xp_logs | Korvus and Layla: Medlab Visit

Korvus brings Layla tandoori chicken and they speak about religion and what her kara means. It might not have been the best time.

Korvus had heard Layla was under medical watch and he expected she might like some company. "American television says that hospital food is unacceptable." He announced as he entered the medlab while carrying a covered tray that smelled strongly of curry spices. "And that people under medical care get even more lonely than you often tend to be already."

"There's a lot of Jell-O," the blonde in the hospital bed complained. The docs promised to spring her soon, but she.basically ate a ton and slept all day so it didn't really matter where she was. Company was good, though, even if she was still a bit gloomy. Though Layla wasn't nearly as depressed as she had been all December. "What'd you bring?"

"Tandoori Chicken. I am unable to test it by taste to make sure it is palatable but I thought it may be something high in protein you would enjoy." Korvus offered with a smile as he made room for the tray on a table in reach. "I suspect you do not eat with your hands as much as is common in India. It should be similar to your grilled chicken and familiar enough for you to comfortably eat it without utensils."

"Why can't you test it? Are you a vegetarian?" Layla was pretty sure she would die if she was a vegetarian. Especially since like every three hours she was convinced she was starving to death. She managed to get upright, but Layla was breathing is bit more heavily by the end of it. She even seemed to get a bit paler than she already was. "Chicken is totally eat with your hands territory though. Thanks." After her breathing normalized again she reached for a piece and bit in. It smelled amazing.

"I am." Korvus nodded. "I have not eaten any meat from a tandoori in years but I remember it being exceptionally juicy." He said with a smile, watching as she tried it. He had become used to spicing things less intensely when making them for people who hadn't been acclimated to the amount he was used to.

She smiled as she chewed and hummed a content sound. This was...amazing. "I didn't even know there was an Indian restaurant around here," she said after swallowing an while fumbling with the control to raise the back of her bed up. Flopping backward was totally necessary because being upright took effort. Way more effort than Layla thought it was supposed to take.

"There is not. A tandoori is made of clay. They are not difficult to construct; it is why they are popular." Korvus explained, probably more than he needed to.

That was confusing. "Huh? So there's not an Indian restaurant but there's a Tandoori place? Does Salem have like a mad love of Tandoori to keep 'em in business or something?"

Korvus laughed and shook his head. "No, I prepared the meal. I would not have been able to retrieve a meal from the city before it grew cold."

The expression on Layla's face was priceless. She had a chicken leg raised, teeth partly biting into the meat, but frozen with wide eyes staring at him. She held that way for a prolonged moment before she tore off a considerably smaller bite than she was aiming for, quickly chewed and swallowed. "Hold up, you built a tandoori? And then made this for me yourself? For real?"

"Well, I made the tandoori for us all." Korvus offered. "I did spice and cook the chicken for you myself."

She was back to staring. Layla threw in a blink every now and then for variety. "Dude. Wow. I mean...dude. Thanks. I mean, if I was the kinda touchy feely person who like hugged people or kissed them or whatever I totally would. But I'm not. I like my personal bubble and my bubble does not wanna rub all up on your bubble. So, uh, you can like imagine the hug or something, okay? But, whoa, thanks. That is awesome." Another bite of chicken put a temporary end to the rapid-fire spewing of words, but once she swallowed she picked up without missing a beat. "I don't even know what a Tandoori is or looks like or whatever. Is it easy to use? Can you teach me to use it to cook stuff? Do you know how to make any Indian desserts?"

"It is a clay oven. It is very easy to use." Korvus said after a moment's pause to catch up with the quick statements. "And I have been learning how to make many Indian dishes on Skype with some of my prior friends."

"Wait, you're just learning how to make stuff?" The question came after another bite of chicken, though the words came out slower than a moment before. Apparently talking really fast used a lot of oxygen and breathing fast was sort of hard. "You should learn like...non-Indian stuff too. 'Cause, you know, land of many many cultures over here. And that means lots of really fucking awesome food."

"I wanted to be capable of making traditional Indian meals for... comfort." Korvus said with a sheepish smile. "It is nice to have something familiar here."

"And no one else here is Indian either, right?" Layla frowned. "That makes sense. Why don't you just get a cookbook instead of learning from friends on Skype? Then you don't need to like coordinate two way different timezones and shit."

Korvus shook his head. "Oh no. A cookbook would be inaccurate and impersonal. It is a good reason for me to speak with friends in India and a topic. Cooking can be a very social event and then we share a meal over great distance."

She was frowning again. "But then you're taking a social thing and being totally antisocial about it," she pointed out. "I mean, you get to see your friends over Skype or whatever but eating together on like video chat or whatever is still sort of...I dunno. Not really togetherness or whatever. And you're not being social with any of the people who are actually around you. So why not cook with people here? Social plus food minus your being antisocial about it." Layla shrugged. "Just a thought. But I, like, feed everyone strudel and cookies and shit so maybe I've got like personal bias or something."

"I do not find the physical proximity to be important." Korvus shrugged. "I plan many activities with my friends here and sometimes we cook together as well."

She shrugged again and took another bite of chicken. "As long as you're not playing loner boy. You totally shoot yourself in the foot by holding onto all your friends who are in a totally different place so much you don't really make friends where you are, y'know? Foster kids do that all the time. They try to just stay with their old friends but eventually they move the fuck on and then you get left behind trying to grab onto air. Totally counter productive."

"My friends in India are few. It is not a problem I assure you." Korvus said with a smile. "When you are finished eating, perhaps I can show you how to grip your kara."

"You're doing this while I'm weak and useless on purpose, aren't you?" Layla gave him a somewhat lopsided smile. "I see how it is. You're worried I'll get over enthusiastic and then you'll end up with a kara to the nuts or something. But don't worry, I'm too tall to hit you that low without effort anyway." As she went to take another bite Layla flashed him a grin.

"I believe you said someone is teaching you how to punch. I will only need to show you how to hold a kara." Korvus offered helpfully, missing most of the joke.

He really did not appreciate Layla's wise cracking. That was sad but if she pointed it out the whole point would be ruined anyway. The blonde shrugged it off, finished the piece of chicken she had been eating and then found a paper towel on the table next to her bed. Once her hands were cleaned off she pulled the kara off her right wrist and held it out to Korvus. "Alright, oh wise one, instruct away."

Exactly as one would expect, Korvus ran his fingers through the ring, half pushing against his palm and the other half arched out in front of his knuckles as he made a fist. "That is all." He said with a helpful smile before opening his hand to offer it back to her.

Layla took her kara back and slid it over her fingers. Her thumb hooked around it rather than going through it and her fingers curled around one side, nestling it into her palm. There was at least an inch of space between her fingers and the far curve of the kara, much more space than there had been when it was around Korvus' hand. "Really? That's it? I mean, it makes sense." She punched lightly into her empty palm with the kara. "You'd, like, break bone really easily if you used this as long as you can keep the kara from slipping or rotating in your grasp, huh?"

Korvus nodded. "I asked about it slipping or rotating. He assured me it was not a problem and, when I punched with it, I found the shape helped it push back against your palm so it would stay in place upon impact. When you are not striking a target hard it may feel imbalanced in the way a motorcycle feels unsteady at low speed."

"Now who's explaining with bad examples?" She wagged a finger at Korvus. "I've never been on a motorcycle. Okay, I get your point. I'll have to try it out...uh...when I'm pretty sure I can throw an actual punch without falling over." Her smile was a bit weak, but that was par for the course since she had gone and collapsed.

"If I may be of further assistance, please let me know." Korvus said, resting his hand on her forearm for just a moment to convey sincerity. She had said she didn't like being touched so it was a very short gesture.

"Thanks, I'll let you know if I need help with it or whatever." The touch made her sort of squirm on the inside, but squirming on the outside took energy Layla didn't have so mostly her smile took on an odd, slightly strained quality. "So am I the only one who thinks it's weird that something you can use for self-defense or fighting is also a symbol of the..uh, how'd you put it? Totality of God?"

Korvus laughed softly. "When we say God we mean very different things. In India, Brahman is the essence of all things. The kara is, for the initiated Sikh, a handcuff to remind them that they can not escape from the effect their actions have upon others and the effects of others actions upon themselves. We are all Atman within Brahman; we are all the same." He didn't know all the Sikh words for the concepts so he made due with Hindi.

"Brahman is the thing that does not change." Korvus gave a little smile. "I am sorry if that does not provide you with any deeper understanding. Western religion is very different in this regard."

"Eh. There's enough kinda similar stuff to sorta understand?" Maybe. Well. Sorta.

"Christianity has this sort of God is in everything belief, right? So Brahman is sort of like that, right? He's the sort of...soul of everything. People, rocks, animals, trees. Right? Or is the whole 'he' thing wrong? Is Brahman a he or an it or a non-gendered entity type...thing? Christian God is always He, which I think is sort of stupid but I didn't write the Bible or, uh, ascribe the pronouns or whatever." Layla was mostly sure that mostly made sense. Maybe.

"Oh no. Brahman is not even a person." Korvus said with a soft laugh; It was good-natured. He waved an arm to indicate the things around them, trying his best to explain very different beliefs without becoming too wordy. "This is all Maya... illusion is it's best translation, maybe. Brahman is the thing that causes the illusion. The God your kara is meant to remind you of is not a religious figure but a philosophy. Some Hindu are religious and some Sikh are too but it is not necessary like it is to be Christian."

Korvus searched for an idiom for a moment. "It is to say that we are all in this together."

"How do you believe in something like a, uh, unifying force?" She wasn't sure that was right but it was the best she could think of to put Brahman into Layla-terms. "But not be religious? Here we would call it a religion, not a philosophy. I don't get the difference." She looked down at her kara and finally opened her hand so she could slide it down to hang on her arm. "I get that Brahman is not a humanoid entity figure like the Christian God. And it's like this force that causes you to see what's around you, but how is believing in that not a religion? Or is it like...I dunno, looked at the way we look at science? I mean, you can't prove Brahman the way you can prove gravity, but it's the same sort of thing like how you relate to it? Like, yeah, I can drop something and gravity pulls it down, but I just sort of accept that it's gravity doing it. Like, I accept that there is oxygen everywhere. I can't prove it on my own but I accept it as a fact. So...the Sikh? They accept that Brahman is there, causing this illusion and being the sort of, uh, tie that binds everything together?" Actually, she probably got that all wrong.

Korvus listened quietly and intently before shaking his head. "Um, that was not right. I believe it is difficult for me to explain in English. When a person sees a thing, they see the light, not the thing. Maya is the light, Brahman is the thing. It is not religion any more than belief that the light is coming off an object is religion. It simply must be the case."

"So like science. Only, uh, not science science. Like mythology science. Wait, is it offensive if I call it mythology? But, I mean," she cut herself off. What the fuck did she mean? Layla reclined her bed so she was mostly laying down and shifted onto her side so she could look at Korvus. A low, unhappy moan came as she moved. God, every fucking muscle in her body hated her and wanted her to die. "Okay, so, you know how mythologies came about so people could like explain the stuff around them that they didn't get because they didn't have science yet? So, like, Zeus caused thunder storms and shit like that? Well, I mean, Brahman isn't causing a thunder storm, Brahman would be the thunder storm. Not that Brahman's a thunder storm. Or, I guess Brahman is a thunder storm, and like everything else. So Maya is what we see but Brahman is...the truth behind what we see? Like...the seed, sort of? And everything comes from the same seed because you said it's all interconnected, right?"

"Not like mythology." Korvus shook his head. "It is not offensive but it is not that. Brahman is a very difficult concept. Many people never fully understand it because it requires a lot of philosophical thinking."

"Sooooo...." Even when she cut the word off several syllables after when it should have ended the O sound continued in her head and distracted her. Layla blamed the fact that her head was sorta swimming. It did that a lot since she had woken up. She shook her head eventually, trying to clear the sound from it. "Not just me being dense? Awesome. I love when it's not my fault."

Korvus reassured her with a smile. "No, not just you."

"Awesome." Layla grabbed another piece of chicken. "We should like try this again when I don't sorta feel like death warmed over though. Maybe I'll get it better then. Oooor, okay, I probably won't. But I can try!"

"Trying is far more important than 'getting it,' I assure you." Korvus said with a smile.

She grinned and tore off another bite of chicken. "Translation: Layla wins!"