Everyday Musings > Good, Evil and the Greys

Any battle where there are two sides - good and evil - is an easy one. Which is possibly why Religion and Fairytales are often a sanctuary for many. They seem to offer a choice of either-or premises where one is marked 'Good' and the other 'Evil'. And one needs to pick a side, preferably the Good one. It's peaceful, simple and the blanket tag absolves us of relative thought. It's a sorted life.

In a world of no clear definitions, where we do not have a simplified for-and-against in our daily lives, culpability is never absolute. There are the teeming Greys we need to account for and that requires deeper thought. Every decision then is a study of context and actions are relative. One definition will not fit all. It can be frustrating.

Those who fight a Good and Evil battle are playing an easy but dangerous game - Corporations (evil) - Common man (good), Politicians (evil) - Common man (good), Synthetic (evil) - Organic (good), Respect (good) - Irreverence (bad), Patriotism (good) - Criticism (bad), Participation (good) - choosing to not be part of the popular sentiment (bad); it is one that seems to offer power, confidence and clarity, but in reality encourages injustice, prejudice and herd-like collective thought.

When one delves deeper into Religion or looks into the symbolism in Fairytales, things are not sorted - there are more questions than answers - it is an unending quest. Good vs Evil was a simplification, a placebo for life. The game of the Greys requires constant weighing - to look beyond and identify the source of issues, to deal with them as individuals instead of as an collective, to question popular sentiment and apply deliberate judgement with each incoming issue.

Does that mean that this is the Good way and that was Bad? No. It simply means we have more choices than we think we do.

Everyday Musings > The Immortals

Read a quote by Mik Everett that said "If a writer falls in love with you, you will never die."

I feel it is true of all believers and lovers - be they artists, priests or fans.

To love or believe in something is to prolong its life by attaching the life of the person who loves/believes.

If it is carved into stone or made into a monument, then it takes on the life of the material the lover/believer breathed it into. Or till a non-lover/believer takes it down.

The Gods that stay on are the ones that have lovers/believers who have lasted and passed on their beliefs. Mona Lisa lives on because Da Vinci chose to paint her and make her important. Osho, Rilke, Che, Gibran, Thoreau, Gandhi – each has had their believer/lover that accorded them a state of everlasting life by giving them their own lives to live in.

We make things important when we attach ourselves to them. Successful brands understand this well. And seek to create attachment by creating desire and connection. Those who wish for eternal life need only to make an impression on things that will live on beyond and long after them – make others believe in/love them. Though once adopted, the nature of the subject or object that is loved or believed in takes on the impressions of the one that loves and believes in it. Is it then, the original, or a regurgitation of the original - a Chinese whisper that may, over time, not even resemble what it originated from.

We are all capable of receiving this gift of immortality - only we will not be around to see if it eventually turns out to be blessing or a curse.

Everyday Musings > The Big C

In our growth as civilised nations, time has been defined by certain events - Industrial Revolution, Nuclear Energy, Liberalisation, Outsourcing, and for a while now, it seems to be rolling around Design. An after-effect seems to be a reverence for Creativity as something hallowed.

Creativity is a built-in feature within every living body - not an added accessory that one needs to pay or pray for. We are all creative just as we are all living beings, so calling someone Creative is akin to saying, hey, meet a Living Creature. It is a survival instinct that when used in different ways, could lead to different results. Just like our breath, a built-in response, that could be modulated to sing with depth, to run more effectively, to calm oneself down or to regulate the flow of Oxygen and Carbon-Di-Oxide in the body through Pranayama.

Being reverential to Creativity creates a distance - it is something to be enjoyed, delight in and utilise as much as we'd like to - not something we need to use to feel superior about or aspire to as we would for something outside of us.

There is another C however that I aspire to, one I hope will define the next era we are moving into - Compassion. Unlike Love, Compassion, I believe, is not in-built. It needs to be given birth to and needs practice to be kept alive. Love, like Creativity, is a survival instinct, a reflex that indicates ownership and attachment to a few. Compassion is empathy and affection for all beings. It's not about pleasing everyone, or turning a blind eye to ills or even being wise. It is understanding inter-connectedness in the Universe. The Dalai Lama, an advocate and a great practitioner of Compassion says here, "Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress and behaviour.There is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences because our basic natures are the same...I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. it is the practice of compassion...I must emphasize again that merely thinking that compassion and reason and patience are good will not be enough to develop them. We must wait for difficulties to arise and then attempt to practice them."

As our personal world turns too big for us to accommodate our limited capacity to Love and the outer world turns so small that the closeness of strangers kicks in our flight or fight response, the big C leads to the big Q - will we go with our survival instincts or will we choose to practice a new way of being?

Everyday Musings > Guest Relations

V and I had guests over today. From the moment we know they're expected till the time they ring the doorbell, we inevitably live their lives and see what they would see, need or feel - dusting top shelves if it's going to be a tall guest, scanning for sharp objects if a child is coming along, double checking if a shaking chair leg has been fixed if it's someone elderly, keeping spare toothbrushes handy if someone is staying on, laying out bathroom slippers to keep feet dry, keeping a bottle in to chill if they prefer their water cold - entertaining guests has cultivated an outside eye into our world and theirs. The little rituals help us walk through unfamiliar doors till we understand and embrace another side.

As I sat down after the day was done, I wondered about guests and hosts. Of both as familiar strangers who form a symbiotic pact to nurture one another every time they meet. We have no dearth of guests in India; when the mortal ones are not visiting, the immortal ones are invited over - we paint Rangolis, light lamps and incense, have all nighters with music and devotional songs - in the hope that good fortune will visit us again and again. We are taught to be good hosts regardless of our circumstance in life and how much we may have or not have.

It led me back into my own life. I recollected how I was, reflected on how I am and imagined how I would be and realised that I had played host to a lot of I's. Had I been a generous host or was I stingy about exhausting all I had? Had I held back because of prejudice and inner conflict? Had I entertained and enjoyed their company? Some I's were long-awaited guests (I finally feel wise after all these years), some surprise guests (I had no idea I could make such a big move), some cherished guests (I was so free spirited when I was 19), some unwanted(I hate myself right now). Some I had been gracious with, some I had rushed through, some I hadn't understood at all, some I still loved. Each 'I' was a familiar stranger, me but not me. As if I had walked in their shoes awhile, then said goodbye and moved houses.

There is a new 'I' visiting soon. I'm busy organising a bit of clutter, dusting some old beliefs, wiping off a bit of hesitation and picking a new menu for thought. The doorbell is ringing. It's time to be a new host.

Everyday Musings > Surprise!

I've spent my life thinking I love surprises. Till one day it hit me. Coincidences I find interesting, chance happenings are fun and serendipitous moments are lovely. But most man-made surprises I truly dread. The Online Etymology Dictionary expresses how I see it - "unexpected attack or capture". It also adds that the term 'surprise party' was originally a military term used in the 1840s and it made its way into the social circuit in 1858. I wonder who first thought it would be a great idea to test a battle strategy on unarmed civilians.

I remember behind-the-door boo's that never seemed funny. Or the sudden cupping of eyes with a cheerful 'Guess Whoooo' or a dancing on the phone lines of someone who wanted to play 20 questions before they told me their name. Or a room full of people yelling 'surprise' as I walked in hoping for a peaceful night off. Surprises, to me, are like pianos hurtling from an upstairs balcony - they may have the potential to sound sweet but I feel it's advisable to flee.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who love surprises. Politicians surely do; they always seem to spring one or have one sprung on them just before a major election. In USA, it even has its own name, October Surprise. Oprah's audience was constantly surprised. In fact, if they weren't, they would have been surprised. Even cynics seem to like them, as this town in Arizona seems to suggest - it was named Surprise by its founder, Flora Mae Statler as she "would be surprised if the town ever amounted to much.

I don't hate all surprises though. There are some that are lovely - like a witty comment in the middle of a serious speech, bits of poetic prose in an otherwise racy novel, a compliment when I thought I looked dishevelled, charming things Su bundled in for our shared birthday, the compassionate offering of food while I was stuck in a monsoon traffic jam for hours in Mumbai, a child who once ran to hug me, a vegetable tote that a chef gifted me at a restaurant once, thoughtful gestures V brings into my day, the lovely Murakami diary Pa posted to me, and this one today. I am writing again. :)

Everyday Musings > Shift

I love watching crime fiction, whodunits and law series. There’s something beautiful about crime solving - the methods, the characters, the deductions, the coming together of facts, the final reveal.

The more I see them, the more I feel there is yet another vital element in their success.

The hero/heroine is always the one who gets it.

While that sounds obvious, when one studies it as a genre, it is ironic. The writers are shifting reality all the time. In TV series such as The Suits and Shark, lawyers have all the answers, whereas in CSI, the lab solves it every time. In Body of Proof, the Medical Examiner is the most intelligent. In Poirot, the private detective is the cleverest. In Marple, it’s an old lady, who lives in a little village, who puts it all together while the police stand baffled. In Law and Order, it is the official representatives of the government who matter. Each of these series has one point of view, and that is always related to the hero/heroine.

It is, in that sense, linear. When seen on the whole, as a genre, there is no one reality we can go home with. So whatever character becomes the hero, the world shifts to his/her gaze. It’s an amusement park with a bunch of rides and the one you pick will take you on its particular path.

It made me think of life – and how we are constantly living in shifting realities.

If working in advertising, ads seem bigger than life, brands seem life changing, and it feels like everyone is or should be excited about the 350th potato chip brand to be launched soon. If in social service, then one sees people being marginalised everywhere, suffering wherever one looks and feels the world spends too much time and money on trivial things like potato chips.

Often we can see our reality shift when we change jobs, change industries, move to another country/city, join a new gang of friends. We orient ourselves accordingly, absorb a new language, realign our loyalties and possibly our thoughts and beliefs. Sometimes, we move out of one reality into another, and hate everything about it. It doesn't align to the reality we knew and we want it returned to us.

The idea of shifting realities takes away the concreteness of right and wrong, the certainty of true and false that we often use to measure our lives by. And brings with it another shift.

If this is true, then there is no reality, except the one we choose.

Everyday Musings > The Ant, The Grasshopper or something else.

A while ago, V and I were watching a group of 60-something folks at a get-together. They had worked hard, saved their money, and were now finally living the life they had always wanted to live. V wondered if that was the ideal path to chart a life - work hard first, enjoy later. I felt it had been true for them, but would not for us.

Even though all of us set out to create our own individual destiny, each generation seems to have its own response to the time it lives in. In my own amateur way, I tried to decode what I meant.

Post-independence, India was ideal for entrepreneurs as a new nation needed industry where it was imperative to take risks and think big. The idealism of pre-independent India still reigned and plans for the future were nation-centric. Thus then, to think big would be in the air. The generation that came after felt the need to sustain the life force of the nation and thus the Middle Class rose. They worked hard and saved to enjoy later. Their goals being to secure the basics in a growing population. People started to move from villages to the cities as agriculture no longer gave them the life they aspired for. There were much demand for respectable government jobs that one could stick to till retirement and later enjoy a pensioner's life.

The generation after needed to do something drastic to jump the stagnation of jobs. They moved out of the country, worked abroad, found any job they could, because they wanted to make something of their lives, they wanted to be rich and successful. Money order economies came about. Few returned. My generation thus had relatives living abroad, Misha magazines, cultural exchange programmes and later, the internet and the rise of creative professions. It was also part of the brain drain - educated people travelling abroad to share their intelligence. The present generation travels, but to experience, to be part of another culture, to widen their perspective of the world. It is seeking meaning perhaps. Much earlier than most would have in the past.

I read The Ant and the Grasshopper story as a child. Hard working ant saving up for a harsh winter. Happy-go-lucky grasshopper living it up and regretting it. I think we are somewhere in between. Tim Ferriss, in his book The Four Hour Work Week, speaks of mini-retirements taken throughout. Work some, enjoy some and so on. What has also altered the glory of retirement is the progress in medicine - we are now living longer lives, and thus will have a much longer retirement than generations before us.

The question for us then is not how we want our post-retirement life to be, but how we will live the rest of our life, starting now.

Everyday Musings > To be or not to be

Shakespeare made Hamlet speak these words - 'To be or not to be'. Rather than just a reflection on indecision, I find it could stand for awareness - of trying to define what one is aiming for.

Two words that spring to my mind in that context are Admire and Aspire. The world we live in today gives us plenty of opportunity to muddle the two. Television and the Internet have made fame and fortune seem just a step away for every being on the planet. And it has made us want the moon, every second. We probably rarely use the words as is. But we definitely use what they stand for. Here are a few sentences.

I want to be famous.
I love people who fight for a cause.
I want to be as beautiful as Angelina Jolie.
I think Anna Hazare is cool.

The 'I want' statements are what we aspire for. The I like, I love are what we admire. The latter is the reason facebook works so well. It creates a space for people to admire other people for their choices with a simple device - 'Like'.

Admire is defined as 'to regard someone or something with amazement, delight' and Aspire is defined as 'to seek to attain or accomplish a particular goal.' Thus Admiration is about giving and Aspiration is about wanting. When we admire, we give all that we have to the other. When we aspire, we want all of what we see for ourselves. So let's say these sentences for what they mean.

I aspire to be famous.
I admire people who fight for a cause.
I aspire to be as beautiful as Angelina Jolie.
I admire Anna Hazare.

Envy, desperation, heartbreak, depression, anxiety could all arise from confusing where we would like to use these words. Lives can shift when we aspire for something we could simply admire or end up just admiring something we could actually aspire to.

To aspire or to admire, that is perhaps the question for our times.

Everyday Musings > Less plastic, more life

My dear friend Lal just created a campaign on plastic and how it chokes animals. Not to mention the planet. I went into my kitchen and looked at my three large bags stacked with plastic covers of all sizes, neatly folded and pressed to accommodate the ever growing number, saved to reuse someday. Till recently, it made me feel organised. Today it made me realise how guilty I am of filling this world with plastic.

I shop for vegetables at the fancy hyper city where every vegetable and fruit is shrink-wrapped or sealed in a plastic pouch after weighing, where they give out eco-friendly plastic covers which still end up choking animals eating out of a garbage bin.

Looking back, I love the concept of Apna Bazaar and ration shops, where my parents carried their own cloth bags to buy groceries. Or how, in Delhi, my neighbouring aunties would lower baskets with money in them from the first and second floor and the vegetable vendor would fill it with vegetables of her choice.

As a country, we've grown up with the best environmental practices. The ones that people struggle with now to earn green credits. Our food was packed in leaves, and we made spoons and plates of them too. We dumped our vegetable waste in our gardens or fed them to our cows. Milk was brought home by a milkman in a steel container and poured into steel vessels handed out by sleepy children. We ate local produce. We wore organic cotton and bought new clothes once a year. We ate organic and learnt not to waste our food. We carried our cloth bags everywhere we went and lived comfortably without missing the allure of plastic.

What changed? Why did we start blindly adopting what we can see is not working in the West? Why did we stop doing what worked perfectly well for us and the planet? Why, now that we know the state of things, don't we wake up and see the plastic each of us generates every time we shrink-wrap our sandwiches or ask for extra plastic bags, just in case. I don't buy veggies from the local cart vendors because I think they'd be unfair with price and the experience is not as exciting as wheeling a shopping cart and being lured by packaging. Now it seems like such a short-sighted choice.

Apart from veggies, I shop lots too - Lifestyle, Food Bazaar, Shoppers Stop, all of them give you plastic bags. And offer no option of you bringing your own cloth bags and shop with them. Actually, I've never asked. I wonder how they would react if I carried a cloth bag in, and asked them to seal that instead of giving me their plastic bags. I will try that next time.

My bag, like many women I know, is stuffed with various things I just might need. The next time I step out of home, I'm going to put something else in it – a neatly folded cloth bag.

Everyday Musings > Is it worth it?

Cost and Worth are often poles apart.

A £18 admission ticket to see the original paintings of a master is a profit for me. Buying a poster with the same art on it for £12 is a cost for me. Buying good quality fresh vegetables worth £20 that keeps my doctor's bills away is a profit. Spending £15 on a restaurant salad is a cost for me.

We live in a consumer-centric time where things are designed and consumed at a rate never seen before. Fashion has gone from Spring/Summer-Autumn/Winter to include Resort and Fall and now pre-season lines, thus ensuring new merchandise in the stores every month. Old things are discarded and new bags are bought with a fake vintage worn out look which is ironic in itself. The idea of 'Something New' is turning out to be mostly cost and very little worth.

The emergence of DIY, sewing, gardening on balconies, second-hand shopping and buying locally has challenged the buy-buy culture. It is making the idea of 'worth' more relevant to us and removing the stigma of it 'being cheap' or 'thrifty' and replacing it with a belief that one can attain a richer life by angling for less 'worth-less' things.

Consumption is as much about real fulfillment as it is about satiating the mind. Thus how does one put a cost on satisfaction of seeing/experiencing something beautiful. Which is where the Internet is such a blessing.

The Internet, currently, is high on worth, as it doesn't cost us per view and is essentially free. Tools like blogs, fb albums and Pinterest are a fantastic way for us to vicariously collect and show-off the things we love without owning them. By posting a picture, or posing next to someone else's Ferrari, sharing someone's comics collection, it tells us and others that 'we are living that experience'. And most often, it's more than enough. We pin it, post it, share it, like it, and move on.

In a city like London, I am fraught with the choice of cost and worth every day. It's a re-engineering of my mind, a letting go of the band-wagon, but as I've come to see over time, you'll earn it all back and more.

Everyday Musings > Useless

Useless - that thing that the dictionary says has "no practical value, no beneficial use". We would call it a waste of our time and money. That thing that we never want to do or be.

Logical, sensible people, I have often heard, only do Useful things - like getting an MBA , managing time, going to the gym, taking breaks on long weekends, buying a car, investing in a house or winning awards. All Useful things that have been tried, tested and verified by repeated action, much like Hamsters running on the wheel - active, stereotypical and explorers of the already known.

Which leads us to the unknown. Which leads us to progress, technology and inventions. How does Useful lead us to the unknown, the black hole of the unexplored? To get there you have to try new things, new ways, new formulations. To get there you have to perform Useless actions and hope for new Useful results. Eureka.

Progress, technology, inventions largely fall on the shoulders of people who spent a lot of time doing Useless actions and experiments. The rest of the world doesn't have time to be Useless. They are Hamsters, in a speeding circle, running, to live. Examples of the effects of Useless are all around us - Greeks chattering and discovering Philosophy, Magellan sailing around the world and proving that the earth was round, Columbus discovering continents, all the isms in Art, the birth of the Internet, creation of facebook. Useless actions that led to Useful things.

Useful runs the world, but the Useless makes it jump forward, into a new dimension. By only doing Useful things, we may be losing out on the most interesting aspects of what we can create or be. Life changing inventions aside, it has practical applications in our daily life.

If I had only one advice to give, it wouldn't be sunscreen. I'd say, discover Useless.

Everyday Musings > Personal Truth

What makes us, human beings, more powerful than other species on Earth? Perhaps it is our large brain, the ability to walk upright, imagination and the fact that we can communicate using language. So if all of us are equipped with the above attributes, what really makes us variably powerful within the human community?

The recent uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia shook up powerful dictatorial regimes that held forth for decades before citizens lost faith and took over power. So perhaps we could add Faith to the list of what makes humans powerful. Belief would then be equally important, or as I've come to see it - Personal Truth.

But how is Belief a Truth – isn’t that like saying ‘same difference’?

I turn to the dictionary. Faith is defined as ‘belief that is not based on proof’, Belief as ‘an opinion or conviction’ and Truth as ‘reality or as a thing exists’.

We hold Truth in high esteem, real things being more admired and loved than fake things. The ‘real deal’, as we refer to something worth our attention, love, money and time.

So where do Personal Truths fit in?

We all have beliefs. About people, experiences, ideology and objects. We trade them freely and confidently in the form of advice, opinion, orders and in conversation. They are clearly not casual thoughts to us. We believe them to be true – “Honestly, people with grey eyes cannot be trusted”, “I am ugly”, “War is the best way to get peace in the Middle East”, “I am going crazy”, “I will never fall in love”, “I am not worth anything”, “I am the best”, “All actors sleep around” … these and many other such statements have become undeniable truths for us – our Personal Truths.

We value our Personal Truths as they help us navigate life; which is possibly why the shattering of one is similar to losing faith in someone we believed in. Sometimes, we berate ourselves and lose trust in our future judgements. Sometimes, we see it as a sign of growing wiser and make peace with it.

We share many Personal Truths with fellow humans and create communities of mutual understanding; as is evident in Clubs, Gangs or on Facebook as Groups or the many Likes seen on Pages like ‘Delhi is the best city in the world’.

The Truth we choose to believe can guide us to do good, to be neutral or to do harm; to ourselves and to others. Great power that brings great responsibility.

A person with no Personal Truths is like a ghost, unreal and probably impossible to find. But that, of course, could be my Personal Truth. Smile.

Everyday Musings > Unsubscribe

Information, on anything, fascinates me. As a result, I’ve subscribed to plenty of newsletters, blogs and websites to gather data. As time passed, this hoarding resulted in a piled up inbox with unread mails to be read ‘not now’. I decided to get clever, and moved all my subscriptions to a new email id. Good plan it seemed like, except that in a week, the new inbox was choked with unread wisdom from New Scientist, Bartlett Architecture, Craft Collective, Trend Watchers, Guardian and more. Not to mention the fashion stores I’d shared my email id with.

I persisted for some time, deleting the mails as they came into the inbox since I was no longer interested in reading all of them. Some had lost relevance. Some I had grown out of. Some didn’t tickle my mind. I decided to be brave and impolite. And decided to cut the umbilical cords that held me to so many worlds. I unsubscribed.

It seemed like such a simple thing yet it took me a while to get there. I was running on auto-pilot, reading, replying and deleting mails. It never occurred to me to let something go for good. The ‘what if it does me some good sometime’ hung somewhere in the air. I realised I would never know, but shedding the weight made life healthier and the inbox leaner.

The same works for my mind, my space, my home, my body as well. There are so many things I’ve subscribed to in life that have stopped working for me, that don’t nourish me, that make me unhappy. I’d like to unsubscribe to them. So off go the pants I’ve been holding onto thinking I’ll get to a size 6 someday. Off go the books that I’ve never read and if I am to be honest, I will never read. Off goes the need to please everyone all the time. Off goes ‘I will recycle this into something’ basket that only had things going in and never being taken out. Off go the TV shows I have to watch or I will die. Off goes the habit of giving unsolicited advice. I am unsubscribing from all these things in my life, and without as much as a diet, I’ve lost so much weight. My mind feels less bogged down by all the things that were in my life that didn’t nourish me, qualities I didn’t care for, things I could do without.

I don’t think we own anything in our selves; they are all subscribed to, like apps on an ipad. We can choose to let go. And subscribe to a new life.

Everyday Musings > Against your grace

I visited a MAC cosmetics store two years ago to purchase Strobe cream, something Anj recommended. Walked into the Mumbai In-orbit store and felt very intimidated, just as I had felt in their Bangalore outlet. As a make-up novice, it was comforting to know exactly what I wanted. The products were great, the staff was courteous, but professional to the point of seeming cold. I was stumped. Why would a cosmetics brand train itself to be so?

I read up on the origins of MAC. Founded in 1984 in Toronto by Frank Toskan and Frank Angelo, MAC was specifically designed for professional make-up artists. It was only much later that they started retailing on the high street and Estee Lauder took over the brand in 1994. That gave me an inkling of why they might have felt so cold – they started as a brand that sold to professionals, akin to a b2b business. When they turned to consumers, perhaps their demeanour remained the same. Even their store design seemed more like a professional's make up box rather than a boudoir. They were professional, even to the novices.

Brands possess inherent qualities which impart a grace peculiar to each one of them. The same is true of characters in sitcoms, books, films and just as true for us Human Beings. As years go by, some of us enhance the grace within us and some of us misplace it within layers of conditioned behaviour. Going against our grace produces a dissonance that doesn’t seem right, to the viewer as well as the character involved. When we speak of actors in plays or sitcoms or movies and marvel how they never let their character slip, we are speaking of them staying within their grace. Like the cast of Friends - their reactions always seem so true to their characters, in good situations and bad. The writers of the show have channelled a consistency makes them so predictable and thus relatable to us, as old friends. Saas-Bahu serials often lose the plot when they make characters do things that are against their grace and viewers lose interest or faith in the story.

To be successful in the long run is perhaps a measure of how well one has managed to not go against one’s grace and stay in character till the curtains go down. As with acting, it is a matter of living the role, of understanding the motivation and inherent qualities that define our character. Once that is figured, it’s a matter of sticking to our natural tendency and relating to everything from that perspective.

Grace is a gift only we can take away from ourselves. Whether we do so willingly or unwittingly, it shapes who we are and who we choose not to be. A block of wood when planed in the wrong direction will tear rather than form a smooth surface, a thing aptly captured in the saying - going against the grain. Or should I say grace.

Everyday Musings > 1000 words on Peace

Last week, V and I watched ‘Thirteen Days’ - a film about the Cuban missile crisis and how it was diffused. JFK was the president, in a run up to the polls, and his armed forces chiefs advised him that war was the only option available. JFK pursued a new course of diplomacy and pushed for peace and eventually in a barter deal with Russia prevented a nuclear showdown.

Today, the Kid sent me a link – to an article on peace journalism by Aditi Bhaduri. She wrote of the role of a journalist reporting the Israel-Palestine conflict and what peace journalism is all about. How by understanding the many reasons and many influences that create conflict, one could really give a credible hearing to all. At the end of the article was a list of 17 do's and don’ts of Peace Journalism compiled by Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick.

In both, the film and the do's and don’t s, what struck me was the intent. Both parties were thinking peace, were thinking of how to restore balance, and it changed what they did. But thinking peace also has another side. In the film, JFK was being thought of as ‘weak’ by his Armed Forces chiefs for not taking a firm decision on war, and the journalist for peace possibly faced the risk of trying to balance both sides so heavily that he/she lost objectivity. Aditi quotes Christiane Amanpour – "There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn’t mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."

I read through the do s and don’t s and found that it was an essential learning. The language of news reporting in India has changed - in paper and on TV. From the DD days of unemotional reading of the news to Prannoy Roy’s analytical and investigative news to the Aaj Tak, IBN, Zee News, Barkha, Arnab and Rajdeep face-offs. The form of reporting that we are exposed possibly also changes our language. Are we always alert to seeing through the words and judging for ourselves and finding out more before we do so. I wonder.

All do's and don'ts I felt, had parallels to our life, as much as it did to peace journalism. I feature some here.

“Avoid portraying a conflict as consisting of only two parties contesting one goal. The logical outcome is for one to win and the other to lose. Instead, a peace journalist would disaggregate the two parties into many smaller groups, pursuing many goals, opening up more creative potential for a range of outcomes.”

This extends to our everyday life as well as politics. The moment we see that there is web of intent rather than just two full stops that say black and white, we are able to form more solutions. A fight between a husband and wife, a boss and an employee. Understanding the greys, the situations from both sides, studying them gives us more options.

“Avoid demonising labels like "terrorist," "extremist", "fanatic" and "fundamentalist". These are always given by "us" to "them". No one ever uses them to describe himself or herself, and so, for a journalist to use them is always to take sides. Instead, try calling people by the names they give themselves. Or be more precise in your descriptions.”

We associate words to people in our life and judge them by how they fare by it, not realising that it was our definition of them, not theirs. Labeling someone a 'calm' person and being disturbed if that person loses their temper than if a person who is labeled 'angry' lost their temper. Many misunderstandings could be resolved or new understandings formed once we dwell on where our judgement of things arises from.

“Avoid concentrating always on what divides the parties, the differences between what they say they want. Instead, try asking questions that may reveal areas of common ground and leading your report with answers which suggest some goals may be shared or at least compatible, after all.”

We could count ten reasons why we absolutely cannot get along with someone, or be on their team or be their friend. Sometimes, looking at the other side, gives you another option of compatibility, if not friendship.

“Avoid imprecise use of emotive words to describe what has happened to people. "Genocide" means the wiping out of an entire people. "Decimated" (said of a population) means reducing it to a tenth of its former size. "Tragedy" is a form of drama, originally Greek, in which someone's fault or weakness proves his or her undoing. "Assassination" is the murder of a head of state. "Massacre" is the deliberate killing of people known to be unarmed and defenseless. Are we sure? Or might these people have died in battle? * "Systematic" eg raping or forcing people from their homes. Has it really been organised in a deliberate pattern or have there been a number of unrelated, albeit extremely nasty incidents? Instead, always be precise about what we know. Do not minimise suffering but reserve the strongest language for the gravest situations or you will beggar the language and help to justify disproportionate responses that escalate the violence.”

When we catch ourselves in mid speech, trying to convince someone of something we want to convince them on, our words are different, more exaggerated, more forceful perhaps. We see this on News channels now, as they turn more competitive and need to get into our minds before some other news channel does – they brand incidents – create large pictures, use forceful words. We do the same in our lives, but don’t always see how that is affecting us.

Thinking peace is about building objectivity in life, the middle path. There are many among us who do it as a way of life, only perhaps are so successful at it that it goes unnoticed in the maddening rush of winning and losing. JFK said after the Cuban missile crisis was diffused – “If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”

Everyday Musings > Practice

Practice = repetition = familiarity = routine = boredom = being thorough = perfectionism = Godliness. A simple act of practice if followed through could lead to Nirvana?

So a woodcutter who diligently cuts wood in the same precise manner, every hour, every day, every week, every year, for all his life is closer to Nirvana than the random me who doesn’t stick to anything but flits and is constantly at the starting point over and over again?

I mentioned this to V who promptly handed me Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and said that he spoke of it too. And even quantified it. 10,000 Hours. That’s how much practice masters put into their craft. Bill Gates, Michael Schumacher, Michael Jordan, Beatles, anybody who has made it to the top of their fields did so with practice.

Perhaps that is why they say Jack of all, master of none. Because for one to be a master, one has to choose and do that one thing over and over again. I go back to ‘The Cooking Gene’ and what I wrote about cooking. Of course, there is the element of love and talent, but perhaps the reason why our grandmothers and mothers are so much better at it than we are was because they practiced more than us. They cooked morning, afternoon and night, every day for all their lives, most of them starting to help their mothers in the kitchen from when they were very young. How do we, the microwave-meal generation, expect to match that amount of rigorous practice?

The better writers write more. The better singers sing more. The better cooks cook more. So the sooner you start, the better your chances at more practice time. My friend ‘I’ always said to me, The best time to start is when you are furthest from where you want to be.’ Reading Outliers and the many factors that he states for the rise of winners, it seems like the advantage is clearly with those who began early and had all the advantages of that time - Luck, opportunity, the right guidance and timing. And of course, practice.

The book talks of other things too – of how winners are not self-made - that their environment, the opportunity they got, the guidance they received and how even being born in the right month changed their destiny. Not astrological at all, just a view of how the modern natural selection system works. He also talks of IQ and how in a class of clever students, it doesn’t matter who cleverer. All have great levels of analytical intelligence; what then matters is who has more Practical Intelligence. He makes a case for how wealthy children are brought up to own the world whereas poor children are taught to be deferential and constrained. And that he says makes a huge difference in getting ahead. The reviewers called the book ‘humane’ perhaps because it breaks the myth of the X Gene being solely responsible for why the greats are great. It tells you that there is a system and that perhaps there is a way to beat the system. I’m still reading it and there’s much more to go before I feel the humane bit kick in.

If a thing has been repeated enough number of times, it becomes the truth. I read that a long time ago and wondered about the nature of the universe. 10,000 Hours. There is something in the practice argument. I see it working with my cooking and my writing, when I do write. My parents have said it enough times to me too - practice makes perfect. Thankfully, they also said, it's never too late to learn. Whew.

Everyday Musings > The Essential Life

Essential home by Judith Wilson and Jan Baldwin is a home decor book that concentrates on the essentials of a home. Judith and Jan talk of building a foundation with good linen, truly comfortable cushions, rugs that feel great to touch, few pieces of classic furniture, well made glassware and cutlery. It could then be dressed up or down after the basics are in place. ‘Easy Living’ by Terrance Conran talks of similar things; of the element of quality in a home that makes it easy to live in. Of being aware of fabrics, textures, even button fastenings, all of which can affect the sense of real comfort.

The home that my parents grew up in had furniture made of solid teak that’s in the family even today. The utensils were iron, wood, brass; always polished and clean. The thin absorbing cotton towels were just right for the Kerala weather. The flooring was red oxide and kept the home cool. There was an invisible aura of quality, of solidity, of being true.

The homes a lot of us live in today aren’t built or decorated based on those principles. The stores we buy from showcase ply polished to imitate mahogany or teak, Oriental rugs in cheap synthetic with chemical dyes that are not ideal to live with. The towels are velvet finished terry that absorb little water and fade and turn limp in five washes. There was a generation that could tell real lace from machine made, good cotton from bad, preferred silk to synthetic, and it wasn’t royalty. It was everyday people, in everyday lives, buying everyday things, in local markets; quality of the kind that we today consider luxury.

What changed? We are definitely more brand conscious, but are we as quality conscious? If we looked around our homes and kept aside everything that was not true quality, how much would we be left with? How much of what we bring into our lives and interact with on a daily basis are really aware of?

What Essential Home got me thinking about was not just about the home, but about us. What goes into making the Essential Human Being? The Essential Mind. The Essential Body. What do we feed ourselves with? What do we fill in our minds? What is the quality of our life? Our thoughts? Our conversations? And how aware are we of our lives?

The Essentials of life are about having real wealth – good health, clean comfortable home, fresh food, good conversations, a clear sharp mind. A surge of quality in our choices, our acts, places us in a higher plane of life. The people who are stalwarts are examples of that. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Nelson Mandela, Schumacher. Before after shows, the ones that work, like Mary, Queen of Shops, are based on that too. They raise the plane that we live on. And life is all about finding the higher plane - of thought, of being, of life.

Quality in life, of life, is the same as breathing. It isn’t a luxury, but an absolute essential.

Everyday Musings > The cooking gene

I love food. But I’m not so keen on cooking it myself. For the past month, I find myself cooking most meals at home, a feat for someone who once in sheer nervousness forgot how to make coffee. I could’ve copped out, said ‘I don’t have the cooking gene’ and probably got away because V is a fantastic cook, a kind human being and is partial to anything scientific.

The first day when we cooked in V’s apartment, I watched in horror as he took a pinch of this, a dollop of that, added a dash of something else, all from instinct. Like my mom and all talented chef-like people I know.

At home in Mumbai, cooking was a ritual. I used to stand in front of the gas and pray before I turned it on. V’s kitchen is electric, so it felt silly to chant over flicking a switch. No excuses left, I got down to it. I started reading about cooking to awaken my cooking gene.

Julia and Julia – I have been reading it for a while and then the cow’s hoof jelly bits got overwhelming and I stopped reading. It’s about an American girl Julia, who stumbles upon a book by Julia Child, a famous chef from the 1900s. Julia Child, an American, was a copywriter before she joined the secret service and then married Paul Child who introduced her to French Cooking and at the age of 34, she joined Cordon Bleu to learn how to cook and even made it to the cover of Time magazine as the Lady of the Ladle. What an amazing woman. I could see similarities. Ex copywriter, married, husband introduced her to cooking. Now, when is the Time magazine cover going to happen!

Nora ‘Harry met Sally’ Ephron recently directed a movie based on this book. Girl Julia sets upon a promise to cook all of Chef Julia’s recipes for a year. And it’s a pretty fat recipe book. Well, Chef Julia inspires Girl Julia to take up this madness. And transforms Girl Julia’s evenings of leisure into one of chaotic smelly cooking fests. And somewhere in chopping, boiling, cleaving, steaming, sniffing, Girl Julia finds herself.

V is pure veg, as is his kitchen, not even eggs, which I love and miss very much. I started with corn, the simplest thing in the world to cook. And made corn every day, in every form, till V pointed out to other vegetables. Sticky arbi, bhindi, lauki etc. Time to get help.

I found my Cordon Bleu in Vidhu Mittal’s ‘Pure and simple vegetarian cooking’. I love the way the dishes are photographed, the quality of the paper, the simplicity of her instructions. So every day is spent flicking pages and figuring what to dazzle V with. Stuffed mirchi, dahi baigan, masala bhindi. I was amazed at how easy it started to become. I could even make nice fluffy phulkas and say things like ‘it’ll just take two minutes’. Vidhu was my spidey web, my batmobile, my lantern, my knight in shining hardbound.

I don’t know if I have a cooking gene. I can’t cook as well as my mother or his mother, not even close to as good as my dear friends Ku, Pat or M who have oodles of it. But V inspires me to make a fool of myself and smiles and nods and says ‘wonderful’ as he eats anything I make. I may hold Vidhu close to my heart, but I think the cooking gene has nothing to do with instinct or books or recipes. It probably just has to do with love.

Everyday Musings > Welcome home

V and I watch a channel four show - Grand Designs. It’s a show on people who set out to make their Dream Home. It’s fascinating to see how far they go to make it come true. Some build in the middle of nowhere with volunteers and local materials, some ship a entire framework across the sea, some rebuild an old barn or church and almost all stretch their funds with mortgages. And when it’s all done, it would seem that they would have found the final resting place that you and I make retirement plans for – they would have come Home. Yet some of them find, it wasn’t the ‘home’ they thought it would be.

So what is this elusive thing called Home?

As a civilisation we might have ceased being nomads long ago, but we are still urban wanderers. Sitting by our computers, shopping, eating, flicking channels, our minds are wandering to wishes and hopes and desires. We might have settled but our hearts haven’t. Our lives are too heavy for us to move them around, and we wait for and plan and dream of a tomorrow where we will reach just where we want to get, lighter, unburdened of today.

My friend M dreams of owning her own apartment, my friend J dreams of going back to Bangalore and living there. I dream of a house in the hills facing a lake. V, of a bed and breakfast somewhere in rural India.

Home, for a lot of us, is a sense of peace, of rest, of finally belonging perhaps, of being one with the self. But sometimes, even when we find that apartment or that house by the hills, it doesn’t seem like we’ve come home.

Perhaps the answer lies in what we call Home. Perhaps Home isn’t a place at all. Maybe it is more a feeling. Something that takes away the emptiness of being human.

So then what is home? Is it one thing? Is it lots of things? If it’s a feeling, what kind is it? Could a couch be home, a moment of glory or a cup of tea? A faded letter perhaps. An oft visited memory. A person. A song. A smell. What if any one of these could be Home, or even better, all of this could be Home?

My friend T’s daughter would stop crying if you played a Bollywood song for her and my friend R would carry his blanket everywhere. That was probably Home to them.

There’s a film of Susan Sarandon’s - ‘Anywhere but here’. It’s a great title and captures the essence of search - constantly restless, rushing about in a waiting room, watching life outside it with keen eyes. Perhaps all of us have a Home hidden someplace that we haven’t yet found because we are expecting something else.

For those of us still searching, the world is as alien inside, as it is out. For those of us who have found their Home, every place now seems, welcome.

Everyday Musings > What defines you?

Merriam-Webster defines Definition as ‘the art of determining, as a statement that expresses the essential nature of something’.

What came first, the definition or the word? Most likely the definition. Diplomacy is not really about word play as it is a play of definitions. Border, Third World, Middle East, Anti-Semitism, Fair Trade, Global Warming, Freedom. It is definition that builds our world - outside of us, and inside too.

Our minds create definitions by experience, knowledge, instinct and interaction. For some, Rain might be defined as ‘drowning’, to others ‘nostalgia’ and for someone ‘romance’. Definitions are said to be the key to unlock meaning. So then, what defines a human?

MW defines a Human as ‘having human form or attributes, susceptible to or representative of the sympathies and frailties of human nature.’

What a boring inaccurate definition! I am sure none of us would like to be defined so. We’d call ourselves adventurous, elegant, tall, pretty, educated, ex Harvard, crazy, intelligent, gay, straight, well-endowed, rich, Indian, Greek, but we’d never define ourselves like that!

I watched ‘Confessions of a shopaholic.’ A fun film, especially if you can’t stop owning things. A girl is convinced that a green scarf defines her, till she had to give it away. When left without possessions, she realises that the green scarf was gone, and she was still who she was.

We define ourselves by what we do, what we did, where we studied, what we own, who we are friends with, what we think, what we hate, what we love, what we will be. We define ourselves to be the most interesting that we can be. Mostly, it makes us rise. And at times, fall prey to our own definition.

Dictionaries evolve over the ages. Our minds sometimes don’t. Definition then becomes a crutch. ‘If not this, then I’m nothing’. A student who commits suicide when he can’t get through medical college or a girl who runs up credit card bills to keep buying designer clothes.

Those around us also define us with statements or words. If they’re positive, it creates an aura, and if repeated by others, it defines us in public. A celebrity known for a certain gesture could end up repeating it consciously because it defines him/her. Or a person known to be always controversial could find it difficult to gain attention by being plain about an issue. Most of us might not even be aware of the things we’ve defined for ourselves or what we have been defined by.

PR managers recognise the power of definition and work at creating positive or controversial definitions for their clients. Most life coaches recommend role play or imaginary definitions to boost confidence.

At one stage 500 words was my defining point - ‘the girl who writes 500 words’. And it gave meaning to my life. When I took a break, it probably moved to ‘the girl who used to write 500’, and today it’s probably ‘the girl who started writing 500 again’. But as long as I remember that these are all definitions and will keep changing as I do, I think I’ll be fine.

Just because we can define something doesn’t always mean we can understand it. And though the world will live by its definitions, the important things - love, faith, life, death – ironically remain indefinable.

Everyday Musings > The Result of Life

In the beginning there was light. Or the Big Bang. Or the churning of the ocean. And then life as we know it began. There were no rules yet, except for the ones Nature had. There were no obligations. No concept of time other than night and day.

Then Human Beings came along. And decided to complicate life. Because they had a superior brain. And needed to do more than what animals did – eat, drink, sleep. They invented fire, started to farm, built communities, picked the strong and beautiful to lead them and divided them from the weak and maimed, created work hours and rest time, work days and holidays and most of all, gave rise to the importance of Result.

Result, as Merriam Webster states, is “to proceed or arise as a consequence, effect, or conclusion b: to have an issue or result .”

We live a life of consequence. Nothing comes from nothing any more. Everything arises out of a cause and effect that is pre-planned. No wonder there is so much stress.

If a flower doesn’t produce an x number of buds, it doesn’t wither in shame. If a tiger hunts a boar instead of a deer, it doesn’t hide from its kin. The results in Nature don’t matter. If one thing doesn’t result, they evolve into something else. They live, day to day, their ambition being only to enjoy the sun, air and water that’s available to them, and within it, to bloom or live.

V was reading something yesterday, and mentioned this line from it. The author said ‘There is no result in Zen practice. That is not the point. It is the effort that you make to prove yourself that is measured.”

Perhaps that is why the Zen Masters are so peaceful. If they meditated only to get Enlightenment as the Result of their meditation, they would indeed be miserable. They meditate. That is it. As the Hindu scriptures say ‘Karm kar, phal ki chinta mat kar’. (Do, don’t worry about the fruits of what you do.)

Not making your life about Results, but about action or karma is a productive thought. An action oriented one. It’s like a mountaineer who wants to climb Mount Everest. If he focuses on the Mountain, he will not be able to take a single step because he is not at the starting point. To make it to the peak, he needs to be aware of every step that takes him there, and when he does that, his mind is not on the Result but on the journey. And step by step, he will reach where he wants to.

Today, most of us are constantly exhausted or tired, awaiting that weekend or a break from life. A Zen Master needs no break from life. That concept is alien to a lot of my friends who enjoy the journey as much as the destination, the grind as much as the award ceremony. For them, life is. Not will be.

The Result of our Life is Death. But if we lived by that thought, we would not progress. The same applies to everything we do. I wonder if we all put the ghost of Result out of our minds, and worked in the ‘is’ rather than the ‘will be’ would it lead to fewer depressions, less suicides, less running away for breaks from our life. That if we did our thing for now, for the moment, without constantly tabulating Results in our mind, we would perhaps be more rested, more peaceful, and ironically more productive.

Everyday Musings > Gazing into the abyss

The kid dropped by the other day. He’d just watched the film ‘Watchmen’ and was describing how Alan Moore had redefined superheroes when he created the 12-part series in the late 80s.

I quote Wikipedia - 'Watchmen is set in an alternate reality which closely mirrors the contemporary world of the 1980s. The primary point of divergence is the presence of superheroes. Their existence in this iteration of America is shown to have dramatically affected and altered the outcomes of real-world events such as the Vietnam War and the presidency of Richard Nixon. In keeping with the realism of the series, although the costumed crime fighters of Watchmen are commonly called "superheroes", the only character who possesses obvious superhuman powers is Doctor Manhattan. The existence of Doctor Manhattan has given the U.S. a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, which has increased tensions between the two nations. Additionally, superheroes have become unpopular among the public, which has led to the passage of legislation in 1977 to outlaw them. While many of the heroes retired, Doctor Manhattan and The Comedian operate as government-sanctioned agents, and the superhero Rorschach continues to operate outside the law.'

The story was interesting. And I felt compelled to read it and then watch the film. But what turned out more interesting was what The Kid said next. He mentioned an interaction between Rorschach (a superhero whose face changes like his namesake’s ink blot tests) and a psychiatrist, where Rorschach ends up tricking the psychiatrist into seeing the dark side of everything. Moore had ended that section with a quote from Nietzsche “Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

I took a moment to digest those words. Stunning statement. ‘If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’ I saw it drive straight down into our everyday lives and make so much sense.

We create abysses every day, with our desires, wants and fears. And as we gaze into the abysses of our making, it gazes back at us and make us do its bidding. Unconsciously we become slaves of our own creations, our own decisions, our own powers, our own deeds.

In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo carries the ring of power to destroy it, but towards the end is mesmerised by it and fights to possess it. Midas was so carried away by his desire for Gold that he turned his daughter into a mass of it. Icarus was so possessed with his wings of wax that he didn’t see his doom in the sun. Abyss, every time.

Our ambition that once fed us, rules us. Our conviction that once gave us self-respect starts making us rigid and hateful. Our desires that made us admire something turn us into envious eyes. Our attachments that stemmed out of love make us hate. We see good intentioned, bright, smart, dynamic people losing their way, and wonder how it happened. The abysses we created gaze back into our soul and lay us bare.

Equanimity, stressed the Buddha - Neither too much, nor too little - The middle path. The abyss is a journey of extremes. When we keep to the middle of the road, we have a clear view of both sides. When we gravitate to either end, we risk a fall. And sometimes the abyss is too deep for a helping hand to reach.

If you’re gazing into the abyss, don’t stare too long.

Everyday Musings > Living with imposters

I open the papers, chat with friends, talk to colleagues and everyone’s talking the big R - Recession. Those wanting to buy a home are waiting, those wanting to change jobs are holding on, this year’s b-school grads are not confident of making it anywhere, those in newer jobs are finding themselves with three month notices to leave...it’s a strange foreboding feeling that seems to have unsettled everyone, especially Indians because it’s never really been like this since India took off with liberalisation.

But what worries me is that we’ve always been in recession. Ever since Independence at least. We’ve been in a recession of ideology, of identity, of faith, of unity, of political stability, of creativity, of peace. Most of all, we have been in a recession of awareness.

Trees are being cut to make way for broader roads, but our minds and thoughts are growing narrow and less inclusive. Our minds and hearts carry less love and peace and there’s more room to pump diseases and dissatisfaction. Malls, not healthcare, have become the signs of modernisation and development, foreign brands retailing from swank stores on our streets, rather than the wisdom of our heritage, is the sign that we too have arrived.

The world we are creating around us is stifling our being and we are not aware. The few, who sense the downfall move away to the fringes, decide to farm, work remotely, be eco-friendly, escape to meditation centres, and keep themselves far from this maddening monstrous metropolis. But as the three musketeers said, all for one, one for all. What will be the fate of one will be the fate of all, and the fate of all will be the fate of one, even if he is the enlightened Buddha. Thus each person’s progress matters, each person’s greed hinders. A recession that we must face even with a healthy balance sheet. The current economic downturn is a superficial big R to hit us, an external mechanism that calculates the money motors and has little to do with emotional content.

Rudyard Kipling, in his very poem If, said; “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same... Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.”

Can’t think of a time when it makes more sense than now. Triumph and Disaster are both fakes. Both illusions. Neither is permanent and neither can rule over the other. Recession is both; a boon for some who will realise that there are more important things in life than a stock index, and a curse for those who continue to live the mirage of the world and pray for the markets to alleviate their problems.

The fashion week, the Mecca of the splurgers, is walking the ramp for Recession, Tata’s new Nano is heralded as the R car. Everyone’s finding a business opportunity in these times, and marketing is twisting itself into cosy corners to find refuge till the R monster passes. Obama and Singh and the other world leaders are meeting to discuss the world and its issues. Maybe there’ll be more bailouts; maybe there will be some big decisions.

While they ruminate on the created societies and their created issues, it’s perhaps time we sat by ourselves, in silence, and became aware of the natural society we live in – our body, that wonderful mechanism that is happy with simple things like air and water. Perhaps a simple shedding of the two imposters will elevate us out of the economic quicksand.

The big R is within us, and it’s time we bailed our souls out.

Everyday Musings > Stuck on you

I bought myself a copy of Rujuta Diwekar’s ‘Don’t lose your mind, Lose your weight’. It’s a delightful read and one of the most sensible words on diets I’ve read so far. She doesn’t mince any words, has plenty of examples to state and brings in references from everyday life to make you smile, laugh and nod your head vigorously at various pages. The core of what she says is that don’t pick up something that you don’t see yourself maintain for the rest of your life. That something like a 3-day diet is not a lifestyle, just an experiment. And we make countless such taxing experiments on our bodies and minds in search of that perfect diet that will make us who we want to be.

It made me think about sticking to something forever. Does the idea still have relevance in today’s times? We are bored easily and in constant need of stimulation, thanks to television or the constant churning or so many new, exciting gadgets and products. By the time you start getting used to one, there’s new, improved you-just-have-to-get-this version 1.2. Where does it end?

My parents have had the same furniture for many years now. The upholstery changes every time it needs to and not because mother is bored with the print or wants to change her decor. The furniture they get made is made from ‘good wood’ that they believe should last for a long time. And they’ve been having the same staple diet since they were born. They stick to things, and like being stuck to them. It’s not imprisonment or a factor for boredom, but satisfaction and familiarity that makes them content and happy. For them, change does not equal to happiness.

Today’s world offers constant change. Moving cities is not such a big decision now; there is ease in having multiple relationships, experimenting with varied cuisines, changing furniture and decor according to one’s moods. Life has become full of choices and we ironically, change works because we are perhaps not prepared to or we do not want to make a choice. And always live with alternatives up our sleeve. Lest the one choice we make sticks and we can’t unstick it.

I wonder, if today, we walk around with alarms that go off in our heads if we’ve been doing the same thing for years. There’s a word for it, rut. And it’s applied even where it possibly doesn’t apply. If being in the same place for years a rut, then perhaps moving around but living your life in circles and not finding contentment is also a rut. And we need to pay heed to that too. So no matter how much I might find my parents need to be hold on to a life they know as being familiar being ‘stuck’, just because I move cities and change my habits and taste and wardrobe every few months, doesn’t mean I’m not ‘stuck’ too.

On March 15th, it’s eight years since I joined Ogilvy. New comers ask me how, what, really?? Old timers smile because they understand how it feels. Some jumpers and hoppers smirk and say, so what next? I honestly don’t know. It’s like living inside a jelly pod. You’re held in by all the gooey stuff, but there’s enough room to unstick from it all. Right now, I choose to stick.

Everyday Musings > Packed

I went to a mall recently to pick up a bottle of perfume. Saw many, some with delightful packaging that turned me dizzy except that the perfume had me nauseous and rushing for coffee beans. I wished then that I could opt to buy just the packaging and not the perfume, like collecting wrapping paper without the intention of ever having it ripped off a gift.

Design. The future of the world seems increasingly hinged on it. As societies grew larger and drifted to other settlements, Packaging was created to keep products fresh for longer, for it to be easily transportable, and in a growing market, to establish a brand. With time, products, however, are turning homogenous. And the role of packaging is now giving people the reason to pick this over that. In a row of a hundred packs of chips, we’d reach for the one most appetising, or most familiar. When products start having shorter life cycles and there are less and less ‘good old familiar’ varieties to pick from, or products travel across nations and no one is sure of how good or bad an alien brand is, design takes centre stage and makes our choices for us. We base earnestness, ‘traditionalness’, fun, taste, authenticity on the proportions and colours and typeface on the pack. This most times subconsciously, and increasingly consciously, dictates what makes it to the shopping cart.

This movement towards conscious recognition of packaging versus it being a subconscious stimulus is one that possibly affects our social character as well. The outer form is becoming more and more important as people find less and less time to invest in getting to know people the old fashioned way. Relationships are shorter and quicker. As are loyalties. Thus what you wear and how you look is the best way to pick this over that. Be it in friendship, love or jobs. I once heard my friend say that his boss decides to hire someone in the first five seconds of seeing that person, the rest of the interview is just a formality. And everyone’s in a rush to package themselves as best as they can.

This charm for window dressing, though, is stoked by talent and opportunity. The rising amount of people employed and enrolled by design is mind boggling. The internet and the real world have unending possibilities for the designer and its muse. And like agriculture, industrialisation, genetics and information technology, this revolution is spreading faster and deeper into everyone’s psyche.

Each one of us are walking design statements, each speaking our own visual language. We walk around the world, our shopping carts in mind, picking this one and that one based on what we see, touch, smell, feel. Sometimes, the packaging is the right pick, sometimes it’s not to expectations and sometimes way past expiry date. And like the ones who walk the malls and thumb the glossies, we're experiencing shopper's anxiety too.

The who-what-which is our pick, our choice, based on our design preferences, but as design gets sharper, slicker and more individualistic, our choices get that much finer. Leaving no room for something to grow on us and surprise us. The price seems too high to pay for a trial and throw. Or is it?

Everyday Musings > Life's checklist

As I sit on my many cubby-holed wooden writing table, two books stare out at me, ’98 things a woman should do in her lifetime’ and ‘101 things to do before you die’.

The first is a gift from Krish and the second was something Sue and I bought together promising to fill it up soon. The lists in it are interesting and things that one would love to do, some bizarre but adventurous, some simple and emotional. I've ticked on many and will probably do much more, but this morning, looking at the books, I wondered. Why do we make bucket lists?

What are our bucket lists all about? Unfulfilled wishes, desires, wants, goals, and expectations. Things that we wish to achieve, that we believe will make us the person we want to be, that we think will be the purpose of our lives. Our collected credits before we leave Earth.

Human Beings are mortal, and the clock starts ticking from the time we’re born. It’s a reverse countdown and the only thing sure in our destiny is the fact that we will die. There is no set way to life, no rules, no guidelines, nothing. We just plop out, cry, blink and start breathing.

To make it easier for to live this journey from birth to death, Human Beings created structures of living, and earned credits for each level - playschool, school, college, work, dating, marriage, children, retirement etc. As life went by, we exchanged our credits for wants, desires and goals. The must do, should do, have to do, really want to do bucket lists.

In the Landmark Forum, they said ‘Life is empty and meaningless and it is empty and meaningless that it is empty and meaningless.’ Like walking into an empty room for no reason at all apart from the reasons that your mind will find or create to explain why you are there. The room by itself is real but inert. It doesn’t goad you to do anything; it’s just a container for you to breed your thoughts and actions in.

But what does this mean for us? Do we stop making bucket lists? Are last wishes or dreams futile? Are achievements unnecessary? I thought about it a lot and came to the conclusion that the fact that life was empty and meaningless was such a liberating, happy thought. It meant I needed to earn no credits. It meant that the bucket list I made had no purpose other than beng a list. ‘I want to travel the world’ meant ‘I want to travel the world’ and nothing else. And that freed me from searching for my destiny, or what plans God had for my life. It meant my bucket list would not matter in the big scheme of things. That there was no big scheme of things. That life just is.

I used to collect bottle caps when I was a kid. If you collected enough of them, you could exchange them for goodies. Maybe some of us make bucket lists to cash them in for a space in the memories of those who live on after us. And thus remain immortal. And maybe some of us make lists so that we can give meaning to life and thus triumph over it's meaninglessness.

Everyday Musings > How random is that

I love random things. The kind that plop into your life when you least expect and fill it with something new and interesting. Much of my life has been built on random decisions and it’s been a delightful pick.

Merriam Webster says being random is taking a haphazard course, without definite aim, direction, rule, or method. Wikipedia adds that randomness is a lack of order, purpose, cause or predictability. Aristotle is said to have defined it as a situation where a choice is to be made which has no logical component by which to determine or make the choice. The term is also often used by statisticians to mean lack of bias or correlation.

Random selection forms the basis of Tarot card readers, teen-patti players, lottery buyers and so on. Things that to us seem mystical and magical and out of our control. And thus provide much excitement of stepping into the unknown by trying them out. Websites like randomwebsite.com and stumbleupon.com makes it interesting to experiment on randomness on the internet, where exploration can lead you to places/people/thoughts you didn’t know existed.

Allthetests.com had a random test on randomness. Questions were something like this. Have you ever worn a ballerina outfit to the mall? Have you stolen an aged piece of garbage? Have you gotten mad at a tree? Do you lick the table on Wednesday? Do you own a planner? Have you annoyed a butterfly? Have you befriended a mailbox? Do you enjoy staring at the wall? Am I scaring you? Do you speak Italian? Can I have your t-shirt? Does Riley own a cow with band aids attached? Have you ever done a dare? Do you have an unnatural fear of staplers? Have you told a stranger that you loved them? Have you skipped dinner? Have you ever been to a gas station to drink an ice tea? Do you hate cockroaches? Do you hate cockroaches? Have you ever travelled to a country just to take a picture? Are you mad at your eyes? According to the test I am sort of random. Hmm ballerina outfit eh.

Sometimes we meet people that things just seem to happen to. And they lead the wonderful lives we’d love to lead. Probably because they are living random. Loving the idea of random I’ve realised means being open to life and everything in it. It means letting oneself be curious, experimental, hopeful, non-judgmental and welcoming. No matter what one encounters, one embraces it and makes it part of one’s life, no matter how strange, icky, weird it might seem. All the explorers and experimenters are definitely lovers of the random.

Living random scares many of us. It’s the phobia of the unknown, of not knowing what to expect. So many of us lead lives which lead to expected results and rue that the unexpected never happens to us. No surprises, no magical events, no wonderful things that just happened out of the blue.

I wonder if we could experiment with random, even if for just a day in the week. Say Wednesday is random day, and we do random things, make random decisions. What would it be like? Uninhibited, mad, crazy, constantly surprised...it would be like being a child again.But then again, guess the idea is to open yourself up to the randomness of life. It wouldn't be random if you planned random, would it?

Everyday Musings > Food Glorious Food

I've been attempting to cook for the last few months. Recently I bought a book - ‘Pure and Simple Vegetarian Cooking’ by Vidhu Mittal. It has beautiful pictures, easy instructions and some lovely recipes. It’s been three days since I’ve been trying a dish a day from the book – brown rice with besan zucchini, carrot and peas pulao and today, phulka with minty aloo. My salt is consistently less and the phulka today fluffed beautifully but wasn’t as soft as it ought to be. It is truly fun to cook and eat fresh, hot food. And I’m sure it is a hell of a lot more fulfilling to cook and feed it to someone too. Once or twice I’ve carried my experiments to work, so my dear friends (who I call my three mothers) can taste it and tell me where I’ve gone right or wrong.

Lunch in the canteen is a depressing affair. The food is insipid and far from nutritious. A platter of diced fruits is all that’s palatable at times. The days when someone gets food from home, our eyes light up. Everyone heaps spoonfuls and relishes it, conversations are more animated, the laughter heartier than usual. A good lunch gives everyone enough reason to smile till the afternoon tea.

The other day, on the way to a meeting, a colleague J and I were discussing that if not for our taste buds, we could pop little green food pills and life would go on without a hitch. There’d be no restaurants, no canteens, no wastage and no hunger problem. I shudder at the thought though. The smell of fresh bread being baked, the taste of apple pie, the last bit of chocolate sauce that waits to be licked off the lip, the appeal of a hot roti giving into a slab of white butter...I cannot imagine food not being food.

India has so many varieties of food; they differ from state to state, region to region, home to home, hand to hand. World over, food is a major reason some people know that a few countries exist. Lebanese Falafal being one instance. Or Caribbean beans. Japanese Sushi. Or Indian curry. Food seems to be a great way to understand culture and initiate hospitality. The first thing anyone does to make a guest feel welcome is to take them out to dinner. The simplest way to show your appreciation for an alien culture is to eat the local food.

Anthony Bourdain, Jamie Oliver, Kylie Kwong, Yan, Sanjiv Kapoor, Tarla Dalal have all earned much praise and fan following for entertaining people with their culinary talents. A cookery show is so relaxing to watch, the neat precise manner in which the ingredients are measured and set aside in plain bowls, the different woks and kadhais, the cooking process and finally the garnishing and serving. Cooking is therapeutic and it is amazing that in a planet with so many creatures, human beings are the only ones able to cook food and relish it.

I learnt to cook a few months ago, and realised that I’ve been missing out a wonderful experience. I wonder why food is not taught as a science to students and why there are no kitchen labs and culinary studies in school? How is it that such an essential skill escaped their attention and is relegated to a Home Science or Catering elective in college?

The way my grandmother cooked and the way my mother cooks and the way I cook are so different. Like copying the same film onto different CDs, there is much generation loss, but as long as there is the willingness to cook, and enough love in the preparation of it, I’m sure food will never turn into a little green pill.

Everyday Musings > On the sidewalk

I grew up in Andhra, Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, Bangalore, and have travelled across the country. But when I had to decide where in India I would like to live, as a single woman, of the 29 states and 6 union territories, Mumbai was the only place that felt relatively safe. It was the only city I could see myself being on my own, having the freedom to live and travel and use the public transport, all alone, after 8 pm.

It unsettles me. This lack of choice. And makes me wonder why it is so.

At the Kalaghoda Fair, there was an installation, a maze created by walls of saris stretched across a frame that you had to walk into. It was called the Labyrinth. It was narrow and one didn’t know where it would lead to. And had signs hanging from above...of incidents and places where women’s freedom had been violated. It was a claustrophobic experience, one that I wished I could run out of. I felt the fear I feel on a semi-deserted bridge or subway, in a nearly empty bus or in a crowded market.

I pick up the papers and read about women being raped, physically assaulted, paraded naked or threatened with acid. TV reports recently showed a bunch of college girls being manhandled and beaten in full view of cameras by hooligans and paid hands. And if these seem random, one only has to step onto the streets to feel the stares, the gropes, the lecherous looks that strip you from head to toe, faces that leer, voices that come close and whisper obscenities or 'hello baby' in your ear. I have waited to cross the road and have seen decent looking guys from ‘good families’, on bikes, with their sisters or girlfriends sitting pillion, air-kiss or letch openly at women on the sidewalk.

My friend M recently posted on her blog about a new taxi service for women in Mumbai city. She said “It’s not only safety concerns that have prompted the move of such a concept in Bombay, it’s a need, when women sit in a taxi, they don't feel comfortable - it’s everything from hygiene to the driver gawking at you in the mirror to the attitude and behaviour of rudeness and belligerence one has to put up with especially given that you don't seek a free ride in the black and yellow! In fact I know of some colleagues who arrive by the last flight into the city late night, and hire a cab from the airport, often pretend to be on mobile phones when alone with male drivers to create a feeling of safety.”

What is this India we live in today? It clashes with every value that my brother and I have been taught as children, every value that I am sure every Indian child has learnt. We pray to so many goddesses, revere and respect our mothers and sisters and yet see our women facing so many unmentionable atrocities. Why do some men treat women like this? What is it that they are trying to prove? Who are they trying to be? What makes them step out of home and do this and go right back and touch their mother's feet?

A fan of Phantom comics, I remember the picture of a beautiful woman dressed in Gold and a blurb that said “Old jungle saying - A beautiful woman clad in the finest jewels may walk in the jungle safely at midnight."

Societies, old and new, would to date count themselves safe if they could make a claim like this. We probably had this kind of peace and freedom from fear a long time ago, during the rule of some benevolent kings, when we were called ‘Sone ki Chidiya’(the golden bird) perhaps. But the India of today has traveled far from Phantom’s just world. I pray it doesn't lose its way completely.

Everyday Musings > By Chance

I watch a bit of a film called 'Just my Luck' which was about this really lucky girl who always gets the best of everything in life, till one day she loses it when she kisses someone who has terrible luck, and they switch destinies. What a helpless situation that would be. If you always wished to be lucky, you'd then wish and pray that you never lost what you asked for. That's the thing with something external I guess, that you could always lose it. I read somewhere that SRK wakes up every morning dreading that he's not famous anymore. But does luck happen by chance?

Fairy godmothers, guardian angels, magic lamps, lucky charms; all are shortcuts, or surecuts to get us the life we want. And what stops us from just going out there and getting what we want? Maybe we don't believe that we can. Maybe we want a quick fix. Maybe we want to be absolutely assured of our happiness. That makes sense – we want to be sure, certain, 100% in the know of tomorrow. Of a happy, joyful, healthy, wealthy tomorrow. The kinds that magic wands seem to promise. And if ever, we get that, even for a minute, we call it luck, fate, destiny, chance, magic, signs, coincidence or the work of a guardian angel.

I'm convinced I have a guardian angel. From the time I was a child till today, I've been taken care of, protected, and loved; every step of the way. If I lost something, I always found it or something else made up for it. If I ran out of money, I'd find some tucked away in my jeans, old wallets, any place I least expected to find some. I see signs everywhere that save me, help me make a decision, bring me out a spot and make me smile. I have had my share of tears and fears, but in hindsight everything that happened to me, happened for a reason. And it's made my life what it is.

Perhaps each one of us has a guardian angel, reaching out, helping like a silent elf. But maybe we're too busy worrying and wanting to notice. Or perhaps, just perhaps, each one of us is our own guardian angel, magic wand, lucky charm, destiny keeper. And the coincidences that we smile at, or the signs that we see, are all the work of our own mind. We make our lives what they are, and all those incredible things we thank luck and chance for, maybe is our own doing. Our minds have supreme power and our bodies are masses of energy and together they attract more than we see. If we call on good, we see good. If we call on bad, we see bad. Like in the Alchemist, 'if we really want something, the whole universe conspires to get it for us'.

So by wishing, praying, hoping, wanting, we're making our energy work for us, to get us what we want. Ironically, if we get it, we celebrate the role of coincidence, chance, luck, fate, but not our own minds. Only the celebration comes with a rider; if I don't know how it came about, how can I make it stay or keep coming back? So we are indebted to an external benefactor, Luck, Fate etc; and we remain chained to that thought, always nervous of losing what we think we got by grace.

I went to K's wedding on Sunday. It was the first catholic wedding I'd ever attended, and thanks to SD, I waltzed, did the wedding march, jived and did the birdie dance too. And when all the single women were called to catch the bouquet, I went and joined them, standing there, remembering all the movies I'd seen this part in. I watched as the bride turned around, raised her arms, flung the bouquet over her head, and the bouquet sailed into the air and to my utter surprise, landed in my hands. What a stroke of luck and fortune said everyone. You will soon marry lucky girl. And they grinned at me.

Yes, it was luck, a thing of chance I said to myself and smiled. A sign from my guardian angel who knows my silly romantic mind. Now I wonder, was it just me, making it happen for myself.

Has luck always been ours for the asking?

Everyday Musings > Absence and Presence

I watched 'He's not that into you' day before. An average film about women who are unable to read the signs men give out, and wonder and worry about love, having it and not having it. I was perplexed by the end of the film about what their conclusions were. Through the film they had a character called Alex who cut through the confusion and gave a girl tips on how to figure when a guy gives you a brush off and by the end of her several dates, men who fall in love seemed an aberration. But then Alex goes and falls in loves with her and all the theories bookmarked turned to nought. It turns out no one knows what makes love work after all.

My friends and I constantly chat about love. Perhaps because someone in the group is either falling out of it, into it, or wanting to. So it's a perennial topic. On my way back home, I remembered something that seemed to connect and could, maybe, shed some light on the issue.

I love white. It's a beautiful soothing colour that stands for calm, peace, serenity and purity. But White, I believe, is not a colour. It is the absence of colour that defines the colour white. White has all the colours of the rainbow and they fuse together to create the impression of white, but white is not a component in it.

I wondered if that could be true for love as well.

The heady feeling, the jelly legs, the not being able to speak or think with clarity, the feeling you can't explain...we look for definite signs when we fall in love. We've read about them in books, seen them in movies, but that need not be the only signs of love. What if it was the absence of all things we are sure of as being love also defines love? Is that perhaps a better judge? Could we start interpreting signs of love differently?

So, say you meet a guy or girl, and you like the person, spend time, talk, smile, call, meet up for coffee etc. But when you start to think if its love, you say nah, no, I don't feel the usual symptoms. Or take the case of an arranged marriage. A couple met, got married, took up responsibility together, brought up children, have a deep understanding of each other, accept each other's faults, but when asked if it was love that keeps them together, say oh we had an arranged marriage, and just grew to accept the other. I wonder if, in our daily life, we're missing the negative spaces, the things that are not love that may also define love.

A thing can be defined by its negative space, by what it does not seem to be. If we look around us, we'll find negative space in everything, the absence which marks a presence. Like night is the absence of day, death is the absence of life. Michelangelo said of his sculpting 'I saw the angel trapped in stone and I set him free.' He sculpted the negative space. He chipped away all the stone that was not the angel, and the angel appeared.

So what if we chipped away all that is not love and then found love by doing that. Like the friends in Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na who one day realise they're in love. So if one doesn't feel negative towards a person, doesn't hate them, doesn't not care, doesn't not understand, doesn't not feel something nice when one is with that person, then it could logically mean that there is a possibility of love. And probably, if the mind explores, ta da, love happens.

For those of us looking for love, perhaps it's always been around. But maybe we've been just been too distracted by the traditional signs of love to see the presence of it.

Everyday Musings > Delhi Belly

I'm up every morning to the sounds of 'Yeh Dilli hai mere yaar' from the soundtrack of Dilli6. It brings back memories from Delhi where I spent five years of my life. In the times when life wasn't so rushed, the streets not so filled with molestation attempts and Gurgaon and Noida debates.

When I moved from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh to Delhi, it was a culture shock. I didn't know a word of Hindi and was lost. I was in KG I think. We moved into a place in Old Rajinder Nagar, a first floor apartment in a G+1 house, with a balcony that ran around the house, where the landlords, the D's, lived below. The D's were a joint family; there was M aunty, A uncle, their lovely 5 year old daughter S and the very interesting dadima. Having a South Indian family staying upstairs meant chawal for S who used to run up for lunch and dinner to have her fill of it. And of course, the dosas and the vadas.

My school was first St Josephs I think and then I moved to Bapu Adarsh Vidyalaya, which had classes till the 6th. They taught everything from singing, dancing, painting, even Sanskrit. The school had a jungle behind the premises where we'd see peacocks during lunch. And I remember making a solar electricity generator for a science exhibition. I walked from home to school, a nice happy walk with friends, through a residential area full of gardens. I remember stopping to wonder if I could pluck any roses from this one lady's garden that was just so inviting.

It's easy to make friends in Delhi. I had plenty. K and P and I were a gang. K's favourite pastime was looking up girl's skirts and P and I used to make fun of him. P was a sweet girl and her mom made the yummiest food. We'd roam about and spend hours doing nothing, but it was fun.

My brother and I had a huge collection of dinky cars that we were so protective about. He and I were best friends and often hung out together. Our haunts were Pappu ki dukaan for Peppy and Thums Up and a tiny shop where we'd buy masala Imli and these yummy fried hollowed out pipe shaped puffed corn thingy.

I once bought a puppy home. My neighbour's dog had had several so I took one. It was winter time, and the puppy would nuzzle its wet nose and get into my parents bed. It once even peed in my mom's closet. My mother was so furious, she ordered it right back. I was very sad to give it away, but would go see it from time to time.

Our home was always filled with guests. P uncle was our favourite. He'd come and take us out to Taj Palace and we'd rush up and down the escalators. And dad would take us to Appu Ghar, Pragati Maidaan and India Gate when the weather was nice, to have ice creams and buy balloons and feel the grass on our bare soles. We'd eat ice creams a Nirulas and kababs on Shankar Road dhabas and when we got the first colour tv around, everyone would sit to watch cricket matches and chitrahaar and movies.

The locality we stayed in was a fun place. The garbage woman S was a loud Haryanvi and such a strong lady. I was a bit scared of her. The opposite house aunty would wash and dry her Sardar husband and son's hair every Sunday and it was mesmerising to watch. D aunty would call me on Kanchke and do puja and give me aate ka halwa, puri and black chana with a crisp new 2 rupee note on it. Come summer and the women would make achaar, the pheri waalas would bring fresh cut muli and kakdi, smear it with salt and chaat masala and we'd crunch it while playing. Winters and the school dress would have blazers and high woollen socks and I'd rub my hands and blow smoke rings.

Festivals were so much fun in Delhi. One didn't have to check dates to know what was when. The streets would be filled with preparations for it. On lohri, the whole street would gather and throw puffed rice into the fire and eat til. On Karvachauth, M aunty would henna her long beautiful hair and put mehndi on her hands, dress up like a bride and pass thaalis with the neighbourhood women. On Janmashtami, the neighbourhood houses would make installations of Krishna's birth and life on the narrow street and it was a treat.

Delhi is a lovely memory in my head, although when I visited it last, it was nothing like how I knew it. Like an innocent child that had become too worldly wise. Woh dilli thi mere yaar.

Everyday Musings > Happy 35th

Mother is chubby. And has twinkling eyes when you look through her glasses. She's soft, like a cotton cloud I could sink into. There's something about her saris. My brother used to sleep with one of them as his blanket for a while. He also had this habit of holding her earlobe as he slept. I just hug her, as much as I can. It's fun to watch her cook. She's like a bird. Her vegetables are cut neatly, her masalas are just right and food always served fresh and hot. She's an incredible cook and loves experimenting with new recipes. She makes a lot of things. Vegetarian for my dad who loves eating only mallu food, baked dishes and fish and prawns for me, something special for my brother who I always think she loves a wee bit more. Hmph. I love to take her shopping. And buy her loads of things. She loves to feed me with fruits and almonds and gooseberries and karele ka juice. Yikes. Mom taught me that the way you cut your vegetables affects their taste. She taught me to welcome people, to never take life too seriously, to laugh as much as I like and cry as much too. She taught me to serve with love, to always keep my home clean and to love plants. She taught me that one can be traditional and modern and it does not conflict. She taught me how to care for others, how to draw, how to love colours and how to be a child even after I grew up. She taught me the first prayer I ever heard. She taught me equality and selflessness. She taught me love. And everything I know about it.

Father challenges me. He treats me as an equal. He bought me my first big book, served me my first glass of beer, helped me with all my elocutions and debates and is the reason I know so many words. He tried teaching me to write and read Malayalam many times but I never learnt. He often took my brother and me to India Gate to have ice cream and always bought us balloons. He taught me how to play chess. We argue, constantly. Father loves collecting newspaper clippings. He says he'll read them when he retires. Only when he retired, he went right back to work. He's a workaholic and works all day. And night. He truly enjoys what he does. He was 55 I think when he worked on his first computer and taught himself so much that he's now an IT consultant. I'm very proud of him but I don't think I've ever told him that. He loves my new home, tells me its warm and nice and is finally convinced I can live alone. Father loves whiskey and beer and cricket matches and Malayalam movies. He loves Aamir Khan and calls SRK a monkey. Grin. He loves his brothers and sisters and always plans to bring them together every occasion he gets. He likes kitchen gardens and always plants lime and chilli and kadi patta in his ancestral home whenever he does back. He started an education fund for poor children in his village. He's very organized and has files for everything. He's saved every card or gift I've given him since I was a child. He saves and invests and wishes I would save too. He loves me and is proud of me and never stops telling me that.

Today my mother and father celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary, and I dedicate this musing to them.