A Time To Reflect

charukesi April 15th, 2008

Blogger appreciation day…. came and went. And I had no clue. That may have been because I have not been blogging or reading blogs with any regularity (does speed-reading through google reader once every few days count?) Anyway, as it happened, I missed blogger appreciation day, which was April 14th - and came across the idea just now, today being that day of the week when the google reader gets a clean-up. Thanks, Sailu at Indian Food for pointing this out to me. This whole appreciation idea 9informal, he stresses) comes from Darren Rowse (whose latest video post is on - How to Come Up with Topics to Write About On Your Blog - and if anyone needs tips on that right now, it’s me)

Says Rowse on his blog -

I’ve been chatting with a few bloggers of late who’ve been feeling a little down in the dumps about their blogging - so perhaps everyone could do with a little lift.

We’re in it together, blogging is about collaboration and together going further than we can by ourselves - so why not help another blogger today by shooting them a word of encouragement, a pep talk, a congratulations, an idea to help them improve or some other positive constructive message. Better still, do it publicly on your blog and tell the world about another blogger who you appreciate.

What a good idea! I know I have been feeling down in the dumps about my blogging - or lack of it. And just this morning was talking to my husband about getting on top of things and discipline and other key words that he normally associates with my resolution to diet and therefore ignored promptly.

Anyway. Here goes. My appreciation for bloggers, blogger friends, blog readers - people who have made my life so much more fun in the last four years. A big thank you. Especially those of you who write in to me after stumbling upon my blog. And those who write or call to ask when I have not been blogging for a while.

Here comes a longish list then, of blogs I love - the usual suspects - Newsmericks, Harini, Shoefi, Nano. Jalsa and Indiequill who were THE discoveries of 2007. And Arun, who writes down his travel experiences with the kind of discipline and passion I can only admire and envy from a distance. And Dina, whose blog who I used to be, and still am, in awe of.

And then those I wish blog more often. Or just get back to more regular, more frequent blogging - Uma, Dilip, Annie, Reshma, Smugbug, Blogpourri, entelechy, Sunil (why this sudden slack in blogging, people?)

A special nod to the most prolific of them all - Patrix (also because the two of us love to get together and talk about the “good old days” of blogging - when we used rediff and blogger respectively!)

And a huge thank you to Madhu Menon who keeps this site up and running. I only reach out to him when something has gone wrong here. Thanks, Madhu!

And a few not-so-usual people too I must mention here - photobloggers - Phil Douglis, friend and mentor at pbase - Phil has been teaching photography for some decades now. He travels with his wife for a few weeks (months?) every year - when he was in Bombay last week, I could not meet up with him as I was away in Thailand. It’s our anniversary, Phil, I wrote to him, Seven years. Phil wrote back congratulating us on the anniversary. And he added that his wife and he would be celebrating forty seven years together in July. Forty seven years! A special toast to you, Phil. And thanks for a wonderful year at pbase.

Julie too - I had written about Julie three years go when I had first discovered her photo stream at flickr. Julie was seventy when she discovered photography. I recently exchanged emails with Julie and she points me to her new English blog (she used to write in French), dedicated to her recent move to London. And she ends saying, I feel younger now that I did three years ago. Cheers, Julie!

So to end, discipline. Yes, that is what is going to drive this blog from now. Regular posting, if it means only links to interesting or just plain funny things. Go see then - The Hidden Half: A Photo Essay on Women in Afghanistan - click on the photographs, read the accompanying text and feel stunned. Just as I did.

Happy blogging! And do pay it forward.

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charukesi March 4th, 2008

Last year, I watched two different productions of A midsummer night’s dream - the first at the open air amphitheatre of Regent’s Park in London. It was midsummer, the perfect setting for that play and just the perfect play for that setting - the trees rustling above, doves flying, the sun shining on well into the performance (which started at 8 p.m.) as it slowly turned cool and then cold… I sat, shivering in the London night air watching the fairies with their lutes and flutes, their laughter ringing in my ears as they ran in and out of the open stage… listening to the music fill the air… the actors in their suits and gowns and the clipped British accents.

Just as Shakespeare would have had it perhaps?

“It shocks me that there are Londoners who have never been to a Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream - this is one of the great and simple rituals of London life” - Alistair McAuley, Financial Times, 2006.

Yes, it shocks me too.

And in January this year, the same play in Mumbai, but different in every way - with a British director and a South Asian crew speaking not just Shakespeare’s English but Tamil, Sinhala, Malayalam and three more languages. Not attired in plaids and pastels but in shiny silks and deep reds of the subcontinent…

If in 2006 Vishal Bharadwaj transported “Othello” into the brown badlands of Uttar Pradesh with his film Omkara, British director Tim Supple’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” could easily have been set in some mythical forest in the Vindhyas. Why, it could even have been an untold canto from the Aranyakanda of Ramayana, with Shakespeare’s fairies as lively vanaras, and Puck a young, playful Hanuman himself. In the true spirit of free creatures of the forest, Supple’s creatures indulge in acrobatic feats, climb up ladders and shimmy down ropes, roll in the mud and jump in the air.

[image courtesy : British Council website]

What contributes a lot in this is the extensive use of color in an otherwise barebones set. Visually arresting single tones have been used to their best effect; a deep red runs through the performance. In the long satiny womb that Titania ensconces herself into as she drifts into sleep, that becomes at once a swing in the middle of the forest and a thooli (makeshift cloth cradle) in the heart of the home.

[image courtesy : British Council website]

Here is my review Southasian Shakespearewallah for Himal.

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charukesi January 23rd, 2008

I have been interested in the idea of Ayush since I first heard about it - a collabortion between Arya Vaidya Pharmacy in Coimbatore and Unilever. I was tempted to visit the local centre in Vashi for a while now, but somehow I was sceptical about the idea of corporatized Ayurveda. I mean, how authentic can branded, neatly packaged ayurveda be. Not for me, well dressed (in spotless clothes - where does all the oil go?) women and feather touch massages with pleasant smelling, even fragrant oils. That is cosmetic, a feel-good massage if you will, even when sold as the “ancient science of ayurveda” - as it is all over Kerala and Goa. For me, the genuine stuff is that which is oily, smelly and otherwise sensorially unpleasant! In other words, therapeutic and healing.

I finally walked into Ayush here at Vashi after two whole weeks of insomnia thanks to one of the worst attacks of fibromyalgia in recent times. I was tired of living with the pain and not being able to escape for the usual eight hours at night either. I was tired of not sleeping all night and waking up feeling exhausted. and I was tired of the double life I was leading - trying to be “normal” and cheerful through the day while fighting the pain. But that is not new for me, And that is neither here nor there.

At Ayush, I am happy to discover all the familiar and comforting elements - including the smelly oils and the awful kashayams and a doctor with a reassuring heavy Malayalam accent - packaged well and presented in a do-good meets feel-good manner. I have been going there for two days now and I am willing to give the treatment course a chance. As long as the authenticity of the treatment is preserved, I have decided I do not care if the attendants wear spotless uniforms and the medicines are given out in an Ayush branded carry bag (though what is inside is the real thing - as I know from several months of consuming them).

There is something to be said for consistency, a range of such clinics across the country, supported by the solid knowledge of the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy. And who better to take this as a project than Unilever with its distribution reach and range of products that include bestsellers like the safe-for-skin Hamam. Apart from therapies and traditional medicine, they also have a range of products - from the website, the Ayush Spa Range is classified into products that protect (Rakshak), nurture (Poshak) and eliminate or reduce discomfort (Naashak) - and this too I am willing to overlook kindly, having experienced the treatment at the center.

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charukesi January 5th, 2008

SelAm tags me on a meme he says is so last year - All you have to do is select and upload one photo that you have clicked this year that is special to you. Could be anything…aesthetic, technical or personal. Also, put in a short note why it is special.

My favorite from last year is this one of Nandini, an old young friend from the Kala Ghoda area where I first met her…

Meet Nandini. She lives somewhere around this area. She is not very sure where. She can’t tell me anything more about herself and her family. But she knows one thing for sure - she likes pani puri. She has no idea what it is called; will she have dhokla? nahi. khandvi? nahi; she quickly dismissed these foolish offers I make in the assumption that the kid would like the less spicy things on offer. Yeh nahi, woh gol gol jo hota hai - her little fingers making whirring circles in the air… oh, the round things? realization dawns as I point to the kachori. She directs a withering look at me (how dumb can you get?, it says in loud tones and I duly wither), gives up attempts to explain and instead leads me confidently to the stall, her little hands in mine. She takes ages to eat the first puri - the tiny mouth can open only so big. So the panipuriwala fill the other puris, piles them up in a leaf cup and she takes them away to a corner by the tree to eat them in peace.

Read her story where it was originally posted - the Kala Ghoda Gazette…

And while no one is looking, can I sneak in another favorite quickly? (Say two pics of kids equals one of an adult?)

(Taken at the primary school at Hampi on independence day - I have posted this pic on this blog earlier) - I call it the colors of freedom - what story does this tell you?

And oh, photographically speaking (if one can do that), one of my aims was developing skills at street and portrait photography - and these images prove how intent was translated into some action. A beginning…

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charukesi November 29th, 2007

My laptop is back in shape after that crash. But a couple of things. One is that my bloglines account has vanished - I mean, the account is there, but now it shows feeds of only three blogs - I had a few hundreds earlier. This is weird but I have no idea why this happened. Is there any way I can retrieve it? Else, I am going into public feeds of bloggers I know and trust to copy their list.

And the other thing is - I have reinstalled itunes on my laptop but the entire library is wiped out - so what happens the next time I connect my ipod to my laptop and it syncs? Do I have to import songs / albums into itunes again (and what is worse, organize them by artist, genre etc. sicne my music is otherwise very disorganized - I take it as it comes wherever it come from!)

All you bright geeks out there, please stop smirking now and give me gyan. thanks!

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charukesi November 8th, 2007

Here I am in Vishakapatnam, where thankfully the sounds of Diwali have not started so far… My laptop crashed the day I left Bombay, and took with it ten years of work and photography and music. No back ups - yes, I know… no back ups. An uneasy truce has been established now, most of the files have been recovered and the laptop is limping along till I get back to Bombay…

And here is wishing all of you a very happy Deepavali…

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charukesi September 7th, 2007

…happens in our house every week or so. My maid takes out the freshly machine-washed note from the washing machine and hands it to me with a sympathetic sigh, I give her an exasperated look (rolling my eyes in the general direction of my husband - who may or may not be in the house at that time - a difficult task that, especially in combination with e.l.) and spread it on the table to dry. And when we get bored of washing currency notes, we drop mobile phones in to the machine with studied casualness. At least, we keep a clean home.

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charukesi August 28th, 2007

Another blog anniversary came and went - this blog completed four yesterday - what a great time this has been - for me, kind peoples, not you. Thank you, everyone I have met on this blog - the nice ones, the very nice ones and even the nasty ones. To think, but for this blog, I would never have heard of blogger meets. Or now get to hear of what happened in the last one.

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charukesi August 7th, 2007

Mine is fursat ke raat din.Describes the mood of the moment perfectly.

Baithe rahen, tasavvurey, jaana kiye huey…

What’s yours?

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charukesi June 12th, 2007

I am off to London tomorrow for two weeks for a much needed break. June has been a month of no work and sickness - after two weeks of (advised and attempted) bed rest with a terrible back, I am just recovering from a bout of throat infection and fever. Croak. Tired of sitting at home in Bombay and doing nothing, I have decided to shift the scene of action to London. That is not strictly true. I hope to do and see all that which I did not have the time and money to (mostly the latter) during my earlier stint as a student in London. From impoverished student to impoverished tourist in five years does not sound all that impressive. I know.

I did manage to see quite a bit of London, mostly by walking around aimlessly (or sitting on the upper deck of a double-decker bus - oh, the joy!) and finding things to do that were free - and London has countless such options. The parks, the museums, street performances… I spent a whole day a the Natural History Museum, mostly staring at the dinosaurs and the gorgeous interiors of the building.

I remember when Royal Opera House had the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ ballet on, with tickets at obnoxious rates. And British Petroleum (BP) had large screens all around Covent Garden, where anyne could sit on the ground and catch the ballet for free. And the good people at BP, I remember, had also provided sacks for sitting on (even free-loaders have delicate bottoms, you know) and a soft drink each. I confess that while I enjoyed the ballet immensely, what gave me more pleasure was the thought of the suckers who had paid a fortune to watch it live.

My greatest regret was not seeing the British Museum - I used to get off at Holborn station each morning and like a homing pigeon, turn left and walk towards the LSE. Not once did I make the effort to turn right and walk a few paces towards once of the world’s best museums, and free at that. Not this time, people, not this time.

I also scrimped and saved and caught a couple of plays, and a kind friend took me to watch ‘Swan Lake’ (the ballet) for my birthday. When I was depressed, which was all the time, what with the grey weather, and being alone and all those essay deadlines looming large in front of my eyes all the time, I headed to the Haagen Daz at Leicester Square (BELIEVE me, there is no depression on earth that Belgian Chocolate at Haagen Daz cannot cure). My friend and I also figured out weekend trips out of London, and got quite addicted to the idea of jai! coach from Victoria or hire a car and ho for the open spaces. I cannot honestly admit that I fully enjoyed all these activities since part of my mind was always occupied furioiusly converting pounds into rupees - and don’t snigger - I was a student on a loan. Heh! But as I said, there are enough things to do in London that come for free - and the conversion rate is easy - 0 rupees for 0 pounds.

I have a few photographs from long ago in London at my travel blog - Itchy Feet - go check them out. And while you are at it, do read a few of the other posts there! And if you are listening to me carefully, also make it a point to drop in at Itchy Feet regularly - I do write / post pics there from time to time. I will try to post a few from London - else expect lots of photographs when I am back end of the month. If you live in London and wish to meet up, goody! let’s - email me and we’ll catch up.

Head now to Itchy Feet for photographs of London oh London…

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