Synesthesia. Majjige and Mosaru

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In one of the Reith Lectures the noted neuroscientist, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran talks about a phenomenon called 'Synesthesia'. When people with ‘Synesthesia’ see numerals they tend to associate them with a particular colour. In some cases sound can give raise to sense of smell. Ramachandran , in the lecture also suggested that we are all Synethetes' in a way. If we were to name a shattered pieces of glass and a round egg with names 'Abubba' and 'Kiki', most of us would name the pieces of glass as Kiki and round egg as Abuba. The shapes get associated with the inflections of the sound of words.

Now, this particular piece of information gets reminded to me many times in an interesting manner. In Kannada 'majjige' refers to buttermilk and 'mosaru' refers to curd. But I often get confused and use the word 'majjige' while referring to curd and vice versa! In Tamil the relation is more in line with Synesthesia. The word 'more' refers to buttermilk and 'thayir' refers to curd.

Math Beauty

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3 Idiots

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Carried away by the praises for 3 Idiots on TV,  magazines, newspapers, blogs and people around me I ventured to watch the movie. It turned out to be foolish. The movie couldn’t have been made worse. Masking the movie as a feel good one, intented at questioning the education system  what the director dishes out is crap like any other that these days gets dismissed by ‘highbrow’ muliplex audience as low quality and meant for the so called ‘B’ and ‘C’ centers.


I am told that it touches at how the education system is defective and needs a overhaul. But I found nothing convinsing and nothing new other than few scenes here and there that Aamir mouths on how things really should be. Otherwise its just a package of unrefined jokes and jokes we have known from god knows when.


What irks me more than the stupid movie is the fact that people are hailing it as masterpiece and good thing to have happened. Its all the Aamir and the Raju Hirani effect.  Everybody would want others to believe that they belong to the exclusive circle of intellectual cinema patrons. Saying anything against the ‘perfectionist’ Aamir’s film would be scorned.  I am dying to read a review which trashes  3 Idiots for what it actual is without having to say crap like “..despite its few flaws,  3 Idiots is fun and sets you thinking. Go for it!”. Well, I might not find it anywhere. Infact that’s the reason for this blog post.