Mumbai followed by Melancholy??

A French lady I know loves Mumbai as a city. It’s her favorite city. She is always on the road traveling from one city to another and I asked her if she missed France and why was Mumbai her favorite city. This is what she had to say. (To be a little philosophical, you see what you want to see. )

Her Answer:-
“No, to be honest I don't. For me home is everywhere but France whatsoever. I love my family and my friends but for holidays, my addictions are travels, photos, sharing something with people, everything real to me. The more I see, the more I need to learn... And France tends to be empty of values and full of selfish or superficial people, it's my opinion.

Again I don't know what happened but it's like having India still on me, in me, wherever I am. This feeling to miss everything from there didn't fade away over the last 8 months and I can't wait to come back and find answers to my questions. We'll see, patience is a virtue. And of course I'll let you know when I plan to get there.
It's funny cause when we arrived, I told Chris I had the impression that the place was familiar to me although I had never been there before. As usual he thought I was going nuts with my spiritual stuff, for example when I told him that amethyst could help develop intuition lol but I really felt this.

I can't explain why I loved it so much but people say I'm passionate when I talk about my experience in Bombay and I enjoy explaining what the om around my neck represents for me, which is my whole stay in the country. It's as if I had everything in this pendant and I feel very strange if I don't have it, it symbolizes my Indian journey.
Let's just say that in Bombay, I felt like addicted to the atmosphere, in another world, another century, always sharing something with someone. The interactions I had with the people where so full of humanity, so real. A little kid, anybody smiling at me could make my day, the smells, the temperature and humidity, the colors, the bay, just breathing and this impression to be filled of happiness by simple things.
And this fascinating culture, the books I've read on Hinduism, everlasting necessity to learn more about it and try to understand, the faith of people.
Some people who have been to India were surprised of my enthusiasm when talking about it. They said they had hated it because "it's smelly, crowded, noisy, dusty, there's no structure, people are tough to manage, the traffic, etc". And my answer was that yes, but that are the charms of India and that's what makes the country so unique, great and particular. And that I enjoy chaos anyway. Now they don't understand and I reckon it's simply a difference of vision, meaning I saw Bombay with other eyes.

The memories still remain. You guys, so nice to us made a lot and we appreciated a lot your friendliness and the way you received us and gave us the great opportunity to share a lot with you.
The people of our street, the Cafe Coffee Day waiters who made me a surprise offering me a mug with moving messages written on it, the feeling to somehow belong to this place when I walked down the streets despite being a foreigner, the people accepting me as a white girl and sharing a tea with them, the funny kids I wanted to hug, the fact that you can see absolutely anything in India: the guys trying to sell giant balloons, toys or tam-tams whereas you're an adult and keep trying when you say no, full of hope, the food on the streets, eat with fingers, the way people share a meal altogether instead of having each a plate, our super helpful neighbors, the way the cleaning boy was looking at us because he thought we were crazy, our super driver Khan who was as a second father, the bargains on Colaba Causeway, going to Polly Esthers with Chris and coming back home in a carriage, the easy access to great places for weekends, watching those guys playing cricket by the University park, having an argument with my ex-boyfriend I was with in Bombay because he was mad at me when I made friends with the dogs and defended them saying "George also deserves some attention and understands what you say "(for me, all the dogs are named George, don't ask me why!), having this lizard in the kitchen and calling him Mohinder as if he was our pet, listening to Indian music while getting prepared for meetings, wandering in the Taj Hotel just for the smells and beauty of everything, having an american breakfast with Chris at Café Mondegar after a blast, etc etc etc.

I will always remember our last day in India. We decided to have the 30min cruise and enjoy the sun. All the memories accumulated over the 3 months in India came to my mind and I couldn't help crying thinking life was so beautiful on one hand and sad about the idea of being empty without all that, terrified to the country on the other hand. Chris was getting sun-tanned, sorry sun-burnt :), and the picture was really funny: him turning into a lobster and me into a fountain! Then a little girl on the boat asked my name, handed me her box of popcorn and offered me some. You have no idea how I felt full of joy, alive, real.

So yes, Bombay is different, so is India and every time I see an Indian person, I smile at them and am sure they understand I still have a foot there...”



There she wrote it very well. If what people think and see are actually a peep in what they are, Marie is a very beautiful person :)



On another note – I happen to be the editor at our international division internal mailer. This requires me to write some ed’s note every quarter. I love writing complete crap and leaving a few riddles in. the market’s are really bad now and no business is happening and hence the nate’s style and tone. See if you can catch the circular reference in the note.

Aesop explained the merit of a reed in the face of headwind. The mighty oak was too rooted in his past, too rooted for what or where he stood. Too rooted, period! Surly we face difficult times, and no amount of external motivation can help face issues as they arise. The voice of doom creates as much clutter as the crackling of a boom. Could the mantra possibly be to stick to basics and follow your own calling? Cutting through the eschatological noise requires a deep firm belief in yourself and your work. The deep inherent strength is probably what Sheldon Kopp meant when he titled his book ‘if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him’. Not meaning to sound sadistic, but to the contrary; Killing the Buddha is looking deeply within us, understanding who we are, our failings, our strengths and everything that goes along with it, us. We are the experts in the journey of our own lives. A ha – Philosophy, eh? – the last refuge of the dumbfounded? The Lonely Planet on India warns that when you meet a sadhu, be on guard. The sadhu has been since centuries also a way for the criminal to hide.
To conclude I borrow the closing verse words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who while reciting the heart of a young man to a psalmist wrote:
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

'copy' writing

V-inu says that I write well. If only I checked what I wrote and just rewrote a bit better it would be dam neat. Ya. I know that but what to do, I did not ever like checking the writing. My mom couldn’t make me do it while I was in school. In office I take pains to check and re write and stuff like that and that’s enough. That takes a toll on me in any case. In office I think I have become the chief copywriter, chief visualizer and chief creative all rolled into one. Not many people can write half decent copy. And I have realized in the years gone by. A very few select guys have the intellect to write sense. I believe that I am half decent. There are many better than me, many many; but I get eth benefit of having billions worse off. What shit. I think I started writing better after reading. It’s not just the reading level but the exposure level that counts. The ability to exposue yourself to newer ideas, newer styles and the willingness to learn. I have said this before – the willingness to learn – from anything – from a rock perhaps.

In my job, good writing is not equal to original writing. Thanks to Google, I have the opportunity to pick lines, research the subject and immediately figure out some stuff to put out. We have a internal emailer that we put out. I am the defacto editor there and the privileges are that I write the ed’s note every time. Below is the ed’s note. I kinda like the way I wrote it. It’s just a piece of lifted lines from around but decently strung together. There is a reason they call it copy writing I mean how difficult can that be? How difficult? This quarter we focused on the Monsoon.


Legend has it that on one his trips back from Kerala, Vasco da Gama asked the king whether he could take a pepper stalk with him for replanting. The king, well known for sarcasm, responded calmly, “You may take our pepper but I don’t think you will be able to take our rains',' referring to Kerala’s twin monsoons, almost a prerequisite for the growth of pepper plants.
No Indian in his right sense would need to be explained the importance of monsoon. And that by that logic it is indispensable for someone selling India. The progress of the monsoon is keenly watched, for it holds (mythically, some argue) the key to everything - from crop output to inflation, consumer spending and economic growth. The first Indian monsoon forecast was issued in 1886. In the last 135 years, the monsoon has been "normal" 94 times -- when rainfall was either 10 per cent above or below average. Whatever that means to you.
For most of Indians Monsoon means much more. The Monsoon has been the subject of many creative. They may be of hope, romance, tragedy, an excuse to clasp your love or the usage of the rain as a metaphor. Thoda sa Roomani ho gaye for the right brained, a movie that is a poetic blend of dreams and reality, a story of ordinary people and that what is extra-ordinary in them.
At the end, the question is simple. It is the one that we ask of yourselves, ourselves this Monsoon – can you make it rain?