FINALLY ... here is the emu that I've been trying to upload all these days. It turns out Internet Explorer doesn't function well on Macs and AOL doesn't function well on anything. So: while using the iBook which I borrow from my friends when I'm at the "office", I haven't been able to upload on IE. And at home, using my own ThinkPad, and dialing up via AOL, no action there either. But all is changed -- because this office iBook has now been installed with FireFox -- and ta-daaaaa! Emu surprise.

All good.

Meanwhile, on other fronts (mentioned in the title), I am learning to drive. Okay, okay -- no hysteria in the audience, please -- better late than never and all that ... so it's been a stressful time for all the young trees along the driveway at my friends' home, where I am gaining valuable experience, and losing much sweat. S, the particular friend who is teaching me, has shown enormous reserves of patience, wit and serenity as we rattle up and rattle down the driveway, scaring goats and dogs and occasional (no doubt) field mice. It's only been about 10 days and there are faint glimmerings of understanding appearing in my cerebral cortex (or wherever. My liver, perhaps. I don't know where the Driving Gene is located).

The reason I am making this effort, after nearly-53 years of non-driving existence, is that I am tired of being a sort of animated parcel, in the US, always having to be collected and delivered from one location to the next. It is an immensely humbling experience, to suddenly be immobilized for lack of taxis/scooters/camels/dog sleds in which to move around. Also, when one is living in a rural area in the US, it becomes positively dangerous to be actually UNABLE to drive -- it is so much taken for granted that every normal adult has this basic skill that it could cause panic and riots if it were to be commonly known that I am Automotively Challenged.

I am discovering all kinds of interesting facts. Such as: I have two feet -- and ONLY two feet -- rather than the three most people seem to have, or SHOULD have, so that they can rest one appendage each on the Clutch, Brake and Accelerator pedals. Such as: there is such a thing as slipping backwards into oblivion when the parking brake is released. Such as: some cars DO NOT HAVE A (functioning) PARKING BRAKE. Such as: yelping and letting go the steering wheel -- mysteriously -- does NOT result in the car coming to a dead halt. Such as ... ohhhh. Never mind. I think I've said enough.

But I haven't yet actually hit anything. Which seems to me to be a good sign. At least till my next lesson ...

98 or 2? Which one r u?

At the end of this message, you are asked a question.

Answer it immediately. Don't stop and think about it.

Just say the first thing that pops into your mind.


This is a fun "test"... AND kind of spooky at the same time! Give it a try, then e-mail it around (including back to me) and you'll see how many people you know fall into the same percentage as you. Be sure to put in the subject line if you are among the 98% or the 2%. You'll understand what that means after you finish taking the "test".


Now... just follow the instructions as quickly as possible.



Do not go to the next calculation before you have finished the previous one.



You do not even need to write or remember the answers, just do it using your mind.


You'll be surprised.



Start:

How much is:



15 + 6

























3 + 56



























89 + 2

























12 + 53





































75 + 26




































25 + 52





























63 + 32

































I know! Calculations are hard work, but it's nearly over..



Come on, one more...




























123 + 5






















































QUICK! THINK ABOUT A COLOR AND A TOOL!
















































Scroll further to the bottom...






















































A bit more...























You just thought about a ... (okay people -- unless I see a minimum of three responses here, I'm not posting the END of this amusing message that came to me by e-mail. Just follow the instructions and post the FIRST RESPONSE that comes to mind.)


---and a mere half day later, five responses -- CONGRATULATIONS, people! You've just proved something to me -- i.e., that there are many more 2%ers than the original testers thought there might be! Here's the end of the message:


You just thought about a red hammer, didn't you?







If this is not your answer, you are among 2% of people who have a different, if not abnormal, mind.



98% of the folks would answer a red hammer while doing this exercise.



If you do not believe this, pass it around and you'll see.



Be sure to put in the subject line if you are among the 98% or the 2% and send to everyone, including the person that sent it to you.

Emusements

I have been trying to post the photograph of an avian friend for several days but the various computers I have at my command (? did I use that word, COMMAND? I wonder what it means ...) have been misbehaving, each in its own way. Currently, I believe I have uploaded a pic, but at this moment, cannot see it anywhere. Maybe it will be here, magically, when I click *publish*. And then again, maybe it will not ...

I have discovered much further information about the Emus since I first became fascinated with them. For instance, I now know that the person who owns them keeps them for THEIR OWN SAKE. Not for food, not for emusement, but just to give them A Room Of Their Own. Maybe I should apply for a home? Wearing an emu-costume of course.

Emu-factoid for today: their eggs are a gorgeous deep green colour. I have not yet seen one (egg, I mean) but the lady across the road from Emu Heaven told me.

A Many-Flavoured Feast

We’ve been in Vermont for just over a week now. The weather is brisk-going-on-cold. We’re living with our friends S & S, their two children E & T, aged 8 and 4 respectively and their two dogs Lobo & Skylar (the reason I’m naming the dogs while leaving the humans only initialed is that I’m guessing that dogs have fewer issues about privacy)(I may be wrong here, of course).

Amongst the varied pleasures of being here is (Amro, take note …) the food. S, who is a passionate believer in food-as-medicine-and-as-joy cooks only with organic ingredients, sometimes plucked from her own herb garden or vegetable beds. An excellent meal we had the other day is worth mentioning – but I should stress that it’s been one of many. I am singling it out for special mention only because I happened to make a note of the recipe (but I didn’t write it down so if I have mis-remembered it when I reproduce it here, that will only mean that some of you will have to try it out, realize something has gone wrong and then write furious comments to me, cursing my poor recall) – Star Pasta with Mussels in Scampi Sauce. You begin (of course) with the Mussels. Four tablespoons of butter, melted with olive oil – enough to just cover the bottom of a medium-sized pan – into which you add the mussels – S used canned baby mussels, three tins of about 400 gms each, including the water. She added a fistful of fresh-plucked chives, three medium-sized heads of garlic (peeled and crushed) and a cup or two of white wine and maybe three-quarter cup of lemon juice. Add salt to taste (though the brine in which the mussels are canned provides quite a bit of flavour). Cook for about 15 minutes and voilà. It is done and delicious.

The Star Pasta was something I’ve not had before. It’s just pasta, like any other, but shaped into TINY little stars – looked at edge-on, a cooked star looks exactly like a grain of rice – and when served, looks like a mound of grains except that they’re NOT grains. For some reason, the starry character of the pasta enters the mind and imagination of the diner – well, this diner, anyway -– so that the act of eating becomes quite ravishingly twinkly. I cannot describe it any other way! T in particular, caught quite a number of stars in her hair, on her elbows and on her cheek and whereas spaghetti similarly distributed about her person would have looked ridiculous, the stars looked frankly delightful.

Well! That gives you an idea of the kind of stay this is turning out to be. Marked by unusual thrills – which aren’t really thrills so much as daily life experienced through the prism of being an outsider to them. Another example: down the road from the house, there’s someone who maintains an emu farm. There are at least 12 or 15 of the creatures prancing around their out-door enclosure. They are about as tall as I am (when they stretch up) – i.e., five foot five – and extremely curious. As soon as they catch sight of someone walking by they trot towards the fence with a jerky-hoppy motion, their brilliant gamboge eyes glittering, their dark beaks closed and their long necks coiling this way and that, snake-like. They are covered with iron-grey feathers which look more like a pelt of long, stringy fur and where it thins out a bit on their throats, the skin shows beneath it, coloured a delicate shade of cornflower blue. From within those serpentine necks and despite the closed beaks, there comes an eldritch BONG! sound … Quite remarkable.

It’s fairly cold, even though it’s the end of April – and just in case you’re inclined to think I might be exaggerating let me inform you that yesterday afternoon, the mild rain had the cheek to turn into snow!! Not very serious snow, to be sure – it did not so much as remain on the ground – but it certainly turned the air into a fine blade, with the wind using one’s nose as its whet-stone.
This morning the puddles of rain that remained from the day before had frozen over, then cracked into muddy shards that looked exactly as if someone had broken a plastic dish and then thrown the pieces carelessly out into the yard.

I am pleased to say that, despite the many distractions, I have even managed to do a bit of reading. Over the weekend, I demolished a book called NOT BUYING IT, by Judith Levine. It’s definitely a must-read item even for someone like me – i.e, someone who doesn’t especially like to shop. The author has published four books besides being a free-lance journalist. She and her partner Paul live half the year in New York and half the year in Vermont (yes … there IS a connection … all will be revealed soon).

As she explains in the preamble to the book, it was while struggling to complete her Christmas shopping in late 2003 that she was suddenly overcome with disgust at the sheer overwhelming chaos caused by Homo Consumerensis. Instead of merely brushing aside her sense of unease at the volume and urgency of the shopping frenzy in which she and her fellow shoppers were wallowing, she chose to do something about it – by deciding to write a book about one entire year during which she refuses to spend money.

In the hands of a less honest, determined and conscientious author this might have been a dreary compilation of temptations resisted or obsessions revealed. Instead, it goes from the early days of 2004, during which Levine experiences real pangs of withdrawal from an activity she knew she enjoyed but had never before considered especially obsessive, to a greater and deeper awareness about the philosophy of runaway consumption that she and others like her are immersed within; about the impact upon the planet of such an attitude; about the echoes she sees in it, in the political realities of the US, particularly in the days just before and then following George W. Bush’s election victory at year end.

By the time her year of denial has come to an end, she is neither especially relieved to know that the “ordeal” is over nor does she truly regard it as an ordeal, now that it is almost behind her. She has learnt to appreciate economies that she hadn’t seen the value of before and she has discovered the painful bald spots appearing in the once healthy and vigorous public domain of America – the libraries that are pitifully over-used and under-funded, the public services that are running down.

During her stay in Vermont, she and Paul become involved in a protest against a proposal to build an unsightly cell-phone tower not far from where our hosts/friends S & S live. They had become intimately involved in the protest. Believing as they do in the urgent need to re-think economic priorities with ecological sanity and the planet’s best interests in view, they were of course passionately opposed to the cell-tower. Levine refers to them in her book – which is of course a powerful incentive to read the book for a guest living in their house! – and by the end of the year, the tower, though sanctioned, is down-sized so that it is less of an eye-sore. It has not yet been built (it may never be) and so, to this day, we do not have cell-phone reception here. But the phones work perfectly well, and so does the Internet and in all truth, without traffic jams to be stuck in, or a social round to maintain, the lack of cell-phones hardly matters AT ALL. And that’s from me, a gadget-lover and SMS-fiend.


In a sense Levine’s book formed an interesting – might I go so far as to say piquant? – counterpoint to the book I had JUST finished reading, called Julie & Julia (I mentioned it in my previous post but didn’t get around to posting a link) which was, by contrast, entirely about consuming – food, that is, of the richest and most gourmet kind. Julie Powell (the author of that book) also created a year-long programme for herself and wrote a book around it and became something of a celebrity too – though it is unclear whether she will go on to sustain her place in the sun with more books. It’s silly, of course, to compare the books, because they really have very little in common and would probably not be mentioned in the same context except for the fact that I read them one after the other. Still – since I DID do that – it interested me to hear echoes from one book to the next. The powerful allure of food and eating in the first book, the way that it connects so many people to the thirty-year-old author’s personal aim of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering The Art Of French Cooking and the powerful siren-song of the shopping plaza sounding in the ears of the second author, as she struggles to resist the urge to buy herself new clothes or see the latest films or buy an unnecessary trinket as a present for her niece upon her Graduation Day from University.

If it isn't already obvious, I strongly recommend both books. Dunno if they're easy to find/order in Delhirium, but I expect The Bookshop, Jorbagh and also Strand Bookshop in Bombay would be able to order them.

Arrived and on the move!

So ... my recommendation for THIS year is AIR FRANCE. We boarded our flight in Delhirium at 1.00 a.m. and were greeted at the aircraft's entrance by airhostesses wishing us "Bon Soir Madame/M'sieur!" -- it was a great start for any Francophile -- and the rest of the flight confirmed that first impression. Yep. By the end of it, E and I were chattering away in French, like a pair of parrots that have been taught a series of stock phrases, and are eager to try them all out!! I don't know what it is about the french language, but being immersed in it makes the immersee feel supercool, elegant, sophisticated, pleasantly perfumed and even (at a stretch) slender.

The result of this was that we wafted out at Boston's Logan airport in a haze of gaulic good-humour, buoyed up by TOTALLY OUTSTANDING FOOD (are you reading this, Amro?) -- not too much, not too little, but fresh and tasty and even the trays weren't too fussy or the little packets impossibly difficult to break into. Red wine both meals, and a nice, smooth dry one it was. There was a scheduled six hour wait at Paris' Charles de Gaulle and that was a bore, but the flight after it was just as good as the one that preceded it so ... like I said, we arrived in very good humour. We were out in the mild spring sunshine within minutes -- literally, I think it took about 20 minutes from the time we left the aircraft -- and that even includes the surreal 15 minute wait between the aircraft and the interior of the Immigration Hall, with all 300+ passengers backed up in one long, bewildered line in front of a locked glass door, coz SOMEBODY forgot to open it and let us in. My niece's partner L collected us in his car and took us to my niece D's sweet, pretty and pleasant-scented apartment in Arlington.

And yes, Amro, we had a GREAT dinner, cooked by my niece, of angel-hair pasta and excellent salmon. Delicately herbed and very tasty. MMMmmm.

I am not going to extend this much longer coz I actually have a life that I need to get back to right about ... NOW. But before I go, I need to say a word about two books I've been reading: one is Irwin Allen Sealy's RED -- which I found so charming, unusual and mind-tickling that I gave it away to D before I'd finished reading it, so keen was I to share it with someone else! More about it in my next post. And the second book is one that I read about in Zig's post about the BLOOKER awards -- it's called JULIE & JULIA by Julie Powell and I'm enjoying it thoroughly. I would've preferred it to have included every single recipe that the author talks about, but even without them it IS, as the backcover blurb promises, a delicious read. All about the joys of cooking -- something I know nothing about, but am constantly hoping to just acquire someday without REALLY TRYING. (If you're reading this, Hurree, I hope you're feeling pleasantly jealous!! I promise to lend you my copy if you haven't got your own by the time I return ... chucklechuckle)

Preparing to Make the Jump to Light-Speed

So -- yes -- once again, we're gathering up our forces to make the Jump. It's an odd feeling, EVERY SINGLE TIME. I never reallyreallyreally believe I am going to make it through all the tiresome hoops and rings of fire that lie between me and the disembark-destination. I always assume that there'll be trolls and were-tramps all along the way, whose only aim in life is prevent me from achieving my goals.

At this moment, I am three-quarters-packed, not yet feeling the panic of wondering what vital items I have left out but already sensing the dwindling of space and time as the hour approaches. *sigh*

More later ...

Young Iraqi Ballerinas

This is going to be a slow rambling post about ... well, to begin with, this photograph. It appeared in the Asian Age, Sunday April 2nd 2006 on page 16 "Newsmakers" of the DELHI AGE section. It's an AFP photograph but has no other captions or credits and when I searched for it online couldn't locate it on the AFP site. So ... here it is, scanned from my newspaper in all its grainy glory.

I found myself gazing at it several times all through the day. I don't know whether your screen rez allows you to see the painterly texture of the image, the wonderful Degas flavour of it, echoed in the painting of a ballerina displayed on the back wall of the stage (I don't think it is a Degas, but it has the correct mood to be one). The colours, the expressions on the faces of the little girls, the curious suspension of life and reality beautifully symbolized by the pair of dancers behind the row of girls in front, of a slightly older ballerina supported on the arms of a male dancer, whom we see only from the waist down. She is all pastel and pink, her cruelly dainty shoes -- can't you just feel the tender toes cramped and bleeding within the tiny wooden cage of that unnatural footwear! -- raised in the air, while he ... well ... he's just the muscle in the picture and yet, in his uniqueness, he stands out. We don't see his face, yet we can guess that he is strangely handsome, that he lives a life that most young men only dream of, immersed up to his bobbing Adam's apple in acres of virginal semi-clad female flesh.

It is hard to know what story or moment is being depicted here. What exactly is the meaning of those tender, underdeveloped limbs, just one for each of the young girls, raised up at that ungainly angle? Are they in the midst of a dance movement or was the photograph posed, frozen for the camera? There is something so thrillingly familiar about the expressions on those very young faces -- the combination of boredom and solemn engagement, the prim sweetness of the wreaths around the heads, the flushed pink skin, the glistening eyes, the half-opened mouths. There is, about the picture, a hushed breathlessness, just as these girls' lives, one senses, are also hushed, breathless, half-open, paused: until ... time's little switches get turned on one by one; they blossom and grow full; the weight of womanly Otherness transforms them; that sweetness is gone -- replaced with other flavours, for sure --but never again that intense, that pure, that unconscious sweetness.

It is very odd for me to have these thoughts.

I have seen lots of pictures of ballerinas before; one of my schools offered ballet as an option and therefore I saw many versions of these young dancers performing in real life, and can still see them in my memory. I used to get Girls Own annuals with endless photo essays of ballerinas and their costumes, hopes, tears, triumphs. Yet none of these remembered pictures evoked in me the confused thoughts that this picture did.

Is it because I know that the girls are Iraqi and that their performance takes place against the backdrop of the war that has engulfed their world? Here's what the text says: Life goes on: Young Iraqi ballerinas perform on a Baghdad stage on Saturday during the opening ceremenony of the First Festival of Child Theatre in Iraq. The 11-day Festival started despite the death of two actors who were to perform in one of the plays in the festival. Their bodies, riddled with bullets were found last week in the war-torn Iraqi capital. The festival is dedicated to Iraqi children and aims to revive happiness among the children, who witness daily bloodshed in their country. (AFP)

On the one hand, I feel what (perhaps) the festival organizers would like everyone to feel -- that it is a remarkable achievement to be able to produce a full-fledged ballet in a country that has seen the kind of upheaval that has been the stuff of front page news for ... oh ... three years already? On the other hand, I feel it is bizarre and inappropriate for little girls to be paraded in this way for all the world to gawp at. I feel quite guilty harbouring such thoughts. But there you are: with one part of my mind, I feel that this kind of display of little girls is exactly what leads, through sad and twisted pathways, into crimes against girls and women.

With these thoughts still twitching and fidgeting in the back of my mind, today, I accessed this link sent to me by Zigzackly. It's a must-read blog-post and it makes reference to two very shocking incidents -- one that occurred in Vietnam, at My Lai, and another that occurred out of media view, to the blogger herself.

In case it seems as if I'm leading up to a grand general theory -- I am going to disappoint you -- coz NO, I'm not. I just wanted to present two very different images of reality, and leave you with the task of working out how we manage to live with both of them side by side(-- okay, not physically, but certainly juxtaposed through the magic of media) in the same world.

And that's all for today.

More Linx

It must be a sign of galloping senility that I find this funny ... (CAUTION: sound file alert -- if there are children/co-workers/sane people in the room with you, do NOT click)(if there are cats, go right ahead).

Learning about Nangla

Over the years, there's been one team of documentary film-makers who interacted with me for whom I have only praise: they call/called themselves RAQS Media Collective. I used to think of them as a three-person unit, but they are in fact (surprise!) three separate individuals, all three highly motivated, very bright, industrious and creative. Their names are Monica, Jeebesh and Shuddhabrata and amongst their several achievements is the establishment of the media resource centre and lab known as SARAI.

I'm posting below a message sent out by Monica about NANGLA MAACHI a community in transition/dislocation, in Delhi.

Dear friends,

Over last 35 years we have seen many an internal dislocation of habitations and life worlds within the city of Delhi. This is something that started with high intensity from the early 70s. Now the process of this internal dislocation has become intense and harder.

Nangla Maachi is a 30 year old habitation. It was made by its inhabitants over this period. It is along the river bank and next to Pragati Maidan (Progress Grounds). It has now become valuable real estate as it is prime land for new urban development fairly close to the centre of the city.

The process of its dislocation has, therefore, begun.

In Nangla Maachi Sarai/Ankur had set up a cybermohalla lab two years ago. Many practitioners have been through the lab.

Over these two years, diaries have been written by the lab practitioners and many of the entries have been about life in Nangla. These diary entries are also a way to stubbornly remind us all that Nangla was made into a
lively, heterogeneous habitation by countless people's efforts, and needs to be remembered for this creative act of making and finding ways of living together.

A recent entry reads - "Packing up and leaving from Nangla has begun." The diary is now a record of a contested terrain of the violence of dislocation.

We have set up a blog in both English and Hindi, to share with a wider public the various diary entries of the practitioners. Do visit it, read it, circulate it, share it and link it further. Your comments and stories will be very valuable.

English language blog


Hindi language blog

More posting from the practitioners will be made. A countdown to yet another disappearance of a self-organised urban space has begun.

best
Monica

Silly Joke Alert!

Okay, if ya hate silly jokes involving Persons of the Blonde Persuasion, read no further. There. I warned you ... This one's from my niece, M.


Blonde - Painting
A blonde wanting to earn some extra money decided to hire herself out
as a handyman-type and started canvassing in a wealthy neighborhood.
She went to the front door of the first house and asked the owner if
he had any jobs for her to do. "Well, you can paint my porch, how much
will you charge?" he replied. The blonde said "How about $50.00 ?" The
man agreed and told her that the paint and ladder were in the garage.

The man's wife inside the house, heard the conversation and said to
her husband, "Does she realize that the porch goes all the way around
the house?" The man replied, "She should, she was standing on the
porch." A short time later, the blonde came to the door to collect her
money. "You're finished already?" he asked. "Yes, the blonde answered
and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats". Impressed, the man
reached in his pocket for the $50.00.

"And by the way," the blonde added, "that's not a Porch, it's a Ferrari".

Another joke ... ... not about blondes ... sent to me by cyber-bud Chuck.

A guy walks into a bar, notices a very large jar on the counter, and sees it's filled to the brim with $10 bills. He guesses there must be thousands of dollars in it.

He approaches the bartender and asks. "What's up with the jar?"

"Well, you pay $10 and if you pass three tests, you get all the money."

The man certainly isn't going to pass this up. "What are the three tests?"

"Pay first, those are the rules," says the bartender.

So the man gives him the $10 and the bartender drops it into the jar.

"OK," the bartender says. Here's what you need to do: First - You have to drink that entire gallon of pepper tequila, the whole thing, all at once...and you can't make a face while doing it. Second, there's a pit bull chained-up out back with a sore tooth. You have to remove the tooth with your bare hands. Third. - There's a 90-year old woman upstairs who has never reached orgasm during intercourse. You've gotta make things right for her."

The man is stunned. "I know I paid my $10, but I'm not an idiot! I won't do it! You have to be nuts to drink a gallon of pepper tequila, and then do those other things..."

"Your call," says the bartender, "but your money stays where it is."

As time goes on and the man has a few drinks, then a few more, he asks, "Where ez zat tequila?" He grabs the gallon with both hands and downs it with a big slurp. Tears streaming down both cheeks, but he doesn't make a face.

Next, he staggers out back where the pit bull is chained-up and soon the people inside the bar hear a huge, noisy, scuffle going on outside. They hear the pit bull barking, the guy screaming, the pit bull yelping and then silence. Just when they think the man surely must be dead, he staggers back into the bar, with his shirt ripped and large bloody scratches all over his body.

"Now," he says, "where's the old woman with the sore tooth?"

Joy!

COMMENT moderation rocks! I am having such a great time zapping the lice just at the point when they dangle their little suckers online. YOW! It's toooo much. I get so energized that I've even been enjoying backing into the archives to zap the resident spam-lice out of existence -- KA-CHOOOONG! Zowie! zappapapapapaZAP! Ka-BLOOOOIEEEEE!! Great sense of empowerment. Highly recommended.

Alas, I have also managed to lose one of the legitimate comments that was posted at the site. That's what happens when an over-ardent comment-moderator hits the zap-button too often. Sorry, and I'll be more careful da next time.

Also highly recommended, Bembo Zoo, sent to me by my friend Anvar -- if your eyes have been starved for candy, this site offers a feast of clever dainties. Please note, that's BEMBO, as in the typeface, and not BIMBO as in a species of nubile human.

The New Racism

An Indian friend reports that he's been facing discrimination while on a house hunt. He works for a well-heeled Australian multinational company and has recently been looking for a place to stay. The landlords to whom he speaks on the phone sound very enthusiastic. When he goes over to meet them and they see that he's Indian, they turn him down without a blush. He's been told in so many words, "We don't rent to Indians."

And where is this happening? In our glorious capital city, New Delhi.

So the next time you hear some recently returned NRI complaining about Westerners being so racist, help them wake up to the realities of their motherland by telling them this story. Me, I believe Indians can out-racist anyone, when we put our five-thousand-years-of-civilization-selves to the task. Sure I get "raced" at when I am abroad -- but it's hardly very different to the various forms of discrimination I am exposed to right here, in Delhirium. Reading the International Women's Day posts at Zigzackly's place in reference to so-called "Eve-Teasing" I am reminded of the years for which merely being a woman resulted in virulent gender discrimination.

I don't face that stuff any more, but on the rare occasions I go walking to the local market, I feel uncomfortable just because I can sense that for the street elements, I am "different". It's no longer anything very specific -- I'm not a bimbette, I'm not obviously rich, I'm not a foreigner -- but my hair's very short and I don't dress in the manner expected of middle-aged middle-class women. This is enuff to cause the local fauna to react in subtle ways -- it's nothing very obvious, just a slight flinching and clearing of throats, often accompanied by a release of spit, a bit like dogs scent-marking territory. It's not racism, so much as an instinctive dislike of anyone who doesn't conform to received notions of "normal".

By contrast, when I am away from these fabled streets, I am merely a brown-skinned "other", who is accorded a neutral space, neither fond nor unfond. Most of the time, I pass unnoticed and am often, I believe, mistaken for Latino. I find this neutrality very comfortable to live with. Sometimes I can see a clear-cut race-based reaction. On such occasions, I just remind myself of what it's like back in the motherland and feel ... well ... the familiar DIScomforts of home!

Meanwhile, on the COMMENTS front, I am enjoying the relief from spam. I hadn't realized how annoying it was until I turned it off. Like having an infestation cyber-lice. Yech. I am also finally getting around to clearing the unwanted posts out of the various little pockets into which they've inserted themselves. I am going to experiment with turning comment "moderation" on now.

Spam

COMMENTS are off for the moment -- and maybe forever -- on account of spam. There was TOO much building up. Also I've been slowly turning over in my mind, my response to the blogging experience in general. The other day, when some young journalist called up to ask questions about "celebrity blogging" these thoughts came to the fore. One of the questions she asked was, "What do you feel about exposing your personal information to the whole wide web?" Of course I had to laugh: my experience has shown me that there's about as much real exposure on a blog as standing naked alone in a desert.

On the few occasions when there IS high traffic, it is nearly always of low consequence. For instance, there was a surge of visits during the performance of my play in California last year. But the calibre of responses consisted almost entirely of emotional garbage that no-one really needed to either read or write. If I'd turned off comments then, the results would certainly have been cooler all around: maybe a few people would have e-mailed me with their furious remarks and I could have chosen which ones to present or not. But the high temperatures that suddenly flared up at the time would simply not have had the easy outlet that they did, and we'd all have had more time to spend on pleasanter pursuits.

Of course it's sad (now, in this commentless atmosphere) not to hear from the few regulars whose responses I welcome here (like Amro and gt, f'rinstance). But the irritants are in greater abundance. The only other time when it was really fun to have a blog was when the SUDOCRITTERS game was in progress. That was cool! And I can see from the traffic stats that SudoCritter continues to be a powerful magnet for one particular search engine in Europe. There is a continuous speckling of hits from France and Holland, every day. However that also means that the relentless spam-parasites (spamasites?) target those posts and fill 'em up with rubbish. I haven't been bothering to remove them, coz it's too much effort. I know about them only because they show up as e-mail.

So ... why do I blog at all? Because it continues to be worthwhile to put out a trickle of news about my patch of turf. It's a bit like sending out a newsletter -- without having to send it out. I know that friends and family visit here in order to confirm that I'm (a) still apparently alive (b) still have the use of my hands and am at least solvent enough to have access to the internet.

I also get to share my most recent amusements. For instance: this mindless-fun game, which I got from Dave Barry's Blog. And one more site, for those who are interested in serial killers ... (sent to me by e-mail by my ComputerVine buddy Chuck aka Slipshod).

Neem News

Last week my mother (who lives in Madras) had a close call with diabetes -- she went into a low-sugar coma just before lunch. She was shifted to the nearby hospital by ambulance and revived in the ICU the moment she was given a drip, and seemed in good cheer when I spoke to her on the phone that evening. The reason I'm sharing this news is that the substance that apparently triggered her brief coma was half a glass of neem-leaf infusion. She'd been told it was a well-known Ayurvedic method of reducing high-sugar levels in diabetics. Maybe her blood-sugar was already normal or perhaps unknown to her it had dipped lower than usual. But the point is: if neem leaves boiled in water can result in a coma-inducing drop of blood-sugar in my mother it sounds like something worth checking out as a low-cost alternative to the normal treatments and drugs that diabetics use. Of course, when you consider the night my mother spent in the ICU, that made it an unusually EXPENSIVE treatment ...

Meanwhile, a friend sent me the following link to an article about the opening up of a new frontier in outsourcing. Reminds me of a certain play I wrote ...

Snail Martyrs and Dragon Fruit

There are two bits of information that I have been meaning to share -- both totally amazing to me.

The first is about the curls on the Buddha's head -- some of you will know immediately what I mean -- you know, the small round bumps that are often shown covering the head of a statue of the Buddha in a seated meditation pose. I probably first saw an image of the Buddha (I mean in a conscious sense) when I was a child of maybe 10 and I remember asking about the bumps. I was told they were "curls". Not much later, my parents and I went to Thailand, and we spent three years there. All that time and ever since, I have believed that those bumps were "curls" -- even though it always bothered me that such curls were in direct contrast to the very smooth skinned, straight-haired type of person the Enlightened One was in every other sense (and in all other representations of him). The curls were an anomaly that were not explained by any other phenomena.

Well -- and now I know the true story: the "curls" are actually meant to represent 108 snails!! They are known formally as "Snail Martyrs" and they climbed up onto the Buddha's head when they saw that he was in deep meditation under the burning sun, to offer him the protection of their little bodies. Isn't that beautiful? My opinion of snails has shot up a thousand-fold! You can read more about it here.

The second astounding new fragment of general truth is that a fruit I was introduced to in Singapore some years ago, by my friend and host there Ela Ghose, turns out to belong to that amazing flower known as the Night Blooming Cereus. The fruit is called Dragon Fruit. The reason I find it so amazing is in part because I was introduced to the flower in my sister's home in Pennsylvania in the US -- it's a weirdly beautiful bloom that flowers only at night, producing one huge (like maybe 10 inches across) display in an astonishingly theatrical manner. I mean, you can practically see the thing opening up and people sometimes come over for Night Blooming Cereus evenings!

No-one speaks about the flower as being a fruit-producer. It is usually admired just for itself. So it was entirely by chance, while browsing the net for something else (that exotic spider lily I featured on this blog some posts ago), I suddenly chanced upon this item about the NBC and its Dragon Fruit.

The second reason it so amazes me that fruit and flower belong to the same plant (a cactus. Very likely, the one that produces the fruit is a different subspecies to the creature that lives in my sister's home -- hers has never shown the slightest sign of productivity. Of course, the poor thing is never exposed to any wasps/moths or whatever it is that pollinates it) is that the NBC is native to the US, while the fruit is best known in Southeast Asia. I saw a few in a wonderful farmers market near Irvine, CA, where I visited last year. But it's not well known.

Okay and that's my show-and-tell for the month!

Remembrance

On this day, 95 years ago, my dad was born in a tiny village in Kerala. He was the first child born to his parents, and would be followed by another ten -- five brothers and five sisters. His father was a Commissaire de Police for the French Government. He spoke Malayalam and French -- NOT English! -- and the only photograph I have seen of him shows him in a superb uniform, all glinting medals and French "kepi"! I never met this grandfather, but my father's mother, who was widowed when her youngest child was barely walking, is someone I remember clearly -- she was an extremely active and creative lady, who was a Sahitya Akademi award-winning author in her life-time and a social activist who enthusiastically joined Gandhi's freedom movement in those heady pre-Independence days. Even to this day, my uncles remember growing up around their mother who would write at the family dining table (perhaps by the light of a kerosene lamp), throwing down pages on the floor as she finished them, such was the energy of her literary flow!

My dad died in 1994, after a long struggle with Parkinson's. He put up a brave fight and was always, right till the end, glad to be alive, unwilling to give up or give in despite the terrible indignities wrought upon him by the disease. His journey was in many ways an extraordinary one, working his way from that small coastal village all the way up to the competitive exams in far away Delhi, earning the right to serve his country in the Foreign Service, reaching the rank of Ambassador in his final two postings, to Thailand and Iran.

In many ways, I was born a little too late to appreciate him and I do feel a sad regret about all the things unsaid and left undone. He was an exemplary Dad. In this day, when we hear endless horror stories about the vile behavior of men towards their wives and families, it is important to also record those men who are decent, kind, good-humoured and hard working. I rarely ever saw him ill-tempered and I never heard him raise his voice in anger to anyone. He was always mild-mannered and cautious, but he held his own, he fought for what he believed was right and I think he brought us up -- my two sisters and me -- to have a strong sense of what is decent and honourable in life.

He was also the source of my interest in puzzles and cartoons! He was an avid crossword puzzler and reader of cartoons. We still have in the family, the collected album of "Curly Wee" comics that were serialized in his local newspaper. He cut them out and stuck the strips neatly into a volume, when he was growing up and they are still enjoyably readable now. He had a warm sense of humour and loved nothing more than to read a good book. Towards the end of his life, when reading was a chore because his eyes were weak, he took to watching art movies on TV and knew more than most of us about the best new films on the art circuit.


So anyway. I thought I'd share that with those of you who read this blog -- and especially for those of you who still have dads. Go give him a hug, go tell him you love him and that he matters to you.

Family-Witness Account of HARVEST!

-- my niece D and partner drove down from Boston to NYC to see the play! I am hugely impressed at their enterprising spirit and very grateful too. Despite the other accounts, I needed to hear from someone who knows me well enough to report on the performance through (almost) my own eyes. Not entirely, of course, because she is very much her own person, but from what she says, and from the photographs I've seen, I have a much clearer impression of what the play was like. I think I would've liked it ...

Here's what she says:

On Sunday, Jan 29, 2006, we drove down to NYC to the East Village to
see the final performance of Harvest at La MaMa, a well-known venue on
the independent theatre circuit. Off the bustling 2nd Avenue, 4th
Street is a quieter stretch of brownstones peppered with little
restaurants and specialty shops featuring those eclectic items that
define New York chic when worn just so, or by today's It Girl. There,
nestled between the residential doorways and store fronts, is the
unassuming entrance to La MaMa. Opening the door, one first encounters
the heat barrier – strips of heavy plastic designed to keep the
bitterness of winter outside where it belongs. Then one enters the
cramped, no-frills box office space – featuring minimum seating along
a corner where photos of past performances serve as wall paper; a
closet bathroom; and two call windows to pick up tickets to one of the
two theatres housed in this narrow Manhattan space. Harvest is playing
in the ground floor theatre.

Ten minutes before the show, the staff opens the door and starts
ushering folks into the hardwood floored corridor that flanks the
stepped seating area. Again, one is struck by the narrowness of the
space – the stage seems barely wider than a large drawing room and the
set is not much deeper. This is perfect staging for a play that
transpires in a one-room flat in a tenement building in a bustling
Third World metropolis. The stage is set with a single bed on the
right with an end table featuring a picture of Ganesha. On the left is
the "kitchen" area. Along the back is a railing with clothes hanging
to dry in the supposed inner courtyard of the tenement. There is also
a door separating the balcony from the living area. Taking a seat on
the second tier of folding chairs, one notices the rustic style of the
theatre, the exposed brick of the walls only enhances the roughness
of the set.

The play begins with Ma and Jaya waiting, and bickering, for Om to
return from InterPlanta. Once Om comes home and breaks the news that
he got the job at InterPlanta, the guards come to disinfect and
reorganize the living space. The two male guards are dressed in button
down dress shirts with blue ties tuck efficiently away, below the
third button, dark blue pants, and rubber gloves. The one female guard
is wearing the same shirt and tie, with a short tight dark blue skirt
accentuating her petite frame which is made all the more delicate by
her hair being twisted into several little buns in a pixie-like style.
The guards work quickly to clear the living area and finish each
other's sentences as they briskly explain the Interplanta rules. All
the props are removed and white plastic sheets are placed over the
door and the balcony area, creating a not only hermetically sealed
living space, but also a flat screen for the series of InterPlanta
commercials that are projected throughout the play. The only thing
that the guards add to the living space is the contact module, an
interlocking paper pieced puzzle light fixture that Manjula herself
would have enjoyed assembling. This whirls to life and Ginny's larger
than life image is projected on the screen behind the characters. She
is blond, blue-eyed, and overly made up, speaking with a typical, but
not quite charming, Southern twang. The play progresses and we meet
Jetu who promptly demonstrates that he knows Jaya a little more
intimately than her own husband. As Interplanta woos the audience with
how they "Make Lives Worth Living," the living area is transformed
with sterile white furniture and stain steel accessories. Om is
sterile as well in a white cotton kurta pajama. Ma, in contrast, is
wearing a black velvet wrap around bath robe with a leopard skin
collar, and chunky slippers with little cow heads that smile back at
their wearer. Jaya is wearing a brocade silk sari and is the only one
questioning this new false reality created by Ginny – her very own
"human fish bowl"- a concept, which given that Harvest was written in
1996 and the current plethora of reality TV shows, is scarily
prophetic.

As the play progress, white InterPlanta boxes are piled up along the
back of the set in front of the balcony screens. The resulting effect
is that as the more and more absurd InterPlanta commercials are
broadcast, the images are splintered across the boxes and partially
blocked screen. The visual fragmentation of the InterPlanta advocates
only adds to the sense of body parts and life parts that are being
traded at the will and whim of the credit card endowed.

As the voyeurism continues, Jetu returns to the household the day the
guards come for Om . Om crumbles at the prospect of paying his debt to
his benefactor. Therefore, the unwitting guards take Jetu in his stead
with Ma's full support of her least beloved son. Upon his return, the
audience gets to meet the living, corporal form of Ginny which is now
being projected directly into Jetu's mind thanks to the first stage of
the transplant process. Enamored by her lily white form, Jetu greedily
agrees to continue the transplant process with the promise of having
more intimate knowledge of this fresh foreign flower, while carelessly
brushing off the reason and concern of the steadfast Jaya. Time passes
and the living space is in disarray, as is Jaya who is back in her
simple red cotton sari, but her hair is now out of its neat pony tail
and she splays herself across the arch of the sofa. The contact module
whirls to life and beckons to Jaya. She is thrown by the new voice,
and then the living space is invaded by the holographic image of Jetu
who now has the arrogance and seduction of the real recipient of the
InterPlanta services. He unveils the true nature and mission of the
transplant process which Jaya rejects unless it is on her terms. The
play ends with Jaya assuming control of her life and the situation and
proving that one voice can prevail over the monstrous machinery of
Manjula's eviscerated vision for the future of global consumerism.

In case it isn't clear - I loved the production and thought it did
much justice to the play and its harsh sentiments.

More Cows!

Yup. It's that time of life again -- those political cows and their ideological products ... A new set (well, new for me. I've read the earlier list dozens of times. This is the first new lot in a LONG while).

DEMOCRATIC

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.


REPUBLICAN

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?


SOCIALIST

You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your
neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage
his cow.


COMMUNIST

You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with
milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.


CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of
cows.


BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays
you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours
the milk down the drain.


AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do
an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of
four cows. You are surprised when one cow
drops dead. You spin an announcement to the
analysts stating you have downsized and are
reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.


FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.


JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size
of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the
milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded
trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow
school.


GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink
lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run
a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately, they also demand 13 weeks of
vacation per year.


ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.


RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.

The Mafia shows up and takes over however many
cows you really have.


TALIBAN CORPORATION

You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are
two. You don't milk them because
you cannot touch any
creature's private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the U.S.
government to find alternatives to milk production,
but use the money to buy weapons.


IRAQI CORPORATION

You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send out radio tapes of their mooing.


POLISH CORPORATION

You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed
attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION

You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks she's French, other
times she thinks she's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.

The French cow wants control of the Flemish
cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.


FLORIDA CORPORATION

You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown
one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.



Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell
you which one you think is the best-looking cow.


CALIFORNIA CORPORATION

You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegal cows.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.


VEGETARIAN CORPORATION

Has two cows
And they are pets.

... and finally:

MARGINALIEN CORPORATION

You wonder: What are "cows"?

An Ayurvedic Lunch & Another Review

Well this afternoon my sister, my mother and my aunt G went out together to a restaurant serving authentic "Ayurvedic" meals -- not merely vegetarian, but healthy in that Mystical Eternal India manner (cue sitar music in the background. And curling wisps of incense. And coconut oil. And a tiger or two).

Those of you who know me will realize that this is NOT my scene at all, but I survived, nevertheless. The main pleasures were: taking my Mum out, despite her difficulties walking and the trouble she has managing since she broke her wrist a couple of months ago (it's healing well, but of course is still a worry); taking my Auntie-G out, because she so enjoys the sacred food concept; being in a small restaurant that takes itself SOOOOO seriously, yet in an entirely different direction to the Michelin Guide-wallahs. After all, who can resist a restaurant which has a sales counter out front, at which one can buy small packets labelled "Simple Enema"?

The meal we had was a set menu. We were seated at a table to ourselves in a small air-conditioned room, whose walls had been decorated by a loose lattice-work of bamboo wands (not especially attractive). A fresh banana leaf was spread in front of each of us and of course there was no question of cutlery. We had a personal attendant (so does anyone who orders the set menu) who advised us about the procedure: we would get 28 items in all, small portions of each. We were to eat only in the particular order in which these items were served; we would not be offered water during the meal, and the rice course would come only towards the end.

It began with two slices of banana sprinkled with grated coconut. Immediately following this were five dainty little glasses with, in order: date juice, almond-cashew milk, beetroot-pumpkin juice, mint-buttermilk, red rice congee (gruel??) -- and the tastes ranged from sweet, less sweet, salty, sour and ... umm ... bland.

The next course comprised one portion each of four uncooked items -- salad-y type things of which the banana-stem item was undoubtedly the best -- then four semi-cooked, which I didn't much enjoy coz there was a white-pumpkin item and a beetroot item, but the mound of banana-flower [something] -- the texture of soft dark sand --was quite pleasant. Then four cooked items, plus red rice. Now this red rice wasn't merely sissy-pale red, it was more like MAROON rice, and had a muscular, nutty flavour. A neat touch: it was served with a spoonful of yellow daal, so softened that it looked EXACTLY like the ghee that would NORMALLY be served on rice. And sambar.

All the cooked items were just okay, in my opinion, not because they didn't taste okay but because they weren't my closest friends, veggie-wise (cauliflower's okay, but the various gourd-type things don't appeal). This was followed by another round of liquids, including rasam, a goo I didn't like, plain buttermilk and a sweet payasam (not rice, but the kind I used to call Brown Payasam as a child and that I didn't ever touch -- but I will admit it was quite nice here). And finally, to round it all off, a teaspoon of honey which was deposited into the palms of our hands (!!) -- which we were told quite sternly to lick up in one go, it was part of the whole procedure -- and a "beeda" -- a paan leaf with betel-nut components of unknown identity wrapped inside it, as a digestive.

The important features to note about the meal were that it was wholly grease-free, everything being pretty much steamed (I think) and that there were no "heaty" veggies, such as onion and garlic, and no spices of the cardamom, clove, turmeric brigade. I am pretty sure there were chillies lurking in the savoury green mango relish that was one of the four "uncooked" selections, because it was certainly chilli-hot -- but the rest was refreshingly low-spice, natural flavour -- but maybe I am wrong and it was only fresh pepper combining explosively with the mango (and maybe cilantro? I forget).

I don't think I'd go again -- mainly coz I don't like eating with my fingers and feel queasy about the raw veggies concept -- oh and I NEVER like to feel that I'm doing anything consciously sacred (does everyone notice how close the word "sacred" is to "scared"?) because ... well, this is my blog, and I don't have to justify anything. I don't like it, and that's all. But the little man who watched over us as we ate was very sweet and seemed genuinely concerned that we should follow the proper procedure in order to get the maximum benefit from our meal. His presence -- like that of the whole restaurant -- was a reminder of that entire world of otherness regarding food -- of food as medicine, as ritual, as tradition -- the supreme opposite of food as entertainment, as titillation, as indulgence.

It's not where I'm at (I mean, medicine/ritual/tradition), but I enjoyed entering that world anyway.

Right! And now ... back to theatre:

from BACKSTAGE
Harvest/January 30, 2006
By Gwen Orel

In answer to the comment that "no one goes abroad these days," Jaya (Diksha Basu) mutters, "Not whole people, anyway." It's true. In Manjula Padmanabhan's play Harvest, bits of impoverished Indians go to America through voluntary organ donation sponsored by the company InterPlanta. InterPlanta's mordant commercials (the video director is Matt Bockelman) punctuate the scenes and are one of the best elements in a solid show; the happy actors' sincerity, and InterPlanta's little jingle, "We make life worth living," are uncomfortably close to the euphoric promises of Viagra commercials.

Jaya, the wife of organ donor Om (Debargo Sanyal), is the play's moral center, although the action is driven by Om and by Jaya's brother-in-law and lover, Jeetu (Rupak Ginn), a street hustler who says, "I don't mind being bought, but I won't be owned." After Om signs with InterPlanta, guards (who farcically finish each other's sentences) come to the house and take all the family's possessions. They install a hanging white rosette called a "contact module," through which their sponsor, a blond Southern woman named Ginni (hilariously bossy Christianna Nelson), beams her image. She treats them like prospective livestock, and in return sends them a toilet, shower, couch, and television. Ma (Naheed Khan) purchases "video paradiso," which breathes and eats for her as she watches television inside her mind. Act II provides more exposition; though the material is dramatically successful, the play is less powerful when the circumstances are pinned down.

Thanks to Padmanabhan's lyrical language, director Benjamin Mosse's pacing and humor, and a solid cast, Harvest is a fascinating, funny, and frightening glimpse of what happens when we commodify human beings. Although it addresses globalization, the play's issues are universal. As Bruce Springsteen sings, "Everybody has a hungry heart." Keeping body and soul together in the face of images of plenty is a human challenge not limited to the Third World.

HARVEST NYC's Reviews

Here's a link to the online review at NYTheatre.com -- there's a photograph of the show there -- it looks great, and I am finally breathing easy. Congratulations to the cast and ECA ...

Martin Denton * January 20, 2006
In Harvest, Manjula Padmanabhan's fine play that is currently receiving its NYC premiere at La MaMa, a young man in India takes a job as a professional organ donor. The time is the near future, and a company called Interplanta is recruiting healthy Third World humans to become, essentially, health repositories for wealthy Westerners. Om's client is a woman named Ginni, who pays him and his family top dollar-at least in terms of India's per capita income-to stay fit and ready for the possible day when she will need something from him, say, a kidney, or his skin, or his eyes.

Om's wife, Jaya, is understandably distressed by this new job, not least because of the strain it puts on an already very dysfunctional relationship. For Jaya is in love with, and having an on-again / off-again affair with, Om's younger brother, Jeetu, who supports himself by working as a prostitute. The other member of the household is Ma, Om and Jeetu's mother, a meddlesome lady who thinks that her elder boy (Om) can do no wrong and that the others can do no right (Jaya, for example, is repeatedly referred to as a "slut").

As for the work itself-such as it is-well, that's a round-the-clock regimen controlled 100% by Interplanta, who deliver boxes of food and other necessities as dictated by Ginni (she orders, for example, that a working toilet and shower be installed in Om's one-room, fourth-floor apartment, because she doesn't want her employee mixing with the "disgusting" others who dwell in his building). Om and his family do get to enjoy the spoils of his new high-paying position-in one of the play's most effective scenes, their rise to consumerist luxury is depicted wittily in a series of sight gags-but their lack of freedom eventually gnaws away at them, as does Om's fear that the day is drawing near when some part of his body will be needed by his faraway benefactress-quite possibly a part that he can't do without.

I won't reveal the rest of Padmanabhan's intricately plotted tale, but I will say that Harvest compels from beginning to end, creating a not-so-fanciful futuristic world that's pretty darned scary. Om's occupation starts off as a stark and brilliant symbol of the most invasive kind of First World Colonialism, but the play shifts gears along the way and turns its attention to an even more insidious form of colonization, that of our very humanity by a cultural ethos besotted with technology and comfort. While Om's family's crisis spirals horrifyingly out of control, commercials for Interplanta's latest and greatest products and services are projected on a screen that coincides with the rear wall of their apartment, lulling us (and them, perhaps) into a sense of security that's as malignant as it is false. (These exceedingly well-crafted videos are directed by Matt Bockelman.) Padmanabhan essentially picks up where Orwell left off, crafting a 21st century cautionary tale of enormous resonance.

Benjamin Mosse's production at La MaMa's First Floor Theater is mostly terrific, anchored by a quartet of splendid performances (Debargo Sanyal as Om, Naheed Khan as Ma, Christianna Nelson as Ginni, and Rupak Ginn as Jeetu) and smartly paced and designed (the endlessly escalating "conveniences" delivered to the family by Interplanta take the form here of cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes, and as they stack up toward the ceiling they provide a visual allusion to Ionesco's The Chairs, a neat and relevant absurdist reference point). Diksha Basu is less effective as Jaya, unfortunately, failing to hold our attention or sympathy in Act One, which proves problematic as the play's focus shifts toward her in its second half.

But Harvest is by any measure a significant success, and La MaMa and East Coast Artists are to be congratulated for bringing it to the New York stage. Audiences in search of lively and challenging theatre that looks deeply and candidly at the relations between the world's "haves" and "have-nots" will be well stimulated by this thought-provoking, valuable work.

And the The New York Times review. It's more critical but I'm told the reviewer saw what amounted to a preview, and that the subsequent shows have tightened up considerably. Frankly? Knowing the kinds of things that can go wrong with the play, this sounds like a pretty good show, even on its first night, with barely six weeks of rehearsal (with the year-end in the middle)* and all the technical stuff the show demands. There's a photograph with the review.

*CORRECTION: Benjamin tells me that he and the cast had sixteen days of rehearsal, between six to ten in the evenings. That makes this performance near-miraculous, what with a live GINNI doing the video without feed-back from the stage, all the tech stuff ... that's just ... WOW. I'm impressed.

Harvest, NYC (contd.) and ...

Thanks to Amba, who posted her impressions of NYC's HARVEST at her blog I have an idea of what it was like, from someone unconnected to the production. I feel a mild regret, about not being there but not REALLY sorry coz I am still shuddering from the memory of The Unmentionable over on the West Coast. No doubt I'll get over it in time, but I wonder if perhaps the best way to survive being a playwright is never to see the staged results? I remember acting in a play once, and being told the playwright wouldn't attend the performance because he never sat through his own plays.

Apparently, the chances are dim that productions will appeal to their creators. I was talking to an English playwright in London this December, someone whose plays have been performed by big name actors (I mean, the type whose names even I was familiar with -- I'm not naming them for fear of libel suits) and he didn't have a single good word to say for anyone associated with stage productions. We agreed that the lot of a playwright is a SAAAAAD one. Anyway, this conversation made me feel whole lot better, since I was able to describe The West Coast HorrorShow in thrilling technicolour to him -- and HE UNDERSTOOD WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!! That was so cool. Other people listen to these tales of woe and think that I'm exaggerating (well, not the friends who came to the west coast show with me; they thought I was exaggerating until they witnessed it for themselves), and smile in a "there, there -- it can't possibly have been THAT bad" way. Only the playwright knew from experience the total nastiness of having one's work messed about by others.

Anyway ... I am pleased to report that, according to Amba's report, it sounds like the NYC show was good. I am very grateful to her for bothering to put up that review.

Meanwhile, I am currently in Madras. Got here on Sunday. My niece D is here from Boss Town and we are in the thick of our annual season of struggles with my mom/her grandmom -- nothing we do can EVER match her expectations. So, even though I am 52 and my niece is 32, we STILL spend most of our lives here variously in the dog-house for being lazy/incompetent/poorly dressed/and much, much more besides. *sigh* It's not easy being born.

Oh -- and -- for a short while, I am hiding comments (I may turn em off altogether; haven't decided) and removing my e-address from view. I am pre-empting possible tedium in the form of unwanted mail in a week from now, because a Bombay tabloid is running a feature in which they're going to be excerpting from author-blogs and mine's going to be one of them.

HARVEST in NYC

It's time to post these links, I guess. The play is due to open in NYC this week. I won't be there, but I've got all my digits crossed. Here are links to: LaMaMa's site, the New York Times notice and an interview with me in nytheatre.com.

Incidentally ... it just occurred to me that crossing one's fingers is really only useful if one is a believing Christian. Ah well. I'll hope that 8 years in convent schools entitles me to request that a little luck be sanctioned in the direction of the play!

Oh -- and -- here's a link to a page in NYTheatre-Wire which features Suki from Penguin India's 2005 collection of my Bombay strip, DOUBLETALK (there's a link to it on the right). I always get a bit of thrill when I see Suki featured anywhere -- she had such a rough time in her early years, it's kind of sweet to find that she's still capable of holding her own even now, 20 years later. When she chooses, that is ...

Name This Flower, Please!

Many years ago, I came across a gorgeous multi-headed flower that looked to me like a variation on the theme of Spider Lily. However, the owner of the garden in which the plant was growing didn't know its name (when I asked, he said, "Oh ... it's just a big lily!"). Ever since then, I've been VERY keen to know what it is. I kept looking out for it, but didn't see any more. Then I noticed that Delhi's IIC had a few clumps growing there -- and have been meaning to get around to taking pix to post them here. It's been about ... ooo ... two years? Since I first noticed them there? Well, finally, today, the syzygy of lily, me and digital camera occurred. Here are two pictures of the flower (one bunch in bud, and the other in bloom) and if anyone knows the creature's botanical name, I'll be very grateful if they would share it. Of course, I could probably find out from the IIC gardeners too ... but it's more fun this way!

2006 -- Hello!

Well -- top o' the ladder to everyone!

It's just past nine in the morning of the new year. We had a peaceful and friendly last day. Went upstairs for lunch, which was (as always) beautifully presented, delicious and accompanied by interesting conversation. At night the nearby residents' association club had an ear-splittingly raucous party that lasted at least till 2 o'clock this new year. The music was so loud it was shaking the foundations of this house, which is practically one block away. I can't IMAGINE what it must have been like to actually be at the party! I guess some people enjoy being deaf.

I began 2006 with a choco-bar! And I was online, writing a message to a friend right till the final minutes of '05. So I suppose that's an augury of sorts -- perhaps the twelvemonth ahead will be cold, sweet and filled with chocolate covered e-mails?

Whatever. I've add a couple of pix from the old year, taken in Vermont. If Stone's Throw Farm looks as good here as it does in real life, please credit that to my little Nikon 2100 -- hardly the most advanced of today's digital cameras, but it does what I need of it and with very little sweat or effort on my part.

One of my resolutions for the year is to Take More Photographs. Not because I'm good at it, but because I always regret NOT having 'em when I look back and see ... no pictures. My idea is to take pictures of whatever's around me, the street, the traffic, the people -- of course, like many amateur photographers, one of the things I am most squeamish about is taking pictures of other people (like on a street) -- I always worry that they'll object and then I'll have to -- whatever -- swallow the camera, blush and move on, whatever. It certainly helps that with a digital camera, I can compose the picture on the view-screen at the back, and don't necessarily have to hold it up to my face.

So ... may there be more pix, pixars, pixels in the year ahead!

2005, Final Days

At the end of every year, I visualize myself reaching the final rungs of a long ladder, the ladder down which I have been climbing, day by day, ever since that year began. On the night of the 31st of December, however much I try to argue myself out of an improbable situation, I can sense my internal time-keeper gathering up her energy to make the leap up, up, UP -- right to the top of the next year's ladder, all in the course of that mystical no-moment as one year ends and the other begins! It would be so much more RESTFUL to imagine one ladder merging calmly into the next but -- no! I see the ladders laid out in a neat row, each one's top aligned against the tops of those that have gone before(I don't presume to guess how many there are ahead -- so I don't see 'em!).

It's been a peaceful and pleasant two weeks since we returned. I've spent the greater part of my time just gathering together my sense of being HERE, rather than en route to somewhere else.

Yesterday, for the first time since we've been back, we went for a long drive, to the bird sanctuary at Sultanpur. As with our expeditions at the beginning of 2005, our valiant charioteer was J, and the chariot was his supremely comfortable Pajero. This time, accompanying us were his son, Y, visiting from the US and our very dear friend and frequent visitor to this blog, A (I most often refer to him here as Amro). Aside from the horrific traffic all the way till just beyond Gurgaon, it was a pleasant outing. Inside the sanctuary, we saw quantities of dabchicks and egrets, painted storks, ibises and one splendid black-necked stork -- how elegant and courtly he was! The plumage for which he is named was not merely black but subtly irridescent, so that even at a distance (and through binocs) we could see a play of midnight colour along the long graceful extent of his neck. That, combined with the white of his body, the soot-black patches on his wings and his spindly crimson legs made him a very handsome sight.

There were quite a few Neelgai around -- we saw maybe 20? According to the ticket-wallahs at the gate, the resident herd numbers around 100 -- and we were close enough to them that my survival skills, normally in deep coma, stirred and raised a mild alarm. Today, of course, a whole day later and no longer within a hundred yards of a 300 lb antelope I can bemoan my weak nerves. Ah well. Next time I'll run up and cuddle 'em.

The bonus wild-life sighting occurred outside the sanctuary. We were in search of a suitable picnic spot at which to eat the main meal of the expedition -- stuffed parathas provided by Amro's parental establishment -- when eagle-eyed E spotted an unusual cat skulking about in the tall grass beside a mustard field. It was most obliging, I must say, because it didn't immediately vanish out of sight, but remained in view long enough for all of us to see the stripes on its back legs and the end of its tail and also the fine ridge of black at the very tips of its ears. It was about the size of a large domesticated tom, its body sandy-gold in colour. As if that weren't thrilling enough, we saw it (or its buddy) as we were leaving the area too. This second sighting was quite generous, because the creature actually sat by the side of the road and posed for a few moments, staring not quite at us, but past us, in that way felines have, as if humans and all our baggage are really too gross to be worth actually looking at.

It was ALMOST small enough to be mistaken for a domestic cat, but ... there an apartness about it, a reserve, that proclaimed its freedom and its independence from the yoke of human companionship.

When we got home and looked it up in "Indian Wildlife", its identity was confirmed: a Jungle Cat.

Oh -- and yes, of course the parathas were excellent -- mooli, cauliflower and potato. And yes, we even had a minor almost-loss: E left his fleece jacket behind in the mustard field he visited briefly (while attempting to escape the photographic attentions of Amro!) and realized it only after we had left the place. But we returned and the jacket was recovered before anyone else captured it. Then back we went, back through the forest of fly-over support-struts that have sprouted all across the access routes into Delhirium, and into the grey, dusty, chaos of the traffic.

Finally -- in case you missed 'em -- there're a couple of new links in the column on the right. I don't like to keep too many links going, so alas I have removed two blog-links that were there before. But I find I hardly ever visit any blogs aside from the two that that have been there from the start -- lazy, that's moi! -- so any disappointment is regreted.

And here's one last link for the year -- the site of the Swiss artist who dreamt up the triple-jawed beastie that froze our popcorn to our numbed fingers when we saw the first of the ALIEN movies -- a little something to curdle your blood at the end of the year: R. GIGER rrrROWRRR! Audio ON, please ...

A Recently Received Delight!

This graphic is a simplified version of a map that appears in a must-have book called THE ATLAS OF EXPERIENCE. It was given to me by our friends/hosts in Berkeley. They've given away dozens of copies to friends, they tell me. And no wonder: it's one of those books that you keep out in a place where many people can find it and smile over it.

It LOOKS like an atlas, but it READS like a witty, charming and thought-provoking deliberation upon life. The picture above is only a very general approximation of the complete map. Go check out the compleat version at World Of Experience. Enjoy!

Twelvth Bulletin -- Home Again!

.. that was ten days ago, actually, after a warm and friendly and very well-fed stay in London. I would have blogged about it while I was still there except for the shadow that fell over my clan-family: one of my elder cousins died, very suddenly, in his sleep, in his home in Budapest. He was just 54, so it was a dreadful shock for everyone, especially his two sisters, wife and two grown children. My uncle in London was as always wonderfully resilient and despite his own sense of deep bereavment(the cousin was my uncle's elder brother's son), organized the funeral. I wasn't there for it, having left the day before, but everyone says it was very moving and very fitting (I'm not mentioning names in order to keep this blog from popping up in the public tributes to my cousin who was a very well-regarded international banker and has been greatly mourned in banking circles).

So it was against this background that I had, despite it all, a very pleasant stay with my cousins, uncles and aunts in London. This visit was my first at the new home of K & S, the cousins with whom I always stay when I'm in -- why doesn't London have a pet-name, like New York? Something like the Big Apple? -- Old Londinium and it was absolutely fabulous. It's a renovated Georgian home, and S has out-done herself. She is an outstanding home-maker -- I should know, having stayed at FOUR of their houses -- and this one tops the lot. It's positively EDIBLE: I would say it has the flavour of heavy cream and raspberries; champagne and orchids; moussaka and hot french bread. Totally YUM.

The return to Delhirium was quite pleasant, all considered. Our flight got in at the very decent hour of just before 12 pm. The immigration queue was one hour long but really, aside from that, re-entry was wholly painless. Our outstanding domestic maitre d' was waiting for us with tea and toast and lunch -- and the house was clean and dusted. Later the same night, our friend Maude from Providence arrived (flying in from France, where she had spent a week or two), so it was all very convivial again. The speed of international really shrinks the globe, huh? It's hard to be aware of the vastness of the distance travelled when it takes a mere night to wake up on the other side of the world. Oh and -- Virgin Atlantic continues to get top marks from me. This time, instead of watching movies, I played their in-flight quiz games practically all the way from the UK. Very cool. But the flight was NOT packed, which is a bit worrying. I want the airline to do WELL! So that I don't have to choose the competition, the next time I fly.

Year-Ender Messages We Shall Never See

In reaction against the treacle-y Year Ender messages from friends and family around the world, I composed a small sampling of those we might like to see ... but WON'T:


OSAMA MESSAGE
Dear All --
Of course, we have had a wonderful year. Being True Believers, we ALWAYS have wonderful years, every year. The same is true of our entire Family -- which means all True Believers: a year of outstanding martyrdom and perfect joy. We are proud of every single one of you, both present and martyred. We expect the same of you next year and for all the years of glory ahead for all of us.

Isn't it wonderful to have no doubts, no fears, no tears? Glory! Glory! Forever! Forever! Your loving, O

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD MESSAGE

Dear All,
It's been a great year. I went out and got eaten by a wolf -- who had previously eaten up old Gra'mum. Amazingly, we BOTH SURVIVED, because a woodsman came and cut open the wolf. Fortunately for G'mum and me, the wolf's digestive system was so very sluggish, we didn't suffer the SLIGHTEST acid burn. Even our clothes came through unscathed.

The wolf of course was TOTALLED. And the woodsman was hauled away by several animal rights agencies at once for having destroyed a unique specimen of wolf, that was both able to swallow two humans whole AND speak in English too! It's all very sad.

However, that was all some time ago. G'mum and I are entirely recovered. On the strength of my trauma, which is being seen as a specialized case of Child Abuse, I've got scholarships to Radcliffe, Brown and Yale. I plan to major in Survival Strategies for the Modern Girl Child.

G'mum has her own hugely popular reality show on TV called Surviving Grandchildren and Their Wolves -- of course I probably don't need to tell you any of this, since you're all probably glued to your sets every weeknight, waiting to see which grandparent gets swallowed next.

Mum and Dad are okay -- though of course I don't get to see them much, what with all the press attention following the attack. Sad thing about old parents, huh? They never entirely enjoy their kids' success. Can you believe -- they want me to STOP wearing my red riding hood! Huh! Considering that I've stopped wearing any OTHER clothes, taking off the cape might be a little ... ummm ... REVEALING, if you get my
point!

Well that's it from me. Wishing y'all a similarly successful
twelvemonth! Your beloved Red.

GAIA's MESSAGE

Another dreadful year *sigh* Dunno what to do about THEM. Yuck. How I hate the pests. Yes, yes -- floods, droughts, plagues -- I'm trying! THEY just keep on reproducing, of course. I thought rabbits were prolific, but these simians? Ohhh gollygollygolly. NOTHING STOPS 'em.

But I've still got a few tricks up my sleeve. My virus programmers are a really creative bunch, for instance. And I can always pull off a well-positioned quake or two -- though I HATE to do it. So many of my beloved rocks and plants and beasts die too, in the chaos. THEY never seem to understand that if only there were fewer of them, there'd be fewer catastrophes too ...

Oh well. This is all very bad-tempered of me. I'll end this now. There are ever more nasty dams to worry about, and nuclear facilities and malls and motorways ... aaaarggh!

Whatever. Have a good one! Your ever-loving, G

Eleventh Bulletin -- London Calling

A final round of dinners and lunches in Berkeley, stacks of oreo cookies, gallons of tea and a rainy last two days and -- we were off. Flew to Boston overnight from SF, a bleary, uncomfortable flight, with only apple juice to nourish us. Of course there was a choice of other fluids, but what I'm pointing to here is the changed circumstances in the skies above America -- the new brusque and food-free atmosphere, with all services stripped down to the dead minimum. No little baggie of goodies -- no flimsy eye-mask, no unusable knock-down toofbrush with miniature tube of chalky toofpaste, no little booties for the feet, no seat-back screens for the movies. Nope, it was back to the Jurassic era of air-travel, with those small bright monitors hanging in a row from the spine of the aircraft and 2$ headphones and no escape from the movie all night long.

In another sense, though, it was a sort of relief not to have to feel grateful for the utterly insincere "hospitality" airlines typically dish out. We ate a giant toasted sandwich just before emplaning and that was quite enough to last us the six-hour flight to Beantown. Got in to my niece's pleasant and cheerful home by around ... oooh ... 8.30? She was still there, but about to leave for work,so we said our helloooos and g'byes before ripping open all our luggage for the final pack-down before the flight out of the US. We had a breezy, enjoyable two nights and one day in Boston -- with the inevitable faint panic in the final hours, trying to decide which combination of hand- and cabin-luggage was best -- keeping in mind the ten day halt in London, E's side-trip to Helsinki, two lap-tops and ... well, you get the idea. Four months of suitcase living and accumulated bric a brac compressed into two strollies, one suitcase, one duffle-bag like a giant frankfurter stuffed with pure lead, two backpacks and one computer bag. *sigh*

The security team at the airport scolded me for being so dumb as to take my laptop out of the case (--good--) but then placing it on top of the case itself rather than in a separate bin (--bad--) and then forgetting to separate two bins (--criminally bad--) ... my stuff finally went through in five separate bins, shoes in one, heavy coat and light jacket in another, backpack in a third, computer case in a fourth and computer in the fifth. Ah well. At least I got through without being strip-searched. Which reminds me --in San Francisco I got random-screened with their new sniffer machines. I went through a separate channel and stood in a small glass chamber and several jets of air suddenly PAFFED around me -- painless but a bit startling -- after which I was released. *shrug* Whatever.

LONDON! Ah, London -- but a pause here before I go on to sing the praises of VIRGIN ATLANTIC. All ye travellers out there, poised to buy your tickets for destinations diverse, hear this and make your adjustments: VA is the best. It all comes down to seating. Any airline can offer duplex apartments to their first class passengers -- but it's the quality of the economy seats that defines a classy flight. And VA delivers. We were comfortable and cramp-free, breathed easy and felt well-loved. The food was pleasant and the movies were inexhaustible -- I'd have gone blind if I'd watched them all. Of the two I saw, one was perfect airline fare -- light but well-acted -- Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins -- set against the backdrop of the London Blitz and with naked beauties in the foreground. MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS -- go see it if you can -- if nothing else, to enjoy the surprising and refreshing lack of prudery about bare flesh. I don't know how VA gets away with it, or whether there's been a sudden loosening of moral corsets in the air (perhaps to offset the repressions on earth?) but at least two movies on this flight featured full frontal nudity -- just brief glimpses, to be sure, no lingering, no close-ups -- male and female, with neither any twinkling pixellation nor any steam-of-porn. It was Just Bits o' Bare Skin. And rather nice bits too. Anyway, so you get the idea, FLY VIRGIN. And no, I've not been paid to say this. I really and truthfully had a good flight.

My stays in London are always pleasant on account of being warmly and lovingly enfolded in the bosom of my family. This time is no different. I am always indulged to the hilt and eat too much and feel nostalgic for England's gigantic coins -- "small change" indeed, huh! -- can't be sure why nostalgic, exactly -- there must be some reason, but I can't hunt it down right now. Too sleepy.

Before I pip off for the moment, two excellent movies to report. I saw both in the US, but feel they both need wider exposure. They're both documentaries and since I'm not entirely compos mentis at the moment, I'll just make a dab at the title of the first one: "THE REAL DIRT about Farmer John" (I'll come back laterand correct it, if I need to) -- and you can find out more about it at: The Real Dirt. The second one's called "RIVERS AND TIDES" and is about the British artist Andy Goldsworthy.

THE REAL DIRT is the true story of John Peterson, who grew up on a farm and loved the land and during the sixties allowed his farm to become a place where agriculture and rock music came together to make a moment of art and beauty and craziness, then almost had to give everything up until finally returning once more to the land, to collective agriculture, to organic crops and people and soil and growing plants and the land, the land, the glorious land. It is a marvellous, witty, cleverly made and strangely moving story with a powerful message: FOLLOW YOUR DREAM. Just do it. Even if it sometimes results in running around wearing bee-costumes and singing funny songs with your girlfriend, in a corn field ...

RIVERS AND TIDES is inspiring and beautiful in an entirely different way. You can google Andy Goldsworthy's name to see his work, but the film is powerful because you can see him PRODUCE his work -- out of random bits of icicle, out of shards of rock, out of simple dandelions, out of sunlight, water, time and his love for the materials he works with. His work is often ephemeral: he might scratch a pattern onto the surfaces of a line of fresh green leaves, place them on a rock in order so that the pattern links up and becomes a jagged line, then watch them as the wind ruffles through his art and blows it all away. He might build a structure out of twigs, big enough to be a nest for a man-sized bird, then watch with an expression of tolerant amusement as the incoming tide swirls it all away.

By making art which doesn't last, it seems to me that he cuts deep towards the heart of what makes a thing a piece of art -- it remains ultimately indescribable of course -- but the pleasure he gets, which becomes visible in the simplicity and beauty of his creations, is surely what it's all about. The sense of doing something because it MUST be done -- not because of deadlines or being immortalized in stone or earning a living or putting food on the table -- yet also involving all of that, since he has four small children, and as for deadlines, even if he didn't have commissions of work to fulfil (which he does, as one of Britain's highly acclaimed contemporary artists), he has the tides and seasons to contend with -- the sense of being caught in a tide of his own art as surely as the leaves he places so reverently on the water ... THAT is powerful and inspirational.