I cannot get enough of these two

In These Arms from banjo bandstand on Vimeo.

Even as a little child, my sister had the most expressive, beautiful eyes.
When she was angry with someone, her tiny little fists would clench tightly by her sides as she glared in defiance at whoever dared enough to arouse that anger.Her eyes would burn with unshed tears and she would stare unblinking with such defiance and chagrin that you would be compelled you picked her tiny frame into your arms. The clenched fists would unfold then and encircle themselves tightly around your neck and she would give in to bawling at the top of her voice.

Fiery one, she was.

And still is. As you can see. Thank God, I'm not compelled to pick her in my arms any more when she does that. Now, I just take pictures.

Sitting in on a rainy saturday afternoon by the window sill , doing lunch.


Song of the day: "Rain is falling chama cham cham..ladki ne aankh maari gir gaye hum.
Tan tana tan..tanan tanan "

Ammu

Occasionally, when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch, to a better, happier place. On days like this there was something restless and untamed about her. As though she had temporarily set aside the morality of motherhood and divorcee-hood. Even her walk changed from a safe-mother walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims.
What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge? This air of unpredictability? It was what she had battling inside her .An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber. It was this that grew inside her, and eventually led her to love by night the man her children loved by day. To use by night the boat that her children used by day. The boat that Estha sat on and Rahel found.
--
Sometimes she was the most beautiful woman that Estha and Rahel had ever seen. And sometimes she wasn’t.


Arundhati Roy, God of small things.

I think I'm ready to order some warm yellow sunshine now.


And while we're at it, can I also have chirpy birds, green grass and blue sky with a little sprinkling of white clouds on the side??


I wouldn't really mind a white sailing boat, a dappled blue-green lake and a tanned sailor in a blue-white uniform with crinkly smiling eyes as well.

Thank you, and could you also let me have the remaining packed nicely in a take away parcel too? For memories sake.

The hands that rocks the cradles, rule the world

Happy International Women's day, ladies!

While surfing the internet, I came across this lovely post by Mellisa McEwan on female farmers across the world.

It's striking to realize the extent to which women contribute in providing for their families in a developing nation while still remaining an inconspicuous minority. A study in the Indian himalayas estimated that a pair of bullocks work 1064 h, a man 1212 h and a woman 3864 h in one year in a 1 ha farm! That's more than three times a man's work!

Most of the hard work put by these women involves transporting heavy loads on their heads for long distances, sifting grains and maintaining the fields while bending low in the scorching sun for hours at length. Yet, these women end up being low status laborers with a much low payroll than their male-counterparts due to gender biases.
In addition , these women also effectively take care of their young ones while they do their work from sun-up to sun-down.
Often,you will find these incredible women bending over the fields with their sickles, their babies tied tightly to their backs with a "chadar".When the baby cries ,she will walk to the nearest shade of a tree and nurse her baby to sleep and then resume her work with unwavering determination. At sunset, she will go back home and cook for the entire family and feed everyone first before she sits down to eat herself.

It's a great thing the world is quickly realizing that real development begins first with the upliftment of women. The Grameen Bank is one such perfect model of the power of rural women. A woman is more likely to grab any chance given to her to raise herself out of poverty and when she does that, she also brings her children and future generations along with her.

Here are some pictures I took while I was in India. Power to you,ladies!



Women waiting at a construction site (Location: Ranchi Overbridge,India)



Women sifting grain at harvest time ( Location: Unknown village where our car broke down,Ranchi,India)



Woman cutting grass in the fields (Location: Unknown village where our car broke down,Ranchi,India)



Woman separating grain from hay (Location: Village Hutar, near Khunti Ranchi,India

Just Lounging

The weekend went by swiftly working on my thesis and having finally sent the latest modules to my advisor this afternoon, I felt like I needed a break from everything academic. Call me a nerd of the first degree ,if you will , but the first place I could think of where I could relax and unwind was the library.
Yes, that's what the graduate school does to you ....sad ,but true! And I embrace this nerdiness shamelessly with arms wide open!!
So holding a steaming cup of coffee, I headed towards the "New Books Reading Lounge" and settled down with these two books which currently hold the top positions in my reading list-



As I read these inspiring stories of ordinary men and women who dared to dream to change the world and who were not afraid to be idealists, I felt comforted somehow. If they could do it and do it so well, then perhaps it was not such an awful decision in my part to leave a cushy (albeit terribly boring) software job and travel half way round the globe to get a green degree and face a terrifyingly unknown future .