heartpour

With the dentist...

2012-02-06T23:16:00.001-08:00

I had been "window shopping" for a dentist who would do the job for me and still not get on my nerves...The session began with a formal introduction, an oral precis of dental prelude and the much dreaded hippo-open view of my (un)intact tooth from the lot that needed the treatment. The dentist lens view of the fractured, half-broken tooth did not put a smile on my lips actually...but the oral drill that a ceramic this and a steel that by the dentist did not clamp shut my mind from thinking of an unexpected cost that promised to chew the pain away. The only ceramic I knew and understood were the grey tiles of my bathroom. And the first dentist who looked fresh from college, married young and a patient artist, drew the skeleton of the tooth, blotted in blue the problem area and promptly placed the type of treatment with its cost on board, cautioning me of "side effects", if I postpone my visit any further. I smiled in relief within that this is not the doctor for me to cheer about...It was not a costly mistake thankfully!! The next in line was a new in neighbourhood dentist,the on-the-toe thinker who quickly bought out the prognosis and smiled more than me. Her fast paced body language and diplomatically smothered criticisms of my dental pattern made me feel more apologetic for myself than thankful for the visit. The constant comebacks of root wrenching pain in the night till mid morning for those hop-jumping dentist find days added its share of agony...until my MIL suggested I give a final try at the clinic that stood right opposite my flat. The dentist there was a quiet doctor who healed after hearing out the problems of her patient(s) than opening the topic for "value" treatments. An extraction was found inevitable and no amount of ceramic would help cement the gaping hole in the mouth. The entire procedure was sensitively processed and enough care taken to rest resulting pain from the pull. The experience at the dentist was worth the pain.3 cheers!!!

Soul food

2012-01-16T01:26:00.000-08:00

With Pongal having come and gone, the rising sense of emotional sentiments, festive rituals and soul food from the past came back...a pongal kolam to mark the beginning of thai maasam, a grouped together, hands-on-earth experience-I drew designs that I thought fit well into the expanding mesh of flowers and butterflies, of a sunny chariot, held high by a sun god motif on a high flying soggy flag, run over by kids(or kite runners) running all over the compound early the next morning. The eldest of the(sister) girl bandwagon, Uma, captained this dusk-dawn colourful beginning. The D day starts with a spiritual dose of thiruvempaavai, eye half shut and winter morning mist air biting into our paavadais and skirts, to sing praise of the three eyed Lord Siva. The high praise that beckons the deep in sleep (or ignorant)village belles or paavais to rise and sing like the raag bhupala, the sweet nectar of pure faith, runs hoarse and pitched off the octave by us sisters. The venn pongal (with coconut chutney and gotsu) and sarkarai pongal eaten religiously, hand sticky with pure ghee smells all day divine! As few showed any real inch of interest in flying kites that day evening(from the terrace), the fun was in observing square diamond-cut kites get bound in shard like thread, spool unwinding, the flying kite anchored, higher above the rest.Being happy for your home team or for the neighbours didn't matter.The take off, the let go, the dip, the spin and the cut off its back up, dis joint and flying homeless to reach another territory was all very moving. The kite looked more liberated and lonely than ever. On kanu pongal, we got weary of the rituals by now, waiting for out turn on the early morning hours of pre sunrise to feed the sparrows and crows leftover pongal, diced sugarcane pieces, berry fruit and some other colourful rice, rolled in palms like mini golf balls, spread in linear patterns on a plaintain leaf. I looked around and checked to see if our singing a song to mark the end of the pongal festivities, attracted any attention from morning walkers and joggers.Being on the terrace didn't feel like the top of the world experience always. And another round of kalandha saadam-this time, coconut rice, lemon rice, curd rice, fried papad, sambar, fresh curd and payasam (with vadai at times). We sisters from this joint family grew as we ate, different tastes of home food, year after year and being married to different home cultures, are now far from this inviting flavours of pongal, kanu pongal and the likes. Like the kites we've come far away from our native land, soaring and disjoint and the common spool of roots reduced in people size- soul food, a delectable memory.

One of a kind

2011-12-17T04:17:00.000-08:00

My mother and I have been the opposites that sit together as a comfortable yet different pair. To begin with, we are not replicas in physical appearance and stature.Her idea of beauty is boring to me, and mine, merely ideal in her view. Her reality of being the pain bearer, an undoing of only that in me. Absorbing an early grief of being a widow, a single parent, a recreation of emptiness, while I look within myself lacking of any feeling whatsoever for her soulfull of sadness. She does things until they look perfect, while I perfect enough only after trial and errors. She fights for her share of appreciation, while I appreciate if there wont be any. She loves to death any thing/any person she finds deserving, while Iam full of life when Iam set free... We are two states of an island-our journey to the coast are two separate ways. She'll do ok there, in this heaven on earth, while I look at my creator, for an easy way out. She'll continue to lead by example, while I follow her from a distance. She has humbled herself through time as I take pride to be her daughter.

What's cooking??

2011-12-03T01:54:00.000-08:00

Multi-culture cooking is happening in many T.V. shows across the country.The getting together of many culinary artisans who blend their art of cooking on a palette of aroma and colours is sure shot appetizing! Iam a hard core vegetarian, but the dressing of the dishes cooked(veg/non-veg), seasoning, blending in of the global flavours, adrenalin pumping pressure tests to bring out the best of the best chefs across the continent is food culture redefined. The passion of the food in the making, the prize money for the numero uno chef amongst competitors and the title to take home are rewarding and feel full for the aspiring cooks. The state of the art culinary techniques and finesse in their applying raises steadily higher and tougher in the ranks of select judges, adding steam to the whole process of becoming the deserved one. This journey, this experience is celebrated in the amateur being prepared to the next best level of master multi-culture chef.

Resting unrest

2011-09-03T04:47:00.000-07:00

A sense of restlessness becomes part of a growing, professional mind.The day seems to end a new, tired beginning for the sunshine to follow. I write less and edit more now - quite the opposite to what I used to do! Being mindful of a measured sense of flow of words is what is the working flow all about. I enjoy the dim lighted darkness at the work foodcourt. It seems to be agreeing to the dark clouds hanging in my head owing to ignorance; exhaustion and the likes are passing clouds that look pale a moment and seem full of silver lining the next. The endless stream of employees trying to make life look larger, trendier, more informal, somewhat serious and a whole lot more than what one is needed for and asked to do is largely obvious. Iam one of those faces.A consciously corporate tight fit in, who takes time out to feel the real life and live simply as a free thinking and writing soul. Today is a day off from the maddening traffic mayhem, suffocating pollution and tight time schedule. My day of restimg my restlessness is quite the break to begin the next week ahead.

Self showcase.

2011-05-27T04:50:00.001-07:00

Are you scared of being free from past worries? Does it unsettle you more often than not to emerge the real person that you are supposed to be and that you have stepped up, one experience after the other, to be truly you? Join the club, as I too am close to feeling found and about to be recreated. These jitters that smudge the routes into future are many to one. The trick is not to lose oneself there, but gather ground one step at a time, stay tuned to the existing situations spinning around, gain momentum and keep walking.The spins will whither themselves out, as you enter a bigger, wider circle of changing reality. The truth as you see it sets you wholly free-from who you were to who you are supposed to be. A picture that stands tall as a memory and the many images that slide shows this change in you is worth living for.

Lone heroes

2011-05-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

Being a single child of a Single parent is a far cry from the popular belief that their every need is given an attention unto detail. Their every wish, the parent's command. Being lone heroes is no small job either. It can be made simpler, with ample time economy and assured in small reminders to the parent concerned, that one cannot hold reins to two lives at a time. That letting go of their child (Son/daughter) to the life he/she desires to recreate makes them reliable in their own, while securing confidence from their creator. The healthy divide that ensues from this freedom is wholesome and binding. Each to their own, despite a common grief of losing a partner and a parent; coming together through moments of loss as a family,as a friend, as a guide and as a philosopher, makes the single parent-single child relationship multi faceted. While material wish list of their child/children have been possessed and fulfilled by hard working single parents across various Indian social classes, getting too worked up over their singledom, blaming the world for their loneliness and expecting that their child fills the void, without disappointing and hurting them, makes it a nightmare that the son/daughter will never wish for. Life never stops for those who've lost their life partner. While the bliss of married company 'happily ever after' may not exist, the practical insights of survival, if one invests in their life, will be self empowering as well as a unique learning experience for the child, that no material happiness can buy.

Chutnification!

2011-05-19T04:42:00.000-07:00

Several ingredients that went into making us the way we are today-our cat fights with our siblings, our make believe play world, running and catching, kite flying, assisting grandma in making pickles, vadams during summers; pocketing sweet sour elandha vadams, badams and juicy maavadu, washed and dried and licking like hungry street urchins, squinting eye and rolling them, while clicking tongue in noisy, tasteful agreement, thayir saadam in placid company.A full moon above our heads on a breezy summer night, as Talat Mehmood sung pathos from the Philips tape recorder... Decades later, juicy nostalgia does find its way into my apartment kitchen, a full moon atop a neighbouring beauty salon and moist breeze that trickles down my sweaty forehead. Although chutney and thuvayal pastes are available in all leading super markets and stores in home food clonish Chennai, the true taste of originality was diligently practised on a groaning mixie, while coriander leaves were slightly sauteed in an oil pan, with til, urad dal and other ingredients, until the leaves were removed of their raw smell. With tamarind juice, red chillies and salt for an addition, the chutney looked a lovely green, for what it was worth. Few goats that were tied to a pole, to fast and feed them prior to their getting slaughtered in the corner meat stall, were the gracious recipients of my evening's chutnification. Before they too could bleat aloud with complaints, I returned home.

Signboard callout!

2011-05-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

Moving on... Sometimes life gives us this reminder that it's time to move on...from people from your past specially. They are the stop gap stations that come and go so fleetingly into our lives, their presence merely remain as names on an old stone signboard. They are part of your fresh earlier memories from the hay days. Their friendship, a breezy autumn that slows the spring in your growing years. They need you more, your sunshine and your warmth, as much as a dampened umbrella, her home, sweet home. People choose to be friendly and act so, but what a blessing in disguise truth is! I've fewer friends now than old pals I cannot count on. Iam more than a name on an old stone signboard.

Cry, the beloved self...

2011-05-10T23:04:00.000-07:00

What are relationships all about? Is it a lifetime pulse that finetunes with positive reciprocative energies or falls out, layer after layer, time after time? Are we in sync with self? Does relating oneself through the other limit us? And as we roleplay from one dutiful submission of identity to the other, weaving thoughts, goals, haves and have (k)nots seamlessly, sometimes aimlessly to give the other just what they want and depriving the need in us to be heard, to be loved, to be cherished, the self in 'self control' gets controlled, almost stiffled for attention. What use is there of a being that has a voice but cannot be heard? In a world full of increasing noise levels around us, getting lost is a blind truth, being found, a real discovery.As we raise the bar, the standard of life from mere breathing to pumping life into our lives, the fog seems to disappear. The boredom of a daily life does kill us, slowly yet silently. As the day dawns to present bright possibilities, a means to unglue oneself from a sticky routine can be a start. Not forcing oneself to be committed in clockwork precision can be another way to stay free of self acquired anxieties in relation to time deadlines. Time is in fact perennial.It is never bound by one's time frames, morning noon and night. It flows, as we learn to tide through highs and lows of life. Life is a deep accord of acknowledgement with the creator, the architect of the universe.It lies in us, within the chambers of our heart.And when we feel emptiness or when it is too full of worries, the chamber echoes a cry for help.And when tears flow out, unclogging blocks, cleansing crevices, the path ahead does look bearable to tread.Pain from past, uncertainty from future, a middle ground at present. Their relationship within self a new direction of life.

By the people-To the people.

2011-02-25T03:17:00.000-08:00

Social networking sites outside of the net is anything but gripping. A set pattern of rituals that earmarks the time and date in function, succeeding which the place of venue and the logistics to reach there can be worked out in predictable plan-specially the need to feel important enough, relatives (near and far) to be seen there and arbitrary comparisons drawn to one's own-belongings and other factors that is anything but one's business. To prepare oneself pre ritually is the gathering together of one's 'party' wearables-saree, lehenga,fitting blouse with befitting accessories.The face that masks hundreds of emotions gets a facial done, a necessity to present one's age and grooming gracefully and being a woman, the layers of cosmetic treatment from hair care to pedicure has to be scrubbed off and shine clean sans the weariness of customised relatively irrelevant get-togethers. For who? For what? are probings that receive only a silent answer from within. To acquire a set role and get t(s)ucked into its making, thanks to many such rituals that make you feel less important than what one assumes to be is a plain understanding that will get told in hundreds of ways in the years to come. Being married to oneself through ego divides within families, uppity snobbery, tongue in cheek sarcasm, insecure prestige and frivolous pride, the loud voice within the clan that always has to have the last word are elements that mar the social makeup and divorces the oneness in being together with people who matter to you most. The grand dinner or the sumptuous lunch can be a saving grace that the high and the low of a same human society can gulp down, in acceptance, if the humble food fare can quell their need to be nourished, failing which an unfulfilled appetite of wrath can fall upon the hosts, word of mouth adding the finishing touch. A photo for a memory and a blandness that tastes bitter sweet, a recall of such times does make me braver to face more such meetings.

Is anybody up there??

2011-02-22T05:07:00.000-08:00

Life has been a vast echo of a higher power calling. They don’t go unheard, but merely get lost in an acquired lifestyle of human choices. As one moves and tides through enduring moments, a living example of pulsating pain, quiet gaps in pause and rumbling laughter, the expectant waiting of a better life is like chasing a rainbow- Colourful and void. Nothingness is real. A real awareness of this takes one closer to living a life as it is-a process of growing older and wider in thinking and being linear in doing, day after day, season after season. This repeated pattern of doing away with one form of lifestyle, shifting in certain daily needs like food and healthy home radius and drawing a circle of wholeness around oneself can be open and ending in that particular choice. Beginning of a newer and a bigger “one” can be born out of a chord of connectivity with the higher power. The way up there is one’s path-choices to be trod on and walked away from down the living road. Anyone hear the calling?

Is your coast clear?

2011-01-17T04:33:00.000-08:00

To care less of others in order to give more to ourselves is allowing feelings to function, outside in. The more you begin to connect this way, you cut out reaching to life outside of you. Awareness of a better world is not a choice, but a natural discovery. And differences that float near you weeds on your island, making a hollow well that reflects only 'you'. Whether you lie low, placid and full of ideas to come free from this darkness or enable parts of you, past hurts, present pause and all, to risk the pain and endure learning, one healing quiet moment at a time,that will oar you to the coast. The choice is yours. And the coast does look clear, as you travel lighter and happier from there.

'Im'proper Nouns

2011-01-02T05:51:00.000-08:00

'Sheila' and 'Munni' have become the new face of Indian womanhood.Every curve of feminity exploited and promoted, one devouring eye candy item after the other. These proper nouns flaunt everything, stop at nothing and push the 'new' face of Indian woman to an all great high. An adjective that's come of age!! A sumptuous feast of perverted voyeurism,masala moves, bang on music and booze unplugged -a riot of human senses, which looks super hot and senseless at the same time.It is not sensitive and moves quite nothing within the viewer.Even hormones hibernate this cold season into numbness. To feel stripped off clean entertainment that gets itemized, tabulated at the top of film charts and worse still, we end up paying for it! Maybe calling women names have become the latest trend,vulnerability on an everyday looming large and trapped in one's own body,a noun, an item. (Im)proper nouns anyone?

10 things to do before you welcome 2011

2010-12-27T04:12:00.000-08:00

As the countdown to a newer You begins, growing a year older and wiser looks possible without putting you off. Read on to know how many or how much you've outgrown... 1. Wake up with the new year. The party need not bash the life out of you. Remember... the lazy baggage in you is never too heavy to be thrown out. 2. Don't drink and drive your blues away.The license to enjoy and welcome a brand new year is not yours alone. 3. Go slow with the junk food.A Garbage can "You" is a sore sight! 4. Stop pleasing everyone...blur out excess attention on others...your life vision is You. 5. Focus on the few who make you want to be a better person. 6. Just let those leftovers be. Not every of those "To Do" lists get done. Look at the ones you could complete. Raise a toast to the finishing touch you've managed to give to those you could lay your hands on. 7. Don't be hard on yourself. Each of us is made differently.Only as you let go can you actually move on. 8. Take your health seriously.Good cheer can mix well with good health. 9. Look special without trying too hard to be.Clear your wardrobe off old clothes you can do away with. Think new only as you shed the old. 10.Finally, stay happy, wear your unique smile and wish people in your life well.Have a great year ahead! Cheers!

One life, one year at a time

2010-12-26T03:37:00.000-08:00

Jhalak 2010 ka: Life comes full circle year after year. As I too have grown a year older, shed some fears, gained some flak in family circles for gaining weight, lost respect for few elders, this year comes to a close and opens a new me. A belief that being oneself is not an effort. And being less vulnerable to criticms, know-it-all remarks, controlling behaviours and tolerance tolerance one's own impulses and restrain equally has been self upgrading to say the least. "Why me?" has become "That's why it's me". Writing my way through unsettled scores, a sense of tally and not being cross at the cost of my peace of mind, let's me be. The coming year opens an unaccounted for lesson-some learnt, some not to be ignored, some to be forgotten and willfully forgiven.

A toast to our city!

2010-12-02T03:15:00.000-08:00

It was raining lightning thunderbolts at high volume volts yesterday night. Nature's fury raging from outside the bedroom windows, that a small peep made me scamper and tuck in like a scared rabbit! Its warm and cold by turns and the rains take us chennaiites by surprise. The roads leading down to the supermarket from the 1920's, the liberated shoe shop that blares stereo (Type) tamizh 'kollywood' music, the overcrowded bhavan that I must be blind to, lest I lose myself in ananda to its oil dripping, crusty and golden brown veggy cutlets...sheer misery to a diet watcher! The queue of people have options many, to wait and be stalled meanwhile by other smaller outlets outside that have the "American" prefix added to the bright yellow sign board reading "American sweet corn", "American pizzas" and so on. While the curtain raiser of a rain dampens and dries, the moisture is enough to keep one's taste buds craving. The variety here in Chennai is rich and generous. Its a nice blend of the south with the mushrooming north, a culture connect with the continental and laps of sea food by the beach. Being a hard core vegetarian and having been to a handful of foodcourts and still counting, food junctures are a stop gap appeasement that is not a daily to me, but a mouthful of appreciation for a city on the go, begins with a morsel and Chennai sure has plenty to offer.Rain or shine, a good reason to dine eh?

For the record...

2010-11-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

Get togethers at marriage is anything but getting back together for old times sake. Distant cousins,cousin's cousin, relatives with temporary amnesia and a whole lot of stuffy sentiments that sigh, stare and make mockery of marriage to just a wedding. A people's place is the mandap, moy panam post, bouquet bridesmaids, glitter and gold displayed from forehead to toe, smiling as a last resort, the bride and her groom. The who's who of the family clan, their lives and stories add no more than vapour to a heavy air of cold vibes from the richest of the snobs. Hypocrisy is the middle name prefixing a surname, a family background, a cosmic comedy connection and last but not the least dutiful submissions to family heads and their respective kula deivam above them. A mehendi and a sangeet are music to the event management's ears, reaching out their hands and ears, sweet accord with duh moolah, one day at a time. A scam of a ceremony for marriage hall honchos, caterers, reception invite services and their various stalls that have money and more of commission written all over them- a rich chance to fleece those auspicious days, arriving in the traditional muhurtham time, from the 'heavy duty' party. Right from dawn to the first night, sweet dreams for some,nightmares for some others, a payoff for the rest of the lives, an investment of happiness on the other, this is what being married relates to...for the record...

Light of our lives

2010-11-20T03:42:00.000-08:00

The festival of lights came and went and bought with it a ray of hope-of removing the darkness that a growing up mind succumbs to and replacing it with leaps of faith, childlike and still curious. My sister’s son, the light of her life, spread the cheer that my “mature” experience did not teach. A toddler in diapers, my constant companion, despite the obvious difference in age, we were similar in terms of observing and understanding the feel of touch, the power of words, body language perception and connect towards social networking. He expressed his need to be heard, to be spoken to and to be protected in small and cute vocabulary. As a grownup, I still have trouble being understood. To pick himself up whenever he falls down, to never ever give up until he fixes a repaired toy and also to reconstruct one, once his mind is tired of the mundane ‘childish’ activities, courage to continue with his curiosity and stay completely natural, were some traits that I watched, smiling and silently praying that they remain just as they are. Being close to two years, he managed to treat the most of us, parents, relatives, friends, his ayah and maid, equally. A quick hug and a tiny toothed smile made the day memorable and richer. The simple joys of watching a toddler are as colourful and unique as watching a rainbow. Both are to be cherished just as is. Enjoy growing up with them-they may bring out the best in you, one day at a time.

The Dying Young

2010-10-04T04:18:00.000-07:00

In Delhi, a 10 year old reportedly hung himself, owing to shortness in his height and the case as it turns out to be, is disillusionment in dealing with reality. Ad campaigns that made a tour at his school, promoting a health drink that enhances height after a quick fix stipulated time, merely shot their product up by make believe words and eye catchy images. As parents from an ignorant educational backdrop, the heights of silent acceptance, outweighing the market value of ‘well meaning’ stalkers, giant walls of ‘friendly’ shadows that accompany a child unto adolescence, only to be left facing multiple other ‘max impression’ walls, is anything but a consolation. Lives of many such defeated minds will not be a call for help. An image wrought future will be the new face of our country. And top brands and their allies will continue making and remaking models out of wooden faces. Products will continue knocking at doors of the poorest of the poor and international levels of sales pitching will survive the deluge, deaths, disease and dire situations, in any order of its occurrence. Blame it on intellectual poverty, monetary handicap, immature parenting, peer pressure or any other silent witnesses to such compounding fatal heights; the downfall of image building is a noticed yet ignored malign growth that consumes the life out of the living class. News headlines that call out loud increasing numbers of suicides of children and youth across varied economic levels, will only be sponsored by value add on childcare commercials and fairest of the fair content, that promises instant beauty at a low price. Unrelated as the ads are to the real life and the pains that go in its making, top brands manage to find their way into a viewer’s psyche, eyeball by eyeball, nudging them to want what the 30/40 seconds lakhs/ crores worth ads display. The ‘actual’ process is a realistic portrayal of items that are blown up lifelike, repeatedly announced, and remade numerous times- popular images that gain by sales revenue size, die a short death and come back fuller with ‘life changing’ ideas, differently shaped models and provoking messages. Items on the shelf as they become once bought and stored in empty racks, reveal to users to be aware of its uses and limitations. Boxes and bag full of ingredients as they are fill human needs as and when they arise. Our core desire to be accepted cherished and understood, go beyond a good height, great complexion and material assets. To stand tall in times of emotional distress, to support and lift the other out of dark moods and to persevere through attempts to get stronger against all odds makes us beautiful just the way we are.

Feel younger, age better

2010-08-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

We never grow tired feeling younger.Age takes away time from us, but the spirit to go on and on is present in each one of us.The desire to grow stronger through odds stacked in every challenge and a changing twist to give to each of those odds to make them even, is what makes the lively spirit take on what comes next. Life bends us-bones, vision and all. Taking the subtle yet surfacing indications and being aware of our body, change is a constant year after year.What we learn to earn and grow upto, we begin making use of time and again.Our core passion(s) too we discover somewhere in the flow of events.Our presence, a physical personality and deeply driven thoughts move us closer to our respective ends.An undoing looks large and becomes us, reflecting the days and experiences gone by.Life stays by us and more so when we give back to our better halves.A coming around the curve of sorts and a two in one beginning.What we create, a symbol of mutual love, reminds us to fill the child in us with warmth, so that when we embrace the daughter/son tight, it is only life reminding us that we may never grow tired feeling younger.

Ready "maid" help

2010-08-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

Maids are a favourably chosen lot. They are an everyday deal of shared household work pressures for women-homemakers or career driven. Instant pills of sorts, to take stock of yesterday, without feeling stressed and too full of domestic chores today-Reliable yet unpredictable (!). French leave is a popular with them (Maids) and so are extras for additional work. They serve their employers conditionally and carry “open” secrets of a maami to her next door curiously casual neighbor, as if unintended and shut off employer privacies. Love them, hate them, they are a way of (South) Indian homemaking. Women (generally) who choose to be maids, cleaning and moping dust off others homes, are susceptible to problem pile their own. Economically deprived and raised in an almost usual “class” of domestic violence, child marriage and mortgage are few painful add-ons .Vulnerable to academics and aware of their importance in everyday housekeeping for those they work for, they are to be served the right doses of doable work and their work planned in advance. The presence and absence of maids feature as “neighbour” talk, a chatty topic, besides the climate and discount deals, for mutual comparisons and concerns, if any. Whether orthodox or open, maids do fit in, inclusive of their very own work patterns. Always in demand and for all seasons, they may be the “always heard of and never found” fruits of labour investment. Maids may not be for keeps, but keep the gap balanced-your household needs and chore turnouts. A house is no home after all, when you, the boss, do not run the show. What say??

Cats and dogs it is!

2010-07-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

The rains are lashing down at the streets below, a stop and start spell of monsoon in Chennai.Vehicles honking their throats out.Wet, wet, wet is the rhythm and cool dampness that pipes down summer music to a weak note.Slushing sounds and soiled boats, capsized and out of breath, as children waddle through their hand work, muddy and unmindful of mothers yelling 'Dinner is getting cold!' Rotis make me go round in circles in kitchen, as the dough looks almost perfect but not oiled enough for the non sticky feel.Add some, remove some, taste some, throw some...cooking can sponge the creative juices out of your thinking stream, as the sambar simmers down, for that last minute additions. Nature puts those breaks on, when the dust and smoke from whizzing motors never seem to stop.A halt, a thinking pause, a dilute reminder of change, of adaptation for daily survival.Even my daily chores are dusted off the usual sense of routine. Trees look spiritually fresh, tingling in the tear shaped drops and lazily moving either ways, leaves towelling them dry.They see lightning eye to eye, as I peep from the moist and sultry kitchen, a window to the outside world. Power cuts cut off the news and the views from such reality.Nature stands stripped off any added glamour, as I miss the red hot countdown of brazen beauties a la filmi style. There are no wipers to make clear the mist of such downpour. Chennai looks every bit a green city, inclusive of its 'unique' sights and smells. Just take it with a pinch of salt. This seasonal 'sambar' has just begun!

Marriage Preview

2010-05-22T04:44:00.000-07:00

Marriage subjects one to an amazing range of emotions.It heals as well as gapes open our true selves. A constant with physiological and psychological changes, working on oneself, lovingly and unconditionally, is the cause and effect of (inevitable) Changes. If the change is a healthy one, the image reflects on the other, a similar need to participate and get better. A transparent wholeness, that is complete in an incomplete way.We begin and end by ourselves and together we understand this. Losing ourselves to the other and being found again, free and natural, is the way this relationship unwinds. There is no one way about it-each has a story his/her own. And the stories are divided in chapters, in short, in length, leading one from one life chapter to the other. A textbook unto itself, we will be read and heard and seen as a subject of an amazing range of emotions.Being married to this relationship is all it takes.

We're Housewives Only

2010-02-20T03:43:00.000-08:00

Something new, something better: Housewives live by a pattern of life that remains a numbing comforter to them through their time in it.Work gets listed daily, as an activity, as a humming unto every job they set out to do. A tune that appeals first as pleasing and promising,plays the same music over and over...until silence descends. Every nook, every corner has volumes to tell. If washing vessels jangle and clean, then so do the slow spinning thump in the washing machine.Fans rustle and take the spring from the air outside. Fridge forms small, sharp icicles and buttoned on to defrost, drops after pittering drop. As the smoke from the raging buses settle comfortably dusty on the AC, hanging on to an open window, the house is neatly placed in the middle of sounds of daily music. Her sensitivities heighten in her cooking space, as the stir of something new, something creative, gets the hand and mind brainstorming.The aroma has simmered down to mere smell, cooking every day, all day, filling voids and sacs, nothingness is leftover. This hush and sigh, an unnoticed high, starts from the deep hollows of the woman within as she suppresses them at the end of her usual day. The creative spirit in her calls her incessantly...to open those thoughts out and dust them free. Each housewife has a higher call to ascend to. Not mute herself into comforting silence.And every nook and every neat corner is no place to fix her mind. She is married to all of life.

Locked Out

2009-12-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

The key was stuck in the lock Turning left and twisted right, it had no clue how to unlock itself. It wished it were few inches sharper, bold edged and less blunt The other keys in the bunch inside tinkered against the wall Their voices were screwed tight and bound to the strings of the veena shaped key holder The singled out victim hollered through the echoing key hole and shook trembling in the hands of the house owner. Rusted and redundant, the key to this problem lay in the other key competitor Useless and outgrown, the older and faithful one lay where it belonged now Stuck in the lock in a pile of muck, this was its end meant to be.

Go Green..

2009-11-28T06:54:00.000-08:00

The grass is greener on all sides for a grasshopper. It learns to mould to the changing seasons, with flying colors. Come rainy days and the rainbow climbs up the veil of clouds outside to smile colorfully at the insects and birds flying below. The curve opens itself embracing the gawks and tweets from nature’s sound of wings. Come winter and the sun basks in cool vacation, resting in a misty snuggle. Time spares none, even the sun, as it has to move on and come to the end of another day. Indulgence in nature comes easily to all. Natures truly gives and never let’s go of its real power to punish those that she creates. We, humans, have given her umpteen second thoughts, to punish almost anything that she creates. We are stuck to going anti green, adding more and more greys to newer rainbows, pushing back its smile in dark clouds. Now she frowns upon the bird flaps and finds them too chirpy. She hides behind frowns to escape from the dance of the insects and shoos them in biting anger. Nature forgives those that she truly considers worth the time. We, as, humans, can only try and make up for every moment of what she continues to give and not change colors of our gratitude to her. The grass is green on all sides you see.

Aadi for sale?

2009-07-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

Come Aadi and Chennai somersaults with the old in the new package.The city is pitching its Aadi sales on an all time high.Newspapers, Tv's, Radio and its jockeys,Colourful posters and the whole lot.What begins like a nudge of an ad is screaming with skyrocketing promises.On your face visuals and product(s) captivatingly displayed in tempting design formats is all too obvious. Are there any value for money takeaways? Really? Or is Aadi comfortably placed in the middle of a year, every year, for stock clearance at thallupadi rates? I'm on the lookout for items for my rented home and also a new apartment specifically to bring them new things and start things all over again. The flat we've managed to secure as tenants in advance, and in payment balance lies the money we need to get back from our current house owner here, who has sold to us her aadi logic And the deference thereafter, becomes all too convenient for her.An extra time bound rent and slackened schedule are the options leftover for us occupants, without any choice.Post aadi or pre aadi, this firewall creates effective one way passage that what comes, comes at a price, auspicious or inauspicious.There is no good time for choosing a better lifestyle, no discounting one's shifts and moves and no owner to restrict and allow any of these. A centralised rule hence, to be blind to such structural claims and be at home with the flavour of the month. Else no roof to cover a thinking head. We the people are at a loss for words, while property owners gain their place in their own terms and agreements. Only double standards conspicuosly survives in this loophole ridden cloak.Aadi is for sale!

What goes around, comes around..

2009-07-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

I've never felt the feelings I feel now.Life has a magnitude all its own and to understand portions of it feels like a lifetime. You've got to face it fair and square and there is nothing else except doing that. No use hiding in your past or showing your back to the future. Iam no hero to demonstrate my strengths, physical or emotional.Iam a baggage of umpteen time portions-my past and present surface and swim in midst of all other life wreckage.Being part of it and swim through till the end, pain and gain and all of it is all it takes.What I've gathered and have with me are the remains from such time tested moments.Weak and vulnerable, lost and lonely, puzzled and plummeted, silent and scared...and so much more. A MVP(Mitral Valve Prolapse)was the most dreadful three letter word in print and an active ignorance of what it really is led me to believe that I was much weaker than what I was capable of.Too much of the passive and numbing down of what I feel, the fear and the factors that actually contribute to it, gets stuck with me, as part of the wreckage survival. To unweed them, one factor at a time, will take an even stronger three letter word-GOD.Not a bundle of yarn, these fears.Pulling them along, protecting and adding weight as I age, is how heavy the results of such MVP'S feel. My heart will go on and on...the rhythm and the flow, the rise and the thuds, the murmurs and the voices...they will stay too.But my heart will go on. Iam made and remade by life's changes and yes, the coast seems clear.And steering them good things that life also continues to bring, rain or shine, good or bad is a choice that I've persevered through.The power to understand its magnitude, is just a lifetime away.The choice is clear.

Baaaaa.....

2009-05-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

Just sleep them through life's downs and wake up dusting the cobwebs off. A second chance is not just a number away, counting sheep as I hear them play. As the lush, swelling grass, paints my blues away, the pains pipe down echoing in the valley head. Here a ridge and there a turn, the sheep disappear and rest in deep slumber I lie awake the coming dawn, rising with the southern skies Life's calling and the tough gets going, chasing shadows I never look back Courting challenges and counting blessings, a sing song this, begins on a note The pains pipe down echoing in the valley head, the sheep disappear and rest in deep slumber

Temporary Amnesia

2009-05-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

A temporary amnesia this life, rolling in a stretch. Between tunnels and light poles, at times far removed and always near Memories from the past is a tree without roots. Firmly set in grooves and assumes a shape all its own. When does it take the thinker by storm is unknown At times far removed and always near. A thicket of a forest it has become these past days, Some forgettable dense life happenings Caught in breaking news reaching national headlines, Headless and handful of violence is the state today Bodies of news making no sense A temporary amnesia this life, far removed and always near.

Life partnered

2009-04-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

Being a housewife and long hours away from my better half, I've tried to rope in as many activities as possible to keep myself mentally occupied. Firstly people relations.My husband does mean the world to me, but theres a significant other world just outside the door, besides inlaws and others concerned. Right from the hot and simmering furnace of an iron box, steaming and calling out loud black coal pieces for a refill to even out stressed shirt collars, the neighbourhood is home for the young,older and the restless. Religious buffs trailed by flowers on carts that bloom to the chants of the evening prayers, a heightened sense of spiritual awareness in mixed hues of the personal and ritual advice(s) rings in the air. Maamis, maamas, moderns, semi-moderns and the naked eyed observers of life calling gather their thoughts clustered and arms entwined in humble submission to the GOD of all things. As much as temple visits are a regular here, food is an equally appetising institution. Soups have been my hot favourite to kickstart evenings and longer walks to burn them calories this summer.While fruits and fried items find their way on the walkers path, every corner of a road and a street is heavily clamoured by the hungry.There is till so much to see...so much to take in and not much to make sense of.While i still await my partner's return, I walk back home making them part of my life. My relation with them a permanent fixture.Observations follows....

Rest in peace

2009-03-08T21:09:00.000-07:00

Why we are, the way we are is a twisted reality.How one gets programmed to be and how one lets it be is all a matter of choice.Several situations that prepare us for life's upheavels and downturns is here today and gone tomorrow.Our spirits within, tested and tried, undergoes a constant plunder into ignorance.What we see, we dont perceive and what we do not perceive, we dot believe.The fine line of difference that blurs truth from reality is nothing but perception. Mind is not a cluster of verbal feel good jargons.It is a continuous exercise of what we know and what we care to know. Good isn't good enough unless our actions speak louder than words. Take one day from the pages of your book.Read through incidents and events as and when they flow.Just allow it to flow, without blotting it.And when your mind is in the swivel mode gulping down things one after the other, just swig in a slightly swift mode to fasten the rest of the day in your mind fully.What should have happened and what really takes place are before you.Continue this another day, when your mind is cleared off the initial cobwebs.Just leaning on the couch to raising yourself, positionning slowly straight, spine erect, breathing step by step, allowing yourself to just be is the key.Your mind, like your couch, needs to be depended upon and used.The posture of your mind rests on comforting it with such a letting go, only to be reclaimed when you need it most.Give it a thought.Its all in the mind finally.

Siva...Siva!!

2009-02-26T23:00:00.000-08:00

The Kapaleeswarar temple in Chennai is just awesome.Specially during sunset when the sky hangs low and casts its shadow on the towering pillars.A pretty musical sight though, to hear and see koels and crows, croon into the blue venom throated Siva's ears.As HE is seated with his family and friends, the ganas, aghoris and the rich natural grandeur painted into sculpted silence, the spiritual canvas, just gets brighter and better! A tapestry of stories running in its own levels of pattern, the essence of all nature echos in the chants from the walls of the temple within.Still unaware of its historical significance, but overwhelmed by its sheer spiritual space, the visit does establish a stirring of a quest that matches to its depth of quantum of solace.

Losing English, The Artistic Way

2009-02-25T07:47:00.000-08:00

I lost my English: (17th Feb, Pettachi Auditorium,Luz Church Road) A fusion of West African dance forms in line with the Indian, “I lost my English” is a non-narrative stream of consciousness adapted in dance form. A mixture of dual voices belonging to varied cultures, finding one single language that consummates themes like alienation, frustration and loneliness is its core of creation. The artistes Tim Winse, a multi-instrumentalist from Burkina Faso plays the Kora, a 21-stringed West-African Harp and the Lolo. With Choreography and Dance credits from Serge Aime Coulibaly (Burkina Faso) and Kalpana Raghuraman (The Netherlands/India), the trio blends to arrive at a new paradigm of freedom of expression, albeit parallel nativities. An exploratory art work that rises to meet culturally significant challenges in the form of communication and the many voices lost in it. A Diaspora (Scattering) of English into various mutually incomprehensible languages is experienced through a common music and dance in the “Duniya”- A word meaning the “World” that paradoxically connects the West African and Indian (Hindi) language culture. The logic of a pre set story does not define the flow of fluid foot work (of the dancers) that expresses freedom in non linear pattern of losing oneself in its very form. While the West African dance in creative collaboration with the Indian Bharatanatyam, goes beyond the structure and grammar that already exists, the transformation of the ancient and the contemporary reaches out as an intensive quest.

Naan Kadavul

2009-02-22T04:29:00.000-08:00

Iam not a regular movie buff, but the stunned acceptance of the factual documentary that "Naan Kadavul", the movie can actually do to the audience is proof enough.And being one of those laidback viewers who has been cynical and creatively compassionate of the regular run of the mill, the essence (or the lack of it?) did manage to churn things down my own set of life theories... Used to identifying with clinical acceptance of existence and closing in from the inside, the rawness that attacks those lying low (In forced contentment, thanks to meltdowns caving in) with sheer openess found in the movie's naked truth(s), makes it worth a watch. Its like going into the darkest of hours (The last show for the day,an add on extra effect:)) in motion picture platform that travels from darkness to light. The ugly face of our country, in remote villages specially, where poverty vandalism with beggers being bought for a sum and sold off, umnimdful of their family connections and roots, forms the core. While beggers by themselves are not "supposed" to buy material happiness, by way of their karmic existence, what they manage to do is render those giving them alms debtless and make individual accountability possible, as per the religious beliefs ruling India. Whether the aggressively detached and self proclaiming God, Rudra (Aarya), an Aghori, gets back to his family that abandons him in his early childhood days, (owing to astrological reasons that predict impending doom to his family), reclaiming him from programmed tenets "Aham Brahmasmi", forms the rest of tne story. And caught in the vagaries of the nomadic poor and their day to day lives is another such begger Hamsavalli (Pooja), who is bought to this part of the village where her visually challenged world becomes more darker and disfigured and begs for release from life in itself.Rudra's reason to be,to do just that and move on to higher realms of his calling for life is a befitting ending.

In relation two....,

2009-01-11T21:17:00.000-08:00

The raw premises of relations lies not in succumbing to each others' weaknesses, but strengthening one's core to help make sense of the surroundings. Casting nasty eyes on appearances that differ from one's own, tongues wagging and ideas that gossip the godliness out of speakers, a showcase these get togethers. Glorified dumbing downs, oxymoronic grandeurs, gala food and glasslike transparent intentions, break the circle of trust quite effectively.What one chews on is not love served by the dozen, but energy that casts a prohibit on a healthy life and give and take lifestyle.Passively judgemental and actively vocal, a web of a make believe, all under microscopic eyes strips the nurturing off love. A malign feature prevalent in ties that don't bind, but just stick through superficially. And when off these limitations, tolerance becomes a way of single choice and interdependency in relation to life, transient.

Visions

2008-12-22T05:17:00.000-08:00

Timely trysts with eternity: While in HIS presence, all chains secured and fraught within chambers seems tugging on one's nerves.How relieving it is to let go off all the pain from one's past and cry out reaching out to HIM....A quick comeback that life can be, giving back what it has taken away from us.Relapses of joy and waves of sorrow bottled up.The closer one goes to the altar,defenseless and renewed in present, a gift of gratitude in heart is an opening unto the universe.An energy that flows inside out and prays for peace-for one and for all.Timeless the moment and timely the divine intervention. As silence permeates through the soul, stillness receives all answers, with no time frames in particular.Every moment slides into passing life-like stage shows.And HE is the witness, in truth, in projection.

Bond unbound

2008-12-20T02:36:00.000-08:00

To stay in touch through sticky times is quite an effort.All the hangups, stiff obsessions, idiosyncrasies and a lot more makes the spin concurring.We never let go of them, as people stay put in their own world, glued.As this fibre of resistance thickens, jarring differences with others' opinions is but a network jammed. One way or the other, the means to arrive at ends in loggerheads, is a quick fix result. To be free of falsities and fears loosens the grip on us.The stickiness can taper out, layer after layer, through scales of time.Weaving one to the other is a mere compulsion, manually drawn, not naturally made.Getting stuck to solutions rather than problem binding makes all the difference.

As you sow...

2008-12-13T21:48:00.000-08:00

Its pretty cold out there.As the farmer starts out to sow and hopes of reaping his share of worth, his feet begins to feel moist.Due of duties and dough, he looks at the fertile ground, dry mouthed and coarsely emotional.What was his, he cannot claim.Tongue tied and looking upwards at the skies, he weeds the thorny corns, one by one. As the passing clouds drift by, he is home away from home.Married for over a decade and with no single debt to wash his hands off, insecurity binds his hands committedly.His creator has weaned him off all love.The pot bellied cows moan laboriously, struggling to place their buried hooves, inching forward, only to be pulled astray by their master.The noose that binds through the fly invested nose of the cow is tugged at forcefully, choking her one more time.Pest ridden and now power switched off, the farmer manually sets out to disinfect his footsteps.Retracing his way back, the wide plaintain leaf, sugarcane, grape and the vineyard out of sight, he comes home to his wife.As you sow...

"Boom"bay!

2008-12-01T02:41:00.000-08:00

Our cries for a better country is lost in islands of bloodpools.As rains tear down from the skies, we stare mute faced and full of the terror muck that channelises back into the dead waters of India.Where does the splurge in such violence lead to? Is this the after effect of "economic meltdown" or humanity meltdown? Has the globe warmed up enough to choking fires full of rage and protests that it has lost its natural flow of voice? Will the human race then go back to the carnal old times when man was just man, no human.Kill and survive and be skilled enough at it...in relation to life and existence, thats all that mattered.Who wins and who loses to such uncivilised men of the dark ages is a reenactment in the present century.History will repeat itself and how?!!

2008-11-19T23:00:00.000-08:00

Best of both: Accompanying my partner until death do us part was and is the vow that Iam working on, being married as Iam to his home spilt in two houses: the main stay and those that feed on newer twists of fate, a place of its own in the bigger cosmic plan... Relatively speaking, shedding scales of thoughts that got me coiled in association with people jointly, while solely taking off to work stations seperate and individual was an in and out from the near to distant and vice versa. Now, being in matrimonial hibernation, is a recoiling unto a space, one that is earmarked for joint efforts towards coming full circle, the means and ends in happiness.

Don't Quit!

2008-11-17T06:55:00.000-08:00

Powerful words of Edgar A.Guest: Don’t Quit: When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, When the road you are trudging seems all uphill, When the funds are low and debts are high, And you want to smile but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest, if you must-but don’t you quit! Life is queer with its twists and turns, As every one of us sometime learns, And many a failure turns about When he might have won had he stuck it out; Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow- You might succeed with another blow… Success is failure turned inside out- The silver tint of the clouds of doubt- And you can never tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems afar; So stick to the fight when you are hardest hit- It’s when things get worse that you mustn’t quit!

Tied up...

2008-10-22T01:04:00.000-07:00

Marriage is an over hyped institution.Too much of the other and little of the self.Though gratifying for all external reasons, its a deep well, full of halves and have knots.A semi circle that concurs with text book material traditions and rituals and never quite finds completion, leave alone settling points within the confines. The wall keeps getting chipped off and the more you cement, the more are the loopholes that ooze out staringly.Its a merger between two broken, yet sturdy walls that learn to balaance each others weight.Bearing it lovingly makes all the difference and letting go off the very same rules that bind, is a learning unto this institution.

A Writer's Block

2008-10-17T06:22:00.000-07:00

Why does work from home sound utopian? Is there more to it than meets the eye? Have content(s) started becoming pricey? or writers? To wake up drowned and washed out ideas while being aware of calls, rings and buzzes seems to be my block...one I can write my way through or stay put coiled.Move on or be eventually written off.

A Doll Order

2008-09-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

Dolls and more of it...a rich display of variety across the states, India is prettily dressed up and showcased.Crafts that bring out the GOD out of artists, as layers of hardwork is etched in its every curve.Marapaachi, mythology, mannu bommai...flavour of finery in the cultural capital, a visual delight in every step.As soups, sweets and spicy incidents hover in the neighbourhood, lifelessness seems a silent pacifier, in presence of countless lives lost, in deafening volumes. Now in light and then in dark, dolls make their presence felt through seasons of time.For the ten days up ahead that worship divinity and diversity, GODS, animals, parks and people standing by their moulded virtues do their jobs quietly-peace and prosperity is a deaperate plea in asking, of humans who remain silent dolls, goodness and evil battling within.Make a difference, not indiffernce they say...as our nation is "prettily" dressed up and showcased.

Planted in loose soil

2008-08-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

"It takes time to grow, winced the baby plant." - To raise to meet expectations tall and find strength in storms and silence."Do not feel watered down, the towering trees in the neighbourhood advised"."Give this some time as you will need to provide sun and shade as you reach heights of happiness and pains alternatively", the oldest among the lot swayed while breathing in deep felt sighs. "But how do I grow when elements are not supportive?" the sapling asked."Soiled the lands are and already tilled the trails of experience.Seeds half sown and premature shoots struggling to get planted has made way for me, another entry in the nursery.A long journey this...."-The fog gets cleared as the fittest of the strong survivors wipes clean the clouds of doubt, bringing with it dew drops of heavenly rain.The plant, though loosely held, grasped one thing though: Be down to earth and the rest will fall in its place.Its time to grow.

Varalakshmi vandachu doi!!

2008-08-13T22:35:00.000-07:00

Partial translation for Bhagya da Lakshmi.... my ishtyle:Welcome aboard Varalakshmi and toss your diet for the day.As we stuff payasam and vadais and kozhakattais down your throat, your blessings full will keep the evil eye away.As maamis frown and maamas bemoan, the manic rituals surround our acquired moods gay.Rumbling down the intestinal valley, the sack, draped to sway, digesting GODliness and mumblings,as we sing your glories away.Come back the next year and the year thereafter, as we await this auspicious day.

Love finds a way

2008-07-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

Living life mindspace open wide creates channels of self discovery.What seems like karmic twists, turns into path already predetermined.Touching the core, custom made conventions hold a meaning of their own-bound unto vedic chants and time tested rituals, unison of two willing souls, rises as high and intense as the fire that solemnises, being one of the natural elememts.Married into a matrimonial life and wedded to happiness, this lifetime journey has just begun.

2008-03-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

Life rolls on...day in and day out.As we set about scripting our lives, musings and short gasps of pause complete our expressions of language.What we want and what we do with them, complete the full circle-choices, decisions and all.Unseen faces, stories untold and myriad magic of words that sring them all together in the needed structure context, speak a lot. Drawing moulds of patterns, derivative and dysfunctional, sets the design layout for us storytellers.To transmute longwinding expressions that leads from one array of a staircase to another, coordination and conjunction in between, stop, gaps and glares, come and go. We learn to cope with personal clauses, relationship mergers and wherewithals to wield their way to ends. Life rolls on...

Love bytes

2008-02-13T22:59:00.000-08:00

Jalaluddin Rumi on Love: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.They're in each other all along. This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.First to let go of life.Finally, to take a step without feet. Out beyond the field of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.I will meet you there. The way you make love is the way God will be with you. Observe the wonder as they occur around you.Don't claim them.Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.

The truth is out there

2008-01-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

Expressions of truth, stylized, scrapped, rewritten and flushed off punctuation toxins and the likes marks the outer feature of an editor's work profile. Reading between lines, rereading for half perceived reflections, that may gloss over the core matter, while envisioning the writer's say, says a lot, in short about the proficiency pundits.When understood in full, the editor, an omnipresent critic, can chaff, cut and complement the original script expressed, thanks awaiting. A fine layer of a verbal well, half full with a soluble sense of the society for which he reports, of situations and people who make it happen, gets deep with reflection. Say less to speak more through reams of pages and prints has been a self professed thought for the day and the days to come. Words worth the value sells.While words in themselves don't.Truth worth the reading sells,but reading only does not.Not anymore. Truth need not be truth alone, unless a reason to back on. I, you, The society that one writes for, are slices of the bigger pie.Believe in them.It maybe worth the time-the biggest truth of all.

Hibernation in a Nutshell

2007-11-30T06:04:00.000-08:00

Yawning my way out of darkness to welcome another stretch of a day, a languid animal on the shores of tossed thoughts.Sigh...grass is greener on the other side... Laps of energy rolled in a limp baggage, the clear coast is but an oasis away."Alchemy??" I fathom half heartedly. A Social animal who can gulp down vacuum and sense the stillness in her, while waves of thought currents fill them.A passage between past and the future and caved in my shell at present, craning to stick my head out and break free.Is there a way out? People make things happen and things happen back to people."As you spring, so you boomerang!!"- flash findings that a sleepy mind can crawl to.To test waters and dip down and soar high in this life ocean as hibernation gets moving to seek the mirage out of the oasis.An hour glass of time has passed and still pouring...grains of sand..mixture of life and full of shells crushed.

Die another day.

2007-08-31T22:29:00.000-07:00

Jets of fountain breeze through the skies, colouring the lining of clouds. Multihued and musical, the loops, commas and exclamations, in chorus, dance to the beats of orchestrated waters. Boom! Boom! Silence………………………………………………………………………………….. Bodies, which a fraction of a second ago were humans, lie dotted on the soft flora and fauna, crushing them dead weight under. The blood bath waters the cries of excitement down to ear splitting hysteria. Humanity dies yet another day. Life makes life. Love makes love and Evil makes evil. Scores of people breathe their last, and scores more, breathless in anxiety, count their life saved blessings. “Why me”? , ask the chosen few, moaning in punished suffering and ripped in life scarring deep wounds. These wounds stay gaping and gnawing into human hearts which witness unspoken voices and hear blasts which mute all degrees of reasoning. Indeed LIFE dies yet another day.

And cold is the night

2007-07-27T22:25:00.000-07:00

And cold is the night: His creator lies still And cold is the night, As the canines howl And share his loss. Aging is the soul A boy of 11 and quarter In the time of a night Stands withered and scorched But his creator lies still Loveless and lifeless Nothing matters anymore In the dying darkness of another day. He embraces her one final time The floods have robbed the harvest While the ebbing fires dry his tears His creator lies still And cold is the night.

Idea Hatched!

2007-07-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

A hen hatches on an idea one day And sits aboard, protective of its outcome. It waits and wriggles its ears Under a feather cap, Cocks to the left and right To hear the crunch... Rotten and broken and half Hatched they stare, the shells Lay bare open While the creative juices run scattered The colony of hens mourns for their loss. Alas!! Their ideas have gone for a toss. But this one sticks out, unruffled The idea within the bulge ripens To a week and a score almost full. Dressed in sun shades of yellow and watery white It awaits a dawn oh so bright!

My mind tree

2007-07-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

Sun kissed leaves bathe In the morning dewdrops. They swish to the hymns Of the temple bells, Greenery chants and Springs to the season of the koel. Happy hues, the leaves cast Their shades on the pond, Murky green carpeted, covers The moss. While the spray of the dew, Leaves behind the watery pond Awash, anew. A fresh start this, Another day, yet another hope… Rooted in my mind tree.

The True Blue GOD

2007-05-23T03:19:00.000-07:00

Dew drops of salt Drop down her eyes, Clouds of despair hang.. Circle-like dark eye under. Her pain blooms for HIS touch, Now missing and forever divine. She seeks for answers many Probes.. knifing deep Into HIS presence. Invisible by sight The mind's eye knows too well, And yet touched by HIS rainbow, Hopes... She stares at the hanging hues, Her despair curving, Melting the deeper blues away.

A page from my Life Library

2007-04-25T01:40:00.000-07:00

Library-Where reading is nurtured, fed time and again with books for young and old, knowledge circulated and imagination kindled, spoken to and paid in its own course of time. Books of fancy, pages of depth and pictures of pseudo reality depicts life as it is or as it should be. Reading life via books can also happen if we allow it to happen.Too often life becomes a playful mockery of our own childishness and outgrowing the same is quite painful.The limited shaping of values and morals as a result can be undone if we, in our right and early senses are fed to nourishing reading habits than couch on junk mindless binging of whatever available and get weighed down by "knowledge blockers" we can do without. Books can rest you, can take your mind to another level of thinking where truth and "goodness" does triumph over evil.Where laughing at oneself pictured as comic text humbles the readers to smiles.Where sorrow never ends, but neither does happiness. Where notes of soulful music is played in soothing volumes of listening pages-songs of our heart escaping through gruelling noise of realities perfectly orchestrated in meaningful books.Make reading happen and if you cannot, then turn to the next page of your life.

Some of my favourite quotes

2007-03-20T23:36:00.000-07:00

"The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible"-Richard M.DeVos. "Time is our most valuable asset, yet we tend to waste it, kill it, and spend it rather than invest it"-Jim Rohn. "Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough is true security to be found"-Anne Morrow Lindbergh. "A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose-a cause to pursue,a person to love, a goal to achieve"-John Maxwell. "Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it"-Rabindranath Tagore. "Life does not require us to make good; it only asks that we give our best at each level of experience"-Harold Ruopp.

Self quotes

2007-03-13T05:04:00.000-07:00

A die hard critic is one who proves himself right at the cost of proving others wrong. Loneliness is a state of mind.Being alone is a choice. An open minded person seldom closes doors to happiness. Don't overstep your way to your goals.Just walk taking one step at a time. An unknown "you"? Look within yourself.

Home runs

2007-03-10T04:55:00.000-08:00

My feet are pained when seeing her sparing footsteps. The family runner needs a walker to stand tall….but not for long. Her footsteps trace back to the times when she had entered the marriage threshold. Forced to love her extended family and their circle of friends, she finds herself hop jumping between various roles. Bearing the weight of her “new” family on her shoulders, she partnered the ensuing pain between her pair of legs. They were almost always waiting to give away, as her better half pushed her to the edge. She had no choice, but to retrace her steps all over again. And waited…to be walked over as she walked the same path ad infinitum-the same mountains, the same circles and monotonous twists and turns. New directions cease to exist even when doors wide open. Getting lost in the already chartered maps seems to be a way of life. The road less traveled in other words. At present she moves in writhing pain and in pause coiled and cranky, tied to her bed post

Second chance

2007-03-07T21:53:00.000-08:00

Swaying slowly to the sleepy and soothing night, and resting on the long, drawn, comfortable (old) easy chair made me forget my worries as my mind traversed backwards in time. Living back then in a 23 member choultry (otherwise called home) was no mean task, and our(singularly plural) home extended from one long corner to the other, housing about 7-8 rooms. Inclusive of such vast space were drawing room cum bedrooms belonging to my uncles and their families (which my mom and i are part of) and an all exclusive poojai room meant for worshipping GOD of small and BIG things.2 dingy bathrooms (1 for the owner and the other for the others, and during pressing needs the "mending wall" philosophy was violated with at most freedom!!) A narrow verandah which was a mere extension to the rooms full of furniture, filth etc and complemented one another quite easily. Objects (too many) were placed in space (too less/little) easily reachable and usable (irrespective of its place) and our understanding of such imperfections, were in short quite "extra" ordinary!! The ensuing lack of comforts, commotion and ceaseless activities bestowed with unique opinions and judgments of the doers was not reflective of a picture-perfect family. Rather a haven for a score of individuals who blended as a unit, inseparable in spirit, and divided in assortments of distinct sizes and shapes. Our neighbours admired us for this accepting attitude towards such daily basis pandemonium, and that too at an age where small families were/are the order of the day. The rocky, barren backyard was made the best use of, especially during sultry summer evenings which eventually became cool and relaxing, and made our problems seem lighter and easily manageable. The thicket(s) of mattress spread under the starry sky and a plethora of books to choose from the dusty shelves helped the booklovers and story-tellers be in tune with their imaginations and hopes. The simplest of gestures shared and reciprocated in mutual trust and innocence made growing (of young and old alike) the way it is and not a mere technical process of ageing. Though not perfect personalities (now), yet, a memorable walk through such times of childhood makes the products of such a family walk the extra mile-for today and the days to come. I dearly hope and pray that youngsters of yesteryears take their much lived, slow/leisurely and time-tested past as a present (gift) and help spread smiles to those who "grow" much too faster. Let us give ourselves and our childhood a 2nd chance.

Love and Fear

2007-03-07T21:49:00.000-08:00

Fear blocks the passage to GOD, whereas Love finds and presents a way. Fear makes one perceive what one wants to, while Love makes one wantless. In fear, one craves to enjoy life, while enjoyment becomes love. Fear courts illness and Love attracts health and strength. Fear can be "I" Love can be "Us" Fear is hardship and Love is simple. Fear opposes some while Love opposes none. To fear more is to flee life To love most is to set oneself free.

Mummies and Mothers

2007-02-25T23:12:00.000-08:00

A lump of pain was bandaged across her knee, shelved off the dead bones and un lively tissues, a (Egyptian) Mummy now, a Mother earlier. Cast in her own life and by situations that bind, she tries to put her best foot forward…sometimes in vain…but now in pain. Mummies long live their past and remain a silent mass weighing down (historians) people’s memories. And similar are the lives of so many more creators who have mothered us, preceded by a cycle of their very own of longsome history. Time remains eternal while we change our roles. Walking on earth as tropical daughters who bloom breezing through springs of childhood, growing further through wintry pangs of adolescence and youth and when older, crucified in summer fires in silence. We are reborn through hard labours of seasons of life and emerge alive from dark holes of pain unto a life of bright hopes and happiness. Clothed in love by mothers, while bandaged by the hands of time that reverses our roles, we remain mummified-in a box of others requirements, wants and desires, carrying within our chest a strength to create and love. History repeats itself and so do We.

oatmeal porridge

2007-02-21T03:33:00.000-08:00

The kitchen seems a boiling pot of a world. Each of us womenfolk at (my) home is one with the heating cauldron on the stove. Burnt from head to toe misshaped and yet strong...each such time-tested vessel has a story to tell. They aren’t empty , though they wish they were...empty of worries and pain as they stand tall making agony mixed noises, only to heard half full by others. As my aunt stood facing her world, the stove at work, stirring thick, creamy, oat porridge, she enquired the bubbling hunger silencer-"Are you a potion of ideas?" "Your bubble head bobs and dips so often, I wish I knew what’s cooking with you?" The exhaust fan hummed lazily and tried blowing air to minimize the steam off the porridge and its maker. The maker, my aunt, was churning things from her past while her hand carried these preserved thoughts, kindling them and making them come alive. Moist faces and dewy days flowed from her past, layer upon layer. A cloud of anger moved across her face, as the fixed deposit of oat chunks in the depth of the vessel stuck not budging. Her conquests to win this losing battle gave way as the smoothened porridge gulped the bubbles, now simmered. The exhaust fan was tired (by now) puffing the excess steam away, as my aunt downed a cup of this victory potion. She was ready for other conquests.