Universal Grocery List: Fill & Download for Free

The very fact that other Quorans are citing authors like Amish Tripathi, Ravinder Singh, and Chetan Bhagat proves to me how poorly read and hype-driven our current generation is. They cannot even correctly spell the names of these authors and yet have the audacity to call themselves their “fans”.Let that fact sink in while I savor this sweet potato.The OP is seeking recommendation for and I quote, “best Indian writer in this generation”. The best has to be someone who has produced the best piece of fiction in our generation. How do we find such a writer?Simple. We look at the honor rolls of prestigious literary awards. Or specifically, the Man Booker Prize which is really the hallmark of supreme quality.India has had three writers with the godlike award trophy festooning their shelves. These writers are Arundhati Roy (for The God of Small Things in the year 1997), Kiran Desai (for The Inheritance of Loss in the year 2006), and Aravind Adiga (for The White Tiger in the year 2008).As glorious as Aravind Adiga and Kiran Desai are, Arundhati Roy was the first Indian to win that prize. She’s the best Indian writer in this generation.The God of Small Things is not just a book, it’s a masterpiece. It has been included in the academic curriculum at the Oxford University and the Wisconsin School of Humanities, to name a few.Here’s some fun trivia: Arundhati donated all of her Booker Prize money ($30,000) to the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). This shows her nobility.The book has been reviewed and praised by publications like The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Time magazine.In 2013, Talkiyan, a Pakistani serial based on the novel, was aired on Express Entertainment. That’s a first.It has received an unparalleled status for being the first book by a south Asian, female author to have won the Booker Prize. It was India’s first Booker win since the very inception of the prestigious honor some twenty-seven-years ago. It brought attention to the south Asian aspirations and revitalized the Indian literary scene.From the very first paragraph, Roy writes deliciously:“May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.”Conclusion? Read Roy’s fiction and non-fiction books. Hell, even read her grocery list if you can legally get a hold of it.

Everything I am about to write is my OPINION.There is a type of person who is terrified by modernity, especially the advances of science, and especially by Darwin's theory of natural selection. If science can answer such questions as, "Who/what caused that earthquake?" or "what does that fossil represent?", this sort of believer fears that Science will replace Deity, kind of like the way movies replaced the nickelodeon.Fundamentalists believe, or say they believe, that God wrote the Bible; or, if they are slightly more sophisticated, they say that God "inspired" the Bible. Since God is perfect and "inerrant" (incapable of mistakes), therefore the Bible must be as perfect and inerrant as God is. Joshua Engel provides the fundamentalists' self-defense: they're not "worshipping" the perfect and inerrant Bible as a demigod, they're "worshipping" their image of God as projected into their perfect and "inerrant" Bible.In all the Universe, only God is perfect. The Bible is a human artifact. The Bible is not identical with God. Therefore the Bible cannot be as perfect and inerrant as God is. If the Bible were as perfect and inerrant as God is, it would be indistinguishable from God. I myself have no trouble telling the two apart.IN MY OPINION, the grocery list is a false analogy, if only because no grocery lists existed until a relatively few decades ago. The grocery list is a tool, whereas religious scriptures are regarded as a conduit between humanity and the divine. I have never heard anyone say, "God wrote my grocery list. Therefore my grocery list is perfect for all people in all cultures in all eras and can never be changed or even reassessed. If God wants you to eat steak with ice cream on top, then you have to eat steak with ice cream on top, or scream in Hell for all eternity."IN MY OPINION, if a believer devotes significant time and spiritualresources to defending his/her image of the Bible as perfect andinerrant, that believer is guilty of bibliolatry — idolizing not the Bible, a physical object, but rather the believer's image of the Bible. God is infinite, eternal, transcendent, immanent, and omniscient. No human artifact, even the Bible, can encompass God. No human believer can "own" God — not even fundamentalists. Perhaps especially not fundamentalists.

As an Indian, I was raised with the notion that “fun” was an exclusively childhood enterprise.Once I was all grown up and married, I was told I would have to wake up before the birds, to cook for my family.I saw play time organically shrink as I entered my late teens.Studies, chores and talking, replaced cricket in the parking lot and chasing a ball for some made-up game of the day.Badminton and Chess, though were apparently still dignified enough at that age.It was time to be more serious about, I don’t know…life, I guess?!?!I saw busy adults milling all around me, flitting from task to task, typically engaged in stuff that needed to get done.And this was when they weren’t actually at their places of work, with its own attendant workload.While I obviously watched my parents relax and take rest over weekends and holidays, I never saw them actively pursuing their hobbies, interests or indulging in objectively fun stuff, for themselves.The only adults that rode bicycles were the ones too poor to afford motorcycles or cars.No adult around me ever played active games- like basketball or even the less technically intensive courtyard games we had skillfully developed as kids.Discomfort, it seemed, was something adults were primed to avoid, at all cost.Don’t get me wrong! It wasn’t cheerless, though…There was plenty of humor and laughter, but for adults, it was still…somehow, confined.I saw adults being silly, but I never saw a silly adult…Like old shoes and clothes, apparently you outgrew that sort of thing, over time.And to me, this made complete sense.Adult life, it appeared, was serious business….Mail, vehicles, insurance, paperwork, investments, domestic help…there was a ton of stuff to manage…Bills needed paying, kids needed parenting, the household needed attention, time, resources; family needed help, support and company.All time was divided into work time, family time and social time.The concept of assigning time for oneself as an adult, was not a norm I was familiar with.….until I came to the US.In graduate school, I heard wizened old scientists, talking about how much fun a certain course was in their Ph.D program.When I was stressed out for a presentation, my Professor told me to, “…go have fun with it.”Have “fun” with work!? “Enjoy” an assignment?!It was the re-framing of an oxymoron.It is true that at times, adult life seems hopelessly filled with things that need to get done, invisible constrictions and bottomless grocery lists.But, the US taught me that plodding on was not all there was to adult life.I re-learned that adults can, in fact, ride bikes, play board games, engage in active sports, try things that were totally new to them, be outrageously dressed, fall while skiing and laugh uproariously at having made complete fools of themselves.I really don’t think what I’m talking about, counts as a “tradition”.I doubt it could even be called a norm or a practice.But the US, taught me not to take myself too seriously all the time.It did not free me from the responsibilities of adulthood, in fact being an immigrant here adds a fair amount to the adulthood baggage…But, it did free me from the cultural burdens of adulthood, that I had all but accepted as a universal law of nature.And for that, I’m eternally grateful.Thank you for this chance to look back, Catherine MacLeod.