By the River Pampa I stood

Tagged by Twinkletoes!

2008-04-02T00:35:00.000-07:00

Of late, I've been feeling quite lazy about blogging but when a sweet person like Twinkletoes tags you, you just have to do it. So here I go:

1.LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER:

Om Shanti Om!
It's a long story. One morning, Mahi woke up and declared: Om Shanti Om! I have to see it to-day. So, off we went in the evening to Lamcy but it was running houseful and so we drove all the way to Ibn Battuta Mall only to discover that only the front rows were available. You should have seen Mahi's face. So we booked for the next morning, took her to her favourite fast food joint and then drove home. Next morning we skipped church and watched OSO with empty balcony seats for company. But it was worth all that trouble... we enjoyed it thoroughly, though the story lacked originality and stuff like that.

2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING?

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Reading it for the second time and still loving it. Loved his first book as well

3. FAVORITE BOARD GAME?

Any board game reminds me of the long lazy summer afternoons I spent during my childhood, playing indoor board games as it was too hot outside. Snakes and Ladders,Monopoly, Ludo....btw,can we include carroms? Scrabble, no doubt , is my eternal favourite

4. FAVORITE MAGAZINE?

Readers Digest from the good old days.....

5. FAVORITE SMELLS?

Smell of new books, coffee blossom, Yardley Lavender Talcum Powder, smell of the earth after the first rain....

6. FAVORITE SOUND?

The melodious tinkle of my Korean chime....it reverberates throughout the house,spreading positive energy...

7. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD?

Feeling lost....

8. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE?

Oh God,I wish it was a holiday....why do Fridays fly and office days crawl????

9. FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE?

TGI Friday (thank God, it's Friday!)

10. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME?

Did you mean future grandchild? Dittu, obviously (check out Mahi's blog)

11. FINISH THIS STATEMENT. "IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY I'D...?

zip around the world in my own jet

12. DO YOU DRIVE FAST?“

I do backseat driving only!LOL! Hubby will vouch for that

13. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL?

Yup. It's called a P-I-L-L-O-W and it is stuffed with feathers.

14. STORMS-COOL OR SCARY?

Scary!

15. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR?

The mighty Ambassador...that was a long time ago....when we were kids. After I got married, we had a Maruti 800, then a Nissan, now its a Lexus, but as I said, strictly back seat driving.

16. FAVORITE DRINK?

Pomegranate Juice (in some restaurants, I'm met with raised eyebrows when I ask for it), Fruit cocktail, filter coffee

17. FINISH THIS STATEMENT, "IF I HAD THE TIME I WOULD .....

write books "

18. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS ON BROCCOLI?

Yessss! Weird?

19. IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR CHOICE?

VIBGYOR!

20. NAME ALL THE DIFFERENT CITIES/TOWNS YOU HAVE LIVED IN.

Bangalore, Bombay, Hyderabad, Madras, Tiruvalla, Kollam , Chengannur, Kochi, Sharjah & Dubai.

21. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?

Cricket....because my hubby is a cricket freak, I'm forced to watch it on TV; though occasionally I stare at the screen and tune out

22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU.

A sweet lass....with a great smile

23. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED?

Books

24. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE BORN AS YOURSELF AGAIN?

Absolutely. Only as myself.

25. MORNING PERSON, OR NIGHT OWL?

Night Owl

26. OVER EASY, OR SUNNY SIDE UP?

Sunny side up, shiny and cholesterol rich...runny inside, with a dash of of pepper and salt

27. FAVORITE PLACE TO RELAX?

In my favourite rocking chair with a good book

28. FAVORITE PIE?

Cutie pie...that's what I call Mahi whenever I'm feeling pleased with her (no, not with her wardrobe in view!)

29. FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR?

Vanilla, Butterscotch, chocolate.....any of the 31 favours at Baskin Robbins

30. OF ALL THE PEOPLE YOU TAGGED THIS TO, WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST?

Hillgrandmom: please don't let me down!

Hey, now that I've done it, I'd like to tag Jawahara and Hillgrandmom....and anyone else who would like to take it

Ring out 2007, Ring in 2008

2007-12-30T22:30:00.000-08:00

RING OUT, WILD BELLS....

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkenss of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

- Lord Tennyson

Happy New Year, everyone! Make as many resolutions as you can ....after all, resolutions are made to be b-r-o-k-e-n!

May You be Blessed this Christmas Season!

2007-12-07T20:35:00.000-08:00

During this Christmas season,
May you be blessed
With the spirit of the season,
which is peace,
The gladness of the season,
which is hope,
And the heart of the season,
which is love

Somehow, not only for Christmas
But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.
And the more you spend in blessing
The poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart's possessing
Returns to you glad.

-John Greenleaf Whittier

Musings of a New Mother

2007-11-27T00:51:00.000-08:00

This is a poem I wrote 17 years ago when my baby daughter was born....

A new star
On the horizon;
A new dawn
In my life;
New aspirations
Within my heart;
A new individual –
My daughter!

A new dream
I now weave;
A new hope
In my soul;
New dimensions
To my thoughts;
A new role to play –
Her mother!

A new life
In this world;
A new change
In my routine;
New worries, anxieties
As time rolls;
A new world to build
My daughter grows!

-Geeta Abraham Jose

Istanbul: Memories of a City

2007-10-20T01:21:00.000-07:00

Book Excerpt:
At least once in a lifetime, self-reflection leads us to examine the circumstances of our birth. Why were we born in this particular corner of the world, on this particular date? These families into which we were born, these countries and cities to which the lottery of life has assigned us - they expect love from us, and in the end, we do love them, from the bottom of our hearts - but did we perhaps deserve better? I sometimes think myself unlucky to have been born in an ageing and impoverished city buried under the ashes of a ruined empire. But a voice inside me always insists this was really a piece of luck. If it were a matter of wealth, then I could certainly count myself fortunate to have been born into an affluent family at a time when the city was at its lowest ebb (though some have ably argued the contrary). Mostly I am disinclined to complain: I've accepted the city into which I was born in the same way I've accepted my body (much as I would have preferred to be more handsome and better built) and my gender (even though I still ask myself, naively, whether I might have been better off had I been born a woman). This is my fate, and there's sense arguing with it.

-Orhan Pamuk (Winner of Nobel Prize in Literature, 2006) Book: Istanbul:Memories of a City

Tagged by three!!!

2007-09-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

I was tagged by Dot, Hillgran and Jac. So there's no way out; here goes mine:
There are 3 rules.
Rule 1. Same as for the last tag
Rule 2 You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
Rule 3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
My middle name is Abraham. But I'd like to shorten it to ABE so that I can do the tag quickly and not postpone it to to-morrow as I have been doing the last few days. And to-morrow never comes, they say...So let me do it TO-DAY.

A: ATTITUDE : Having the right attitude is crucial for getting ahead in life. A positive attitude works wonders in one's life. A great thinker (I don't remember who) once said that the greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be.

B: BEAUTY: Beauty, they say, is skin deep. But when I think of beauty, it is the inner beauty that manifests itself through good words, kind deeds and supreme sacrifices. If you were ask me to name the most beautiful woman on earth in recent times, my answer would be: Mother Teresa.

E: EMPATHY: One of the greatest qualities that sets man apart from beasts is his capacity to empathize with fellow beings. It originates deep within your soul and spreads out to your fellow being who is suffering physically, mentally or spiritually. My favourite quote on Empathy is: I do not ask the wounded person how he feels. I simply become the wounded person…...

So mine is done, Jac,Hillgran, Dot. Now who shall I tag? Hmmmm....yes..got it
1.Dr.Hope and Love
2.mm
3.Sarah

The Day the World Changed Forever

2007-09-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

Invisible City

Sweet and bitter smoke stains the air
The verb stains has a thread torn out

I step out to the linden grove
Bruised trees are the color of sand.

Something uncoils and blows at my feet.
Sliver of mist? Bolt of beatitude?

A scrap of what was once called sky?
I murmur words that come to me

Tall towers, twin towers I used to see.
A bloody seam of sense drops free.

By Liberty Street, on a knot of rubble
In altered light, I see a bird cry.

by Meena Alexander(author of Fault Lines, Nampally Road etc)

Dot's Tag of Fav Smells

2007-09-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

I'm doing Dot's Tag....Here is my list of favourite smells:

1. The smell of the earth just after the first monsoon rain...did you know that it's called "petrichor"?
2. The mild fragrance of Johnson's Baby Powder...it takes me back to the time my daughter was a sweet little baby
3. The aroma of my mom's chicken stew brewing in the pot...yummmm
4. The smell of new books...something I loved as a child and still do.
5. The ethereal smell of coffee blossoms back home in Kerala....

Now, its my turn to tag:
Vidya, Jac and Hillgrandmom

Hello there!

2007-08-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

Hey Guyz…..I'm back with a bang. Fully charged and ready to take on the next year's challenges after the most relaxing and refreshing holiday in the best place on planet Earth: monsoon drenched Kerala. Missed you guys…I'm catching up with everyone.
In the meantime, here's an excerpt from a wonderful book on Bombay, that I read during my vacation. It takes you right from the crown to the underbelly of the city and never ceases to amaze you with facts about this great city, that the author gathered by befriending people from every section of the society- from slum dwellers, killers, smugglers and prostitutes to movie stars , cops and politicians. This non fiction book reads like a novel that you simply cannot put down.

Excerpt - Maximum City : Bombay Lost and Found

You have to break the laws to survive. I break the law often and casually. I dislike giving bribes, I dislike buying movie tickets in black. But since the legal option is so ridiculously arduous – in getting a driving licence, in buying a movie ticket—I take the easy way out. If the whole country collectively takes the easy way out, an alternative system is established whose rules are more or less known to all, whose rates are fixed. The 'parallel economy', a traveling partner of the official economy, is always there; turn your head a little to the left or right and you'll see it. To survive in Bombay, you need to know its habits. If you have a child, you have to know how much 'donation' to give to the school to get admission. If you have a traffic accident, you have to know how much to give to the cops to dispose of the matter and how much to give to the father of the child you've run over to stop the mob from lynching you. If you're a tenant, you have to know how much to demand in key money from the landlord to move out. The parallel economy is fed on a diet of judicial rot. The system of justice, supreme legacy of the British, is in tatters, starved by a succession of governments afraid of its power over them.........

- Suketu Mehta ( Maximum City)

Excerpt 4 - Off to GOC

2007-06-24T02:42:00.000-07:00

....Outside the window, the brown countryside was gradually giving way to a green one. Swaying coconut palms- myriads of them- welcomed us to the land of coconuts.
Lush green paddy fields flowed past. The purple lines of hilltops rose behind them on the horizon, scalloping the sky. Slowly, the sun rose above them, heralding the birth of a new day.

I was in God's own country where the sun smiled, the rain danced and thunder applauded as nature sashayed down the catwalk in all her finery. Here, nature was endowed with an abundance of beauty, grace and charm in such measure that tourists often exclaimed, "Surely, this must be God's own country!", and the tourism people decided to use this expression to their advantage in luring more tourists to Kerala.

God’s own country with its fields and rivers, lapping lagoons and bewitching backwaters was a treat to the eyes. I looked out of the window at the scenes racing backwards as the train raced forward. But I was hardly appreciating the beauty of the land. My mind was racing. Racing backwards. Through months, through years, through decades……………

-Geeta Abraham Jose (By the River Pampa I stood)

Dear blogger friends,

Yay! I'm off on a vacation to Kerala. Will miss you all. See you in August. Have fun, keep writing and KEEP SMILING!!!!

Book Excerpt: Broken Wings

2007-06-16T03:59:00.000-07:00

Every time I went to the fields I returned disappointed, without understanding the cause of my disappointment. Every time I looked at the grey sky I felt my heart contract. Every time I heard the singing of the birds and babbling of the spring I suffered without understanding the reason for my suffering. It is said that unsophistication makes a man empty and that emptiness makes him carefree. It may be true among those who were born dead and who exist like frozen corpses; but the sensitive boy who feels much and knows little is the most unfortunate creature under the sun, because he is torn by two forces. the first force elevates him and shows him the beauty of existence through a cloud of dreams; the second ties him down to the earth and fills his eyes with dust and overpowers him with fears and darkness.

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.

The boy's soul undergoing the buffeting of sorrow is like a white lily just unfolding. It trembles before the breeze and opens its heart to day break and folds its leaves back when the shadow of night comes. If that boy does not have diversion or friends or companions in his games his life will be like a narrow prison in which he sees nothing but spider webs and hears nothing but the crawling of insects.

That sorrow which obsessed me during my youth was not caused by lack of amusement, because I could have had it; neither from lack of friends, because I could have found them. That sorrow was caused by an inward ailment which made me love solitude. It killed in me the inclination for games and amusement. It removed from my shoulders the wings of youth and made me like a pong of water between mountains which reflects in its calm surface the shadows of ghosts and the colours of clouds and trees, but cannot find an outlet by which to pass singing to the sea.

Thus was my life before I attained the age of eighteen. That year is like a mountain peak in my life, for it awakened knowledge in me and made me understand the vicissitudes of mankind. In that year I was reborn and unless a person is born again his life will remain like a blank sheet in the book of existence. In that year, I saw the angels of heaven looking at me through the eyes of a beautiful woman. I also saw the devils of hell raging in the heart of an evil man. He who does not see the angels and devils in the beauty and malice of life will be far removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be empty of affection.

-Kahlil Gibran (Broken Wings)

More on Optimists and Pessimists

2007-06-06T01:20:00.000-07:00

The optimist is a person who wakes up in the morning and shouts: "Good Morning, God!" The pessimist is a person who wakes up in the morning and groans: "Good God! It's morning!"
(this is my favourite quote on optimists and pessimists- I don't know who said it)

Here are some more:

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
-Mark Twain

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.
-Kahlil Gibran

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
-Rene Descartes

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight. The truly wise person is colorblind.
-Albert Schweitzer

Always borrow money from a pessimist, he doesn't expect to be paid back.
-Anonymous

An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be
-Anonymous

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
-William Arthur Ward

Don't ever become a pessimist; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.
-Robert Heinlein

Any more quotes on Pessimists and Optimists????

Optimist or Pessimist?????

2007-06-02T07:40:00.001-07:00

I found this at Hillgrandmom's and set to find out where I stand. And here's the result:

You Are a Realist

You don't see the glass as half empty or half full. You see what's exactly in the glass.
You never try to make a bad situation seem better than it is...
But you also never sabotage any good things you have going on.
You are brutally honest in your assessments of situations - and this always seems to help you cope.

Are You An Optimist or Pessimist?

Book Excerpt: The Origin of Species

2007-05-31T20:21:00.000-07:00

Thus ends this highly controversial book:

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species of each genus, and all the species of many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

- Charles Darwin (The Origin of Species)

Book Excerpt: The Audacity of Hope

2007-05-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

......Almost by definition, faith and reason operate in different domains and involve different paths to discerning truth.

The story of Abraham and Isaac offers a simple but powerful example. According to the Bible, Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his "only son, Isaac, whom you love," as a burnt offering. Without argument, Abraham takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded. Of course, we know the happy ending—God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute. Abraham has passed God's test of devotion. He becomes a model of fidelity to God, and his great faith is rewarded through future generations. And yet it is fair to say that if any of us saw a 21st century Abraham raising the knife on the roof of his apartment building, we would call the police; we would wrestle him down; even if we saw him lower the knife at the last minute, we would expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away and charge Abraham with child abuse. We would do so because God doesn't reveal Himself or His angels to all of us in a single moment. We do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know, understanding that a part of what we know to be true—as individuals or communities of faith—will be true for us alone.

This is not to say that I'm unanchored in my faith. There are some things that I'm absolutely sure about—the Golden Rule, the need to battle cruelty in all its forms, the value of love and charity, humility and grace.

- Barack Obama (The Audacity of Hope)

Another Book Tag

2007-05-17T02:43:00.000-07:00

Book Tag – Indian Authors
Have you read these books by authors of Indian origin? The ones in bold font are the ones I have read and the ones in italics are the ones I am longing to read....

1. The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri (great read!not seen the movie though!)
2. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy (amazing book!Estha and Rahel continue to haunt me....)
3. An Equal Music – Vikram Seth (I liked it)
4. The Vine of Desire – Chitra Divakaruni (I enjoyed reading it)
5. Mulligatawny Soup – Manorama Mathai (humourous one!)
6. The Burden of Foreknowledge – Jawahara Saidulla (I'm just waiting to buy it!)
7. By the River Pampa I stood – Geeta Abraham Jose ( guess who wrote it!)
8. My Story – Kamala Das (Good one)
9. The Raj – Gita Mehta
10. Circumferences – Suma Josson (it transported me to my childhood, good book)
11. Mediocre but Arrogant – Abhijit Bhaduri
12. The Enigma of Arrival – V.S.Naipaul (for serious readers only!)
13. The Better Man – Anita Nair
14. Fault lines – Meena Alexander
15. The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai (wonderful book!)
16. Fasting, Feasting – Anita Desai
17. Bookless in Baghdad – Shashi Tharoor
18. Train to Pakistan – Khushwant Singh
19. Difficult Daughters- Manju Kapur
20. Desirable Daughters- Bharati Mukherjee
21. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
22. The Feast of Roses – Indu Sundaresan
23. Malgudi Days – R.K.Narayan (read it a long time ago!)
24. Five Point Someone – Chetan Bhagat ( a cool one for teenagers)
25. Anything for You, Ma'am – Tushar Raheja (super cool one for teenagers)
26. The Moor's Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie

Hillgrandmom, Twinkletoes, Nav , John and Jawahara - You are TAGGED!!!!

Happy Mother's Day!

2007-05-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

I have this beautiful poem taped to my dressing table and I read it almost everyday as I get ready for office. I'm sure no working mom would be able to read through the entire poem without a pang of guilt in her heart or a tear in her eye....

When Time Flies By!!!!

My hands were busy through the day;
I didn’t have much time to play.
The little games you asked to do,
I didn’t have much time for you.
I’d wash your clothes;I’d sew and cook
But when you bring your picture book
And ask me to share in your laughter
I'd say, "a little later, daughter"
I’d tuck you in all safe at night,
And hear your prayers; turn out the light.
Then tiptoe softly by your door,
I wish I’d stayed a minute more.
For life is short, the years rush past,
A little girl grows up so fast.
No longer is she at your side,
Her precious secrets to confide.
The picture books are put away'
There are no longer games to play.
No Teddy Bears or misplaced toys,
No sleepovers with lots of noise.
No goodnight kiss, no prayers to hear,
That all belongs to yesteryear.
My hands, once busy, now are still,
The days are long and hard to fill.
I wish I could go back and do
The little things you asked me to.

Anonymous

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!!!

Deccan Herald - Interview 8 Apr '07

2007-04-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

Familiar ground

Utpal Borpujari in an interview with Geeta Abraham Jose, whose first novel is about her own community, the Syrian Christians

Remember The God of Small Things and the world created in it by Arundhati Roy? It is the same world of the Syrian Christian community of Kerala that Geeta Abraham Jose takes a reader into through her debut novel By The River Pampa I Stood.

An IIT-Chennai alumni, Jose lives in Dubai.A portion of the proceeds from the book is being donated to the Nav Srishti Foundation (an NGO that works for under-privileged women in India) by Srishti Publishers & Distributors.

This is not the first novel with the Syrian Christian community as the backdrop and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is the most famous example of that. How would you describe your novel's theme?

Way back in 1995, I said to myself, ‘Hey, why not write a book using my own community as the backdrop? This is an uncharted territory. So let me write about it.’ That's when my novel was born.

I had almost completed writing it when Arundhati’s novel took the world by storm. I loved her book but I was amazed at the similarities in the theme and the family set up. We come from the same Syrian Christian background and anyone from this background would know the kind of incidents which could raise eyebrows in a highly conservative society like ours. This could be the reason for the similarity in the theme. As for the kind of life that existed in the pre-Independence era, I picked a lot from conversations with people from the older generations of the community.

As for the river Pampa, it has always remained close to my heart. I grew up hearing legends about the Pampa and during the hot summer days we cruised on its serene waters through the Kuttanadan plains. What is particularly appealing about Kuttanad is its old-world charm, its slow pace of life and its innocence which remain unchanged.

There seems to be a deliberate attempt to ride on the success of Chetan Bhagat, as the cover page of your book says, “A novel by yet another IITian”. Comment.

My book is not a book about IIT. I guess my publishers are still riding on the crest of the success wave of IITian Tushar Raheja’s novel (Anything for you, ma'am), which they published last year and still remains a hot favourite with teenagers in India. The publishers were attracted to my manuscript because it was penned by another IITian. That could be the reason for the rejoinder on the cover page.

How important was the Syrian Christian backdrop for your first novel?

I chose this background only because I am familiar with the community I was born into and brought up in. I was very particular that the descriptions of lifestyle and traditions be original; only then does the book have literary value. Instead of treading on unknown territory, I chose to walk confidently on familiar ground. I did not need much research for portraying the community's characteristics.

How long did it take for you to conceptualise the storyline and actually write it down?

It took me around two years to complete the novel. In one of my creative moments I must have conjured up the plot. The conceptualisation of the storyline must have taken only a couple of months. When I relocated to Dubai, the manuscript travelled with me and lay dormant in the bottom drawers of my closet. About a couple of years ago I transferred it to a word document on my laptop and gave it a few finishing touches before dashing it off to publishers.

Having been settled in the Gulf, has it allowed to take a more objective view of your society when you wrote the novel?

Sure, it did. But the main portions of the novel were written before I moved to Dubai to join my husband.

Are there autobiographical elements in the novel, since it ends with such an indication?

If it seems so to the reader, then I have succeeded in what I intended it to seem like. I wished that the reader would read it as though it was a true story. Frankly speaking, it is not autobiographical. A few incidents were picked from my associations with senior citizens. The main plot is totally fabricated. I have written in first person using a ‘journal style’ in order to lend credibility to the story.

As a first time author, what kind of experience did you have while looking for a publisher?

Oh, that was really the difficult part. Some publishers sent instant regret letters. Some kept the sample chapters for a long time and nothing ever happened. As I said, initially it was the ‘IITian’ tag that caught the attention of Srishti Publishers— who are well known to provide a platform for amateur writers— and then the manuscript was read and appreciated by the editor. Many a manuscript is born to blush and die unseen… You need to send it to the right publisher at the right time.

Thoughts of Pontius Pilate

2007-04-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

My wife spoke of Him many times ere He was brought before me, but I was not concerned.

My wife is a dreamer, and she is given, like so many Roman women of her rank, to Eastern cults and rituals. And these cults are dangerous to the Empire; and when they find a path to the hearts of our women they become destructive.

Egypt came to an end when the Hyskos of Arabia brought to her the one God of their desert. And Greece was overcome and fell to dust when Ashtarte and her seven maidens came from the Syrian shores.

As for Jesus, I never saw the man before He was delivered up to me as a malefactor, as an enemy of His own nation and also of Rome.

He was brought into the Hall of Judgment with His arms bound to His body with ropes.

I was sitting upon the dais, and He walked towards me with long, firm steps; then He stood erect and His head was held high.

And I cannot fathom what came over me at that moment; but it was suddenly my desire, though not my will, to rise and go down from the dais and fall before Him.

I felt as if Caesar had entered the Hall, a man greater than even Rome herself.

But this lasted only a moment. And then I saw simply a man who was accused of treason by His own people. And I was His governor and His judge.

I questioned Him but he would not answer. He only looked at me. And in His look was pity, as if it were He who was my governor and my judge.

Then there rose from without the cries of the people. But He remained silent, and still He was looking at me with pity in His eyes.

And I went out upon the steps of the palace, and when the people saw me they ceased to cry out. And I said, "What would you with this man?"

And they shouted as if with one throat, "We would crucify Him. He is our enemy and the enemy of Rome."

And some called out, "Did He not say He would destroy the temple? And was it not He who claimed the kingdom? We will have no king but Caesar."

Then I left them and went back into the Judgment Hall again, and I saw Him still standing there alone, and His head was still high.

And I remembered what I had read that a Greek philosopher said, "The lonely man is the strongest man." At that moment the Nazarene was greater than His race.

And I did not feel clement towards Him. He was beyond my clemency.

I asked Him then, "Are you the King of the Jews?"

And He said not a word.

And I asked Him again, "Have you not said that you are the King of the Jews?"

And He looked upon me.

Then He answered with a quiet voice, "You yourself proclaimed me king. Perhaps to this end I was born, and for this cause came to bear witness unto truth."

Behold a man speaking of truth at such a moment.

In my impatience I said aloud, to myself as much as to Him, "What is truth? And what is truth to the guiltless when the hand of the executioner is already upon him?"

Then Jesus said with power, "None shall rule the world save with the Spirit and truth."

And I asked Him saying, "Are you of the Spirit?"

He answered, "So are you also, though you know it not."

And what was the Spirit and what was truth, when I, for the sake of the State, and they from jealousy for their ancient rites, delivered an innocent man unto His death?

No man, no race, no empire would halt before a truth on its way towards self-fulfilment.

And I said again, "Are you the King of the Jews?"

And He answered, "You yourself say this. I have conquered the world ere this hour."

And this alone of all that He said was unseemly, inasmuch as only Rome has conquered the world.

But now the voices of the people rose again, and the noise was greater than before.

And I descended from my seat and said to Him, "Follow me."

And again I appeared upon the steps of the palace, and He stood there beside me.

When the people saw Him they roared like the roaring thunder. And in their clamour I heard naught save "Crucify Him, crucify Him."

Then I yielded Him to the priests who had yielded Him to me and I said to them, "Do what you will with this just man. And if it is your desire, take with you soldiers of Rome to guard Him."

Then they took Him, and I decreed that there be written upon the cross above His head, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." I should have said instead, "Jesus of Nazareth, a King."

And the man was stripped and flogged and crucified.

It would have been within my power to save Him, but saving Him would have caused a revolution; and it is always wise for the governor of a Roman province not to be intolerant of the religious scruples of a conquered race.

I believe unto this hour that the man was more than an agitator. What I decreed was not my will, but rather for the sake of Rome.

Not long after, we left Syria, and from that day my wife has been a woman of sorrow. Sometimes even here in this garden I see a tragedy in her face.

I am told she talks much of Jesus to other women of Rome.

Behold, the man whose death I decreed returns from the world of shadows and enters into my own house.

And within myself I ask again and again, What is truth and what is not truth?

Can it be that the Syrian is conquering us in the quiet hours of the night?

It should not indeed be so.

For Rome must needs prevail against the nightmares of our wives.

-Kahlil Gibran (Book: Jesus, the Son of Man)

The Burning Candle

2007-03-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

Excerpt-3
from "By the River Pampa I Stood"

A burning candle.
That’s what she often reminded me of. Attired in her crisp, white mundu-chatta-kavani - the traditional dress of the Syrian Christian woman of Kerala – she stood tall and stately, her golden hair creating a halo around her fair, radiant face.
Like a candle with a golden flame.
Even in her eighties she was exuberant and perky as ever; bubbling with energy and vitality as she went about, helping people, filling lives around with love and laughter.

If you think it’s about another Mother Teresa, dear PeaJay, you are sadly mistaken.
For she was no saint.
At least in the eyes of mortals, that is.

She was one who broke rules. And for that matter, broke hearts too!
She was one who reversed the Dos and Don’ts that convention demanded of her. Dos that were not meant to become Don’ts. Don’ts that were never meant to become Dos. And that too, in a society that was highly sensitive to the slightest infringement of its conventions.
She broke rules….
…….Rules that were never to be amended.
And broke hearts in the process….
…….Hearts that were never to be mended.
Which, obviously, made her a sinner. In the eyes of society. In the eyes of the world.
But not in mine. For she was my favourite grandmother!
"Rules", she once told me, "are like a heap of dry twigs. You tread on one intentionally and you end up breaking not one, but a good number of them, all unintentionally".

A Book Tag

2007-03-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

I saw this tag on Hillgrandmom's blog and wanted to do it right away. There are a hundred books in the list. You need to highlight the ones you've read in Bold, the ones you long to read in Italics and the ones you haven't read in normal font.

So here goes mine:

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) - was curious about the hype
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) - loved it
3. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) - an all time fave book
4. Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell) was obsessed by it for a long time
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)- love all her books, especially The Story Girl and The Golden Road which instantly transport me to my childhood. I recommend these 2 books to all who love LMM
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)- borrowed from my daughter
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)- lovely book.
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) - a classic I love
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) - great read
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) -one of my favourites
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) - I liked it a lot but the sea journey seemed too long
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte - An all time favourite classic
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) -
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert) - I have it in my collection
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell) - Classic science fiction.
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) - a wonderful book
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible - my favourite book -I've read it from cover to cover around 5 times
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) - good one. I'd love to read 'Tis and Teacher Man by the same author
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) - from my daughter's collection
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) -wow! great book
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) - have read its sequel The Edge of Reason too
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) - one of my favourites
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving) -
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) - I love all her books
84. Wizard’s First Rule
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)- loved all her books
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

*do tag it if you like.

Mohanlal introduces the book to Dubai folks

2007-03-02T00:22:00.000-08:00

India's renowned movie actor Padmashri Mohanlal introducing BTRPIS to the Dubai folks.

indiaclub.com

2007-02-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

Here is the link to indiaclub.com where you can read reviews by readers

http://www.indiaclub.com/Shop/SearchResults.asp?ProdStock=19782

The Hindu - First Impressions

2007-02-25T01:39:00.000-08:00

THE HINDU FEB 04, 2007
LITERARY REVIEW
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
SUCHITRA BEHAL

By The River Pampa I Stood; Geeta Abraham Jose; Srishti; Rs 100.
IN the backwaters of Kerala stands the Gold House. Its occupants have many stories to tell and some secrets lie locked away till the eldest daughter of the house lies ailing. Always the rebel, she has set her standards way above those around her. She has lived life by her rules. But now, it is time to come clean and as she waits for her favourite niece to be by her side, Annama, as she is now known, wonders about the past. At the same time, her niece discovers different facets of her aunt's life, many of which throw up quite a few surprises. However, she keeps these to herself, promising to fulfil her aunt's last wishes. Spanning over a century, this story also covers the lives of Kerala's Syrian Christian community, a people who abide by age-old conventions abhorring change of any kind.

The Hindu - Eye Catchers

2007-02-24T01:58:00.000-08:00

The Hindu (Kochi Edition) - By the River Pampa I Stood

2007-02-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

Metro Plus Kochi
Published on Mondays & Thursdays
Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Metro Plus Bangalore Chennai Coimbatore Delhi Hyderabad Kochi

21 Dec 2006

From alongside the Pampa

Geeta Abraham Jose reveals the background of her book By The River Pampa I Stood, which is based on the Syrian Christian community

"The Syrian Christian community was un-charted territory till Arundhati Roy put it on the literary map. But I decided to write about something I know. I know what's happening in this community." Taking advantage of the topicality of Kerala, Geeta Abraham Jose ventured to write By The River Pampa I Stood.

Based in Dubai, she was recently in Delhi for the official launch. An IIT Madras post-graduate in Electronics and Communication Engineering, she started writing the book in 1995, when her husband had just moved to Dubai.

An engineer and professor she asserts that literature is her first love. She moved to engineering only because she got good marks! Writing was her way of unwinding at the end of the day. Her daughter would sit beside, watching her. Today, her daughter in senior school hopes to write her own book soon.

She is bashful of the rejoinder on the cover of the book, "A novel by yet another IITian!!!". "It is not an IIT story," she insists. But she admits she sent the book for publication, inspired by fellow IITian Chetan Bhagat's success.

While she desists from calling the book autobiographical, she says has taken stories from older people in the family. "For me an old person is a store house," she admits with a genuine laugh, "When a grandmother dies, I feel sad at all the stories that have died with her."

By The River Pampa I Stood is the story of a grandmother and granddaughter and the tangents of their lives. But Jose's aim is to show, "though times are different, mindsets have not changed, especially when it comes to marriage."

The status quo of the community does affect her. "The Syrian Christians pride themselves on dating back to the Apostles. As a community they are resistant to change." But her beliefs and book betray an optimistic view. "You cannot step twice into the same river for the waters are continually moving on," she quotes. Taking the example of her book she says, "In the end, change does happen. At first the patriarchy went to great extent to preserve the family, but towards the end, a new system emerges. Change becomes inevitable."

While preferring to stick to the "Queen's English", the book does use different Malayalam verses to re-create the ambience. Songs of the workers and rhymes of children are occasionally woven into the text.

The river Pampa has been a constant for Jose's childhood. Memories and legends are associated with it. The book, she hopes, will also promote tourism in Kerala as she describes in detail the beauty of the backwaters.

by
NANDINI NAIR

Indian Express -By the River Pampa I stood

2007-02-23T10:08:00.000-08:00

Indian Express Sunday 15 Jan 2007
Books & Literature
________________________________________
Fresh print
Thursday January 11 2007 19:07 IST

Priya M Menon

By The River
Pampa I Stood
By Geeta Abraham Jose
Srishti Publishers & Distributors, Rs 100

The world got a peek into the life, caste politics and practices of the Syrian Christian community in Kerala with Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things. Geeta Abraham Jose’s work (a novel by yet another IITian, screams the cover) once again revolves around this very community.

Replace Ayemenem with Kuttanad and the prominent Ponnumpurackal family. Where caste politics still lurk within the folds of Christianity. Where the do’s and don’ts are still dictated by convention.

To the author, then a lonely young girl who has just lost her father, great aunt Annammachi offers solace, comfort and inspiration. But Annammachi is the woman who had dared defy all norms. Who had reversed the do’s and the don’ts with her love for childhood friend and pulaya, Thoma.

The novel, filled with local colour, paints an evocative picture of the typical Syrian Christian/ Nasrani family, its beliefs and time-honoured traditions. The fictional plot sketches characters that are refreshingly real, the author choosing to dwell on the grey areas of life where there are no heroes or heroic acts but just the ordinary human condition.

Femina - By the River Pampa I Stood

2007-02-23T04:10:00.000-08:00

Femina 17 Jan 2007

To the Po

2007-02-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

River, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the lady of love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;
What if thy deep and ample stream should be

A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!
What do I say -- a mirror of my heart?
Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?

Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;
And such as thou art were my passions long.
Time may have somewhat tamed them, -- not for ever;
Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye
Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away -
But left long wrecks behind: and now again,
Borne our old unchanged career we move,
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I -- to loving one I should not love.

Lord Byron (1819)

The aftermath...

2007-02-16T23:35:00.000-08:00

124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old--as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny band prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the doorsill. Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once--the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn't have a number then, because Cincinnati didn't stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy years when first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them.
Baby Suggs didn't even raise her head. From her sickbed she heard them go but that wasn't the reason she lay still. It was a wonder to her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize that every house wasn't like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present--intolerable--and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color.
"Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don't."
And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue. Winter in Ohio was especially rough if you had an appetite for color. Sky provided the only drama, and counting on a Cincinnati horizon for life's principal joy was reckless indeed. So Sethe and the girl Denver did what they could, and what the house permitted, for her. Together they waged a perfunctory battle against the outrageous behavior of that place; against turned-over slop jars, smacks on the behind, and gusts of sour air. For they understood the source of the outrage as well as they knew the source of light.
Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers, and right afterward Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the ghost that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange of views or something would help. So they held hands and said, "Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on."
-Toni Morrison (Nobel Prize winner) (Book:Beloved- Pulitzer Prize winner)

Thoughts of "Doubting Thomas"

2007-02-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

Thomas: On The Forefathers Of His Doubts

My grandfather who was a lawyer once said, "Let us observe truth, but only when truth is made manifest unto us."

When Jesus called me I heeded Him, for His command was more potent than my will; yet I kept my counsel.

When He spoke and the others were swayed like branches in the wind, I listened immovable. Yet I loved Him.

Three years ago He left us, a scattered company to sing His name, and to be His witnesses unto the nations.

At that time I was called Thomas the Doubter. The shadow of my grandfather was still upon me, and always I would have truth made manifest.

I would even put my hand in my own wound to feel the blood ere I would believe in my pain.

Now a man who loves with his heart yet holds a doubt in his mind, is but a slave in a galley who sleeps at his oar and dreams of his freedom, till the lash of the master wakes him.

I myself was that slave, and I dreamed of freedom, but the sleep of my grandfather was upon me. My flesh needed the whip of my own day.

Even in the presence of the Nazarene I had closed my eyes to see my hands chained to the oar.

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

Doubt is a foundling unhappy and astray, and though his own mother who gave him birth should find him and enfold him, he would withdraw in caution and in fear.

For Doubt will not know truth till his wounds are healed and restored.

I doubted Jesus until He made Himself manifest to me, and thrust my own hand into His very wounds.

Then indeed I believed, and after that I was rid of my yesterday and the yesterdays of my forefathers.

The dead in me buried their dead; and the living shall live for the Anointed King, even for Him who was the Son of Man.

Yesterday they told me that I must go and utter His name among the Persians and the Hindus.

I shall go. And from this day to my last day, at dawn and at eventide, I shall see my Lord rising in majesty and I shall hear Him speak.

-Kahlil Gibran (Jesus, the Son of Man)

Tagged by Hillgrandmom

2007-01-29T23:00:00.000-08:00

This tag on My Style came from Hillgrandmom.

Here's mine:

Style- Appearance

I like to appear simple, smart and trendy but I would not like to be attired in something that doesn't suit me even if it is the current rage. When I am out shopping, you would spot me in jeans or salwaars, which are comfortable and hassle-free. In the office, it would be formal suits and at parties, it would be sarees any day. I have a collection of accessories to go with my dresses. Again it would be different for office and party wear. For office wear I use simple jewellery. For parties, it would be precious stone sets that are set in gold or silver to go with my sarees.

Style – Home Interiors

A house is built of bricks and stones; it becomes a home when you do the interiors in such a way that it gives you a sense of comfort, peace and tranquility and imparts a welcoming feeling to the guests you entertain. I prefer traditional style interiors with a homey, subtle, non-jarring, non-intimidating ambience. A nice and cozy place where you can snuggle into your comfy chair after a hectic day in the office; a quiet and comfortable retreat where the family members get recharged to go out and meet their day to day challenges – that's the magic of traditional interiors. Being a Libran, I love to be surrounded by beautiful objects. I like collecting antiques. I feel that each ancient object has a unique story to tell about the people who have used it back then.

Style – Food

I love home-made food, preferably Indian. But to break the monotony, we do dine out whenever possible. At such times we try out various cuisines – Chinese, Arabic, Italian, Mexican, whatever!

Style – Relationships

My family consists of my husband, my daughter and myself but back home in India we have large extended families on both sides. I look upon the family as my vital support system. I believe in togetherness but at the same time each member needs his or her own breathing space. Mutual love and respect are the buzzwords which bind our family together. We love to go out with friends and their families whenever we get some time off from our busy schedules.

In Kalimpong ...

2007-01-26T23:01:00.000-08:00

All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapor, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at its summit.

Sai, sitting on the veranda, was reading an article about giant squid in an old National Geographic. Every now and then she looked up at Kanchenjunga, observed its wizard phosphorescence with a shiver. The judge sat at the far corner with his chessboard, playing against himself. Stuffed under his chair where she felt safe was Mutt the dog, snoring gently in her sleep. A single bald lightbulb dangled on a wire above. It was cold, but inside the house, it was still colder, the dark, the freeze, contained by stone walls several feet deep.

Here, at the back, inside the cavernous kitchen, was the cook, trying to light the damp wood. He fingered the kindling gingerly for fear of the community of scorpions living, loving, reproducing in the pile. Once he’d found a mother, plump with poison, fourteen babies on her back.

Eventually, the fire caught and he placed his kettle on top, as battered, as encrusted as something dug up by an archeological team, and waited for it to boil. The walls were singed and sodden, garlic hung by muddy stems from the charred beams, thickets of soot clumped batlike upon the ceiling. The flame cast a mosaic of shiny orange across the cook’s face, and his top half grew hot, but a mean gust tortured his arthritic knees.

Up through the chimney and out, the smoke mingled with the mist that was gathering speed, sweeping in thicker and thicker, obscuring things in parts—half a hill, then the other half. The trees turned into silhouettes, loomed forth, were submerged again. Gradually the vapor replaced everything with itself, solid objects with shadow, and nothing remained that did not seem molded from or inspired by it. Sai’s breath flew from her nostrils in drifts, and the diagram of a giant squid constructed from scraps of information, scientists’ dreams, sank entirely into the murk.

Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss, Booker Prize Winner 2006)

Silent Sorrow

2007-01-09T00:09:00.000-08:00

Every time I close my eyes I see those valleys full of magic and dignity and those mountains covered with glory and greatness trying to reach the sky. Every time I shut my ears to the clamour of the city I hear the murmur of the rivulets and the rustling of the branches. All those beauties which I speak of now and which I long to see, as a child longs for his mother's breast, wounded my spirit, imprisoned in the darkness of youth, as a falcon suffers in its cage when it sees a flock of birds flying freely in the spacious sky. Those valleys and hills fired my imagination, but bitter thoughts wove round my heart a net of hopelessness.

Every time I went to the fields I returned disappointed, without understanding the cause of my disappointment. Every time I looked at the grey sky I felt my heart contract. Every time I heard the singing of the birds and babbling of the spring I suffered without understanding the reason for my suffering. It is said that unsophistication makes a man empty and that emptiness makes him carefree. It may be true among those who were born dead and who exist like frozen corpses; but the sensitive boy who feels much and knows little is the most unfortunate creature under the sun, because he is torn by two forces. the first force elevates him and shows him the beauty of existence through a cloud of dreams; the second ties him down to the earth and fills his eyes with dust and overpowers him with fears and darkness.

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.

- Kahlil Gibran (Broken Wings)

Happy 2007

2007-01-06T04:48:00.000-08:00

During the new year may you have...
Enough happiness to keep you sweet.
Enough trials to keep you strong.
Enough sorrow to keep you human.
Enough hope to keep you happy.
Enough failure to keep you humble.
Enough success to keep you eager.
Enough friends to give you comfort.
Enough wealth to meet your needs.
Enough enthusiasm to make you look forward to tomorrow.
Enough determination to make each day better than the day before.

Happy New Year!

2006-12-29T03:55:00.000-08:00

Hindustan Times - By the River Pampa I Stood

2006-12-27T01:53:00.000-08:00

The Hindu -By the River Pampa I stood

2006-12-26T09:54:00.000-08:00

The Pioneer on "By the River..."

2006-12-26T09:44:00.000-08:00

Mistletoe ( A Christmas poem)

2006-12-25T02:16:00.000-08:00

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen - and kissed me there.

-Walter de la Mare

The Little Drummer Boy (A Christmas song)

2006-12-22T02:07:00.000-08:00

Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum
A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
When we come.

Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum
I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum
I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,
On my drum?

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum
The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum
Me and my drum.

****

The words and music to the Christmas song Little Drummer Boy was composed by Katherine K. Davis, Henry Onorati and Harry Simeone in 1958. The most notable rendition was created by the most unlikely combination of Bing Crosby and David Bowie. This version of Little Drummer Boy was a massive hot for the artists and was in fact Bing Crosby's most successful recording since the legendary White Christmas.

Excerpt 2 - By the River Pampa I Stood

2006-12-17T06:07:00.000-08:00

This book is now available online from

www.indiaclub.com
or
www.dkpd.com

Gift yourself and your loved ones this Christmas, a copy of "By the River Pampa I stood"

Christmas Time

That evening had been a lovely one. And so is its memory. Like a peacock feather tucked away between the pages of a favourite book, to be retrieved occasionally; to be cherished forever. There was plenty to eat and plenty of music. She danced with the little ones and sang merry old Malayalam songs for them.

Memories, like diamonds, have a way of getting more precious with time.

For Christmas every year, she was unanimously chosen by the children to be their Santa (or Christmas Papa as he is known in Kerala). She would fish out the famous red gown with frilly edges from her kaalpetti – her mother’s wooden bridal dowry box with intricate carvings and brass knobs and edges – and press it well to remove creases, taking care to adjust the heat lest the frilly nylon edges get burned. The children loved to do her face and her patience with them was remarkable. She would sit still on a chair for hours while the children cut out beards and moustaches out of cotton rolls and pasted them on her face with glue made of flour and water. When she emerged from the chair, lo and behold, we had our Santa!

This practice had begun when I was a little girl. And this practice continues now, when Laya's cousins enjoy creating a Santa out of their great grandmother, Annammachi.

Santa and the little ones would then go carol singing from room to room inside the Gold House:

Joy to the world; the Lord is come.
Let earth receive her King.
Let ev’ry heart prepare him room
And heav’n and nature sing……

The maids in the kitchen would grumble about the missing ladles and spoons and tins. These were the musical instruments that accompanied the singing. In any case, the cacophony heralded the spirit of Christmas into the Gold House, which at other times wore a lost and forlorn look.

She made mounds of mouth-watering cookies and cakes at Christmas. The aroma of baking filled the house and the courtyard. Munching hungrily, we would gather around her, begging for a tale.

A brilliant storyteller she was, indeed. She could hold a listener with bated breath at the edge of his seat for hours, engrossed in her tale. And clamouring for more at the end of it.

Geeta Abraham Jose (By the River Pampa I stood)

Excerpt-1 By The River Pampa I stood

2006-12-14T00:38:00.000-08:00

Daughter Dearest

Nevertheless, Mathen prayed for a little daughter whom he would treasure as the apple of his eye. His house would then reverberate with the sound of the bells on her tiny gold anklets and the ripples of her laughter. He would carry her on his shoulders and walk through the luxuriant green paddy fields where dark skinned workers toiled from dawn to dusk, singing as they toiled:

Ponnumpurackale Thampurane , thai
Ponnu manasulla Thampurane , thai….
(The Master of The Gold House, thai
With a heart made of gold, thai….)
Ponnumpurackale pennungale, thai
Ponnin niramulla pennungale thai….
(The Ladies of The Gold House, thai
With their colour of pure gold, thai…)

The singing would stop abruptly and the dark skinned workers would turn around to marvel at the fair daughter of the Master, as she rode piggyback on his back.
These dreams of Mathen seemed to have come true with the birth of Annamma on a bright, sunny morning.
It was summertime. The jasmines were in bloom in the garden and their fragrance hung in the air around the Gold House like an invisible cloak. Birds sang merrily in the garden.
- Geeta Abraham Jose (By the River Pampa I Stood)

When you open the book....

2006-12-06T23:17:00.000-08:00

......you are greeted by the following quote:

"You cannot step twice into the same river
for the waters are continually moving on"

- Hereclitus

Food for thought....

Hey, what's this book about?

2006-12-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

There is an ethnic Christian community with a two millennium old heritage in the southernmost part of India, where nature has endowed the land and the people with an abundance of grace and beauty. The land is popularly known as "God's Own Country". The people belonging to this particular community are known as Syrian Christians or Nasranis.

The story is set in "God's Own Country" and the backdrop is a typical Syrian Christian family - its ups and downs, its joys and sorrows, its secrets......The story spans over a century taking the family from the zenith of glory to imminent decay.

The plot is a purely fabricated one but the backdrop, lifestyle etc are original and give an insight into the life of a typical family in Kerala.

More details to follow....

By The River Pampa I Stood

2006-12-02T23:17:00.000-08:00

To all my online friends,

You will be glad to hear that my debut novel

"By The River Pampa I Stood"

is being launched by Srishti Publishers in Delhi
on 9 Dec 2006. There will be a book reading session
at Oxford Bookstores in Delhi on the same day
and later on in Bangalore and Chennai.
The book will hit the bookshelves in Indian bookstores
in the second week of December as a gift
at Christmas for book lovers.

Hope you will buy it, read it, enjoy it
and post your comments.

Geeta Abraham Jose

Never Stop Dreaming

2006-12-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
Never stop dreaming.
Not everyone can see his dreams come true in the same way.
Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
The world's greatest lie: At a certain point in out lives we lose control of what's happening to us and our lives become controlled by fate.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything because it's all written there.
If you can concentrate on the present, you'll be a happy man…the secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better…Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.
Everything has been written by the same hand.
All things are one.
Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the language of the world.
Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him.
Wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.
You've got to find the treasure, so that everything you have learned along the way can make sense.
There is only one way to learn. It's through action.
Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World and it will one day return there.
This natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise.
The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect.
No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.
Most people see the world as a threatening place, and because they do, the world turns out indeed to be a threatening place.
When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.
No one fails to suffer the consequences of everything under the sun.
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
Without love, dreams would have no meaning.
Love is the pure language of the world...A language without words…the one true language of the universe. It requires no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time.
Love is the force that transforms and improves the soul of the world.
No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.
A philosophy of life: I'm an adventurer, looking for treasure.
- Quotes from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Scarlett's musings

2006-11-29T23:23:00.000-08:00

All her life she had heard sneers hurled at the Yankees because their pretensions to gentility were based on wealth, not breeding. But at this moment, heresy though it was, she could not help thinking the Yankees were right on this one matter, even if wrong in all others. It took money to be a lady. ... She shrugged in irritation. Perhaps these people were right and she was wrong but, just the same, these proud fools weren't looking forward as she was doing, straining every nerve, risking even honor and good name to get back what they had lost. It was beneath the dignity of many of them to indulge in a scramble for money. The times were rude and hard. They called for rude and hard struggle if one was to conquer them. Scarlett knew that family tradition would forcibly restrain many of these people from such a struggle -- with the making of money admittedly its aim. They all thought that obvious money-making and even talk of money were vulgar in the extreme. ... But she was going to be poor all her life. She wasn't going to sit down and patiently wait for a miracle to help her. She was going to rush into life and wrest from it what she could. Her father had started as a poor immigrant boy and had won the broad acres of Tara. What he had done, his daughter could do. She wasn't like these people who had gambled everything on a Cause that was gone and were content to be proud of having lost that Cause, because it was worth any sacrifice. They drew their courage from the past. She was drawing hers from the future.
-Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind)

All men are equal

2006-11-29T08:14:00.000-08:00

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?...
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

-William Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice)

The Twins

2006-11-25T03:26:00.000-08:00

They never did look much like each other, Estha and Rahel, and even when they were thin-armed children, flat-chasted, wormridden and Elvis Presley-puffed, there was none of the usual "Who is who?" and "Which is which?" from oversmiling relatives or the Syrian Orthodox bishops who frequently visited the Ayemenem House for donations.

The confusion lay in a deeper, more secret place.

In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities.

Now, these years later, Rahel has a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha's funny dream.

She has other memories too that she has no right to have.

-Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)

Another Lost Sailor

2006-11-21T20:06:00.000-08:00

Lost Sailor

They were the perfect couple,
Everyone knew their love,
but one day in April, he had to go away,
he set his ship and left.
Eternal love he promised, I'll come back he said,
giving her a kiss, with tears on her face,
good bye she said to him.

Ship by ship were coming, none of them brought her, her love, as the weeks passed by, she waited on that port,
wearing the same dress, so in case he came,
he wouldn't be confused, but that day never seemed to come,
alone she stayed.

Her hair grew long, her pain grew more,
her smile vanished from her face, her hopes were short,
her dreams were gone, the ocean took her love,
and never got it back, never saw him again,
her lost sailor was her eternal love, in the sea she lost her soul.

Alone she stayed, she never got any news from him,
as the years passed by, reflected in her eyes,
the time and pain she felt, her tears went to the ocean,
in vain she cried for him, she became part of the sand,
another love she never got, they called her the widow of the ocean, the sun dried her hair, the time on her eyes were, her love never saw again, she didn't want to give up,
believing he would come, but the ocean took her love,
and never got it back, never saw him again,
her lost sailor was, her eternal love,
in the sea she lost him.

- Cesar A. Miranda

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

2006-11-14T20:07:00.000-08:00

The free bird leaps
on the back of the win
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hillfor the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Maya Angelou

Lost Sailor

2006-11-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

The compass card is spinnin'.
The helm is swingin' to and fro.
Ooh, where's the Dog Star?
Ooh, where's the moon?

You're a lost sailor. You've been too long at sea.
Now the shore lights beckon. Yeah, there's a price for bein' free.

Some days the gales are howlin'. Some days the sea is still as glass.
Ooh, reef the mainsail.
Ooh, lash the mast.

You're a lost sailor. You've been too long at sea.
Now the shore lights beckon. Yeah, there's a price for bein' free.

Yeah, the sea bird's cryin',
And there's a ghost wind blowin'.
It's callin' you to that misty swirlin' sea.
Till the chains of your dreams are broken,
No place in the world you can be.

You're a lost sailor. You've been too long at sea.
Now the shore lights beckon. Yeah, there's a price for bein' free.

Driftin'. Yeah, driftin'. Yeah, driftin' and dreamin'.
There's a place you've never been.
Maybe a face you've never seen.
You can hear 'em callin' on the wind.

Go on and drift your life away, driftin' and dreamin'.
Drift your life away, maybe goin' on a dream.
Maybe goin' for a feelin', goin' for a feelin' --
Drift your life away.

John Perry Barlow

Still I Rise

2006-11-13T06:43:00.000-08:00

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust,
I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air,
I'll rise.

- Maya Angelou

Remembrance Day

2006-11-12T06:52:00.000-08:00

PLEASE WEAR A POPPY.
"Please wear a poppy," the lady said
And held one forth, but I shook my head.
Then I stopped and watched as she offered them there,
And her face was old and lined with care;
But beneath the scars the years had made
There remained a smile that refused to fade.

A boy came whistling down the street,
Bouncing along on care-free feet.
His smile was full of joy and fun,
"Lady," said he, "may I have one?"

When she'd pinned it on he turned to say,
"Why do we wear a poppy today?"
The lady smiled in her wistful way
And answered,
"This is Remembrance Day,
And the poppy there is the symbol for
The gallant men who died in war.
And because they did, you and I are free -
That's why we wear a poppy, you see."

"I had a boy about your size,
With golden hair and big blue eyes.
He loved to play and jump and shout,
Free as a bird he would race about.
As the years went by he learned
and grew and became a man - as you will, too.
"He was fine and strong, with a boyish smile,
But he'd seemed with us such a little while
When war broke out and he went away.
I still remember his face that day
When he smiled at me and said,
Goodbye,I'll be back soon,
Mom, so please don't cry.
"But the war went on and he had to stay,
And all I could do was wait and pray.

His letters told of the awful fight,
(I can see it still in my dreams at night),
With the tanks and guns and cruel barbed wire,
And the mines and bullets, the bombs and fire.
"Till at last, at last, the war was won -
And that's why we wear a poppy son."

The small boy turned as if to go,
Then said, "Thanks, lady, I'm glad to know.
That sure did sound like an awful fight,
But your son - did he come back all right?"

A tear rolled down each faded cheek;
She shook her head, but didn't speak.
I slunk away in a sort of shame,
And if you were me you'd have done the same;
For our thanks, in giving, if oft delayed,
Thought our freedom was bought - and thousands paid!

And so when we see a poppy worn,
Let us reflect on the burden borne,
By those who gave their very all
When asked to answer their country's call
That we at home in peace might live.
Then wear a poppy!
Remember - and give!
~~By Don Crawford

Children are like Jam

2006-11-01T01:46:00.000-08:00

Children are like jam: all very well in the proper place, but you can't stand them all over the shop - eh, what?'

These were the dreadful words of our Indian uncle. They made us feel very young and angry; and yet we could not be comforted by calling him names to ourselves, as you do when nasty grown-ups say nasty things, because he is not nasty, but quite the exact opposite when not irritated. And we could not think it ungentlemanly of him to say we were like jam, because, as Alice says, jam is very nice indeed - only not on furniture and improper places like that. My father said, 'Perhaps they had better go to boarding-school.' And that was awful, because we know Father disapproves of boarding-schools. And he looked at us and said, 'I am ashamed of them, sir!'

- E.Nesbit (The Woodbegoods)

On Giving

2006-10-30T03:00:00.000-08:00

You give but little when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?

And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?

And what is fear of need but need itself?

Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;

They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;

And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving

And is there aught you would withhold?

All you have shall some day be given;

Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."

The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.

They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.

Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?

And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?

See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life - while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.

Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;

For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.
- Kahlil Gibran

The Thorn-birds

2006-10-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out-carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the price of great pain... or so says the legend...
- From The Thornbirds (Colleen McCollough)

Time is a Lie

2006-10-25T04:12:00.000-07:00

"I think of all that is happening elsewhere, as I lie here. Nearby, I can hear the sounds of a road crew. Somewhere else, monkeys chatter in trees. A male seahorse becomes pregnant. A diamond forms, a bee dances out directions, a windshield shatters. Somewhere a mother spreads peanut butter for her son's lunch, a lover sighs, a knitter binds off the edge of a sleeve. Clouds gather to make rain, corn ripens on the stalk, a cancer cell divides, a little league team scores. Somewhere blossoms open, a man pushes a knife in deeper, a painter darkens her blue. A cashier pours new dimes into an outstretched hand, rainbows form and fade, plates in the earth shift and settle. A woman opens a velvet box, male spiders pluck gently on the females' webs, falcons fall from the sky. Abstracts are real and time is a lie, it cannot be measured when one moment can expand to hold everything. You can want to live and end up choosing death; and you can want to die and end up living. What keeps us here, really? A thread that breaks in a breeze. And yet a thread that cannot be broken." ~Elizabeth Berg ( Never Change)

The Golden Road

2006-10-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fair highway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine were blessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and a new loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes.
On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrances aerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies and iris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the years waited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comrade with purple flowers dripping from her fingers.
We may long have left the golden road behind, but its memories are the dearest of our eternal possessions; and those who cherish them as such may haply find a pleasure in the pages of this book, whose people are pilgrims on the golden road of youth.

- L.M.Montgomery

A Time to Every Purpose

2006-10-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

To every thing there is a
season, and a time to every purpose under the
heaven: a time to be born, and
a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to
pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time
to break down, and a time to build
up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to
dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time
to gather stones together; a
time to embrace, and a time to refrain from
embracing; a time to get, and a
time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to
cast away; a time to rend, and a
time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a
time to speak; a time to love, and
a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of
peace.

Ecclesiastes 3, 1-8

Time

2006-10-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all. In this world, a second is a second. Time paces forward with exquisite regularity, at precisely the same velocity in every corner of space. Time is an infinite ruler. Time is absolute.

-- Einstein

Through the Eyes of a Kid

2006-10-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

When I look at a patch of dandelions, I see a bunch of weeds that are going to take over my garden.

Kids see flowers for Mom and blowing white fluff you can wish on.

When I look at an old, desolate man and he smiles at me, I see a smelly, dirty person who wants money and I look away.

Kids see someone smiling at them and they smile back.

When I hear music I love, I know I can't carry a tune and don't have much rhythm, so I sit self consciously and listen.

Kids feel the beat and move to it. They sing out the words. If they don't know them, they make up their own.

When I feel wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I feel it messing up my hair and pulling me back when I walk.

Kids close their eyes, spread their arms and fly with it, until they fall to the ground laughing.

When I pray, I say "thee" and "thou" and "grant me this, "please give me that".

Kids say "Hi God. Thanks for my toys and my friends. Please keep the bad dreams away tonight. Sorry, I don't want to go to heaven yet. I would miss my Mum and Dad."

When I see a mud puddle, I step around it. I see muddy shoes and dirty carpets.

Kids step in it. They see dams to build, rivers to cross and water to play with.

I wonder, are we given children to teach or to learn from?

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and see they were the big things.

(Anonymous)

When I Asked God

2006-10-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

When I Asked God for Strength
He Gave Me Difficult Situations to Face
When I Asked God for Brain & Brawn
He Gave Me Puzzles in Life to Solve
When I Asked God for Happiness
He Showed Me Some Unhappy People
When I Asked God for Wealth
He Showed Me How to Work Hard
When I Asked God for Favors
He Showed Me Opportunities to Work Hard
When I Asked God for Peace
He Showed Me How to Help Others
God Gave Me Nothing I Wanted
He Gave Me Everything I Needed

- Swami Vivekananda

To Risk It

2006-09-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out to another is to risk involvement,

To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.

To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return,

To live is to risk dying,

To hope is to risk despair,

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.

He may avoid suffering and sorrow,

But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.

Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.

Only a person who risks is free....
(Arthur William Ward)