Monday, January 14, 2008

The Beautiful Temperamental Six Yard

I started this year draped myself with lots and lots of chiffon!

I wore Saree for the first time in my life. The occasion was New Year's Party organized by our office for our 250+ group.

Kudos to all the +billion women in India/around the globe who wears Saree with such sheer ease and elegance.

I for one, along with her, was all over the place wherever I went. She was a separate entity; temperamental, snooty and proud and someone who absolutely did not like me at all.
In the first hour, I could hardly walk, so I lifted her many folds a bit higher than my ankle; my friends started chastising me.
Then I draped her loose end over and tied it across my waist; my friends came down on me again.
So, finally they pinned her against me; I still did manage to get smothered!

I gave up and after a glass of wine, I let her Be. She was free to do whatever she wanted to do.
Viola! She immediately liked the independence! We became the best of friends and swayed away to glory.

:)


Another attempt to revive thee blog! but I did have an amazing experience (though much later) wearing a Saree. Giving the Saree a personal touch because it is one of the most beautiful attire on earth and just did not feel like refering it to a mundane 'Saree'.
Here is me with her and my new found good friend N.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Happy New Year! /Book/Movie Review

Happy new year everybody!!! Sorry for the delay but I was busy with work :)

(This post is last year's which I never published. Just something to salvage by but a profound book and movie nevertheless.)

The Freedom Writers is a movie based on the 1999 non fiction book The Freedom Diary Writers by teacher Erin Gruwell. The movie is about how a teacher can make a difference and in many ways personalized for me of what a real teacher should constitute; someone who teaches from the heart. It's a movie about how a set of different students with much of a bitter past and difficult upbringing are placed in one classroom with a very misplaced teacher.


Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning chronicles his journey through various Nazi concentration camps. The journey reading the 100 pages were memorable; each page for me was a celebration of being alive; even when you have lost everything; even when every ounce of what humanity is, was taken from you.


After more than 65 years of the testament of the brutality of mankind, Erin Gruwell asked her class, if anyone of them has heard about the holocaust. Many of these students had grown up in rough neighborhoods of Long Beach; a mix of African-American, Latino, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Caucasian students. Only one white hand is up in the air. She asked again if anyone of them had been shot; All, except the one white hand is up in the air.


There in that one instant I came to understand why Frankl says that pain is relative to every man. I could have been callous and unashamedly thank God that I was not the one tortured in the many concentrations camps had I not seen All the hands raised who were shot at. They might not have heard or realized the tragedy of holocaust but their life has been their own holocaust. They have seen, felt and tasted pain.


To say, we just need real love to heal the world sounds feeble and unrealistic. But, if I am sure of anything is the fact that we do need real love to heal the world. Nothing else will work.