Goa Routine

Sudha asks me as we sit on the beach one evening, “Do you miss Bombay?” I realise very definitely, I don’t. There is nothing I miss about it, except maybe my cat – and my parents. I don’t miss the flat, I don’t miss my room, not my computer, nor internet, nor email. I don’t miss the books, haven’t even thought of the music system. Well well well. Even I feel surprised when I think about it. I have even been writing – as in writing with my hand! Carrying on with the translation from Samuel’s latest book and discovering I haven’t yet lost the ability to use my thumb and fingers, completely.

Pinjone

In a short time a routine is established. Mornings we carry our chatais onto the beach and spend a good half hour exercising by the sea, watched by one or two fishermen pottering around their boats and various dogs who come by, sniffing at our faces and our feet and checking out to see if we are interested in friendship. (Which of course means food for them). Our training is followed by breakfast, a short walk to the nearest general store from where we pick up a mango drink to enjoy at Max’s place. Then it’s two hours of solid work for me – either translating or planning out future sessions, while Sudha catches up on her notes. Twelve thirty means it's time for beer and lunch after which we pass out for a couple of hours because it is too hot to actually do anything.

Peshtone

The best part I find are the sunsets and our post dinner meditations on the dark moonless beach. We don’t know much about the stars and constellations but it is lovely just sitting there and watching them and once in a while going “Ooooh!” as a shooting star appears from nowhere and curves down in a graceful arc and once again vanishes in the dark.

Often, sitting in the restaurant we watch Max’s two boys playing in the sand. The older one, Preston, who is two and a half, is very shy and even a bit fearful. Max says he once saw a cow bolt in his direction and although she meant him no harm and stopped long before she reached him he has been terrified of animals since then which probably means humans as well. The younger one, Princeton, a year younger than Preston, is more outgoing, curious, and constantly tottering around the place, in his zeal to explore the world. We’ve renamed him “Penguin” because that is exactly what he looks like, especially on the days that he wears his yellow and black T-shirt , or the black and white one, with his arms flailing at his side to help him keep his balance. Fatima, their grandma, Max’s mother, calls them Peshtone and Pinjone.

The worrying thing is not knowing how long it will be before the marauding mobs descend on this more or less isolated beach and turn it into a discotheque with their boom boxes and stalls and what not. There are signs of increasing huts and rooms being built in the village but as yet (thank god!) no luxury hotels. Only hope the old man/woman in the sky thinks fit to protect the place and keep it intact. At least for a million years or so.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Goa in March

Stillness. Peace. Tranquillity. Balmy evenings by the sea.

Afternoon beers and evening pegs of feni with lots of fish and squid to go with it.

Silent after dinner meditations under the starlit sky, watching white crested waves crash on the shore.

Chats with Fatima about recipes and children and travel and the price of fish, as the grandchildren played around her feet with their spades and plastic boxes, filling sand into fanta bottles, emptying them out - again, and again, and again. Tirelessly.

Exchanges with the local school kids who used to pass by our cottage on their way to class every morning just before eight. Good morning! How are you? What is your name? How long you staying?

Palm trees, palm trees and more palm trees surrounding Max’s place, where we stayed this time. And pigs scuttling around and occasionally squabbling with each other and also with the local dogs. And lots of chickens. No sign of bird flu yet!

Bet you envy us our week long stay on the beach. And that’s it for now since I’ve barely got back home. More to come in the next few days.

www.basicindia.net

Cultural Progress!!!

Reading about some of the tribal societies in India really makes you wonder where Indian culture is heading – where culture in general is heading. The Dards and the Broghpas for example, are a tribe living in Ladakh, with none of the usual inhibitions which hamper the rest of us civilised Indians. Supposed to be descendents of a group of soldiers who lost their way returning to Greece, after the battle with Porous, they settled down in the fertile valley of Dhahnu in Ladakh. According to Norboo, a scholar who has extensively studied this tribe, they worship the cow, offer sacrifices, are fond of music and wine, and dance together at the onset of spring.

The interesting thing is that the Brogpas traditionally practise polygamy and polyandry and pre-marital sex is not looked down upon. “We didn’t know what shame was,” says one of the tribesmen, Tashi. “But we are learning it gradually, because of modern education and giving up our culture and traditions.” And so polyandry has vanished although instances of polygamy are still to be found, with a man having two wives and up to ten children.

The sad thing is the way the Indian army has succeeded in breaking down local culture, labelling tribal practices as “uncivilised.” Till 1970, groups of men and women would kiss each other openly without consideration for marital partnerships. “Now we do it only when there are no outsiders around,” says Tashi.

It takes so little to destroy the freedom and innocence of others, and so long for us human beings to retrieve it – if it is at all possible to get something like innocence back! Sexual innocence. Do any of us in the civilised world even vaguely understand what that is? In fact many people will try to counteract the notion with instances of sexual abuse in the western countries, or indeed, all over the world. But then one has to see, that sexual abuse and perversion is not the same thing at all, as freedom.

Questions as to why and how sex began to acquire the connotations of shame and guilt which they have today, will continue to bother those of us who have an inkling of the role that sexuality plays in the drama of life. Of the frustration and violence that result through our lack of understanding of the subject. Those of us brought up with the kind of conditioning which has made us almost neurotic, will know what it means to struggle with such issues and continue to grapple with the riddle. The rest will continue to seal the subject up in a mental box, not meant to be looked at or spoken about and will continue to act prissy and a bit weird all their days. Never quite realising all that we have lost, in losing our freedom and innocence.

(Am off to Goa tomorrow morning and will be back next week. See you then).

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Kids Parties

I hate to sound like an old grandmother (which I find I am doing increasingly these days) but when I was a kid, our parties had a different flavour to them than what you see today. We met, we played hide and seek, we ran around, we chatted, we drank stuff like orange squash and ate cake and potato chips. Occasionally when an adult got it into his head to organise games for us we found ourselves playing "pin the donkey’s tail" or taking part in a lemon and spoon race. By seven o’clock our mothers and fathers or ayahs would turn up to take us home and off we would go, after screeching out prolongued “Bye’s” and clutching a balloon or a packet of sweets in our hands.

Well a couple of days back, this four or five year old kid’s party was celebrated with a bang (literally!) in the garden downstairs. It was one of those stage managed affairs. A hu…uu…uuuu …ge blue plastic playpen was set up at one end of the lawn with green plastic palm trees at the corners and a huge wobbly plastic clown in the centre with steps on the sides and ropes hanging down for kids to practise their rappelling skills. There was a fire-eater, a young DJ who kept making silly jokes and various games which had the kids run to and fro all over the lawn. All of which might have been okay if it hadn't been for the music.

Two huge loudspeakers blared out thousands of watts of noise to crack your ear drums. The DJ kept up a running commntary on the mike and a woman in a light green trouser suit (the manager of the event?) busily attended to the details. The party must have cost a bomb. As I watched it all from our balcony on the first floor, I wondered what it must be like to be a kid these days, in Bombay, being fattened on this kind of wealth. Also, what it must be like to not be rich and to attend these kind of parties and then throw a tantrum at home because you wanted the same kind of party on your birthday and your parents couldn't afford it. I wonder what it must be like to be parents these days at all. So dependent on money and artificiality to prove your love for your kid. I am just glad to have grown up in the days that I did.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Who is What?

Manisha with friends

Shahnaz with Dinyar

Another meeting with the people at “Anchorage” this time at the workshop itself. When we had met a few weeks back during the dance class, Meghna and Shahnaz had suggested I come over for lunch one afternoon so there I was last Thursday. It felt good to be not only recognised but greeted like an old friend by the crew – by Manan, (who beamed at me and pinched my cheeks like I was a five year old!) and Dilber and various others.

Lunch (provided by the staff – that is, by Meghna, Manisha, Bhavna, Shahnaz and Nirupa) was a pretty lavish affair with mountains of teplas, dhokla, two different kinds of chutney, salad and vegetables. And glasses of fresh lassi.








Dilber, Meghna, Dinyar and Yasmin

I got some more information about how the place was initially set up in 1989 – about the handful of parents of mentally retarded children. (I refuse to use the term “mentally challenged”. I don’t like it any more than I like to use the term “physically challenged” to describe myself. Prefer to stick to good old fashioned terminology like physically or mentally handicapped because they are perfectly adequate and anyway euphemisms don’t change a damn thing about the way other people actually see you. I will write more about this later, some time!)

Dinyar and Nirupa (popular fellow!!)

So anyway, a group of parents had got together to found what they call a ‘sheltered workshop’ for their children who were fast growing up and needed to learn to be independent. The five founder members got together with a special educator to organise productive work contracts so that they could train young adults in a small garage. Today this cooperative offers many services which include training in various areas of work, teaching life skills, yoga, arts and crafts, music and dance and so on

Bhavna and group

During my visit I saw people busy at work putting the finishing touches on costume jewellery and switches as well as involved in packaging products like paper handkerchiefs. As on the previous occasion when I had met them everyone seemed to be having a ball and I had the feeling at the end of it all when I came away, that maybe we need to seriously look at who’s who and who is what. I mean, if those young adults busy at work at the Anchorage are supposed to be mentally challenged (hmmm ok I will make an exception and see what it sounds like to use this term!) – then maybe the rest of us are emotionally challenged or challenged in terms of self expression, generosity, spontaneity and all the rest of it. Let’s put it more simply, the rest of us are “egoistically challenged.”

Website: www.basicindia.net

Radio Bihar

Raghav Mahato

Once in way you come across a really interesting piece of news in the daily press. Like the story I read a few days ago about a young man who set up a radio station in a small town in Bihar. Bihar as everyone knows is best known for its chaos and corruption and dacoity and other terrible goings on, so something as enterprising as a guy of really modest means and modest education setting up an FM station is nothing short of a miracle.

This young man, Raghav Mahato climbs up to the third floor of a hospital building in Mansoorpur, with his box of tools and sender and antennae and other stuff he requires and gets this station going. Raghav Entertainment FM 1 is what he calls it which he runs for about ten hours a day with the help of friends. The station plays Hindi and devotional and all kinds of music and disseminates information on various happenings in the town and nearby areas, including things like the dates and timings of polio vaccination camps.

In the couple of years that he has been working on the station, Raghav has acquired a large fan following. People who listen to his station – which is the only one they get on their receivers! - come to meet him from ten kms away. None of it has earned him hard cash though. He continues to run his electrical shop “Priya Electronics” which earns him roughly Rs. 2000 a month (in case my American and European friends are wondering how much that is, it translates into roughly $50).

I loved reading about Raghav Mahato. It somehow made me feel good, just to know how enterprising people can get and that not everyone puts their heart and soul only into money spinning projects. I wonder sometimes why these kind of stories don’t make the front page and why they don’t relegate Bush and Tony Blair and our own politicians to the back pages so that another kind of reality can come to the forefront and be seen and recognised by - and bring hope - to people.

www.basicindia.net

I Want Your Brain!

If you ask me, Hitler was not the scariest person on earth. I don’t mean to make fun of his crimes at all – or of the fact that over six million Jews met a gruesome end at the hands of his deranged crew. But those crimes were so obvious, that it is relatively easy to see what was wrong about the whole movement and for those of us who have any conscience at all, to vow not to allow ourselves to be misled by madmen.

Aberrations occur however, that are not easy to pin point or even see as such. Some days ago, flipping through the channels on TV I accidentally came across this bizarre scene of one of India’s most popular gurus taking part in some mega celebration, of I am not sure what. Maybe it was his birthday or maybe it was just some happy occasion but what it involved was thousands of people gathering together while the guru sat on a podium along with his henchmen, all of them listening to one speech after the other by a string of the most boring looking, boring sounding devotees.

The first devotee was an elderly bloke in a safari suit who droned on and on about the goodness of the guru, while reading from a sheet of paper on the lectern in front. He was followed by a fat, black man in a white shirt (Indian white as my friend Gisela used to refer to it in the days when she used to live in Bombay. This means it is a sort of white, but not quite the dazzling shade you would expect, when you think of “white” – because it is usually tinged with a bit of grey without actually being grey, if you know what I mean).

A white woman in the audience watching the proceedings with utmost fascination broke into smiles and waved a flag as the black guy gabbled on in Telegu. Why should I say anything about her – maybe she really could follow every word of whatever language that guy was speaking, which I couldn’t. All the while that these important looking men babbled into the mike, other important looking men in orange walked up and down the aisles and across the podium, carrying boxes of what looked like mithai which they handed over to the guru with obsequious smiles.

The guru himself, dressed in chaste white, sat on a sofa, with his legs folded under him looking alternately bored, constipated and condescending. The camera switched from showing close ups of his face to views of the millions gathered to see him. Entire groups of overseas visitors like the Japanese or Americans had assembled together, each group clad in the colours of their particular team. There were blue groups and red groups and groups clad in green and they were all waving little flags and big flags and cheering and smiling wildly. All in celebration of a guy whom I have heard say some peculiar things in the past (at least according to press reports). For example, that we are all brothers and sisters on earth and therefore not supposed to take a sexual interest in each other. Which in effect means we are all products of incest.

Watching those millions with a fixed robotic beam on their faces made my skin crawl, to be honest. Men like Hitler pale in comparison because what is happening here, in case you haven’t yet caught on, is a very subtle form of mind control, a kind of mass hypnosis of the kind that can spread like an infection among people who are insecure and need somebody else to tell them what is right. Among people who are looking for someone to solve their problems. At the point when the whole crowd began to resemble a forest full of indoctrinated chimpanzees I decided to switch off the TV set. The guru smiled. Maybe he was wishing me goodnight.

www.basicindia.net

Last Rites

Banganga

Monday morning, almost seven months to the day that my grandmother (Nalinima) died, we went to immerse her ashes and to carry out the last rites. The reason we waited this long was that my brother Vishnu wanted to be present for the immersion. Since we are a really uneducated family in terms of religion and rituals, we depended largely on Saru, the younger of my grandmother’s two maids and on Tukaram, our Man Friday, to inform us on the procedure.

We were supposed to get a priest (they hired one for us) and the ritual was carried out at Banganga. Not at Chowpatty beach as I had thought. So I once again visited this picturesque district of Bombay, the houses set around the ancient tank which was supposed to have been created by Lord Ram when his arrow struck the earth and gave rise to a stream.

Father trying hard to be holy in his yellow towel

Our priest was a sixty-ish fellow in a dhoti with stubby grey hair and a bugs bunny smile. He chanted away at the speed of an express train and my father who was supposed to do the last rites had to follow suit, which he managed to do with relative agility – which impressed the priest because he guessed (quite correctly) we were just a bunch of poor westernised sods who didn’t know the first thing about our religion.

The chanting and pouring of ghee into the fire and onto banana leaves went on for what seemed like decades but finally it came to an end, after which my mother, accompanied by the priest walked around the tank to the side and left an offering on behalf of my grandmother, for the crows. I must say I was impressed because a dozen of them swooped down immediately, to finish off the ladoo in the earthenware bowl which resembled a large egg cup. Saru was mighty thrilled at this, and let out her shrill giggle and triumphant laugh. That meant the old lady was happy wherever she was, she informed us.



Mother, followed by Peg, Vishnu and Saru, off to leave the offering for the crows at Banganga

Dad, who didn’t come prepared as he should have, with the ceremonial dhoti, had to wrap a yellow towel round his waist for the ritual ( which Tukaram had thoughtfully brought with him, in case they needed to dip their feet in the holy waters). And to make up for the sacred thread which my father never wears, the priest threw a tattered strip of cloth over his neck and shoulder and began to chant.

Parvati and I watched from a distance because the steps were steep and the alcove where the rites were undertaken was a bit difficult for me to access. To our left, men, young and old, who had lost some close relative, were having their heads shaved by the local barber, according to the custom. But modern attitudes have forced the priests to alter the requirements. For those who are not keen to lose their locks, a token bit of hair is snipped off – merely as a gesture. Which my dad agreed to, without a problem.

This morning the priest came over for a last bit of cleansing, and we had smoke pouring out of Nalinima’s bedroom as the house was purified and my father had to once again go through the various mantras like yesterday. Luckily the ritual was over in less than an hour.

Website: www.basicindia.net

Ready for some chicken?

The news (at least in Bombay) these last few days has been monopolised, not by terrorists or tycoons making big time business deals or not even movie star scandals, but by… chickens. So the pages have been full of stories about chicken accompanied by life sized portraits of poultry. Live chickens, dead chickens, chickens hanging upside down, chicken legs popping out of gunny sacks.

Many of us hit with patriotic fervour are going to be forced into gluttony. Egged on by the government, which assures us that it is perfectly safe to eat poultry, we will soon start to look like those mad people in eating contests whom I wrote about, a couple of weeks back, who keep stuffing themselves with mountains of pizza or hotdogs (65 pizzas in twelve minutes or 49 grilled sandwiches in ten minutes twenty eight seconds) to get their names into the Guinness Book. But the cause of our gorging will not be a claim to fame. It will be all on account of bird flu.

Bird flu has resulted in huge losses for poultry farmers in India, to make up for which the union agriculture minister (who denies that there has been any flu around these parts) has been persuading us to eat chicken "with a vengeance." (His words). Sharad Pawar, has actually said (and I am quoting directly from the yesterday’s DNA) that as far as he is concerned, “vegetarians can eat vegetables or grass.” (Grass? Oh, grass! Yum yum!) But human beings (ok, my words) should start consuming chicken “with full fervour so that the backlog of the past fortnight … be completed.” 20 lakh eggs are at stake, and if we don’t consume them at express speed, they’re likely to end up just rotting.

In Tamil Nadu they had a chicken and egg mela in which 500 kg of chicken and 5000 eggs were cooked for a feast in which some 2500 people participated. This morning’s papers carried a huge photograph of the chief secretary of Maharashtra stuffing his face with chicken wings.

So far the public doesn’t seem to have responded and it looks like it is going to take a while for them to be reassured that chickens are not dangerous to eat any more. And it is apparently going to take more than Sharad Pawar to convince them about that.

The Anchorage

"The gang " - L to R: Mannan, Meghna, Dinyar, Shahnaz, Deven. Meghna and Shahnaz have been helping out at the Anchorage for several years.

Last Friday I had my first taste of the group at "Anchorage" where Nirupa works these days. Nirupa and I were colleagues some years back, in the days when we were involved in organisational development work. Since June 2005, N. has been with this organisation where mentally retarded adults are trained to be productive and where they actually do some assembly line work. They have a lot of fun as well as far as I can see.

Every Friday afternoon the lot of them gather in the hall on the ground floor of Nirupa and Vijay’s apartment block where a professional dancer called Mahesh gives them lessons. So I watched them spin and twirl away as they mimed various actions like gathering oranges from trees and putting them into baskets. Mahesh also makes them meditate at the start and end, which some of them attempt to do though - most of them tend to stare at everything around them with a lot of interest.

Dinyar striking a Cleopatra pose in the art gallery

When dance class was over we walked over to the art gallery run by one of the building residents, around the corner from the hall. I had originally thought we could get the members of the Anchorage to maybe comment on the paintings – for us get a different perspective on art.

The gallery is very swish, with black marble steps leading into a series of regal looking rooms stacked with canvases. As I discovered, the guys were not particularly interested in exercising their brains about the paintings but were far more engrossed in the coca cola and chocolate cake served by the gallery owner. And in having their photographs taken! “Me, me me!” they went as I tried to oblige.

The Anchorage has been around for (I think) over fifteen years and caters to around twenty five adults. A swinging cheerful group of women assist in the administration of the place and if you ask me it is picnic time every day at this workshop.


Cyrus and Nikita













Group Website: www.basicindia.net

Where's the Real Strength?

First this cartoon in a Danish magazine about a revered Mohammedan leader, (let’s not mention names, for fear of offending the sentiments of a certain segment of organized religion in the world) gets entire communities worked up. To the extent that two people were actually killed in a stampede in Pakistan a day or two ago, and entire crowds were yelling “Off with their heads” in the manner of the mad queen in “Alice in Wonderland.” Now it is Durga’s turn. A poster in Athens, showing this venerable old deity waving a bottle of whisky with each of her four arms, has had the Hindus all over, screaming blue murder. Sacrilege! How could anyone think of it, blah blah blah they went on until the proprietors of the bar responsible for exhibiting this advertisement at their doorstep apparently tendered an apology.

Makes you wonder about religion, about prophets and gods all over the world eh? That if they are so weak as to get blemished by a bit of harmless fun, how they could possibly hope to hold up an entire community or (as the Hindus claim their gods do) – the entire world. Truly. And more than that, if that reveller Shiva can indulge in all kinds of stuff from liquor to dope and still have millions of followers dancing around him, why cant Durga afford to be seen downing a peg of whisky now and then without hundreds of her followers jumping to her rescue?

Hindus of the world unite! Screamed some religious organisation a few days back, concerning this “dastardly” attack on the holy goddess. “Let yourselves be counted.” OK so I guess I am not one after all. I was born into a community of that name but seem to identify myself like all slightly barmy people, with something called the human race. Not with Christianity, not with Islam, nor with the Jewish religion or Hinduism. Not even Buddhism. But rather, with a spirit that is incapable of taking offence at what people “think” about it or the way they depict it. Because the true spirit underlying the human race is strong in its own right and doesn’t need any images or fanatical bolstering to prop it up.

Group website:
www.basicindia.net

Evening entertainment

Another evening at the club. We went to watch the Wednesday movie which was “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” this time. The usual contingent of old geezers turned up. Mainly old Parsees, chattering nineteen to the dozen and gorging on plates of bhel puri. A row of women behind us were nattering about a meditation class one of them was attending. Someone else had attended a lecture in spirituality. What was the theme? One of the women asked. “It was on esoteric things” was the reply. Silence for a while. Then the woman who had posed the question says, in a puzzled tone, “What does that mean?”

About fifteen minutes into the movie, and I was ready to walk out. Brad Pitt was awful and Angelina Jolie can’t act for nuts. Maybe this was supposed to be a kind of metaphor for what marriage has come to be these days. For those who haven’t seen the movie as yet, well, it concerns an apparently staid and ordinary couple, both of whom are working, except neither knows exactly what the other person does. It SO happens that they are both secret agents and after it is all out in the open, they openly go after each other since of course, they belong to rival organizations and most of the movie just becomes very very noisy and full of the rat-a-tat’s of gun fire. OK. OK. Feel free to enjoy that kind of stuff but count me out.

My parents and I walked out during the interval and decided to go to the restaurant upstairs for a drink and for dinner. That was much more entertaining than the movie and we returned home quite happy.

group website:
www.basicindia.net

A View From the Wrong End

Criticism and negativity comes so easily to all of us. Ever noticed it? Especially the kind that has no productive value and which we often indulge in when the person concerned is not present. Somehow the “wrongs” done us, the offences and the insults seem to remain with us longer than all that is good about us and others. Human beings seem to have a vast capacity for anger, bitterness and revengeful feelings.

Much of our attraction for the darker side of life is reflected in the media – TV news, the newspapers and so on, in which you find a concentration of the world’s disasters. Murders, rapes, bombings, lootings, grandmothers being killed by their grandchildren and like we saw recently in Bombay, a boy being (I forget) either killed or beaten up by his grandmother. Cheerful world aint it!

Here and there between the stories of violence and those that are downright inane you salvage a piece or two that gives you hope for the world. I am not referring to those hospital rounds by film stars to cheer up children with cancer and the like – but more to normal citizens fighting back the bureaucracy and administration. Cleaning up their part of the city. Fighting stupid laws. Coming to each other’s aid in times of distress.

I sometimes wish stories like that would make the headlines on the front page and our fat politicians could be pushed back a bit. To do that I guess we would have to take ourselves as individuals at least as seriously as we take the people we choose to represent us on the world stage. As it happens it looks like we give all the importance and authority to our chosen reps and allow them to handle us like puppets.

website:
www.basicindia.net

Boxers and Beauty Queens

Ash – just in case you didn’t know it - has a boxer called Sunshine. The Ash I am referring to – also in case you didn’t know - is the first lady of India’s beauty business and queen of wooden acting in Bollywood. Aishwarya Rai of course. Chap called Daboo wants to marry off his boxer Flash to Ash’s boxer Sunshine but Ash hasn’t yet indicated whether it’s to be yes or no.

This is only one among several similar golden nuggets of info filling eight pages of DNA’s supplement “After Hours” along with mountains of ads for silly and sillier films. Of course there is not much to differentiate it from the Bombay Times which goes along with the main Times which as everyone knows is the queen of crap. Mmmmmm. Delicious. Pages and pages of photographs of celebrities grinning over glasses of wine and grinning at each other and filled with details of who eats what for breakfast and who wore what at whose wedding.

Why do I even bother to glance at it? Because the “news” items are accompanied by photographs. And photographs of human beings somehow interest me far more than drab print. Of course the truth is that the person in the photo doesn’t have to be a celebrity to attract my attention. I am equally happy to look at and read about, say a housewife with a green thumb, or about gentlemen who feed pigeons in the park. But all newspaper supplements seem to presume that filling their pages day after day with the photographs of the same old famous bores is what creativity and human interest is all about.

I mean I would have far preferred it if DNA had interviewed Ash’s boxer, Sunshine, and asked her her opinion of life – without bothering to mention who her pearly toothed mistress happened to be. Most dogs are anyway much cuter than most movie stars.

Website
www.basicindia.net

New Ideas

Group in Hampi
pic by Chandran


Had a good meeting with Charmayne yesterday who turned up in the evening. Following our session on Monday evening on the topic of “community” and responsibility she felt it would be good for us to do something together. I was game too and we talked quite a while about various possibilities. Well one idea is to start a ten week “Saturday group” based on the theme of “Communication”. Because this is something most of us are so bad at. Bad at listening and bad at expressing ourselves too so that we often misunderstand others and we ourselves never feel understood.

Another fun idea was to invite people to “Soirees” based on a theme. Not more than a handful of people to an evening of music, poetry and discussion, for example around the theme of “parents and children” or “love” or “the quality of our lives.” It’s a way, we figured, to bring people together but to dispense with the usual superficial chatter and to use our time together more meaningfully.

Those of you in Bombay, keep in touch for further developments!

website:
www.basicindia.net

Our hunger for more

There is this woman I read about in the papers recently, who won an eating contest. I think she’s from Malaysia or thereabouts. You have these eating competitions all the time, everywhere, and hear about men and women drinking two or three gallons of milk in a minute and a half or throwing in one lamb chop after another into their mouth and well, this woman I read about, ate 46 grilled chicken sandwiches in eleven minutes. In order for those sandwiches to go down her throat easily and quickly she had to soak them in water. This same woman has taken part in umpteen such contests and bolted tons of other kinds of food in a similar time frame. Wolfing down kilos of sweets, steak, hamburgers and the like to be able to get her name in the Guinness or some other book of records. Can you believe it?

Just shows you how desperate people are for attention. And also the fact that this is what our culture is based on. The acme of greed and consumerism. I mean in a way this kind of competition goes beyond both, and needs to be mentioned in a class of its own – stupidity maybe?

News items like this somehow simultaneously amuse and horrify me. It is good shock value in a way, it gives you something to talk about. But then again, when you look at how depraved the whole business is, it gives you rather a jolt. To see that human beings want more, more and yet more of everything. That “more” is supposed to be good. More cars, more fridges, more money (of course, goes without saying), more lovers, more sex (nothing bad about that except when it becomes part of the “more game” anything loses its meaning altogether).

Wee…eeelll, coming back to that chicken sandwich. I personally love a good grilled chicken sandwich. Mostly I can’t even finish the one I order at the snack bar and have to ask for it to be packed up so I can eat it at home the next day. Maybe the Guiness Book could include me in as the person who needs the maximum length of time to eat the smallest portion of grilled chicken sandwich?

website: www.basicindia.net

Last thoughts on Hampi

Hampi recedes into the background every day as the Bombay fog and noise takes over. I didn’t get to visit the old temple town though those who did swear that it was the most impressive thing. For me those ancient hillsides were enough, the gigantic rocks piled on other rocks, which when you stared at them revealed faces of monsters and kings and whales and all kinds of creatures leaving you gaping open mouthed as you kept staring.

Workshop hut

Hampi, the site of the ancient kingdom of Vijaynagara seems imbued with awesome energy. A whole lot of people I know had really weird dreams, most of them violent. At least three people told me they dreamt of murders. One said she had dreamt of war. Peter woke up suddenly one night and woke me up too in the bargain, shouting, “Shit!” I held him for a while and comforted him until he went back to sleep. Next morning he told me that he had dreamt he saw me on the edge of an abyss and was attempting to save me from falling over it! I too had my share of visions of violence, both during the meditation we took part in in the second workshop and at times, at night. Phew!!

Rock carving in Hampi

Peter and Franziska’s place was really beautiful – surrounded by hills. They have greened it too, and planted many flowering bushes and trees in the vicinity of the houses. It was ideal for the workshop – remote, quiet and somehow intense. Hope to carry some of the strangeness and wonder of that experience with me through the next months, if not years Samuel and Daniele who conducted the workshop in Hampi

All photos here by Uma L

group website: www.basicindia.net

OW!

Ow ow ow. Stomach cramps are horrid. Probably some kind of infection, picked up either during the travel or after getting back. India, after all, is home to myriads of versatile microbes which can land you with anything from belly ache, sores, itchy eyes or worse. When you're in perfect health you forget what it's like to be sick. Maybe this is life's way of remind one, to be grateful for good health.

group website: www.basicindia.net

Getting back to so-called normal life

Ulrike and Fenena in Hampi. (Ulrike, Peter and Fenena live in Switzerland).


What the hell is so difficult about getting back to "normal life"? What is it about normal life that makes it sometimes difficult to get back to, after a holiday? Specially the kind of holiday we had together - our gang from Bombay together with friends from Europe, including Suhail and Shasha from Paris, Joerg and Sabine from Switzerland and Gursel and Aysegul from Turkey?

The last of my nostalgic memories of Goa and Hampi are taking their time going out the back door, but I am sure that in a day or two I will be all set for the next phase.

Endings are a bit painful but then I guess if they didn't take place there would be no room for new beginnings.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Back in Bombay!

Sunrise in Hampi


Just about getting back to normal after quite an adventurous and circuitous trip down south. For more info check out: www.basicindia.net

Back soon though!