Light of our lives

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

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 at the cost of the kid's life.

It's scary to think of the real face of tomorrow's India. Would an image wrought future be the new face of our country?

News headlines that call out loud increasing numbers of suicides of children and youth across varied economic levels, will most likely 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.

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.  The ‘actual’ process is a realistic portrayal of items that are blown up lifelike, repeatedly announced, and remade numerous times- 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.

We're Housewives Only

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.

Aadi for sale?

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 (discounted) 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!

Rest in peace

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!!

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

'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 in the form of communication and the many voices lost in it 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. While the West African dance in creative collaboration with the Indian Bharatanatyam, goes beyond the structure and grammar of the art form, the transformation of the ancient through the contemporary reaches out as an intensive quest.