Thank you

Egads! Its getting on to 6 months since I wrote my last blog. Now I have gone and ruined my resolution to blog regularly. Aargh! I dont really have any valid excuse for this erratic behaviour, except that I have been lazy, preoccupied, travelling, busy - not necessarily in that order.

As usual, I have hit a big block in my head, when I try to figure out what I should write about. I have often tried to bookmark an interesting or significant moment and thought to myself " this is something I should write about", but those bookmarks have faded away over time. So as I sit and twiddle my thumbs and hem and haw a  line I read in April Hoeller's recent blog comes to mind. "Write about what should not be forgotten."
I shall try to use that as a mantra from now on.

The last 6 months have had their memorable moments. Not really earth shaking, but remarkable in some way or the other.

There was the 'man proposes and God disposes' moment, as my carefully planned trip to escort my ageing parents (Daddy is 89 and Ma is 79!) for their once-every-two-years visit with my sister in USA, went awry one early May morning. My daughter who was to accompany them half way, called to say my dad had a fall and hurt his foot and his head too!!!

After many an anxious moment, frantic phone calls and much hand wringing in Doha , while they went from doctor to hospital in faraway Kolkata, I was relieved to hear that he had a hairline fracture on the ankle bone! The hip and other big bones were intact. The head wound was just a flesh wound and was nothing to worry about. He was lucid and out of any danger.  Unfortunately, it still put a spanner in the works and a plaster cast on his foot!

So off I went to Kolkata instead of Washington, fighting off dismay and despondence.  I spent a very hot and humid month there, trying to help out and just being there as my father 's pain and trauma eased, his disappointment faded somewhat and his mobility returned gradually with the help of a 'walker' first and the elbow crutch later. I watched with awe as my mother picked up the threads and restarted their daily routine as they had wound down their establishment in anticipation of the USA trip. She rose early every morning and attended to endless chores through the day, at her age. There was the house cleaning, tea and breakfast to fix,  the morning Puja, the clothes to be washed and put out to sun dry on the balcony and brought in as they dry, the lunch to be cooked, the ironing, the groceries to be bought, the calls to be made to friends and family to keep everyone in the loop, the neighbours to be met .....the list goes on and on. This may seem mundane, but those who live in India will appreciate how much of a chore all this works out to be without help. I salute the spirit of my parents and their ability to manage to live  independently despite their advancing years.


By the end of the month, the plaster was removed from my father's foot, and I returned to Doha albeit with a niggling feeling about their increasing vulnerability and much gratitude for their neighbours, friends and family who have been rallying around them. My sister and I live far away and it is they, who my parents go to first when they need help. Thank you.

Lush foliage of the mango tree rich with bird life outside my parents' balcony in Kolkata

My March whirligig

Aargh! ...... I havent written anything for a while, despite every good intention to blog regularly. Every time I think about it, I am stumped .....what shall I write about? No flurry of ideas raising their hands in my mind's classroom (borrowed that from April Hoeller, by the way - loved the mental picture it creates).

Guess it will have to be the mundane for the moment till I can teach myself to be more intellectual.....

Let's see now.... I  did some geometry - a design based on the 'breath of the Compassionate' theme for a friend whose salon is done up all in black and white!

I reconnected with a hitherto 'virtual' friend whom I had met at a common friend's place two years over an evening of lively conversation and experience sharing. D had been in Doha for a long time and had many interesting stories to tell. We stayed in touch via the internet, sharing funny jokes and emails  for two years till she sent me a moving message a month ago inviting me to 'sit at her table'. Turns out she lived close by and one day recently she invited friends for coffee at her house one morning and I got to meet her again and felt a warm glow as she and her fun friends from all over the world, pulled me in briefly, extending their hand of friendship. Alas, D is leaving Doha after more than 2 decades!  I  understand now, when she says " My friends are the Jewels on my Crown, thanks for being there for me and for being a Jewel of a Friend... I will alway remember you" ... Farewell D .... you are definitely a jewel in my crown and your emails brighten my day! Keep those jokes coming ......

Then there was this mad dash trip to India. First to Delhi, where my daughter was in the throes of finalising her MPhil dissertation, figuring out footnotes and references - didnt know there were so many formats on footnotes and bibliography writing. Once she is done, my daughter will be the most highly educated member of our family for a few generations on both sides! 

I stayed out of her way dealing with the piles of laundry, cooking and sundry chores, in between catching up with old friends, before heading off to Bangalore.

The meeting in Bangalore went well at this NGO that has been working quietly without fanfare to promote and help realise the rights of persons with disabilities in rural areas across some very remote parts of India. I feel privileged to have been part of their journey, initially as a resource person and for the past three plus years as a board member. Now that I have relocated to Doha, it was time to pass the baton on, so I have opted out of their board, but am so glad they accepted my offer to stay on as a general member.

I like going to Bangalore and meeting up with old friends and family,  and I have got used to the chaotic commutes and crazy traffic. I like how it is spreading out and evolving into a truly multi cultural city - a friend joked about how it was soon to be renamed 'Bongolore'  by the large population of Bengalis living there! It is also extremely popular destination for young people from North East India. The Ant Store in Indira Nagar, is a must visit place and has become quite a hub for the 'northeastisation' of the city  and I am proud to have had a hand in making that happen. It is not uncommon to hear Assamese spoken around you, and now there a few restaurants serving Naga food! Way to go NorthEasterners!!!

Onward ho to Kolkata to meet with the parents, who are getting on in years but still continue to amaze me with their albeit now slowing, spirit and energy (Daddy is 89 and Ma is 78!!).  Ever the film buff, my father and I watch 'Twelve Years a Slave' on DVD the evening I arrive and wake up early next morning to watch the Oscars ceremony live!!!

Next stop Guwahati. Was so good to be home and sleep in my own bed and wake up to the sound of sparrows cheeping and crows cawing outside my bedroom window and to see the baskets of petunias hanging on the terrace.

Mother in law is doing okay despite her 80 + years and twice replaced hip bones!!! (touch wood!). Visited the office where I used to work for a chat with my successor, attended a first birthday celebration of our friends' grandson, and spent an evening chatting with my one time colleague, confidant and close friend (even if she is almost as old as my mum!)

Back in Delhi, on my way back, my daughter is still slaving away at the dissertation as her deadlines have been extended. I meet her flatmates from Mexico and Lithuania, who are in India interning with a leading NGO that converges technology and science with ecology and food security! Daughter's apartment building is a mess on account of long overdue renovation work and she is plodding through the proofreading and editing  amid all the banging and yelling and cement and concrete flying around! Poor dear!  I leave her with a heavy heart and the hope that her situation will ease up soon.

Winged it back to Doha from Delhi on an upgrade to business class ! Hah! I had complained about the service and rude treatment on an earlier trip....wonder whether there is a flag against my name on their computer?

I am attending art classes again at the MIA. The Marbling class was great fun and brought out the child in all of us as we swirled through the blobs of colour in the marbling bath and  watched the patterns form when we pulled out our sheets of paper and fabric. But watercolour painting was a different ball game altogether.

My brother in law from USA passed through Doha in a whirl of salsa dancing and tango classes, much to his surprise and delight!

And so it goes on...... next time I will write about my attempts to learn 'dandiya' dancing ...

Expressing myself

Expressing myself

So I went to this workshop about two weeks ago at the College of North Atlantic -Qatar campus. I had responded to an advertisement they put out in the local papers announcing a series of 'free' Writing courses for the community. The first course was spread over 2 sessions  and aptly titled Express Yourself! I was quite excited when I got a response from Andrea Comeau, Mentor at the Advanced Writing Centre of the University, saying she had me down for the course after I committed to take both the sessions.

Now to figure out how to get there. You see, I don’t drive, and have to depend on taxis to get around the city. This works well most of the time, as we live just across the road from City Centre where there usually is a long line of waiting cabs driven by men from Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Phillipines, Kenya, Ghana, Somalia, Egypt, Morocco - some total newbies, others seasoned old hands. The newbies are usually courteous and helpful, but often dont know their way around, while the older guys are wily and usually reluctant to go by the meter. Getting back home, is often a problem. Sometime cabbies offer to come back and fetch me (my phone has a long list of mobile numbers of cabbies!) but it doesnt always work out.   As this was an evening class, and  CNAQ is a little way out,  decided to call Shahmim, my go-to guy, from Bangladesh who runs a more expensive private taxi service, whom we had befriended some months ago when he drove us back home from Katara late one evening and bonded over our common Bengali origins. Shahmim has since regularly rescued me from being stranded and frequently ferries me to new unfamiliar places.

So Shahmim gets me to CNAQ a little early and offers to come back for me if I cant swing a lift with somebody. As we drive in to the sprawling grounds of the very swish, state of the art campus, we slow down at a speed breaker, and I catch a glimpse of this cute little Bulbul like bird peering out from among the leaves of this neatly trimmed topiaried tree lining the driveway....one of the oh-so-many ‘aha’ moments when I wished I had a camera on the ready!

Andrea was busy setting up the Learning Commons for the meeting and I was joined shortly by Maya, another younger coursemate from India. We were delighted to learn that Andrea is really widely travelled, having visited India a few times. Soon others began to trickle in and by the time we really got going, what started like a low turnout became a very full class of people, all very keen to learn to 'express ourselves'. Most of us were there for the first time, but a few participants, had taken earlier courses and had even been published in CNAQ’s Mosaic publication. I totally understood, when one gentleman said he was impressed by columnists who are able to write so much about some seemingly trivial matter. I for one, want to be able to find a focus in my amateurish attempts at blogging.

I learned that there can be a whole lot of ways to express ourselves - it could be written (poetry, prose etc), oral (public speaking etc), visual (photographs, videos etc). There is a whole multitude of medium out there - Journalling -chronicling and reflecting, writing memoirs and autobiographies,  vision boards, blogging, tweeting, and facebooking etc.By the way, did you know 'who' your audience is going to be? Gosh! so far, my audience has mostly been my husband and two children! even though I have started to make the blog public via Google Plus and occasionally shared it via Facebook. I guess this is the price of teaching yourself to use all these new apps and social medium and being a wannabe. You fumble and fall and then pick yourself up and try to figure out stuff on your own, with occasional help from your children. So far I have managed to navigate my way into Facebook  and I am thrilled to be able to connect on so many levels with old and new 'friends', sharing thoughts, comments, opinions and of course photos. I do worry about being a bit voyeur-ish sometimes, of others’ travels, get togethers and shameless selfies. I tweet occasionally, but am unsure about using hashtags and following ‘trends’. Communicating your thoughts and ideas in 140 characters can be fun and challenging. I even have a Pinterest account, where so far I have collected and pinned photos of garden ideas, recipes, cross stitch and embroidery patterns and a whole lot of Islamic art motifs.

Blogging via e-Blogger has been quite user friendly, and as I mentioned in my introduction in the class, very liberating. The shackle of all those years of being brief, to the point and succinct while drafting documents, reports and official correspondence, have fallen off. I can express myself just as I wish. I can ramble and roam, like I tend to do when I speak. My children, who are young adults now, remain my harshest critics (God bless them!)  are forever ticking me off about my meandering conversations. They say I loose the thread and focus.  I tell them, I am establishing context. Now that I think of it, I do get impatient with my mother when we are talking, she can go on and on.  Sigh, I guess I will have to learn to rein myself in!

It was great to talk with Arti from our group, who has also started blogging recently to share her thoughts about recent travels and record them for posterity. I hugely enjoyed reading of her Tblisi travels, her poems and the twist in the tail of her Valentine Day blog!!! Way to go Arti! I also eagerly follow April Hoeller's blogs that I stumbled upon while idly surfing the net.

We did an interesting exercise in the class. Following the less is more principle I guess, and based on the Smith Magazine Six Word Memoir contest . We were asked to describe ourselves in just  6 words!  Boy! That was a tough one. I had earlier struggled with a 50 word intro about myself when I enrolled for a MOOC in October. After hemming and hawing  I came up with 'Living and learning, greying and growing'. Seemed kind of tame. I loved some of the really clever ones in the handouts that we were given ‘surfing life’s ripples, wishing for waves’ , former doc now wears art smock’ , ‘the good child until I wasnt’.  My 60 yr old friend Virginia, whom I mentioned this exercise to last Friday came up with a 4 word tagline for herself,  'Still in the game'  that was really apt and so her.  Maybe mine should be 'change is the name of my game' (>6) or 'Change is my game's name' (<6) or 'Variety is my life's spice' (<6), considering that I am a Gemini and I like change and enjoying doing new things. As I think of 6 clever words I am reminded of Vani Saraswathy’s blog response to the question Who are you? asked in another blog by Kirsty Rice. It depends on who is asking. At the risk of incurring Vani’s wrath, for the moment, I  would like to borrow her words, ‘I am a work in progress’....

  

What do I do?

Althought I still dont have a response to my question in the last blog (What do I blog about?) as I sit down to try and blog regularly, I ask myself ' what did I do?'
I am often asked this question by people I meet, "what do you do?" and ever since I moved to Doha after giving up my job with a local foundation  and years of working in the non profit sector in Assam and briefly in Delhi, I go into a bit of a tizzy trying to articulate a meaningful response. Sometimes I mention something I have just been doing, which could be anything from teaching myself to cook and keep house (back in India, I had the luxury of help at home to take care of household chores), going for a walk, grocery shopping, seeing a film, watching television, to surfing the net. I tell my friends in India, that I do "nothing much - I am a lady of leisure now" and they laugh, as they have usually seen me rushing about or frothing in the mouth about some issue or the other. I worry that I sound slothful and lazy. Then again, I am forever running behind on my chores, or places I have to go to. Guess I just have poor time management skills.
Getting back to what I 'did' last week. Let me see -
I have tried out the Moroccan Lentil Soup recipe a couple of times - it is improving with each attempt, although still nothing like the delicious soup that Kate and her fantastic team served us at Dar Seffarine in Fez, where we stayed, during that amazing Study Tour with Richard and Adam of Art of Islamic Pattern in September last year. Dar Seffarine, is a beautiful, restored Dar, run by Kate and Ala and Kate's team cooked up some fantastic lunches, during our sessions there.
I have been walking on the Corniche which is looking so lovely these days, with the cool weather and riot of colours of the petunias in the flowerbeds. I have stopped to smell the sweet fragrance of the flowers and to admire the lovely blue of the waters in the bay and take pictures of the bright night lights. I have watched as structures are erected for the National Sports Day - being organised in a big way on 11th February, to encourage Qatari and expats alike to be more active and engaged in sports activities.
I have been taking more Woodwork classes at the Museum of Islamic Art (a lovely local institution) to finish my earlier piece.  I am gradually beginning to understand that you have to 'listen to the wood' as I wield my 'raqama' (Algerian style chisel) and coax out the slivers of pinewood from my block !
I watched a wrenching and deeply moving Brazilian film 'Central Station' screened by Doha Film Institute, as part of their Qatar Brazil 2014 cultural exchange program.
I met up with friends over 'dosas' one morning and at a jazz bar one evening.
I finally got to give some fabric, bought on earlier shopping trip with friends at the Souk, to a local tailor, courtesy a kind friend who runs a lovely salon here that I go to for an occasional indulgence of a pedicure or a facial, but mostly for a chat and a cup of tea! My fingers are crossed tight as I hope the tailor works his wonder on my cloth.
Hurrah! I finished reading a book online. Love Comes Later by Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar is an interesting tale exploring cross cultural boundaries of the Arabs and South Asians. Before that I had actually finished reading another book - Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowlands.
I listened to  musicians from the Qatar Philaharmonic Orchestras perform Music from the Movies  at the awe inspiring MIA atrium -
And the week has gone by and I am way behind on posting this blog, and finishing a geometry piece that I am working on, and preparing for my session at a local school on behalf of a local foundation here that trains young people with work readiness skills..... this course has an upcoming session on time management, where I hope to learn a thing or two before I talk about it to the class !!!

What should I blog about?

Am trying to discipline myself to blog regularly, but its hard. I guess its me. I tend to go into a slide when there is nobody breathing down my neck. No deadlines to be met. No meetings to attend. No reports to write. Instead there is cooking and laundry to be done, the gym to go to, groceries to be bought and newly learnt art skills  to be practised.

I have been reading other blogs on and off and some of them are quite inspiring. I am amazed at the way their words just flow and the way they articulate thoughts. Many of these thoughts and ideas are similar to what I think about. I want to say to the blogger " hey, my thoughts exactly!..." Sometimes I write a comment, sometimes I just +1 them... I hesitate too, not knowing whether my comments are appropriate or if they sound cliched.

There is of course the other issue of my being self taught. That's the way it has been all along. Earlier on I taught myself how to use Microsoft Word an Excel and later PowerPoint as part of the exigencies of work (just couldnt wrap my head around MS Access though!). I went on to Facebook and more recently Twitter just to check it out and see what it was all about. Still trying to fumble my way through Pinterest. The e Blogger facility linked to Google tempted me to try it last year and I have managed to blog in fits and starts about random stuff - hence the name Random Ramblings. But I am still figuring out the way it works, and I
struggle with adding photographs and changing layouts. Wish I were more savvy with the technology.

I also keep wondering what I should blog about? I think about different things then I weigh them in my mind. I guess it doesnt have to be earth-shakingly important and from the different blogs I have read, it could be about just anything. I was once advised to find some focus or theme for the blog. However I am still adrift and cant quite figure out a theme. Till then I guess it will just be a random ramble about something, anything....