What I saw:

Had been out shopping for groceries with my mother. In the old part of Pune. I saw, I saw:

1. At a little streetside restaurant, a woman treating herself to lunch. This is remarkable in itself, but know also that this was an old, old rural woman. She had collected her pension (or her husband’s more likely) from the bank and had come here. I wondered if this was a little break from the family/farm/home routine, or a monthly ritual. Was it a treat, or simply a safe place where she could count out and keep away her money? I hope it is the former. I am captivated, encouraged by this woman turning a necessary trip into town into a little vacation for the self.

2. A friend had once asked me if singing while working is a very Indian thing. I remembered that today when I saw a seller of copper jewellery cleaning his wares. He was rinsing each little bunch of bracelets in lemon juice, and had set up a beat. So before one saw him, one heard the cheerful chamcham-CHAM-chamcham-CHAM he had set up.

3. The anti-encroachment police came by when I was in the market. By the time I had figured out what had happened, the stalls had magically folded in onto themselves and disappeared. All those neatly laid out goods, the tables with their little plastic roofs. Each of those stalls has such a permanent air about it that I had never realised that they are illegal, much less so temporary.

yosemite!

and today I am in India! Well, if I squint my eyes a bit. Just arrived at the Yosemite Bug, not yet checked in, and went for a short walk. The forest is exactly like the Western Ghats- 'my' forests. It is only when one looks closely at the trees that one realises that one is not home, after all.
Will post snaps of yosemite soon, in the meantime, here is San Francisco.

on presentations and audiences

had a couple of presentations scheduled last week, and what I liked the most is that the audience was mostly made up of my cheerleading squad. Yes, some did turn up because of interest in the topic, but I love the large shaggy bunch that turned up because' it's chicu' .
Thanks, and hugs, people..

What I Saw..

Yesterday, I said bye to the folks at People for Puget Sound. Today, I became a tourist on a mission.

I saw, I saw:

• The paintings and posters in Post Alley. Also Bubblegum wall. Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of the wall, (or of the rest of the day, sorry, and keep watching this page for updates!). But it is a wall where people have over the years stuck bubble gum so that now it is no longer yucky, but Art. Imagine first, a covered alley with brick walls and cobbled streets that looks like it might house Jack the Ripper. And then, one wall festooned with multi-coloured bits of gum- some just daubed on, some stretched to make patterns. There’s even a figure on a cycle! Someday, soon, I will go and take photos..

• The permanent exhibits at SAM- like with most museums, some left me cold (portraits of the rich and famous), some disturbed me (7-foot tall black rat, anyone?). And some enthralled me. One of those was a jacket from a display of Japanese theatre costumes. The jacket illustrated a story of rabbits preparing for a moon viewing party. The rabbits were showing gathering sake, grass, and I-forget-what for the party. What charmed me is that the rabbits were not walking like the ones in the children’s stories I have seen, they were gambolling! The figures were shown hopping like real rabbits, with the slight difference that these were carrying dishes. I loved it! One could just about imagine it- the softness of the rabbits, the excitement, the anticipation.
  

• And if there was one piece I thoroughly coveted, it was Dishes. This is a painting of dishes drying in a red wire rack. The surface there are set on is blue, the dishes are yellow, pink, green, blue and clear glass. There is a lot of light in that painting. And one can feel that it is a sunny morning, the meal has been shared with friends, and can almost hear the clinking and the laughter. I looked at this one for ages, and tomorrow, as I wash my dishes, I will look at them with new eyes.

• And in the Islamic arts. A photo/calligraphy work. Shows a figure in a white kameez sitting with her back to us, writing on a wall. there is writing on the kameez, on the floor, on the wall, on the writer's hand. Separate, but linked. Missed my sister and how much she would like that. Her words and life merge like that too, I think.

• The exhibition of Roman Art: As Chhotu would say, 'yes,yes, very interesting'. But the faces, esp that of Augustus, were strangely familiar. and loved.

• Came across and watched the beginning of the Labour Day March. It being Seattle, variety and freedom of expression were key. The slogans ranged from ' we charge Bush and Cheney with genocide' to the gently nostalgic 'make love not war'. Well, I saw all this, and the march passed me, and then I turned to cross the street- and did a double take. Ambling towards me, around 4 blocks down the street was a Polar Bear. It was late for the parade, poor thing, and had decided not to bother trying to catch up. So there they were, four men on a protest march of their own- two of them being a bear for a day, and the other two guiding it. (We go UP now, and then down- there is a post ahead).

• Waterfall Park: WHY did noone ever tell me of this? a little garden, surrounded with high brick walls near Pioneer Square. One enters, and there is a huge thundering waterfall, with algae covered rocks and ferns in the crevices. with a little effort, I could almost imagine myself in the Western Ghats. But the garden is Japanese, and the trees are maples, and it is beautiful.
  

Methow

I don't believe this- I have not written of Methow yet. A little place, across the cascades, near Wenatchee. Even the names are interesting, na?
I stayed in a little cabin, in a valley that seemed to have walked out of an Andrew Wyeth painting. a valley of sagebrush and snow surrounded by gentle hills, with pines and boulders. I reached there on a moonless night, and it was dark ,and the snow was so white. I have no idea what light it found to reflect, but it did. white and crunchy, and the only thing one could hear was the steady crunch of our footsteps, and, i am afraid, the occasional 'oops' or worse from yours truly.
In the morning, it was an O'Keefe painting before me. I always thought she painted those purple shadows for art's sake, but no! shadows in the snow are really, truly purple-blue. And the sun was so, so bright! The air smelt of sagebrush. and it was warm, and quiet, and the colours! a limited palette, but all possible hues of purple and yellow with the green of the pines.
And at night, the stars came out. like I have seen them only a handful of times. Once each at sawantwadi, hari-hareshwar, and Dive-a-ghar, and twice at sulibhanjan. it was cold, and we were standing on the deck wrapped in blankets and looking up,up, up.
I was reading Isabella Bird, and at one point she mentions of a peaceful night ," I was woken up only once by gunshots, but after that the night was quiet and I went back to sleep." That sentence was always to me the epitome of travel. Well, here I was woken up only once by coyotes, and after that the night was quiet, but I did not go back to sleep. Instead, I went out to the porch again and stood looking at the stars.
There were deer tracks, and coyote scat, and we saw a chipmunk, and a hawk.
Everything was perfect. We walked, and read, and cooked, and played scrabble, and I was happy.

Spring!!

has sprung.
and i have never lived through this explosion before.
At home, it is a gentle awakening. it is green. the tangy smell of mango blossoms (i miss them, miss them), new leaves, the desperate-for-a-mate magpie robins.
Here, it is pink. cherry blossoms, other fruit blossoms i have not been introduced to, magnolias, camellias that are exuberant but strangely disappoint with the lack of fragrance- like a goodlooking person who is not interesting.
So home, it is green and sharp- like kairi chutney; and here, pink and sweet, like strawberry icecream. do i prefer one over the other? one is home, the other is mine. one grown with, the other reached out for. hmm.
but it snowed. And while all of Seattle was deploring the return of winter, yours truly pulled on a coat and went out. think of it, I thought I had said goodbye to Seattle snow- and then it palated. how could I not run out and hug it?
But here is a link to pinkness..

is cold

Frosh pond freezeth over!

How intelligent are gulls? are they like crows who have a concept of play? Because today on the pond I saw one juvenile 'playing' with a piece of ice. it would pick it up, drop it with a satisfying clang and then scoot around pushing the ice with it's beak. Repeat over and over again. It looked exactly like avian ice-hockey, and by the time i left, there was a crowd of spectators large enough to gladden it's little gull heart.