Monday Cup Of Links #78 - Savarkar teaser, Disturbing Gandhi Facts, Gold lion cups.
And status-conscious Babylonian teens.
Happy Monday!
It’s been a rainy few weeks in the Bay Area, thanks to the atmospheric river here. It’s been a lot of staying indoors and frying food.
Did you know there’s a meteorological phenomenon called Pineapple Express Storms? They are called that because they mostly happen near the islands of Hawaii.
The teaser for the Randeep Hooda starrer Swatantrya Veer Savarkar is out and I’m quite amazed at it. The tone and cadence seem closer to the idea of Savarkar that I’ve gotten from reading his works than many other representations of him. The issue with something iconic like this though is everyone has such high expectations, and the work too tries to be everything for everyone. I realized that’s something I struggle with too, and it seems a very first-novel phenomenon. Works like this take the stress off. I feel bad honestly that they could shoot and release a fully-fledged movie in the time I could barely finish writing a book, but then I’m one person who isn’t yet getting paid for this. Not an excuse, but it’s good to have some perspective.
I came across this news article that reveals rather disturbing facts. There are letters in existence from Mahatma Gandhi to his son Harilal, where he is accusing Harilal of having raped his own daughter Manu. This article is from 2014, when the auctioneer Mullock’s tried to auction some letters handwritten by Gandhi in Gujarati to his son, and found no takers even when they reduced the price from 80k pounds to 20k. The letters have to do with Harilal’s problematic behaviors involving drinking and relations with women. The disturbing part says:
“Manu is telling me number of dangerous things about you. She says that you had raped her before eight years and she was so much hurt that medical treatment was also to be taken…”
Manu here is Harilal’s daughter. Harilal Gandhi was Gandhi’s first son, who seemed to be the family’s black sheep, became an alcoholic and died not long after his father’s death from alcoholism. He was found dead in Mumbai’s red-light district.
The whole Gandhi family seems problematic in a lot of ways, in no small amount owing to the patriarch’s unrelenting imposition of his public ideals on his own family with little thinking or consideration for their aims and interests. Nothing however excuses any part of this, it’s clear there’s some monsters in that family.This Babylonian letter from a student to his mother in 3800 BC is wild. It reads
From year to year, the clothes of the young gentlemen here become better, but you let my clothes get worse from year to year. (…) The son of Adad-iddinam, whose father is only an assistant of my father, has two new sets of clothes, while you fuss even about a single set of clothes for me. In spite of the fact that you bore me and his mother only adopted him, his mother loves him, while you, you do not love me!
This young man’s father is an official who reported to the great Hammurabi himself. That kind of status-conscious rich boy emotionally blackmailing his parents for new clothes is so relatable, and it feels like such a quintessential part of being human, given he’s feeling this way even when these clothes are all made by hand and you get like 1-2 sets of clothes every year if you’re lucky. I’m sure if we looked hard enough at apes, we’d find similar sentiments somehow.
Artifact of the week: This lion-headed gold vessel from 5th century BCE Achaemanid Iran. Given it’s made of gold, and the lion seems to have a crest and its flanks have ostrich feather like engravings, suggesting it might be winged, I suppose the utensil has some kind of sacred or ritual function and isn’t just another cup. But I’d just love to have household items with this level of whimsy and meaning in their design. Or so I think; I looked up what I could find on Etsy, and I did find a mug with a lion on it…. and I’m not sure I want it.