Organic intelligence in the time of artificial intelligence

To be organically intelligent in these times is to be modern, even post-modern—but as a truly modern man/woman/child with choices, not a robot clunking at the knees and beeping at the eyes to the tunes of a machine we do not control

- Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Are your stainless-steel thalis and katoris a bore? No, heavens, no! Don't throw them away. Let me tell you why. They may have an engraving that says a name, discreetly dot-graven, of your ancestor, or someone who gifted it to your forebear. In any case, imagine the generations of meals that have been served in and polished off them! They hold the memory of our foods and fads, our eating wisdom, or our gluttonous follies.

Brass tumblers, copper ladles, cracked but defiantly holding out, old china, spoons now twisted and tarnished but with enamel work on them, blackened kadhais in which succulent curries have been made over the decades (remember the old brass vessels which kalai-walas used to refresh for you?), brazen tavas on which an endless stream of rotis have been made, sharp-toothed coconut scrapers, knives of different widths and lengths which have sliced or chopped vegetables, fish, perhaps meat, those old coffee-bean grinders with handles that have turned the gashed, blackish berry to aromatic brown powder, the old four-wedge wooden butter and ghee churner—hug, don't junk them!

All these belong to an endangered species. They are a genre of kitchenware that is being overtaken by modern accessories that work on electricity, dangle on wires, have to be serviced, and when pronounced unserviceable, have to be junked.

Likewise, old saris of cotton and silk fibre worn to threadbareness, dhotis, kurtas and leg-wear, hand-knitted sweaters, mufflers, and gloves with gaping holes, do not discard them. Keep them, or at least some of them. They are just old, not dead, and can be repaired by darners if not by your deft fingers. Have you seen a darner at work?

Rafuwalas are restorers of the first order, teasing out threads from the rims of the tear, linking their points. They are surgeons of fabric, their needles being surgical instruments.