My aaji's house used to be full of random stuff and food items cos she literally bought something from every door to door salesperson saying "such a hard life it is, we should buy whatever we can to support them". She'd offer them water, snacks, invite them to sit and rest.
Often you'd come home to find some stranger eating pohe on her couch and aaji happily buying whatever they were selling, from tchotchkes to appliances! And then she'd give it away to neighbors or relatives. Was never into possessions, my aaji. Only books and experiences.
She passed away today in Pune at 90. Sad that I couldn't visit her for 18 months because of the pandemic. But glad that I spent lots of time with her in 2019 and early 2020.
It was a full happy life she led and all her grandkids were near her, around her and visiting regularly in the last couple of years.
She had left explicit instructions to NOT do even the slightest rituals. "Just put me in that electric thing and go home." She was an atheist who encouraged my atheism when I was younger.
It was just old age. But we did have to get a covid test done for the formalities etc. It was negative, thankfully. And you now need passes for crematoriums!
Mom said the last time aaji was lucid and communicative was when she was shown these pictures and was very impressed with rupal's Promethean achievement. 😁

Have been off social media all day to reminisce about aaji and one thing we'd do together often was crosswords. And today I finished a New Yorker puzzle. 😁😁
Going through the loving condolence messages sent by twitter friends over the past 24 hours and I am overwhelmed and touched. It's amazing, the deep meaningful friendships that twitter has given me. I love you all!
It's almost 4 AM. I'm at a friend's mountain cabin with 6 people and 2 dogs sleeping soundly all around me. I can't sleep because there's a cascade of never ending aaji memories. Can't call anyone cos everyone sleeping. Twitter is so helpful at such times.

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More from @gauravsabnis

29 May
The biggest source of Abhishek Asthana's continuing moral turpitude even during a pandemic slaughtering millions of his fellow citizens is that he knows better than anyone the real antecedents of his follower count 🤣🤣. And of course, his preter-mercenary nature.
That was a bit too Tharoor.
Plainspeak. Abhishek lies for money, despite it costing lives, because his whole personality is built on lies.
Read 4 tweets
29 May
Abhishek Asthana Bikau Bawasir. Basically he's telegraphing to Pfizer and Moderna that if he can get some money from them, he will flip sides. For people like him, the whole thing is that ke bhaiyya sabse bada rupaiyya.
For anyone who wrote their own science exams instead of outsourcing homework, it's obvious that at least as May '21 ends, mRNA vaccines are THE best of all avlbl. Data from multiple clinical trials AND 100+ million vaccinations is historically obvious. But sabse bada rupaiyya.
Asthana is selfish enough to keep his presence still on the vastly superior American Twitter and not very much on the vastly inferior Indian Koo.
But he is still shilling to oppose American mRNA vaccines which, out of 10.1 crore, had only 700 hospitalizations. 🤔🤔
Read 9 tweets
29 May
Are USA and India on the same planet?
Oh, and Moderna has literally 100% effectiveness for children and should get FDA authorization for children very soon.

At this stage, sanghi lies are months behind reality.
Ah, apparently this was meant as a loyalty test for whatsapp warriors. If you swallowed and repeated the IT cell's bizarre "but 12 years old are not children" gaslighting from whatsapp, then you are still a loyal Abhishek Asthana type bikau bawasir.
Read 4 tweets
28 May
Here's the Memorial Day weekend edition of my regular "Dispatches from #NYC on Masking/SD Trends in my corner of Manhattan (east village, gramercy, union square)".

This weekend is big every year (except last 😖) in NYC. It's the official start of the summer/tourist season.
In my walks today, keeping a quick mental count of about 500 pedestrians I encountered on this, the start of the first long weekend in the city with a huge majority of adults vaccinated. And permission from city, state, federal govts to remove masks outdoors if vaccinated....
~70% people still wearing masks, covering noses properly.
20% had masks under their chin or in hands, slipping them on if passing someone.
10% were unmasked. Interestingly, most of them were senior citizens! Presumably fully vaccinated. Until recently, universally masked!
Read 8 tweets
28 May
Wow, California is doing a 100 million plus lottery for vaccination. As in if you're vaccinated, you're automatically entered in a lottery to get thousands in cash!

In India, getting a vaccine itself is like a lottery.

Yet right wing bay area bros act like they're in hell.
If you're still a "minimal gormint", "privatize Medicare and social security" bro in 2021, after seeing the VERY blatant difference in pandemic management between liberal and conservative governments and millions of lives lost... nothing will convince you.
This week and the next, you're going to see a lot of #factcheckbait from sanghis over vaccines, because it is now a simple objective fact that for under $40 billion, the Modi govt can get everyone vaccinated in 6 months with the crazy effective mRNA vaccines. No cold chain etc.
Read 8 tweets
28 May
Just a reminder that all of Savarkar's work after release from jail has easily verifiable multiple sources of his bigotry and fascism.
The hagiography of his younger "revolutionary" days comes primarily from a book that was revealed later to be written by him.
Self-made man. 🙄
Savarkar's own words from late 1920s till his death in 1960s, extensively published, reported, quoted in marathi as well as english, are easily googleable. In contrast, details of his "saagaraa praaN taLmaLalaa" heroics are almost entirely based on what he wrote under a pen name.
The objective facts about Savarkar are
- he was a good student, and had a flair for words, especially marathi poetry
- he was involved in some violent anti Brit revolutionary activity in his younger days. Was caught and jailed as a terrorist. This is objective fact.
Read 7 tweets

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