The Reader's Writer..

This post is for my friend and popular blogger GreatBong (GB), whose book "May I hebb your attention Pliss" has been on the stands since the beginning of the year. Not that he is a stranger at all to anyone in the Indie Blogging community (and now in the publishing world), but a post to celebrate GB's success and to uncover the dirty secrets underlying it, is long overdue.

I have known Arnab since my days in Grad School. I always wondered how he saw humor in all the everyday things that would pass the rest of us by like just another day. His sparkling, self-deprecating wit, warped and twisted sense of humor and his relentlessly funny, incessant chatter was enough to turn our little college town on its head.. (or at the very least our Graduate School Dorms - they were pretty miserable save for entertainers like him who cohabited for some reason. And did unspeakable things). I cannot think of anyone who is so equally inspired by good English Literature AND by B-Grade Bollywood movies, Indian pop culture trivia and Bollywood dirt. People very often revel in either, not both.

But Arnab is and always has been well, a bit weird, just like the rest of us. Except he says so and is very articulate about it when he lays it out in a memoir or in a piece of fiction and makes us all chuckle/laugh/roll on the floor at the startling honesty of it all. It feels fantastic to know we are not the only ones who thought/felt/reacted a certain way and that it is ok to laugh about it.

Writers write to connect. I think what people like about Arnab's blog and his book, apart from the trademark Greatbong style and content, is that he has never written anything from this lofty pedestal of an aspiring literary honcho who is too well-read for us, too erudite for us or too far-in-with-cool-journalist-crowd for us. He is, and when he started his blog was, one of us - A regular guy with a job, opinions and a 90's middle class upbringing, who just loves to write, and is so good at it that we think he speaks for us when we agree with him. If we disagree with him, we feel compelled to let him know. He, unlike some other authors, doesn't wear his prose like its piece of jewelery (although him wearing jewelery of any kind is a very disturbing thought in itself). In short, at some point, if you read his posts once you can't ignore him; In any case, with the deliberately and overtly bawdy assemblage of politicians, Mithun movie characters, sadhus, and got knows what else on his blog, how the hell can you ?

Unfortunately though, from what I know of the youngest generation in the publishing industry, pretenses are as important if not more important than true talent. The pretense of heady idealism, the pretense of being passionate and brave to choose journalism as a career "off-the-beaten-track", the pretense of being refined and well read, the pretense of being on a literary pedestal, is all grotesque and obscene and reminds me of a room full of too much nasty smelling perfume that I cannot escape. Hopefully though, the days of the shock embracing second rate talent that results from pretending all the time will be short lived.

Someone from this fine-smelling melee happened to mention that GB's new book is an extension of his blog. Her import I think was that he might as well have blogged the whole book. I think this is a generational bias -I, and the reviewer, still belong to the generation of readers who love their NY times on real paper.It would, still, break my heart if I have to get all my favorite columns online, and have them be only online. We like our book to smell like one. We like to turn its yellowing pages and keep a physical bookmark to pick up where we left off next time. That is just how we all grew up. GB and other writers like him are a part of a paradigm shift in the medium of popular media. His "connection" with his readers started online - they scrolled through to get to different sections of his prose instead of turning pages forward and backward, tabbed through his previous posts to find their favorite post instead of looking up a previous book of his, and left him comments about his post instead of mailing him their letters. I am not suggesting that GB's writing isn't book material, I am merely saying that the existence of prose in a book as we know it today might be short lived. The fact that this might effect writing styles altogether is a worthwhile thought process to engage in, methinks.

I met him recently when he was in New York. I smiled to myself when I noticed he hadn't changed one bit since I knew him in Grad School. He is overwhelmed by the reception from his readers, is thankful for it to have panned out the way it did, is unsure how he as an outsider would fit into the changing landscape of publishing without being different from who is and most importantly, still says as he always has, that he writes because he loves to.

GB, is here to stay. Because he is one of us and he wants things to stay that way. Because what living and breathing all that he writes about will do for GB, tons of deliberate snootiness might not for a whole generation of aspiring wide-eyed authors.

The other side of the Wall Street melt down

One of the things the Wall Street super nova explosion resulted in apart from lost fortunes (or stories of past fortunes), prison sentences and forced sales of homes and private castles, is introspection on the part of some of the bankers (junior and senior) who rode the wave either thinking :

(1) they would get out of this dirty business when they have made their $X Million (X increases exponentially with time and success) or
(2) being a banker was a cool thing to do, and a cooler thing to say - to the skimpily clad girl/guy at the new club in the meatpacking district of New York city - on the one weekend that you had off from making excel models or pitch books (marketing material for deals). If you were lucky not to pass out by the first two drinks and take the girl/guy at the bar home, it would only be to have yourself dumped soon after for answering your Type A boss's frazzled questions on your blackberry while making out. Yep, that's your average entry level banking analyst.
or
(3) Everyone after business school is becoming an investment banker. Sounds good, especially since it will help me pay off my gigantic B-school debt.


Then there were those who really enjoyed doing deals, and loved the thrill of making the fees. And were good at it. Many of those have survived.

Regardless, in my eternal quest for my calling in this world I asked many - and sounded foolish - "do you like what you do " or "is this your calling" or " why do you do what you do" ?

Check out the range of responses :

"I wanted to have enough in common with my husband, so I would be able to relate to him in the future as well" - there it is ladies!! The secret to a happy marriage - its not all those things self help columns tell you it is, its not the sex or holding hands or having vacations together without the kids, and you can now stop worrying about getting home in time to put food on the table before the husband gets home, or going to the gym to be in shape. All you need is the ability to talk shop with your husband! Jeez- who knew?

" I don't despise it, and am fairly good at it. And I don't have to fight with my husband for my annual Chanel/Louis Vuitton fix" - Ah the life-style argument by the LV -Chanel/Lamborghini -Maserati loving people. Sadly, not one that I can support- because I don't have much of a fixation for luxury goods - and don't want to go to LA and Miami to flaunt my latest LV bag. And what do these folks do, when their luxury goods motivated careers plateau because of a lack for a real passion for business - they become chefs, nutritionists, wives of senators or remain middling cogs in the Giant American Corporate Wheel.

I have somehow concluded that frequently people are capable/interested in pursuing a career different from the one they find themselves in. Their worst fears come true when they find themselves in a career at 40 that they don't love very much and are not the best at - a realization I have known several senior bankers to have, especially in bad times when only the really good ones survive because they have a passion for what they do.

Prior to my current job I worked on the trading floor for a giant bank, and sat next to this senior banker who had been in banking for 20 years, was always in the office, but did not seem to get a single transaction underway. From what I could tell he had been fired from two previous jobs, knew only a handful of people in the industry (it is serious career suicide if you don't know enough people on the "street") and for the most part did not have support of the powers that be in the bank to push any of his deals to fruition. In rare quiet moments, over a Seamless web dinner (Seamless Web is a web site listing nearby restaurants for dinner that lowly folks are entitled to as a reward for staying late) he would admit to making a wrong career choice, and his love for gadgets and software and that his best years were those spent getting a degree in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Delhi. He was about 46, had three children and a mortgage. He was fired, again, in the wake of the crisis.

I remain unconvinced after talking to several people on Wall Street that this is indeed they were meant to do. And even as failed bankers yanked out of Wall Street maze either re-invent themselves to prepare for a different career or decide to keep chipping away, maybe there is no black or white answer to my question, maybe many of them don't bother answering it at all. When they realize its too late to have the career of the historian, the Egyptologist, the oceanographer or the astronaut that fascinated them when they were 12, I think the balance people settle on is something they are not bad at, that pays the mortgage and contributes to the college fund for their children and then they hope that all of those factors collectively gets them out of bed every morning. And soon they find themselves in this morass, this endless cycle validated for its purposefulness from time to time by an occasional deal, dinner at a fancy New York restaurant or a few fleeting moments of joy on a vacation at Turks and Caicos- replete with celebrity sightings no less.

For many others though, it continues to be a long quest.

Dump,Eat,Pray,Love, Marry (Repeat)

Liz Gilbert's frivolous and funny rant has made it to Hollywood -I should have seen that coming. The movie stars Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.
I read Eat, Pray, Love while on a plane to Maui. A scholarly work of literary significance this was not. Self help book maybe. Some version of a travelogue, perhaps. In short, a fun, silly, non serious, Carrie-Bradshaw-goes-globetrotting account by the former GQ journalist (columnist?).

I merely have a problem when women take this woman's frivolity for life's lessons and head to Bali to find their "true selves" (Yes, apparently there are accounts of divorced women vacationing in Bali/Ubud because it is the new search-for-your-soul-and-find-your-soulmate destination of the world.). I really hope this movie spawns a generation of 40 something women divorcing their perfect lives. I am evil like that.

The gist of her story (don't worry about this being a spoiler) is this - she is 30, married, with a seemingly perfect life which she and/or her husband must have worked hard at some point to build (upper east side apartment, vacation home somewhere else) and a husband who wants to have a family. But she is hopelessly unhappy. From what I remember, her problem with her marriage is that she does not want to have children because she fears she will end up like her mother in a sub-urban home stirring a large pot of stew with children squealing in the background. She goes into entertaining, curious details about her rationalization of her fears - in fact I consider it quite commendable that she successfully engages the reader despite presenting such details of her mental process as contents of her prose.

She hates her life in New York for all its trite, boring perfection and misconstrues her fascination for escapist, free spirited souls for her own ability and desire to be this free,aimless wanderer who believes self discovery lies in traveling, at your publisher's expense (come to think of it, I do too).
She decides to leave her life and her husband (who one cannot help feeling sorry for despite her best efforts, but I don't think that is the point of her story) behind for going around the world (Italy to eat, India to pray and Indonesia to hang out, I guess).

At this point the book is about her travel and culinary experiences which lacked the Paul-Theroux-Jack-Kerouac'ish dreamy romanticism of travel, but were full of delightful details about food,men and the culture of Italy which she contrasted with the drab, puritanical hum drum of New York. After several such interesting travel and culture related trivia that she notes about India (where she learns to meditate) and Indonesia, there are some small, inconsistent spurts of self-actualization and introspection. Here is the best part - She falls for some one while in Indonesia.

I wondered what was different about the situation with her new love interest (especially since in the book her new love interest is NOT called Javier Bardem!). Why does she suddenly want a binding relationship when that is what she ran away from? Is it possible she just needed a break from her marriage? Is it because the new guy brought novelty to her life being of Brazilian descent and maybe she couldn't take up the "study-abroad" program in college to have had enough interesting experiences? The sympathetic NY Times critic A.O.Scott notes "the essential tension between Liz’s longing for independence and her desire to be loved".

Eat, Pray, Love is an engaging read as the story of a puerile, weak-willed, neurotic Ms. Gilbert who does not have the gall to be the free spirited soul that she so loves to write about. Her previous books include a biography of Eustace Conway in The Last American Man, where according to one of the reviewers, what Ms. Gilbert is most enamored by is "the lifestyle ideal Conway seeks to propagate". It seems Conway abandoned his sub-urban life and family to live in the Appalachian Mountains.
I take the liberty to call her puerile because she jumps from one lifestyle to another somehow believing that there is a Utopian life style decision you can make ( of being single or married i.e.) that has no cons. Predictably, she demonstrates beyond doubt that she does not have the faith to see through her own life decisions, of being single or married, through its expected ups and downs.

I care to voice my dislike because I feel that attempts such as these (and as watchable as it is, Sex and the City too) become pop-culture unfortunately, and promote a brand of fake feminism which is not based on knowing and believing in yourself and being responsible for your actions but on your ability to spurn what society has deemed to be the perfect life - a husband, two kids and a suburban home. As if spurning such a life is somehow brave and assertive. It is hard to blame some one who is compelled to leave a life they once wanted because suddenly they believe that is the way they can truly be happy, but lets at least admit that is not brave to abandon a life you chose for yourself, it is neurotic, and possibly irresponsible.

My cousin in India is a very career focused woman who, after seeing the marriages of her three sisters, consciously decided it wasn't for her. She was in her 20's when she made that decision, she is 55 now. Not only has she been an extremely successful businesswoman, she was the only one who had the resources and the time to take care of my ailing aunt while despite their best intentions, her married sisters were unable to assist in any way because of their numerous other justifiable obligations. At a recent *wedding* celebration for one of her nephews she sighed " You know I look at people who marry, and admire them. I have no faith in the institution of marriage. I don't how people do it. Good for them, as long as they are happy". She knew what she wanted when she was a 20 something and was tough enough to stand her ground in the face of all the social norms, and perhaps even her own weak moments. She still believes that the thrill and peace of being independent far outweigh the benefits of a marriage.

Whether you believe in the institution of marriage or not, society has evolved enough to allow you live your life the way you please. Marriage does not have to mean a sub-urban home and kids; A committed relationship does not have to mean a piece of paper two people sign in court which legally binds them forever, neither does it mean some fairy tale wedding with gifts, flowers and the perfect wedding dress. It is your relationship with yourself, to begin with - Make what you want of it. This is where Ms. Gilbert's in depth, and curious analysis of the history of the institution of marriage to rationalize her decisions seems unnecessary, and exposes her own inability to grasp what she wants from life.

Liz Gilbert has written a new book called Committed where she marries once again (this time her hand is forced by the US authorities) but apparently spends all her prose explaining her research on this all-enduring institution called marriage, and how she has finally made peace with it.

As for the movie, I said I should have seen it coming(I said so when I started writing what has become a very long post in the middle of a work day), because the book with its touristy description of all the lovely locales, the various cultures coupled with this sex-and-the-city brand of neurosis that I clearly love so much seemed all set to be a watchable HBO movie with shallow ideals and hopefully some silly entertainment value for that cold night when you decide to stay in with a bottle of red, pizza and some Javier Bardem..*gasps*

Delicious Words As Nourishment..

The NY times ran a column a few months ago about how the advent of social media, and online bookclubs might have helped book sales, but has taken little something away from the private experience that reading a book used to be. I agree to some degree. As a child, I would finish lunch after school and prop myself up on our old, shaky, wooden four poster bed next to my grandmother, promise to nap but would instead lose myself to a world woven by someone else. Hours would go by, and I would be alone in that world inside my head that some one else created, and one that the author shared, in that moment, only with me. There is absolutely no substitute to the satisfaction of rich, beautiful, layered prose. And I refuse to be available when I feel like escaping into a beautiful story, or a poem, or the lyrics of a song (except my all-powerful claimants almost always win).

I owe my love for stories to my grandmother, and a few other very memorable people (paternal uncle, maternal uncle and Nupur Didi). All these people have left a little bit of themselves with me in all the stories they told me.
My grandmother used to have a old, large chest filled with books that she had collected from when she used to be a little girl. Most of her books were written in Bengali, which I, regrettably never learned to read. But I loved digging out the lovely hard bound books from of her treasure chest - mostly I did that to annoy her and have her chase me around the house, but I also loved their tattered edges, their old odor and their yellow pages with notes scribbled in Bengali. I imagined my grandmother as a little girl reading from these books, and wondered what the little scribbled notes were about. Sometimes she would read to me from one of her books. I'd listen to her comforting, crackling voice which she expertly modulated to express the character's rage, disgust, surprise, sorrow, delight and even a much wider range of emotions I don't have the words for. Sometimes, as a bonus, she would even read me her little notes.

My grandmother lost her eyesight to the point of not being able to read well by the time she was 80. And yet, she would swear by how she would rather give away her jewelry than have anyone taker her precious books away from her (I love books but I doubt I'd go that far, if I had owned any worthwhile jewelry i.e), and how it was her books that had been the constant in her life.Most of my cousins remember her as their cantankerous, sharp-tongued, caustic old grandma. I, however, remember her as a restless, deeply dissapointed person towards the end. Knowing her love for stories and poems, and the care with which she had preserved her books through the many changes in her life, I am convinced that some of her restlessness had to do with not being able seek refuge in her books, when she perhaps needed them the most. She grew up in a non-facebook-internet-TV time. She heard the radio for the first time when she was over 40. Books and her friends were her escape. I, for one, know for a fact that she was happier and absolutely delightful when she could still read, the same book and the same story for the umpteenth time.

Such, I think, is the love for books that spawned this ode to the joy of reading - Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Amy Barrows and Mary Ann Schaffer.

Set in the decade of World War II in Guernsey (Channel Islands), this book is as unconventional as its name. Its dedicated, sincere faith in the magic of story telling as an escape is what sets it apart from other numerous accounts of extraordinary human endurance and sacrifice in times of war. It is as witty, funny and intelligent as it is overwhelmingly sad, all the while superb in its refrain from overtness of any nature (except perhaps about the love life of the person I shall call the psuedo-protagonist. Her love life was, I think, the most unnecessary part of this wonderful book but more about that later).

The story is about the lives of people in Guernsey when the island was occupied by German soldiers during the war. After making their way into France, the Germans occupied the Channel Islands because they believed it would serve as an entry point into England.

The book speaks of the endless restrictions imposed by the Germans on the local residents not in the least of which was the complete blockage of any communication with the world outside of Guernsey. The only thing worse than being cut off from the world is being kept from good food - they ate turnip soup, for days on end because they weren't allowed to eat any good food- if they were found cooking roast pig they could be sent off to the wrong kind of camp. Cut off from the world and forced to do the bidding of the soldiers for everything, Guernsey residents sought solace in each other and in books which they read and talked to each other about in their daily/weekly book club meetings which they hosted in turns. Food for the guests included things like a potato peel pie (residents were not allowed to eat potatoes either). The book is written as a series of letters exchanged between a journalist for the Times (London) and the residents of Guernsey, after the war ended. The exchange is sparked when a book, onced owned by the journalist, somehow finds its way to one of the residents of Guernsey.

Now I am not well read enough to have known that this form of narration (in letters i.e) has a precedent, but I loved it. Before the days of the internet and when there was such a thing as a long summer break, I used to write long letters to friends and family, and anyone who'd reply. A dear uncle in particular was especially kind about writing me back, as generously as I'd appreciate. So there's my very personal reason to love this book.

Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame is far from being among my favorite authors (even with my unimpressively short roster of favorite authors) with her frivolous, although funny, rant about going on tour around the world (Yes, I HAVE read her book on a 6 hour flight to Hawaii), but she IS right about liking this book. Although she must like it for all the reasons I don't. At 30, the pseudo-protagonist (you haven't been paying attention if you've already forgotten who that is) spurns the advances of an all-goodies-rolled-into-one Mr. Big'ish character for some inexplicable neurotic reason after dating him for quite sometime. The way she then chooses to conclude her single life might be in keeping with the whole love-for-books angle of the story, and with the neurotic Liz-Gilbert-Carrie-Bradshaw brand of affected feminism, but it fails to keep up with the simple honesty of the rest of the book.

Now that the snarky bit is done, I must say I also loved how the story draws you in to feel for the characters and their dissapointments, making you want to curse the world for all that is inflicted on them. All they do in the book however is endure, without protest. Life's biggest dissapointments don't transpire with a bang. They sink in slowly, and painfully.

If this book was a person, I think I'd absolutely love her (it has to be a her, read it to find out). Thakuma (my grandmother) would too.

Deutscheland - Hamburg

I don't like being told, which might explain why I work for a state owned, strictly hierarchical, German government bank. However, when I was told that I was to travel to Hamburg, the headquarters and be there for three weeks, I let them know that despite my busy life and elaborate plans of taking the train to work every day, working 8 hours, going to gym once a week to loose 10 pounds in one month and taking the train back to eat my piping hot Stouffer's ready meals over a riveting episode of Law and Order followed by CSI, I would readily defer, as always, to their wishes of sending me to leafy, watery, historic, dreamy Hamburg for three weeks.

Initial Shock
I landed in Hamburg on May 12th 2010, and realized- surprise, surprise - everything was in German-menus, instructions, directions,computer keyboards, Seinfeld,Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond - everything, except for music videos on MTV and CNN. Being accustomed to surroundings that have almost always been bilingual, one of the languages in use being English, and my last trip to Europe being at 4, I totally looked forward to being in this tower of babel with more than a million Deutschen Volk. I quickly realized few other fun things, which were mostly the result of me being the bumpkin that I am :

1. Power supply in Germany (and most of Europe I think) is 220V, its 110V in the US. The hotel did not have a converter and I of course did not either. Which meant that I couldn't use my hair straightener that I had painstakingly remembered to pack for fear of walking around all day looking like I had just rolled out of bed (since no one ever told me that I look stunningly beautiful even when I get out of bed in the morning, I assume it isn't true). I ended up going to work on the first day looking exactly as if.. I had just rolled out of bed. Who said scraggly, frizzy hair in a business suit isn't cool ? Believe me, it isn't.

2. Many retail businesses, including many restaurants, grocery stores, general phramaceuticals etc. don't take credit cards. At all. And I pay by credit card for a bottle of water worth $1.00 in the US. People carry wads of cash all around, or have a special card with "EC" logo which is basically a debit card. I was told using my debit card to withdraw money from an ATM would cost me an arm and a leg. So, there I was, a day old in Hamburg, clearly a city much too advanced for me, without any cash to buy a reasonable bottle of water. And worse, on a holiday. Read on.

3. The Germans are as serious about their holidays as they are about their cars, their beer, being on time and their Bratwurst (or even the unremarkable Curry Wurst). All retail establishments except restaurants, public transport and bars are shut on public holidays and Sundays. So no duane reade like pharmacies, grocery stores, liquor stores, malls on holidays. So you're left with pretty, cobble-stoned streets full of locals and tourists sipping beer and idling away outdoors under restaurant umbrellas wrapped in fleece blankets kept ready by the restaurant to fend off the gentle spring. Too idyllic and peaceful for you, the harried New Yorker ? Get used to it. I know I did, too easily.

4. You ask water at a store or at a restaurant, they'll ask you if you want still water. To which I replied "No, I want bumping water from a river rushing down a hill. What did you think, punk?" The right answer : "I want NATURAL water, no soda." By still water, with or without soda, the Germans mean sparkling water, and they survive on this. In restaurants when you ask for water they often assume you want still water with soda. Even if you ask for still water without soda, it sort of tastes weird, like water with a little bit tonic in it.

After the initial shock wore off, I finally let Hamburg sink in.

An old port city, Hamburg is full of little surprises. I will leave Wikipedia fill in most of the details about Hamburg's hanseatic history and will fill you in any other trivia I come across. But it would suffice to say that Hamburg is one of wealthiest cities in Germany. Instead of the massive castles that usually come to mind when you think of Germany (most castles are in Southern Germany which is also the more touristy part of DE), old world charm is captured in the perfectly maintained 18th century houses that once belonged to wealthy merchants and were bequeathed to future generations. I stayed in one such house, the only one of its kind that was converted into a hotel/inn in the neighborhood I stayed in (Hotel Mittelweg, Hamburg). All the art owned by the merchant was preserved - most of which were portraits of the family. As enchanting as the house was, since I am such a valued employee and was there for three weeks, I had the privilege of staying in what was definitely the closet of the mistress of the house. It was narrow room with a bed, a couch and a desk laid out lengthwise; minibar, closet, TV along the breadth. Charming, pink wall paper with ornate prints lined the walls. Oh and there was loads of still water, free.

Watery Tales

Rivers Alster and Elbe - Hamburg lives and breathes (figuratively and literally) in and around their patient, perennial waters. The beautiful Binnealster (Inner Alster) is lined by the heart of Hamburg's (Germany's) trade and commercial centers. Along the banks of the Outer Alster are some of the city's best neighborhoods, restaurants, parks (Alster park) and houses, which, according to Hamburger's, can either be inherited or make for some rich dowry. These houses never go on sale. Getting rich is so over-rated. I always said so.

Kicking your little kayak into the water for the Hamburg-ers is like getting your bike out on a sunny day and riding it along the park (which they also do actually). And then they wonder why I quiz them about ever bothering to leave the city.

This is an average sunny day in Hamburg.







The Caribbean this is not. Hamburg has a thriving "beach culture", along its rivers. This just means that when they are not physically on the beach, they recreate the beach for themselves in the several beach bars that line the Elbe. This one called the Strand Pauli, is named after Hamburg's favorite sports team. No trip to Hamburg can possibly be complete, without an evening spent idling over a few mojitos slumped on a bean bag on beach sand that layers this special patch of land (specially bought and layered on by the bar's hipster owners), watching the sun set over the Hamburger's as they talk, drink, read and wave to the world that passes them by on the Elbe.

Yoga,Ashram, The cosmos and other such mumbo-jumbo...

After my yoga retreat in Maine last year, even the husband (who wasn't on that trip with me) decided that a mini yoga trip within a few hours of where we live might be worth a shot. The weekend of April 3rd-4th seemed especially promising - beautiful, sunny WEEKENDS (there is no need for the sun to shine so gracefully during the weekdays) are so hard to come by in this part of the world at this time of the year that letting your skin bathe in the sun is like stocking up on precious food while it lasts at a refugee camp. You never know how many days it will be before you are fed sunlight again if you live and work in New York, thanks to an evil conspiracy between rain bearing clouds and harried corporate clients.

We were off to Ananda Ashram in Monroe, New York, an hour's drive from Greenwich, CT. The entrance to the ashram had a sign on the wall, off to the side, in medium sized,subdued green letters which could be easily missed in the dark "Yoga Society of New York, Est. 1958". A couple walking up the pathway pointed us to the main office which was fairly dilapidated, old'ish building with a small,white creaky door. A caucasian lady with cropped hair and glasses sat in a little office which had pictures of Ganesha, Shri Krishna, Shri Brahmananda (The Guru) on the walls, and a small bench with brocade cushions for visitors to sit on while the lady checked them in and gave them instructions on how to get around the Ashram. The office had windows overlooking a small private lake and undulating green patches of land, that were not carefully manicured but not overgrown. Deers roamed about freely on the premises and the lady reacted to my excitement at seeing them by letting us know that the deers have lyme disease. Rooms are usually dorm style (with bunk beds) or semi private (two people to a room). The husband and I got a semi private room in one of the many similarly slightly creaky, somewhat dilapidated but clean buildings owned by the Ashram all within 100-150 yards of the main office building.
Rooms are spartan - two standing lamps, a basic dresser, two twin beds, two windows and a closet with additional blankets.
The establishment is basically run by volunteers - who were all under 25 and hipsters from Brooklyn, and broke into songs and played the guitar between chores.

All meals were preceeded by a little shloka recited by an oldi'sh volunteer who assumed that the husband and I would obviously chime in (being the only Indians around)- these american hindus who have never been to India don't realize that we don't start mouthing shlokas at birth(or sometimes ever).

Meals are served in a separate kitchen area and are american vegetarian (maybe even aspiring to be Indian, as their version of the palak paneer will have you believe) and no, I, the carnivore did not complain - maybe because as we piled the food on to our plates, the chef who looked like another one of 'dem hipsters, remarked that he was (or maybe had been) the assistant chef at David Bouley and Resto in Manhattan and was volunteering at the Ashram for a few months. I think this was meant to be a pick up line for the pretty young volunteer he was speaking with, but unfortunately for him the pretty young girl didn't know of either of the establishments, and turned away with a polite smile. The chef looked around expectantly, and found that the "unpickable" husband and me to be the only ones suitably impressed.

The meditation session was led by this German woman who called herself Bharti, wore a white cotton sari, played the harmonium, and seemed apalled that the husband and I spoke less Sanskrit (no Sanskrit in my case) than her. And that we hadn't read the Upanishads. She also teaches Sanskrit at the ashram, and read to us from the Vedas. Heavy duty stuff.

I don't know- what is it with ashrams being full of artists, musicians, writers, academics and hipsters? Since I am an aspiring artist-musician-writer-academic-hipster, I did not mind being out of place at all. Its the money, I think- going to the Ashram is cheaper than going to, I don't know, the hamptons maybe (which is too tacky for these sorts anyway) or flying away somewhere for the weekend. Several sessions of Yoga and meditation, three meals and the accomodation are all included in the price at the Ashram which is a fairly pretty place - alcohol is not allowed but feel free smoke up. And sing, by the lake or anywhere else you please. I think I see why they like it. I loved it.

On why I abandaoned my blog for all these months...

The whole concept of blogging came about when I was in grad school, like almost 7 years ago (wow, I am THAT old!) - and I remember that my then boy freind, who was a self confessed and amply acknowledged geek said to me "Wow, isn't this cool ? You can post your thoughts, articles whatever you like online!! Like a diary, except online..". Now, non-gadgety as I am , my engineering degree notwithstanding, I didn't quite relate to his excitement about having my whole life online and didn't grasp why this was supposed to be so much fun- not that I had ever been much of diary writer either. I shrugged his enthusiasm away..But now, I will tell you - despite my apparent reticence on my blog, I LOVE my blog. Mostly because I feel like its mine. A space I have created for myself, where I write, I live and for now, for the most part, only I read - I dont mind that very much, although it wouldn't be so bad to share my virtual space with freinds. Actually I guess I am a bit undecided about sharing this space, at this point sharing my presence here with everyone is allowing people to intrude into what has come to be my personal space. To me, my little corner here is different from my facebook presence where I am up there for everyone to see, supposedly. My facebook presence is within the facebook framework, where I am available to people and they are available to me according to FB's rules. On my blog though, its ALL me.

So why do I periodically abandon it ? Because I tend to take all that I love for granted - all that I love and all that makes me feel loved. I miss them, I think about them but because I know that they will always be there I dont make an effort to be in touch with them.

So there- that is my sentimental ode to my home online. I think about you, I love you, you make me feel special - and your punishment for all of that is that I dont stop by often enough.