Here we go again!

Am going to Mysore tomorrow for one, perhaps even two months. I've always lived with family in India, and I'm excited to see what it's like to be on your own here, single woman and all!

Hopefully, I'll have good internet options there. I better.

How Kaavya Viswanathan got smacked

Kaavya Viswanathan. A 19 year old Harvard sophomore. a $500,000 chic-lit book deal for How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life". Acres of media coverage. Mountains of hype. One perceptive reader and SPLAT!

Kaavya's book allegedly has 45 passages that bear similarities to Megan Mccafferty's books "sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings". Kaavya, first denying any truth to the plagiarism accusations, admitted that she had read both books in high school and may have sub-consciously re-written the words in her book. Read more...

John Scalzi has a good discussion on his blog (Whatever).

I'm annoyed that no one caught this before the book got published (or they thought stupid consumers won't notice). $500k dropped on a book deal just like that, an indication of what the book publishing business is like. I don't really feel sorry for the girl, if she did it, she has to deal with it. Though some say she could have been bullied by the publishing house. Interestingly enough, all this has come out just when Mccafferty's third book, "Charmed Thirds" hit the bookstores.

Hmm, so much we could be suspicious about...

What is the Meatrix

"Ten million minds freed so far. There's still more work to be done.
Many facets of the Meatrix are yet to be exposed.
Look through the illusion of the Meatrix."

Hilarious. Awesome production. If you haven't seen Meatrix I, it's worth a watch.

Fighting for life

Pramod Mahajan, a dynamic leader of the BJP (one of the major political parties of India) was shot at three times by his younger brother. The reasons are not clear, the brother's lawyer is claiming depression and mental unstability (already laying the ground for pleading insanity!).

Some say Mahajan is a future Prime Minister candidate. The nation's watching anxiously. More...

Saved by the bell

One of the 8-year-olds in yoga class asked me who God is and if there is only one God then how come we (Hindus) pray to a different God each festival?

Er, um, well....I was stumped. This kid was having a hard time accepting the pantheon of Gods in Hindu mythology. How do I explain that Hindu mythology is like a large corporation where Brahma is the CEO and then each aspect of running an efficient world is handled by a different department (I mean God). That's why Laxmi takes care of wealth (Finance), Saraswati of knowledge (Training), Vishnu of protection (Security), etc. etc. I was also not sure if I should break it to him that this is just mythology and that they are simply symbols that Hindus worship.

I was scared to give him my opinion especially since I know that his family follows Hindu traditions and worships the Gods religiously. I was worried that he would go home and challenge the ideas he's been fed so far ("My yoga teacher said she doesn't believe in Ganesh, yaadi yaadi yaada") and was also petrified of facing his mother's wrath...what if she beat me up for filling her son's head with "rubbish"?

Our time was up and so I ho-humed a "we'll talk next class" and was glad to have a weekend to think over what the approach will be.

Kiddie Yoga

I'm teaching a yoga workshop for kids between 8-12 years. On the first day, all the kids were shuffling their feet, looking around to see if anything would interest them. "What is this stupid yoga thing my mom has signed me up for?", was the general sentiment. I knew I'd done well when they were disappointed that our hour was up!

I'm lucky that yoga's sort of inspired from Nature. The kids love pretending to be all sorts of animals -- hissing cobras, meowing cats, growling dogs. It's great to watch my little ones lose their inhibitions and open up. I had a tiny moment today when I found myself on all fours howling like a jackal -- I think I've lost a few inhibitions myself ;).

They say (whoever "they" might be) teaching kids is energizing. Their creativity and spontaneity keep it stimulating...blah blah blah. I've got to be doing it all wrong 'cause at the end of the hour, I'm friggin exhausted. I just want to be in the ending Shavasana (corpse pose) for an hour, heck even go to sleep in it ;).

On Marriage

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

- Kahlil Gibran

Muneera, I couldn't be more excited for you, baby! Congratulations!

P.S: James, are you sure you know what you're getting into? ;)

"There are moments in a Tennis match....

.... the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward and you win…or maybe it doesn't, and you lose."

Watched Woody Allen's Matchpoint last weekend with a friend. If you haven't seen the film, here's a synopsis.

The film got us discussing -- Would we rather be lucky or good?

Well obviously, I'd like to be lucky. But I do believe that luck runs out unless you're good. Oh sure, there are tonnes of people in the world whom Lady Luck has raised to the mantle of success, and also hordes who have worked hard all their lives but are still waiting for their lucky moment. I doubt that there is a formula to figure it out.

So much of our lives is dependent on luck. We can't control all the variables that play with it and the idea of 'being in control" is simply ridiculous. It's too big a picture to manage. I can only contribute a teeny-tiny piece of it -- hard work. The biggest let downs of my life have been situations when I've been lazy and done a shoddy job.

It's too damned hard to rely on Luck. You never know when she'll show up. So until then, keep to the grind, my friend!

The art of negotiation

I've never been good at negotiations. I've always been paranoid that the other person will eventually come out ahead. In the effort to do the "right thing", I usually lose sight of what actually makes sense.

I've been going back and forth with a friend on a project we're working on. After a difficult discussion, I was frustrated and confused about what I should do. Clarity struck and I decided to be honest. Set my ego and fears aside and talked openly.

Negotiating isn't a mind-game at all. It's 100% heart and 120% instinct. Honesty proves to be my best friend again.

Mumbai Express

Four days of pure fun. I feel so guilty. I'm not even employed. I don't deserve this much pleasure. I went out there with some old high school friends, stayed in an amazing apartment overlooking the sea, ate some of the best Indian food I have ever eaten, and of course, drank buckets of Kingfisher to beat the sticky heat.

Bombay's sweat or Hyderabad's furnace? I prefer the sweat. We stepped out of the airport in Hyd and I thought our clothes had caught fire. It is HOT (40C/105F).

The days passed by in a blur. All I remember is rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter with tears in my eyes. Some things never change and am I glad about that.

Hats off to Ninna, my hero. She is the only Indian woman I know who can drink more than most of my male friends. 5 beers, 4 large pegs of neat whiskey, and still going strong. I'm burning with envy. Grr.

Bombay, the city of my dreams

Am off to Bombay tomorrow. 4 days in the city I always dreamed of falling in love with. I can already feel the magic, the excitement, the sheer thrill.

Be back on Wednesday.

Good Night

My favorite part of the day...minutes before I go to sleep. I can feel my space all around me...a rare moment where no one else is around and I can just be.

Just concluded chats with several friends in New York. It feels good to have reconnected with them.

A friend's brother was diagnosed with cancer. It descended upon them out of the blue. My heart lurched upon hearing the news. You never know. You just never know when it will hit you in the stomach. We must be prepared. I just don't know how.

Chongming retreat

We celebrated St.Patrick's Day on a Friday and took off for Chongming Island on Saturday morning, on about 3 hours of sleep. Carol, our translator has a quick synopsis of what went on that weekend. She led us around like cattle for next two days :).

My favorite part was when our tour guide drove us, on Sunday morning, for an hour to show us the island's coastline. Hungry and sleepy, we were cruising along in anticipation of the sea and a casual stroll on the beach. We decided not to waste time on breakfast and bought this gigantic box of cookies and some strange looking candy to tide us over. And then the car stops and we're parked in front of an infinite marshland. Carol announces chirpily, "This IS the coastline" before bursting into hysterical laughter. The only creatures taking a stroll there were the water buffaloes.

The island was actually set up to be quite touristy. I could imagine hordes of Chinese families visiting each year. But there weren't many people at this time of the year (who would want to be there in the cold rain!). We went to a national park on the island, played tonnes of frisbee, rode the two-people bikes all over the place, and rock-climbed. It's a great day-trip from Shanghai and was the perfect break from our sight-seeing agenda.

Travelling in a new country is not about sightseeing alone. I can't sustain a non-stop schedule and need some time to switch off and just relax, which is what Chongming was for me. It wasn't about being in China, it was about being close(r) to nature and retreating from urban chaos.

Signs

Conflicting dates, travel agent politics, visa and ticketing issues. We got through them all and finally had our tickets to China one day before we were to leave.We were scheduled on an Air Deccan flight to Delhi at 5:30pm. We get a call at 4pm that our flight is cancelled and we may (or may not) be able to get on another one at 7:30. It's storming in Hyderabad and all flights to Delhi are delayed or cancelled. Perhaps this is a sign. There's been too much trouble over this damned trip.

Well, we're finally air-borne at 7:45pm and make it to the international airport without a hitch. At 1:30am we go to check in for our Beijing flight. The airline rep tells me I don't have the "ECNR" stamp. "Emigration check not required (ECNR)". I'd never heard of it before. A stamp, I'm told, required by Indians to pass through most Asian countries unless we're traveling to the US or Europe. So there was no chance of me boarding the plane that night.

Err, now what? Flight leaves at 4am. The doubts creep in again. Is this a sign? What if we’re hit by some bad luck?

So I find myself in the emigration chief’s room. I ask him if there is anything, ANYTHING, I can do to get past this emigration stuff. "What do you mean by anything", he asks. He's testing me to check whether I suggest a bribe. But I'm not good at that kind of stuff and I would never have the guts to suggest something like that to an officer like him. I'm dumb like that. So I play innocent -- "I don't know Sir. You tell me what can be done. You're the officer here". He asks again and now I’m convinced that he wants a bribe and I don’t know what to do.

He fired questions at me for the next 10 minutes. He suddenly got sentimental. He realizes we’re both from Rajasthan (ethnically). Also, his 25 year old daughter studies in LA and he said Tulika and I reminded him of her. “You look like girls with a good background”, he judged. He could relate to us now and decided we were safe. I quickly wrote out an official letter requesting him passage to China and he let me go.

We ran to board the plane and passed out the minute we took off. There are no “Signs”.

Pssst!

I have a little secret.

The site updates weekly. There's always something one can relate to. Enjoy!

Undoubtedly a Great Wall

We got back last week. What a trip! Made a lot of new friends, caught with an old one, ate plenty (I just don't know what)....all in all it was one big party. Tulika and I survived each other and that is a good thing ;).

We covered Beijing (including the Great Wall), Shanghai, Suzhou, and Chong Ming islands. I've got some more pictures on flicr.