Fun and Learning with the Wise!

Do you have an elderly person in your family/neighbourhood who is extremely knowledgeable in any specific area, which could be of interest to others? For example, traditional Indian recipes, medicinal herbs, the history of a particular place, events from a particular era, or an interesting craft or skill that few people have. Or are they great story tellers, of old traditional Indian stories and folk tales that have not been documented?

Would they be happy to speak about it to a general audience, on a Zoom call? Can they speak reasonably well in English? If yes, would love to hear from you. 😃

What is this about?

 A bunch of us ex-colleagues got together virtually during the lockdown to do something around Mental Well-being in the Elderly.  

We are partnering with Silver Talkies to launch a series of sessions where elderly people will share knowledge in a live virtual session for the young and old alike, and interact with them. Our senior citizens have a wealth of knowledge! 

Being mentally engaged and feeling valued go a long way in keeping them happy and alert, and it delays cognitive decline. So this is a small attempt to help with that. 

We did 2 trial sessions with 2 friends' mothers speaking about traditional regional recipes, customized to their families' tastes. It was a great success! And both of them were super-excited though initially nervous. 😊 Their children/grandkids introduced them and made it feel like we are listening in on a family conversation - it was a beautiful experience!

So now we are trying to launch this with Silver Talkies providing the platform.

Guidelines

• The person should be able to speak reasonable English. Later on we would like to do this in vernacular languages too, but trying to get this off the ground for now, following Silver Talkies guidelines.
  
• Would need a family member/friend with them who can help them get on  to the Zoom call that Silver Talkies will set up, keep them company, ask questions, explain questions if needed etc. And if it is in the form of a conversation with the old person, they will also feel more comfortable. 
• It will be a 1-hour session. Open to anyone. You could forward the Zoom invite to all your family and friends. This is free of charge. 
  

Please let us know in the comments below if you know of someone. Or mail/message me or one of the people below if you know us personally. 

Thanks!

Asha. For the group (Adarsh, Lekha, Manoj, Prabha)

Who will you call today?

"When the lockdown started, all of us from the old college batch made a promise that we will dig up the phone numbers of our teachers from 20 years ago, make a list, and sign up to call and check on each one of them. They were incredibly moved. And so happy to hear from us. Some of them were in tears.

After that we now call up at least two people every week to check on them. People whom we haven't spoken to in years, old friends, distant relatives. Just call. Ask how they are. Connect. Spend at least 20 minutes on a conversation where you are really listening.

And every Saturday we have a quick catch-up with the college batch to share how moved we have been by these calls. How we received more than we gave. It has been life-changing. And it totally raises our spirits amidst all the gloom and disaster all around, the best distraction ever."

We heard this incredibly beautiful story because an old friend and I set up this Zoom call in our apartment complex, on Mental Well-being. She works for the Live Love Laugh Foundation, which is doing incredible service at a time when we are having a Mental Health crisis the world over. 

Of course it was uncomfortable. We don't speak about Mental Well-being in public in India, do we? 😊 But what do we have to lose? Covid has brought mental health to the forefront, ironically. The few people who dialed in completely agreed that we need to talk about this subject now. 

And what a hugely inspiring story we got as a reward! I have been trying to practice this myself. 

What does it entail?

1. Make a list of people you haven't spoken to in ages. Old friends, classmates, teachers, neighbours, acquaintances, distant family members, ex-colleagues. People whom you like or respect, but haven't connected to in ages because you have just been too busy with your own life.
2. Get their numbers if you don't have them.
3. Call at least 2 people from this list every week, when you and they are not in a hurry. Or just 1 if you can't make the time. 
4. Spend a good 20 minutes at least catching up. Listen. Ask the real questions. Get to know what they are going through. How they have also smiled and wept and walked through the fire while you were busy with your own journey. Share how you have done the same. Look beyond and really see the human being behind the words.

I won't spoil it for you by telling you how you will feel at the end. 

Discover it for yourself. 😃 And tell me about it. 

Background to this Post: Walking the Thin Line

Walking the Thin Line

Are you walking the Thin Line? Know someone who is? Don't know what to do? 

There is help all around. Reach out. Talk. It's not a Bad Life. It's a Bad Day. 

Deepika Padukone, a well-known Indian movie star, founded The Live Love Laugh Foundation after she came out about her battle with depression.

 https://thelivelovelaughfoundation.org/

The site is an excellent resource for those who are not sure where they are on the spectrum of mental well-being issues, whether it is time to seek help - and how. They also have programs for various groups, including children. One of our dear friends works there. 

India is seeing yet another amazing wave of positive social change amidst all the disaster, yet another testament  to our incredible adaptability and resilience. More and more people are speaking up about struggling with mental health issues. Seeking help is increasingly applauded as the right thing to do.  

Covid has finally brought in an increased acceptance that we are fallible, we have minds that need to be looked after as much as our bodies, and that the most resilient people are those who seek help.

Join the movement. Make 2020 the year you were an Agent of Social Change, part of the Big Wave that will go down in the history of this country. Tell me, you DO want some good memories of this year, don't you? 😊 

Speak

• Initiate conversations around mental well-being in your close circles - family, friends, office colleagues, apartment complexes, communities
• Of course it is uncomfortable. Change is difficult. Be a Warrior. "What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"*
• You will be surprised what change you bring about, bit by bit. You never know. 
• The time is right. Strike.  

Share

• Share mental health resources widely across social media
• You never know which helpline will save someone's life

Seek

• If you ever find yourself walking the thin line, seek help. There is a life after this. Believe me.

Why am I sharing this? This is a campaign that came out of Saturday evening calls I set up with ex-colleagues from 15-20 years ago when the lockdown started in March 2020. We hope to contribute to the Mental Health Revolution in India, in our own small way. We believe that it's when everything comes crumbling down that we have to rise, be engaged, go beyond the preoccupations of our own personal lives. 

Has any other time ever proved to us as much that we are all in this together, we are intricately and irrevocably linked?

Please share. Somewhere someday it may reach someone who is walking the thin line with nothing to break the fall. 

*Mary Oliver, 'The Summer Day'

Foul!

My good friend Venkat doesn't get on Chat with me much these days. Wonder whether it has something to do with this conversation that happened more than a decade ago...😀

Discussion on Chat with Venkat. He wants to know about the films happening at the Indo-German film festival.

I tell him he missed the German movie called Wild Chicks at 3 PM.

I also tell him that some day I will make a movie called Wild Chicks. [Vild Chix, to prevent copyright problems]. It will be about this military coup in a poultry farm.

Since I need to somehow get people to watch/buy the film, I will have a few women in it. (this was pre-political correctness!)

But guess where they come in the movie, apart from all over the DVD cover and the posters? At the poultry farm the chickens watch this educational program called Reproduction in Humans. That's where these women come in.

But just when it gets interesting, Grandpa Chicken will come and switch off the TV.

Yes, I need to get an A certificate for the movie - otherwise no one will watch it. I'll get one - for the abusive language the chickens use when they fight!

At this point, I think Venkat is pulling his hair out. There is silence in the Chat window. He says he's going to watch F TV.

I say that there is an F TV in the poultry farm movie too - the chickens watch this channel called F TV - Fowl TV. Ooo ha ha ha ha!!

Though old-fashioned Grandpa Chicken calls it Foul TV.

I think it was at this point that Venkat abruptly closed the Chat window and went out for a drink.

Duck!

That was a warning. In case you didn't notice. 😛

Mr.Watter and his family lived with their best friend whose name was Duck. Duck's name was Duck because he was a duck. Duck lived in a small wooden house on stilts which Mr.Watter built for him near the porch.

Whoever made the word "weird" did so after meeting Duck. Every morning when one of the Watters opened the front door to collect the newspaper, Duck would be waiting on the small ledge under the porch roof with bated breath. Just as the person bent to pick up the newspaper, Duck would jump on his back cackling loudly in wicked glee. You could duck other ducks, but not Duck. He was as good as a heat-sensitive missile.

This drove Watter mad, but he didn't beat the life out of Duck or have him for dinner - he knew that in life, having to put up with some weirdness was a small price to pay for having loving, faithful, and forgiving friends.

So he came up with this solution. Whoever came to pick up the paper would wear a trekking jacket. So when Duck landed on them like God's wrath early in the morning, he would not get a grip and would slip off and land on the ground with a surprised cackle, and waddle away shaking his bottom furiously.

Now, Duck, either due to genetic unfairness in the department of Logical Deduction from Predictable Patterns, or having read just the first few chapters of too many philosophy books and therefore treated each new day as a fresh blank slate, unsullied by the experience of yesterday, went on jumping off the ledge on Watters' backs and falling off each time.

This went on so long that in the neighbourhood, when anyone wanted to say that something didn't affect him at all, he would say " It fell off me like Duck off a Watters' back!"

End of Story.😬

For life ought to be rich and abundant and full of love

Sonali and me and her folding chair at my Silk Cotton Tree

Twenty years ago, I used to be part of this group of strangers who used to meet up at an old house on Lavelle road in Bangalore on Sunday evenings, for "Culture Cafe" readings. The lovely Jyoti Makhija of the British Library set up this Yahoo group for people who loved to read. We met up on Sunday evenings and sat in a circle on the cool red oxide floor of this old empty house and read excerpts from books we loved. I met some very beautiful people there. Like Sonali. 

From whom I got a letter on Friday - ON PAPER - with big pictures of owls, in crayon. She lives a few kilometres away, but is reviving this old "art form", the written word on paper. It so happens that I get it the day before my birthday. What a lovely gift! 

And in the letter she mentions a particular passage I read in the group - 20 years ago! She said she could never forget the bread and the cheese, the thick chunks of it. 😃

Sonali, of the incredible strength, and the knowledge that Joy is something you got to create, like a home-cooked meal, not something you wait for to be delivered on a platter. 

It was easy to find that excerpt. This is where I got the name for my recipe blog - Abundance. It is the very first post on that blog. I had forgotten the details. But in a way this line was seared into my brain, and defined everything I believed life should be. 

I read this 1963 Norwegian novel just before I turned 20, those years of suffering when you are coming out of your cocoon and you are Neither Here nor There. 

I am not a foodie. If you ask me what I want to eat when we meet, I will probably say, "whatever". I don't really care. I care way more for Conversation and Connection. I will most probably not remember a single thing we ever ate together, unless of course you cooked it for me. But I will remember every single story you told me. And I believe in Generosity. And the Giving of Oneself without holding back. 

“…..For life ought to be rich and abundant and full of love."

Through all the years when life was neither rich nor abundant nor full of love, I still believed in this ideal vision. Just because I can't see the stars does not mean they don't exist. 

Nothing is ever promised. But "only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one" as Mary Oliver said? 

"A piece of bread and butter must overflow with joy and enthusiasm, with generosity and love."  

Ash Burlefoot, somewhere along the way, I have become you. 

Abundance: http://noodlesandmangopickle.blogspot.com/2009/08/abundance.html

There are no edges to my loving now

"We are drawn to edges, to our own, parapets, and sea-walls."

'Apart', Robin Robertson

They say everything is Freudian. Everything has a reason which our poor old slow Conscious mind is yet to catch up with. 

I still remember the taking of this photo. The exact spot where I rode up to, with two dear friends. I was riding into the sea, from a steep steep hill top, as a joke. Just stopping at the very edge, and looking back into the camera.

This picture sums up my entire life.

Yet another birthday. And I am still around. Thank you. For making me turn back and look. In your own individual ways. 

There are no edges to my loving the world anymore....

There are no edges to my loving now
The clear bead at the center changes everything.

There are no edges to my loving now.

You've heard it said there's a window

that opens from one mind to another,

but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Translated from the original Persian by Coleman Barks

Listen to Albert Cadmore's Show on Harbour Radio :)

The most delightful thing happened to me two Thursdays ago! 😃A dear British colleague's father Albert Cadmore hosts this lovely music show on the Great Yarmouth Community radio every Thursday 2-4 PM UK time. And he played a song for me  - Sway, by Dean Martin! And spoke about me on the show, saying I am his first listener from India!

The 2-hour show is full of anecdotes and short interviews, and appreciation for all the great things people are doing locally during these difficult times, amidst a collection of beautiful old songs - many of which are requests from listeners, often dedicated to someone. It's two hours of peacefulness amidst all the anxiety going on all around. You can keep this running while you go around doing other stuff. 

Please listen to his show, it's such a lovely way to relax - and we could all do with some de-stressing right now. I have a recurrent reminder in my calendar now, and I wait for Thursdays. 

Do let him know if you enjoy the show - he will be thrilled, and also mention you on the show. 😊They are very eager to connect with people across the world, so do spread the word. 

How to Listen

1. Open Play Store on your phone's Home screen, if you have an Android phone. See picture above - that's how the Play Store icon looks like. For iPhones, you will have something similar that allows you to download apps. 
2. Now search for Radio Garden, or the TuneIn app in Play Store Search. When you find it, click Install.
3. Once it is installed, open the app and locate Harbour Radio.
4.  You can also look for Great Yarmouth on the map that it displays. It's on the East coast of England, see picture below. You will see Harbor Radio once you locate Great Yarmouth. Save as Favourite, the Heart icon. 
5. Play Harbor Radio at 2-4 PM UK time every Thursday. Which is 6.30 PM India time now. You will hear Albert Cadmore presenting his show. 
6. Create a recurrent reminder on your phone/Gmail calendar if you use one, so you get a reminder every Thursday. Or some other reminder that works for you. 😊

Requesting a Song/Dedication/Contacting him

• You can send requests or message him on the number given on their Facebook page: 
• 0-79-42-64-10-74 (+44-79-42-64-10-74 from overseas)
• If you liked his show, you can also leave a comment/message on their Facebook page.

Follow their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/harbourradio

Do let me know if you enjoyed the show. 😊 If you would like to mail him, do ask me, can share his id. 

For what else might happiness be?

Squirrels live on trees doing Squirrel Things, scampering on agile butterfly feet, scratching their ears with baby fingers, cleaning their bushy tails, playing endless games of catch-me-if-you-can, going crazy at the return of the light ("OH MY GOD, it's back!") and standing on their hind feet and stretching their arms  and yawning and warming their fluffy tummies in the first rays of the morning sun when all is well and ummmmmmmm happy in their small squirrel world.

Every morning they come down from the trees, and take what the day offers them. Sometimes there is food, sometimes there isn't. But every morning they come down and notice - "OH MY GOD, it's morning again!" And run around like crazy the rest of the day, chasing each other up and down and around tree trunks, round and round, like they are on wheels. Squirrels never get dizzy. They have a Dizzy Stabilizer in their heads. Am sure they won't faint on a roller coaster like I do.

Understandably I am on a high when I return from my morning walks full of squirrel encounters. Some part of my soul must be with them.

I figured out a long time ago that humans were put on this earth primarily to create electric lines and TV cables so that squirrels can get from tree to tree without having to come down and cross the road. We are just Squirrel Bridge Makers, and we are blessed to be given such purpose. (Come on, can you come up with a better reason? :) )

I watch squirrels all the time, wherever I go. I can hear a squirrel above the sound of the traffic. In the park I sometimes follow Squirrels Going Somewhere jumping from tree to tree and sometimes I discover squirrel nests.

If a squirrel comes near me, you no longer have my attention, sorry. I like you, but the trust of an animal is Another Thing Altogether. That is the kind of thing you have to kneel down to accept, in reverence and wonder. For a tiny little piece of time, the wall between you and a wild creature has come down. And you look into each other's eyes. And wonder - do I know you?

Of all the saints, I relate the most to St Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Animals. And therefore this poem speaks to me.

Happiness
Jane Hirshfield

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2014/05/for-what-else-might-happiness-be.html  

The world you most want to live in is right here

The fundamental principle of Tai Chi is balance. To never lose your balance when you are attacked. As long as you are standing you have a chance. You fall down and your opponent has the upper hand. At the root of all the slow movements of this incredibly beautiful martial art, the mother of all other forms, is a return to equilibrium.

Patrick used to be my hairdresser for a few years. One of the many Westerners who came to India and never went back. We both used to wait for my monthly haircuts - he, because he could talk in French non-stop, and me because I got to practice my French, AND hear a million stories! About his native Marseilles, his mother who would keep an extra place at the table every Christmas for someone who had no place to go to, and his fisherman grandfather who could predict the heavy winds of the mistral by the colour of the sky. His colleagues at the saloon would smile when I walk in. They knew Patrick would be in a great mood the rest of the day. :) 

He had told me once that he had learned Tai Chi from a Chinese teacher in Marseilles 30+ years ago, and how he still practices it. How it has helped him through so much. And how people ask him to teach it, but he doesn't want to. He was a man of strong opinions. So I didn't ask, though I wanted to continue the Tai Chi I had learned many many years ago.

But suddenly one day in 2016 he asks me - do you want me to teach you Tai Chi? I couldn't believe it. And so started our weekly early morning sessions in Jayamahal park. He would explain so beautifully, in French, how everything about Tai Chi was about balance.  You open, you close. You rise, you descend. You give, you take. And you repeat, again and again and again. You stand with your feet firm on the ground, and move slowly, gracefully, barely displacing the air. 

It was just other-worldly, I could barely breathe. I had goose-bumps every single time. 

Later on, you realize why he did that. He knew he was going to die. He wanted to pass on whatever he could, while there was still time. He was waiting for his biopsy report. He had lung cancer. I was with him and his wife the last few months. The hospital. The treatment at home. And I helped to call his daughter and speak to her in French and ask her to advance her ticket, there would be no time. She made it, 2 days before he passed on. She brought him the smells of his hometown, from the Southern coast of France.  Lavender oil, Marseilles soap made of olives, traditional sweets. 

He left with the smells of his childhood, half-conscious. Maybe that was closure in one way. You go out into the world, you return.

And so I move on, the sum of all the innumerable gifts so many have given me, so generously, so whole-heartedly. I try to give it all away, this embarrassment of riches,  but the universe keeps refilling my bowl, again and again, in the most unexpected of ways. 

On a Day when Hostility rules the News

Rosemerry Trommer

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2017/08/on-day-when-hostility-rules-news.html

Patrick, featured here: https://www.magzter.com/article/Celebrity/HiBLITZ/Je-taime-Bangalore

Arriving Home

The hardest journey is the journey to the ground at our feet. I should have known that, given how much time I spend alone with myself, happily. No, I didn't see it, I was busy watching ants. :)

It is amazing how much distraction we heap upon ourselves to avoid looking at the face in the mirror. Or denial. Work, hobbies, fun, travel, the search for novelty, learning, doing, saving the world - everything protects us from having to look at oneself. And getting down to fixing what needs to be fixed. And yet love the pitiful creature that one is.

Still a long way to go. But the journey has been the most humbling one ever. And it wasn't joyful when it began.

But age, that wondrous thing!

The body starts to fall apart. (Why do I even need so many teeth?:)) But the mind just comes into its own, reaching its joyful youthful exhilarating prime, heaviness giving way to lightness, the chaff falling away by the wayside - along with all the hair. :)

A Spiritual Journey
Wendell Berry

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-ground-at-our-feet.html  

The birds don't alter space, they reveal it

White-cheeked barbet, nesting on my Silk Cotton tree

For Abhisheka, with gratitude

I have never been able to meditate. But I can tune into Barbet Station anytime, anywhere. :)  Above the loud traffic sounds, beyond all that is going on around, I can still identify a white-cheeked barbet. If I suddenly look distracted when you are talking to me, I have picked up a barbet signal. :)  

You can always hear what you want to hear. I hear birds. I hear barbets. This city is still a magical place for me. When things are not good, I go for a walk. And I tune into birds. I move from bird to bird as I walk along. I can more or less identify every single bird call in the neighbourhood by now. Thanks to friends who really know birds - my teachers who changed my life. I can never repay the debt I owe them.  

There is a time to save the world. Fight the good fight. Stand at street corners with placards and raise slogans. Like Rambert the journalist in Camus' 'The Plague', I would "feel ashamed to seek a merely personal happiness."

And there is a time to stop. And tune into bird stations. The barbets. The bulbuls. The cuckoos. The magpies. The kites. The mynahs. And the shikaras, if you are really lucky. And remember that you are one thing among so many others in this universe, your power equally matched by your powerlessness. 

Barbets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IpU_dLropY

The birds don't alter space, they reveal it

Li-Young Lee

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-birds-dont-alter-space-they-reveal.html 

Someone should say what everyone knew

A dear friend is now working for an organization that is hoping to make mental health a topic that people are comfortable talking about in India. Acknowledging mental illness as a reality, and a possibility in every person's life. 

For once we are on a level playing field, ironically. The line between the "Okay" and the "Not Okay" people is blurring. And some have not realized that they have crossed the line, moved to the territory that so many find themselves in most of their lives. 

At the start of it all is paying attention. Keeping an eye on oneself. On others. And actually having the courage to ask, "Are you okay?". The greatest sadness is sometimes no one asking that question. Maybe this lockdown situation will make us no longer avoid what is staring us in the face, "while there is still time". This beautiful poem says it so well. 

On the Death of a Colleague
Stephen Dunn

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2013/06/avoidance.html 

Faith

St Mary's Church, Cambridge, UK

I am not a Christian, but I spent 15 years of my early education in a school and college run by the nuns of the Apostolic Carmel order. The shy stammering child bullied by the smarter more confident children, I used to find refuge in the school chapel where no one could harass me or tease me until I cried. The chapel was usually empty during the day. When I was very small I did not know who this man was, why he was nailed to a cross, why he had a crown of thorns on his head. But I felt he surely must be suffering, and more than me?

And that's how he became a brother.

The nuns once took us to watch a movie about Jesus. When the time came for him to be lifted up onto the cross, I was crying so uncontrollably they had to take me out of the huge hall. Decades later I went to watch the 'The Passion'. When the scene of the crucifixion came, I knew nothing had changed. This was still my brother, my flesh and blood they were torturing. I fainted and slid down unconscious from my seat, much to the horror of my husband and my friend. :)

To this day I walk into churches wherever I go, anywhere in the world, I am deeply drawn to them. The routine is still the same. I smile and say Hello. I kneel down. And then I usually end up crying. Though now it is more out of gratitude and astonishment.

The realization that I have been saved, again and again and again, in ways too miraculous to be real - though I have never had any faith whatsoever..

Storm on Galilee
Teddy Macker

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2016/09/faith.html

Until only the mountain remains...

Stillness...

Dedicated to Shreya, my patient wise young teacher

Fully living and experiencing this well-known poem of Li Po has always remained an aspiration. Though I am very comfortable with silence, love walking alone for hours, and can relate to this poem very deeply - I knew that the quality of  absolute stillness and weightlessness - as if I don't exist at all - I had not really achieved.

And now I am learning Praanayaama (Yogic breathing) from a young friend, an excellent teacher who is correcting all the mistakes I had made earlier when I had attempted to learn. Which led to this mind-blowing experience, literally. 

At the end of each round of Kapaalbaadhi (one deep inhalation followed by multiple rapid exhalations - I can do up to 60 now, and increasing) there is that magical thing that happens. 

For a few seconds you are not breathing. At all. You would think that after not having inhaled for a full one minute, your body would be rushing to inhale, deeply. But no, it doesn't. It pauses. And for a few seconds you are absolutely still. You are not inhaling. You have no thoughts. Yes, that practically impossible thing - to not have thoughts at all - I am experiencing it for the first time in my life. 

I am finally beginning to know what this is really supposed to be - prana (prāṇa), breath, + āyāma (stopping, controlling, restraining) - literally the suspension of breath. 

And then you slowly start breathing again, like the body is just easing back into it, like it just remembered it has to do it, but there is no hurry. And then your breathing throughout the day becomes slower and deeper. Which evidently makes you calmer.  A few weeks of practice, my no-breathing pause has grown significantly. I don't know by how much. I am not counting - because I am not thinking. :)  

It is absolutely exhilarating, wondrous, magical, life-changing. I have hope now that maybe one day I can sit with a mountain like Li Po, until only the mountain remains....

Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2007/09/until-only-mountain-remains.html