Tuesday: Hili dialogue

Note: The intenet has been dicey here, so posting may be lighter than usual. As usual, I will do my best. I have plenty of photos of noms and cats; the experience here is fantastic.

Good morning from Bangalore! I am now officially staying in Paradise. The 72 virgins of Islam have nothing on this: I am staying in a sumptuous house owned by Mr. Birendra Das, owner of the K. C. Das chain of sweetshops, who produces perhaps the best Indian sweets I’ve ever had. He’s a lovely man and very hospitable—and he has forty cats (strays as well as housecats), whom he feeds twice a day with fish and chicken. I got up at 7 to watch the whole process: Mr. Das boils the fish and cooks the chicken himself, and his assistants apportion it out at various feeding stations. The dogs also get fed (in a a separate place from the cats), and the crows, pigeons, and kites as well (ditto). I’m also told that there are two monkeys who come to be fed. The food is terrific (you can order what you want at a previous meal, complemented by Mr. Das’s own sweets, but more on noms later.

Today is March 22, the day of the Jamestown Massacre (1622), and the first U.S. requirement, in Illinois, of gender equality in employment (1872). On this day in 1894 was the first playoff for the Stanley Cup, and, in 1963, the first Beatles album (“Please please me”) was released in the UK. Finally, it was only in 1972 that, as Wikipedia reports, “In Eisenstadt v. Baird, the United States Supreme Court decides that unmarried persons have the right to possess contraceptives.”

Notable births on this day include Adam Sedgwick (1785), Chico Marx (1887), Karl Malden (1912), Wolf Blitzer (1948), and Lena Olin (1955). Those who died on this day include Jonathan Edwards (1758), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1832), Karl Wallenda (1978), Walter Lantz (1994), and Matthew White Ridley (2012, father of writer, and now Viscount, Matt Ridley). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili shows her usual concern for noms:

Hili: Formerly in the pantries sausages were hanging under the ceiling.

A: Yes, but now people have changed their habits.

Hili: Pity, it was a nice tradition.

Hili: Dawniej w spiżarniach pod sufitem wisiały wędliny.
Ja: Tak, ale teraz ludzie zmienili obyczaje.
Hili: Szkoda, to była ładna tradycja.

 

Meanwhile, spring can’t come too soon for the Dark Tabby of Wroclawek:

Leon: Well, and where is this spring?