Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. Having just come back from organizing and escorting an all-women trip to the quaint, rural hamlet of Banavasi in Karnataka, today was a day for me to just think about all the wonderful women I have been in touch with over the years, and who have been sources of inspiration […]
The other day I happened to read this article. The post was wise, looked at reality, and made me think. But what the post also had was a fair extent of bitterness. It might make a person with fewer wings think less of flying. Don’t be that person, I thought after reading the post. These […]
I can’t believe it’s the Year of the Monkey again. That it has been more than a decade since the last Year of the Monkey. Gone through 12 Zodiac signs. All the other animals before reaching the monkey again. It was in 2004 that I first met the monkey. Back then, I was in Lianyungang, […]
There’s a photo of me on the wardrobe in my room, in my parent’s house. My Dad has taken some of the photos of my childhood, and stuck them on the wooden wardrobe that spans the floor to the ceiling here in my bedroom. One of me as a baby, grinning delightedly, sepia-tinted with my […]
Have a problem? I can solve it. Have something on your mind? I can listen to it. Want to talk about the deepest, darkest corners of your soul? I can empathize. Ask me to do the same. I freeze. I realized that today at work when I was faced with an outpouring of emotion when […]
The other day I was reading an article, yet another interview, with the world’s happiest man. Matthieu Ricard, a 69-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monk, is not called the “world’s happiest man” without reason. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin found that Ricard’s brain, when meditating, “produces a level of gamma waves – those linked to consciousness, […]
I found some fresh bok choy in the local grocery store and I was immediately taken back to many a dinner and lunch in restaurants from the north, south, east, and west of China. All these years. I remembered the texture, the flavor of garlic and ginger. Just gentle garlic and ginger and the rich, […]
Of late, my posts on this blog have become less personal. I am sometimes scared, seeing Google Analytics, and all these people who are visiting this blog, to writing what I really feel. I wonder why they would want to read about my life. Its mundane happenings. Its pointless wanderings. My own pitiful bleat. I […]
Frances looked at the little box in her hand. She wasn’t sure how she came to be holding it in her hand. Around her, boys hooted and kids shrieked. Teachers scurried about looking vaguely harried and wonderfully busy. At 5, life can seem strange. At 50, it doesn’t seem to change. But that she would […]