The Kali Shoe

When I stumbled upon this website called zazzle.co.uk I was first amazed at their product offering. The website allows you to create your own designs online. But I was appalled, when I came across one particular design - the "Kali Hindu Goddess Shoes". The designer has crossed all limits of cultural sensitivity by putting the image of a Kali-like figure on the shoes.

Wonder where have all the activists gone who had vandalised M.F Hussain's art works when he had "supposedly" portrayed the Hindu Goddesses in nude.

The Invisible Gift

Never in my life would I have felt this blank as all of us did after we got off from the rickshaw that Saturday night.
We had been invited to a friend's house over dinner cum birthday treat. As is customary, we - me, A and R - had a bag of goodies as a gift for our host for the night. We got a rick and were chit chatting all the way to Mulund, where we had to change to another rickshaw to reach G's house in Thane.
I called up G when we reached Mulund that we are standing in a queue to get a rickshaw to Thane. This (queue), in our view, was the most absurd thing that we had come across that day - at least till that point in time.
Our turn came pretty quickly and soon we were trotting all the way to G's home. Half way through I called up G to tell her that we would be reaching in another 10 minutes.
As we got down from the rickshaw, and I was settling the bill, A asked the BIG QUESTION "Where is the bag?"
In all this rickshaw hunting and queuing up, we had conveniently forgotten about the gift which we had left in the first rickshaw.
My mind went blank.
This rickwallah was saying aomething about change and I son't remember how much I gave him over the fare.
I was still blank.
As we made way to G's house I could see the disappointment on A's face and astonishment on R's face. We could not believe we had done this, and there was no way that we could trace the rickshaw back.
We went up to G's house and were greeted by the warm smiles of G and her mom and grandmom.
The jaws dropped when they heard our deeds and we got our share of scoldings from Maanti (as A and G call her) and G's mom.
For G, we had nothing but an invisible bag from Lifestyle, an odourless perfume by Marks & Spencer and a colourless eyeshadow pack by Maybelline. Guess G would not have been too happy flaunting these.. neither we gifting them to her.

Ganpati Bappa Morya, Pudhchya Varshi Lavkarya

And then it rained, like it had never before in the past few days. It was a sign of good omen. The skies had finally relented to the cries of the people. May be, it was the final gift that Ganapati wanted to give to his devotees.
It was the tenth day of Ganapati celebrations. The last day. The lake near my home - the Powai Lake - was a busy place. This Ganapati, though I had all plans to visit one of the pandals, I decided otherwise - thanks to the flu of the Swine. But then one could not have missed the grand visarjan ceremony.
As if, the waters of the lake were not sufficient, there was a great sea of humanity that was thronging the ghats to bid farewell to its favourite God; and one could see hundreds of statues floating amidst this sea of thousands of devotees. It was a joyous and mystic atmosphere all around.
The dhak of the dhols, the glare of spotlights, the blaring bollywood numbers, the soft-tonned aartis, the loud slogans and the messemerizingly beautiful statues took you to a different world altogether. After a good long walk and a dekho at all the murtis and a memory card full load of photographs we headed home.... and just as we entered the apartment, it started pouring heavily... May be, Ganapati was showering his blessings on us!

Some beautiful moments my friend "A" captured on his camera.....

"Is that a halo, or am I dazed by your divine presence"


"Even the mouse is so cute"


"I pray to thee, oh lord!"

"A hand from all"

"Am holding your hands"





"You are under my umbrella"



"Rest your tired bodies on me, am here for you"


"The sea of humanity"

"Divine"

"The Golden Ganapati"

"A closer look"

(C) All photographs are courtesy Amol.

V, R and Me

Time flies. It was about three months back that my friend V told me about her wedding planned in September. That got me, and another common friend making plans for the wedding and at the end, both of us ended up not attending the wedding.
As luck would have it, this other friend also got engaged and is now busy preparing for her own wedding and thus could not make it to V's marriage. Why I never made it - that is another story - which I would rather not discuss :(
The bottomline being, that we didn't make it to V's moment of happiness.... I can only imagine V clad in a rich silk sari with heavy gajra (God knows if she would have worn jewellery on her marriage or not - she was always a no-jewellery person) sitting in the mandapam amidst the sacred chants with R by her side, clad in a white dhoti ("Topless" as V describes the look).

God knows if we ever will meet again.... All three of us together again, like we used to when we were in the college - over a lunch at Shrikunj or for that pao bhaji at the Unit 1 market.
O! What fun it used to be. Going all around the city of Bhubaneswar in an autorickshaw to visit various temples, or a trip to the far flung forests of Simplipal and the adventurous Hirakud dam excursion, or the innumerable visits to Puri and shopping at Raghurajpur, or (as a matter of fact!) the various assignment where we played those you-did-not-do-anything blame games, getting caught by the professor for helping each other and sending apology mails to clear the mess - they will all be the sweet memories that one can never forget.
Am sure V and R (not V's R) will agree to this.