism would be that I haven't been posting these letters - the way work timings don't match with post office timings, means I've been carting some letters around for months now. That is set to change and you (you know who you are) are going to get mail soon.

This one's for mom!

Mom, you've taught me so many things that magically seem to make themselves useful in scenarios I could never had imagined. But more than anything, I love how you would explain the rationale behind something while teaching me about it. FYI, that has set me up for a lifetime of annoyance with people who refuse to use their brain.

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Take for example, using the humble pressure cooker. I still remember how my mom taught me -  our cook-masi was trying to tech me how to cook with a pressure cooker; how to open it, how to close it, the subtle nuances of how many whistles are too many whistles, etc. when she over-rode her and told me "this is pressure vessel, its job is to build up steam and increase the pressure so that the things inside boil faster and cook faster. So once the steam is built up, if you keep the flame on high all the time, you're basically wasting energy. Only chickpeas and kidney beans take more than 10 mins to cook" That was all the wisdom I've ever needed. Years later, in Physics class I learnt that a liquid's boiling temperature is a function of its vapor pressure; but my mom had beat Clausius and Clapeyron here.

So the next time you're cooking with a pressure cooker, try this: keep the flame high till you hear a steady low hum issuing from the safety valve (or what we call the whistle). At this point turn the heat down while ensuring that the "hum" is steady and set a timer to "Hum" time. Promptly turn off the flame when the time is up and allow the steam to escape. If you're too impatient, you can plunge the whole thing under a running tap in the sink. Below are proportions and tips that I've gleaned from my mom and experience, that heartless bit*h:

To Cook	Water Proportion	“Hum” Time	Remarks
Soaked Rice, Daals, Khichdi, Pulao, etc.	2 cups of water for every cup	10 min	The daals will come out very thick and creamy. They can be diluted to one’s taste
Un-soaked Rice, Daals, Khichdi, Pulao, etc.	2+ cups of water for every cup	10 - 12 min	This is not an exact science. Remember you’re still in a kitchen
Broken Wheat / Cracked Wheat / Porridge / Dalia	2.5 cups of water for every cup	10 min	You’ll have to use your discretion here. If the grain size is kinda small, go for 2 cups instead of 2.5.
Soaked whole legumes like green gram (मूंग), Bengal gram (चना), etc.	2.5 cups of water for every “dry” cup	10 min	This is for people who like bite in their food and don’t want to eat boiled mush.
Un-soaked whole legumes like green gram (मूंग), Bengal gram (चना), etc.	3 cups of water for every cup	15 min
Soaked chickpeas, kidney beans, etc.	3 cups of water for every “dry” cup	25 min	These things tend to expand a lot on soaking – don’t mess this up.
Un-soaked chickpeas, kidney beans, etc.	4 cups of water for every cup	45 min

Now that I've told you this, go experiment. Do it. Also go make this bowl full of awesomeness. It was a part of this fantabulus meal I mentioned here.