Where are you from?

Sun peeps through the trees

Where am I from?

So much is going on. I have about ten blog items in my head but have no time to write.

I am also struggling to keep up with both my written journal and the online journal/blog.

I cannot decide whether I want to let go of my ritual writing that I have been doing in notebooks since I was 16. There is something beautiful about writing on a pretty paper, with a fresh pen.

Something so beautiful about the way we dot our i's and cross our t's.

And writing to me is meditation.

It is the same delimma I faced when I started to use my video camera last year and seriously dropped the number of pictures I was taking. Composing a picture is something very meditative. Taking a video on the other hand different.

Ofcourse, today with picture manipulation we can change anything. But for those who care for the process, is the placement, the angle, the light, the shadows that make a picture.

But as some of you know that I lost my camera about five months ago and since then have felt amputated.

So pardon me no pictures of every other place I visit, post July that should change, I plan on getting myself a really nice camera.

So here is something from March 16, 2010.

And yes, the picture above is a real picture from around early March. This is how it was still on the streets….

Here goes:

Am at a Café in Karlstad, Sweden.

Came to Studio Pan to get pictures taken for some official documents.

The gentleman asked me to wait 45 minutes so he could fix the pics for me.

As I looked around at the photo shop, how could I not smile….

Except a few things it was all the same, quite familiar.

The same chubby kids, bald, smiling, giggling like they’ve found the last place to this jigsaw puzzle called, the Universe.

Newly married people snuggled together in flowers, close ups, kisses, --the only thing that stands out that I may not have seen in a photo shop before is a picture of a pregnant woman, probably in her eighth month, in her undergarments whose partner/husband, shirtless, wraps her with his arm like a fleece cloak. Barely dressed as they are, they still look calm and radiate love.

Another image of affirmation of love, …quite different from the ones I am used to….

The studio owner asked me where I was from?

And as always I say, I grew up in India.

What does that mean. Do people like me, really belong to a place, are we from somewhere? Is there only one answer?

Recently I heard an interview with Salman Rushdie and he said, India is just where I am from and that does not change

And may be he is right but how do I explain—that drumming on a bucket (Botswana), or listenting to This land is my land (US), Isa Lei (Fiji) It’s a Wedding day (South Africa/ Brenda Fassie), or listening to Benediction Chants, makes my heart beat with the same intensity as Govind Bolo, Gopal bolo (a devotional song from India chanting Lord Krishna’s name).

Where am I from?

Probably from the void whence forth everything emerged. I was born when startdust kissed infinite possibility as it pushed away boxes and walls....

I grew up under clouds whose silver lining was thicker and wider than the darkness.

I learnt the language of breath, slow, clam, meaningful, fast unsure, passionate, unenven, despondent, fearful, hopeful….

And all of that brought me to where I am.

In the middle of rainbows---where one mood smoothly fades into another and when I rest all the colors merge---and I am the white light that is formed

That is where I am from!!

And where are you from?

This video is exactly a year old. Just before I was leaving Fiji, the Hungarian twins celebrated their second birthday.

Lorend and Erwin.

For me it was a joy, because when I saw them at barely 6 mths of age, they were just learning to sit down. Not only had the kids started talking by the time I left, they had actually become bilingual--to the best of their ability.

They understood both Magyar and English.

To a New Continent

The following was a long mass email that went out to friends earlier this year when I moved to a new continent. I have complained about the uncertainities of life, but like in Jhumpa Lahri's story, 'The Third and Final Continent' in An Interpreter of Maladies, sometimes all this is beyond my imagination. It feels like someone else's life. Becuase I had only dreamt of seeing every nook and corner of India and writing about it. But life, destiny and many other factors flew me to far off places.

And a few years after leaving home, home became an elusive term. It became a feeling and not a place, it was a memory that could be triggered by a sight, a smell, a smile.

Simply Sweden

Dear All:

Guys, this is 862 words, read it at your leisure. Write back and be patient if I cannot write right away. This goes out to my friends spread across the globe.

Wish a very late happy new year. And an update you on my whereabouts.

The last 6-8 months have been crazy for me. Made some snap decisions and somehow landed up in yet another continent.

Europe. Scandinavia. Sweden.

The permanent address will take a while. The official email. ---

I will be working at ---- University & will have to learn the language (tried playing wheel of fortune in Swedish and failed!! :(()

They have a great Global Media Studies program that impressed me. And since I can’t do anything else, I teach. Thankfully I enjoy it very much.

And I was all set to move to North America. Such is my journey on this planet -this time around!!

Predictability is -35!! Visibility is Zilch!!

You know, when we were in 3rd grade among other things in grammar class we learnt the ‘opposites’.

"Right-wrong, top-bottom, light-dark, north-south. At some point the process got intuitive important/unimportant literate/illiterate….

Well, Fiji----Sweden sounds right.

It is January end and they are just ending their fall semester. The spring semester starts the next week. The classes go on till June etc.

There is stark contrast in the amount of light we get as opposed to Fiji, which is pretty much constant in sunlight and daylight year around.

A week before I arrived it went down to -21 C.

As a friend from Indiana said, "Wisconsin is one of the few places where global warming is appreciated."

Yeah, and Sweden is another!!

I have circled around the globe almost twice this year.

And may I just say that movement is great if you have a base, which I don't. Everytime I’ve to make the painful decision of what to hang on to and what to let go of.

Yet, I have taught myself to savor this uncertainty. But often am in a whirlpool of doubts. And ask the supposed sane questions, "while my friends are working on publications, and, building a home, I have not been able to organize for the last decade because of movement. Still do not know whether I need a velvet covered rocking chair or a beach chair. What should I collect that will help in the long run...help me be efficient and productive….

Since my woolens lay alone for nearly four years, I started to give them away. Now my beautiful collection of sarongs and shell jewelry will seem useless.

I give up.

And yet I am prepared to experience the new place. The people are lovely and warm!! The topography is so much like Pennsylvania!!

Only I realize when I cant read the ingredients on a jam bottle that it would be good to learn the language.

And I must state that I will not trade the friends I have made in Fiji for anything. And there is no other way than to have this uncertainty to meet a great bunch of people in such a short time.

So am grateful for this magic, which leaves a cloud of confusion. But when it parts, I am surrounded by some familiar faces, who do not mind sticking by my side.

I will write as often as I can, and you do the same. The next few weeks will be hectic for me. While I have written a record of nearly 450 letters a year, even in candle light (my previous life in Africa), I find it hard to keep up with all the emails now. So have started a blog. www.insearchofahome2009.blogspot.com I called myself, “the accidentally seasoned Hobo but will change it to my name so that people can find it easily. 

I, like anyone interested in writing am hungry for readers, so follow the blog, read it, make comments, silly ones are welcome…..and keep in touch.

I carry all of you in my heart.

A very happy spring to you in the northern hemisphere, those in the southern hemisphere, well enjoy the rest of the summer.

And ….for the weather forecast from here...

all the leaves are brown

and the sky is grey

I've been for a walk

on a winter's day

I'd be safe and warm

if I was in L.A/ OR FIJI….

California Dreamin'

on such a winter's day

It was -17 C today….Ah, warmer than -21!!!

“What is -20 in Fahrenheit?” I asked my landlord who is a Ph.D. student in Chemical engineering. Despite years in Fiji I still measure in Fahrenheit and write Month before the date.

The young man said very gently but very firmly “You know we think Fahrenheit is silly”

“Really, why is that?” I expected a scientific answer from a scientist.

“Because Celsius was Swedish”

Simple people, simple philosophy, Simply Sweden!!