Feminine forces

Many attributes desirable in a woman are represented by Hindu female deities. They are worshipped as the embodiment of specific capabilities and powers.

For instance, Saraswati represents intelligence, consciousness, cosmic knowledge, creativity, education, enlightenment, music, the arts, and power. Hindus worship her not only for "secular knowledge", but for "divine knowledge" essential to the achievement of ‘Moksha’ (Freedom or Salvation), their ultimate spiritual goal.

Lakshmi is the Goddess of wealth, prosperity (both material and spiritual), light, wisdom, fortune, fertility, generosity and courage and the embodiment of beauty, grace and charm. She is believed to protect her devotees from all kinds of misery and money-related sorrows.

Durga, an embodiment of creative feminine force (Shakti), manifests fearlessness and patience.

This collection of brass statuettes are not from a mandir or puja room but have been part of this household for more than fifty years. They belonged to my mother-in-law M, a truly empowered woman of great determination, taste as well as beauty.

Women need to tap their own abilities and powers -- discovering the true goddess spirit within. Whether they have access to these goddesses or not they should take inspiration from them to elevate their self-esteem and empower personal growth and spirituality.

M more or less educated herself, got a job (in Bombay), participated in the Freedom Movement in a small way, married outside her community (at a time when such inter-religion marriages were taboo), took on the role of a Consular Officer / Ambassador’s wife, and then gamely fought through her husband’s terminal illness and then finally her own.

IS remembers that in the difficult times when his father’s condition deteriorated, his mother’s belief through these deities would have been a help in bolstering her strength and composure.

Today is my mother-in-law’s 91^st birth anniversary.

Rangoli

Rows of Petunias in vibrant spring colours adorn the traffic round-abouts (inter-changes) and parks of Dubai city, in patterns resembling Rangolis.

They look wonderfully attractive and fresh, and give everyone a feeling of being welcome.

These 'pettus' (as the girls have nicknamed them) will last only for a few more weeks, before the weather turns warm again.

Walk On......

I love walking. Not just walk around but go for long walks in forests, on mountain trails or on beaches, or anywhere where there is nature …. I remember some nature walks when in school and a few great walks when on family holidays in the mountains or at beach resorts. When you walk you get to see more …. as opposed to driving … so this what we did when we went to new places, especially when travelling abroad. One trip to Paris with IS, I had never walked so much in my life ….. we explored quite a bit of the city on foot.

I love nature and the outdoors …. walking gives the pleasure of both. Weather-permitting I’d much rather be outdoors than in, and love seeing greenery, the birds (the feathered variety, not the other kind that IS prefers!).

Back home in India I did not walk much, in fact hardly at all. In Chennai we were lucky to have our homes within a 5-min. walk from the beach, but the lack of cleanliness was a put-off, and worse, the sight of villagers squatting along the water-line to relieve themselves would totally take the fun out of it.

Then in Dubai for 3 years our apartment was again very close to the sea, so I started regular walks along the beach … no cleanliness issue here so usually barefoot, feeling the sand and sometimes the water. Mostly in the evening so one could stop, sit and gaze at the sea and the setting sun. And the fun of seeing people of all ages enjoying themselves in the water.

Just over a year ago we moved house to the Lakes area of Dubai, a residential colony with row housing surrounding some man-made 'lakes'. The streets along the water-bodies are lined with date-palms with a lot of green around. A paved walking path runs all along the streets. This ready-made track was very tempting …. I could not keep myself away from it long. So after settling into the house, in a couple of months I started setting out on my evening walks again.

After some days of walking … IS joked that I was not doing much exercise, walking more for leisure and just to enjoy the scenery …. I would retort that he was not even doing that.

A few years ago one suddenly woke up to the need to address health issues ... like stiff joints, lack of muscle tone, lethargy, weight gain; and the benefits of exercise. Both IS and I tried different exercise regimes. IS joined a gym for short spells, sprinkled with an occasional swim, all of which he soon gave up. I joined yoga classes at my sister-in-law’s home but when this stopped it was tough to continue alone and soon dwindled out. Keeping up any exercise schedule is tough.

Now IS and I walk regularly almost every evening. Seeing the serious, professional-looking joggers who pass by prompted us to increase our pace, so we started inter-spacing our walking with short jogs. It has now become our daily fix … by the end of the walk which lasts about 35 mins. ... about 3 kms … with the warm, very humid weather in Dubai we end up soaking wet with perspiration, and can feel each pore open … and sweating!

IS says his English teacher at school had to regularly correct them in class with a stern 'horses sweat, humans PERSPIRE!'

Getting back home is a real relief, where would we be without air-conditioning?! And water … there’s really nothing like water, period. More so on a very hot day. And in Dubai it can go up to 48 Deg. C, so we've been there!

Then we read that jogging can severely strain our feet and knee joints, and that jogging does not help lose weight anyway! Well, we continue our walks and jogging, and promise to tread carefully!

As long as my legs have the strength and I have no major aches and pains I will continue to walk and run!!!!

No Fool’s Day: a birth date to remember

Today is IS’s father Sulaiman’s 101^st birth anniversary (April Fool’s Day!). Since I’d never met him I asked IS to write a piece for me, which is below.

Considering he passed on over 42 years ago (when I was 15), memories are few and far between … more so since I was in boarding school from 13 so we were not even together much of the last 2½ years. The last year he was in any case mostly in hospitals with cancer. Anyway, I’ll try and steer clear of biographic details and keep this tight, here goes.

My Baba. At least until Vietnam, where we heard of a gentleman named Mr. Hui! Both of us were so tickled by the sound of the name that we promptly re-named each other ‘Buibui’.

His love for the ‘hots’ in life was legendary … while much was whispered about the loves in his life (before he met my mother, I hope!), his penchant for taking on the hottest food / chilies were legion, I’d bet he could have set many World Records; Tabasco sauce on the dining table was more normal than a salt cellar.

Watching him tackle a fried egg on toast at the breakfast table was a life-changing experience … carefully arranged sunny side up (with soft yoke), topped with slices of the most fiery chili peppers available. First thing in the morning you’d be treated to the sight of his face getting redder and redder, his grin getting wider, tears streaming from his eyes, and sweat from his scalp! Priceless. Driving hard with knife and fork for his next mouthful. A final sweep with a piece of toast, mopping up the spillage, yolk/chili from the plate.

A really handsome man. Ambassador of India. Full of life and the good things. Work hard, play hard. Great values. His lovely circle of strongly loyal friends (who knew him as Suli). His wonderful sense of humour. His laugh. Amazingly contagious. At full throttle it would work up into a series of wheezes so hilarious that to hear him would be to start laughing yourself even if for no other reason. With him jokes sounded so much funnier …

His whistle. He had a couple of favourite tunes, the one I recall most being one I managed to put a name to just last week through an web search; Terry's Theme from Limelight, one of the top tunes of the 50s. Turned out to be titled ‘Eternally’, composed by Charlie Chaplin, with first line of the song: "I'll be loving you eternally ..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk0mdW-j9VQ. As someone said, Music is a connection to people who’ve gone ....

He wrote a lot, mostly regular long-hand, but there are notebooks filled with lines of symbols looking like Greek! Seriously, like Ø, Ω. As soon as I get a chance I intend sitting down and going through them, and hopefully break his code!

His famous long-standing brush with babudom and the peculiar politicians in charge of External Affairs in Delhi who he was answerable to … and eventually forced to bow to, resulting not only in his own sad, funny (unfinished) musings titled “The Straight Saits in Dire Straits”, but I feel sure, also in his illness and untimely death at 58. Fought and laughed through all his pain, all the way till the end.

They truly don't make many like that anymore. He must be out there somewhere, I really hope I can meet him again and get to know him better in the next phase.

Silent Words

Movement of lines,
fluid,
lattice of letters
forming words.
Pouring thoughts,
a process ongoing.
Make permanent
in black and white
to stand the test of time.

The blank spaces
hold unspoken words,
a pregnant pause,
a frozen thought,
held back.
Often misunderstood,
meaningful silence?

Tea bloom in my glass

Hand-tied green tea wrapped around orange lily petals and sweet jasmine flowers. Poured hot water onto this ball of tea and it blossomed in my glass as I sipped my tea. A totally different experience from a normal cup-a-tea. A calming taste!

After Tsunami

When the Tsunami struck Japan I was reminded of the earlier one which hit south India end- 2004. Very few including me had heard of the word Tsunami before ...

After 10 years in Chennai we'd just shifted to our new home near the beach and less than a month later, in the early morning of 26th Dec, felt a slight tremor while we were still asleep: as we'd had a late night .. bringing in AS's birthday. Around 6am the glass of water at IS's bedside shook, but we thought nothing more of it and dosed off again. Later around 8am I heard people outside scream in Tamil 'the Sea is coming! the Sea is coming!' in a panic tone and knew something was wrong. My first thought was the girls who were sleeping in their first floor bedroom. Ran up to check on them and went out on the terrace from where one could see the sea. The water had come into the lower-lying lane next to ours, with it bringing in some fishermen's boats! There was panic all around ... surely something was wrong.

IS went out of the gate to check and walked a 100 meters towards the beach, then came back running when he saw a big gush of water coming down our road ... the 2nd wave.

A few phone calls to some friends, my aunt who was in her beach-house close-by for the weekend said they were going back to their home in the city and we should also pack and leave. We could not get ourselves to leave as this was our home and we had no other home to go to. And what about the gardener and his family, where would they go? The two little pups who'd adopted us?

The power supply was cut, phone lines went dead (after the initial panic calls from friends and relatives asking us about our well-being), since we were near the sea. Till that time I assumed it was a tidal wave, till we heard later of the devastation this had caused all along the coast and thousands were homeless and how bodies had been washed away. In the coastal flat-lands nearer Pondicherry (used for salt-ponds, shrimp ponds), the water carried in for miles, whole fishing villages getting wiped out.

It was frightening to see disaster so closely and at the same time we were thankful that we were safe. Next day, a walk to the beach showed us a scary picture of the fury of the Sea. Compound walls washed away, cars washed away, the beach sand blackened. With the salt water coming in so far inland, the ground water aquifers got affected everywhere, and even in our belt which was blessed with drinkable ground-water, got salty for some months.

Another time I actually cried when a cyclone brought down the newly-built shed IS had put up for his seafood business. We had recently moved to Chennai and were still getting used to the city, but now the whole city was a mess, with up-rooted trees, fallen billboards ... very strange and upsetting. At that time also we went without power and phones for nearly ten days.

This kind of devastation by nature could happen anytime, any place ... not just near the sea, even people living inland are not spared from floods, drought, cyclones, earthquakes, forest fires, etc.

So we got a slight taste of similar situations up-close, but now the horrific news of the Tsunami in Japan where the term was coined that has killed thousands and taken away homes from those who survived. Japan has endured atom bomb explosions and is now trying to avoid a radioactive disaster due to the damaged nuclear reactors. Seeing visuals on TV, I feel some of their pain and can only respond with my prayers.

I don't think these catastrophic events are signs that our world is coming to an end, at least not yet, but I do believe these are signals to awaken us to take more care of our planet earth, otherwise we'll speed up that process!

I can only be thankful to God, who is the Creator and the Destroyer, for every single day we are alive and safe.


It still remains
'The land of the rising sun'
of cherry blossoms.
The earth moved
sending waves.
The sea
regurgitating
the debris.
Water engulfed
making lives
homeless,
and missing.
I feel sad
as I see visuals
of dry tears
on faces of devastation.
A disciplined, resilient people
helpless
as nature cursed.
Fighting radiation
a boon
now a bane.
Preserve nature
but in vain.

A silent prayer for all affected by the Tsunami.