Mar 18, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

Climate Change is Real – Day 2 of my Vigil Alone
©March 18th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

So, another late night followed by an even earlier morning (6:15) for me today – sigh!

I made coffee to take in my trusty travel mug, and a hot breakfast, and ginger tea for my daughter (who arose at 7:20 in order to get ready for our post-vigil haul all the way to Cohasset, MA, where she will be attending a once-a-week farming/harvesting/animal-care home-school class at Holly Hill Farm from now until mid-May).  The dog was philosophical when left for my vigil.  My daughter was sanguine.  I love them both.

Despite awakening so early, I was STILL fifteen minutes behind the Warren-time on the vigil!  Never mind.  I made it, at least.

It’s been a beautiful, sunshiny day all day today, and it was cool (45 degrees), but sunny in the morning at my spot. Blue-jays flashed in blue streaks between the trees, and mid-way through, a sudden rush of wings divided the air near me. I saw, with wonder, two Canada geese arise from the boggy area of the Fells, which come close to the Warren Intersection (as I now call that part of Roosevelt Circle), and end right near where he/I stand at our vigil, and rise up, honking madly. It was quite arresting.

I was in low-energy mode, so I sang what I ALWAYS sing when I don’t know what to sing – namely, Bhairav – my default setting, possibly because I grew up learning South Indian music.  Mayamalavagowla (with the same notes as Bhairav) is the first raga that all good little South Indian children learn if they learn Carnatic music. I made moaning aakars, and some paltas, and droned on, did some sargam (Indian solfege) work, and sang Jaago, Mohana Pyaare Tumha, as well as Jaago Brija Raja Kumara. My voice held up for a bit, then cracked on some of the not-so-high higher notes. (Sigh! I have a long, uphill climb to regain my skills in singing Hindustani music). In any case, I had a good time.

Cars went by, and I had several thumbs-ups – one from an older white-haired, man with a Bernie bumper-sticker, one from a grey-haired man with distinctly liberal features, several smiles and waves from younger men and women, and even one heavily bearded, long-haired young hippie-ish looking guy driving a low pick-up car-truck thing (I don’t know what to call those!) –  who, having apparently being much taken by the sight of a woman standing with a protest sign, must have driven ahead, and parked his car somewhere, because I turned to see him walking up to me.  He asked to take my picture, asked me my name, told me his name, and added that he worked for a magazine called In League Press, which published pictures and articles about people with protest signs, or something like that.  I told him that it was really my husband’s sign, and that I was covering for him, and that he would probably see my husband in a couple of weeks.  He told me I would probably see my picture on FB or Twitter in a few days (or, did he say, weeks), and then left.  I was pleased by him, and warmed by our exchange.

A woman drove by, applying lipstick.  Another drove by, elaborately applying mascara. How did she do that and not slam into the car in front of her?  I admired her, in spite of myself.  Mothers turning back to their children in the back drove by, and fathers with empty car seats in the back drove by, as well.  So much potential for distraction when we have children!  I remember having to carefully explain to my daughter when she was younger that I could not turn around and look every time she said, ” Mom, look!  See what I’m doing!”  She was put out at first, but understood when I explained some more.  How much can one tell one’s young children about potential disaster (car accidents, Climate Change) without upsetting them, or making them into bundles of anxiety?  I walk a fine line there.  I think I do okay, but only time will tell.

Several plumber-type trucks and construction vehicles were out this morning, and I thought, not for the first time, about how plumbing and construction are some of the REAL jobs that would be nice to learn.  At the same time, they signal the fact that we occupy space, and leave waste behind.  Sometimes, when I feel pessimistic and misanthropic, I think that to be human is to create waste and denude the land of its natural beauty.  Thinking this does not make me happy.  (Quick!  Think better thoughts!  Yes, yes!  We humans create beauty, yes, we create music, yes, we create art, yes, we create language … yes, we create entire dimensions of thought and being.  Yes, we’re all right.  Phew!)

Still, if I were to be reincarnated, I think I’ll opt to be a bird, or a frog.  Or, better still, a dolphin.  Birds sing, frogs sing, dolphins click – who wouldn’t want that?
More good things:  A lovely black van drove by with this legend:  Earth, Stone and Water.  That was somehow soothing, even grand, in its way.  I imagined the company to be concerned with environmental work.  No doubt, if I Google it, I’ll find out something mundane.  I do not want to know. It was followed by another van with this on its side:  Plumbing / Heating / HVAC / Boilers.  Good, but not as nice.  Humpf!  After a while, another van drove by, and its driver, a young man, gave me a thumbs-up and a big smile.  The sign on the side and back said something about bee-keeping services.  I felt an absurd upwelling of affection for him.

So, I droned in Bhairav, and felt freer by the second.

Fifty minutes passed.  Suddenly, a nasty sour-faced SUV drove by, and a scowling man leaned out from the passenger seat, and snarled, “Oh, go get a job!”

If I had not heard from my husband about his routinely hearing such remarks every week, I might have stiffened and perhaps, gotten briefly upset.  As it was, I just laughed, and said, well after the car had driven past, “Oh, go to hell!”  Not the wittiest of retorts, but it was all I could muster in the moment.

I sang some more, finished my coffee, and trundled back home, and then raced around the house to get ready to take my daughter to Holly Hill Farm far, far away in Cohasset, and Warren’s student Thomas, showed up to dog-sit our Standard Poodle, Holly.   Holly is crazy about Thomas, and I swear that if we were to vanish from the earth, Holly would live quite happily with him.  It’s sweet to see her adore him so waggily and goofily.  He must emanate the scent of goodness (He’s certainly a very kind and good person, from what I’ve seen!)

My daughter and I returned after a lovely few hours at the Farm, and now, I have written this post.

Contradictions exist – we all know that.  I stood with a “Climate Change is Real” sign for an hour this morning, then got in my car, and drove several miles to have my daughter be in the midst of growing vegetables and animals in a beautiful area.  I wish things could be less complicated, but nothing is.

What we can do is try to reduce our carbon footprint, grow more things, buy less stuff.  We do what we can, and raise consciousness as we do it.  Every conscious action leads others to conscious action.  I hope this is true.
Thanks for reading!

Signing off,
Dreamer of Dreams
(Standing in for Man with Sign)

Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #Contradictions, #Man with Sign, #Nature, #Waste, #Woman with Sign

Mar 17, 2016 Daily Life, The Daily Post

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Shelf

On one of the bookshelves in my study / work-space (made of mahogany by my amazing husband) are the following:

• A metal bird hanging on the side of it
• Some dust on the very top, along with:
  A tone drum, very beautifully carved
  A pair of clay and goatskin bongos from Turkey (I think)
  A handmade (by my husband) Kora
  A fish scraper (percussion, that is)
  An Asante (or Ashanti) kete bell for kids
• Books by women
• Books by men
• Books on language
• Books on education
• Some Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Isabel Allende
  
• P.G. Wodehouse (the best humor writer in the world, for those who haven’t heard of him – the best, that is, along with James Thurber and Donald E. Westlake! )
• The Joy of Lex
• Six Plays of the Modern Theater
• Prego – Italian textbook which I got back in 1996, when I took six months of Italian, simply because I love the language.
• Accent – French textbook (used, simply because it made me happy to have it; I’d already studied French for four years – two in school, and two in college).
• Children’s books
• A book on Rock n’ Roll
• A book on Ancient Egypt
• A photograph album
• A book titled Stuntology
• The Italian translation of Gibran’s The Prophet
• Some Margaret Atwood
• Some Anne Tyler
• Some Jonathan Kozol
• A book about Gauguin
• A couple of Marion Zimmer-Bradley books, which I don’t much like (I loved The Mists of Avalon, but that’s on another shelf)
• A couple of Cynthia Voigt books
• A book about Twyla Tharp
• A book about Shakespeare’s Flowers
• The Book of Psalms
• Some Ray Bradbury
• Some D.H. Lawrence
• Some Toni Morrison
• Some Barbara Kingsolver
• Some Gil-Scott Heron
• A book about Astronomy
• Spider Robinson Stardance
• Tracy Kidder Mountains Beyond Mountains
• Herbert Kohl 36 Children
• Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ, and Zorba the Greek
• A Short Treasury of American Humor
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (all of my other Gaiman books are on another shelf)
• Virgil’s Aeneid
• Tim’O’Brien – The Things They Carried
• Spider Robinson – Stardance
• A book about Oscar Wilde (all my other Oscar Wilde books – and I have MANY – are on another shelf)
• Some Graphic novels, including Beowulf illustrated and reworked by Gareth Hinds, who has done some amazing work, especially his graphic novel versions of King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey)
• The inimitable, but misanthropic, James Thurber
• The recently-deceased Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum
  Ulysses (which I call somewhat grumpily The Great Unread) by James Joyce
  A book on jazz
• A book by Neil Young
  A couple of books by Noam Chomsky
• Several books by Jonathan Stroud and Philip Pullman
• A beautiful book that my Parsee friend Perin Pudumjee (now Coyajee) made of her calligraphic art
• An amazing and moving book called Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Journals which are mostly empty, save for a few pages here and there (I’m not great about writing in journals nowadays, unlike how I used to be when I was young)
• Books on language – Italian, French and Russian, which I don’t need anymore, but I loved them when I bought them.  I had visions of learning Russian.  Perhaps, I still might – you never know!
• An English-Portuguese dictionary given as a gift by my husband when I was in love with Samba Bossa Nova songs.
• Oxford English Dictionaries

There are MANY more bookshelves in the house.  We quip that our house is held together and held up by its bookshelves.  We also quip that we’ll never ever move again, because the books were so heavy to carry up our 42 steps leading to the house on a sharp incline, that I sprained both my arms back in 2001, when we moved.  We joke that the only way we’ll ever leave our home is feet first.  (Sorry to sound so morbid here!)

I love our books!  I love being at home!

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Tags: #Books, #Humor, #Languages, #Magic Realism, #Shelf

Mar 17, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #For the Planet, #Hindustani classical vocal music, #Keeping Vigil, #Man with Sign, #Singing, #Sitar, #Warren Senders, #Woman with Sign

Mar 17, 2016 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

Travels Without the Dog
©March 16th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Holly is sad.  She doesn’t know why my daughter, husband and I drove with her to pick up my husband after he’d finished teaching his class.  She doesn’t understand why we drove together to a fancy street in the city, and left her in the car, to clearly partake of a delicious dinner, because she detected it in our breath when we returned.  She doesn’t understand why we all drove together after that to a mysterious place with many cars on many levels, and left her for a little while in our car.  She doesn’t get why my husband gave her an extra-special hug and loving words, telling her he would miss her.  Even more painful and puzzling to her is the fact that after we left her in the car, only my daughter and I returned, having apparently mislaid my husband.

She squeak-whined a little, and looked dismally at us, but cheered up when we left the car-ridden place, and got on the tunnel that led to another road – a highway, really, that she recognized, and which led us magically home.  We got home, and she ran up the stairs, and into the house after I unlocked it, and looked around for my husband, then at me.  I spoke kindly to her, letting her know he would be back in thirteen days.  Of course, she didn’t understand the exact meaning of what I said, but like a very young child does, she picked up the soothing tone that told her that it was going to be all right.  Trotting up with  her small, fluffy toy lammie in her mouth, she asked me to toss it around around the living room, which I did.  After I gave her a good dinner, plus yogurt, which she loves, she appeared to be satisfied that it was all going to be fine, after all.

To be a dog means having to deal with the mysterious comings and goings of her human pets; sometimes, we’re all together; sometimes we’re in clumps of twos and threes.  She’s a family dog.  She needs us all there.  When one of us is missing, she’s sad at first, but always philosophical, I think, because in her doggie mind, it’s clear that we’ll all eventually be there for her. 

I always it a point of saying goodbye to her, and so do my husband and daughter.  And I always tell her, “We’ll be back,” or, “I’ll be back,” (just like I would tell my daughter when she was a baby, and I left the house, leaving her in my husband’s care – which worked for her, because my daughter has turned out to be reasonably sanguine about such things, thank goodness).   Back to our dog, however.  I think what comforts her the most  is that our home smells like all three of us and her – she has everything she needs right here.   

It must be very upsetting to be a dog and note the many arrivals and departures of her pet-humans.  Fortunately, the immediacy of life grabs a dog’s attention, and any sadness that dogs feel dissipates in the face of a well-placed squirrel with a taunting tail.  Of course, it’s night-time right now, and there are no squirrels about, worse luck! 

Right now, she’s lying on the couch, with her chin on my husband’s sweater, which he handed over to me before he went into the Emirates security check-in for his flight to India – he won’t need it for the thirteen days he’ll be there (apparently, it’s 81° F in Mumbai right now).

I had placed his sweater near my dog’s favorite pillow on purpose, and she is happy to be near the scent of her beloved master.

There’s no such thing as fear of disaster, or fear of loss in a dog’s mind – everything is the eternal Now.  Every experience and every memory, every thought, every image, every sense of being loved – all of these are in her nose, her adorable, sensitive, eternal Nose.  So, this sweater’s Daddy-smell, here, now, soothes, protects, consoles, and wraps its arms around her.

Soon, she’ll trundle up to bed, for I’m turning in for the night at an hour that’s unusually early for me – it’s midnight now – the night’s absurdly young, but I’m feeling absurdly old from too many late nights.  In ten minutes, I hope to be wrapped in dream-clouds.

I hope my husband’s flight and India-trip are safe and wonderful.  I shall be happy when he returns.  So will our daughter.  So will the dog.

Home is where we’re all happiest.

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Tags: #Dog and Family, #Holly Tales, #Travels Without the Dog

Mar 15, 2016 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

Today in Five Senses
©March 15th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Today, there’s rain and damp earth, and my bulbs have begun to bloom – bright yellow flowers pushing out from the ground on rich, green stems, and shy, purple flowers just beginning to make their appearance.  And my new-growing bulbs drink long, cool draughts of air and water, and soak in sunlight, while the moisture makes all the red-brown-breasted robins come out in droves, and thirstily sip the rain drops on the leaves and on tree-bark.  They look fat and happy, ready to populate the world with more robins.  And the rich, fat, wriggly worms poke their heads out, diving into earth and making more rich, brown earth, themselves, and the robins love them for it, so much that they snack busily on them, and it’s all part of the sun-bright, rain-dimmed days that make the Spring both joyous and gray.

And I look out and am glad.

The day wears on, as days have done since I left teaching, with things to do at home, and also time to write in between.

A friend visits – he’s teaching my daughter the drums.  (She got a four-piece drum-set, to which our friend added a proper bass-drum and a tom-tom) .  It thrills me to hear her play – this is just her fourth lesson, but her six years of dancing kathak (a North-Indian classical dance form), and her innate musicality and rhythmic intelligence are a great asset, so she’s learning fast.

Last week, I sneaked into her room and played, and found to my delight, that I was able to sing and play simple drum beats, with high-hat, tom, and the bass drum, while singing my favorite Beatles songs.  Yes, I, am fortunate to have been a musician for as long as I’ve been aware that I was one, which was when I began to sing in tune at age two and a half.  I cannot wait until we can play songs together – she, and my husband and  I taking turns on guitar, bass and drums.

I listen, and hear the familiar patterns of a twelve-eight feel, ta-ki-ta, ta-ki-ta, ta-ki-ta,  ta-ki-ta.  I later learn they were practising a song that she and I know and love, the Smokey Robinson song, “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” which was later sung by The Beatles.  There’s a comforting, nostalgic feeling that sweeps over me when I hear it.  Reminds me of when I was young and full of happiness, because life was opening up for me in my twenties, and I remember listening to a cassette-tape that my future husband had sent me of The Bobs singing their brilliant a cappella version of it.  I remember, looking back, that my eyes felt like they held the sun, and my skin felt like silk, and fit me well, my blood felt right, and flowed laughingly in my veins, and my heart beat faster because I was in love, and was loved back.

Now, here I am, years later, having gone through ups and downs, but what I remember are mostly the ups, which feel so fragrant and linger so long in my mind that they feel as if they happened only yesterday.  I remember the downs, but only as if they had happened to someone else in a dream who resembled me, and whose chaotic heart I could not harness during times of turbulence.

So, it’s time to make Indian masala chai for the four of us.

I chop fresh strips of ginger and dice them, and pop them in two cups of boiling water, adding cloves and cardamom pods, and crushed black pepper.  The air is fragrant and thrills my senses.  What I need now is a stick of cinnamon, or better still, crushed cinnamon.  And lo!  Here it is, right under my nose.  Inhale that, but do it gently, and from afar – you can damage your nose and lungs seriously if you do anything more than just take a whiff of its happy-making smell.  Toss that in the ebullient water, and add some black tea leaves — enough for four people (four teaspoons will do).  Let that come to a boil.  Now add six teaspoons of brown sugar, and then two cups of milk, stirring the whole time, turning down the blue-white flame.

Oops!  I turned it off by mistake.  I try turning it on again, and I get that horrid smell, stinky as hell, that tells me the gas hasn’t been lit, though it’s on.  Quick, fix that!  Good!

Open the door to the backyard, and let the stinky smell, and our dog, out.  Holly’s both happy that the air smells good, and irked that it’s rainy.  Ah well.  All that lovely, curly, Standard-Poodle hair will get messed up.  Got to brush her tonight into a nice cloud of soft poodley fur.

Back to the tea.  Yup.  it’s done!  Let me waft the scent your way.  Can you smell it?  Now, strain the tea into four cups with a tea-strainer.  Serve it steaming hot to your family and visiting drum-teacher friend.  Set out plantain chips, and sweet-peanut crunchies.  Heat up a spinach triangle for your husband, who needs something more sustaining after a long day.

Inhale the tea, then sip.  Ahhh!

Feel that steaming liquid heal something within you – dismissing the malaise that might have crept up unawares, and looked over your shoulder.

Get back to other work, now!

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Tags: #Being in love, #Brewing spiced chai on a rainy day, #Bulbs in Spring, #Drumming in twelve-eight time, #Family and Friends, #GardeninginSpringtime, #HowtomakeMasalaChaiIndianStyle, #Journal Entry, #Life in Springtime, #Nostalgia, #RobinsLoveWorms, #Snack-time!, #Writing for the Five Senses

Mar 14, 2016 Daily Life, The Daily Post

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt:  Incomplete

Incomplete
March 13th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Why is it SO hard to write about this topic?  I began TWO poems before this post, and discarded them.

I think I know the reason why.

It’s because INCOMPLETE is the dirge of my days.  Incomplete this, and incomplete that, and incomplete something else.

It’s not that I’m a slacker.  It’s just that I can’t keep up sometimes.  Or, perhaps, I just dream big dreams, sometimes — no, not lofty ones, like saving the earth, or the oceans, or helping one homeless person every day.  No, just BIG dreams … like I WILL clean up my room that’s overflowing with seventeen years worth of teaching-related papers and books that I do not, and will not want to use ever again.

Or, I WILL finish reading “The Defender – How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America,” in between dealing with cooking, housework, other work, laundry, taking child and dog here and there, going to drum group, playing the guitar, singing with my family knitting, taking walks, writing  … and starting a new life.

Two years, I began TWO novels, and have not completed them.   Arrgh!

Is it fear of committing myself to the ultimate step (for me)?

No, more likely, it’s just inertia.  It’s like getting my sitar out of its case, and actually playing it, instead of moaning and groaning about how I haven’t played it recently.

Once I begin, I go on.  I know that.  So, what am I waiting for?

Oh, yes, I’ll finish writing this post.  Unfinished laundry awaits me, and after that, sleep … perhaps.

Goodnight!

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Tags: #Incomplete, Meanderings

Mar 12, 2016 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings, The Daily Post Photo Challenge

In response to The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge:  One Love

(Note: All photographs©Vijaya Sundaram (with the exception of the one of me with sitar, which is © Warren Senders, and the one of both of us, taken by a friend).

All You Need*
©March 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

I’ve always loved the word, “Love.”

It has a magical, radiant feeling, a feeling of bottomless abundance.  It fills me up when I’m hungry, and I chase after it in dreams.

I used to whisper it to myself when I was a pre-teen, and a teenager, and a young woman,

… and now, as a not-as-young woman.

I say it to my husband and eleven-year old daughter every day. 

 [The above picture of her is from this past Christmas.  The picture below of my husband and me is from many years ago.]

I say it to our Standard Poodle, who is full of love.

I love love-songs, although I wrote, composed and sang only a couple of my own love-songs.  Here is one which I’d uploaded to YouTube a few years ago:

I Can’t Bring Myself to Call it Love – Original song by Vijaya Sundaram

Thank you for reading and listening!

Love,

Dreamer of Dreams

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*All You Need is Love — The Beatles

Tags: #The Daily Post, #Weekly Photo Challenge, All You Need is Love, One Love

Mar 12, 2016 Daily Life, Uncategorized

On the eve of my birthday (wait, it IS my birthday now, since its now 12:30 a.m.), I wish to say this:

I am happy to be alive.

I am happy to love and be loved.

I am happy to know good people.

I am happy to learn new things.

I am happy to teach.

I am happy to just be.

There are merits to growing older.

I shall go to bed now — sleep beckons.

_________________________________________________________________

Tags: Happy!

Feb 24, 2016 Daily Life, Friday Fictioneers

Genre:  Non-Fiction
Word Count:  100 words of text, exactly

Tribute
(Or:  Who Carries Whom?)
©February 24th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Ninety-three years old, clear-skinned, white-haired, my grandmother shines with inner light.  Married at thirteen, a mother at seventeen, a grandmother in her early forties, she grew up in a time and country unconducive to women.

However, she rules the kitchen, her uncontested realm.  With unflinching hands full of creative strength, she cooks fragrant meals and South-Indian desserts par excellence with poise and pleasure. 

She speaks about the joint-family in which she lived, with pride and regret, both.

Wonder-struck, I listen to her stories.  She’s proud of me, her accomplished grand-daughter.

I hold her hands, and tell her I love her.

_________________________________________________________________

Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, our delightful, kindly Fairy Blog-Mother, for hosting Friday Fictioneers (which invites and celebrates story-telling [in a hundred words] from people all over the world), and to Al Forbes for that curious photo-prompt, which gives rise to many scenarios in my mind.

Tags: My Grandmother, Old and Young-ish, Who carries whom?

Feb 12, 2016 Daily Life, The Daily Post

 Eat to Live, or Live to Eat, but LIVE!
©February 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Live to Eat –Dailypost prompt

Don’t we all?  I mean, live to eat? 
No?  Which planet do you come from?
No, seriously!

Food is good.  It’s beautiful.  It’s … full of untold sensations that satisfy so many needs!

Yes, we may analyze in all sorts of ways, and perhaps we might be right, but food is beyond that.  It’s mystical.  It’s joy.  It’s comfort.  It’s love.

I remember there was a time when all I did was eat to live.  I was too busy being worried about things I had to do, and places I had to be.  No, no, I was never anorexic (even then, I liked food, just didn’t eat too much — except for my favorite, crunchy, Indian junk food, a craving which endures even today, and to  which my husband and daughter object) — I was just busy with other stuff.  I will say that that was when I was in my teens.  I was too obsessed with playing music, singing songs, playing the guitar and sitar, writing poetry, and reading books, to be much interested in food.

In my twenties, I was too busy working, composing, writing songs and poems, and being newly in love with my future husband, to pay attention to food, although I ate all sorts of dishes with great enjoyment — I definitely wasn’t one of those dainty, pick-at-your-meal types.  I still had my favorite junk muchies like tortilla chips and potato chips, but they were organic junk foods, don’t you know? (she said, with exaggerated pride).  And I was slim, despite all that — walking everywhere, and not having a car had something to do with that.

Ah, feminine vanity! When I noticed I was a little heavier than I liked, I started exercising in a focused way, and even went on a diet of my own making, making sure that it was for only ten days, but very strict.  After that, it was easy to eat more, and exercise to keep off unwanted weight.

When I reached the age of thirty, I decided I’d go to the gym for the first time.  I became quite exercise-obsessed.  I loved it.  It gave me a rush.  So, food, which I still loved, came a poor second.  But oh, how I loved my salads, my roasted almonds, and polenta, and Indian food!  And I started biking everywhere, so I stayed skinny.

Then, I became a suburban school-teacher, and caved in to the necessity of buying a car.  That was the slow beginning of the end.  Being in one’s thirties, and staying up many nights to grade papers, and having all sorts of tempting sweet baked goods in the front office on most days added to the slow creep of weight.  I still ate to live, though.

But after my daughter was born, it began to change within a couple of years.  Being in my early forties, with a toddler, as well as being a school-teacher, with no time for such indulgences as going to a gym, I turned into a full-fledged live-to-eat type.

“Living to eat” compensated for the sleep-hunger and loss of time that occurred when I turned my sleeping hours into grading hours (because I spent my after-school afternoons, evenings and nights with my baby girl, being the good, attentive and joyful new mommy that I was).  It made up for the endless work, and the occasional spurts of depression that come when one sleeps less and works a lot.

Mind you, I was not obese — just slightly in the overweight category.  So, I was grateful.  Standing in the classroom, walking around while teaching helped to keep me moderately fit, and so did walking up and down the halls for this or that errand between classes.  Sometimes, my walks led me downtown in my lunch half-hour to get a cappuccino and a cookie — which, of course, did not help!

Then, two years ago, came the arrival of a dog into our lives.  With Holly’s entrance, we had no choice, any of us, but to take long, strenuous walks on most days, except during very, very cold (seven-degrees-Fahrenheit-type-cold) weather or rainy days.  Holly made us all very happy and fit.

And now, retired after seventeen years of teaching, I look forward to balancing my now somewhat deplorable tendency of Living-to-Eat with my earlier Puritannical tendency of Eating-to-Live.  I plan to do it  by taking long walks, not eating out much, avoiding Indian junk food (that will be a serious blow for me), and taking the long road back to a balanced, physically fit life,  I plan to spend time with my daughter, husband and dog, friends — as well as do music, and write poems and stories.

Back to food, however.  Food is too beautiful to ignore.  Don’t turn up your nose at it.  Instead, turn your nose towards it.  Savour its lingering, satisfying aroma, whatever your pleasure.  For me, food-pleasure lies in things vegetarian:  In the rich fenugreek-and-tamarind flavours of sambhar; in the bay-leaf-cinnamon-cumin-mustard-seed-ginger-and-ciantro flavors of mixed vegetable pulav; in the warm, ghee-infused savour of brown chappatis –Indian flat-breads, in delicately curried vegetables with fresh grated coconut, in toor, massoor, udid and moong dal, in pasta, polenta, in tempting hot South Indian idlis, coconut or mint chutney and dosai, in mint rice, palak paneer, malai kofta, chana masala, candied lemon and orange peel in the delicious cakes I bake; in upma and chakkarai pongal, in masala chai made with freshly chopped ginger and ground pepper, cinnamon and cardomom, with added milk and sugar.  It’s in vegetarian Chinese food:  Bright, delicate baby bok choy with garlic sauce, spiced tofu, juicy water chestnuts, tender, shy, baby corn, plus other vegetables, crunchy scallion pancakes.  It’s in vegetarian Mediterranean foods I’ve tasted:  Falafel, fresh, parsley-topped hummus, olive-oil-infused grape leaves, muhammara, pilaf, pita bread with baba ganoush, and more.

My point is, why deny oneself innocent pleasures?  As Oscar Wilde said, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it,” and “I can resist everything, except temptation.”

So, go ahead, eat to live, but also live to eat.  It cannot hurt you, unless you overdo it.  Oscar Wilde might say, “Moderation is a fatal thing.  Nothing succeeds like excess,” but this is where I disagree with my literary God.

Mangia, mangia!  Chappidu, chappidu!  Kha jao, kha jao!  Mange, mange!  Eat, eat!

And LIVE joyously!

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Tags: #vegetarian, Eat to Live, Food, Live to Eat