Sporadic Thoughts and Useless Knowledge - Volume LVIX

Or we all need to learn to waste time purposefully

• We all need to learn to waste time purposefully

  • That’s a nice motto to have.

• A successful road-trip is a stringing-together of adjacent near-misses

• Cubbon Park is the BO capital of Bengaluru; that mist you see wafting up, thats condensation off warm bodies

• While cycling, and negotiating a climb, you always tend to stop just a few hundred meters before the top of the climb; yet in your head, you are done, you cannot go on, you are evaluating life choices, and yet the end is nigh.

• Fruits and vegetables with three-syllable names almost always have originated from South America or Mexico

  • To-ma-to

  • Po-ta-to

  • Gu-a-va

  • Ca-ca-o

  • Ca-sa-va

  • Jo-jo-ba

  • Well, there are exceptions, like Chi-li, and Ba-na-na, nevertheless, its an interesting working theory, is it not?

  • If not for the Spanish / Portuguese conquistadors, the North Indian diet as we know today might not exist.

• Words in Tamil that you thought were native to Tamil are actually Portuguese words - chaavi, alamari, mejai, jannal. And the furniture that we have today is a result of the Portuguese. And Krishna Devaraya beat the Sultans of Bijapur in the Battle of the Raichur Doab, with the help of Portuguese mercenaries. They were the Arcabuziers, which were a Turkish matchlock guns, used probably for the first time in an Indian battle.

  

  Portuguese Arcabuziers in India, 16th century. D João de Castro Tapestries.

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