Sunday, September 30, 2012

Bright and Beautiful Sunday







This Sunday, everything sparkled after the showers. One thing led to another and I landed at UB City for lunch once more, in the excellent company to two wonderful, chilled out, very charming people.
It is always interesting to see how people react to extreme wealth. Some just walk right past the designer shops as fast as possible looking neither left nor right and then stressfully moan and whine the rest of the evening that they have no money. Others resentfully hiss comments about the fashionably dressed people walking past and then make trite declarations for the rest of the visit:  ‘Indian goods are better than foreign’ (yawn), 'happiness is better than wealth' (snore).
For a change it was so nice to walk around with friends sans hang-ups. We walked into shops admired pretty things, looked some more and walked on...it was a fun relaxed afternoon. 

When I drove back, I passed by these colourful patchwork quilts made by construction workers. Since I had my camera with me, I stopped to take pictures and the little girl happily posed for me. (No, I don’t intend to make an obvious comparison here with the ultra expensive stuff I saw earlier. They are from two very different worlds and there is no need for comparison). These quilts are beautiful and have been instinctively put together with found and leftover scraps of cloth to create a patchwork of gorgeous squares of colour where each piece of cloth sets off the other in its seemingly arbitrary placement. I think the women who made these thoroughly enjoyed the process
.


It is worth a few minutes of your time to watch this beautiful film sent to me by Jenny Sue.



Sunday, September 9, 2012

The Departure

There are some words which resonate with me forever.
One of them is this and the other is the writing above.

Monday, September 3, 2012

A Special Tea Party


One morning Archana called up and invited Aarohi and me over for tea so that me could meet before she left the shores of India. I took her flowers and Aarohi brought her one of her beautiful painted kettles.

There was a wonderful spread at the table - cold salad, muffins, banana chips...

...and deep dark fruitcake on pretty plates.

Of course there was piping hot perfectly blended Masala Chai in the most enormous cups that I have ever seen.

We ate and we talked and talked and ate some more, we laughed and clicked photographs and shared memories...
This was a warm and happy morning that I would not forget.

While we may grumble about the internet and how much of our time it takes from us, I do believe the pros outweigh the cons. Some of the nicest friendships with inspirational people have been made due to blogging.
Please take some time to read about both the extraordinary women that I had tea with at my other blog called Gilaas of Chai >>
I thought it would be more appropriate to shift the rest of this post there because the pictures are BIGGER which is when they look best. Also more importantly, that is where I first met Archana which  eventually led to the now famous tea party :)