The Return....

National Geographic Daily Dozen - Baby Blues

I was speechless when I saw this blue eyed beggar girl outside a temple near Mysore, I had to get on one knee and propose with my camera.
National Geographic has selected this photo to feature in their daily dozen photos in the 1st week of september. The photos are selected by their photo editor Susan Welchman.
I hope this image inspires gratitude, compassion and action.

Check out the link and feel free to vote if the image moves you to do so.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/your-shot

Pimp my Ride - Indian Style

Start with a healthy dose of machismo, open up a Pandora’s Box of color, add a mushroom trip full of pattern and throw in a drag queens trousseau of accessories.
Apply liberally to the vehicle of your choice and you have pimp my ride Indian Style!
I have started a photo journal of these rides, check them out on www.tash007.smugmug.com under Pimp My Ride – Indian Style

The Shri Mantha Ceremony – A celebration of impending motherhood in south India

It’s remarkable what one finds at a south Indian beauty parlor when all one is looking for is a $2 leg wax, tips included.
I had called earlier in the day and set up an appointment for 2:30pm. Time in India, is either to be conquered through mystical practices of dying to oneself or debated about philosophically but certainly not adhered to in the trivial matters of day to day life.
And so it was that I waited well past the appointed time, in the corner of the saffron walled beauty parlor while the owner attended to her very pregnant customer and a hovering mother. The pregnant lady’s name was Sushma. Her thick long hair was deftly braided by the fussy beautician, and the ends woven into a gold ornament. An elaborate bridal floral composition of jasmine and roses was then carefully attached to the braid enveloping it and making an exclamation of the gold ornament.
Sushma’s mother fondly set the ornament in place while describing its origins. It had been in the family for almost a century, and a few generations, it was worn by the great grandmother at her Shri Mantha ceremony and ensured safe deliveries in difficult times.

Ah, so this isn’t a shotgun wedding after all, I thought. Further inquiry into the Shri Mantha ceremony revealed it to be a tradition amongst southern Indian women to celebrate the first pregnancy and initiate the woman into motherhood. It involves a puja (prayer and offering to a deity) followed by an exclusively female celebratory meal with the young mother in waiting’s friends and relatives. The meal is prepared by friends and family and consists of her favourite foods, especially the ones she had been craving through the pregnancy. Gifts of sari’s, bangles and jewelry are given and the choice of color for the gifts is green. Green is said to be an auspicious color, associated with the heart chakra representing the love which created the child and the unconditional love that will be required when it is born.
This ceremony is conducted in the 8th month of the 1st pregnancy, after which the mother in waiting leaves the home of her husband to take up residence with her mother until the child is born.

Floral India

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not!
I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch of
pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am
aware, and the time of offering go by.

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower
in thy service and pluck it while there is time.


Rabindranath Tagore

Flowers weave themselves into the garland of life in India.
From intricate hair adorments of the fragrant mogra to the puja offerings to the dieties in households and roadsides to the mightiest temples around the country.

For pictures of flowers and the way they are sold and used in India see:
www.tash007.smugmug.com
Look under Flora of India

The solo female traveller in India

Solo travel as a single woman in India requires the following armor - a thick skin, full body coverage, dark sunglasses, knowledge of a couple of choice Hindi swear words and the ability to dish out a slap in the face if required (when you are groped – and yes this does occur in tight confined spaces such as buses, or busy shopping centers).
Philosophically it requires one to view the perpetrators as psychologically delinquent mama’s boys instead of intimidating; otherwise it’s easy to feel like not venturing out alone.
In India, bar’s are not for women without a male escort. As recently as last year, a group of women in a straightforward Bangalore pub were dragged out by the “moral police” and beaten up for daring to be single women in a bar.

Simply put, the Indian male sexual psyche, regardless of age, remains profoundly regressive and stuck in the teenage years, a product of sexual repression and a system of morality distilled from a male superiority complex based on an archaic history of society prizing men (traditional breadwinners) over women. (determining the sex of the fetus is illegal in India for fear of high number of aborted female fetuses).
The practice of dedicating devadasi’s (temple “dancers”) in Karnataka to supplement family income amongst the poor is still practiced to this day. Pimps from Bombay’s red light district flock to these ceremonies to recruit pubescent girls to the trade.

What one would consider sexual harassment in the west is the norm and part of everyday life for women in India. A woman wearing anything other than the traditional Indian clothing of salwar kameez or a sari regardless of whether she is Indian or a foreigner will be ogled at lasciviously, curiously and disdainfully when outside the confines of her home. In discussing the matter with locals, even older conservative traditionally dressed women have been “eve teased” as they put it.
“Eve teasing encompasses the gamut of sexual harassment offences such as staring, groping, whistling, masturbating, singing songs etc
The increase in the severity of eve teasing probably began with the influx of unescorted females leaving their homes to answer the call for capable workers in the booming IT, BPO and call center industries in the 1990’s
Sexually repressed men everywhere took this as the perfect opportunity to inflict their teenage mentality on female travelers on buses and trains. As an answer to this social menace, the government created laws calling for the punishment of eve teasing through fines and imprisonment. Cities such as Bombay which have higher numbers of single female travelers have created “female only” trains during peak hours.

What does one do?
On a personal level, the best way to deal with this everyday menace has been to ignore the perpetrator (philosophically viewing them as pathetic and ignorant takes away the feeling of intimidation). Wearing dark sunglasses helps.
When the advances have encroached into my personal space (touching, accidental brushing, singing songs or even at one time masturbating – happened when I was checking out a park in Bombay) I have administered one of three treatments – depending on the set and setting:
- Getting up and walking away (singing)
- A tight slap across the face followed by choice Hindi swearword, or JAO (meaning go) when groped.
- Getting out my camera and telling the perpetrator that I am a reporter from the US and will take a photo of him for the police and US consulate and asked for his name at which point he ran off (probably to his mummy).

Resources such as project Blank noise are an excellent way to vent your frustrations or join the cause; they even have a list of photos of perpetrators, so if you catch your man in action do send it along. Check out http://blog.blanknoise.org/

My abode in Mysore

Found an apartment in Mysore, right next to the Mandala Yogashala (yoga school). It is a Spartan humble and yet character filled affair consisting of 1 bedroom, a small separate kitchen with a single cylinder gas stove and a fridge, a bathroom and toilet all housed under a high vaulted tiled ceiling. Outside is an Indian style washing stone for handwashing laundry and a wall separating the landlord’s house from the 12 or so apartments rented out to yoga student. The landlord’s garden is lusciously serene and has some unique features such as “prayer area” housing the holy tulsi plant, numerous flowering trees and shrubs, tropical fruit trees, and a heady scented jasmine vine creeping about the wall that separates his house from the apartments. I like it here and it feels good to have a pad to call my own for now. The rent is Rs 6000 per month including utilities.
Each morning, his wife plucks flowers from the garden and conducts a puja (prayer to the household deity) and then places a single flower outside each of our windows.

Mumbai's Dhobi Ghat - A step back in laundry time

Dobhi Ghat: Mumbai’s unique and oldest laundry facility.

Dhobi = Indian word meaning washerman
Ghat = A place or a station

I arrived at my hotel room in downtown Mumbai at the end of an explorative day, to find a newspaper package tied up with string laying on the neatly made bed.
Excitedly I ripped open the packaging wondering what the contents of this odd package might reveal, hoping for some exotic freebie from the hotel. I was mildly disappointed to find my freshly laundered pair of jeans I had turned in at the reception earlier that day.
I was about to toss the package aside when I came about the unmistakable frayed white cotton tag with the undecipherable indelible black ink marking hanging off the buttonhole. Like the mark of Zorro, this meant only one thing :
My jeans had been beaten up, stomped on and put through its paces at Mumbai’s oldest laundry institution – The Dhobi Ghat.

I called my friend Jyothi and we penciled in a photography visit to the Ghat the next evening. We arrived at the Dhobi Ghat to a welcome sign posted by the government of India, indicating photography was strictly prohibited.
“This is India, don’t worry” quipped Jyothi who after a goodly amount of heated bargaining worked out a deal with an “insider” to let us in to photograph the Ghats for the sum of Rs100 (US$2)
The dirty laundry list on the inside by western standards included child labor, archaic sterilization methods for the cities hospital linens (achieved by boiling linens in large vats over wood burning stoves) poor living conditions and skin to harsh chemical exposure for the workers of the Ghats.
But in refocusing the lens and sharpening the bokeh, I noticed a rich landscape suspended in time somewhere in the 18th century, steeped in tradition and a way of life whose efficacy stood the test of time as the services remain cheaper than dry cleaning, and are utilized by the hotels and hospitals around downtown Bombay.
The photo story can be seen on http://tash007.smugmug.com/gallery/7938689_jraXS#515186533_TgV4C

I pondered on the fact that someone somewhere a century ago would have ritually separated the little frayed cotton tag from their sari or Victorian clothing, just like I was about to do with my jeans today.

India's Evil Eye Catcher

These ubiquitous lime and chilies on a string contraption seem to hang off the oddest places, not just in Mumbai but throughout India.
Inquiries into their function and purpose revealed a belief by the Hindu’s that the contrivance serves to absorb the negative influence of covetous people with malicious intentions, thus protecting the prized object it hangs off.
The list of prized objects that need protection I have seen thus far are as follows: Homes, Cars, Trucks, Commercial photocopiers, computers, sugarcane juice machines, fish market display tables – seemingly anything that generates a livelihood.
Why the lime and chili and not an onion and potato remains a mystery. Perhaps it’s the metaphors for the heated and sour expressions on a covetous person.
Keep watching this space for photos of my collection of these cute little “Evil eye catchers”. http://tash007.smugmug.com/gallery/7935659_bBzxB

Mumbai - A Re Acquaintance after 25 years.

25 years of separation from family, friends and childhood places bends the mind and forges an experience where emotions and physical perception are thrown into a conundrum.
The source of the conundrum lies in the extremities of perceptions of a 13 year old that have been suspended in space and time and the now 39 year old looking at the clock that has started ticking again.
The distillation of this twilight zone revealed some oddities and insights.
Personalities indeed are forged on the battles and celebrations of the playground and this remains essentially unchanged by time. My cousins while all grown up now are the same characters I used to play with back then. Little family genetic oddities - a similar birthmark to mine except on my cousins left hand, our similar likes and dislikes were interesting discoveries.
Spaces have shrunk - the highrise I used to live in is now just a little building. The gargantuan steps I used to lean against are mere stepping stones, The long road I took to school is merely half a block. The playground is no more replaced by commercial shopping center.

Check out my childhood stomping grounds and old school photos here:

LAX Farewell crew

To love and be loved is what we live for and I felt the love on Thursday morning when close friends who have grown into family stopped by LAX to bid goodbye. I will miss your inspired company and insy wincy spider recitals but you will be in my heartfelt thoughts. How could I not find serendipity on the journey with so many good wishes in my sails.

Reasons for the trip

This poem attempts a presentation of my feelings and thoughts about the reasons for deciding to quit my job in July08, selling my home in December08, abandoning plans of single motherhood for the time being, parking my Porsche and belongings at good friends who have become family in Los Angeles, and setting off on a 6 month journey to India (the country of my birth) and the far east.
The journey begins on a United Flight 112 from Los Angeles to Bombay departing on the 31st of March 2009 arriving Bombay on April Fools Day!



After all these years of seizing the day
Pushing the limits, blurring the boundaries
Living up to expectations, theirs and mine
Treading old paths and carving new ones

I am tired of the rules of the game
Tired of playing at the old table
An autodidactic player
Winning a few rounds, loosing a few

I want to turn on, tune in and drop out
I want to change the parameters of the game
Learn to court its obstinate and obdurate ways
I want to love the enemy and keep the friend
I want to feel part of the scenery
And walk right out of the machinery

Will this fools journey guarantee new livery