Shailaza's Blog

Category: jlf2024

  • When Poets Cook

    Maria Goretti is unlike any Bollywood wife that you may have heard about. Though she is the wife of the celebrated actor Arshad Warsi, this mother of two believes in making her own mark in the world, with her books about poetry and food.

    Maria Goretti with her children

    When one is readying to interview a person who is a celebrity in her own right and belongs to the Hindi film industry, one tries to prepare for all sorts of scenarios (maybe she will not have time or not grant the interview or will have some qualms etc). However, Maria Goretti believes in singing a very different tune. She is not only married to the celebrated actor Arshad Warsi but is also a celebrated VJ, dancer, actress, TV show host in her own right but when she starts talking you realize that she believes in being as simple as the food and poems she writes about.
    We caught up with her on the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024.

    What makes you write? Do you have a particular time that you write in?

    I don’t know how it came about when I first started writing. But now writing is almost like an out-of-body experience for me. So, I cannot really say that I write at this particular time or that time. It’s just something that I do and it’s become part of my life now. It doesn’t matter where I am. I could be in a completely crowded room and I will just get a few thoughts in my mind about something and I would want to put it down because it needs to be said maybe not to anyone, just to me.

    Maria Goretti with Mandira Bedi

    How did you start writing poetry?

    It was very similar to how I started writing. It just happened. When I was a child, I used to write poetry but then lost touch with it. When my children became older, I started getting some time to pursue my own passions. I started blogging and cooking. I used to write poems about experiences or whatever used to catch my fancy.

    With her husband Arshad Warsi

    Is it tough to write a poem?

    No, I don’t think writing poems is a tough job. For me, it is the editing that is tougher because you edit your work, you scrutinize each and every line and you end up hating everything. I realized that I would sit and just write a poem sometimes from start to finish and then I would revisit it maybe two or three times after that. I would make a few changes in it. But when I was doing the book, it was the most difficult thing for me to do.
    I think I read them so much that I just didn’t like them anymore. As a result, I redid half the book while I was editing it.

    How do you think a poem helps?

    I don’t know whether a poem helps anyone else, but it definitely helps the person writing. So, I think a lot of times when you read something, something in it may or may not resonate with you, you know, because I think most of the people who write poems, it comes from a very passion-filled part of your soul. I think it comes from a space that is, that is having probably an outpouring about something that you’re listening to, something that’s going on in the world, something that has probably affected you, affected the people who are around you, a movie, a situation in life. I think, I think most poems are about life in different stages. And I feel, for me especially, when I meet people and if they have read my book, and some of them come up and tell me, ma’am, that piece was really nice, it really talked to me, I feel really wonderful about it. You know, there is an oneness that happens when you read poetry.
    There’s a feeling of, okay, I know that feeling, and I know that place, or I have felt like that before. And I think that’s very, that’s very satisfying.

    As a child when you read a poem, did it really affect you?

    At the time, it did not affect me. I have been reading poems since childhood and have even recited some on the stage. But I don’t remember being touched by it. But today when I read, it is different for me, because there is no compulsion to me because I’m reading it by choice.

    So today, when you read somebody else’s poem, what happens to you?

    Sometimes it touches me. At other times, I think of what the author was thinking when he was, or she was writing it. And sometimes, of course, it leaves you with nothing, because you probably are not yet open to receiving whatever the poem is trying to tell you.
    I think a poem is an art. It’s like looking at a painting. Some people get it, some people don’t. Some people wonder, what is that speck? Why is it so expensive? I could do that or I could have done that.

    You have also written a cook book. What is food to you?

    I think food is art for the person making it. I think food is art for somebody who understands it and for somebody who loves food. More than everything else, it is a binding force. I always feel that when every time I cook or I am doing something for my friends, nobody may be talking about the food, which is the least important, but there is a gathering that happens.

    Some people are enjoying it, some are laughing, others are talking to each other, who are having probably more or you must have this because I tasted it. You know, it does that. I think food brings people together and I think that is beautiful.

    Should everyone regardless of their gender know cooking?

    I think everyone should be able to fry an egg if they are non-vegetarian and everyone needs to be able to make something for themselves (not counting Maggie here), that they live on and not be dependent. My 19-year-old son has been cooking since he was four years old. He makes his food, which I don’t like very much. I want him to sit at the table and eat with everyone else.

    What is the kind of food you like to eat?

    At home, I have my parents living with me. So, there is one kind of food made for them. And then there are my teen kids who look at the food and are like, Ugh! What is that? And then there is me in the middle. So, I am constantly juggling between, Oh my God, why don’t you like that? That is so tasty and that’s good for your health and they look at me like, that’s old people’s food. But having said that, I love clean food. I am somebody who actually changed the way I look at food.
    I would say 70% of the time, what I love to eat is the kind of food that Ayurveda tells you to eat. Nice. You know? I have learned that, I would say I got changed in my head because I love doing a cleanse for myself once in a year. And I remember that when I first went to an Ayurveda place, I tasted the food and I was quite amazed at how simple it was and how beautiful it tasted. And that brought about a huge change in the way I cook.

    What’s your favourite dish?

    I am a pasta lover and I love a simple aglio olio pepperoncino. I also like dal chawal.

    So, how are you able to wear so many hats like an author, a chef and a mom?

    Easily. But I take that back. Being a mom is not easy. I think the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life is being a mom. Because it doesn’t, you don’t have a manual of what is right, what is wrong. You’re just winging it all the time. Sometimes you hit the jackpot, sometimes you’re absolutely wrong. When I’m absolutely wrong, I say sorry.

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 17 July 2024

  • Games, numbers and play

    Marcus du Sautoy is a professor of mathematics who loves to play games with Maths. Though initially he found math tough, once he discovered the magic of Math, there was no going back.

    For most of us, a person good in mathematics would perhaps look like a nerd, wear high power spectacles and would constantly prefer company of books over humans. At least, that is the perception we have grown up with. However, Marcus Du Sautoy begs to differ. Marcus is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and the author of well-known books that dispel the myth and terror associated with mathematics. When I caught up with him for a tet-e-tat on the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival this year, I realized mathematics was not just about numbers but also nature. Some excerpts from a freewheeling chat with the man who loves to play games with math.

    What is it like to visit the Jaipur Literature Festival?

    Oh! Its hectic but so much fun. I get to talk about everything. I have been to seven sessions and each session has been a different experience. Today was games, yesterday was parenting in the digital age, I have done AI and publishing, AI and creativity, and tonight I’m talking about free speech.

    So what do you like about the Jaipur Literature Festival?

    This is my fourth time at the Jaipur Literature Festival. I love the fact that it brings so many people from different disciplines, different countries, different philosophies, and that I think is what’s so exciting, sharing time with people with very different ways of looking at the world. So, I’m a scientist, so it’s nice to bring a scientific perspective on political issues, for example. I like the variety.

    Have you been to Jaipur before?

    I love coming to India, and especially Rajasthan. Last year I came with my wife, and after the festival we travelled around Jodhpur, Udaipur, and I’ve been also other places before that. And in Jodhpur we got to know a very wonderful family who are into making carpets, and today I’m having two carpets delivered to my hotel from the family. We are good friends with them. They invited us to their daughter’s wedding, but unfortunately it was two weeks before the festival, so we couldn’t go.

    Was mathematics easy for you as a child?

    Math wasn’t necessarily easy for me. I think that you have to remember that mathematics is a little bit like learning a musical instrument. You can’t play the piano immediately. You have to practice, spend time in that world, and gradually it gets easier.
    I think people have to remember that you don’t have to get everything right the first time, but you have to understand why you got something wrong and learn from that. I only fell in love with mathematics when I was about 12 or 13, and the key for me was seeing some exciting stories of mathematics, not just doing multiplication and all the technical side. And again, it’s like learning an instrument.
    If you just did scales and arpeggios, you get bored. That’s not music. Sometimes I feel like the mathematics taught in school is not the real mathematics. Fortunately, I had was a teacher who showed me these stories about math. Things about prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers, infinity, geometry, and for me, that was what made me fall in love with the subject, seeing there were so many exciting stories inside there, which if I had learnt the mathematics I did at school, I’d be able to understand or now write myself.

    Okay, can you share some of those stories, maybe one story about what made it so interesting for you?

    Yeah, sure for example, Fibonacci numbers, which many kids might see, but it’s not on curriculum. So these are numbers which go 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and there’s a pattern because you add the two previous numbers. 5 plus 8 gives you 13, 8 plus 13 gives you 21, 13 plus 21 gives you 34. So, these numbers are growing out of the other numbers. Now, these numbers are all over nature. If you count the number of petals on a flower, it’s either 5 or 8 or 13. If you cut open a fruit, like an apple, you get a 5-pointed star. A banana has a 3-pointed star, a persimmon has an 8. If you take a pineapple and you count the number of cells, it’s a Fibonacci number. When I tell this to my children respond about nature doing mathematics, they start thinking that math must be important, it’s not something arbitrary. But the other beautiful thing is these numbers are important in music as well. If you’re a drummer, a tabla player, with long and short beats, the number of rhythms goes in this sequence, 5, 8, 13. So for me, that’s the kind of story you want to tell. Then the numbers start to creep into nature, into music, into poetry. And then that connects with the things, you know, maybe your child is not immediately interested in numbers, but they might like music. Or they might like the garden. For me, that’s the key, is finding why mathematics is everywhere. And then the children start saying, I want to understand the world, I need to understand maths.

    How can teachers convert mathematics into a game for children?

    I think we’re in a golden age where a teacher who may not be so confident with mathematics can still teach well because there are lots of resources on the internet that they can use to try and help the children. In particular, for example, I created an internet maths school based on gaming. It’s called MangaHigh.com, and what we did was to take the mathematical curriculum, turn it into a game and then the kids learn the mathematics by playing the game. And the game is clever enough so it understands, well, the student is finding this difficult, so it takes them down a level to lift their confidence up, or if a student is just eating it all up, so it pushes them to the higher levels. I think we’re in a great age where technology can help a teacher to, not replace a teacher.

    Somewhere, you said that there is a possibility that AI can become conscious. What if that happens? Will we be in danger?

    With new technologies, there are always positives and negatives, and it’s about how we use that technology. So, if AI becomes conscious, we want it to be empathetic to the human race. We can we create AI that understands us and we understand it. So as with any new relationship, it’s about building trust. If the thing is conscious, it’s sophisticated, then we’ll understand because we want to create an AI which isn’t incentivized to wipe out humanity.

    How can that happen?

    I think what AI is very good at is learning behaviours. So if we give it empathetic behaviour, then it will produce empathetic results. If we lead it astray by depicting abusive behaviour, it will respond with abusive results. We’ve seen many examples of this, where a chatbot put online interacts with people who are racist, misogynist, and it learns how to repeat that, and that’s what we don’t want. We’re at the momentin control of its evolution, and so we need to take responsibility to take it in a positive direction.

    Does that mean that if we create robots or anything, it will learn that behaviour?

    Yes. And unfortunately, because it’s learning on human behaviour, and human behaviour is not always terribly good, there are dangers that this thing is learning to succeed at the expense of everybody else. That is not a great learning model.

    So, will we need to reformat the humans first?

    (Laughs) I think so, right? That’s a very good way to put it. But I think that’s what’s interesting and I think people don’t realize this, the AI that is emerging is a reflection of our values and our way of looking at the world, because it’s learning from our world, our art, our writing, our literature. And so it’s not a new thing. It’s a new take on an old thing, which is humanity.

    ..To Be Continued

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on July 10, 2024