Stupid Toy Day? Makes No Sense!

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Every year on December 16, the internet celebrates something most households have tripped over, stepped on in the dark, or quietly wished would disappear: the “stupid toy.” Officially, it’s called Stupid Toy Day—a day devoted to toys that serve no obvious purpose, promise no educational outcomes, and stubbornly resist all attempts at being “enriching.” They do not teach coding. They do not build emotional intelligence. They simply… exist.

A “stupid” toy, as the internet defines it, is not broken or unsafe. It’s just inexplicable. It does one odd thing. It refuses to justify itself. It looks faintly ridiculous. Pet Rocks. Rubber chickens. Slime. Talking dolls that say things no one programmed on purpose. Lights that flash for no reason at all.

And honestly? That’s exactly why I think there is no such thing as a stupid toy. Because anything that gives joy to a child and it wants to spend time playing with, is a good toy! Whether store-bought, found at home or contrived from the most mundane things, whatever floats a child’s boat, is a toy. Entire generations have grown up playing with objects that contributed nothing measurable—and yet somehow contributed enormously to childhood.

The thing about calling a toy stupid is that the word never really belongs to the object. It belongs to the adult standing next to it and judging it.

When parents complain about “stupid toys,” they rarely mean toys that fail the child. They mean toys that fail them. Too loud. Too sticky. Too impossible to clean. Too bright. Too many pieces. Too much glitter. Too much slime. Too much mess. Too much noise. Too much… joy, possibly, expressed in a form that requires major clean-ups. Seems to me, most “stupid” toys are simply inconvenient toys. Toys which seem pointless to an adult.

AN ARVIND GUPTA TOY

But to my mind, there is one category of toys that are stupid. A toy becomes exponentially more “stupid” the minute it costs a small fortune. A plush animal that costs as much as a phone. A doll with a wardrobe bigger than yours. A remote-controlled something that breaks in three days. High price and low value—what could be stupider?

Brian Sutton-Smith’s work on toys and play is powerful. In Toys as Culture, he argues that toys don’t live in one neat category like “fun” or “education.” They exist in overlapping worlds—family, technology, education, and marketplace. Toys can be consolation, security and companionship. They can be tools, machines, friends, achievements. They are not just objects; they are emotional support.

A glitter jar might look like a mess waiting to happen.
To a child, it might be the universe in a bottle.

A noisy toy might feel like an assault on adult nerves.
To a child, it might be power.

A useless toy might be, in truth, a deeply useful one—the kind that absorbs loneliness, invents stories, and makes space for imagination.

We forget that children do not play with toys to improve themselves. They play to live inside themselves.

And children by themselves never measure toys by price or return on investment. But sadly, there is no refuting that peer pressure and media pressure have enormous influence on a child perceiving a toy as highly desirable. And that is a worry.

Stupid Toy Day, at its best, quietly reminds us that joy doesn’t require justification. It doesn’t need a developmental framework or a learning outcome chart. Play is not a performance. It is a state of being.

Basically, Stupid Toy Day is STUPID!

Honour the toy that made no sense but means everything. And remember: not everything precious needs to be practical. And in this holiday season, as we go about buying things left and right, remember, a child will be as happy playing with the cardboard carton as the toy which was packed in it. Remember Calvin, Hobbes and their time machine? And Arvind Gupta’s Toys from Trash? Money does NOT equal toy-joy.

–Meena

The Call of the Mountains: Nan Shepherd

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December 11 is marked as the International Mountain Day. Mountains have always fascinated human beings not only for their sheer scale and majesty, but also as a natural element that offers a challenge, as well as a test of physical and mental strength, and the thrill of scaling the peaks. There are numerous narratives of expeditions that describe these challenges and achievements, most of these by, and about men.

The Cairngorms

A different perspective, and approach towards mountains reminds us that there is more to mountains than the thrill of conquest.

This was lyrically described by Anna (who called herself Nan) Shepherd, a Scottish poet, writer and explorer of mountains. Nan was born in February 1893, close to Aberdeen on the North East coast of Scotland. When she was one month old, her family moved to nearby Cults and lived in a house with a garden overlooking the hills. Nan continued to live in the same house almost till the end of her life. As a young girl Nan was encouraged by her father, a keen hill walker, to explore the nearby hills, and this planted in her a lifelong love for nature and the mountains. Nan was an equally avid reader, and from her early teens she would fill notebooks with passages that inspired her from the wide spectrum of her reading. After completing her schooling in 1912, Nan joined the University of Aberdeen in the first decades after women were allowed to do so. She was an outstanding student, and graduated in 1915 with an MA in literature. Following this she taught English literature at Aberdeen Training Centre for Teachers, and continued to give enthralling lectures until she was well into her eighties. She was not only an inspiring teacher but also a role model for her students, as an early feminist. She wryly described her role as “the heaven-appointed task of trying to prevent a few of the students who pass through our Institution from conforming altogether to the approved pattern.”

Although she had always enjoyed walking in the hills, Nan Shepherd became deeply engaged with climbing in the period between the two World Wars. She was thirty years old when she began her explorations in the Cairngorms in 1928. This experience was the start of a passion that came to define both her life and her writing. From then on, she sought to escape into the Cairngorms whenever her job would allow. Often she would walk alone, camping out, and wading into hidden lochs. Occasionally she was accompanied by friends and fellow walkers from the local Deeside Field Club, or by students from the university.

By the 1940s Nan had scaled some of the highest peaks in the Cairngorms, among the wildest landscapes in the British Isles. However Nan’s expeditions were not about ‘reaching the top’ but rather a spiritual journey to ‘understand herself and the world’. She became fascinated by what happened to mind and matter on this journey up and down the mountain slopes.

These experiences were reflected in her literary work. The harsh landscape, as well as the people and places she knew well, provided the background to her first three books, published while she was teaching. These novels focussed on the harsh landscape which made for a harsh way of life, and within these, complexities of women struggling with maintaining traditional roles in a dawning age which was opening up new opportunities

But Nan Shepherd never wrote for recognition. She wrote only when she felt she had something worth saying. “I don’t like writing, really. In fact, I very rarely write. No. I never do short stories and articles. I only write when I feel that there’s something that simply must be written.”

For her teaching was as, if not more, important than her writing. However she continued to document her explorations of the Cairngorms, which came together around the end of the Second World War, under the title The Living Mountain. She combined her knowledge of the mountains, her observations of their rugged beauty, and her literary skills to muse on the philosophical and spiritual offerings from mountains. She wrote of the Cairngorms as “friends” that she “visits”, and with whom her imagination is fired as if “touched by another mind.”

 Nan Shepherd completed her book in the summer of 1945, and sent her manuscript to a novelist friend. He cautioned that it may be hard to find a publisher of a book of this nature. Nan put the manuscript away in a drawer where it remained for 30 years. Towards the end of her life, Nan retrieved the manuscript from her drawer and felt that it still resonated in many ways. Given her long association with Aberdeen University, she submitted it to Aberdeen University Press. The Living Mountain was finally published in 1977.

The Living Mountain threaded together, beautifully geography, geology, history and philosophy, along with everything that she herself had experienced in the mountains that she had fallen deeply in love with. For Shepherd, the mountains were living beings, and her book describes how she nurtured her relationship with them by walking. She wholeheartedly believed that only through walking and experiencing could insight be gained. “The more one learns of this intricate interplay of soil, altitude, weather, and the living tissues of plant and insect … the more the mystery deepens.”

The Living Mountain, continues to be timeless, since its publication 30 years after Nan Shephard wrote it. It provides a rare lens into a world that has been viewed mainly through the eyes of male climbers, who focus on the challenges, and the conquests. Nan Shepherd’s lens is that of a naturalist and poet, one of contemplation, reverence, and an exploration of the profound. The book suggests that the summit should not be the organizing principle of a mountain; it urges the practice of not walking “up” a mountain, but rather “into” them, so as to explore not just the physical forms but also ourselves, peering into the nooks and crannies.

Today, mountains across the world are facing their own challenges. Climate change is melting glaciers and distorting landscapes; the surge of climbers are leaving behind manmade mountains of garbage that threaten to bury the real mountains. This is a good time to remember The Living Mountain, and a mountain lover who looked beyond the ascents to the journeys within.

–Mamata Pandya

The Joy of the Bouncy Bite

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Did you know that Q is a word? No, not QUEUE, but just plain Q. It is the Taiwanese name for a range of textures best translated, imperfectly, as “bouncy.” It is the degree of chewiness of a given food and how it feels against the teeth and tongue.

If you’ve ever bitten into something that resisted you just a little—neither soft nor hard, but springy, elastic, and alive—you’ve probably encountered Q without knowing its name. Think sabudana, tapioca pearls in bubble tea, or handmade noodles that snap faintly between your teeth. That sensation—the cheerful recoil, the gentle resistance—is Q.

What makes Q fascinating is that it describes not one texture, but a spectrum. There is nen-Q, soft and tender; cui-Q, crispy-bouncy; tan-Q, chewy-springy. Noodles are Q: resilient but not rubbery, lively but not tough. (In the case of pastas, I suppose ‘al dente’ is the equivalent,) Even sweets and desserts aspire to it—marshmallows, herbal jellies or sweet potato balls.

In Taiwanese food culture, to say something is Q is high praise. Q is considered one of the keys to good food in Taiwan, on par with taste, color, and consistency. It’s not about indulgence alone; it’s about skill. Achieving Q often requires precise technique: the right ratio of starch to water, the correct kneading time, the ideal temperature.

What’s intriguing is how Q resists quick translation. “Chewy” is too blunt. “Springy” is closer, but incomplete. “Bouncy” catches the spirit but misses the nuance. Q is pleasant resistance, playful elasticity, a sassy texture. It invites you back for another bite. It’s the opposite of mushy or limp.

Q became a recognised food term in Taiwan in the late 20th century — roughly the 1980s to early 1990s,when it moved from slang into mainstream food language. Interestingly, the letter Q itself is not traditional Chinese. It entered Taiwanese usage as a borrowed symbol from English, chosen because:

  • the sound (“kyu”) suggested elasticity
  • the shape felt visually “springy”
  • and there was no single Chinese word that captured the idea precisely

At first, it was slang but now it’s formal enough to appear in Taiwanese dictionaries, culinary writing, product labels and restaurant menus

In Taiwan, the term has gone beyond the kitchen and found its way into everyday speech, where it can describe hair, skin, or even the bounce in someone’s step.

In a world increasingly obsessed with flavour profiles—smoky, umami, citrusy—we sometimes forget texture altogether. Yet Q reminds us that eating is as much about feel as it is about taste.

Q—Taiwan’s playful word for “bouncy”—captures that perfect bite: springy, chewy, lively, and irresistible. From bubble-tea pearls to handmade noodles, Q celebrates food that pushes back just enough. It’s a texture so prized in Taiwan that it’s become part of the language itself, standing alongside taste and aroma. Every culture has its version of Q—al dente pasta, mochi-mochi rice cakes—and we in India find it in sabudana, fresh idlis, rasgulla, modak and more. Q is not just what you chew, but what you feel: a small, elastic joy.

Maybe every culture has its own version of Q, a word for the textures it prizes most. Italians chase al dente, the Japanese revere mochi-mochi and kori-kori. But Taiwan’s Q feels particularly evocative—a single letter carrying a thousand sensations.

So the next time you sip a bubble tea and play absently with the pearls at the bottom, or tear into a dumpling that seems to smile back at your teeth, remember this small, clever word. Q is not just what you’re chewing. It’s what you’re feeling—a quiet, elastic joy.

And here is a tour of Indian Q foods that I can think of: sabudana, fresh idli, rasgulla, modak, noodles, dhokla,  sevai, and appam.

Any others?

–Meena

Sandow in our Lives

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The end of the year is a time of going back in time and re-living memories.

And one of the enduring memories for those of us who grew up in the  1950s, 60s and 70s, is the word Sandow. It was a part of everyday lives—an integral part of the pencil box, a dirty grey rubber that erased pencil marks.

For us in India, “rubber” was the term for eraser, a usage inherited from British English and reinforced through colonial schooling. A child did not “borrow an eraser”; they asked for a rubber. And the most trusted rubber of all in our times was the Sandow.

These erasers were made of natural vulcanised rubber, not vinyl or plastic as most modern erasers are. They were firmer, slightly gritty, and erased by abrasion — scraping graphite off paper rather than gently lifting it. They left dark crumbs behind and wore down slowly. A new Sandow rubber meant clean pages. A worn one told the story of errors made and lessons learnt.

Where did Sandow rubbers come from?

The earliest Sandow erasers were almost certainly manufactured in Britain and exported to India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through British stationery suppliers. During the colonial period, Indian schools depended heavily on imported notebooks, inks, slates and erasers.

Stupid Toy Day (December 16) is a celebration of the wonderfully useless things from childhood—rubber chickens, yo-yos, slinkies, and strange plastic objects that made no sense but brought endless joy. From ridiculous toys to unsettling antique dolls that now star in creepy museum contests, this post reflects on how toys—whether silly or sinister—stay with us long after childhood ends. A nostalgic look at why useless never really meant unimportant.

After Independence, Indian factories began manufacturing erasers using similar formulations and — crucially — the same name. By the 1950s, most Sandow erasers sold in India were produced locally. However, the word “Sandow” was never firmly trademarked in India, allowing multiple manufacturers to use it freely. Over time, it became not a brand but a category. “Sandow rubber” simply meant “the regular school rubber.”

Sandows were not the only erasers available. There were white, scented rubbers, with a gel-like coloured top. But alas, most of us never possessed one, given they were about four or five times more expensive!

And a Strongman called Sandow

Another Sandow (though of older vintage) was part of our childhoods too. He lived on barbershop calendars and tattered posters: a muscular European strongman frozen in permanent flex.

Eugen Sandow (1867–1925) was a Prussian-born showman, athlete and entrepreneur who became the world’s first international bodybuilding celebrity. He toured Europe, Britain and America performing feats of strength before royal families and packed audiences.

Sandow was much ahead of his time, and would have done great in the current days, surely becoming a hero of Insta reels, posing as he did to deliberately display his muscularity. He was also a businessman. He published training manuals, endorsed health products, sold exercise equipment, and promoted physical culture as moral discipline. King George V even appointed him “Professor of Scientific and Physical Culture” in Britain — a title that further elevated his image as a respectable authority on fitness.

In India, encounters were through his images — black-and-white posters, calendar art, tins, and labels that travelled through imperial trade routes. But nevertheless, his name was well known, whether with urban kids or rural youth.

Were the rubber and the strongman officially connected?

There is no evidence that Sandow ever licensed his name to an eraser manufacturer. No contract, no advertisement, no endorsement exists in any reliable archive.

However, the naming may have had a connection. The two existed at around the same time, and the name ‘Sandow’ symbolised durability, strength and European modernity. Calling an eraser “Sandow” suggested that it would last, work hard and not fail easily. In an era with loose branding laws, borrowing famous names for product credibility was common.

Today…

Now, erasers come in neon colours and cartoon shapes. Eugen Sandow is remembered only by historians and fitness professionals. But for those who grew up in that older India, the word still carries a double image: fingers dusted with graphite, and a chest forever flexed on fading paper.

Sandow was never just an eraser.
And Sandow was never only a man.

Both were a part of our simple, innocent youth!

–Meena

Photocredit: Wikipedia for Mr. Sandow

ebay for the Vintage Tin advertising the eraser

Of Tongues: Tied and Twisted

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Many of us have student-day memories of freezing up in the middle of an elocution competition, or as adults, not being able to converse comfortably when in a large group of people. We were told that had become “tongue-tied”. The dictionary defines this state as being ‘too shy or embarrassed to speak’.

More recently I was introduced to another, more literal, form of tongue tie. This is a medical condition where a tight band of tissue connects the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth, keeping it from moving freely. Nowadays, paediatricians usually check for this in new born babies, and a minor surgical procedure can cut the tight tissue to allow for a free movement of the tongue. While this is not a mandatory nor critical issue, sometimes this restrictive movement of the tongue could hamper the baby from proper breast feeding, and could (though not definitely) be an impediment to speech as the child begins to speak.

This was not a condition that I was familiar with, and I suspect that many adults have grown up unaware about this. At best, these were labelled as people with speech impediments, and either lived with it through their life, or were sent to speech therapists. Perhaps one of the exercises that they were prescribed, was to recite aloud some phrases that had alliteration, rhymes, and repetition. Speech therapists believe that such exercises help to strengthen the muscles that are used when we speak. The muscles of the mouth need to move in certain positions to create individual sounds. Tongue twisters help practice and strengthen these positions and muscles in order to perfect these sounds. 

Even without being guided by a therapist, many of us have childhood memories of getting our tongues in a twist with these lines:

She sells seas shells on the seashore

The shells she sells are seashells, I’m sure

So if she sells seashells on the seashore

Then I’m sure she sells seashore shells.

No wonder such lines were described as ‘’tongue twisters”. Such phrases have been part of the oral tradition in all cultures since early times. In ancient Russia travelling performers called skomorokhi would amuse crowds by reciting fast tricky lines and challenging the audience to repeat these. Most people couldn’t and their fumbling attempts raised a laugh from the others. Folklore in all languages has examples of such nonsense rhymes that need an acrobatic tongue to master.

In fact even today, performers use tongue twisters to loosen up before they are scheduled to go on stage. These help them warm up and get their mouth and tongues ready to perform in front of an audience. Tongue twisters are also used by voice actors before they are recorded.

The term tongue twister is believed to have appeared in print in the late 19th century to describe phrases that are difficult to articulate due to their use of similar but distinct sounds. In the English language these gained attention with the publication of a book called Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation, which included a tongue twister for every letter of the alphabet. The book was meant to help children learn the fundamentals of speech mechanics, but it attracted a lot of attention. The title itself garnered curiosity. The author of the book was John Harris, who then was the Peter Piper? The mystery was heightened with the inclusion of the rhyme:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

It turns out that this one was based on a French horticulturist Pierre Poivre. Pierrre is the French version of Peter, and Poivre is the French word for pepper. Pierre, it is believed, was exploring the viability of growing spices in the Seychelles. Thus the peppers, and the peck which was an old measure of weight.

Tenuous connections, at best, but they do add some spice to the story!

While tongue twisters are accepted as a part of speech therapy, people enjoy these just for the fun of fumbling and stumbling over words in absurd sentences. So much so that there is even a day designated as the International Tongue Twister Day celebrated on the second Sunday in November every year. And there is an International Tongue Twister Contest held at the Logic Puzzle Museum in Burlington, Wisconsin in the USA. First held in 2008, the contest has become an annual tradition. This invites everyone between the ages of ‘6 and 106 years of age’ to test their verbal dexterity. A joyful celebration of the playful side of language!

At the same time there is also serious research being carried out on this subject. A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have deemed that the most difficult tongue twister in the world is this one:

“Pad kid poured curd pulled cod”.

If one is not quite up to the challenge of cracking this one, here are some others to twist our tongues around:

“The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.”

“Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie.”

“A tutor who tooted the flute tried to teach two young tooters to toot. Said the two to the tutor, ‘Is it harder to toot, or to tutor two tooters to toot?’”

Don’t let these leave you tongue-tied!

–Mamata

Listen carefully. Listen widely. Listen without assumptions: Gallup Polls

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For many of us who grew up reading international newspapers, Gallup was a familiar name—almost a synonym for “what America thinks.” Their polls were quoted in classrooms, editorials, speeches, and policy discussions. If Gallup said Americans trusted an institution, or were worried about unemployment, or supported a policy, it felt as if a nation had spoken.

November 19 marked the anniversery of the birth of the man who started it all–George Gallup, a career journalist. His interest in politics led him into the areana of forecasting polls, and he set up a company to do this. He set up the American Institute of Public Opinion in 1935 to do this, at a time when the idea of systematically measuring public opinion was almost revolutionary.

Gallup polls represent a methodology of scientific polling initiated by George S. Gallup in the 1930s, aimed at accurately assessing public sentiment. This was a significant departure from earlier, less systematic polling methods, as it emphasized the importance of selecting representative samples of the population. Gallup polls gained widespread recognition in 1936 for successfully predicting Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election victory but faced criticism in 1948 when they incorrectly forecasted Harry S. Truman’s defeat. These setbacks led to learnings, and Gallup refined his polling techniques, employing random sampling and continuous polling to enhance accuracy, particularly in presidential elections during the 1950s.

When Gallup moved to random sampling in the 1950s and began polling continuously until the eve of elections, he wasn’t chasing precision for its own sake. He recognised a deeper truth: societies shift quietly, between headlines. Polls must therefore be reliable mirrors, not hurried sketches.

Over the years, Gallup polls have become integral to political campaigns, influencing candidate nominations and public policy discussions. They have also mirrored societal changes, capturing evolving attitudes on issues such as gender equality and civil rights. Despite their utility, there is ongoing debate about the reliance on polling data by political leaders, with critics cautioning against using polls as the sole measure of success. Overall, Gallup polls continue to play a vital role in understanding public opinion and shaping political discourse.

But over the past twenty years, America has changed dramatically. People stopped answering landlines. Survey participation dropped. Voter behaviour became harder to predict. And suddenly, the organisation that once defined polling found itself struggling to keep pace with a shifting landscape.

There were headline moments—for example, missing the mark in the 2012 US presidential election—that forced painful introspection. To their credit, Gallup did omething rare: they hit pause. They stepped back from national election polling, admitted where methods were no longer working, and began a long process of rebuilding.

Today, Gallup occupies a different—but still significant—place in American public life.

They no longer dominate political horse-race coverage the way they once did. But they have pivoted towards areas where long-term, stable measurement matters more:

  • Public trust in institutions
  • Wellbeing and life evaluation
  • Workplace engagement
  • Social attitudes that evolve over years, not election cycles

Their “State of the American Workplace” and “Global Emotions Report” are now widely cited, not for predicting results, but for revealing how people feel about their lives and work. In a country where political noise can drown out quieter realities, Gallup’s longitudinal datasets offer something precious: continuity.

And that, perhaps, is Gallup’s place today. Not the sole voice of American opinion, but a steady, methodical listener in a crowded room.

And Then Comes the Indian Question…

All this inevitably leads to a Indian doubt: Do we do anything like this?

India is a nation where elections are larger than many countries, where tea stall debates spill into WhatsApp forwards, and where “sentiment” is often declared loudly—but loosely. So who is actually listening methodically?

The answer is both reassuring and sobering.

Yes, India does have organisations that follow rigorous polling practices—most famously CSDS-Lokniti, which uses sampling frames, stratified selection, field-tested questionnaires, and detailed post-poll analysis. Some private agencies also attempt scientific sampling, though with varying transparency. But polling in India faces unique challenges: population size, linguistic diversity, urban-rural divides, accessibility, and the sheer logistics of reaching voices beyond the easily reachable.

The result? While we do have pockets of high-quality research, we also have a landscape crowded with “quick polls,” “mood trackers,” and “snap surveys” whose methodology, if printed, might fit on the back of a bus ticket. Till today, election forecasts have minimum credibility.

Let’s see if all the bad press drives election forecasters to move towards more statistically sound and scientifically based approaches. Well, we can hope!

–Meena

Pic from: The India Forum

A Fool of Fruits

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This morning my sisters suddenly remembered our mother’s (who had a great sweet tooth) fondness for Mango Fool. This brought back so many memories of the many sweet dishes that we used to have at home, which included lots of sugary syrupy Indian sweetmeats, as well as the more subtle English ones such as custard and pies. Our combined memories recall that Mango Fool was some form of thick milk shake. Turns out that the real Mango Fool is a more sophisticated desert that includes mangoes, and whipped cream. And, of course, so many years later, the memory nudged me to dig deeper into investigating the curious name of this dessert.

As it turns out ‘Fools’ of the fruity variety have ancient origins and a rich history. Fruit fool is a classic English dessert. Traditionally, fools were made by folding a stewed fruit (originally gooseberries) into a creamy, sweet custard. The documented origins of the desert can be traced back to the 17th century, although it is believed that some form of this existed as far back as the 15th century.

The earliest known recipe is from the time of the Merry Monarch, King Charles II in a book called The Compleat Cook published in 1665, written by an anonymous author ‘Mr WM’. The recipe was for what he called Gooseberry Foole. The recipe included cooked, mashed, and strained gooseberries, which are beaten with sugar, butter, and eggs to form a pudding-like consistency.

Take your gooseberries and put them in a silver or earthen pot, and set it in a skillet of boiling water, and when they are coddled enough, strain them; when they are scalding hot beat them well with a good piece of butter, rose-water and sugar, and put in the yolk of two or three egg, you may put rose-water into them, and so stir it altogether and serve it to the table when it is cold.  Anonymous.  London.  1658.

The recipe endured through the ages, and was almost no change in the one included 250 years later in the Victorian era cookbook The Art Of Cookery Made Easy and Refined.

But why the name Foole? The most popular theory to explain this is that the term comes from the old French term ‘fouler’ which meant to mash or crush. And this is what the recipe demands—that the cooked fruit be crushed or pressed before being folded into the custard mixture. In those days most fruits were cooked, because people thought that raw fruits were dangerous for health.

Another theory points out to the fact that it was an unpretentious dessert which ended a meal, just as a trifle did. Fool was another term for a syllabub or trifle (something of little value). As an etymological dictionary explained Fool is ‘a reallocation of a word for something light-headed or frivolous as a light dessert’. Perhaps these desserts were literally lighter than the stodgy traditional English desserts like Sticky Toffee Pudding, Steamed Syrup Sponge, Jam Roly-Poly, and Suet Pudding.  

Whatever the theory, gooseberry remained a favoured fruit for this dessert, and the Gooseberry Fool was a popular dessert for many years. So popular that Edward Lear even incorporated it into a limerick in his A Book of Nonsense published in 1846.

There was an Old Person of Leeds,
Whose head was infested with beads;
She sat on a stool,
And ate gooseberry fool,
Which agreed with that person of Leeds.

Over time, other seasonal fruits such as strawberries, raspberries, apples, apricots, and cherries, also began to be incorporated in the recipe. Also, the custard was replaced by whipped cream which made it lighter. The combination of fresh fruit and frothy cream, served chilled, makes for a refreshing summer treat.

The ‘Fool’ part was also incorporated in the names of other desserts.

Norfolk Fool as an early type of bread and butter pudding dating back to the 17th century. It included creamy custard, dates and spices.

Westminster Fool was a sweet custard with a flavouring of rose, mace and nutmeg, poured over a penny loaf cut into six slices, soaked in sherry. (Maybe the inspiration for our own Shahi Tukra, or inspired by it!)

Boodles Fool was named after Boodle’s Club, a private exclusive gentlemen’s club founded in 1762. Ironically, in the very class-conscious British society, the club was named after its head waiter Edward Boodle! His namesake dessert featured a citrus (orange and lemon) mixture whipped with cream, poured over sponge cake, served chilled, decorated with orange slices.  

Whatever the ingredients and recipe, Fruit Fools provided for a delicious finale to a meal. Today these continue to be popular as cool summer desserts. Where my mother picked up the concept and term is a mystery lost in time, and so is the actual form of her version, but the name Mango Fool is closely associated with our childhood memories of sweltering hot Delhi summers.

–Mamata

When Feet Take Flight: A Memory and the Magic of Sepak Takraw

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Some memories come back vividly when there is a trigger. Sadly, the trigger for this memory was a newspaper item reporting an accident involving a Sepak Takraw team.

But the memory itself is joyful. A trip to Burma, about fifteen years ago. It was a warm afternoon in Yangon. The tea stalls were buzzing, the pagodas gleamed in the sun, and somewhere between wandering and people-watching, I found myself drawn to a small patch of open ground near a quiet lane.

A group of young boys were playing a game I had never seen before. A boy leapt into the air, spun like a dancer mid-flight, and kicked a small rattan ball clean. I stood completely still, mesmerized. It was my first encounter with Sepak Takraw. We stood and watched for quite a while—the grace, the athleticism, the sheer joy of the players—was something amazing to watch. Fortunately on the way out, I found a Sepak Takraw at the airport and bought it.

All these years later, that moment still shines brightly in memory. Because Sepak Takraw is not a sport you easily forget.

For many of us in our generation, our playground sports were familiar—gully cricket, kho-kho, maybe a weekly volleyball session if your school had both a net and enough motivation to set it up. But Sepak Takraw feels like someone took volleyball, infused it with martial arts, added the grace of classical dance, and sprinkled it with sheer joy.

In the lanes of Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, this sport has lived for centuries. Its early form, sepak raga, simply meant “kick the rattan ball.” Communities played in circles, keeping the woven ball aloft with feet, knees, heads—much like our own childhood attempts to keep a rubber ball bouncing on our legs, but infinitely more skillful.

Over time, the game evolved. Nets were added, rules refined, teams formed. What remained unchanged was the heart of the sport—rhythm, teamwork, and an almost balletic coordination.

What struck me in that first encounter in Burma was the joy. There was no crowd, no scoreboard, just a group of boys pushing the limits of their bodies, laughing, teasing, showing off impossible kicks.

Since then, as videos of Sepak Takraw swirl across the internet, the world has begun to share in that delight. Watching professionals play is like watching physics bend slightly. The killer kick—a full somersault that sends the ball crashing down at an angle—feels like something from a choreographed stage performance. The teamwork is intuitive, almost telepathic.

Interestingly, Sepak Takraw has been creeping into India’s sporting landscape too, especially in the Northeast. Manipur in particular has embraced it with enthusiasm, with players who train tirelessly and compete internationally. Perhaps some Indian traveller today will see a game in Imphal or Aizawl and feel the same quiet awe I felt in Yangon all those years ago.

Today the game is played at international level, and has entered the AsianGames. Efforts are on to get it into the Olympic list. 

But for me, it is the memory of that afternoon in Burma—the dusty field, the laughter of boys, the swift arc of a rattan ball against the sky. It is a reminder of how sport, in its purest form, connects us across borders and time.

–Meena

Birdwoman Jamal Ara

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12 November marks the birthday of Salim Ali the Birdman of India. Much has been written and published by, and about, Salim Ali. However very little is known about a young woman who was recognized as the first Bird Woman of India by Salim Ali himself. This was Jamal Ara, a path breaker in more ways than one.

Jamal Ara was born in 1923 in Barh, Bihar, in a conservative Muslim family. She could study only until class ten before she was married off at a young age, much against her wishes. She moved to Calcutta with her husband where a daughter, Madhuca, was born. Sadly her marriage broke down, leaving her in dire straits. Fortunately a cousin who was in the Forest Service in Bihar, came to her aid and Jamal and her daughter moved to Ranchi. As a forest officer, her cousin was posted to different forest divisions of Bihar, and Jamal often accompanied him on his trips. This sparked in her a great love for wildlife, and Jamal would spend hours observing the flora and fauna in her surroundings. The English wife of a senior forest officer encouraged her to keep notes of her observations, and helped her to hone her writing skills. As her proficiency grew, they also encouraged her to turn her notes into articles and send them for publication.

Jamal Ara spent many years doing extensive field work in what is now Jharkhand, and her study of birds in the Chota Nagpur plateau was comprehensive and detailed. She meticulously documented her observations, and wrote prolifically from 1949 to 1988.  She contributed over 60 papers and articles to the journals of the Bombay Natural History Society and Bengal Natural History Society. She could communicate equally well with a lay audience. She wrote for The Newsletter for Birdwatchers, which was popular with amateur as well as seasoned birdwatchers, and also a book for children, Watching Birds which was published by National Book Trust, and translated into many Indian languages. I remember this book as being one of my own early introductions to nature study.

Jamal Ara was a multi-faceted writer. She wrote fiction, translated stories, and worked as a journalist for a short time. She also did programmes for All India Radio. Jamal Ara was also much more than a birdwatcher. She saw birds as an integral part of a healthy ecosystem, and advocated for a balanced conservation approach, something that was not common in an age when shikar was also a popular pastime.

After such an intense involvement in ornithology, and a prolific contribution to the field, in 1988, Jamal Ara suddenly vanished from the Indian ornithology scene. Her contributions stopped, and she herself disappeared. It is believed that a series of personal losses and setbacks affected her badly. She stopped writing, and after a few years also burnt her notes and photographs. She died in 1995.

Gradually Jamal Ara’s name and contributions sunk into oblivion. She would have been lost to the history of Indian conservation if not for a young researcher Raza Kazmi, who stumbled upon a story by Madhuca Singh, a celebrated basketball coach of Ranchi who mentioned Jamal Ara, her mother, who was a great bird lover. Raza Kazmi was intrigued by this mysterious bird lover, and embarked on a search for this woman and her work. After chasing numerous leads, he finally connected with Madhuca who shared her mother’s story.

It is thanks to Raza Kazmi’s single-minded pursuit, and the publication of Jamal Ara’s story in the book Women in the Wild edited by Anita Mani published in 2023, that we can join in celebrating this enigmatic, but brilliant bird woman of India.

It is also heartening that whatever had remained of Jamal Ara’s original work has been collected and digitized as part of the Archives at NCBS, a public centre for the history of science in contemporary India. The Jamal Ara Collection has archival papers relating to her life and work from 1940s to 1980s, including correspondence, unpublished manuscripts, field diaries and notebooks, and drafts of articles.

This week, as we celebrate Salim Ali, as well as Jamal Ara, both passionate bird watchers, here are a few words from them that remind us of the simple joys of bird watching.

”A bird’s song is a sound that touches the soul; it reminds us of the beauty of nature that we must protect. For me, birds have always been the greatest source of joy and inspiration.”  Salim Ali

“Even if you are not a birdwatcher and are not even faintly interested in them you cannot barricade yourself successfully against fugitive but striking impressions that the sight of a bird invariably leaves. The impression is not altogether fleeting although the sight may have been. It persists in memory. Colour, song, manner of flight, the build or some aspect of physiognomy may have thrust itself into your consciousness and nestles there pleasantly. That is why there is no person entirely uninterested in birds. Most persons are unattentive but a few helps to their stored memories and they start taking an interest in birds. They become attentive and surprise themselves by evolving into birdwatchers.” Jamal Ara 

–Mamata

Our Dangerous Dunning-Kruger World: Why Ignorance Wins.

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Have you ever sat through a meeting where someone confidently proclaimed an idea that made you wonder if you were the only one who found it… well, questionable? Or listened to a neighbour explaining, with great authority, how to “fix the economy” or “end corruption,” in the time it takes for the traffic light to change?

Chances are, you’ve witnessed the Dunning–Kruger Effect in action — that quirk of human psychology where people with limited knowledge or skill in an area tend to overestimate their competence. Ironically, the more ignorant we are about something, the more certain we can feel about our opinions.

The term comes from two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, who in 1999 published a study with the rather unexciting title “Unskilled and Unaware of It.” They were intrigued by a bizarre news story about a man who robbed banks after rubbing lemon juice on his face, believing it would make him invisible to security cameras. The man wasn’t joking — he genuinely thought he had found a clever loophole. Dunning and Kruger wondered how someone could be so wrong and yet so sure.

Their research showed that people who perform poorly on tests of logic, grammar, or humour not only make more mistakes — they also lack the skill to recognise those mistakes. In contrast, the truly competent often underestimate themselves, assuming that if something is easy for them, it must be easy for everyone.

So we end up with a world divided between the confidently incompetent and the competently cautious.

If this sounds like a comment on social media, well……. Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram stories are veritable festivals of the Dunning–Kruger Effect — where the loudest voices are often the least informed. Whether it’s miracle diets, “instant wealth” advice, or armchair experts diagnosing global issues, confidence is never in short supply. Accuracy, on the other hand, might need a search party.

But before we roll our eyes at others, it’s worth pausing. The uncomfortable truth is that we’ve all been there. Remember that time you confidently assembled a piece of IKEA furniture without reading the instructions — and then found one mysterious screw left over? Or when you tried to give a five-minute explanation of blockchain to someone who actually works in finance? Yes, that too is Dunning–Kruger territory.

What makes this effect particularly sneaky is that it feeds on self-assurance. It feels good to be certain. Admitting “I don’t know” can feel like weakness. Yet, as Socrates famously said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” In other words, humility is intelligence in disguise.

The flip side of the effect is equally interesting. Those who genuinely know their stuff often hesitate to speak up. They second-guess themselves, feel like impostors, and worry that they might be wrong. This is where the Impostor Syndrome meets the Dunning–Kruger Effect — a perfect psychological storm that ensures the least qualified sometimes take charge, while the best-qualified stay silent.

So how do we guard against it? A few simple habits can help:

  • Ask questions. Even if you think you know. Especially if you think you know.
  • Seek feedback. It’s not always pleasant, but it’s the antidote to self-deception.
  • Stay curious. The more you learn, the more you realise how much there is to learn.
  • Listen before leaping. Sometimes the quietest voices in the room hold the deepest insight.

The Dunning–Kruger Effect may make for amusing anecdotes, but it also reminds us to pair confidence with curiosity. As we navigate workplaces, communities, and conversations — maybe even family and friends WhatsApp groups— it helps to remember that certainty is not the same as wisdom.

In the end, perhaps the best safeguard against foolish confidence is a dose of humble awareness — and a willingness to laugh at ourselves when we realise, as we often do, that we didn’t know as much as we thought.

–Meena

Graph: Wikimedia Commons