itiuvacha

Fit for Life

2011-09-19T02:31:00.000-07:00

No fitness or weight loss goals can do full good unless they enhance your total enjoyment of life. Loss of fitness implies a loss of many enjoyments which are denied us when we are not at proper fitness levels. We cannot wear just any dress most of the time for few possess panache with extra pounds. As levels of movement decrease, we become slower, our reflexes are slower and we are no longer those who used to climb trees, have endless energy and want to play all day.
To work within the framework of making life fun again will make all your fitness and weight loss goals easy to reach and maintain.
All human beings need balance. As we age we tend to totter more often and slowly retreat into a comfortable hunch to avoid having to do vigorous things as we feel we have learned that they bring us grief.
They bring us grief because we jump in like fools without caution-we are no longer young and elastic and have slid into that state little by little. To come back to the youthful state we need to take it slowly as well. Besides for cardio, adjust the pace of your life by re-evaluating what you do-no body needs to be in the Rat Race! We are not hamsters but we need to stretch our hamstrings!
It is wiser to begin with a certified Yoga class, free or paid, at home or in a gym. In no time you will be able to make decisions on behalf of your body like an expert. Yoga, while gentler on the aging or otherwise novice body can provide safe challenges while and because of focussing more on being aware of the body and breath throughout the workout.
Other ways to be mindful which is what we want to effortlessly be so that we may enjoy our food rather than shovelling it in are to indulge the inner child and do drawing or colouring activities or dance/sing, to go on simple outings in the neighbourhood -all these will make activity so appealing that the right things will be done painlessly.
If you increase the daily ambit you cover on foot in time and variety of location you will burn calories and be alert and see the world around you -you will cease to pedal the cycle of empty calories and empty lives

Simple exercises maintain knee health

2011-08-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

Please consult your doctor before taking up any exercise if you have not been trained to pay attention to body signals and even otherwise. I would also stress that, should you be having any health condition which requires specific care, please learn all about it. Today we have the Internet where, if we can allow ourselves some time for research, we can find a lot of information. Remember that in today’s world where money plays too big a role, medical care may not be guided solely by the desire to cure. Many procedures are expensive and not necessarily the best solution. You have to be the one to decide what needs to be done.
I had quite a lot of pain in my right knee last winter and, luckily, almost everyday, I had to pass a clinic which offered physiotherapy. Dr. Sheenu Jha (Consultant physiotherapist at Kingdom of Dreams) worked on my knee and taught me simple exercises which have made it so much more easy for me to carry on a normal life.
The exercises are basically leg raises, performed both standing and lying.
Here are some of the moves I do to strengthen other muscles of my leg so that my knee is not compromised.

I. Standing Straight Leg Raises

1. Straight Leg Raises, Standing

Repeat 10 times.Support yourself, if necessary, and slowly lift your leg forward keeping your knee straight. Return to the starting position.

2. Same thing but with the leg going backwards

This exercise strengthens balance, buttocks, lower back and hips. Keeping back straight, slowly lift one leg to the back, hold for about a second and then lower. Keep the standing leg slightly bent at all times to protect the back, and do not raise the working leg higher than you are comfortable with. Repeat 10 to 15 times with each leg, working toward two sets. You may choose to do eight reps in the beginning.

3. The same thing but with the leg going sideways

II. Lying Straight Leg Raises

1. Do 10 reps/3 sets
2. Still lying down, move your leg sideways and bring it back. Repeat 10 times with each leg. Perform 3 sets.
3. Cycling movements while lying down. Lie flat on your back and cycle. Ordinarily we do it upwards but here we are doing it so that the legs go forwards and backwards –not upwards and downwards. For this and the below exercise, 15 reps, 3 sets.
4. Reverse cycling. Perform the above movements in the reverse.

There was one more exercise with a rolled up towel or small ball: dandasana.

Sketch for a nascent Graphic Novel

2011-08-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

Anandamine is pouring down for the past few days. It is a fierce Energy. If you do not keep your Inner Shrine scrupulously pure in the days to come you will not be ready for the coming Storm. Horrific though the external manifestations might be, wars and other acts of physical violence will be nothing to the Inner Kurukshetra-fools will fight for their petty Truths while Truth will laugh naked on corpses. What does Titan Kala care for your maggoty beliefs?!
Inner purity is never difficult -keep your inner puppies and kittens and children alive and be not as Kamsa, stiffling Joy at every turn to build fearsome Temples of Illusions.

City Walks for Fitness

2011-07-25T01:23:00.000-07:00

Due to the challenge posed by a diagnosis of the beginnings of osteoarthritis of the right knee, my fitness journey had to change focus.

Initially, I felt frustrated as, most of the time, satisfactory speed in weight loss efforts is most fruitful when high impact, high intensity workouts are done.
Interestingly, it is around the time that I feel that I have finally grappled my way to a solution to the above problem that I met an old friend after ages. One could consider that this friend required to lose weight. There is a willingness in the person to lose weight. Yet the only activity consistently done in this direction seems to be a daily 40 minute walk.
What is interesting is that, on that very day, I embarked on longer distance walking. I did not tell my friend that I was planning on a 3-4 hour walk. I did not, at the time, know this would be the time frame-I was merely challenging myself to walk to the nearest mall I knew that sells most items much cheaper. I did tell my friend that the speed of walking should occasionally be sharply increased during a walk, say: one minute normal-walk to 15 seconds of "getting breathless" walk.
For about a month or more I had already done several one hour forty minute walks. I was a bit sore-lasting roughly a couple of hours-after the first one but have never looked back since. This just stresses the need to do relaxed stretching and limbering up before a walk, especially a long one. One might, like I did, think that just walking is enough of a warm up. Avoid the risks of cramps and catches by studying and practising pre-workout routines.
Once upon a time I thought that walking was a boring way to lose weight and I would certainly go insane if I had to walk round and round the same perimeter day after day.
My "city walks" are anything but boring: you chance upon all kinds of challenges and innumerable surprise delights for the senses all the time: birds of all kinds, people going about their daily life stories, rapturous interludes in sylvan havens and so much more.
At first I took a relatively long time to get out there on my walk. Now it's a breeze. If it looks like rain I carry my umbrella and it serves as a walking stick, is elegant and most of all fun to twirl!
I do try and carry drinking water.
Wallet is most optional. After you get used to the joy of the walks, it's a self set challenge to not carry money.
Fitness is not only abut the body: it builds moral and mental muscle.
A typical city walk demands mindfulness for safety: it's not for the namby pamby.You can fall into manholes, pits, get hit by vehicles, cut on barbed wire, get mugged, etc., etc.
Let me wind down with a word about post walk cool-downs.
1. Do stretch and loosen muscles as soon as possible after the long walk.
2. Do continue to keep yourself hydrated in you live in a warm/hot climate.
3. Do have your post-walk snack/meal as soon as possible: include a fistful of each important thing-protein, carbs, fruit/veg.
4. Don't have a cold shower right after your walk if you live in a hot /warm climate. A hot shower later will relax any remaining muscle tiredness.
5. Do be amazed at how quickly the body recovers and you can do your mundane household chores with a spring in your step and a song on your lip.
One last word of caution: do not use ear phones to listen to music, etc. This workout requires extreme mindfulness.

Happy walking!

Edwin Thoo

2011-07-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

When we were in Malaysia, we had joined Celebrity Fitness in Midvalley. The gym offered all kinds of free classes and we had taken up Beginner's Yoga. However, the instructors for this course at that time were not very pleasant at all: they used to come up to us and try and force our bodies into the asanas.
One Chinese New Year, they were on leave and the substitute, Edwin Thoo, made a great impression on us although he was very unassuming. And so we shifted to his Vinyasa class.
Though he had warned us that this was not for beginners, we could cope as, somehow, his voice, for one thing, though not loud or shrill, was audible and comprehensible to us. Due to his calmness of nature, even though he mainly sat on the podium and instructed, it was easy to try the instructions.
His classes were always full, a tribute to his qualities as a Guru. He had some simple rules: we had to be there much before time. He would also enter earlier though after the class had more or less filled. This time was spent stretching or practising moves.
The class began with either seated or standing meditation, followed by some Suryanamaskaram moves. Like many other Hindu Indians, we had some exposure to Yoga when we were youngsters. The middle part of the class would be slightly challenging and then he would swiftly make us move into easier poses until we wound down with Savasana. This was followed by a seated meditation to end the session.
We also joined his Partner Yoga classes. These were excellent for a couple although we were the only couple: most of the class was young girls! Doing the Yoga Poses together can act as a wonderful stretching and massage session. There is laughter together as we fumble. It is excellent therapy for couples.
So, if you are in Malaysia and want to do some Yoga, you must look for this wonderful instructor.

Post Work-Out Binges

2011-06-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

1. You're a work-out newbie. When you move from an almost zero level of physical activity to any higher level, you're bound to feel hungrier. Your body is burning its fuel and is calling for more fuel. It is, quite rightly, asking to be fed. It needs to be fed.

“Your cells are literally hungry for fuel after a hard workout because you’ve used up a lot of your carbohydrate stores,” Wein says. Carbohydrates are stored in muscle as glycogen, and the harder you work out the more you burn, she explains.

2. You have not had a proper work-out.

There is no question that when an indivdiual can do 1 hour of signficant aerobic exercise on a regular basis, he or she will want to eat less food.

If you're eating fairly right, you might not be pushing yourself out of your workout comfort zone. If you work out properly and regularly, you'll find your cravings reducing dramatically.

Who says sports make bigger appetite? Results conducted by researchers found regular exercise can actually reduce the appetite. With regular exercise your body will issue a satiety signal that can defeat hunger.

The body produces in a healthy way the stuff that makes you reach for the wrong foods-too much sugar or too much carb.

Exercising helps to normalize fluctuations in your blood sugar levels

and in doing so you won't get that starving feeling as often.

Even so, you have to eat post-workout.

WHAT’S THE POINT OF EATING AFTER EXERCISE? It’s all about two things: recovery and storage. You need to recover the losses you undertook during the exercise, and your body is simply better at storing that recovery fuel right after your workout. Sure, you can eat later—but the benefits won’t be as good. The sports medicine pros at ESPN explain it: “athletes need carbohydrate and fluid to replace glycogen and water losses during the exercise. The muscles store more glycogen immediately after exercise than they do later.” Simple, no?

3. You have not researched the dos and don'ts of working out. You should eat something in roughly the 90 minute window on both sides of a workout. Your homework for today is to find out more abut all this :D

TIP: Ask about L-Glutamine. If your doctor does not contra-indicate its use, you might find that, combined with a good workout, it reduces your bottomless pit syndrome.

So what should you eat?

Pre-Workout

Something light yet sustaining roughly 90 minutes before working out. You don't want to feel too full. Being uncomfortably full will interfere with your workout and might even be quite unpleasant. It will all depend on your individual digestive system. For one kind of person it can range from nothing to a boiled egg or small glass of milk. For another it may range from an egg with a toast or even that plus a piece of fruit and a small glass of milk.
If you need to lose a lot of weight and can go without food without discomfort, workout on an empty stomach .

Though many athletes eat before training, some scientists say that if you really want to get rid of more fat, you should skip the pre-workout snack.

Have your post-workout snack though.

Post-Workout

Within 90 minutes of a good workout, eat something.

Create supplements The body needs a high-protein diet for muscle building. However, relying on supplements is not the answer. The best option for a post workout DIY supplement is to take the watery part of curd (that is very rich in proteins), chop a banana and apple into it and put it in the blender. It's a perfect combination of proteins and carbohydrates. Not to forget, the apple is rich in fibre.

If you have a good metabolism or if you know you will be regular with your proper workouts, and you don't have huge amounts of weight to lose, you can get away with almost anything ( a reasonable amount!). If not, have about a handful of something healthy. I used to carry a banana as my post workout snack and then hit the road for my 30 minute walk home. Once home I had my meal. When in doubt stick with a low fat liquid snack, ideally, a small helping of low fat chocolate milk.

New study finds lowfat chocolate milk is effective post-exercise recovery aid for soccer players Chocolate milk's 'natural' muscle recovery benefits match or may even surpass a specially designed carbohydrate sports drink It is better not to avoid the post-workout snack.

Disclaimer: I am not a health or fitness expert. I am merely sharing what I do and what suits me.

HOW TO FIND YOUR FITNESS FIT

2011-04-29T00:59:00.000-07:00

There are quite a few out there who would like to get fit. Who wouldn’t?
Here’s the catch though: some of us start out of the blue, all by ourselves. We get a painful catch or pull a muscle or break a bone before even breaking out into a sweat. And that’s that. As we grow older, it’s scarier to think of jumping in or any kind of jumping for that matter.
Forget about old (For a lot of folks, thirty is old!). We have young ladies who want a good figure. And everyone’s heard of dieting. Unfortunately, for most, dieting equals fasting. So the young lass begins to starve herself. Her family throws a fit and her fitness goals are out the door before even she began. The simple reason: she’s been taught to think of herself as an “object of someone’s lust” rather than as an “objet d’art”. She wants some egotistical narcissistic male to admire her. What she should want is to look at her own image in the mirror and be able to say: “Damn! I’m hot!”
You cannot get fit unless you know what you want and why. There are a million whys: to lose weight, to get healthy, to feel good, etc.
If you have to choose a single motivating factor let it be: “To Feel Good”.
A good workout leaves you feeling on top of the world. If you keep at it, the day comes when you look good.
A beautiful face may carry off a sloppy figure but only so far. An average face or one that is not traditionally considered beautiful or pretty even, will be hotter by far than the beauty without figure –if the person has focused on fitness. The body wins hands down in the real life beauty contest. Fitness improves posture and stride, puts the glow in your skin and the luster in your hair and makes heads turn faster than any sickly, skinny, anorexic figure can.
Fitness is about loving yourself. When you love yourself enough to care about toning your arms or tackling your abs, you empower yourself. Your walk says: I’m strong! Once you see all the second and third glances coming your way, it’s an addiction! You can ride on it or just bask contently in your new found self confidence.
So, now, how do you go about getting fit without injuring yourself and without being a wimp? That’s right! Walking round and round in circles at the same speed every day will only take you so far. Challenging yourself is what makes all the difference.
Scared? You better be! Fitness is not for the faint of heart although it can make your heart stronger.
So, if you’re still here, reading this, let’s jump in!
1. Consult a doctor and ask what you can or must not do.
2. Be prepared for lifestyle changes and a gorgeous new you. I don’t really like this link but it will have to do-I was thinking more in terms of how you dress. If you have fitness attire that already makes you feel good, you’ll be propelled into a fit lifestyle.
3. Spend some time becoming aware of your body: your aches and pains and all your systems-your breathing, digestion, etc.
4. Spend some time every day searching for good links or exploring fitness websites. These days I swear by fitnessmagazine.com
5. Take a good hard look at what you eat and how you eat. And drink.
6. Weigh yourself or measure your waist and check your BMI online.
7. Buy a notebook and learn how to bookmark sites.
8. Buy or borrow Fitness magazines or books.
9. Join a gym or yoga or dance class. Many countries have gym locators. Here, in India, you can find a gym/yoga or dance class advertised every few yards. Visit the nearest ones and choose one which fits your budget and other requirements. If it’s too far you’re never going to be regular.
10. Move it right now-get up and march in place for a count of 100-don’t do it so fast or so carelessly that you injure yourself. Fitness is the enemy of ignorance-it’s all about awareness: what are the different parts of your body doing or telling you.

Watch this blog for another installment of how to get fit on your own.
Caution: Please don’t be reckless when you embark on a fitness programme. Do consult a doctor before you start and at any time that you feel pain when working out. Do the moves with awareness of your body-try and understand good form and try to read up before you begin.

Mouse Clutching Winter Melon, Loh siu kip tong kua, By Kuan Guat Choo

2010-12-13T05:59:00.000-08:00

Penang-born Kuan Guat Choo is a health visitor by profession, says the blurb.

Finding this book meant a lot to me as it is a book in English by a Malaysian about life in Malaysia, about the history of Chinese emigration to this country and about the interactions between the three races of the nation: the Chinese, the Malays and the Indians. Most of the time, we are restricted to the accounts of the White Man about any new land we visit. Which is fine should the country be European. Or one of those which now is inhabited by more White people than original inhabitants. Thus it was tragic that I found this kind of book only late in my five year stay in Malaysia and had only my memories of Somerset Maugham stories about this country and one or two French novels to paint for me an idea of its history. Similarly I just found one book by an Indonesian in the bookshops during my one week stay in Jakarta.
The book has a foreword by a certain Bill Chew which is in itself also exciting to read-transporting one back to the days of yore in what was then Malaya.

In a recent visit to Penang I found myself walking down Muntri street, along Love Lane, and then on to Chulia Street. This was the old part of town, dating back probably 200 years…among these buildings are the grander structures known as kongsi (Chinese clan houses…

This is followed by the Acknowledgment-again not to be missed as it is again a history of sorts in the form of short character sketches of the persons to whom the author owes a debt of gratitude.

Lee Swee Har: The schoolmate from primary school who feeds me humour through e-mail and keeps me laughing and thinking young. She was the one who said: “With school friends we do not have to pretend.”

We have still the Author’s Note before we can broach the story

Apologies may be given and accepted but as the Chinese saying goes, “a cracked porcelain bowl cannot be mended.

We are also provided with a Glossary upfront before we can embark on this marvelous account. From Chinese words like

Chum pun mein Face like a round chopping board (in the Cantonese dialect)

Katak dibawa tempurung Frog beneath a coconut shell, that is a person who lacks exposure to the world

kavadi A decorated one-man palanquin carried in a state of trance during Thaipusam

brinjals egg-plant

There are also gems like

Ch…Ch...Ba very vulgar word (in the Hokkien dialect)

And

Eu Niak Ah Ma F…k your mother

But we are still far from the first chapter as there remains Characters

Aunt May Papa’s youngest sister who returned from Selama and gave me a tight hug

And …
Nope, not yet there! There’s the Prologue which remains

In my mind’s eye, I remember two big eyes framed by long thick black eyelashes, jet back hair, fair translucent complexion ad a willowy figure…Autumn Fern had a voracious appetite but she had to walk most of the time and this sculpted her reed-like figure

And, voila! Part I
From Roots which transports us back to ancient times –an age with which we assume ourselves to be familiar via Pear S Buck novels- to the later part of the book which becomes increasingly biographical in tone, Kuan leads us through the lives and times of her family.
I enjoyed this book so much that I am glad no note was taken of the quaint English: this is what makes it read so much the better:

When Grandma’s earthly remains was still in the house, in the morning we had to put a wash basin, …in front of the coffin and informed her to wake up and wash her face.

Here is a book to be read before visiting Malaysia-a story full of romance, humour, pathos and action, a tender and compassionate look at the peoples of a lovable country.

The Book of Secrets

2010-12-09T17:04:00.000-08:00

Authors of Indian origin writing in English have come a long way since Nirad Chaudhuri and Naipaul. From those fulsomely vituperative pens to the Rushdie breed of award winners to a Chetan Bhagatwho tells us it’s quite cool to actually write for our own readership, it’s been an arduous road laden with many a pitfall.
Time and again, we in India hear of the curse of a colonial style education, a hand-me-down which we have taken a long time to out-grow. Perhaps it was that malady which afflicted our prose for so long. And it does the heart good to read The Book of Secrets which bears witness to this coming of age.

The story of a written record (a diary or journal). To get an authentic sense of period for TGS I had to consult the journals and biographies of British colonial administrators and explorers, who were, for all their faults, wonderful recorders. TBOS is the story of the fate of one such journal written by a colonial administrator at the outset of the First World War as it arrived in East Africa.

says author, M G Vassanji.

If pressed, I describe myself as an IndoAfrican Canadian writer. Attempts to box me in I find abhorrent.

He might well be speaking of his book!
The best review, for me, so far, has been that of Salil Tripathi. Most other write-ups are from Westerners and we others are in, some sense, invisible to them: much like their child rearing philosophy that kids are best seen and not heard.

This charmingly unpretentious novel covers nearly a century, the dusk of an empire, a colonized and a colonial post culture, the great wars, independence... Still the pace is leisurely, allowing us to savour the flavours of those times.

"Because it has no end, this book, it ingests us and carries us with it, and so it grows."

The novel’s historical time frame indulges in a promiscuous affair with a family saga. Loose ends titillate: whose son was the protagonist? And what about his own son? The ambiguous abounds!

Good old story telling at its best.

Are you Happiness enabled?

2010-01-19T00:36:00.000-08:00

Happiness, for most of us, is very conditional. We can only be happy if a given set of circumstances exist. These circumstances are usually outside of us. We cannot or can only in a very limited sense, control things which are not within us. Even our bodies and thoughts are rarely in our control, for that matter, but at least, they are "ours" for what that is worth and we have a kind of ownership of our body and thoughts.

To mess with the rest is to invite pain and suffering, usually. Sometimes, we assume that we have "mastered" the external world thanks to our bank balance or charismatic personality. That is mostly utter nonsense or is true to the extent that we have been able to bend our vision and that of others who perceive us. For the most part, we bemoan the climate, weather, traffic conditions, natural and unnatural calamities, others (near and dear or far and/or not so dear-spouses/partners, offspring, relatives, colleagues, and so on).

We would be happy if only they behaved better. If. But is that really any kind of definition of happiness? What is happiness?

Rather than define it one looks around for it: children, for the most part, seem to be happy. We can hear them emit screams of joy often. They jump and dance at the drop of a hat. We can hear the laughter of friends. We can see bliss on the face of lovers. Few people even get this far for we seem to be happiness disabled given the large doses of misery and moaning which has become a fashionable diet for society as a whole.

So how to become Happiness Enabled?

First: One has to want to be happy.

Second: One has to be happy with oneself, for oneself, and by oneself.

Third: One has to frequently click on control panel to check if it is still enabled or if someone or oneself has accidentally disabled it.

Today's Experience -Tomorrow's Experiment

2009-11-14T21:56:00.000-08:00

To my father, his “spiritual” Masters, the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, were not
abstruse “True Gurus” so much as scientists. Preaching is everybody’s cup of tea but practice is more often than not a victim of procrastination. In my experience, my father was a living example of “Abhyasa” and, through his vision, one could see the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, Buddha and whoever wrote the Bhagavad-Gita, as men and women who used their time on this Earth to experiment with their experiences.
All too often, extraordinary people who walk this planet are co-opted by the fearful masses. There is the stratum
which is comfortable where it is and the thoughts of Masters most often shake this status quo. Many, who today have expensive places of worship constructed in their names, had the least involvement with the objects of covetousness. It was, thus, safest for the classes, which govern by creating, in the masses, the fear-based desire for financial security, to “adopt” these dissidents and, in this way, to render them harmless “icons” of worship. If we “pray” to someone, it rids us of the need to strive to follow in their footsteps: their teachings become elegant acquisitions and respectable pastimes. And so it is that we have millions of preachers and, perhaps, no one who invests time in practice.
Indeed, practice often becomes blasphemy. Imagine, for one second, a Christian who had the courage to throw all the “commercial” objects out of a Church, a Buddhist (Buddha’s Teachings, so far as I know, do not require
reference to God/Gods) who rejected the Buddhist Pantheon, or a Rama who could reject a Kingdom just to keep his word (THE SENTENCE). Today, we have tied ourselves in a sufficient amount of “legal”, “emotional” and even “scientific” knots to prevent most of us from breaking free.
Yet, as has been said by someone or the other: if a cave has been dark for centuries it does not take centuries to bring light to it. Each day is the opportunity for an
experiment. What is experienced today can become something to experiment with in the next minute. Once this mindset is attained, the “experimenter” shifts as often as possible between Experience and Experiment.
Again, reading something and nodding in approval is the surest way to prevent any of it sinking into being: no amount of reading “How To” books on Football will teach one anything unless one also plays a game, at least now and then. Things are experienced in a place, a situation. We undergo experiences in Time-every second we experience something or the other. Yet when we want to ensure that we learned something from an experience, we place that in a “nowhere” Time/Space: Tomorrow. The Truth is that we only ever have a “now-here”.
Life is experience. Life is experienced through the senses. The five senses (Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste and Touch) are the only way we know we are alive. And this should be a joyful celebration of Life as it is an amazing gift to see all that is around us, to hear the many sounds, to smell all sorts of things, to taste such a diversity of flavours and to feel millions and millions of sensations through our skin.
Unfortunately, for one reason or the other, we grumble throughout the day. Those who don’t openly grumble, mutter in their minds. We are not even conscious that we are never happy. In fact, although never openly acknowledged, Happiness is a great Sin except inside the covers of the latest Self-Help Bestseller. If someone in our immediate neighbourhood is happy, we must strive to douse that Joy with cold water as soon as possible. WHY?!
Anyway, this blog entry is for those who feel that something is not right and who would like to do something to make things right. There is only one way and that is to do something about it physically (not by sitting cross legged and eyes closed and hoping your problem will go away since you can’t see it!). Do something infinitesimal, with a tiny part of your “territory” (your body) for a fraction of time (one second). If you smoke and feel like stopping-stop for one second. Time is made up of seconds and so, that is all that you can do, realistically speaking. For one second, walk up and down the room instead of smoking.
For me, the goals are to experience Happiness and Enjoyment, Luxury and Comfort, to feel Love and Oneness.
My experiments with the above for one second each, using the timer on my cell phone:
1. Happiness and Enjoyment – I have uncrossed my knees and am wiggling in my chair and wiggling my fingers and toes, hands and legs stretching gently and feeling a great big Mmmmmmmmmm of happiness and enjoyment welling up within me and flowing out.
2. Luxury and Comfort – I am sitting with one leg up and one down in my chair and swinging this office chair gently and smiling as if I am Queen Cleopatra-aaaaaaaahhhhhhh.
3. Love and Oneness- I am gently hugging and cuddling myself and spending quality time with myself-making adoring kissing noises.

2009-03-27T02:26:00.000-07:00

Pithamagan (2003) is also directed by Bala with score and soundtrack by Ilayaraaja.

Chithan (Vikram), orphaned at infancy, is adopted by the person who takes care of burning ghats (Hindu crematoriums). He is barely human. Vikram has given his best to this role.

Gomathy (Sangeetha), a ganja seller, takes this creature under her wings and gets him a job at the villain’s ganja fields.

Sakthi (Surya), a lively conman, gets more than he bargained for when he tries to pull the wool over the eyes of Manju (Laila), a polytechnic student. Surya is another amazing actor from the Tamil film industry and he steps into this role with consummate ease.

Sakthi meets Chithan in jail. They bond and Chithan develops a dog like devotion to this young man, who is one of the two people who seem to care for him. It is this

which sets us up for the kill.

Grass is not just green in India. It is something many of us look back on with fond nostalgia but this look at the underbelly of life behind the friendly “joints” gives one pause.

Sethu

2009-03-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

Sethu (1999) is a Tamil film directed by Bala, with score and soundtrack by Ilaiyaraaja.

Sethu (Vikram), a typical Indian macho college union president, seems to thrive on violence. He lives with his brother who is a Judge and who is quite disapproving of him and his sister-in-law who is more sympathetic. Love in the form of the timid Abitha, daughter of a poor temple priest, turns Sethu’s life upside down.

The tender love story plays the perfect foil for the cruel twist of fate that follows.

The role so fits Vikram that the public often addresses him by his nickname in the film: Cheeyan. Abitha wins the heart with her portrayal of pure innocence.

That which sets the film apart, however, is the depiction of some forms of mental health care as it still exists in India. This topic can and should be controversial rather than swept under the carpet. As shown in the film, it is dismaying and yet without the existence of alternative treatments all health care becomes as good as the old witch doctor system.

Interestingly, the presiding “doctor” in the film’s institution is a White man. Could this be a reflection on the tendency of some foreigners to come to India, pick up a bit of this and that and immediately seek to milk it for monetary gains?

My Love Affair with Kollywood

2009-03-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

When I was about ten years old, somewhere in the late Sixties, my family moved to a small coastal town in South India. Those were days when the idiot Box had not yet hit India. Radios were rare. The phrase Sound Pollution had not yet been coined and pollution as such was yet to cloud the horizon.

Although my father was a South Indian and we were living in South India (I was born in the South and there I lived till I was Twenty), we only spoke English and a bit of Hindi at home. The few films we saw were either in English or from Bollywood. If you are not Indian you won’t quite follow what I’m trying to get at.

India is huge. India has an awful lot of languages. Each State of India is almost another country if one thinks in terms of language, culture and cuisine. Before moving we lived in Karnataka where Kannada is spoken.

Pondicherry was a charming ex-French colony with a mainly Tamil population.Hence it was that in those early years, I rejoiced in the Tamil film songs that floating down to me from roadside tea shops and temples. Alas! In those days I lived cocooned in an Ashram whose population was mainly from the North of India and thus could not decipher the lyrics. More tragic is the fact that I cannot now easily locate those tunes online.

It was only in my graduate years when I joined a local college that I got a proper exposure to Tamil films and they had some good ones in those years (late Seventies).

From the swash buckling MGR/Sivaji era, Kollywood had graduated to a much more muted mood. Anti-heroes and tragic heroines dominated stories where social issues prevailed over formula offerings. Pathinaru Vayathinile’s village idiot, Chapani (Kamal Haasan) caught the cine goer fancy far more than fancy costumed hero dancing around trees could. Shobha’s heart wrenching innocence was responsible for many a choked sob in the stalls.

I do not know much Tamil but a well made film often speaks for itself. And the cinematic striving of Tamil movies towers over that of other Indian genres. It is world class many a time and yet lies neglected. It is something of a shame that such excellent movies are rarely to be found with English sub-titles.

There was a long hiatus in the years that followed as I went North until I came to Malaysia and here I have re-established my relationship with Tamil cinema.

In the posts to come I hope to cover ten Tamil films which I have enjoyed recently.

Shankarabharanam

2009-02-18T23:57:00.000-08:00

So far as I can remember, my father appeared to us no big fan of the cinema. While he approved of my enthusiasm for Laurel and Hardy and condemned my poor teenage sister’s insistence on going to watch the wonderful Hindi films of the Sixties, I’m sure neither of us can recall his presence at any of those films.

In all, so far as going to the movies was concerned, I only went to see two films with him: Oh God and Shankarabharanam. Some of the rationale behind my luring him to these films lay in the fact that, to me, he resembled the protagonist in both.
By that age, he seemed to me, on the one hand, a George Burns and, on the other, the story symbolized for me his life, as I saw it, of intimate friendship with God. As for the other film, it is as if I sensed that he had once a fascination for Carnatic.

Shankarabharanam is a Telugu language film and my father was from Andhra, the region in South India where this "Italian of the East" was spoken. This film, like many another Indian movie, is replete with songs. The difference is that Shankarabharanam mainly features classical Indian music.

To me, Jonnalagadda Venkata Somayajulu strongly resembled my father. There was a grace and gravity in his manner, a delicate tenderness, a beauteous posture of piety and devotion-traits which I saw in my father even in the smallest day to day routines of life. In this film, J.V. Somayajulu is "Shankarabharanam" Sankara Shastri, a Carnatic singer.

All those who have known my father will have mental images of him singing. He would often burst into gentle song to illustrate some stanza from the Bhagavad Gita or even when a fit of humour or appreciation of beauty seized his spirit and drew forth lines from Sankara’s Bhaja Govindam or Kalaidasa’s mellifluous poetry.

Quite a few urban Indian youngsters of the Seventies had turned to Rock and Pop, a trend for which the Hindi film music of the Sixties had already laid a solid basis. However, even in those families where the love of Indian classical music (Which had always been respectable in the South due to its association with devotion and seems to have gained a respectable status in the North post Independence) was not a pivot of daily intercourse, many a young lad and lass had hearts which moved more to the ragas than their bodies to the cacophony which they blared from radios much to the annoyance of sedate elders.

Shankarabharanam is said to mark a turning point in Indian cinema which brought the audience back into the fold of classical music.

Here are some songs from this film with as much information as I can find about them for the moment:

BrocheevaarevaruraaRaagam: Khamas
Oh, Raghuvara! Would anyone other than you come to my rescue?

Dorakuna Ituvanti SevaRaagam: bilahariCan I ever obtain a servitude like this?

Omkara Raagam: ShankarabharanamThe celestial sound called Om

Sankaraa

Tsukigami or The Haunted Samurai

2008-12-15T19:04:00.000-08:00

I knew that I could count on some fun with a Japanese film whose title was The Haunted Samurai. Three years ago, when I was totally under the thrall of Western Media and had no access to anything but Hollywood or Bollywood or other Indian cinematic offerings, my expectations from Japanese film-making would have been sex and gore of the most perverted genre.

But visiting Malaysia opened to me the gates of an amazing audio visual perception of diverse cultures: I have since viewed films from Thailand, Korea, Japan, China, The Philippines, and even lately, one Greek film!

And although I have digested some violent Japanese films ( Boiling Point, for example), my basic journey of initiation into Nipponese cinema took the path of The Twilight Samurai, Train Man, Udon and so many others, to lead me to an entirely new perception of the Japanese psyche as delicate, tender, and value based. And this is what made me buy and view this incredible film.

Director Furuhata Yasuo and cinematographer Kimura Daisaku cast the cute young Tsumabuki Satoshi in the lead role for this wacky period film version of a novel by Asada Jiro "Tsukigami".

Bessho Hikoshiro is a struggling to survive in the caste system of the Bakumatsu era. Separated from his rich wife and son, he now lives with his good for nothing elder brother and wife. A noodle seller tells him that one of his friends, Enomoto, rose in life after praying at a shrine in Mukojima.One night, a drunken Hikoshiro tumbles down off the road near a small neglected shrine and thinks he has found the one in Mukojima. He offers a prayer ...Which is answered but alas! Not in quite the way he imagined as one after the other the God of Poverty Iseya, the God of Disease Kuzuryu, and the 1200-year-old God of Death , come to plague him.The film shows us how he deals with and outwits them. It took me totally by surprise with its enchanting way of tackling the theme. The Rap style music is very foot tapping and way in which the titles roll at the end is delightful.Death as the Grim Reaper we can live with but who can resist the form it takes in this film?

Arabikatha-a 2007 Indian Malayalam film

2008-11-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

Few are the Malayalam films that I have seen and of those little remains that is memorable.

However, I have my cousin-in-laws to thank for sending over a bunch of films from Kerala.

These girls have given me such an amazing pile of movies that I literally wept buckets and am now a confirmed fan of Malayalam cinema.

Arabikatha tops my list for the moment.

Kerala is a very "Communist" State in India. And Indian Communism is very peculiar to India-an eccentric mix of art and literature, of Don Quixotish idealism. Most of the Indian Communists come from high caste families, are not too well off preferring to live off slogans and strikes than to do an honest days work to feed self or family.

Cuba Mukundan is just one such specimen. All he knows is party politics and that too only that of his little town. He is a simple man much loved by all who are acquainted with him. All?

Alas no. He has made his share of enemies in the course of his "protests". And a small bunch of people plot to throw a spoke in his works.

When his father is accused of embezzling money, it is up to him to go out into the real world to pay off the debt. And where do Malayalees go to earn some extra bucks?

Mukundan finds himself adrift in Dubai. Jobs elude. Crooked hearts abound.

Yet the timeless spirit of Indian brotherhood surges to the rescue and strangers with compassionate hearts shelter him.

The tale is entertaining and told with gentleness.

I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to explore films from Kerala.

MENTAL DISORDERS AND YOU

2008-09-11T02:07:00.000-07:00

When my son was a little boy, he was fond of books about insects and animals. These were mostly illustrated and informative. The little fellow called them "Knowledge Books". This almost-encyclopedia on Mental Health falls into this category and is both extensively and imaginatively illustrated as well as pretty exhaustively informative.

As wife to a film maker who focused on Science, I was prone to having numerous books on various subjects being inflicted on me. Drs. Arun and Mary Rukadikar's learned tome thus reminds me of one particular manual on health:
Where There Is No Doctor.

This book was designed to be a

"health care manual for health workers, clinicians, and others involved in primary health care delivery and health promotion programs around the world."

It had a lot of hand drawn pictures too. However, this effort of David Werner, Carol Thuman, Jane Maxwell, while equally bulky, will find it hard to compete with the thoroughness of the treatment given the Mental Health manual by its assiduous authors.

As Jacob K John's thorough review puts it,

"this book is aimed at patients and relatives, but should find itself on the shelf of any mental health professional, particularly the young ones who are fresh out of training and bristling with a theoretical construct of practice."

I also agree with him that

"it will indeed be a tribute to the authors if they (the authors) allow the book to be translated into different languages to benefit many more people."

Let us look at it this way. A psychiatrist is sadly a rare luxury for most around the world. In remote rural settings it is the GP who has to deal with a range of health issues in none of which he may be a specialist. One can easily see how this manual would provide yeoman assistance when a village GP in the developing world, for example, is confronted with psychiatric issues which may not warrant the expense to the patient or patient's family of a trip to the big city.

Sadly, although the urban milieu should ideally be composed of an informed population, media has never done psychiatry adequate justice and even today a depressed person's friends and family expect the patient to just "snap out of it". A visit to a psychiatrist is all too often equated with stop over at a spa. The easy availability of Drs. Arun and Mary Rukadikar's user's guide to mental problems would help literate people in distress or their families to process and pinpoint the problem and seek the right treatment.

It would also guide those under active treatment or their families and thus demystify the psychiatric process. Knowledge sets you free and living in this advanced age it is a shame that so many still do not have the luxury of making informed decisions from sheer lack of such a manual where it concerns mental disorders.

Its sole drawback might be its size and comprehensiveness in this user friendly day and age where people
a. do not read as much as they should for lack of time
b. prefer things to be short (the book is heavy to hold or carry around)
and
c. sweet (the tone is rather severe at times and we have all become rather used to TLC)

That said, all it now needs to fill the tragic vacuum in terms of mental health information for the layman is to find its way to a book shelf in every book store around the world.

Suffering as I am from depression, I can only thank Drs. Arun and Mary Rukadikar for this boon -I'm no longer at sea and can see my way to the Light.

An illustrated and easy guide to mental disorders for the mentally ill and their families

Arun Rukadikar, Mary Ponnaiya Rukadikar
Publisher: Miraj Psychiatric Centre, Dr. Gaikwuad Road, Miraj - 416410, Maharashtra, India
E-mail: mirajpsychiatriccentre@yahoo.co.in
Pages: 472 pp; Price: Rs. 420

Paintings by Indian Translators

2008-05-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

Translation is an art but who knew that Indian translators Deependra Pandey and Anuj Goswami and his wife, Nidhi, interpret more than words.

I was left speechless when I discovered their paintings on Srujak.

Deependra R. Pandey's abstract mode draws inspiration from

"some kind of subconscious state of mind where he spreads the wings of his imagination whereupon his conscious state of mind throws something into it".

Anuj Goswami's name may bring a smile to the lips as it is a Sanskrit word for younger brother, while he is , in fact, the eldest! It was his wife, an artist herself, who

"introduced him to the world of colors and imagination."

In the words of the artist himself:

As per SANATANA, Vedic or Yogic culture this body is made of 5 elements - Prthivi (Earth), Jal (Water), Agni (Fire), Vaayu (Air) and Aakaash (Sky or Space). The 4 horizontal bands represent the color of Water, Earth, Air and Sky respectively from bottom to top. At the top left corner is the SUN, the Fire (energy) element not only for humans but also for the whole universe.
The hand represents MAN with KARMA (duties), also correlated with the 5 elements of the human body. And the Sun being the ultimate source in the sky for these Karmas is on top of all.
Now when mother NATURE had given all sources of life in its purest form then I (human) have to decide the KARMA, keeping all these 5 elements in my mind (in purest form).
The painting was an effort to express this philosophy with help of Colors on Paper.

Global Warming

2008-05-09T01:16:00.000-07:00

It's a hot topic and one which makes some of us very hot under the collar. While a lot of us are warming up to the issue, others are staying cool under the heat.

China and India are being made to feel the heat as are many other countries which already have enough woes on their plate but those who are wielding the “Global Warming” cudgel over our heads do not seem to have enough irons in the fire. And the more exposure this so-called Apocalypse prediction now gets, the more we are apt to swallow it hook, line and sinker.

So where do we draw the line, read between the lines or at least find the bottom line?

Musings on Media says

The implication of the story that is presented by the media is that the people who live in tropics are responsible for it. These people who live in hot climes are stinky and therefore use body sprays. They want to drink cold water and keep their food from rotting and therefore use refrigerators. They use air-conditioners to keep themselves cool. And in the process they liberate what the media fondly calls CFCs – Chlorofluorocarbons. It is these CFCs that are responsible for the ozone hole. In other words, these browns and blacks – they will ultimately take over the earth after killing off the white skinned people with skin cancer.

The Global Warming Myth? asks John Stossel and goes on to challenge the "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity".

MYTH No. 2: The Earth is warming because of us!
TRUTH: Maybe. The frantic media suggest it's all about us. But the IPCC only said it is likely that we have increased the warming.
Our climate has always undergone changes. Greenland was named Greenland because its coasts used to be very green. It's presumptuous to think humans' impact matters so much in comparison to the frightening geologic history of the earth. And who is to say that last year's temperature is the perfect optimum? Warmer may be better! More people die in cold waves than heat waves.

So, if we dig where media lays it on too thick we might do ourselves a greater favour than if we bury our heads like ostriches forced to watch a discovery travel and Living programme featuring Ostrich Pasta.

My take: Live simple- don’t let the media dictate your opinions nor your purchasing urges.

Most people in Asia, Africa and perhaps even the Middle East, have splendid road side markets where it is often the farmer himself or herself who sells the produce. So it is with many other goods and services in these parts of the world but some of us not only need to buy products that need to be flown to us from Denmark or France or God Knows Where but we need to step into the very skins of the people of those lands- we need to exclusively use “Whitening” cosmetics.

You can’t whitewash a falsehood for long and hopefully the consumers in Asia, Africa, and perhaps even the Middle East will let the scales fall from their eyes and awaken to the truth- All the doomsday predictions of what Global Warming will surely come to pass if all of us can only hope to live so long as we speak like Brad Pitt, or look like Angelina Jolie or drive cars and live in houses more suited to Germany or Italy than to our own regions.
Stay cool, dudes. The end of the world is not yet at hand and, for all you know, it will end in the words of Poet T.S. Eliot,
“Not with a bang but a whimper”

April Fools' Day

2008-04-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

Did anyone visit their Google calendar yesterday?

Still in Chains

2008-03-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

While most countries have manged to shrug off the shackles of colonialism over the years, large parts of the world remain under the thumb and it looks like new ones are being added to the toll.

One wonders at a world where a "democracy" like the US and its "democratic" allies still maintain troops in Japan, the Philippines, South Kora and other places. Let us not even begin talking of the fact that peoples as a whole are entirely subjugated: the Red Indians, the original peoples of Canada, Australia and New Zealand to name a few.

Will it end in this century or will we continue to put up with this until we forget that we ever enjoyed another type of life?

Goodbye Bafana, Gandhi, My Father and Sione's Wedding

2008-03-19T01:56:00.000-07:00

What do these three films have in common?

The first one which documents how Mandela became the most inspirational political figure of the modern world, poses the questions: Who is the prisoner? And who sets whom free?

The second centres on the stormy relationship between Gandhi and his eldest son.

Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela both used non-violent protests to liberate their countries-the first from the British and the second from Apartheid.

Another link between the two films is the fact that it is said that Nelson Mandela was deeply moved by Gandhi my Father.

And what about the last film?
Well, Sione's Wedding is the first Samoan New Zealanders.

So why do I put them together?

Well, I started surfing the net to find out more about Samoa and found that they managed to gain their freedom through non-violent protests!

In the early 1920s, the Western Samoans began a campaign known as the Mau ("Strongly held Opinion"), a non-violent popular movement to protest the mistreatment of the Samoan people by the New Zealand administration.

Weird Subtitles from an Unknown Korean Film

2008-01-17T22:59:00.000-08:00

The picture is not from the film but it should give you a premonition!
I'm going to give you a few treats:

"All canned not see clearly"

Isn't this sample subtitle an eye opener?

"I learn the thing of the society everywhere"

"Who ah?"

"be he"

The thing is that it probably gives you an idea of the structure of the source language.

Subtitiling humor-Part 1

2008-01-16T18:12:00.000-08:00

My Tutor Friend Lesson II

Last night I finished watching this delightful Korean comedy and it reinforces my thoughts regarding subtitling.
I need a way to quote some examples and in the process I've downloaded things and don't know what to do with them!
The movie is full of puns which though conveyed in fairly good English yet lose the punch of the original play on words.

Subtitles

2008-01-14T18:20:00.000-08:00

Over the past few years I have been exposed to a variety of subtitles.
In fact, before that, that is to say, living in India, I never gave subtitles much thought as one either watched things in Indian languages or in English. The ease of obtaining or viewing a CD or a DVD was also not yet in full swing there.

Here, in Malaysia, I realized that subtitling plays a greater role. Firstly, subtitles are extensively used on TV as the Malaysian population consists of the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians (mostly Tamil). Depending on the programme, you have the option of English, Chinese or Malay subtitles.

But, besides this, there is the easy availability of the DVD or CD version of films from most of the region (China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, etc) as well as a smaller selection from the European world.

My first serious look at subtitles was via French films borrowed from the Alliance Française here at Kuala Lumpur. I’m bilingual (English/French) with the bias towards English. The subtitles were mostly “good”: they had not horrifying bloopers and the only comment I can make is that some were done by Native speakers of French and others by Native speakers of English.

The observation is that perfection sometimes kills. The flawless subtitling of the obviously Native speaker of English detracted from some of the flavoring and nuances of the French whereas the not so perfect subtitling by the Native speaker of French acted much in the way a French accent does. It actually enhanced the pleasure of the viewing.

Then came the Chinese movies viewed on Celestial Movies … That’s when the fun begins…Well, google “funny subtitles” and you have enough clones for the likes of The Best Bad English Subtitles from Hong Kong Movies. Some examples that spring to mind are the use of the word “fever” for “horny”. Yet here again the main satisfaction is the flavor- something was lost in the perfectly dubbed versions of Chinese films that I had seen on HBO or Star Movies. Some very vital cultural clues get swallowed up in the quest for perfection.

As the lust for viewing exotic films grew upon us, we progressed to pirated DVDs and here’s where the fun really got going. There was this version of the French film Taxi 4 –I have no idea how this marvelous gem of a sub-titler went about it. He or she merely used the sounds to weave the subtitles! An absolute gem.

But the end was nowhere in sight until we got this Japanese film and a whole bunch of others (Chinese, Korean…) recently. The subtitles are bizarre to say the least and must surely be the work of some robotic enterprise.

Hopefully I may find a way to capture some of these exquisite samples on my next blog entry!

Indian English

2008-01-13T19:40:00.001-08:00

Goodness Gracious

While Indian English is sometimes the source of amusement, the fact remains that a certain number of Indians (given India’s population, this becomes a significant number) have little or no option when it comes to their “native” language or “mother” tongue. Again given the figures, a serious student would do better to consult the Dictionary Of Indian English featuring such terms as brinjal and wet grinder than being merely reassured that "Indian English is a recognized dialect of English, just like British Received Pronunciation (RP, or BBC English) or Australian English, or Standard American."

Perhaps this is or will no longer be the situation with the death of the last of those who lived under Colonial rule and the rise of Indian English. Be that as it may, Indian English still proves or is increasingly proving to be a thorn in the side-not only for those who seek to carve a new identity more in tune with geographical reality but also for all those who find that, while American/Canadian/ Australian or other “White” English is acceptable as a “marketable” tool, Indian English is an outrage. Such a thing is only permissible in terms of prizes for Indo-Anglican writings but somehow not to be tolerated as a “working” language. To quote some lines from what was once a famous war of words on some translator sides, the general Western attitude remains: "Again, let's face another truth: "Indian English" is not considered "standard English" by any accounts."

All that is, however, not going to be my focus here today. My desire is merely to gain world acceptance for a certain number of terms (particularly those to do with food stuffs).

And so I find the taste of a brinjal marred by any other name and cannot for the life of me bring my self to exorcise the yuck from yoghurt as I need my curds. An okra is definitely not going to help me make my favorite ladies fingers and I object to onions being called shallots at least in my part of the world.

And as for the dals, it’s a real tragedy when the best one can serve up is a plate of mushy lentils! While I do go ouch when I read some French translations on a packet of my favorite Haldiram offerings, I still maintain that all Dal Moth needs is some uniformity in spelling. To think that one can only settle for some sort of scientific term is like castrating our chillies! Pepper? That’s a hard round black dried condiment to me. And I’m the one who needs at least 6 or more of those green devils to meet my family’s daily culinary requirements.

So I hope I’ve stirred the sambhar up enough to dish up some spicy curry for thought.

Beat the Blues!

2006-11-14T02:19:00.000-08:00

Remember:
The Lotus sprouts in the Keechad

Keechad is slushy mud, preferably really replete with the sort of microorganisms that would drive those who have anal retentiveness up a tree.

Things to do when you are in the keechad
Play football (Football in a slushy field is sexy!)

Mix 4 pills of Kali Phos in a quarter cup of hot water and sip.
Never underestimate its gentle power to heal the mind. I'm staying sane by shoving those 4 pills into my bottle of water.

Grin - use Laughter Yoga

Read at least one joke per day. I subscribe to at lest 2 joke sites- do let me know if you have a favourite.

Be properly sad. Don't shilly shally about it. According to my father and guru, Prof. N. C. Surya, the Ramayana mentions a "anger room"

So he ( And he was a pretty famous psychiatrist) used to tell me ( I'm quoting freely from memory): " If you want to be sad, do it properly. Go look in the mirror and act it out like Meena Kumari.
" Meena Kumari longed to be doomed. And she methodically set out to create tragedy in her life."

Remember: If you're feeling sad, you're not alone. It's the same thing when you have a head ache, are angry, hungry, etc. Our feelings come to us from the world of feelings. They are not ours.

I can go on writing but this is an ongoing adventure for me...

Last but not least, and again in the word of Shri Surya: " You are your own mother, father, brother, sister, lover, etc. "

So give yourself a BIG HUG.

You are the best creation of the Supreme Lord. There is no one and nothing like you in this whole universe, there never was and there never will be.

Arise like Arjuna
Overcome with grief Arjuna jumped from the chariot and threw his bow and arrows on the ground. Uncontrollable tears started flowing from his eyes

Finally, if you are sad and you read this, remember I love you. As I have been loved by the Universe. So go forth and give love, give laughter. Make use of your sadness.

Let your blues be the keechad from which the Lotus grows. Write, paint, dance, make love, sing- do anything to use this wonderful gift for

Remember: the world's most exquisite art was born of sadness

2006-05-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

Depression...
What do you do when you feel you can't even crawl along?

Most people don't know anything about depression. They think it's about the blues. Oh we all have our ups and downs.

I'm so glad I get to go through this. Just as I'm so glad I got to know what it's like to be really poor. Just as I'm so very glad I can never be a proper fart since I have no proper roots.

Well, if you want to speak of sadness, it's sad that love comes last in the order of things. It's all about being propah! So go chop chop little man with your trimmer, cut the heart out of life, do a cardio vasectomy on every object you find.

We will teach life a lesson- it has no manners. How dare it feel? It should proceed as per the logic of some ancient piece of horse radish who belched some so called wisdom. Meanwhile the world dies at your feet, bro, every second a little bit harder. Why not learn to simply love?

It's not so difficult and the rewards are plenty. It's scary, I can see that- you are afraid, my good man, that you will lose your status, the air will come out of the balloon and you'll go whirling off into the clouds. But you should try it.

Try to feel love at least once a day- don't take love itself for granted.

Tell your wife or girl friend or partner how much you love her.

Try to think about love at least once a day. Why is love the most beautiful thing on earth? Why does all the world love a lover?

I know it sounds corny but all we need is love. And all most people seem to fear is love, or fear to show love.

2006-03-23T00:59:00.000-08:00

This translator's day now begins with the day. Earlier it began at dusk on the week end when client’s love to send work and ended some weeks later when the work was dispatched. Now it’s just get out of bed, log on.
There was a lot of desperation because one is not working in the best of conditions.
There was more desperation as one skimmed through the various groups in between hours of typing at break neck speed- one person finds it stupid of translators to seek help with terminology and assumes that one has posted queries without any search. Another accuses one of being phirang.
On the "White" site, there is the usual bashing of the Natives. Good fun for the Pale Face especially since most sensible Indian translators are too busy working to be bothered to hang out at such dhabhas. The Chinese are inscrutable - they come, they post and they vanish. The Malays have no axe to grind since they only work within their native language... and English. They are equally discrete about the rampant Islamophobia. There is a kind of Jihad watch going on at the "White" site and I'm now in the line of fire for trying to say that it's not about Islam, it's about the oil.
It's 5 pm now- must get off this chair before I fossilize here.
And then? A minimalist shower, brush teeth (yech- that's my iguana breath out there), try not to burn the rice tonight. If resident Boy needs chauffeuring, Man and translator will do the needful and thus provisions will also be bought as in fruit, some booze for the 2 middle aged workaholics to ease the tired muscles at the end of very full days (work work nor dare to shirk while goblins laugh).
There might be a breakfast meet with local translators- looking forwards to that. Although the present 11, 000 words will be followed by another batch. Thankfully the client is as sweet as ever and has sent me the word counts so that I can invoice- some money for when this one's put out to pasture. I doubt that even then it will be enough to buy the simplest of roofs over the head but what the heck! At the end of the day all a Hindu needs is the Rs. 10,000 for the cremation (wonder what it'll be when this one croaks?).
That was pretty morose and hope tomorrow wont be more so. Hehehehehe, cackle, mrhahaa, cough cough cough. Yes, I'm still smoking like a fish.

2006-03-22T00:19:00.000-08:00

I have no idea how people “blog” but here goes…

In Delhi/Gurgaon it was hard to get to the Alliance. Here in KL, I visit it every two weeks, using my son’s student card to borrow books, magazines, DVDs, CDs and comics.

This week’s bagful:

Music

Debussy – PrÉlude À l’aprÈs-midi d’un Faune

“French composer Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun; completed in 1894) was based on French writer Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem of the same name. The principal theme, a series of falling and rising motives, is played on the flute, at first solo and then above differently orchestrated accompaniments (as in this extract). The piece is intended to depict the thoughts and dreams of a faun—a creature from Roman mythology that is part man and part goat—on a hot summer’s afternoon.

At the given site you can also listen to a snippet”

http://encarta.msn.com/media_102686995/Debussy%E2%80%99s_Pr%C3%A9lude_%C3%A0_l%E2%80%99apr%C3%A8s-midi_d%E2%80%99un_faune.html

I left my copy of Mallarmé’s poems along with all my French treasures with a friend in Gurgaon.

I was introduced to Mallarmé by my French teacher at school. This gentle French woman, Brigith, with wispy straw coloured hair, was named “Radha” by the Mother ( Of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry). She was very bespectacled and though quite plain, it was she who opened the windows of my soul to the French poets like Rimbaud, Verlaine, etc. We would just sit and read the poems together- no homework, no nothing in that school.

But here’s my favourite one

Soupir

Mon âme vers ton front où rêve, ô calme soeur,
Un automne jonché de taches de rousseur,
Et vers le ciel errant de ton oeil angélique
Monte, comme dans un jardin mélancolique,
Fidèle, un blanc jet d'eau soupire vers l'Azur!
- Vers l'Azur attendri d'Octobre pâle et pur
Qui mire aux grands bassins sa langueur infinie
Et laisse, sur l'eau morte où la fauve agonie
Des feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon,
Se traîner le soleil jaune d'un long rayon.

Stéphane Mallarmé

http://www.toutelapoesie.com/poemes/mallarme/soupir.htm

Eurojazz – a medley of stuff with very African touches.

Films: Les Tontons Flingeurs and Les Barbouzes

There was a discussion on French films at translatorscafe.com and I got this one as a result. It’s priceless. Sadly, it didn’t have English subtitles and so I was rattling off a translation to help my hubby understand what was going on.

At http://lesflingueurs.free.fr/ you can even listen to some dialogues and the famous kitchen scene dialogue transcript is also there. Be prepared to die of laughter. I’ll try and write more about this film later.

The other film in this set ( also starring Lino Ventura) is also classic.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac (Depardieu) is a master swordsman, captain of the Gascony cadets, a man so skilled with the blade that he can defeat a hundred men single-handedly without breaking a sweat, whose name strikes fear in the hearts of lesser men. But Cyrano is not only a soldier, but a poet, who cherishes words so ardently that he will hunt down an actor who performs poorly, and who is so passionate that he will toss away a year's salary simply to abort a mediocre stage production. Skilled as he is at both war and wit, Cyrano would seem to be the paragon of manhood—yet beneath his veneer of bravado he is a shy, sad soul, having been cursed with an oversized nose that, to Cyrano, renders his features grotesque, unlovable.

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/cyranodebergerac.php

I was introduced to Edmond Rostand’s play by another of my French teachers, Sébastien (Half-Russian and half-English). I’m planning to read it again.

If you want you can read it at : http://manybooks.net/titles/rostandeetext98cdbfr10.html

Books: The French, Theodore Zeldin

I think I’ve read this before – the point of getting French books in English is in the hope that my son will read them.

Napoleon, The Song of Departure, Max Gallo

I was rather sad to learn that Napoleon was racist but anyway let's see what this book has to say about the Petit Colonel.

Comics:

La Prison Dorée, Bobo par Deliège

Libellule s’évade, Gil Jourdan par M. Tillieux

Haven’t read them yet.

Le Monde (Jan 2006) – got it to find out more about the French stand on the Islamophobic world of today

Marie Claire Feb 2005- this issue was disappointing but normally Marie Claire is a good read with

So, in one way, my French should be really receiving a shot in the arm!