Monday Cup Of Links #52 - Ouija Typewriters, Ottoman Travelogue, Cuneiform Map
And possibly a new character in my novel!
Happy Monday!
Another Monday, another work week. There’s this shocking realization that work stresses me out, and until I’m done with my work deadlines, I can’t work on anything I’m doing on the side. Pre-parenthood, I could creatively procrastinate by writing a long Thursday piece instead of cleaning data with regexes, but now the guilt is too crushing.
The solution is of course to be more organized and structured, and to get help, but the first one has never been easy for me, and the second one is hard with the pandemic, not to mention it doesn’t take away the fact that a lot of stuff in my life is things only I can do.
I was rereading Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy, a most excellent book about time management. In it, he says to delegate the things anyone can do, and make time for the things that only you can do. Well, it turns out I’m the only one who can write my novel, earn my own living, do my side projects, and make accidental eye contact with my infant late at night, which rouses her from her half-sleep and makes her want to play.
I’m sure I can streamline things more than I do, but it hits me a lot of the “everybody has the same 24 hours” rhetoric that you see on LinkedIn doesn’t work, because a lot of people can’t outsource or delegate things to the same extent other people can. Some people just have more on their plate than others. And I’m not thinking of me when I say that; I’m more thinking of people like my mom who managed work, side gig to boost family income, sick elders in the family, children’s homework, and making hot meals for everyone with all that.
In any case, I’m now here and writing this email, so onto our links!
An Ottoman Admiral was fighting the Portuguese in the Arabian Sea in 1553, when a typhoon blew him to the west coast of India. Seydi Ali Reis found himself stuck for several years in India, amid a series of civil wars, uprisings, and the death of Humayun when Akbar was still a child.
The Portuguese were baying for his blood, so going back by sea was out of the question. He tried going overland by going from Gujarat to Sindh, and the Mughal empire, all the while looking for a permit to cross the border into Iran. Finally he did manage to leave just as Humayun died. Bairam Khan tried to keep him and use him in the conflict that was to follow with Hemachandra Vikramaditya, but Humayun had signed his exit visa before he died, and Seydi was unsure any subsequent ruler would be so kind, so he scarpered when he could.
The point is, he wrote a nice travelogue about his time in India, and his travel through Central Asia. It seems quite interesting, given there was war and destruction wherever he went, and he talks about interesting things he observed, like drinking stations at the bottom of every toddy palm tree, and the strange creature that is the Banyan tree, with a new tree sprouting where a branch drops from the old one and touches the ground.
I looked online, and I found a copy of his memoirs on Amazon for 99c. The preview makes it seem like a bad conversion from a scan to text, but I’ll manage that for 99c.I came across this image of a Babylonian cuneiform tablet from the 17th century BCE, which depicts the canal system they had on the Euphrates river. It’s interesting to see how a complex system was depicted in a small and compact map so long ago - I can’t seem to get it out of the depths of my brain that people in the past were somehow dumber than us now, or that the things we have are only available in this era and were unavailable in any shape of form 4000 years ago, so I’m glad to be constantly proven wrong.
I tried to find annotations for what that cuneiform text says, but I haven’t been successful so far.This Indian inventor in the early 20th century invented a push-up bra, a flushing toilet, an ouija typewriter, and best of all, a device that was supposed to revolutionize the print industry, the Bhisotype. Shankar Abaji Bhise was by all accounts a prodigy who was interested in anything mechanical, and was constantly innovating on them. He entered a contest by a British journal to design a grocery weighing machine, with an entry he had designed between 3am and 7am, and it won! And then he moved to London to secure funding for all his inventions.
And here is where I get pretty interested. Bhise was in contact with Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian to become a British MP, and he introduced him to the noted anti-colonialist Hyndman. This name is familiar to me, because he was a good friend and inspiration to the good folks at India House!
Anyway, Mr. Bhise came up with the design for a device that quickly and cheaply produced metal types, in 1906 presumably. And Henry Hyndman promised to raise investment to produce and market this device. With this confidence, Mr. Bhise even refused an offer to be bought out. But in a couple of years, Hyndman realized he couldn’t come up with the money, and Mr. Bhise had to return to India.
The interesting thing for me is Mr. Bhise as a Maharashtrian, probably came in contact with Savarkar, Bapat and all the others at India House. Especially since he was a strong nationalist. What did all of these guys think about Hyndman as a result? More importantly, how come someone like Shyamji Krishna Verma didn’t fund or advertise Mr. Bhise?
However, Mr. Bhise moved to the US after coming in contact with Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the “moderate” Indian National Congress leader (I prefer “loyalist” and “nationalist” vs “moderate” and “extremist”). Gokhale put him in touch with the Tata group, who funded him and he went to America, marketed an iodine solution and got rich. He actually had a pretty regular tincture of iodine kind of solution at first, but in 1931, he came across this American psychic who had a formula for iodine that would “improve your psychic abilities”. And once a charlatan like that decides to endorse your work, you need to let go of all pride and credibility, and just wipe your tears with all the money you’re making. I found this page about “Nascent Iodine” interesting; it goes into Bhise’s path to getting endorsed by a psychic. It looks like Bhise had a son named Harold who carried on the family business, and a son-in-law who took over the company after him.
With all this going on, Bhise hosted and funded a lot of the Indian nationalists who came to the US to spread their message and network. This makes me think he was probably a part of the Gadar group, though I’ve barely seen any references to him.
I’m now motivated to have Shankar Bhise’s story as kind of a B-plot all through India House and the second book set in the US. I love his story so much. It has immigration, innovation, investment, nationalism, and finally, selling out, settling down, and having a successful family business. Isn’t that finally the Great American Dream?