An old track rendered by the velvety voiced one, Jagjit Singh himself…
Today, I need to tell you this. Life is laughter, and we will leave laughing.
Category: This-That (page 36 of 234)
Beachy Feet, Santa Monica
Earlier, when I wrote on Live Journal, there would be long periods of silence and then I’d return with a post that always opened with “I know it’s been a while…” This time, I decided to forgo that standard opening line (did I?). Anyway, life has been chugging along, fairly predictable and regular and busy and leisurely and contented and itching-for-something, all at once. Is that how it is for everyone?
Food updates? Well, we eat at home most of the time and no, I am not cooking anything exciting. In fact, most of what I cook these days contains very little spice. Me and P, I have realized, are prone to Pitta aggravation, so salt-spice-sour is best avoided. That being said, every once in a while, we will sneak off for a healthy dose of Indian chaat or Kari Sayur Campur or South Indian tiffin. Sushi has been on my mind lately, so hopefully we will find a time to go eat some. I was wondering some weeks back why the baking itch was so dormant. Well, I baked a couple of items – baked oatmeal, cocoa-almond breakfast cookies, banana-oats-coconut cookies. The cocoa-almond cookies were spectacular. Friends loved it. I only tasted a couple before giving them away. Baked oatmeal? Strictly okay. Or not. Banana oat cookies? Absymal, depressing, soggy masquerading as soft. What a letdown of a recipe, what a waste of three organic bananas… sigh. This is the third time I am trying this recipe out. When I made these cookies earlier, they were sad specimens but I kept thinking that I was the one who had messed up somewhere. Hmm, I need to find a better recipe to use overripe bananas.
Life is lovely although there is a definite itch within that keeps me wondering what’s going on and where I am headed. You keep feeling like you are on the brink of something, a breakthrough, a gigantic A-Ha moment or experience. Actually, I feel like I want to go away someplace. Get rid of everything I own (okay, not everything), hunker down for some dedicated work, keep the world and its denizens OUT. I guess it is a theme that many of us entertain in our humdrum lives. Well… that’s all I am going to say for now.
Endlessly Still and Dynamic
So many trips to the motherland and back… Yet the magic is intact. Maybe it is the glaring contrast between my land of residence and my land of birth. Or maybe it is the infinite shades of color that India hosts – parched dull brown, bursting-with-healthy-vibrance green and everything else in between. Maybe it is the staggering appetite of Indians for love, music, food, heroes and meaning.
In India, my emotions reside right beneath the skin, threatening to burst forth any time. My intellect and emotions are constantly at war with each other. My heart craves comfort, family and coziness. It cares scant for the right/wrong of things. My head desperately tries to stay afloat… on “top of things,” so to speak. “Does it matter? You are on vacation,” a voice inside chants repeatedly. Where do I find my balance?
In the moment? Yes, perhaps. It is easiest to be in the moment – a space of no judgment or bias. Here, in this moment, I can be whoever I want. Wisdom and balance, good sense and right action, intelligence and emotional richness – they all emerge in the right proportions, perfectly timed. In this moment, I need fear nothing. I only need to be. I only need to be available. Like a crystal that simply reflects light as clearly as it can.
So, I continue to polish this crystal, day after day, so that it need fight no emotional/intellectual battles any more. So that it is free to express all colors and shades of the rainbow without fear or labeling or being labeled. Because it is the path of least resistance… to simply be, breathing and present.
Flowers
Many many years ago, when G and I were bright little girls – smart and talkative and intelligent and spunky – we visited a friend’s home. This lady was my mother’s friend and colleague. Their family was hosting a wise man from South India who was a devotee of Hanuman. Now my mother’s friend’s mother-in-law was a devotee herself and that’s probably why they were hosting this gentleman.
Long story short, we got there and sure enough, there was a throng of people who’d come to meet this person. We were too young to be introduced, so we entertained ourselves with whispers and remarks and little games. Out of the blue, some highly enthusiastic person (maybe it was my Mom?) asks us to sing a song for everyone. Huh! Just as we had made ourselves invisible in a little corner at the back of the room… Darn. I protested that we didn’t know any songs for Hanuman but no one paid any heed. “Oh, just sing any song,” they said.
So we made our way to the beautifully decorated altar with the magnificent picture of the mighty Hanuman surrounded by elaborate platters with fruits and flowers and snacks, lit lamps, burning incense… and a bearded man, eyes closed, emanating waves of silence.
G and I had a hurried consultation and we finally picked a song that we were both comfortable singing together. The song was Maamava Sadaa Janani in raag Kaanada. I felt silly singing a song in praise of Mother Divine in front of a Hanuman devotee and assembly. Well, let’s just get this over with.
We began singing and I had the strangest sensation of feeling terribly overwhelmed. Maybe it was the fervor in the song, the weight of all the people milling around in the room and their expectations, the nervous tension of performing? I don’t know. Or maybe it was the tangible feeling of being in the presence of something larger and benevolent and beautiful and kind. I just about managed to complete singing the song – fighting a choked throat all through. It was probably the first time I had experienced such depth of feeling and I was clueless where it originated from.
Must be almost 20 years since that day…. But I remember it so clearly.