We women and our money!
Sheconomics (I love the word) is a fairly new book by Karne Pine and Simonne Gnessen (Hachette India, 2009) on women and their complicated relationship with money. Simply written, with some good tips and strategies, I enjoyed it and managed to takeaway some learnings despite the fact that the overall context is not Indian.
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Ads and our kids
There’s an ad on television for the D’zire car and no-one seems shocked. I am. And maybe there are hundred of blogs or comments out there which I just haven’t read. This ad is the one about the little bespectacled girl whom no one befriends in school. Everyone ignores her and then, presto…. Father gets a D’zire and fetches her from school. Faces turn towards her and her sorry little face is radiant with happiness.
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It’s a green re-cycled day?
It’s World Environment Day and my head has been buzzing with regulations and policies and carbon footprints and dire warnings. The media is full of it too and online I can find gazillion comments and information. See the UNEP website (http://www.unep.org/wed/2009/english/) or Wikipedia for a primer.
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Will she read the books that I read?
Is reading a habit we need to inculcate in our kids or we want to encourage? Didn’t think that would come up but then we were talking with Jo Williams and Swati Roy and should have thought carefully about it much before this fun word-filled afternoon began. If you check the thesaurus, the words that come up for ‘inculcate’ are hammer, pound, beat, indoctrinate….. Oh no, that’s definitely not what we want to do to those kids of ours. Agree completely with Jo – we want to encourage our babies to make reading a part of their lives, a joy , a discovery, and as most of the group said, we want them to read because it’s always ‘such fun’.
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A fresh look to the maxiMum store co.
Hi!
There are some new and interesting products at the store. Here are
pics of some corners.
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Happy TV Turnoff Week
Hi those-of-you-who-are- parents,
Do you know that this is Happy TV Turnoff Week (20-26 April 2009!) the international campaign against television.
Want to try it on your kids ? Read below and more at
http://www.whitedot.org/issue/fix_tvturnoffweek.asp
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Dreamtime stories
Dreamtime Stories
‘Dreamtime’ is often used, indigenously in some countries, to refer to ‘the time before time’ or ‘the time of the creation of all things’.
Through a series of pendants comprising the collection ‘Dreamtime Stories’, I have reflected on this aspect of creation- the act of or the result of- the natural and the manmade; woven around the cultural context of the sun and the moon- defining our very raison d’etre- misplaced in the conscious, placed in the subconscious, reflecting the urban Indian dichotomy: the obsession with the mass-produced, unregulated- all in the name of modernism and yet the desire for a unique multisensory experience: to see and feel, to hear and feel, to touch and feel.
The style is contemporary and distinctly Indian in its sensitivity.
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moon over the ruined castle: Dreamtime stories
solitary reflections
in a reflected light,
the distant stars
shed light-dim,
a crumbling downfall
or
a life lived gloriously?
disbelief in my heart-
its a cloudy day,
the sun emerges-
the glorious victor
ever victorious,
i burn.
to be continued
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A glimpse of Dreamtime
Jewellery plays a greater role in today’s world than it ever did in the past. No more is its use only the privilege of the wealthy, for the broadening of the social structure of contemporary society and the burgeoning concepts of what a jewel is or can be, has made its use universal. It still is a means of releasing us to fantasize about ourselves, our lives and our world though in a now strongly individualistic sense. In the act of creating a piece of jewellery, several interrelated and interacting concepts and techniques are operating simultaneously. The ability to recognize and understand concepts and processes, makes possible a profound ‘conversation’. Though mute, every creation speaks volumes in this dialogue. Valid concepts are not confined to any time or culture and time works to improve the appearance of jewellery worn in a single life-span.
Design is certainly inspiration, imagination and genius, but it is first and foremost culture that shapes not just the visual style of the ornament but imparts a visual style of a time and a culture….to be continued
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At Heaven’s Door
The boy wakes up everyday to the familiar stench of human waste but never gets used to it. Just like the garbage scattered all around his dwelling, he is the waste of the society he lives in, consigned to living a miserable life of blistering summer heat and freezing winters, of constant hunger, of beatings and abuse, and a fear that never seems to go away-a fear that his situation will get even worse. He knows that there are people better off than he is. But he is consumed by his life of poverty, so much so that he does not quite comprehend what a better life would be like. And for him, for 10 long years, each day is merely a question of survival and not of betterment.
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