Hope Floats

There has been so much devastation and loss in Kashmir recently. I can't even begin to imagine the horrors of being trapped on the terrace of your own home or school or shop, as it lies flooded, all your belongings having floated out with the raging water. To fight for survival not knowing whether your family and friends are okay, or if your children are managing in the school where they are trapped. To wait to be rescued for many nights, with no food or water or medicines or company.
In the midst of this heart wrenching nightmare, there is a sliver of hope. It isn't much, but it does exist. Hope has come in the form of our people. People who have come out in hoards from neighbouring villages to help the stranded. Who have taken time out from their jobs in order to help as much as they can. The army officers who are tirelessly rescuing people from all sorts of tricky situations and rowing them to the safety of overcrowded hospitals and dry ground - some who themselves have loved ones missing. There are people like my housekeeper here in Gurgaon, who has donated her hard-earned money so that medicines may be bought for the Kashmiris, because she wants to help in whatever way possible. Money from all over the country is steadily coming into rescue funds for the flood affected as citizen groups are reaching Kashmir to try and volunteer at camps and hospitals and assist the army in their boats.
I pray, as do prayer groups across the country, that the water recedes soon, and the damage is as minimum as possible. I hope we remember as a nation how it feels to come together, support each other, put the needs of others above our own for a change. I hope it doesn't take another national disaster to remind us of how good we can be.

Peacocks and Sunshine

This morning I woke to the sounds of excited giggles outside the window. I looked out to find my cook’s daughters pointing and staring at two peacocks that had very calmly decided to strut around our lawn. They looked unimpressed by all the attention the kids were giving them, and more keen on discovering the hidden gems that lay in the shrubbery to the side. Quite magically, as we looked at the peacocks, the sun came up bright and strong (unlike what we’ve seen in days) and lit up the garden; almost a tribute to our morning guests, the smog gently pushed away so their colours could shine. After a few minutes everyone went off to where they were needed; the girls to school and the rest of us to work but I was left wondering . . .
These glorious creatures that drop in to visit our homes sometimes are so special – they’re quiet and lovely, minding their own business yet able to break out a serious dance move when the mood strikes. I hope we realize how lucky we are to still see them around the city. It’s like they’re there to remind us of what we could potentially lose if we’re not more careful with our planet.
Peacocks and sunshine – the right start to the day.

Mountain Afternoon

You sit under pine trees, the breeze cooling your face and damp blades of grass crushed under your feet. The book you ambitiously carried to read outdoors sits forgotten next to you because everything else is so much more appealing – the clouds, the birds, the flowers. 

You have to make sure to breathe in all that fresh air so your lungs can hang onto it. Clear blue skies stretch for miles above you, making you wonder how people get any work done around here. It’s all so distracting; the beauty of everything. The rather persistent chirping of crickets that would normally annoy you feels like a pleasant background score. The tea you would have gulped down in the city takes on a magical quality here: it soothes and refreshes and makes you pause. 

You doze off, wake up and are still very much on schedule. There’s no hurry to get anywhere, do anything, be anyone. You stare at ants briskly moving in line. How ‘city’ of them.

Slowly and Reverently

Vintage Teacup by HummingBoxStudios

There are so many stories and lives that fill my one cup of tea. So many to give thanks to. There's the earth and rain that made the clay possible. The potter that shaped the clay into a tea cup. The man who planted the tea and the woman who picked it. The cow that gave milk. The children that looked after the cow. The man who sold me the tea cup. The woman who brewed it for me. So many things need to come together for one perfect cup of tea that I often just gulp, my mind in a million other places.
What if I paid more attention to the tea I drank, that culmination of so many lives and the intersection of so many stories? What if I relished every drop, and tasted every sip fully? Would my tea taste the same? Perhaps I'd feel the rich nuances of flavour, or appreciate the experience more holistically. As Zen Buddhist master Thich Naht Hahn says, Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.
Ah, to live the moment. I could do so much more if I lived the moment. No thinking. Just being. But first there is the mind to be tamed, my eager pendulum between a projected future and the cache of the past. I'm sure it can be done though, and I'm sure I could do it. It all starts with making the most of every sip. 

Motivations

A friend of mine recently asked me how come, if I was so interested in current affairs, that I did not choose to write about them on my blog. He wondered why I would ignore them and instead focus on design and food and books and the random events of my day.
Thing is, my blog is a space dedicated to things like design and art and books. I deliberately choose to keep my writing light because I want my blog to be a space people come to for a nice start to the day or a welcome mid-day break. I want them to feel cheered up, and hopefully a little inspired; even if it is only to try reading a book I’ve blogged about or listen to a song I've recommended.
There is a great deal of beauty and charm and relevance in the mundane, and I enjoy sharing that. I love writing about the brilliance of design and books and food and things that motivate me. I just don't see it as any less important. In any case, we all know what’s happening in the news, and there are far smarter, far more credible interpretations of it than mine that people could read.
So, this space, this blog, is my humble offering to anyone who cares to read it. Thank you, because I really appreciate you stopping by. The fact that you're reading this gives me an extreme case of the happies.

P.S. Speaking of doing things we love, is The Holstee Manifesto not the perfect poster? 

The Creative Life

I remember each jury I’ve ever had in design school. My sweaty palms, trying to make myself smile and seem confident, my friends’ faces peering back at me from the crowd as I talked about my work, hoping that the jury panel didn’t hate it. Hoping that the questions they’d ask would be something I could handle. I mostly could, but I do recall a lot of explanation-giving. 
Cut to many years later, today, with me working as a designer. I have a great work environment, very democratic (too democratic if you ask me), apolitical and indulgent of people’s time and space. However, everyone has an opinion on design. Whether they even care about colour or form or typography is immaterial, everybody has an opinion on art and design and how things should look. 
That is the very beauty of aesthetics surely, that great unifier of minds and people, but it's also the great misery of the creative soul who spent 5 years being trained in colour and form and typography and visual communication (and must have a more developed eye), but is reduced to producing work that will appeal to the 'masses' that basically, pardon my French, have no taste. It doesn't matter if we think it looks good, the masses need to like it. Bite your tongue, designers. You chose to 'create and inspire' in others and for others, now deal with it. But unless I produce incredible work, how will the masses know any better? They have no idea what I can do. The extent of my creativity. Oh well. My loss. 
So while no one questions a doctor or a lawyer when they roll out their verdicts, a designer or artist or architect is subject to a life of question, doubt and better-ways-to-do-it. 
The college juries prepared us. I guess they knew what they were doing at design school after all.

Everyday Indulgences

I make my day a little more special by peppering it with these luxuries. They make me feel very indulged, and are totally worth it in my book (titled How to Pamper Yourself All the Time and Justify It in the Name of Self-Improvement).

1. Morning cuppa: For me nothing beats a good, aromatic cup of coffee at the start of the day. I get mine from the Orange County plantation in Coorg whose environmentally-friendly philosophy I really admire.
2. New podcasts to hear while driving: I eagerly wait for new podcasts from my favourite shows because they change my drive time and somehow make me feel smarter and more in-the-know. Anything to develop these facets of my brain, she said.
3. Perfume: The woodsy, citrusy perfume Escale à Pondichéry makes me feel like I’m on a holiday. Could one ask for more from a perfume?
4. The perfect everyday lipstick: I finally found the right shade for me. A small step towards my dream of looking like the girls I saw cycling to work in Amsterdam/all over Europe - immaculately made up but very natural. Seriously, how do they do it?
5. Ordering an eagerly anticipated book online: Nothing to beat finding/ordering a book you’ve been looking forward to for ages - in my case right now it's Wild by Cheryl Strayed.
6. Soaking my feet in warm water at the end of the day: Sooo good for tired feet.
7. Pine-scented soy candles: I love the candles made by Niana; they spread their fragrance lightly through the room and are most relaxing. Home spa, if you will.
8. Random email/text chats with my BFFs: Life updates, gossip and randomness in short sentences is guaranteed to brighten the day.
9. Balsamic vinegar and freshly cut mango: Balsamic + any sweet fruit + salt is a match made in heaven. You have to try this.
10. Fancy skincare products: Judge me if you will, but I have a weakness for all things skincare. I guess I'm a believer. They make my day (ahem, while preparing me for the onslaught of age and pollution of course). Thank you, Visionnaire!

What are your little indulgences through the day? I'm sure everyone has some? I can't be the only one with a neon sign over my head . . . 

Men, Money and Chocolate - the Holy Trinity Redefined

I'm rather impressed with Menna Van Praag's Men, Money and Chocolate. The author takes complicated personal issues and elegantly turns them on their head making you wonder how you missed such obvious truths. Deceptively simple, perhaps even seeming like chick-lit given the title and cover art, this book is in actuality a godsend to anyone who feels like they need a partner, wealth or comfort food (chocolate, anyone?) to feel better about themselves. It's not preachy and high-handed at all, but does drive home the message that you are all you need to be happy. The protagonist, Maya, finds her way to the light in the most captivating manner and I know that in some small way, we can all relate to her insecurities, which is what makes this book so special. You feel lighter, somehow, and more hopeful once you've read it. It's also filled with chocolate and charming men, in case that helps. 
Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:


EVERY DAY MAYA LOST AN ONGOING BATTLE to resist breakfasting on coffee and chocolate croissants. Sometimes she managed to hold back for a few hours, but rarely made it to ten o’clock without devouring a couple of croissants in a guilt-laden frenzy. The rest of the day was an inevitable downslide into oblivion. All the time the chocolate treats tempted her, and Maya wondered desperately why she couldn't win a battle of wills with a slice of fudge cake, just once.
She glanced at a plate of chocolate cupcakes on the counter and absolutely vowed that today she wouldn't eat anything sweet. She looked down at the unopened self-help book in her hands, the title promising to cure Maya of her addiction to unavailable men, and caught the sad sight of her cake-rounded belly under her apron. Maya turned a page, trying to focus, but her heart wasn't in it.
Some days Maya feared she’d finally have to let go of her dreams. For years she’d been trying to finish a novel, scribbling sentences between baking cakes, serving customers and worrying about her accounts. She’d tried, hoped and wished to find love but had spent the last decade either serially single or recovering from failed love affairs. And every day she tried to impose a strict diet on herself, calling on ever-diminishing reserves of willpower, and every day she succumbed to temptation.
Maya’s world was shaped by her thoughts about men, money and chocolate; and these thoughts were almost always self-critical and depressing. In the pursuit of love, success and weight loss she’d failed to find anything like joy, but she continued to try.
It rarely occurred to Maya that perhaps she might be mistaken, that in her obsessive focus on these particular goals, she may be missing something.
Sometimes Maya sensed some special secret to happiness that lay just beyond her reach. For, in rare moments, she would be surprised by a sensation of childhood joy that crept up when her head hovered over a cake bowl and she bent down to sniff the sugar, or caught the sight of sunlight through golden leaves. Without knowing why or how, the memory of something she’d once known would touch her and suddenly she would smile, seeing a whole bright and brilliant world opening up before her. And for one eternal moment, Maya would be flooded with a feeling of warmth and peace. But in the next second it was gone.

So, while Maya believed, deep in her heart, that she could be truly happy, she had absolutely no idea how.


Excerpted from Men, Money and Chocolate, by Menna Van Praag. Copyright © 2010 (Hay House)

She Walks in Beauty

As part of her Venus Project, Anna Utopia Giordano took classic paintings and photoshopped them to represent today's standards of beauty. It's a fantastic, thought provoking project, and so effective in its impact. 

My very favourite painting, Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, has Venus stripped of all curves and surprisingly therefore, all her sensuality. I never thought her curves meant so much to me, but seeing Venus all reed-like was disturbing. It made me happy that Botticelli painted her the way he did. 

I'm no stranger to the occasional bout of I'm-overweight-and-unattractive syndrome, but I take solace in the fact that there's hardly a woman without some variety of body-image issues, no matter which end of the spectrum she belongs to. I'm so tired of discussing it, honestly. Some of us make our weight a conversation focal point at dinner parties even. I hate to generalize but this is usually a super skinny or quite thin or not-remotely-fat person. (If you fall into this category, please stop. We don't need to hear about your battle with food and exercise. We're all in the same boat and some of us are trying to get out of it. Go get yourself a snack and another topic to discuss.)

Thing is, from what the media tells us now, we're supposed to be embracing our curves. We're supposed to love our jiggly bottoms and ample breasts. This is of course from the same media that declares a celebrity pregnant if their stomach bulges even a little. Come on. You call that pregnant, I call that a good lunch.

I think the only solution really is to own what you have. Feel sexy in the skin you're in, and surround yourself with people who make you feel that way regardless of your dress size.

My new agenda is to be my healthiest (not in the moronic Delhi 'healthy' = overweight way) and happiest, and just let my body be what it needs to be. It's like I'm letting my body go to design school when all the other parents wanted their bodies to be doctors. I'll try and turn off that creeping seed of self-doubt whenever it crops up. Life's too short, really.

If one needs a little inspiration, there's always Nigella.