Sivan Arul

Love to interact with mammals and electronic devices than homosapiens except for a few I like.

[Ancient History Hub @AncientHistorry]

Most Romans never once ate a "Roman feast." The real daily diet was way stranger and more human than the movies show.

The staple was puls, a thick porridge of emmer wheat. Poor families ate it morning and night for their whole lives. Rome ran on porridge long before it ran on bread.

Then there was garum. Fermented fish guts left in salt under the sun for weeks until they broke down into a salty brown sauce. It smelled so bad that making it was banned inside some city limits. Romans put it on almost everything. It was their ketchup.

Most people lived in apartment blocks with no kitchen, because open fires in packed wooden buildings meant the whole block burned down. So they ate out. Every street had a thermopolium, a counter with clay pots of hot food sunk into it. Stew, sausage, chickpeas, whatever was cheap that day. Ancient fast food, and you can still see the counters standing in Pompeii.

Meat was a luxury for ordinary people. When they got it, it was usually pork. Sausages, offal, blood, the cheap cuts. Beef was rare because oxen were worth more alive, pulling plows.

Vegetables did the heavy lifting. Cabbage, leeks, onions, garlic, lentils, fava beans, chickpeas. Cato the Elder was so obsessed with cabbage he claimed it cured basically every disease and wrote about using it as medicine.

No sugar existed, so honey was the only real sweetener. They put it in wine, on cheese, even on meat.

Nobody drank plain water if they could help it. Wine was watered down and sipped all day long. Poorer people and soldiers drank posca, a sour mix of vinegar and water that also killed bacteria without anyone knowing why.

And the rich? Totally different world. At elite dinners they served dormice fattened in clay jars and rolled in honey, flamingo tongues, whole roast peacock, and imported spices worth more than gold. One surviving Roman cookbook reads like a dare.

So the true taste of ancient Rome was not marble and grapes. It was porridge, cheap wine, and fish sauce that smelled like a dock at low tide. And they loved it.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@Rainmaker1973 Oh so cute. They run like a cat, a dog, a tiger, a lion—all into one. Two large balls of fur rolling fast on the snow covered mountains. What a sight to watch? 💚💚💚💚💚💚 Someone please save them for the generations to come.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@depressionlesss Orange Mittai, Amudhan, Nanmathi. All three are my pet cats.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@SriramMadras Global south was treated badly. Ignored and trampled upon. But they have risen up under the leadership of India, Brazil, South Africa, China and Indonesia. Similarly we as India's south should unite and rise up. Can't allow them to ignore or trample us. Rise up guys!

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@nanuramu Majority of people have voted in favour of two slogans. As you said 'HINDI is INDIA'. Adding to that 'HINDU is INDIA'. As a democracy, we have no choice but to accept this. 'INDIA for HINDUS and HINDI' is a majoritarian concept that people have accepted. Except TAMIL people.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@nanuramu Except for PV Narasimha Rao, no South Indian has ever completed a full term as PM. The Congress party selected him because at that time they won a huge number of seats in South India and Rajiv Gandhi was no more. They aren't favourable to South Indians either.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@nanuramu Naturally they would be in important positions in the government. Most people know that whosoever wins in the Hindi heartland wins India. So it is natural for them to favour Hindi speaking people. Do you think a south indian from BJP will ever become the PM of India?

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@nanuramu She deserved a Padma Bhushan in the year 1990 not in 2013. That's the reason she probably rejected it, rightly so. Hindus are a majority in India. Hindus have voted in favour of of a party that stands for the majority religion. Hindi is spoken by majority of the people in India.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@TimesNow @shreyadhoundial While I was in awe of the governor who went to Kashmir when militancy was at its peak, I remembered Shreyaji posting a pic of the mountains she climbed—where the Kargil war was fought. Inspirational pic. Not for me. I always feared to go to Kashmir even for a tour. Poles apart

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@TimesNow @shreyadhoundial After having done so many things that a normal housewife can only dream of, she gives such an advice to the girls. She could have spoken about the things she has done in her life which would have motivated the girls and given them the courage to undertake such tasks in life.

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

Japan was our first office outside India and the US. That was 2001.

Yesterday, I visited our office in Yokohama and I'm reminded that we were a small unknown company from Chennai and we chose the hardest market first.

Nobody in Japan buys because of a brand or a pitch. They watch how you behave when something breaks, and if you pass that test they stay with you for decades. That patience got into our engineering culture and never left.

ありがとうございます 🙏

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@hvgoenka Go Gas ⛽

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@TimesNow I don't support reservation just because I belong to a backward caste. But most forward caste people including Shreyaji @shreyadhoundial are against reservation. Why are they so insensitive to the atrocities that were perpetrated on the dalit community over the millennia.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@TimesNow I strongly disagree with Shreyaji's view @shreyadhoundial that affirmative action cannot continue indefinitely. The upper castes subjugated the lower castes for 5000 years and you will end reservation within 100 years. Yeh kaisa insaf hai.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@TimesNow (Cont.) Iran does this because it wants to control the strait because it thinks there is no other way to ensure it's security. US says we can't allow this. So let's bomb Iran to free the strait of hormuz. Was it an MOU or MOM (Memorandum of Misunderstanding)?

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@TimesNow Lot of clarity has emerged from the debate. Firstly both US and Iran could not agree on the strait of hormuz. But both wanted to buy time for whatever reason. So sign an MOU, buy time and let's strategize. Time passes. Iran waits for the right time and attacks.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@TimesNow @shreyadhoundial Movies are an art form to tell stories, real life or otherwise. Censor has suppressed the freedom of expression of the Sikh artistic community. They have withheld the truth. But truth always comes out in the end. SUTLEJ will flow even if you construct dams.

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@sabeer I hate when they say about being the 4th largest economy which does not amount to anything. Nobody talks about the per capita income of the some of the Indian states which are equal to a few African countries. I am not demeaning them, but we need to acknowledge the reality

[Sivan Arul @sivanarul_s]

@sabeer Even I don't think we are rich. The super rich constitute .01% and the rich 1% of the population. The rest of the population comes in various layers such upper class, upper middle, middle, lower middle class, labour class, pavement dwellers, and beggars(.01%).