Recent content in Welcome. on Ravi's Notes
This is a story that connects Mumbai, Pune, Baghdad, Armenia and Turkey. Once a year or so, I visit my family back in Pune, in India. Pune has a famous hospital called Sassoon Hospital, and for years I didn’t think anything about it. One day, many years ago, during another visit to Pune, I passed Sassoon Hospital, and I remembered that Mumbai has a famous dock called Sassoon Docks. I…
When we talk about the Indian subcontinent, we often talk about how diverse the society is. We have multiple religions, numerous languages, many races, and on and on. The conflict between India and Pakistan dominates the cultural minds of many South Asians and every country that is not India strives to makes its own identity stand out tall and proud. While I do agree that nation states should…
The Indian subcontinent has an abundance of languages, cultures and peoples. And yet the most commonly known epics are just two of them: The Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In this list, I aim to maintain a list of epics apart from those two massive works. The modern nation of India has twenty-two official languages at the central/federal level - and numerous other languages, some of which are…
The what Indian food is incredibly diverse and regional. No two people will make chai the same way. No two people will make any Indian dish the same way. And I think this is the reason I have an inherent distrust of recipes for Indian cooking. If you have been cooking for many years, you already know a good majority of steps. What you need is that unique characteristic that makes a dish stand out.…
Today I will describe how to build, deploy and serve a website similar to this one. We will primarily use AWS services. Step 1: Buy a domain name Most domain names can be bought using AWS’s Route 53 . Route 53 is the AWS service responsible for all things related to DNS - you can buy domains, set up records for your domains, and so on. Use Route 53 to buy your domain name. Let us assume your…
Croatia made it to the FIFA 2018 World Cup final after a bunch of wildly entertaining games where they knocked out their opponents. Croatia is going to meet France in the finals. Everyone knows about France. You know champagne, croissants and the Eiffel Tower. What do you know about Croatia? Where is it? Croatia is a tiny country in South Eastern Europe. It is part of the Balkan peninsula, named…
Today, I want to talk about Slavs. Who are slavs? Slavs are an ethnic group primarily occupying Eastern Europe who share common customs and traditions. They also speak languages that are in the same family: the Slavic language family. The biggest Slavic country is Russia. Slavs are also the most populous ethnic group in Europe. It is surprising that the rest of the world does not know much about…
Meh Michelin I had heard a lot about Bistro Voltaire. A friend of mine had eaten there and claimed that it was a gastronomical Mecca. I decided to check it out before taking the wife. I made a reservation. I walk in to Bistro Voltaire and am greeted by an overly polite maitre’d. “Maitre’d” is a word I would only use at a place like Bistro Voltaire. I have never used that…
Read the first part here Rohan woke up inside a dark chamber. He had been drooling in his sleep and dreaming. His mind raced through the tinglings of a dream where he was being slow cooked alive in a hot pot. His hands were tied behind his back with a silky string. The chamber had a very low ceiling and the ceiling protruded out in a corner. He looked around and saw that he was surrounded by books…
Rohan crouched so that no one could see him. It was past midnight on a dark, moonless night. The only sound Rohan could hear was the rhythmical buzz of the crickets. He was facing a small square - an open area between buildings where kids played during the day. The square was faintly lit by street lights in the adjacent street. In the middle of the square was a giant statue of a cow. The cow was…
Here is the list, without any preamble. Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall : This book serves as an introduction to the fascinating world of geopolitics - a guide to understanding international relations based on the geography and history of nations around the world. The first chapter on Russia is perhaps the most fascinating account I have…
I was on my 10-minute break at Hadapsar Depot. The depot was surrounded by snack shops, restaurants that served quick and dirty grub, and numerous other hawkers. I was sitting under a banyan tree, sipping on a cutting of chai. My route went through the dirtiest and most crowded parts of Pune and I needed the caffeine to mentally prepare myself. The time was up. I got into my bus, sat down on the…
Manji woke her son up with a few kisses. “Not now, mom”, he squealed. “If you wake up, we can play your favorite game!”. Their favorite game was hide and seek. This was in the time of eternal darkness. There was no sun that streamed down upon them. A game of hide and seek in perpetual darkness was bound to be exciting. Manji’s son woke up with a whimper. He did want…
Chapter 2 This is the first of a series of chapters on religion, philosophy and the idea of God amongst Indian Hindus of the 11th century. Al Beruni exhibits a slight elitist bias which is not surprising for a learned man of his time. He says that in every nation, the educated & the uneducated treat religion differently. The educated strive to conceive abstract ideas and to define general…
At the height of the Arab civilization in the 11th century, a guy called Al Beruni came to India and wrote an account of the country that was so unique you would think this was written by a scholar in the 21st century. Al Beruni was one of a kind - likely a political prisoner of Mahmud of Ghazni - he was multi-lingual, a mathematician, a scientist and also a historian. Like many who dabbled in…
Chapter 1 Summary Al is addressing a Muslim audience, most likely consisting of Arab and Persian readers. Although Al himself was ethnically Persian, he wrote the book in Arabic. In this chapter, he introduces the Hindus to his readers, mainly talking about how different they are from him. Italicized text will be used to denote my personal opinion. Difference #1: language What Al says…
Hi! My name is Ravi Ramanujam and I live in San Francisco. I love reading, building software, cooking, biking, talking about food, and dreaming about writing. I love samosas: I made samosasnearyou.com (now defunct) and Samosas in the Bay Area My old blog has posts since 2007 with occasional thoughts and a bunch of short stories I have lived in many different cities. Here is a list in reverse…