Thank God...

for these ads...

Absolute MUST-SEEs:

Anouk - Bold Is Beautiful / The Visit

The Visit - Bold Is Beautiful / The Wait

The Wait - Bold Is Beautiful / The Whispers

Tanishq started the trend when it came out with an ad showing the remarriage of a woman in which her daughter plays an important role. Add this to the three mentioned and we have an emerging class of aware youth that is trying very bravely to counter the hypocrisy embedded in our society. 

Kudos many times over to Avishek Ghosh, co-partner of Hectic Content, the production house that made the film conceptualized by ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Bangalore.

Silence and stillness...

have great meaning for me, and a very definite place in my living.

Here's a poem I came across. I think you'll love it - I do...

KEEPING QUIET

by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,

let's not speak in any language;

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines;

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victories with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;

I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.

All of us...

tend to obsess about our personal beauty. However:

The quality that we call beauty ... must always grow from the realities of life. Our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows toward beauty's ends. Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.

We tend to forget that it is the reality of our past - painful, hurting, mad, bad, horrible....and present - painful, hurting, mad, bad, horrible, that etches itself on our faces. We don't need to hide it under layers of make up. We don't need to rationalize it in our speech. We don't need to pretend it never happened or is not happening. We don't need to resort to the knife or medical therapies to erase the patterns our past and present have created/are creating on our faces and bodies. We need to accept that our past and our present is our reality - our very own reality.......and......we move on. When we accept the reality of our past and our present, the lines and blemishes become beautiful. When we don't accept it, they look ugly even as our soul in not accepting our past and present realities is ever uneasy and fretful and unhappy and black.

Without steeping/pickling ourselves in the past, or stewing in our present, we have to realize that it is the shadows and the darkenesses that have etched/are etching our souls that find reflection in our faces.

Let's toast ourselves: 'To me'!!!! Cheers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes I feel...

so mad with despair...

If you're a Christian, there's trouble

If you're a Muslim, there's trouble

If you're gay, there's trouble

If you're a lesbian, there's trouble

If you belong to the 'third sex', there's trouble

If you're a girl child, there's trouble

If you're challenged, physically or mentally, there're huge problems

If you're emotionally crippled, there're problems



What happens to the heart beating in each breast? Does it have a label? Does it discriminate?

What happens to feelings? Do they have a sex?

What happens to thoughts? Do they have a sex?

What happens to beliefs and values they live by? Do these have a sex?

One of the most powerful ways...

I would even go so far as to say - The only way...to change our life is to make a difference in someone else's life. Even just trying to make a difference in someone else's life changes ours.

If you've reached a dead end, if you're troubled beyond belief, if you've finally, finally arrived at a blank wall reaching up to the skies...

                                             it is time to take yourself in hand - no matter how difficult that proves to be, no matter you just want to pull the covers over your head and block out the day, no matter that you feel you have absolutely no strength in you to even lift your hand, let alone your head....no matter what...

Just make that herculean effort just once. For just one last time find a wee bit of love for yourself...

Get up and go to the poorest of neighborhoods, or an orphanage, or an old people's home, or a school for the less privileged. Talk to the people, see if you can do something to help, just be around if you don't know what to do....the answers will come. Once you look into the eyes of a dispossessed person, a brutalized woman, a hurt child...your life will never be the same again. You will feel energy flowing through you, your mind will start humming with all kinds of solutions and things you can do, and the balance returns to your mind-heart-soul-body......................and you feel healed.

For this is the reality. These are the real people. And these will bring out the real you.

Try it. I have...

A tribute...

to Aruna Shanbaug...

What a brave soul

What a brutal thing to happen to her at age 25.....she was on the threshold of a full life

What generosity of spirit - her colleagues, and subsequently two generations of nurses, looked after her, cared for her, and spent time with her....celebrating her birthdays and her tiny 'life' successes


42 years after...

                                                                                                         The KEM Hospital bid her farewell 

I've learnt by first-hand example...

that no matter how unpleasant/terribly unpleasant or horrible unhappy a situation is, to grit my teeth and ride it out.

This is difficult, can be unbelievably difficult, but it is do-able. Ride it out...Ride it out without bitter thoughts either directed to those creating this unpleasantness/unhappiness, or towards myself. And the results are peaceful.

The tactic is this: Do something, anything to keep your mind away and occupied with something else. Do something so that, as it is bound to happen, when your mind does go towards it or veers towards it, you force it away and do something else - keep on at your regular tasks - no matter how much you don't feel like doing anything - read, do some craft work, or whatever you had scheduled for this time, or which gives you pleasure during normal days. Maybe you'll have to re-read what you'd read or redo the craft work again, but it wouldn't have been a waste of time and energy, because it helped you ride out and wait out the unpleasantness/unhappiness.

This helps:

Let every situation be what it is, instead of what you think it should be, and then making the best of it. ~ Walker Samui