#deepthi

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

To speak the future is to shape the future.

Naomi Novik, The Golden Enclaves 

[crossedwithblue]

The Sharmas, and vegetarianism in India

I just finished the books and this stood out to me. One side of my family is Jain, a small religion philosophically very similar to Buddhism, with a similar emphasis on nonviolence and the complete avoidance of harm to any human being. This includes:

No meat, obviously. Eggs are also excluded (as in the more general Indian definition of vegetarianism) No root vegetables, even, because you have to kill the whole plant to get them. Interestingly, non-lethal animal products are fine - milk, honey, wool - so it's not the same as veganism. I'm not sure what the position is on the hidden life-cost of milk i.e. the death of male calves because it's a waste to keep most around. This is common enough that retaurants will have 'Jain options' on their menu/allow you to request a Jain version of a dish, and it's a widely understood dietary requirement (though most people in India seen to think Jainism is a branch of Hinduism. It's not, it's a completly splintered-off heterodoxy, but we don't need to get into that).

They also don't use leather or silk since that does require death to produce, though my granny does have a 'peace silk' sari that's made without boiling the cocoons.

No eating after sunset and no eating food kept overnight, because they had some concept of germ theory and knew that bacteria bred more after dark. Pre-fridges, this is generally a pretty good idea in a hot country, anyway.

A yearly ritual where you meditate and ask forgiveness from any creature of any kind that you might have injured, deliberately or not. It's meant to be an acknowledgement that you've done wrong and a meditation on forgiving other people because everyone's fallible. You also exchange this with anyone you can - friends, family etc. I have very very mixed feelings about this one, how valid and meaningful it usually is in-practice and its actual effect on most people's mental health, but I'll leave that out of this post LOL

In the same vein, a prayer ritual you do at the temple where you repeat the same request for forgivness while repeatedly moving from a standing position to kneeling and prostrated with your head on the floor, the gradual standing - kneeling upright - kneeling fully - completely prostrate timed to the lines of the request. As my mum pointed out, it's also pretty good exercise, like a slowed-down bungee squat that's also gentler on your joints. I can picture El doing it for mana.

If you thought this was intense enough, the monks and nuns take it to another level. They eat nothing but boiled vegetables, lentils and grains, and I believe are not allowed to wear any clothing but what is purely plant derived, so they are closer to veganism in that sense. They have little brooms they use to sweep the path ahead of them to avoid stepping on insects (which, since they spend a lot of time on the road physically walking from place to place, presumably slows them down as much as you might imagine. They wear masks over their face to avoid inhaling small insects and keep out bacteria as much as possible (presumably the tiny insects are more of a concern if, again, you're pretty much sleeping out in the open in a rural area).

Not Jain any more, but upper-caste Hindus from some regions, essentially the priest caste, are also pretty strict vegetarians to the point that they're quite snobby about it. They are vegetarian because they consider it necessary to ritual purity, and look down on people who aren't - according to my mum, who went to uni with a lot of people like that, the reason why they accepted her relatively easily was because she was also a very strict vegetarian. I'm not sure if those guys avoid root vegetables too - mum had to start eating them at uni, anyway, because she would have struggled for food otherwise.

The Sharma family's insistence on strict mana reminded me of these practices a lot. They won't use any malia because you cannot get it without deliberately causing harm to another living being, even if that's just a blade of grass. I don't know if Novik was aware of this but it's pretty plausible and if she was, it adds a lot of context to her making El half-Indian and giving her paternal family similar beliefs. My headcanon is that they are indeed Jain - there's a pretty big community in Maharashtra/of Marathi origin.

[ace-and-ranty]

hello! Just finished the entirety of the scholomance trilogy in a few days (and am currently paying for it with Sleep Deprivation Headache) but like. A concept I haven’t seen get spoken about yet is the manner in which outcomes and such get played with, but like. I don’t know, the idea of another entity contriving circumstances that will ultimately result in a good or at least better outcome but first someone has to be totally miserable for a little while, and when it’s over you can’t even complain because said entity was completely right and you couldn’t have gotten there without it. It’s what happened with El with the school and the prophecy, and also probably what Ophelia was going for with Orion

Oh yes, El's and Deepthi's dynamics is profoundly tragic in that way. I think it really says something for El's family that Deepthi doesn't expect El to not complain later. She did what she did fully prepared for her grandson (El's grandpa) to hate her forever because of it, and at the end of the book it's implied neither El's grandparents, Gwen or El have forgiven her, exactly, they are all just willing to try and be a family.

It is still very, very deeply tragic, and I think it falls within a bigger theme in the series and specially in The Golden Enclaves, which is the legacies that children inherit. In a way everyone in the world is born burdened by their parents' choices. They do what they think is best for us when we just aren't old enough to decide... and for good or for worse, we gotta learn to live with those choices. Deepthi is is just an extreme magical version of it.

Like how El is called "a burdened soul" in the prophecy? She didn't choose to be the weight the universe threw to balance Ophelia's dark magic, she didn't choose to be born to parents who wanted to build Golden Enclaves... and through the book she decides, yeah, maybe she didn't fully choose to receive the Golden Sutras, it was an inheritance from her parents, but she decides she loves them anyway.

On the other hand you have, for example, Liu, who was born to the dream of Enclave building, and who was crumbling under the pressure of it, who decides, actually, she is going to be part of this legacy her way: she won't use malia and she won't stay conveniently in the closet. And Naomi mentioned, in her TGE AMA, that what will really help Liu heal is the fact that ultimately, when push came to shove, her immediate family firmly chose her over the dream of an Enclave.

And then you have Orion as well, GOOD GOD, who was an instrument of his parents' legacy much before he was a child, who was LITERALLY crushed to mawmouth jelly under their expectations.

It's all just variations on the same theme, that children have to contend with legacies they just happened to be born into.

You know, LOL. Speaking of this. Funny story. When I was in high school, my mother had to drag me, kicking and screaming, to my English classes because I did NOT want to go. Now?. Now I work translating English/Portuguese.

"Another entity contriving circumstances that will ultimately result in a good or at least better outcome but first someone has to be totally miserable for a little while, and when it’s over you can’t even complain because said entity was completely right and you couldn’t have gotten there without it"? That's me. That's me and English classes. Mom will never let me forget how right she was about it hahahahahaha.

[mediagraph]

Called 'Monkey, Mental' By Fellow Villagers, Deepthi Jeevanji Fights Taboo To Achieve Paralympics Glory

The Paris Paralympics 2024 has shown the world that anything is achievable if one has the will. The athletes, despite challenges, have risen to glory. India's Deepthi Jeevanji is among those inspirational athletes whose journey was full of challenges, but they never gave up. Deepthi Jeevanji bagged the 16th medal for India as she won the bronze on Tuesday in the women's 400m T20 final at the ongoing Paris Paralympics 2024. The para-athlete finished the race in 55.82 seconds.

Deepthi Jeevanji had earlier won India's first gold medal at the World Athletics Para Championship in Kobe, Japan. She hails from the village of Kalleda in the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh.

Her parents, Jeevanji Yadhagiri and Jeevanji Dhanalaxmi, had then recalled how their daughter had to face taunts while growing up. According to a report in The Indian Express, Deepthi was born with intellectual disability, a cognitive disease hampering communication as well as adaptive skills.

“She was born during the solar eclipse and her head was very small at birth along with the lips and nose being a bit unusual. Every villager who saw her and some of our relatives would call Deepthi pichi (mental) and kothi (monkey) and tell us to send her to an orphanage. Today, seeing her become the world champion in a far-off country proves that she is indeed a special girl,” Jeevanji Dhanalaxmi, Deepthi's mother, told The Indian Express in May.

"When my husband's father died, we had to sell the farm to make ends meet. My husband would earn Rs 100 or Rs 150 a day so there were days when I had to work to support our family, including Deepthi's younger sister Amulya. Deepthi was always a calm child and spoke very little. But when the village kids would tease her, she would come home and cry. So I would make her sweet rice or, on some days, chicken and that's what made her happy."

After her daughter's big feat, Jeevanji's father Yadhagiri was emotional.

"Even though it's a big day for all of us, I could not afford to miss work. That's my bread and butter and the whole day I was thinking about Deepthi winning a medal in Paris and would tell the driver Elfer about calling other friends and their families to celebrate Deepthi's medal. She has always given us joy and this medal will also mean a lot to

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Scholomance - Naomi Novik Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Scholomance (Scholomance) Additional Tags: sentient building, Worldbuilding, POV Nonhuman, the canon is the warning, Canon-Typical Death Rates, Canonical Character Death, School Summary:

The Scholomance watches its children die, in direct violation of its charge, for a hundred years and more.

by @raspberryhunter

[pyjamacardinal]

Pictures of the eclipse by my friend Deepthi, in Indiana today.

[rotationalsymmetry]

My immediate thoughts on the ending of the golden enclaves (spoilers):

I'm happy that El finally figured out how to not only accept her allies sticking with her in a crisis, but actually ask them to. Personal growth!

I do not understand the thing with Orion, but whatever, it's a fantasy story, I'll roll with it. In terms of understanding the plot at least. I'm not sure how I feel about "Orion really did have a monster inside of him that could have destroyed everything, but then it got killed and now he's fine." Wut. It helps that he seems to basically be the same person after. If he'd gone through some sort of personality makeover I would have lost it.

I find it hilarious that El was trying to get Orion to face his supposed trauma as a way of avoiding dealing with her own and her mom absolutely caught on to it. Very human.

I think there's something probably deeply symbolic about El combining the three spells there, I'm not up for unpacking it all but including the Scholomance "shelter all the wise-gifted children of the world" thing but making it real very much reminds me of this poem by Langston Hughes. The whole, it wasn't true but it was a good idea so let's make it true. On that note I imagine Orion is thrilled that he gets to stay in his favorite place and do his favorite activity forever. (Or as long as he lives? I'm not sure whether he's going to end up with a normal human lifespan or not.) And he'll get to see his favorite human at least some of the time.

I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but Orion being afraid he'd drain El's mana is more poignant in retrospect. Apparently there was actually a real risk there.

In terms of real world analogs, I think replacing the enclaves with golden stone enclaves works well as a metaphor for "the capitalist system is fucked up, but if you just tear it all down without a replacement, people will die." I know I was cheering for the burn it all down approach earlier, but the book did in fact do a solid job of showing the problems with that. Little 13 or 14 year old coming home from walking her grandmother's dog and everyone's just gone. Ay.

I'm very happy they found a way to cast the spells that do not rely on El having once in a millennium powers. Ideally they'd also find a way to get rid of maw-mouths that doesn't rely on her once a Millenium powers, but whatever.

I probably would have rolled with it if they'd broken the how enclaves are made news to the world and there was some massive outcry, but I do find it satisfyingly realistic that it's not that simple.

I am still confused about the Orion thing. That one kid from Argentina was OK because his shield was still mostly up. Lu was OK (ish) because the spell had been interrupted. But if someone really did have that done to them, before they were even born, that shouldn't actually be survivable, should it? But if Orion didn't survive, he shouldn't have been a person and he was a person. I don't get it. Gah.

Complaints aside, the ending does work for me. I'm buying it. I'm enjoying El eating edamame with Orion and having birds and butterflies in place of falling snake-things and finally admitting something is nice (personal growth). And it does feel like she's not entirely happy yet, she's not entirely content yet, but she wants to be and she's moving in that direction. I think she's getting there.

And I'm glad El got to reunite with her father's family. I wouldn't blame her if she never forgave Deepthi. But I think it's cool she did, and it really does sound like there weren't better options.

Speaking of lack of better options, it's aggravating that Ophelia made Domina, but...it's consistent with the book's themes that that happened and it doesn't prevent the happy ending. It's not about taking down a specific bad guy, or bad woman as the case may be. It's dealing with systemic bullshit, and actually El can do that without taking Ophelia out. Nice parallel to Liesel letting go of her revenge quest too.

I figure there's a much longer thing to be written about pacifism and themes in the scholomance, but for now: sometimes people get this weird idea that anyone committed to non-violence or anything similar, like not seeking revenge, must have had an incredibly sheltered life with no real problems. Anyways. El is definitely not that. She did have an especially kind mother, but that mother also didn't have a particularly sheltered life and she chose that path anyways. I approve of that narrative choice. (And it doesn't feel like it's floating out in nowhere either. It's grounded, like Avatar the Last Airbender is grounded, in showing all the characters as people. In ATLA, people in the Fire Nation are people, farmers and criminals and guerrilla fighters and soldiers are people, Ozai is a massive dick with an appalling absence of checks on his power but he's still a person. And every time El doesn't like someone, because of their privilege or because they're a jerk, she ends up seeing a different side of them, a way that they're vulnerable or have been hurt, a generous and giving or heroic side to them. Everyone gets to be a person. We don't see enough behind Ophelia's mask I think to really see what kind of person she is (we see more of what's his name, Shanghai Guy's) but we can reasonably assume that she is a person whose motives at least make sense to her.

[bhaskarlive]

Paris Paralympics: India hit 20-medal milestone, surpass Tokyo tally

India surpassed its Tokyo 2020 tally to hit the 20-medal mark for the first time ever in the history of the Paralympic Games and the count is expected increase on Wednesday with the country’s para-athletes continuing their hunt for medals.

After Deepthi Jeevanji pocketed bronze in women’s 400m T20 race on her Paralympics debut in the evening. India added four more medals to its tally in Para-Athletics late on Tuesday night, with two double-podium finishes swelling its tally past it’s Tokyo haul of 19 medals.

Source: bhaskarlive.in

[monstersqueen]

“Because he understood my gift,” Deepthi said, low and terrible. “The Arjun who followed my warning, who lived, would have understood that I had made a choice. That I could have saved one—and so she, and you with her, had been taken in his place. And he refused that choice. There was no future in which he let me save him. So I didn’t warn him. I only gave him my blessing, and let him go.” Let him go despite her own grief, to have a brief time of love uncomplicated by fear, and to make the gift that he’d after all chosen eyes wide open to hand to Mum and to me, in every possible future that Deepthi could see.

oh -

oh i didn't get it the first time - it's not that he didn't want to live without them, or that he'd rather be eaten along with them, or that he couldn't stand to live on when they were traded for him - it's that he understood her. he made sure there was no future in which she could save him. not by accident by refusing to live at their expense, but deliberately. he made sure there was no him or them choice. he deliberately choose that there could not be such a choice. so she would have to choose the future where they lived

in every future where he could have lived he instead choose the same fate than in the one where they lived, so that the one where they lived would be the one she choose

that's. gods. that's -

oh my god

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 15

I mean, imagine living with someone who’s able to see the future, and the outcomes of their own actions. You wouldn’t know if anything they say is because they actually mean what they say, or if it’s the thing that will lead to the outcome they want. Hell, we don’t really know if anything Deepthi says here is what she means, or if it’s what El needs to hear to be able to do whatever it is that she needs to do now that the war has apparently started.

But, like, from the point of view of emotional reality and thematically speaking of course Deepthi and all the rest of El’s family mean it when they say they accept her wholeheartedly. El has had to wield the power that she has without using it against other people, so that she doesn’t become like Orion’s mother. So, this is who she should aspire to be: someone who’s able to live with those she loves, who has to shoulder a huge burden but who’s happy and able to help people.

I also don’t actually like El throwing away New York’s power-sharer. There was a great opportunity for the symbolism that El, who was born out of a union of an Asian man and a Western woman walking into this war with a New York power-sharer and her family’s jewelry. It would have given her a certain kind of legitimacy to when she’ll attempt to mediate between the two sides, so that it doesn’t read completely like a white saviour narrative.

Although she was raised by her mother only, and she spent most of her Scholomance career on the English-speaking side, so she has a lot of that side already.

[ace-and-ranty]

Out of the many soul destroying quotes in the first conversation with Deepthi, there is one small quote that always sets me crying:

“There was no future in which he let me save him”

[metataxy]

Scholomance...

Has anyone considered what El and Orion’s kids would be like?

Spoilery things below>>>

I mean, El is a tertiary order entity and Orion is a human connection to the void with a dozen enclaves metaphorically relying on him.  I THINK their kids should be normal wizard children, since it’s not like El and Orion’s circumstances are genetic.  With that much crazy magic involved though, I wouldn’t swear to it.

Also like, I just really want El to get pregnant because I’m gleefully imagining everyone’s reactions.  Liesel would probably decide that being pregnant at the same time was a great bonding opportunity, figure out El is knocked up before she does, and conspire with Alfie to ensure she and El go through the experience together ;)  Ophelia would be plotting to get time with the grandkids (future pawns?) to spoil them, hopefully not literally.  A bunch of enclaves probably would be desperate to kidnap them as a means of leverage against their parents.  Grandma Higgins and Arjun’s family would just be like, yay, babies! and turn them loose to play with the rest of Deepthi’s horde of grandchildren :D

And when the kids are growing up?  Liesel DEFINITELY would be a super responsable aunt but also do annoying shit like give the kids random tests to check what developmental stage they’re at, magically.  

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