Eskimos:Snow :: Germans:…. ?

If you are willing to accept the urban legend that Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow, then the German equivalent must be milk products. In fact, not only do the Germans make very fine distinctions between different types of milk products by having separate words for them, you can actually buy the different categories at grocery stores or supermarkets.

I caught the first whiff of this mystifying practice soon after moving here, when I spotted a tub of a certain substance called Quark at a supermarket. It looked like something one would eat (as opposed to put in their hair), and the omnivore in me got curious. I got one, came to my apartment, and went straight for the dictionary! That’s when I knew something was wrong. The dictionary translated Quark as “curd”, which, let me tell you, is a total lie. Well, maybe a half truth. There is really nothing in the English language that can adequately explain what Quark is.

But that was just the beginning – I was soon to discover myself cruising the aisles and witness cream manifest itself to me in the multiple avatars of Sahne (regular creme), Schlagsahne (whipping cream), Kaffeesahne (half-n-half in USA), Sauer Sahne (sour cream), Crème Fraîche, Schmand, and Crème Double. If you can translate Schmand, I will buy you a year’s supply of it! In US I choose between salted and unsalted butter. Here, on the other hand, trying to buy butter I was faced with the choice of Süßrahmbutter, Sauerrahmbutter, and Molkenbutter – and all of them unsalted. For some strange reason salted butter is considered exotic in Germany, is hard to find, and costs you a pretty penny!

I was spending my days suspended in this state of confusion, when one day I demanded an explanation from my roomie. Not willing to take up the gauntlet, he hid behind the usual refrain of not knowing the right English words. But he had an obviously ingenious idea – to look it up on Wikipedia! Now, who would have thought of that? Anyone except me, I guess. So I was finally enlightened, and I want to share the revelation with you all. The following flowchart explains how all the milk products are obtained. Take a look, it’s educational.

Of campaign songs and okra

While on the topic of music and politics – here is Siddhartha Mitter on New York Public Radio presenting you a sampling of the campaign theme songs for the 2008 primaries.

Apparently, John McCain is a huge fan of ABBA, and “Take a Chance on Me” was his personal pick to replace Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” on the campaign trail. I always thought the moment ABBA came on was the time to leave the party. But McCain’s doing pretty well in the primaries, so what do I know?

Follow the link and listen to the whole audio (I am sorry, WordPress doesn’t allow me to use Javascript to embed the audio directly here) – it is quite funny. And no prizes for guessing who turns out to be the rock-star of the whole troupe.

A quick googling of his name (what, you don’t google every new name you see?) led me to another gem – a heartfelt rambling about the mistreatment of okra by mainstream America.

I discovered my favorite vegetable at age 7 at my grandma’s table in Calcutta, India. That vegetable was okra [...] Okra has lovers and haters, but mainly haters. The reason is texture; here we call that lush consistency “slime” [...] sauce gombo from Ivory Coast involves okra sliced to the vanishing point, a green substance that stretches taut off the spoon, infused with palm oil, freckled with seeds, cradling cubes of beef, and sinews of smoked fish, and giant quarters of crab. I call that delicious, but many Americans will call it disgusting!

Listening to him one might imagine that if okra could speak, it would lament “yeh duniya, yeh mehfil, mere kaam ki nahin“! But all is not lost. Mitter provides a glimmer of hope – okra is resurgent, buoyed up by the legions of immigrants washing up on America’s shores. Listen to the whole thing here.

Now, in Bengali okra is called dharosh. In our practice of describing personality traits with names of animals or vegetables, dharosh signifies incompetence and lack of the smarts. If the world’s favorite leader grew up in rural Bengal, he would have surely earned the moniker of dharosh, and that would have been the end of him. Just like some speculate that the name Schiklgruber could have altered the course of history for the better, the lowly dharosh could have saved the day too; if only it got a chance!

An Indian spin

The Foo Fighters are playing during the Grammys tonight, and sometime back they launched a YouTube competition for an accompanying instrumentalist for their chart topper song “The Pretender“. There were a bunch of really awesome (for want of a better word) submissions, of which some of my favorites are Asha Mevlana on Viper violin, Ann Marie Calhoun, Brian Fitzgerald, and Abigail Loving on violin, and Tara Klein on cello. But today I saw this violin piece by Aishwarya Venkataraman where she presents a Foo Fighter ala Carnatic. She won’t be playing tonight, but I think this was one of the most unique submissions (together with Asha Mevlana’s Viper violin).

This reminded me of the Channel [V] ad that bobbed up on the “series of tubes” a while back – a Hindustani classical rendition of “Sweet Child O’ Mine”.

I personally feel that the vocals kind of messed up the brilliant sitar duo, but it was salvaged to some extent by aunti-ji at the end What do you think?