Awareness is a long, painful road. When I started meditating more after my Vipassana retreat last year, awareness was the first step you must embark on. And that’s kind of the first and last step really. There are no more levels of awareness – there are just gradations to it. This year I discovered that… […]
Softness is the look in Pluto’s eyes. The tuft on his head. The whoosh of his breath as he laid his head on my lap. Softness is earth piling on him. Softness is the goodbye I whispered to my soul friend in October. Softness is the whisper of a heart as I lay listening to […]
Many years ago, back in 2002, I got my first dog, Bambi. She was a senior dog, almost seven or eight years old, and given away by my English professor in college. I didn’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to adopt Bambi. I don’t think I thought much. I didn’t have any […]
What colours can our mind weave? When I think of the word ‘green’, I am reminded of rolling hills, of vistas of green stretching away. I think of the feel of wet grass under my feet many years ago when I was teaching in an international school in Bangalore. But what does green remind me […]
When this prompt came up on my feed, I smiled. A wave of warm memories floated in. The adan calls for prayer. The fragrance of attar. And, the whiff of friendship. It had been more than three years since I met Dave and Karen and Birdy all at the same time. The last time we […]
This year marks my first full year without a full-time job. I had been working the grind every single year ever since I graduated back in 2002. 2017 was the year that would test this resolve of mine to be ‘retired’ the most. But here I am. In 2017, I was continually challenged by the […]
I am terrified of this word ‘best’. There is a certain finality to that word. I loathe using the word ‘best’ friend. It implies that the other friends are in some way flawed – lesser. I prefer to use the word ‘close’ instead. And if I really need to distinguish that special friend, I just […]
The circle is a beautiful shape – a moving continuation of eternity. When I think of the circle, I am reminded of Life itself. I think of all the ways we repeat endlessly our mistakes, our follies, and our beauty. When I think of myself, I think of myself as a circle. There is no […]
This was easy. There are all kinds of families, as Tolstoy once wrote, and I have paraphrased him horribly. My family is one of a kind too. My family is one that doesn’t go out too much together. We don’t really travel together much. We are not even the sort who frequent restaurants together all […]