The Weaves of Time!!

When I was a little child, my mother had a few nice mekhela sadors that she would alternate wearing to weddings. One was a shade of purple and another was the most beautiful resplendent peacock blue, she had got during my eldest Mama's wedding. Sometimes I would wear them while playing with dolls, pretending to be grown-up. Later, she added few more to her collection, purchased from one of her friends Medhi aunty, who used to bring them from Sualkuchi and cater to everyone in Shillong. I believe it was common for middle class India at that time to not have too much of anything and still be very happy.

I didn't have too many myself, when I moved to the US, apart from the few from my wedding. I never felt the need to get more, since I didn't wear them much. But once we got here, we got sucked into a social whirlpool and it spun out a rainbow of shades of mekhela sadors, adorned by the beautiful ladies, I now call friends. Since then my closet has grown by a few mekhela sadors, every year. 

The two things that inspire me the most about the attire, is that the beautiful Assamese ladies embrace and adorn it full throttle. Whenever I visit Guwahati, I am thoroughly impressed by women just going about their daily business, fluttering beautiful weaves. There is no giving up on mekhela sador for any other attire!!! The second and even more important one is that the weavers and designers keep coming up with innovations in color, design, fabric and style, always keeping it interesting.

Here are two recent trends. In the first picture, I am wearing a pastel lavender mekhela sador with rose gold copper guna, in contrast to yellow gold guna used traditionally and in the second picture I am wearing a pistachio mekhela sador in tone-on-tone metallic guna and oh how I love them!!!❤️

Anupamaa

My blog has suffered much worse from the lack of content during the pandemic, than mainstream media. So I have decided to revive it by posting more frequently. 

In the height of the dearth of content, one by one we got hooked to an Indian soap named Anupamaa on Hotstar, starting with me. Anupamaa,the protagonist in the series, is a housewife taking care of the entire family, while neglecting herself. Despite her efforts, she is mistreated by almost everyone she takes care of, from her mother-in-law to her husband and even her own kids.

The story is about her battle and struggle to find herself and her happiness. The first of these being starting a dance school, a passion she had long given up. 

New episodes were loaded at 9pm ET and we kept checking for it and religiously watched it all together as family for one and a half years, when there was nothing of much else to do, until this summer, when we canceled the Hulu-Hotstar subscription. The series was also going a little too far in the story line like all long-running soaps. But while we watch it pushed forth several female centric areas, such as remarriage of older divorced women in India. Rupali Ganguly of Sarabhai vs Sarabhai fame, played a great role enacting the protagonist. Here is my enactment of her most famous dialog in the series. :-)

Survive, Thrive, Don't Languish!

‘You can cut me up all you want, but I will still grow even more lush’. That is the motto of a plant.  

I don’t know if it is a part of growing older, but plants seem to be influencing me over anything else these days. Last year, when we were in the heat of the pandemic, in my effort to share some positivity, I had written about how we should learn to be resilient like plants. They can be limp one moment and opulent the next, after we give them some water. 

 

Who had expected at that time, that this year would be even worse? A back-breaking mockery of our resilience. It has broken us emotionally, mentally, impacted jobs, careers, education, finances, not even to mention the millions of lives lost globally. An irreversible blotch. 

But do we have a choice, other than to persist and survive and even thrive when all this is over. The New York Times attributed the work ‘languishing’ to how everyone is feeling now. But I would say that in our minds, let us take a lesson from the plants and not give up our hopes to thrive.

Last summer, I had a big brawl with my husband because he almost mowed my favorite rose bush down completely. He never liked it much since it was growing skimpy and it was his first effort to get rid of it completely, not taking it out all at once to not offend me even more. Come spring, the bush just grew as verdant as can be and radiated out a hundred flowers. Much to my bewilderment and his complacency, that he did the right thing.

 

More recently, in another amazing instance, I cut off the leafless stems of my age-old money plant, to see if I could generate some new plants out of them. I put them in a vase of water and didn’t pay much attention to the original pot. In two months, the original plant was screaming leaves at me, almost mocking me :-). The cut-off stems had also grown roots, which I planted in a hanging pot.     

The plant gave me a lesson that no matter which end I cut, it would grow what it needed. The base plant grew new leaves and shoots, while the other end grew new roots. It consolidated in me a lesson and a conviction to never let go. I hope these stories will inspire you too.

 

Survive now and thrive when the circumstances allow and as best as you can, erase the languishing!!

 

The Bridges Of Lancaster County

Wanderlust found a unique way of fulfilling itself this year, right here in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. Lancaster is the home of the Amish, a conservative Christian community that arrived in the 1720s from Europe, to avoid religious persecution. Their presence has helped this area retain its pastoral ambience, owing to their adherence to a mode of living sans the use of modern amenities. Just about an hour away from where we live, it is an easily accessible drive and this year, it has often featured in our escapades from isolation at home.The county has twenty-eight covered bridges and the highlight of our trips was a passionate hunt for one bridge after another, with several conquered. These covered bridges were built around 150 years back and the reason for such construction was to protect the wood from the vagaries of weather, combined with preventing the horses from getting spooked while crossing the brooks and rivulets and jumping right into them. They were also called 'kissing bridges', as in the olden days, lovers took a moment to kiss in the privacy they afforded, while crossing them. Take a look below and if you live in the area, visiting these bridges, can be a fun activity for you too.

Resilience and You!

Have you seen a plant withering for lack of water? I am sure you have. What happens after some time when you water it? It springs back to life. That is resilience. The ability to spring back into our normal healthy, positive self, no matter what we endure, in the course of our existence.

Resilience is one of the foremost qualities that we need to imbibe in ourselves, so we can make forward-looking strides in our life’s journey and thus be positive and spread positivity around us. It has become even so much more relevant, in the current circumstances, with the pandemic taking its toll on every aspect of our life, social, economic and most importantly our physical, emotional and mental health. Humanity is suffering from a collective fatigue.

During the pandemic, I have been seeking to find what activities could be done, whilst socially distancing from others. Among several things, we visited a lavender farm in Milton, Delaware with beautiful fragrant flowers, that refreshed our minds. Here is a glimpse of it with a humble request that each of you seek out ways in which, you can feed your soul with positive experiences, until we overcome this calamity, with a firm belief that all this will be over and move to our distant memory soon. 

Life in the Time of Corona

The sapiens were all jet-setting on thier own trajectories, when the whole wide world came to a grinding halt.

It was early March, when news of the COVID-19 outbreak started hitting the headlines more often, overshadowing everything else and moved quickly to panic. Even more quickly, the distinction between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', was reduced to hand-sanitizer. A very rude awakening, to say the least, but one that will hopefully keep us grounded and humble, at least for the lifetimes of the generations, living this nightmare.

We were traveling in India at the time the panic spread, almost at the fag end of our trip. Until a few days back, the Bengali Koro-na or Beer Corona jokes had evoked laughter. At this point though, all humor was overcast by pall of the doom, the virus was bearing, in several countries.

Abandoning last minute shopping plans, I desperately looked for just a bottle of sanitizer. The commodity was nowhere to be found. But goodness prevailed.  A blessed lady, who didn't even know me, shared a small bottle of Lifebuoy brand sanitizer, on being asked by someone, who was looking for it for me. I hadn't thought about masks at that time, but by the end of the day, I wanted them just as desperately and managed to procure somehow. It was a 15-hour flight from New Delhi to Newark with a plane-full of people, otherwise mundane, but now a pretty daunting task to undertake.

For the first time, we donned masks in the airport, in a long line of many firsts to come. I enjoyed a Raj Kachori, at the Dehli airport, despite seeing instructions to avoid eating cold stuff and I am glad I did, because that would be my last nice meal eating out, for a very long time.

Raj Kachori at Delhi Airport

Back in US, we hardly got to step out for two days, before everything went on lockdown.I didn't care to find out, why toilet paper was running out, which I later read could be due to herd mentality or since people would have forty percent more consumption, as they would be home instead of their workplaces or schools.

I desperately looked for sanitizers though, at the end ordering a 1-gallon bottle from Amazon, that cost me a whopping eighty dollars. It was all the sanitizer I would need forever, but the item was unavailable soon after I ordered, so I was glad I did. After a wait of several days, it finally came.Now that I was a 'have', I decided to pay forward the good Karma of the lady who donated to me. I filled small mineral-water bottles with sanitizer and gave them to some neighbors, who couldn't find them.

Life as we knew it didn't exist anymore, other than indoors. Social distancing and video calling became the norm. The garage and kitchen became a war-zone and doing grocery (sanitizing, washing and drying) took precedence over doing laundry, which dwindled in volume anyway.

Hotel Ponce De Leon, now Flagler College of Liberal Arts in St.Augustine, Florida

Just four months back, when I was touring yellow fever torn St. Augustine and Savannah, I had wondered, how primitive it must have been, to lose a vast population to a fever.  I had read somewhere, even as a child, that the viruses of the world are our true enemies and that our scientific strides were mockingly minuscule, when it came to not being able to conquer these enemies. Today, our 20-20 vision has shown us that reality, making us aware of how myopic we had become and jogging us back to our senses.

But we are Sapiens - wise, thinking, collaborative humans. According to the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, that is what makes us different from all other species and has led to our predominance and development, our willingness to work with and trust each other. It is not seen, in any other life form, to the same degree. We have lived through crisis of much larger magnitude and evolved to be better and stronger, as a species.

We shall overcome. Hopefully, that day will come soon. Until then, stay safe and strong!!

The Spring

This vernal equinox was especially benevolent, in restoring our lost smiles. After losing Max, a new puppy was not in the cards for us, both emotionally and due to hectic work and travel schedules. However, a bigger destiny fabricated by this circumstantial and indefinite home-stay, brought this adorable 14-week old golden retriever into our home and hearts. 

'If winter comes, can spring be far behind!'

Say Hello to Milo !!