Become Aware... Make Aware...

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

This whole study/ presentation puts in to right perspective so many relevant aspects of our lifestyle and how that is directly connected to the deterioration of the very planet we inhabit. Which means, we are responsible for it in someway, which means, ignorance is no bliss, which means, we cant take what's dumped on us. Which means, alarmingly, we need to be more AWARE.

Annie Leonard spent nearly 10 years of her life researching & traveling around the world, gathering information and putting this http://www.storyofstuff.com/ the way we see it. What we see is hard-hitting and candid.

I wonder if we did a simulation of this study that is India specific what would the findings be?

The noisy beginnings that some may call 'interventions' are too scarce to redeem the drastic damage already done- to our planet, its people and the systems arouns us.But each of needs to resolve to do our bit. At the rate the deterioration is happening, it would take millions of us to do something- not just voice our opinions or feel terrible about it.

To start with- I decided I would never get packaged fruit juices anymore- fresh, they will be made. And a religious practice of carrying cloth/ jute bag to get veggies- wont be a sporadic practice anymore.

And yes, do tell your friends and folks about this- circulate.

I've seen plenty of this kind of talk,
I've read enough in friends blogs,
I've felt it myself- to miss THE point.

When you touch the quarter of your life ( assuming the 100yr, else you've lived well past that quarter!) you tend to look back, increasingly. Look back at school and how that load of homework wasn't really that onerous, you look back at pictures of siblings and smile at those meaningless plays and fights (my Sis and I indulged in a game of catching butterflies, crushing them and making a soup of it.. ofcourse we didnt eat it! Pretty much a carnage...), the teachers weren't mean, wearing uniform wasn't all that bad. What stands out most is the fact that whatever Dad and Mum chided you for was for the ultimate good and love of/for you!


Its long-years after its gone, that childhood becomes a cherished chapter! Well past that utopian sheen of teen has abraded, that you stop feeling anger towards this world and you become a part of those who have given up! And mysteriously, it all seems to happen at that quarter of a lifetime.

I once was...

Anil Kumble retiring from cricket- it was a rush of memories for friends and folks and for me. Quite a few msgs and mails like this one from A (It had me wonder... "God! Folks actually remember! Sheesh!) "sending this ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/nov/02/indiacricketteam-cricket) to the most hardcore kumble fan i know! :) in memory of that scrambled scooty ride to catch up with the tall man for a happy pic together."

While in school some sort of a crazy Kumble fascination just got to me. Right from watching ALL of his matches to creating a scene to meet him at the benefit match in Hubli or the crazy bike ride to catch up with him along with friends and folks at a shop inauguration in Hubli, or getting another opportunity during an internship with at a production house... The fascination has waned away.

But here's to a cool sportsman, I could never figure out why Kumble though... didnt matter then, now either.

A plane full of kids...

Written back in time, posting now...

After quite an eventful visit to Delhi, we had no idea that more was in store for us on our return flight.

As we boarded the bus to get to our flight, I knew this flight is going to be different. The bus was filled with kids! The bus was in terrible shape though (I anticipate Spicejet is soon going to be in for a long haul- the bus was pretty much akin to a public bus plying on the streets). M and I got talking with this kid who was sitting near the window, bag cuddled and all. The kids were on their return flight to Bangalore after an excursion to the Himalayas, happy to have been there but eager to get home as well. WOW! (I spun back to my school excursions- of their own kind packed with fun! )

They were a melange of a 50-60 bunch of kids- some sober, some mischievous, some haughty but all of them- highly spirited. They didn't stop talking, murmuring and or whispering for a moment. When the plane got jerky, the kids were going ooooo....aaaaaa and having their share of fun! They had a senior nun who was with them, chastising, shooing, losing-her-nerve over them.

For M and me, this was the first time with so many kids on the flight- and sure it was a big difference and one I can still feel, each time I recollect that experience.

Think About It...

An e-mail forward I saw today spelt this out so well and clearly too.
Its something we all probably know, but the wisdom does not knock us when the situation is such-

The stone after the throw
The word after it's said
The occasion after the loss
The time after its gone

"Brilliante Weblog"

This was awarded to me by Shalom, dear lost and found friend. We studied in Bombay together and ironically we happen to be married and live in the same city now.

Thanks Salom for this gesture :) This award is meant for sites and blogs that are smart and brilliant in their content or design. And now, per the rules of the game, I shall:


1. When you receive the prize you must write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back. That's done!

2. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs (or even more) that you find brilliant in their content or design. Here, I share my predicament with the giver of this award. Considering that I would nominate-

1. Anju- Dearmost friend & family. We've shared more than those bus rides, telephone conversations, overnight study for French exams,. We've grown together... still are, in a strange way :)

2. Apoorv- Something of a blogger pal. Voracious reader, wanderlust bug, shutter bug... BUG? Not at all.

3. DK - An acclaimed poet in the making. She's most adept at putting the vaguest thought into a plainness of a clear flowing rivulet. Adore her writing!

4. Karanjeet- She's not kept her word nor her blog. But that does not make her a bad person/ friend. Nor a bad writer. Quite the opposite.
Keep ur word soul sister, let the words flow.
3. Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with ‘Brilliant Weblog'. Done.

4. Show a picture of those who awarded you and those you give the prize (optional).

5. And pass it on!

Sometimes

Sometimes, the answer is in the question...

Psychobabble

I regret the untimely, but slow dying of the words.

Sometimes it happens I guess, a flourishing kingdom gets plundered.
A prosperous life gets dry.

But we can always bask in the glory of the past.
Without making 'the' today miserable.

When something goes wrong the index finger is all ready to point the blame onto someone.
Its hard not to do that, sometimes genuinely and sometimes not so.

So here's to the glory of the past. And to the serenity of the present.

After all, what's more alluring than 'peace', with yourself and the world (if not the words)?

Afterthoughts....

A conviction that the words will not die.
A secret stray ray of hope shines.
Words will get fuelled. They will flow, they have to.
Nothing can stop them.
The words WILL have to flow.
After all, words are thoughts that get frozen, those that dont just evaporate...

The Pages

That was a long time ago- when I was in a chronic spell of reading- reading page after page, book after book, hours after hours, ... late into the night, into the wee hours of the morning. That reminds me of a little story, something I find hilarious today but horrific then.

It was right after 11th grade final exams (Gosh it's almost a decade ago... and I want to write those exams again... and sometimes I still have nightmares that I've missed a paper between my finals and its either Math or Kannada), July 31st, I was turning page after page of Sidney Sheldon's 'Tell Me Your Dreams' gripping novel. It was just about time for the morning rays to hit the horizon and the birds to chirp the darkness away when I wrapped the book to a finish and kept it aside.

I heard the most strangest of sounds and got this eerie feeling. I peered through the window and could hardly believe my sight when i saw this figure that seemed to be afloat. I instantly drew the curtains and woke up my sister... ' Saw a ghost' and snuggled!! Chanted all the mantras I knew and slumbered, while my sister sat awake (in fear). Needless to point out, I thought I'd seen a ghost ( I still believe so!).

And here's this tag (after a long time)... :) Here's a book list... Shalom's got me running through this list of books and made me see how much I've read and how much more there's left to read!!!!!

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Underline the books you really love

4) Reprint this list in your own blog.

----------

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible/ The Bhagavad Gita As It Is

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Naboko

v63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (children's version.....does that count???)

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnights Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Mantra for sane living

Don't read the unread
Don't say the unintended
Don't hear the unsaid

The List

Some end up making 'lists', all their lives.
Never 'hit' any of it.

And some 'make', 'just', a "FINAL" list.
And 'NAIL IT'.

ODE TO THOSE WHO NAIL IT!

Space

To be.
To feel.
To transcend into.
To hear.
To transform.
To think...

yellow submarine

there are times when i surge out of the waters of existence.
and breathe in some air.
i realise am living a subliminal existence.

with so much to learn, do and accomplish somewhere i need to float on these waters than swim under it.

so true beatles were when they sang ' we all live in a yellow submarine'....

Heritage Hysteria

Wonder what some of these posts were doing-sitting idle for all this while. Posting all the stuff resting in the drafts folder...


There were these temples that were built some hundreds of years ago right across the city where I grew up. Ofcourse, I did'nt know of its existence until a year ago. An intent search to see (neglected monuments- nt that i was discovering them even if the feeling was such :) ) places like this took me there. And need I mention the state this wondrous temple was in? Shambles. So one sunday evening the father and daughter duo drove along the raging colors of the setting sun...

Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) has demarcated it as a site of 'historical importance' and put up a board with its paint chipped off from it. There's nothing much to read about the significance and story of the temple. I craned for information and sought to speak with the temple pujari whose ancestral profession and duty its been, to render worship to the deity of Lord Shiva in this temple. He's worried what will happen to the temple after him. He has no sons, and no one in the family wants to take on the profession of a humble pujari.

It brings me to the point that's been on my mind's horizon, for as long as I think and even more after visiting a few World Heritage Sites - as identified by UNESCO. Does it take a UNESCO to tell us that ancient temples that abound this country are Heritage Sites? Does it take their funds to restore a befitting respect of maintaining these sites? Does it take a 7 wonders Foundation to label a monument?

The lack of cognizance and attention these monuments beget in our lives is shameful to say the least. They are a living testimony to our great heritage.

If each person, every home, every community, every school, college, organisation takes a step forward and builds an awareness of such places in its precincts and instills a pinch of respect- there would be much hope in some restoration of respect to the glory of India that was and in this humility, we will take India back to its glory.

A revolution starts with small steps, it starts WITH YOU and ME.

Just the way it is...

In this world,
In the contour of every pleasure lurks pain,
In its core, there is void
In every love, there is lack
Every victory, there’s defeat
For every happy song, there is a poignant past and an uncertain future.

Was that a smile... or life itself?

Was that a crack on the frozen river?
To let the waiting water trickle beneath the frozen glass,
To come gushing out and run along, dance along…

Was that a smile?
Or was it the flaming fire, dancing to reach the sky?
Was that a smile?
Or was it the winds, lifting and swaying with it, the whole world?

Was that a smile?
Or victory? Or victor?
Truth?
Or the search for it?
Or was that a mountain that stood tall yet still?
Was it benevolence or was it munificence?

What was it?
Humility to stamp(ede) over?
Or honour to crown?
Was that the glint of wit?
Or the light of wisdom?
Was that patience, perseverance or tolerance?
Was that the sparkle of an idea?
Or was it divine revelation?

Many things can never be understood.
Most others can never be described.
But there are very few things that remain etched forever in the mind’s eye…
Like that smile.

A January Jot

Something I jotted in January...

IN THIS MAZE
I LAZE,
UNABLE TO HANDLE, ALL OF THIS CRAZE.
IT TOTTERS ME IN AN UNHOLY DAZE.
TO COME OUT OF THIS PHASE,
SOMEBODY HELP ME CLEAR THIS GAZE.

For starters...

For starters, am really glad I got could get onto my blog from my phone. Since Jan '08, i've been lethargically procrastinating getting this done. Or was it some kind of a techno block in my head. All I had to do was call the helplines and this was fixed in half an hour! hmmm... was lik magic unravelling before my eyes as the connection went for verification and then authentication! My uninterested eyes almost popped out :))

I feel so cut-off from the plethora of words and thoughts that i actually am floating in :)

Will be sometime before thoughts and feelings take shape in words. Until then, its a thoughtwarp!

Chapters and Books

A wise friend says to me- marriage is not like another chapter of life, as most people would put it. Its a new book altogether. That piece of insight coming in around the right time.

I say to time...

I'l get a hold on you soon, hang on.