Lottery racket on the roads:)

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Did you know the lottery sellers are now trying to get u to buy at traffic signals? Apart from selling strawberries (while in season), or umbrellas, little masks, plastic helicopters, car screens and car cushions, they are now also selling lottery tickets.

The Maharashtra state lottery ticket, one fellow told me. Some fantastic amount, that seemed to be too fantastic to be part of my karma:) So I shooed him away. He deliberately dropped a ticket inside my auto. While I tried to wave him back to pick it right back (he had danced a few steps away, this urchin) he came back, acting bemused. "Memsaheb," he looked at me, as if I had already won the lotto, "you must now buy it for sure. It is your luck which has made this ticket drop off my hand. It means your fate is now written on it." !!!!

I wonder who coaches them in such alluring language:) It must be our Bollywood films...

More on the sunbirds roosting in my home:)

I will let these delightful pictures speak for themselves. Sunbirds, roosting in my balcony. See that little fellow inside. One is always seated in, so I assume the eggs are there now. The nesting bird looks always in a daze... some hormone that must be stunning it that way (vasopression, for late-comers) since otherwise they are, by nature, extremely restless.
One day when my Muay Thai instructor walked looking lovingly at them, the seated bird screamed in a violated and scared fashion and flung away... I could imagine its tiny heart beating madly:(
So, now we try not to disturb them too much.... And though Biki suggested we could feed them something I fear the big birds will be more interested in such grains and disturb these little fellows. Best way to keep them around is to be non-interfering...

Rhythm House: a tradition that really rocks:)

This is the new release (I think) called Nagore Sessions -- a compilation of Sufi type of songs from the famous dargah of Nagore, in Tamil Nadu. I read an interview with the singers and wanted to desperately to get my hands on it... being from the south and exploring Sufism also. I tried Landmark ... but u know, it is difficult to deal with the sales staff there -- some know their stuff, some don't. But at Rhythm House I know I will always find it. I ran into Rhythm House and looked out for that boy I always ask for such stuff (last time I wanted the Siddhar Cave music -- a Tantric, exotic compilation) and he knew where I will find it. I also found Vyas' fabulous Sattwa that way... another superb Satsangy music compilation... And this time asked him (his label reads AJAY:) and he asked another one, who seemed to know more... This one is Athik -- and he knew exactly which shelf I will find the Nagore Sessions in.. Wow, na?
I love Rhythm House. It rocks, man:)!!!

For details, go here...

Karma T-shirts: I lov m

I got a T-shirt with this mind-blowing image. It is a Karma T-shirt. I just lovvv it... It sort of sums up a lot of things about this country... The Karma T-shirt slogan says," Crazy about India." That too... sort of T-shirt that gets a lot of eye-balls (Tantra Tees can also be that way, though some of their PJs I find OTT... The sex ones particularly, and I am not even the moral police....

Where did I get it?
At Colaba Causeway... It is nearabouts the Bank of Baroda, a female clothes shop (called LOTUS, near Mc Donalds) that has been there for over a decade(I had got an expensive lengha for my daughter when she was just a toddler) It is manned (can u say that of a woman? ) by a lady who seems more keen on counting her stocks of embroidered clothes than selling this T-shirt. I had to practically wrench it from her (Poloma, are u reading this?:) before I could get the shop girls to hunt out the size of this T-shirt... they like the Tees soo much they don't want to sell it? They would not look up at all, from their precious stock. I had to keep pointing to this great sadhu hanging outside, on the glass, to get them to dig out a small sized for me. Already people are asking me for it. I intend to trek over to Colaba next week and buy a few more of these Karma Tees. Provided the lady obliges... What an idea, Sirji:) U can check out more on the Karma Tees on net, created by Madan Chhabria I think.

I will put up the photos of some more I just could resist picking up later on.
Contact number: 9320425272

Masks and more

My nephew clicked this picture for me, since I tried to click so many times and only caught the tip of my foot or big toe in the frame..Off Churchgate this man, stands selling mask. I picked up one, just for the heck of it (Some pompous TV journalist will come along and call me a sickness touris or some such thing?) It smelt of some vinyl -e thing, u know, that I could not imagine every wearing it. It cost me Rs 20. When half-hour later I walked past this guy, he was surrounded by a hoard of commuters who were all trying to make him rich:) by buying what all he had to offer. He had another mask for Rs 40.

Any case, the thougth that occured to me was that if we were health conscious as a nation (which we are not at all, despite Swami Ramdev) then we would not be in such a flutter about this flu. Our kids hardly get once a week PT (sports class). What sort of sick (I hate to say that cliche, pun intended) education system that excludes health-building activity. Once they come to tenth, this nonsense gets even more virulent, because the kids hardly get to think of doing any of the kiddie things -- even dancing, when u are a teen, they cannot.. We are terribly flaccid as a nation, where health is concerned. And we should feel guilty that the kids succumb when such virulent epidemics unleash, because we have, collectively, wrong priorities when we send them to school.
Lecture over. Feel strongly about such things. Or they will remain just the way they are. Drag us all down...

Temple jewellery

My daughter has the habit of asking for something very important (like some costume for an important performance, or a notebook for a particular test) in the last minute. Now that she is into boarding this trait is becoming more pronounced. This time she suddenly tells me she needs temple jewellery for her internal exams in her dance college. So I sort of panic and scout about and find a fake gold-plated costume jewellery shop near my complex. I splurge on some necklace, bangles, ear drops and then, since I cannot resist it, buy some myself. After which, commonsense dawns on me and I decide to go the south Indian and staid and reasonably priced Giri's for some temple jewellery. I remember the Goregaon Giri's proprietor Sharada telling me about her stocking such stuff. I decide to go to Matunga's Giri, but some thing makes me change my mind and I go to the Goregoan one and pick up a pile of beautiful, gold-tinted, jewellery that looks so much like the original stuff and made in the typical south Indian style -- of deep reds, round curves (like their women), and starkly set against pearls and clustered about in simple, unassuming way -- each one looking like the other. You won't find this simplicity in Gujarati jewellery which revels in extravagance. It is amazing the styles of jewellery in this country. I like all the styles and each has their own mood and I def think suggests the temperament of the people. A certain uniformity runs through most things south indian, which makes them more conservative than most.
It can grate that, if you don't belong. Otherwise, it can be a haven. It is matter of orientation I guess. I myself, I prefer, to be out of all that and observe and be neither this or that. Even in the matter of choice of jewellery...
But if you want to use fake gold jewellery for performances or even for your outings, south Indian temple jewellery are nice rich choices:)

At the gold-plated costume jewellery shop I picked four pieces for Rs 2200. At Giri's I got 12 pieces (bangles, necklace, neckpiece, head pins, nose pins and rings, waist band, arm bands, etc) for Rs 2650.

Giri Trading Agency Private Lts.
At Bangur nagar, Goragaon West, 28767298
They also have units at Dombivli, Matunga (Big one, in two sections -- book and Cd and one of temple and pooja items near the Matunga post office) , Nerul. They also have centers in other cities like Secunderabad, Coimbatore, Kanchipuram and Chennai.
For further details check out their website www.giritrading.com

It is also a great place to scout for spiritual/religious books:)

Sun birds, actually, in my balcony

(The small pile of dirty looking leaves and twigs, a perfectly camflouged nest of the sunbirds, handing from a dried money plant vine in my balcony:)

My student Sabrina pointed out that the birds nesting in my tiny balcony are not tailor birds after all. They are sun birds. Possibly called that for the dash of pale yellow on their breasts. These ones are technically called Purple rumped sunbirds. The female, as with the animal species, is duller, greyish where the male has a dark, blackish attractive overcoat. The nest, over which the two birds have been fussing, has taken over a week now. And they are still at it. My husband made a video of their effort. It was done with his mobile, which explains the quality.(Click on the line, to watch it).

The other day I saw a sparrow, which looked large compared to these tiny fellows, peck harshly on the male seated on my tiny neem tree. The male sun bird was holding a fluffy feather in his curved beak, to line the nest. The sparrow kept pecking till the poor fellow had to drop it. Only then would the sparrow fly off. What wickedness, meaningless too:) Amazing how this world goes... And I remember singing as a child "It is Love, it is love, it is love that makes the world go around.." So innocent, so foolish, then. And now!

The dried Money plant vine is what the sunbirds had chosen, deliberately flimsy and frail so that other wicked ones of the animal kingdom, more keen on things other than the pecking order, could not climb over it. I can imagine snakes, crows loving to gobble up either those eggs or the nestlings. Let's see how it goes. As of now, the female makes foolish forays against my French windows, either imaging another rival female flapping into her, or seeing foliage where none is. So much like humans:)

So funny, so silly: what some people say...

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Yesterday I read a compilation in HT Cafe about beads. And read this amazingly silly statement: "Research says people who wear beads have more fun."

(My take and why I find it silly-funny? Do u need a research to say THAT!! Only people who have fun in their mind and body also have the guts to wear beads... Rest just dream about it(the bead-wearer admirers) or sniff at it (the sour grapes) ... It is a right brain orientation!)