SOULspace

We have a visitor to our balcony nowadays. It was K who spotted it first. ( Actually speaking, K-boy is deeply into nature nowadays...ahem...don't be too mislead by that statement...this purely translates into  fact 1) TV viewership having shifted from Pogo to Animal Planet fact 2) Tall claims that he will (or has already) caught a King Cobra with his bare (bear??) hands. so that means I have to watch him, (mind you, every time he shows this to me, I have to eagerly view it like I am seeing it for the first time), hold a wooden snake by the tail, and grab its head like they show on TV or I have to watch his blow by blow account of:  "How to escape from a Python when it has swallowed half your body" demo.. "Nothing Happens Amma, the python will not do any harm till it swallows your legs...maybe a bone could break...but only after it reaches your hips then the bones will actually start breaking. By that time you have to take out yo...

  A six letter word...no escaping it... It stalks you, it nabs you by the throat and shakes you out of complacency... It is that persistent verb-adjective (verb when you choose to do something, and an adjective when you exclaim it). It compels you to take those baby steps as a toddler and much latter determines how or where you are in life... How many times has our inner mind shouted out unable to vocalise for fear of reprimand...   CHANGE...I say...change Change is the only constant in life... How I hate and admire that word... I have had my battles with change, life defining, soul wrenching.... But...leaving my personal battles aside... I scream out for one humongous change... I Yell for it, I fight for it, I work for it, within myself and where ever I get a chance ... To leave this world a Safe place for our children Physically Safe, where children are not scared of being beaten, burnt and abused... Emotionally Safe , where children are not scared to sa...

Snippets of memories swirl through my mind...after all the past is retained in our neurons as impressions, chemical pathways that reignite as we browse back into the realms of our childhood, teen, adulthood, to extract those Real moments of being connected. Flashback... Lethargic Chennai summer spent with Paati in a one room tenement, in Tamil that was known as "ondu kuduthanam"; where a rich landlord would sublet rooms in his property to others from his same community/caste. (I am sure it exists even now in quintessential Mylapore)... Thats where this story takes us as well...to Paati in her traditional nine yards, a widow, in her one room/ kitchen kept spic and span, in the by lanes of Mylapore near the Kappali temple...our summer retreat. There was so much to do; playing Daya kattai (Ludo), or Palankhuzhi (I don't even know the English equivalent for this) with her in the afternoons, Paandi (hopscotch) in the evenings, jumping walls to play cricket with the...

Ear worm, is the word my husband popped into my mind before leaving for work; apparently BBC had an article about these things...  ....Ear worm is music that stays with you, in your mind and in your ears, through the day; like a flea on the dog's back, impossible to shake away... so I guess we have to shake to it... Today I woke up with this Ear worm: Happiness, Happiness is making people Happy....  I can't shake it off...I just Cant... But I have to analyse this too.. Is happiness really about making people Happy...though this preschool diddle is meant to make the little ones more pliant and better behaved..I feel it doesn't convey all what happiness really is about I guess it should read... Happiness, Happiness is making myself Happy.... But then this can trigger off thoughts like what if squishing insects makes me happy...or if tearing up my sister's favorite book makes me happy....hmmm..then we have a serious issue at hand.... Yet for the mos...