The Menagerie of Bottles

So, the Girl with the Encyclopedia of Bottles,  has gone and done it again. She's taken the most ordinary little bottles that you and I would probably walk past with nary a second glance and gone and created the most surreal little menagerie.

In this age of recycling and upcycling and generally over- priced 'Eco-friendly'  stuff , it's becoming, sadly, increasingly rare finding imaginatively conceived truly interesting work. This isn't a spiel I promise you.

Animal Farm by Nishi Chauhan (Source: Here)

This menagerie isn't about mere upcycling by the way. Oh no. Flo, Gerry, Peeves, Ellie , Humf and Porky are so much more. Each is a carefully thought out, carefully designed piece that will light up your day - quite literally as it happens.

The best part though- for me- is the confluence of the old and the new. These fantastical creatures born of glass and wood bring together new notions with the timeless craftsmanship that we have long forgotten to appreciate- in this case the skills of the craftsmen at Channapatna in South India.

Animal Farm isn't about putting an old idea in a new bottle as it were. This little farm is about a new idea.It's also about rejuvenating an old art form. This project is about wedding two extraordinary ideas and creating unique, usable pieces that speak to you and me.

Read more about  'Animal Farm' here.

Encounters 2

In December of 2005, I'd been in London about three months. This being my first time spending winter in a place that far north on the globe, the sudden onset of darkness by 4 in the afternoon was still a bit of a novelty and ever so slightly depressing. Christmas was definitely in the air. The weather was wet and oh so cold for my desert bred self.

One evening I was returning by tube from the last class of the term at SOAS. I got off the tube at Belsize Park where I was rooming and started walking up the street. I had gone barely a few meters out of the tube station when I saw an elderly lady wrapped up in a long coat and wool cap walking slowly and painfully up the street. The streets up in Belsize and Hampstead are rather steep.The ground was wet and she looked as if she might be in some pain. I'm not sure why, as I'm usually a bit reserved around strangers but I thought I'd stop and ask her if she needed  help. She immediately held my hand and asked me if she was walking in the right direction toward the Royal Free Hospital. As it happened she was and I was headed in the same direction. The residence I was rooming at was right next door to the Royal Free. And so it was that I offered to drop her off at the hospital.

It took us about 20 minutes to cover a distance that usually takes about 6 minutes and that was enough time for us to exchange stories and what a fascinating story she had. Her name it turns out was Dr. Jutta Singer. Yes, she made sure I knew she was a doctor. Anyway, she lived in Schonfeld Park in North London. She was Jewish and she used to be married to a doctor from Mauritius.Her husband was, she said, a Muslim man who had passed away about 20 years ago by then and she'd come back to London.  Her marriage had apparently not gone down too well with her community but now as a widow she'd been welcomed back. By the time she'd explained all this we'd arrived at the entrance to the Royal Free and we said our goodbyes. But not before she asked me if I'd like to help her sort out her papers and things at her home in Schonfeld Park. She apparently had too many of them and had a small army of students much like myself who occasionally helped her out. I almost immediately said why not. After all, this would give me a chance to learn a bit more about a community I'd long been curious about. Besides, Dr, Singer sounded like she had many more stories. And so began one of the strangest associations of my life.

Over the next four months, twice a week, I'd visit her in Schonfeld Park in the afternoons. Schonfeld Park , named for a rabbi who apparently ran an orphanage or some such ( I don't remember exactly now), was a housing estate in Stoke Newington in North London occupied entirely by Hassidic Jews. It was a world unto itself, as they say. Each time I visited it felt like I was stepping into another world. Dr. Singer's apartment closely resembled a storeroom of sorts. The little flat was overflowing with stacks of papers and books and smelled vaguely like something was boiling on the stove all the time.Most of her needs in terms of food was catered to by her young neighbours. I never did find out what these neighbours did for a living. The young women were all mothers to broods of seemingly extremely well-behaved young children. The men, I'm not sure what the men did really. They all seemed rather scholarly. I really should have been a bit more curious about this I guess. In any case, my days with Dr. Singer usually involved arranging her papers for her, arranging her various Sabbath invites and mostly just listening to her stories. These included stories about her childhood in Austria. It sounded rather idyllic until of course the horrors visited on that country by Hitler. Dr. Singer was shipped off to England before that along with her siblings. The rest of her family sadly perished in one of the labour camps.

Dr. Singer on the other hand was brought up by her relatives in London. She went on to study medicine and eventually specialized in women's health. Then sometime in the 1960's or so, the British government deputed her to go out to Mauritius and set up a family planning clinic. And this is where she met the handsome Dr. Ebrahim. There followed the usual drama that surrounds inter-faith marriages. In any case, they managed to get married and became parents to three bright boys  who all seem to have grown up into high profile careers and good marriages it would seem.

Sadly though at the end of four months, academics and my own life got in the way and I was no longer able to spare the time I'd need to travel up to her. I've always wondered what happened to her. I misplaced her number and wasn't able to get in touch with her before leaving London. I do hope that her sons came to see her. She always seemed rather lonely and they never seemed to be able to make the time. One morning, shortly before I left her  she told me that she wanted to give me a badge that said ' Angel Friend'. It turns out that the lady had a whole network of young people like me that she'd met in circumstances very like the one that we met under and she called them her Angel Friend Network. She told me that they seem to come into her life when she most needed them and they seemed to leave when their role in her life was up. But she was deeply grateful for whatever this plan was that the universe had that was sending her these angels. I suppose that's as good as an explanation as any , don't you think?

Love stories



Source: Here

 I've just finished reading Annie Zaidi's Love  Stories # 1 to 14. And let me tell you one thing- love is messy. In case you hadn't already realized, that is. Love is messy. It's complicated. It's violent- and I don't mean physically. Being in love and loving and being loved are all on some level violent- the violence of the heart is perhaps something one cannot recover from - ever. You get over it, perhaps, but do you ever fully recover?

I remember in some movie one of the characters says " I have loved many people and each of them has taken a little piece of me." Isn't that perhaps the most violent act of all- giving a piece of yourself and taking a piece of someone else and neither of you is ever the same again.The happily ever afters are a dream really- a very unrealistic one. Even the happiest love stories I know of are not happily ever afters. And on some level I think who needs that anyway.

However, I digress. The book that I just finished reading- Zaidi's Love Stories # 1 to 14- is a collection of short stories and each deals with an aspect of love- romantic love. The stories are unexpected and honest. They have that strange quality that's so hard to capture of making one live each of the characters. You cannot help but be involved and wonder and even worry. For me each of these stories contained an 'aha' moment and I'm sure most readers would find this too. The magic of Zaidi's book really lies in the fact that she has somehow managed to capture and express the nuances- the layers- of love if you will. Even the cheesiest isn't necessarily the easiest cheese. They leave you with uncomfortable questions as well. Where does love end and comfort/habit begin? Is all love some kind of mass delusion? What's real? Who decides? When do you decide to trust and why?

A couple of the stories probably could have done with a bit tighter writing or better editing.

In the end though this is probably the best collection of stories coming from the crop of new writers emerging out of India that I have read in a very long time.

Icarus and reflections on a pale blue dot

I've been reading Mona Simpson's A Regular Guy and there's a lovely part in the book where the main character acquires a Matisse. He then gets so attached to it that he cannot stand the thought of it mattering as much as it does and proceeds to give it away. This is the second time that Henri Matisse has entered my life.

Source: Here

The first time was through a friend ( who is no longer a friend, unfortunately) and it was a very specific piece- Icarus. I fell in love with it. I don't know if it's that deep, vibrant blue. Or those exploding yellow stars. Or that wonderful, free falling, almost dancing figure with that beating red heart. There's something so beautiful and tragic about it.

Based on the story of the adventurer who aspired to reach the sun and in trying to attain his dream failed so spectacularly that he must be celebrated. But it's never really failure is it if you dared to dream and dared to defy the gods as it were.Dared to defy your 'humanness'.

Perhaps it meant so much to me then because it came into my life at a time when I was setting out to explore my own life.I was testing the waters.The universe was throwing things my way that were unexpected. It was significant I think in a way that was not yet clear to me and wouldn't be for some time to come. But now, almost a decade later I look at it again and it moves me. The artist who had so much to create that neither pain nor disability would stop him. He found ways to negotiate both. Isn't that what the story of Icarus is anyway? Indeed the story of humanity as a whole in a sense. For all our frailty we must defy the gods. We must - we are compelled - to reach for the stars. We look at the birds and we are compelled to fly. And we have. We have flown and we  have traveled among the stars .We are looking at worlds beyond our gaze. We are not perfect but that which is perfection in us is beyond compare- don't you think?

We no more know why we've been put on this "pale blue dot" " floating along like a smote of dust on a beam of sunlight" , than when we first began wondering about these things. But here we are.

So, there, those are my reflections for a Thursday night. I'll leave you with the following lesson in perspectives from the incomparable Carl Sagan:

Pale Blue Dot (Source: Here)

 We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Of feet of clay and a house sparrow named Ben Franklin

I feel I must write something today. But it's all rather random- the thoughts in my head.

Gaza is being pounded mercilessly by Israel. Israel is getting its share of missile attacks from Gaza. But the power balance remains skewed as always. The world remains divided as usual. I'd rather not say anything about a certain Mr Obama and his stance on the whole thing.

 My uncle and a cousin are stuck in Jerusalem. What was a tour of the holy lands has turned into a nightmare. They finally learn that the holy lands are not quite so holy anymore. If they ever were that is. I wish there was some intelligent insight into the mess that I could provide. But I'm fresh out I'm afraid.

The famous Aung San Suu Kyi was in town yesterday and I was given an opportunity to go meet her which I turned down. Her rather crude fence sitting on the whole Rohingya problem has been rather off putting. As a friend said the other day, it's best not to have heroes- they turn out to have feet of clay anyway.

All this is rather depressing. So turning to slightly more cheerful topics- the sparrow on my balcony has been christened Benjamin Franklin by my sister for his rather founding father-ish aspect and demeanour. She also believes he used to be a cat in his previous life going by the long hours he sits in meditation on our window sill. I personally find fascinating his fascination with the washing machine. Benjamin can sit for hours watching the water swirl and the clothes tumble. Watching him definitely makes clear why they're called house

Sparrow love

sparrows. He loves household sounds of all sort be it the clang of vessels in the kitchen, the pounding of pestle in mortar, the sputter of mustard seeds in hot oil, the sizzle of  frying onions, the whistle on the pressure cooker, the blender- anything really. Lunch preparation is his favourite time of day I have noticed. And he loves our flowers... the geraniums are a particular favourite.

Looking forward to a quiet Sunday reading four books simultaneously ( always a thrilling , if not entirely practical, approach). But on the menu are Annie Zaidi's Love Stories, Mona Simpson's A Regular Guy, Agatha Christie's autobiography and Paul Theroux's short stories.

Here's hoping for peace everywhere...

Ruminations on a cold rainy day

So, a cyclone hit nearby Tamil Nadu state yesterday. And as usual, Bangalore must bear part of the consequence. This came in the form of rain that just still hasn't let up. It's Thursday afternoon and the rain hasn't stopped even one little bit in that time. And it's cold. Colder than I have ever felt here I think in these three years.

The mid-week holiday means that I have pretty much spent the day sitting on one sofa or another in front of my laptop and in front of the tv , eating bread and peanut butter and drinking gallons of green tea. The world outside - at least the glimpses of it that I catch when I look out the one open window in the flat- is drenched. My plants are holding on. Their blooms seem to be able to withstand the wind and the incessant drip drip of the rain.

I just finished watching a beautiful Malayalam movie, Adaminte Makan Abu. I hadn't expected to like it. I ended up loving it. On the face of it , it's a movie about a man at the end of his life who hopes to perform the Hajj in Mecca. But it's so much more. It's about human relationships and what it means to lead a life well-lived. It is about faith and what that means to each of us. Faith has got to be the most personal of all human experiences I think. And in an odd way it dictates our relationships. Or maybe not so odd. The protagonist has lived his whole life with the one desire- to go to Mecca. Not just go to Mecca. But go to Mecca on the terms dictated by his faith. No short cuts and no half measures will do. And so as he sets about arranging for this- the most significant journey of his life, it's the relationships that he's built over a lifetime lived faithfully that help him prepare.And in the end when things don't go as expected it's that faith that helps him live as well and find hope.

I found this movie a great comfort.

So, that was the theme of the day- comfort... and faith.

Changes

It's been a while. In that while, the world I grew up in has been changing faster than I can keep up. People gone. Monuments gone. So many things -just gone. Not complaining here. At least not too much. Not all of the change has been bad I must admit. In fact much of it has been for the good. But at least a couple of people who are gone , I wish they'd stuck around for a while longer. Nora Ephron for example. The way she saw the world made it always so much more bearable somehow. I loved the movies she made even before I knew that it was she who'd made them. I loved things that she'd said even before I knew it was she who'd said them.

Reading a book that has much to do with change at the moment. Julia Gregson's East of the Sun. The story's set in India of the 1920's -30's. If I have to categorize it , I'd call it 'Raj era chick lit'. Filled with inaccuracies of all sort. Some good research and fact checking would have helped it much. But the characters are wonderfully compelling and one does get terribly attached to them. The kind of book to be enjoyed with a lovely cup of tea and a plate of butter cookies. Hmm.

A friend also introduced me to the work of Joann Sfar through his graphic novel The Rabbi's Cat. A work of effortless genius. I highly recommend it.

In the meantime, the monsoons here are mighty spotty. Not good. But there are days with lovely weather and these are to be enjoyed when they do occur I suppose.