December reflections and a long harsh winter

This has been a December of many firsts for me or feels that way at least. Being in Toronto all through December. Then, experiencing an ice storm with a protracted power outage which forced shut half the city, it's shops and restaurants included, during the busiest time of the year for all retailers. Another first is working through the holidays with an oddly busy work schedule marked with deadlines and little time to clean and get caught up before the onset of New Year. Probably also one of my first Decembers away from Uttara who either visited or saw me visit her at this time every year.

Also for the very first time I am taking the malevolence of winter in stride. Forbearing and reflecting on the devastation it has left in its wake. We have birch and maple trees split in half and several other trees bent over under the weight of the ice in formations, ready to snap at any moment. The icy cold temperatures are threatening to drop to a -30 degree low. With no let up we will be gazing at glistening trees, like the ones on Christmas greeting cards, for several days to come, and a lot of stumps in the spring. After all this is only just the official start of winter.

The power outage was not catastrophic for us. We had hot water, stoves and fireplaces all fired by gas. Also the hush around the house with no TV or devices was merciful. I had 3G on phone and iPad to indulge an online craving or two, send and receive text messages and make emergency phone calls. I set out to make hot chayote stew (Poricha kozhambu) and when I realized I could not grind coconut for it in my blender, substituted with coconut milk, cumin and pepper. I ended up with a fantastic hot soup which we had with quinoa and dhal and it was wonderfully comforting. In fact, I thought we had all we needed. Really electricity was an indulgence we could do very well without. We had flashlights to find our stuff in dark corners and enough bright sunshine to do all that we needed to during the day - reading, cooking, decluttering. I even thought that we should endeavour to live without power 1 day a month to do our bit for energy savings and wean ourselves off our dependence. The day without power was marked by a simplicity that came with having no choice! It felt like we could have gone on for days replicating the lives of our grandmothers, starting with filter coffee in the morning. We got power the same night and so did not have to find out! Also our food could remain in our fridges and freezers (far too much of it, I realized, and have vowed to clear everything out and not buy for a few weeks!)

When I got to work I was less insular and felt quite uncomfortable for having been so smug and even mocking of our need for electric power. My colleagues related experiences of hardship they faced living in high rises where the water was turned off to prevent pipes from freezing and bursting, leaving them with no water as well. With no elevators, their Christmas turkeys and all other frozen food had to be rescued, carried down flights of stairs to friends' fridges and freezers. People with pregnant spouses and aging parents spoke of their challenges caring for loved ones who could not themselves walk down flights of stairs. On the news, we heard stories of trees falling over homes, fires and carbon monoxide poisoning from burning charcoal inside to stay warm and other such desperate tales. There are people still without power and after one day the novelty must have worn off.

Given harsh weather conditions, our lives here are generally constructed around the availability of power so much so that we cannot imagine living without it. We are gorging on it like at a buffet table because no one is telling us to consume less. Our gas and hydro are still not prized at their real cost. For eg, we are looking at tapping the oil sands now, at the cost of polluting our vast water resources by fracking. Even subliminally, we are not getting the messages that we should use less. We live today with the mentality that the availability of power will continue ad infinitum - until an ice catastrophe strikes and we wake up to our dependence. The wonderful thing about us humans, though, is that we quickly adapt. We can take on a lot and find work- arounds. So I guess we will, when power is not so abundant!

We also show our best selves under great hardship. I witnessed peace and calm and acts of kindness everywhere. Several of our friends offered us their homes and plied us with food. Others opened up their fridges for friends to store perishables. The busy intersections with no traffic lights flowed through smoothly even without cops in attendance. And the spirit of the season was visible everywhere in human acts of compassion.

I wish everyone a warm and happy Christmas with loved ones. I wish us all the strength to get through our challenges including the ones brought on by a long harsh winter.

Here are a list of 13 things mentally strong people do not do! Do you agree?
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/13-things-mentally-strong-people-dont.html

Travel blog - 2 - A trip to Cairo

A few years ago, Utta and I went on a short but memorable trip to Cairo. It was a couple of years before the uprising in Tahrir square. Hosni Mubarak was still comfortably ensconced in power and the city was eerily tranquil with the muted signs of militia everywhere.

I loved Cairo because it was so much like India. The sunshine, greenery, palms and old architecture were very much like Chennai and burbs, and the pervasive tall and mid sized flats with clothes drying in the balconies, very much like Mumbai. Also like in India, there were ample signs of life and living everywhere - from young nubile couples in clandestine encounters by the Nile, funerals in the cemeteries, children playing in the dirt in the crowded back alley souks, men balancimg trays of tea as they negotiated the pressing crowds in all places of commerce, to flirtatious young men sitting around street corners on Roxy Square serenading the beautiful young women walking down that street. The magnificent ancient pyramids and mosques, with courtyards the size of football fields, were almost incidental. In fact, when we were in Old Cairo, it came up to their noon hour prayer and the mosques opened up to welcome all Muslim worshippers. The trip to the Giza Pyramids and Sphinx was quite like arriving at the Shore Temples in Mammalapuram, smack in the middle of a crowded town, where people went about their lives, apparently unaffected by the five thousand year history of one of the world's architectural marvels in their backyard.

Cairo is a holy place with a confluence of religions and cultures. Islam, of course, is the dominant religion today. However, predating the arrival of the Arabs, over the last two millennia, Egypt experienced Greco Roman influences with the Ptolemaic period and before that the rich dynastic tradition of the Pharaoh kingdoms going back to 3000 BC. Legend has it that Cairo is the birthplace of Judaism, the location of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo the place where a Pharaoh's wife found Moses after he had crossed the Red Sea. The synagogue is surrounded by the Babylon fortress and a hanging church. Among other firsts, Egypt boasts the first monastery dating back to 300 AD under the Coptics, a sect of Christianity which still flourishes, their art a blend of pagan traditions and expressive Christianity. More recently, Egypt was also a French colony and there is some of that influence evident in its peoples and food. In short, a veritable pot pourrie of eastern and European cultures, Egypt is a country of beautiful mixed race people, varied cuisines and diverse architecture. The language, however, is predominantly Arabic, with a few French speakers. English is practically non existent.

What’s a trip to Egypt without a pilgrimage to the pyramids. Particularly memorable was my 10 metre climb into one pyramid's funerary chamber, down a very narrow passage. The tombs are equally astounding and the preoccupation with death, dying and tomb architecture quite fascinating. King Tut knew not just how to live and but also how to die, so elaborate were his plans for his afterlife. The Nile, the only enduring witness to these thousands of years of history, tamed in recent times with the Aswan dam, has influenced every aspect of life in this historic place as is evident from the art and elaborate sailboat sculptures in the tomb architecture. Today, she is there a benevolent and bountiful goddess in the middle of the Sahara.

Our gap toothed taxi driver, Nabil took us around everywhere in his 20 year old Peugeot. He spoke broken English but showed us all the sights and bid us a tearful farewell. Amidst all those crooks who prey on tourists, we had found a gem.

It was wonderful to hang out with an adult daughter sipping tea in cafes, experimenting with the sheesha (water pipes), haggling at the Khan Al Khalili markets and trying out different cuisines at the restaurants. The trip left me with wonderful memories and a fresher perspective on the world and our present state of being.

Sunday reflections - vol 3 - Fever dreams

Amazon’s Jeff Bazos is known for his “fever dreams”. His ideas are so outrageous they are born in his delirium. I don’t blame him. Running a very small enterprise myself, I know the preoccupation that comes with wanting to improve quality, responsiveness and cut costs. In his case, it’s the “last mile” problem. In an e-commerce business where a consumer orders one CD how do you get it across to them at their doorstep in the most cost efficient way? His fever dreams even included having bike couriers store them in their apartments before the last mile. Of course, there was the cost of pilferage by the dishonest ones, which had to be factored in. So soon there will be drones and robot couriers. It’s going to be a mad scramble to get the consumer the product. Is e-Commerce more efficient? It sounds like it is more dangerous and is fraught with many unknowns on what could happen if our product crazy world goes on LSD ordering things online setting off a spiral of credit card debts, drones, people madly rushing around on bikes, and robots working the warehouses which are housed in unsafe and unsanitary locations, maybe. What happens after Jeff Bazos when there is no one to have his fevered dreams? Anyway, I am sure I dramatise. There will be a start-up that comes up with ways to rationalise and optimise delivery, I am sure, so e-Commerce can continue, to grow, thrive and fascinate!

As you can tell, I love reading, writing and thinking wild thoughts on Sunday mornings. I think I am entitled to my own delirious dreams. So here is what I keep thinking of as a solution to our housing problem. In Toronto, for eg, we have a housing bubble. No one can afford to buy a house and, rents being so high, accumulate the equity to buy. So how do we optimise the space and energy we use to allow people the breathing room to save up and buy? With all this reading about exchanges – Obamacare and the 250 recently spawned financial exchanges nipping at the heels of the newly acquired NYSE by ICE (Intercontinental Exchange), I am thinking why not we build a housing exchange. It would have on it, people who are looking to buy, people who want to sell or improve their properties, mortgagors who would like to lend more safe cash for collateral and insurance companies that secure the loans. Of course you would need dealer networks on it too. Potential buyers and sellers could do any combination of things. Those who are borderline and are fearful of losing their shirt on their investment, could buy short, ie hedge their exposure by shorting futures on the index – ie betting on their decline in value. If prices fell, short will gain in value reducing the homeowner’s loss. They could further shore it up with insurance that uses the futures market. Those who cannot afford to buy but may qualify for a small mortgage could pay to improve homes of existing homeowners (ie basement apartments for eg) in exchange for staying there for just the cost of utilities to allow them a window to save for their purchase after paying interest on the cost of the home improvement. This may not seem like a fair exchange to the homeowner. However think about the “paying it forward” equity and the reduction in carbon footprint it means. Also think of the growing divide between rich and poor and the dire consequences for the economy of this growing inequity? For heaven’s sake I have a 1000 square feet basement, which we do not use, which walks onto the backyard and is a beautiful space. I would gladly enter into such an agreement if it means it will also help someone save up for their home?

The woman of the hill

The woman of the hill

Our house is situated on a hill. The road, lined with beautiful tall Christmas and other trees, undulates up and down in a gentle slope. However, going up and down that hill on foot involves triumphing over the naysaying body! Especially when the weather is a bitter cold -10 degrees C as it was today. However, on any given day, I just have to peek out at 6:30 am, when it is still dark, and I will see a familiar figure in a burgundy coat, fully covered from head to toe, taking strong determined strides. In the summer, she is a skinny figure in shorts. I like to call her Sophia the woman of the hill. In her 60s she has relentlessly scaled that hill everyday for 29 years. She does 10 hills on an average day at 12 minutes per hill but could keep at it for about 20. I have never been able to do more than 6.

I met Sophia three years ago when she approached me on the hill as we were crossing paths with "are you a yoga teacher?" I admitted that I did lead yoga sessions. We got into conversation about all things spiritual and esoteric. Born in Greece and a resident of Canada for over 40 years, Sophia still speaks with her accent. She is a healer. She is a Master Reiki practitioner, a Bowen therapist, a counselor and teacher who holds free success groups and non religious prayer sessions at her home every Friday night for the willing and the down and out. She can quote from any religious or spiritual text, from the Gita to the Bible, Osho or the Dalai Lama and her knowledge of human anatomy and physiology is astonishing. A karma yogi, she counsels and treats people all day and does it out of love and a desire to make them feel and live better. She has vowed to lower my blood pressure with Bowen and has never charged me for the one hour sessions. Healing is her calling, spirituality her state of being. She eats fruits and vegetables and very little of it. She responds to all emails from people in distress every day and prays for them. She lives with her husband in a house on 2 acres of land growing her own organic vegetables in a magnificent greenhouse. She has a heavenly orchard with apple and pear trees brimming over with their bounty in the fall and donates them to friends and anyone in need. She works hard in the house and garden and tending to people in distress, with no outside help. She maintains an immaculate house cleaned with soda bicarbonate, vinegar and steam, keeping all noxious chemicals out.

But most inspirational of all is her habit of walking up and down the hill every morning of the year, no matter the weather, while inspiring others to do the same. She has gathered a crowd of faithfuls around her, walking away depression and loneliness from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). She goes over to our homes sometimes to draw us out. She then regales us with wonderful stories as we walk with her, of her trips to Corfu, her hometown in Greece, a book she has been inspired by, a healing remedy she has found, a condition she has treated or even the recipe of a gluten free apple crisp she has baked for her prayer group. She greets everyone who joins her walk with a warm and tight hug and stays till the last one leaves the hill. She speaks with passion of the hill's magical powers to heal, the special magnetic field around it and we believe her.

I feel blessed to have Sophia as my neighbour and of course to be living on such a daunting but holy hill. It truly only takes one person, to transform a village.

Additional thoughts - on how the book came to be!

People have asked me how the book came to be...

The idea was to bring out the multicultural fabric of this city. We wanted to make it more visible with stories about people’s food experiences from back home and have them sharing their favourite recipes from home with all of us. We found out through this process how food is a great unifier that transcends language barriers. For newcomers who are struggling it is probably the best way they know to connect back to their roots so they can bring comfort to their mind, body and soul. Through their stories they enchant with the exoticism of their experiences, while also ringing within us a familiar chord.

The book is also meant as a fundraiser to revive a Community Kitchen program for ex/residents from the Sandgate Women’s Shelter, which provides refuge to women fleeing abuse. Food heals and communal cooking revives the convivial experiences that women had in kitchens back home, with their mothers, aunts and grandmothers. Communal kitchens help people share, network and offer an excuse for people to congregate. They also help save $$ in food and cooking costs for those whose lives are financially precarious when they are on social assistance or at risk of homelessness.

Interestingly, the idea was conceived at MCIS but the stories were recorded by journalists from Brazil, newcomers volunteering with us, whose English is somewhat limited. They captured the narratives interviewing the storytellers – interpreters from MCIS, and staff from both MCIS and the shelters. They took pictures, sometimes even made the recipes on behalf of the contributors. A number of our staff volunteered their time or freelanced for a nominal fee during their off time. We had one staff devote some of her working hours to coordinating this effort. It was done on a shoestring and so we are quite proud of it in its present form and also the potential it offers for future initiatives. An idea I have germinating is to partner with agencies working with people who have mental health issues and having them do something similar with us. It will bring humanity to the experiences of people who suffer from stigma or ostracism because of their illness. This may be conceived as a documentary.

Travel blog - Volume 1 - Cambodia memories

Recently someone asked me about my trip to Siem Reap. So I decided to look up my writings and locate them in one place. So here goes:

We flew in from Singapore into this gem of a town called Siem Reap. This holiest of holy cities, with lush green vegetation, including the tallest teak trees I have ever seen is home to the most magnificent temple architecture known to human kind. This gentle land with its doe eyed beautiful people is predominantly agricultural and is only now recovering from the carnage of the Killing Fields which took place between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge took the lives of 3 million of its cultural elite. During this time, monuments and rare archival documents were destroyed forever making the task of heritage site restoration even more difficult.

We stayed at a beautiful French boutique hotel with verandahs overlooking greenery and the pool, and a scrumptious breakfast spread complete with french croissants, melon jam, delicious chocolate and banana cake (decadent indeed!), fresh tropical fruit and juices, beverages and freshly baked bread. The dollar goes a long way and a nice meal with wine and spirits sets one back only about $7. So we did it all. Massages everyday, high tea at the Raffles Hotel, out on the town in Pub Street every night, the Night Market and Old Market to shop to our heart's content.

By day, we visited the temples and the ancient monuments both Hindu and Buddhist. Hinduism was the reigning religion for about 700 years between 800 and 1500 AD and the priests at the King's palace, to this day, trace their origins back to Tanjore, India. After Hinduism came Buddhism, which flourishes to this day.

At 5 a.m., the day after we landed, we caught the sunrise at the Angkor Wat, a magnificent Vishnu Temple based on Cambodian and South Indian temple architecture. The same evening we caught the sunset at the Bakheng Mountain Shiva Temple. The next day we took the pilgrimage up to Kbal Sbean and drank from the holy spring that emanates from what the Campucheans believe is the mythical "Mount Meru". This holy place has the trinity, with a thousand lingas carved in stone on top of a hill 1500 metres high, has Vishnu in repose and Brahma seated on a Lotus. The water flows over this holy trinity into a rectangular pool also dating back a thousand years, as those rock carvings. I drank this water, considered no less holy than that of the Ganges and paid homage to the dancing Shiva in a place considered as sacred as Mount Kailas. The trek up was challenging over small and large boulders, several of which were quite steep and slippery. The climb down was a breeze. Shaded from the sun and flanked by tall tropical jungle this trek was the closest I had come to nature in a very long time. Our guide informed me that tigers and other wild animals in this jungle had fallen prey to the Khmer Rouge. He pointed to the places where these soldiers had sought refuge even as they had carried out their carnage. The trinity on the hill had borne silent witness to their violent acts.

After Kbal Sbean and wonderful cold coffee at the base of the hill, we visited the Crown Jewel of the temples we had seen in this trip, Bantey Krei. A Shiva temple in shades of pink and yellow, it still bears the most exquisite carvings of Shiva and Parvathy and stories from the Ramyana and Mahabharatha epics, rivalling those at the Angkor Wat. Built by a Brahmin, not a reigning monarch as with the other temples, and even older than the Angkor Wat, this has a sophisticated structure with rest-houses and a meditation hall, flanking the altars of Shiva and his consort Parvathy. At the entrance, there is a dismembered bull, the remnant of a Nandi.

Besides the magnificent temples, the Angkor Tham, the beautiful temple town with its 4 magnificient gateways leading into what must have been a thriving cultural centre, I was moved by the many monasteries, the orange clad monks who stand patiently outside homes waiting for their daily bhiksha and the rural poor and the simplicity of their lives. We went everywhere by Tuk tuk and passed through villages where people lived in homes on stilts built with wood or mud and coconut palm, with no electricity or running water. We stopped to watch the village folk process cane sugar in huge basins on firewood stoves. In these villages children run about scantily clad, dirty and malnourished and people peddle wares including bare essentials in food and drink, firewood, handmade bamboo and cane products and even gasoline in bottles or cans for tuk tuks and scooters. A simple sustainable life off the land and its bounty.

Siem Reap is sleepy, hot, muggy and lush. The City takes great pride in its World Heritage Sites and so it is easy to navigate, very safe and clean. The children who peddle wares outside each of these sites, evoke one's sympathy and are the only real sign that this is a tourist destination. The economic downturn worldwide has had its impact on the flow of tourists and so there were no crowds or waits or line ups anywhere. I urge everyone to make the trip..!

Of life and book launches

We had our book launch on Friday. Jehan Chaudhry, the Executive Director of Sandgate Women's Shelter spoke about our enduring partnership helping immigrant women. Several contributors read from the book "Food for Language" an MCIS Cookbook Collective.

I spoke about my serendipitous entry into a world where I would support victims of domestic violence. That time in the distant past when I started working out of a storefront which housed our little nonprofit which then had two hundred thousand dollars in revenue and 2.5 staff, including myself. We were passionate about what we did reaching out to everyone who would listen to us, the Police and private bar alike, to educate them about our interpretation services for victims of violence. We knew immigrant women who endured assaults everyday would not come out and seek help unless they could operate within the sphere of comfort offered by their own language. In those days I never invited anyone to my office - so ashamed was I of those shabby digs. I was not convinced I had made the right decision straddling two careers when I could have plunged headlong into law full-time.

Then one day an interpreter came to my office and talked to me about her vicarious trauma from helping a woman at a shelter. In order to respect the woman's confidentiality, I did not delve deep. A few months later I read about a case where an Ontario Superior Court judge had adjourned the sentencing hearing, emotionally overcome and weeping after listening to a woman's victim impact statement, where she described assault and neglect of her toddler and herself that bordered on torture. Her accused husband was sentenced to 6 years in prison. (Yes-only 6 years)! Anyway, I found out then that it was the same case our interpreter had worked on and was lauded for. She had been pivotal in ensuring the woman's case was vigorously prosecuted, based on powerful evidence the woman had given in her mother tongue. Well this case changed everything for me. I began to value my work and to take great pride in it. Since those early days, somewhat sadly, we have grown to help thousands. Parallel to this, we have grown our revenue generating arm expanding it to provide a full suite of language services to the public and private sectors.

Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of your roots, purpose and beginnings when you are caught in the daily grind. This book, entirely a volunteer effort on the part of our staff, will anchor us back. Rich with stories, people have narrated, and food histories of the recipes shared, it is a wonderful reminder of our diversity. It also abounds with compassion which is often lost when we are "competing" to win bids. For me personally, it was a much needed breath of fresh air. Rather than donate money to our shelter partner we offered something enduring and enchanting that would snowball into a "fund-raiser" for their community kitchen. The book is on Amazon and is already being given away as Christmas/holiday presents. We will hold a town hall with the staff to think of ways to sustain this initiative. It's by no means perfect but is not meant to be. Like a life full of crags and crannies, it has grammar issues and design flaws. But it is heartfelt, soulful and a wonderful use of technology to bring back memories of times when women bonded in the kitchen creating wonderful recipes while chatting and sharing! Find us on Amazon or this holiday season do something personal like putting together a family recipe book of your own!

Sunday morning reflections - 2

The silence that comes with death – remembering Appa

When Appa was diagnosed with a terminal illness 9 years ago, he set about planning life after him. He paid all his bills and ensured the money they had saved up was in secure places, garnering sufficient interest to pay my mother's keep. Then one night, while he was still mobile, he handed me a long checklist, neatly written on the back of recycled paper, which he used for everything except important correspondence, with all items on the list checked off. There clearly was nothing left for us kids to do. He had taken care of everything in meticulous detail, as was his nature. He then neatly put away all his files and stationery never to touch them again, or so he may have realised. The next morning he fainted as he was brushing his teeth, and when he came to, we took him to the hospital. He left his beloved house without a second glance and never to return. When he regained strength at the hospital, he read the paper, even attempted to write a letter to the editor, signed some cheques and enquired after some medical reimbursement claims he had made. Two weeks in, as though sensing his end was near, he was still alert but no longer interested in anything. He became quieter, more inner focussed and calm. He even stopped signing documents because his hand was unsteady and his writing squiggly. When I spoke to him about income I had generated for the company for which I had appointed him Director, he did not crack a smile as he would have done in the past. He just solemnly told me to “always keep my word”. When I told him that I was renovating the flat that he had so lovingly scoped out and purchased on my behalf, promising him he would be well enough to see it, he just nodded. This was the man who had brimmed over with excitement and pride, when he had taken me to see this flat that he had picked for me. He had been ecstatic when I had finally seen it and told him how happy I was with this great “find”. This was also the man who had taken great interest in life and lived it with gusto. He had enjoyed his flat by the beach, his long morning walks in his borough and the food my mother lovingly cooked him; he had admired and appreciated all things beautiful in nuanced detail and had been passionate in his support of the underdog. When he fell quiet I understood what it meant to die. If such a man did not care about anything as death neared, there really must be nothing at all, to our everyday clamour, I realized. What I had known intellectually all along, I knew experientially, then. He would have been gone 9 years this 4th of December and his absence has left a deafening silence for us all - but he left it all quiet peacefully.