![\"\"](\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/11\/silver2.jpg?w=300\" "\\"silver\\"")
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Many moons ago I found myself in the erstwhile Portuguese enclave of Daman, out for \u00a0the weekend. In those days- and perhaps even now- Daman (and Diu) offered a variety of forbidden fruits to adjacent (and dry)<\/em> Gujarat. The Union Territory also had a reputation of sorts- people would casually point out smugglers’ houses that just seemed to be everywhere.\u00a0<\/em>Added to which there was a pervading air of the exotic: families that spoke only Gujarati and Portuguese, the colonial architecture, the Avenidas, the Alamedas, crossing \u00a0the Daman Ganga river that \u00a0separates Nani Daman from Moti Daman standing in a boat… and all within a few hours of the TIFR, Mumbai where I was then a fidgety Visiting Fellow.<\/p>\n At dinner one night I found the fried pomfret that I had ordered to be exceptionally good. I’m not much of a foodie, but I recall it was excellent, good enough that I ordered another. But\u2026 the second pomfret<\/strong> just did not taste as good.<\/p>\n I’ve often wondered\u00a0why. Perhaps the two fish differed in quality\u2026 Maybe the first was not as good as I thought it was in the first place\u2026 Maybe the first took the edge off the hunger, and so the second just did not seem as good\u2026 Maybe different cooks\u2026 Do the taste buds change after the first bite\u2026 Who knows, but I do recall both emotions clearly, the pleasure of the first and the disappointment of the second. I guess this was just my personal rediscovery of Heraclitus, that you cannot step into the same river twice\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many moons ago I found myself in the erstwhile Portuguese enclave of Daman, out for \u00a0the weekend. In those days- and perhaps even now- Daman (and Diu) offered a variety of forbidden fruits to adjacent (and dry) Gujarat. The Union Territory also had a reputation of sorts- people would casually point out smugglers’ houses that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paG6mN-au","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}