Thought of the day...

Virginia Woolfe's interpretation of incandescence in ‘A Room of Her Own’:
Being independent and owing nothing to anybody is essential to achieve the state of mind necessary to produce great art. With material and financial independence, "no force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine for ever. I need not hate any man; he can not hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me" Material independence grants its owner an emotional independence, it allows one to be free of "grudges and spites and antipathies," to have one's mind unclouded by "alien emotions like fear and hatred". Woolf calls this state of mind "incandescence".

Just wasting time...

This little girl was blissfully playing with her own hands at the Kemps Corner traffic light, creating a little world of fun, all her own.

Dia

I met her at Tanah Lok temple in Bali. She was trying to sell me some colourful souvenirs with quiet desperation on her face. She had no time for my niceties. She was here to do a job. There are plenty of street children in India trying to sell me stuff, but Dia somehow tore my heart with her grown up almond eyes, neat ponytail, clean clothes and sling bag, translucent flawless skin and serious expression. I could not touch her on the head, as I read in The Lonely Planet that here the head is considered the home of the spirit, and it is very rude to touch it. So I just made eye contact and spoke to her gently, asking her to smile and then showing her the photo on my digicam. This somehow brightened her up, until she disappeared into the crowd of tourists, on a mission.

Of dogs and golfers with soft hearts

What you see is the most expensive grass that a golf course would have - "The Green". No one, and I repeat, no one is allowed to step on it without special golf shoes. And no one (except the caddie) could even dream of hanging out there while a golfer is putting towards the hole. But at Tollygunge Golf Club in Kolkata, the rules are different. Here, stray dogs are allowed, loved and welcomed everywhere.

Meet Julie, supposedly 18 years old. I watched her with my heart in my mouth, shuffling with her arthritic legs to The Green, and lying down there, blissfully soaking up the sun. A group of golfers were all around, and one of them cautiously started approaching her. Just when I though he would tap her with his golf club and prod her to go away, he... bent down and patted her with utmost care and affection!!! Julie is also the only dog allowed within The Shamiana - the open air cafe at the club, where players and guests can have tea, snacks or breakfast. She has her own little food and water bowls in a corner, and is a permanent 'fixture' around. She was sleeping peacefully one morning, until a table of elderly gentlemen (the type I would normally assume hate dogs) was served hot steaming omelettes and toast. Almost blind Julie woke up, smelled the air, and slowly limped towards their table. She stood there for good 5-10 minutes, patiently. Until one of the men lovingly cut a piece of omelette and gave it to her, patting her on the head for dessert. The fact is, The Shamiana was full, and everyone's table was laden with delicious treats. Why did she go to this table?

The next day at breakfast, I saw a lady giving Julie her daily dose of vitamins (!). She told me that on days when the kitchen is closed, she comes especially from home to make sure the old lady is fed and happy!

It would have been hard to miss a horde of small puppies running around. In the evening, the club staff secures them in an old concrete tub, and covers them with cardboard, so that the jackals which abound around the premises, don't eat them up at night. Someone is responsible for taking them out at the crack of dawn. And yes, "a doctor did come around last week to check out their skin disease, madam". And part of the watchman's duties is to make sure the puppies stay off the drive in alley of the club (which he demonstrated proudly, gently using a short stick).

Thought of the day...

I recently discovered an amazing blog by Janice, living in DC, a musician fascinated by jewellery. If you need something to spark off your creativity on a dull day, visit http://goddessfindingsjewelsforthespirit.blogspot.com/

I am grateful to janice for publishing an excerpt of one of my favourite books, Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel:

“In 1669, Brandt, a chemist from Hamburg, was searching for the philosophers stone discovered phosphorous. My grandmother Morning Star, she was a Kikapu Indian, she used to say that we’re all born with a box of matches inside. We can’t light them by ourselves. Just like in this experiment, we need oxygen and the help of a candle. Except that in our case, the oxygen has to come, for example, from a lover’s breath. The candle can be anything: a melody, a word, a caress, a sound anything that pulls the trigger and sets off one of the matches, Everyone has to discover what will pull his trigger and enable him to live because it it’s the explosive flair of a match that feeds our souls. If there’s nothing to trigger the explosion, our box of matches becomes damp an then we’ll never be able to light any of them."

So what lights up your inner fire?

American Gangster follow up

I recently saw American Gangster and as I always get super excited about real stories, I decided to read up a bit more on Frank Lucas. And stumbled upon this amazing piece by a New York Magazine journalist who actually spent a whole day with Lucas and recorded his memories. A rare, mesmerizing insight: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/3649/

Glimpses of Kala Ghoda

Once a year, in February, the heritage area of Kala Ghoda ("the black horse", named after a statue which is now in the Byculla Zoo of Bombay), transforms into a bustling non-traffic zone full of street stalls selling crafts and books, open air exhibitions and performances, and all kinds of cool stuff. I love this time of the year!

The nip is still in the Bombay air...

Love, actually...

Have always looked forward to reading The Speaking Tree, the spirituality column in The Times Of India. And I really enjoyed this one. Wishing everyone happy Valentine's Day!

ALL YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT LOVE

By Ashok Vohra, published in The Times Of India, February 14th, 2008
Love is a basic emotion, yet you cannot plan to fall in love or create conditions for being in love. It is something over which you have no control. Either you fall in love or you do not. It is ordained. Ramakrishna explains this with the following analogy: "When a huge tidal wave comes, all the little brooks and ditches become full to the brim without any effort or consciousness on their own part”. However, there are some criteria for judging whether one is in love or not.

The first test is that you do not want exclusive possession of the object of your love. You wish the world to know of your love. You could declare your love from the rooftop. And you wish to do or say whatever makes the person you love happy. M K Gandhi said: "Love and exclusive possession can never go together. Theoretically where there is perfect love, there must be perfect non-possession”.

The second test of love is that there can be no bargain. It does not recognise reward or punishment. Love itself is a merit, and itself its own reward. Beyond itself love seeks neither cause nor outcome; the outcome of it is one with the practice of it. You love something or someone for its own sake and not because you want or desire a favour in return. Love is not a means to some ephemeral or non-ephemeral end, but is an end in itself. Love is not a response to a certain positive situation. You can go on loving... for when you give your love it comes back millions of times more. The notion of giving is so consequential to love that "if you do not give it, it goes, it becomes dead, it becomes a dead weight on you. It becomes hatred — it turns into its very opposite. It becomes fear, it becomes jealousy, it becomes possessiveness”, said Osho.

The third test of real love is the annihilation of the ego. It obliterates the distinction between the self and the other by an unconditional surrender to the other; rather it is a total merger, a complete synthesis with the beloved. In true love the lover and the beloved are one. The sense of your own identity and individuality vanishes. The other, therefore, does not place a limit on the lover’s freedom; rather, communion with the beloved leads to unbound freedom. It frees us from limits imposed on us by our ahamkara — ego.

The fourth test of real love is that it knows no fear. Fear could be of unfulfilled desires. If your love springs from fear of punishment, or from your desires being fulfilled, then it is no love at all. Love and fear are incompatible, because in love there is no place for desire.

The fifth test of love is that you love what you consider to be the best. Therefore, the beloved person, object, or ideal is unique. It is the highest from the perspective of the lover; from others’ perspective it may not be so. For others some other ideal could be higher than this one. But for the lover the beloved is the best.

The sixth test of real love is that the lover does not so much believe in pedantic and powerless reason which merely argues but is not able to establish a direct contact with the beloved. The lover gives up the fruitless intellectual groping in the dark, and trusts his own direct experience. He does not give reasons and argu-ments, nor depend upon inference but depends on direct perception and lived life experience.
The writer is head, department of philosophy, Delhi University

A Day In The Life Of Bombay

- The fascist party of the Shiv Sena is at it again, beating up 'outsiders' and vandalising signs in English. Newspapers are overflowing with letters and interviews where people inanimously say that Bombay is for everyone and its beauty lies in its cosmopilitan natur. Anyone listening?

- a couple drowns (!!!) in the sea near Bandra Bandstand

- real estate prices are soaring - again

- 6 LeT men were arrested just before blowing up bombs at Churchgate station

- a headline in the newspaper says that in the 21st century shining India, child sacrifice (mainly girls) is rampant in West Bengol.

I am angry.

Sick to the stomach.

Speechless.

Furious.

Wondering.

Sad.

Then a phone call comes. Gurtaj tells me that cars on Bombay's busiest intersection all stopped so that a man can shift an injured pigeon from the middle of the road to the foot path.

I am hopeful.

Kinky Boots

Mom and I had a movie marathon recently, and caught one of the best feel-good movies I have seen recently - Kinky Boots. A very Brit comedy, I found out today that it was actually based on a true story: Charlie Brown's family has been running a shoe factory for more than hundred years. And just as Charlie decides to defy the family tradition and move out of town, his father dies and he has to take over the reins of the factory. He very soon finds out that his father has been steadily losing business without telling anyone. After laying off several people, Charlie decides to do something to save the factory... A chance meeting with a drag queen, Lola, changes everything... And soon they come out with their very own collection of drag queen foot wear (built to support the weight of a man on stilettos). Really cool, really light, and really inspiring.

THE KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL, By Deborah Rodrigues

Just finished reading this book and I am eager to share with everyone Debbie's incredible story. At first glance, a small-town American hairdresser volunteering in war-torn Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, would have strictly nothing to do there. But here's a typical, amazing example of being at the right place at the right time, and turning a small advantage into something much bigger than yourself.

Shyly standing amongst her co-aid workers, Debbie listens at everyone being introduced as doctor, epidemiologist, educator, and dreads what explanation would be given about her presence there. But at the moment she is introduced as a hair dresser and beautician, the whole room of foreigners living in Kabul erupts with applause, and before she knows it, she is busy, from morning to evening, cutting hair, giving highlights and pedicures to people from all different nationalities.

From here comes an idea, which, little she knows, will start a mini-revolution in the lives of many an Afghan women. Debbie realises that in the patriarchal Afghani culture, being a hairdresser or a beautician, is one of the very very few professions which give a woman the legitimate reason to leave her home and earn money. So she decides to start a beauty school, as a mean of empowerment and livelihood for Afghani women. Back in the US, she starts collecting donations from customers and even manages to involve big cosmetics companies to contribute money and supplies for the school. Ecstatic, she goes back to Kabul (leaving her mother and two teenage sons back in America) and thus starts a story worth a blockbuster - a lone American woman struggles with prejudice, threats to her security, finances, the rough conditions in the country and bureaucracy, to not only initiate social change, but also change her own life forever (getting a glimpse of life behind the veil, committing every possible cultural faux pas, and even marrying an Afghan man 10 years younger than her - knowing she is his second wife). This is a story of incredible guts, living life to the fullest, of unlikely friendships, and a simple truth I only too well understand - sometimes it is hard to change an injustice happening right in front of your eyes. It is not easy to go into a country with such harsh realities and ancient, rigid culture, and just wave a magic wand. It needs a lot of patience, understanding, treading with a velvet glove.

Another moral of the story for me, personally, is: even if you are wondering about a place and thinking 'what the hell am I doing here?', you never, absolutely never know what life has in stock for you, and sometimes the most unexpected thing can empower you and give a meaning to your existence.

Read more on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/11/DDG5SP5EOE1.DTL

CLICK!

Recently, stuck at home with high fever and an awful cough, too tired to work online or even read, I found solace in some long-forgotten daytime TV. Sweating it out under a blanket, amongst mountains of used tissues and swigging from a bottle of nicely intoxicating cough syrup, I spent two days into a blur of movie repeats, soap operas and shows that I would normally miss while in office the whole day.

PASS THE SOAP!

THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Can you believe this is still going on? I mean, at this point, everyone has married and re-married everyone possible in this series; Brooke has conceived every single or married hero’s child; Stephanie has plotted and implemented an evil plan against every woman her sons cast an eye upon; all imaginable disappeared or illegitimate relatives have shown up… Many of the heroes already have gray hair. But no, the action continues, and honestly, even if you have missed a few hundred episodes, there’s no problem in catching up thanks to nagging flashbacks. And yes, Brooke is still sleeping around and crying, Ridge is still not sure about her, and Stephanie is still as evil as can be.

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
This is where The Bold and The Beautiful rejects live a parallel life, with their own affairs and plots. Switched channels within 5 minutes.

THE BEST OF FRIENDS
Did you know that Zee Studio shows back to back episodes of Friends?! I didn’t, and it made my day. This is one show which never bores me or tires me up. Each joke is a gem, each episode is unique!

HEROES
Ok, everyone is watching it. But allow me not to be part of the herd. Already past the freshness of the first few episodes, the protagonists’ tricks and travails have become like something the dog chewed on and then left in a corner – stale and boring. I love the way Claire (Hayden Panettiere) has transformed from a high school cheer leader into a beautiful young woman, and the Brit accent of India-born Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), but that’s about it…

NEVER WATCHED BEFORE…

HANGING UP
I was ecstatic to catch this movie with Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton and Lisa Kudrow. I had read some reviews and was looking forward to a feel-good two hours. But fell flat on my face. I didn’t quite understand why the two sisters played by Diane and Lisa never went to visit their dying father, while a Mother Theresa-ish Meg never left his bedside despite all the mean things he had said to her. And the three sisters dynamics was somehow weak. At least it helped me fall asleep…

REEL TO REAL

WIFE SWAP
The person who invented the concept must have been a genius, and the way the show has been shot and edited is just brilliant. Imagine two families, can’t be more different from each other than that (a couple with two sons and a daughter living as pirates vs a super-organised household where each and every thing is labeled; or a family where the kids have to go to the bathroom on schedule and sign against their daily chores graph vs a family where the three sons are allowed to do whatever they want, with mommy succumbing to their every wish). The two wives swap homes for two weeks. The first week, they have to live as per the existing household rules. The next, they have the right to implement their own rules. Watch the fun as clashes and fights occur, while also subtle, gentle change happens, and both families find balance in their extreme existences.

COOKING UP A STORM

I could finally get a glimpse of the much talked-about celebrity chef Nigella Watson and see for myself what all the fuss is about. Men find her very sensual – tick against that point – I agree nature has gifted her the right assets (and some more, having in mind that at the end of the program they showed her going to the fridge at night and polishing off the leftovers). However, I found her drawl very unappetizing, and her cooking too oil-heavy.

KYLIE KWONG
From the way she talks food, to the frequent “mmmm”s interspersing her demos, everything about this program is absolutely delicious! I watched her for half an hour, mesmerized and hypnotized, dishing out a Peking Duck with plum sauce and fresh condiments. And decided the first thing I’ll do after getting better is dust my cookbooks and re-arrange my pantry.

ANTHONY BOURDAIN: NO RESERVATIONS
This man’s taste for adventure and unusual flavours is just too sexy! The way he can describe a place and its food, and mingle with the locals, is extremely down-to-earth, honest and raw. Love it!

PAST PERFECT
It’s official – daytime TV gets all the old, done to death movies. Several times I got stranded flicking channels for something decent to watch, only to end up recycling ancient UFO movies and horror flicks (although I must say they are much less scary during the day – The Grudge would normally get me screaming with nightmares, but this time I survived through it like I would through an episode of Sesame Street). However, I was very happy to catch up on an old favourite of mine - Practical Magic, with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. Brought up by two aunts who are witches, these two sisters are also witches, and so are Sandra’s character’s two daughters. It is a cute, heart-warming story about love, family, loss, fighting and making up. Plus, I can’t remember a movie where Sandra has looked more sexy, feminine and absolutely beautiful! A must-see! I balanced the very girlie aftertaste of this movie, by watching, back-to-back, The Jackal. Bruce Willis and Richard Gere… Need I say more?

Only in Bombay...

... you can see "Shantaram", or ex-Australian convict and now a bestselling author of the book with the same name Gregory David Roberts, and the princess of Sweden, riding a beautiful black motorcycle on Regal Circle. Both in leather jackets, she, sporting oversized shades. Both in their late 50s, they are nevertheless gorgeous - tall, slim, fit and both with long blond hair.

Between worlds

This is an excerpt from Anthony Bourdain's book NO RESERVATIONS, based on the TV show with the same name (airing on Discovery Travel + Living). It really "spoke" to me, althought he talks about travel to many different places.

"... When you're a tourist on vacation, coming home means coming back to real life: familiar places, relationships, work, love, the rent... But when you travel for a living - when "work" is drinking ayahuasca with a jungle shaman or standing on a glacier, when you're as likely, on any given day, to be trudging down a riverbed in Borneo as standing in line at Starbucks - you start to ask yourself: Which of these is my "real" life? And if the answer is that the road is the real thing, how do you go back? How do you pick up your old life, your normal life, after you've seen all this? Returning to grilled cheese and bacon, or even a good piece of fish - sauteed Western style with a drizzle of butter sauce and microgreen garnish - seems flat and lifeless after experiencing the colours and condiments of Asia. The expectations of a meal become distorted... The clothes you see and wear back home seem shapeless and washed out... The bar at the W hotel in Westwood starts to seem alien, airless and sterile. And you fear that one day you will look at your friends and loved ones and think: "I was sitting under a bouquet of human skulls, drinking rice whiskey and eating wild pig with my new headhunter buddies last week. How do I feign the appropriate level of interest in everyday things?" It has been said that we find out more about ourselves when we travel than about the places we visit. And it's true that I always look for a universality - some common ground, a unified theory of human behaviour. A comfortable takeaway that would describe the world and the behaviour of everyone in it."