To be able to read

The past few weeks have been wonderful . Full of the illicit pleasure of being able to read . to read without having the weight of unfinished work pressing down on you , hovering at the corner of your eyes and nudging you in the back of your shoulder .
I have had this felling for more than 6 years now , ever since I became an office bearer in this NGO that I work with .
I borrowed an armful of new books from the club ( we are allowed only one out of 7 ) And I have been spending day after day reading and I love the feeling . Getting lost in another's life in another time on another continent .
I just finished "The Settler's Cook Book" by Yasmin Alibhai Brown . A kutchi Ismaili , born in Uganda , thrown out by Idi Amin and now in London . Did not think much of her recipes , though that was the reason I borrowed it in the first place . But her impressions of attitudes over the years to immigrants , the immigrants themselves - indians - are ones that I agree with to a great extent .
And yes I find this whole business of blending in with the place that you migrate to or  keeping up with the trend really very tiresome and boring . You just have a whole lot of clone like creatures at the end of it . Clone like - because they are not clones and will eventually come apart with the strain of being alike .
I like the way she put the Satanic Verses issue . Yes , you have a right to your opinion but not to wilfully hurt or abuse another.
And all those dogmatic , jingoistic people who belong to NGO's , think tank's and organisations - they have a  desert of their own - where alien thoughts and ideas are shrivelled at germination itself

Brooklyn - Colm Toibin

I loved Blackwater Light Ship and I loved this book too . Its great . His books are full of brothers , sisters parents and neighbours . That is the world I know and that I can relate too .

This book is about leaving home cause you have to and when you come back you realise that you would give anything to just settle back into the comfort of the known . But you cant , you never can

Reminded me so much of young girls in India who are married to total strangers and leave everything to go and live in their new homes .When they come back for a visit its a flurry of activity and pampering and no one speaks of the impending departure.

The forgotten Island

The Forgotten Island by Sasha Troyan

A little book that I picked from my daughter's collection of books

I picked it up because it was slim( would fit in my bag ) .Was travelling the next day and did not want anything thick and cumbersome

Its a story that I would call a fugue - rather than a tragedy .

You know what happens to the older child from the back cover and then the whole narration is a repetitive one of the child's wilful behaviour and you think each time , each page is going to be when she disappears forever .

A sibling whose voice is never heard because she doesn't think she has one .

Raghava KK: Five lives of an artist | Video on TED.com

Raghava KK: Five lives of an artist | Video on TED.com

Just watch this . Its amazing

How come I have never heard of this guy

Have you

On China

On China

My first exposure to China was the owner of the only Chinese restaurant in Coimbatore who used to cycle from the market with half a dozen chicken hanging from his cycle bar.

Then it was Pearl S Buck and her tales of bound feet and poverty and abandoned infant girls and concubines . Subsequently reading other books never quite erases the original images of courtyards with moon gates or cramped living spaces of cooks and beauticians.

The beautiful craft – lacquered screens , calligraphy with the attendant paraphernalia of Ink stones ,brushes and rice paper . Jade Buddhas , Embroidery without a wrong side , lac bangles , carved furniture ,porcelain , cloisonné . All this belonged to an exotic China .

A China that we thought we would see in a fine mist amongst weeping willows in courtyard houses where craftsmen would be diligently working amongst children and dogs and other live stock .

It was very interesting meeting different kinds of people on this trip [ Crafts Council Nov 4^th 2008 to Nov 21 2008] . All the more interesting cause we were all in a strange country of which we knew very little , most of which was wrong .

Nothing prepared us for wide roads and multi tiered flyovers and train stations that were cleaner than our international airports . For the acres of city squares and parks .

Where are the 1.3 billion people ? Certainly not on the roads . Not hanging out of their balconies . They all seem to have been accommodated in tall narrow buildings and humongous factories on aces and acres of land . So the individual doesn’t occupy acres of precious farmland in “independent houses”

We get panic attacks if we receive an order for more than 100 of any craft item . Nightmares of raw material availability and the agricultural and festival cycles . How do the Chinese fill bazaar after bazaar with hundreds of identical ‘hand made’ lac bangles ? How do they sell a 60 yuan bangle for 5 yuan because I am a special friend ? Is a product less beautiful because there are so many of them ? Is it less beautiful because machines have been used to make the craftsman’s job easier ?

In retrospect I wonder what is craft and what is industry ? Is there a line and who draws it .?
And do you call people who work 9 to 5 in a factory on predetermined designs craftsmen ?
Does the market and money decide the product or does the creator have a choice ?

A large diverse country . Immense geographically and population wise . How can we hope to understand in today’s terms the reason the Terracotta Warriors were built over 20 years by one emperor and 2 years later the whole thing burnt to the ground by another .
When people talk of the Great Wall they can only think of the people who died building it . Why did a nation spend all its resources to build this immense wall across the northern border ? To make an Empire .

Wasn’t a dialogue and trade possible with the awful Mongol hordes ?

A civilization that took 4000 years to reach a point when its descendants, in the Cultural Revolution, decided to destroy all that it developed . A brief blip in its history when all that was old was razed .
And we judge a history by the frail interpretation of a guide who has to make a living .

And a country through a journalist who needs his bytes