Notes on Dravidian Words - viii

Bathukamma is supposedly a unique festival of Telangana region. The term 'bathuku' refers to 'life' in Telugu. The equivalent Kannada word is 'baduku'. And here lies the mystery.

The native Dravidian terms that start with 'b' in Kannada should start with 'v' in Telugu. I wonder why baduku is an anomaly here.

The aspects of the festival are starkly patriarchal and resemble Indo-Aryan festivals like 'Karva Chauth' or 'Raksha Bandhan', generally, not found in Dravidian lands. This festival is restricted to only a section of Telugus.

There are two strange things here.
1. The word doesn't follow regular Dravidian sound changes between Kannada and Telugu
2. The aspects of the festival appear alien to Dravidian ethos.

I wonder whether the term 'baduku' is derived from an Indo-Aryan word. Tamil and Malayalam tend to nativize the terms. However, Kannada and Telugu aren't that fastidious. But what about the festival?

I'm Elamo-Dravidian

That's what I could infer from my Population Finder results, I suppose.

Notes on Dravidian Words - vii

In Kasaragod Malayalam, the word for 'housewarming' is 'porakudi'. Where pora means house and kudi also means house but probably takes the verbal form 'residing'. I was fascinated by this compound word. The verb form of kudi is hardly used. The other meanings, farmer or house, are more mainstream.

Then I started analyzing its Kannada equivalent, manehokkalu, where mane means house and hokkalu means entrance. I felt something was wrong there. If I go by the Malayalam format, it should be 'maneyokkalu' (mane+okkalu), where okkalu means residing.  Then I confirmed from a born Kannada speaker that the word was indeed maneyokkalu.

However, similar to kudi, the popular usage is okkaliga -> farmer. I suppose because of my unfamiliarity with its multiple usages, somewhere in the past, I over-corrected the word to hokkalu from okkalu. It's unclear whether the term hokkalu is itself correct or not. I most likely modified the term 'hokku' meaning enter.

It's interesting that the same idea has been implemented in the compound word in both languages using all different words.

Road to True Capitalism - IV

I support Food Security Bill as it has rudimentary proposals for making women the heads of the households. There are government schemes which provide free houses to the poor. I hope the ownership of those houses also rests with the females.

Oh, those Russians

"We are Russians. Maybe we are different than European people, than other people from different lands. We have our law which everyone has to respect."

- Yelena Isinbayeva , via BBC

Classical Status for Malayalam

I came across this rather hilarious reason that supposedly clinched the classical status deal for Malayalam.

Mahadevan’s intervention on the Edakkal engraving was decisive in a way. He proffered the reading ‘pazhama’, meaning ‘antiquity’ in Tamil and Malayalam. Coincidentally, just about then, Kerala had set up an experts’ panel to make a case for classical status. Besides litterateurs like O.N.V. Kurup, it included linguist Naduvattom Gopalakrishnan. Now, he had just what he wan­ted. Zeroing in on ‘pazhama’, he ext­ended it, saying the prefixed string was not ‘Sree’ but the Malayalam ‘Ee’ (‘this’). Most advocated caution, Varier even called it a “dangerous interpretation”. But who was to argue against the tide of provisionist history! If you’re looking to prove your antiquity, what could be more fortuitous than to come across a petroglyph that proclaims, precisely, “O! This Antiquity” and putatively joins you to Indus cultures? It’s almost pluperfect: a past that talks of an older past. One neat standing jump on an Indus Valley zebu over the 1,500-year cutoff.

In fact, the author of the article mentions Tulu being left behind. But if Malayalis say 'This Antiquity' and get Rs. 100 crores classical status, Tuluvas can say 'pirak' (archaic/old) and claim the same. In fact, some of the Tulu enthusiasts have observed the origin of the word in the Indus valley region Pirak. Thus Tuluvas are also connected to Indus culture.

Anyway,drab I don't see any reason for not giving classical status to Tulu. 

Hikikomori

My cousin now into his late twenties probably has the similar social withdrawal condition which in Japanese is called Hikikomori. He exhibits all the symptoms described in the article and psychiatrist consultation hasn't helped. But I wonder whether it's parental expectation (which as far as I know never really existed) or the person's perceived notion about societal expectation based on his perceived identity through societal expressions.

From the article:

• Andy Furlong points out that young people in Western societies frequently "take time out" in gap years or have "false starts" on careers or courses without attracting stigma

I wonder how much financially feasible is that  for many families even if there is no stigma attached.

Usefulness of Genetic Horoscope - III

Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has undergone a double mastectomy to reduce her chances of getting breast cancer.
:
She said her doctors estimated she had an 87% risk of breast cancer and a 50% risk of ovarian cancer. "I decided to be proactive and to minimise the risk as much I could," she wrote.
:

"but the truth is I carry a 'faulty' gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer"

 :

Her chances of developing breast cancer have now dropped from 87% to under 5%, she said.

Via BBC News 

Random Thoughts - Love_Lust

Love, as we know today was invented by the English(along with ambition and happiness) and in particular by Shakespeare. So says this article. I don't have much idea and I haven't read Shakespeare in original. But according to the author;

Today, of course, this most powerful feeling is familiar everywhere within the so-called "Western" civilization (which includes all societies based on monotheistic religion, i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and it has penetrated into other civilizations as well

That certainly carries some weight in Indian context as one can observe that the passionate love songs in Hindi movies are the works of poets with Islamic background (including Atheists and Hindus with education in Urdu).

Anyway, non-articulation of this emotion need not mean non-existence of it in other societies (but for practical purposes could be as good as non-existent) or in England prior to the sixteenth century.

The characteristic of true love that Shakespeare stresses in this sonnet is its unchanging nature: it is one-in-a-lifetime passion. Admit it: this is what we all want, however difficult it proves for most of us to find. Those who argue that our desires are genetically, and therefore, evolutionarily determined, should consider that; it is far more likely that we share our genetic endowment with the clearly polygamous apes, than with species genetically remote from us, such as wolves, penguins, or swans, who mate for life. Yet, we long for a monogamous lifetime relationship.

I guess here the author confuses love with lust. However, I believe even a person in love can fall in love again with some other person simultaneously. Didn't Levin fall in love with Anna when he was still passionately in love with Kitty? In the case of unfaithfulness in lust, when a person lusts after more than one person, it requires action from his/her part to truly become unfaithful. However, unfaithful love is a natural phenomenon as it doesn't require any physical contact. It's easier to become unfaithful in love than in lust. There exists freewill in lust but not in love.

But I believe one-in-a-lifetime passion isn't supported by the "scientific" studies too. I guess it's been measured that love lasts only for one and half years and after that one needs regular sex or some mutual work to keep that oxytocin running in the relationship. But of course, the narrative could be changed if it's always in love and not always in love with one person.

Then the author ends with this absolute mystical flourish. I suppose the field of psychology badly needs scientific validity just like psychiatry so as not to get into these unverifiable.

In short, love makes it possible for every one of us to find one’s proper place in the world and to define oneself. It leads one to the discovery of one’s true identity (we often say that we find true understanding in the loved one, someone who really understands us): one’s identity, one’s true self is found in another person, in what he or she sees in one. This other person, immediately recognized (thus true love is love at first sight), then is recognized as one’s destiny, the One, and finding love at once also becomes self-realization, giving meaning to life as a whole.

The way I see it the feelings of love and lust could be felt from your early childhood. The passion could only go up when one reaches his/her puberty but I believe one can distinguish between love and lust even before that. Also, even after coming of age, the raging hormones don't adulterate the feeling of love. However, since the society around doesn't articulate it for you, probably, one could be confused about those feelings and could think it's another form of lust. I'm not sure the idea of understanding or identity influencing coming into picture in any of these. 

Random Thoughts - Astrology

In my previous post I argued that negative predictions would impact psychologically and that might be responsible for some of the "successes" of those predictions.

I found my thoughts echoed by a commentator at P Z Myers's blog.