gaelikaa's diary

Solitude

2020-11-27T05:22:00.001+05:30

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

This week's post, entitled 'Solitude' is the result of a topic suggested by the intrepid blogger from Pune, Ramana Rajgopaul. Ramana also happens to be my adopted brother. His blog is great. You'll find the link for it at the end of this post, along with the blog links for the rest of our blogging group.

Someone I know (I'll call him Mark, not his real name) did something bad a few decades ago. Something for which he served time as a guest of the President of Ireland. You don't know what that is? Well in the UK, if someone says they're a guest of Her Majesty, it means they're in jail. So go figure. So Mark's life went very much downhill. His marriage broke up and most of his relatives turned their backs on him. Mark doesn't blame them for that. He knows he did wrong. But the fallout of the whole business means that he ended up living in solitude. As he gets older, the chances of getting meaningful work are becoming fewer and further between. When he was in jail, he used to get visits from the priest. Then he was asked if he'd like to get visits from an evangelical church that undertook prison visiting. Mark agreed to the visits and it changed his life. He found the evangelical church to be wonderful. When he went to the Catholic Mass, he felt as if he was just another face in the crowd. When he attended the Evangelical Church meetings after being released, he felt as if he had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This made a huge difference.

Image by Gypzy from Pixabay

Mark's Church has Bible study on Tuesday, prayer meetings on Wednesday nights and Eucharistic Celebrations on Sundays. Although Mark lives in solitude, only breaking that solitude for trips to the doctor, he is not alone. He can join his Church meetings on Zoom. I think that if it wasn't for the Evangelical Church members, Mark's life would be miserable. Solitude can be wonderful and refreshing, especially if you're surrounded by people most of the time. But too much solitude can be very isolating. It's a recipe for loneliness and depression. In Mark's case, it was good that he found a Church that was so personal and helpful.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

If you look at the life of people in middle age, it is often a very busy time. Kids clamouring for your attention, elderly people needing support and very little time for yourself. In that time of life, a little bit of time spent by yourself can be an unheard-of luxury. Then, a few years later, life could be totally different. The elders may have passed on. The kids may be gone. It may seem hard to believe, but things can totally turn around in a few years. In Dublin in the 1970s, a firefighter named Willie Bermingham was shocked, along with his colleagues, to have found the bodies of a number of elderly people who had died neglected and alone throughout the city. Mr Bermingham started up a voluntary organisation called ALONE to advocate for the right of the 'forgotten old'. I remember the media campaign they launched. I also remember the song from the campaign. Although it wasn't common, sometimes there were people who slipped through the fingers of society to a lonely existence in old age. That should never happen. It's good that there is more awareness now.

Image by mel_88 from Pixabay

Many religions, including Christianity and Hinduism have people who take religious vows and go and live in solitude, keeping themselves alive by some kind of subsistence work or alms and spending time devoted to reading Scriptures. They feel they hear the voice of God speaking in silence. However, most religious vocations seem to feature some sort of community life, where people meet each other for prayer, work and study. In the long run, a mixture of solitude and community life seems to work better for most people. I'm not saying that it's no use being a hermit. That's a very special vocation and not for everyone. As for me, I love to write. But I find I can't write during the day when I'm surrounded by people. I can write better at night. There are no meals to cook or doors to answer. I can hear my thoughts more clearly. So I suppose you could say I need solitude to write. I hope the results are worth reading.

Many thanks to Pixabay for the imagery.

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members
The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are  Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum,  Raju, Shackman, Srinivas and Conrad. 

Modern Democracy - Success or Failure?

2020-11-23T03:00:00.003+05:30

Image by GDJ from Pixabay

This week's topic is now last week's topic, as we're entering a new week as I write. The topic was chosen by Raju, another blogger in our group. His posts appear on his wife Padmini's blog. It's a very lofty topic indeed and way out of my league. I know very little about political science. My daughters studied it in school, though. However, challenge accepted. I will write on this topic and see how it goes. For all those who are far more knowledgeable about politics than I am, my apologies. I write as an ordinary woman in the street, so to speak. A complete laywoman in the area of politics.

People who are not in politics generally agree that it's a dirty business and they wouldn't be caught dead

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

anywhere near it. People who are connected to it, whether by family or work ties, generally can't get enough of it. A sister of mine once worked with the daughter of a moderately well-known Irish politician (we'll call the girl Laura - not her real name). Sister dearest went for drinks in a pub one night with her friend Laura and there were quite a few party workers present. Sis listened aghast as Laura was asked if she'd ever considered running for her father's seat should he ever drop dead or something. The general consensus was that she probably should. After all, the group reasoned, wouldn't it be a shame for that seat to go out of the family? Sis swallowed her indignance. A public representative works on behalf of his or her constituency as a sacred trust. And here were these people treating a seat in the Irish Dáil (parliament, pronounced: 'doyl' for your kind information, should you, my reader, not be Irish) as if it was some kind of family property. Incredible! As the evening drew to a close, Sis told her friend she must depart. Our mother was at a work-related party in a hotel nearby. It was Christmas, so a lot of parties were going on. Laura, being considerate, was concerned about my sister getting home safely. She said 'let me know if you find your mother.' Mother was duly found and Sis brought her in to say a final goodnight and goodbye to Laura. So Sis and Mother said their goodbyes and suddenly Laura got all excited. "Hey, Dad's here," she said. "You must meet my dad."

Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

So Laura goes over and tells Dad that her friend's mother was present and he really must say hello. Within seconds, my mother's hand was firmly grasped, eye contact was duly made and Mr Mac the politician (wild horses wouldn't drag the name out of me - names changed to protect the guilty, you never know who's reading) was assuring my bewildered mother that it was a true pleasure to meet her and that he hoped it would not be too long before their paths crossed again. I may mention here that the gentleman had a few drinks taken, enough said. But fair play to him, as we say in Ireland, he could hold his drink. I wouldn't have put him behind the wheel of a car that night, though. But, sure, he probably had a driver. So, no harm was done. I've had my share of meeting politicians and having my hand firmly grasped and eye contact made. I think they must all go to the same public relations agency. The female politicians I've met were a different breed altogether. Some quite friendly and some very distant and aloof. But they were somehow more real than their male counterparts. That's what I think anyway.

Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

So, yeah, democracy. Government for the people, of the people and of the people as the classical Greeks might have said Democracy is quite a modern phenomenon. In the past, east and west, countries were ruled by Royal families who ruled by divine right through a bloodline. The western and eastern concept of kingship was that's it's a sacred charge. More important than crowning in Christian monarchy was anointing, which was part of the king-making rituals in the Bible. But the word democracy has been coined from the Greek language. The concept of democratic government has been contemplated by no less a people than the learned ancient Greeks. But when the French violently abolished their monarchy at the end of the 18th century, the western world changed and the modern era was ushered in. The concept of elected legislators was born. Apparently, the concept of left-wing and right-wing politics came from the French parliament. The conservative politicians apparently sat on the right side of the assembly and the reformers hung out on the left side. Extremes of right and left are dangerous because extremism is dangerous. Moderation is a better option. The middle ground is always better.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

Democratic principles sound great. As many an Irish politician says after each election, 'the people have spoken'. But have they really? Apparently, you can't run for the elections if you have no money. Irish politician Royston Brady came to grief in 2004, when he was persuaded to run for the European elections and then left to pay a huge bill for election costs when his campaign failed. He was a man with great ability, but you need more than ability in order to succeed in politics, it seems. Donald Trump was not a popular President. But at least the man was able to pay his way around. A poor person cannot dream of running for the elections in India. I think now in these days of social media, things have averaged out a bit. Once you have a smartphone, you have access to social media tools. But you need the skill set, or an employee or assistant with the skill set to run these tools, to make social media work for you. Otherwise, you might as well go home.

Politics does not work for me, even as a voter. I'm a person with Labour leanings. My late father was a member of the Irish Labour party. He was a committed union man. So, I'm always on the side of the workers. I believe that a mixed economy such as we have in Ireland, that encourages business and takes care of the weaker sections, is the way to go. That puts me firmly on the left. On the other hand, I'm a devout Catholic and pro-life to the hilt. I am opposed to abortion and euthanasia on the grounds that killing is wrong. By the way, by euthanasia, I mean assisted suicide of the incurably ill. I don't mean palliative care, which seeks to alleviate the pain of those who are in mortal pain by giving them medication which alleviates their suffering and as a side effect, may cause their lives to be a little shorter. I also don't believe that removing an unborn child before its time, to save the mother's life, is abortion. Anyway, the point is, that while I believe in live and let live, I am pro-life. And being pro-life puts me on the right-wing side. So as I said, politics doesn't work for me.

As Jesus Christ said, in His Infinite Wisdom, give to God what belongs to God and to Caeser what belongs to Caeser. You can't go wrong with that advice. As a Christian, I believe it's important to pray for our leaders. So, is modern democracy a success or a failure? It depends, I suppose. On how you view it and on whether you have enough money to do what you want. Including run for the elections

Many thanks to Pixabay for the imagery.

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members
The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are  Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum,  Raju, Shackman, Srinivas and Conrad. 

Dinner in Two Hours

2020-11-13T00:30:00.001+05:30

Image by RealAKP from Pixabay
This week, it was my privilege to pick the topic for our blogging group, and I thought long and hard about the topic. So using a tried and trusted method, I put five books down in front of me. I picked one at random. I opened a random page and went to page 103. Then I looked at the third line from the bottom of the page. The immortal phrase 'dinner in two hours' leapt from the page and into my consciousness. No, sorry, I can't remember which book it was.  I kept the selection process as random as possible and without prejudice. I have to admit that we had a food post on the blogging group recently but this is the phrase with which I ended up. The more I considered it, the more I noticed endless possibilities suggesting themselves. Phrases that are open to interpretation can be a lot of fun. On one hand, it suggests urgency. As in 'oh my God, look at the state of me? I'm going to dinner in two hours'. Or, it could suggest a  relaxed approach. As in 'take your time. We're having dinner in two hours'. Or 'how can I prepare dinner in two hours?' It could be the name of a James Bond movie. Don't laugh. Look at the title 'Never Say Never Again?' That title took up hours of my time, trying to figure it out. My favourite track by Irish singer/songwriter David Kitt is 'You Know What I Want to Know'. The title can read several ways. I have a special liking for the musical work of David Kitt. His mother, Jacinta Kitt, was my teacher in primary school.  Her wisdom influenced me in my formative years. So we're related on some level. Okay, 'dinner in two hours' may not reach those lofty heights. But still.....

Image by Ron Mitra from Pixabay 
The initial meaning that most people would take from this is: 'can you make dinner in two hours? The answer depends on one's eating habits. If you're a foodie who revels in haute cuisine, the answer is 'no'. But, in fairness, most working people leave the haute cuisine for special occasions. Most practise convenient cooking on an everyday basis.  Microwaves are a gift. Even the most 'haute' of haute cuisine types can manage dinner in way less than two hours with the freezer's help. Many a working man or woman prepares lasagnes and casseroles at the weekend. They cut them into convenient portions to defrost and serve during the week. This is true for many Indian city-dwellers too. 

Continuing on this train of thought. I'm currently writing a novel for the American National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I love all types of writing, blog posts, short stories and long stories. Long stories (novels) take a lot of extra effort. NaNoWriMo has a nice website to help authors plan their book. It encourages them to make a playlist and Pinterest board. It gives writing friends the opportunity to cheer each other on. I love that buzz, that excitement because writing can be lonely.  Irish- woman-with-Indian connections that I am, I've set my novel in Ireland.  Yet there are Indian characters in it. I have created an Irish-Indian girl called Angie Kapoor. She cooks dinner at home for her Irish friends one evening. I haven't dwelt too much on the food aspects, but she prepares chole, Punjabi chickpea curry. She does this having earlier soaked the chickpeas overnight and boiled them beforehand. She prepares the curry sauce when her friends start to arrive. She serves the dish with boiled rice, knowing her Irish friends won't insist on Indian bread. Rice is quite easy to cook if you know how to do it. Especially if you soak it in water for a few hours beforehand. Pre-soaking helps it to cook in a very short time. Lest I commit myself, I must mention that this principle applies to Indian rice. It might not apply to the rice of a different region.

Image by REBECA CRUZ GALVAN from Pixabay
As  I'm married into an Indian family and live in India, I usually cook Indian food. I would have different cooking habits if I lived in Ireland. But I know that preparation is everything. I usually prepare extra rice and dal (a dish made of pulses such as lentils) at lunchtime. We need to have these items for dinner at night too. So we have dal and rice already made.  We prepare dough earlier for making our chapattis at night. So, preparing a vegetable dish to go with all that doesn't take long. Since my husband retired,  he prepares our vegetable dish at night. No meat, as we're a vegetarian family. So he makes vegetable curry and I make the flatbreads. So, we make our dinner in far less time than two hours. Last year, I ran into a bit of a problem. Despite making extra rice and dal for lunch, there was never any left at night for our dinner. Making dinner at night was far more laborious than it should have been. There was a woman working in our house at that time as a carer for my mother-in-law. We'd told her that she could have lunch from our kitchen if she was hungry. She made herself very free indeed. I watched in surprise as she went back three times during lunch to consume all our dal and rice. In the end, I sat down with her and had a chat. I found that she thought that the leftover dal and rice from lunch was 'waste food'. She thought that we would throw to the street dogs afterwards. She was trying to preventing waste, she said. I explained to her that the fridge and the microwave were there to prevent wastage. The food would stay fresh for later in the fridge and the microwave could heat it in minutes. It was a relief to get that misunderstanding cleared up. 

That carer is not the only person to misunderstand the role of the fridge in preparing food. People 
mage by Usman Yousaf from Pixabay - roti
who run restaurants often prepare and freeze food in advance.   This means that dishes requiring long preparation can reach diners at the earliest. Indian and Chinese cuisines are popular in western countries nowadays. No-one wants to wait for several hours while the restaurant prepares their food.  We see  Indian and Chinese takeaways today. This is because people don't want to wait too long for their food. But that makes some people think Indian and Chinese food is 'fast food', like chips and burgers. 

I remember reading an article by well-known Irish broadcaster in 'Ireland's Own'. He was comparing
Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay
Irish cuisine to oriental food. He made the point that there could never be an "Irish takeaway"  where you could order a carton of Irish stew. This, he explained, was because Irish stew takes time, skill and effort to prepare. Cooking the meat, vegetables and potatoes to perfection was a special skill and an art, he said. He relegated the ancient cuisines of India and China to the junk food category. While he may have excelled in broadcasting, his culinary ignorance was embarrassing.  I hope that someone set him right. He reminds me of the elderly Indians I met when I first came here. They thought that everyone in the west ate sandwiches and nothing else. But their cuisine was rich in culture and tradition. Yes, you can boil some potatoes and vegetables and grill a bit of lean meat if you need a quick dinner in the west. But there is haute cuisine and, well, everyday cuisine in every culture, east and west. Western people also prepare and eat traditional dishes. We have lasagne and shepherds pie and roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and so on. What we eat depends on our taste and culture. I remember an idea we had in Ireland long back about continental breakfasts. We thought mainland Europeans took only tea or coffee and bread and butter for breakfast. We pitied them. Irish breakfasts had eggs, cereal and much more. We now know better. Continental breakfast features fruit, juice, yoghurt, croissants and other healthy items. You learn a lot when you travel around.  

Image by Siggy Nowak from Pixabay 
Let's look at the other possible meaning of the title topic. So,  you're having dinner in two hours?  Whether you have time for anything else in the meantime depends on whether you're the cook or not. If you're not cooking, you have time to get dressed up for dinner. People on the top levels of society still do that. A dignitary with a full social calendar, can attend an evening reception at six pm and still go to dinner at 8 pm.  When you have the chauffeur to drive you, it's possible. If you're a chef and the dinner is a black-tie function, you may have done all your prepping two hours before. But you might spend that last two hours putting the finishing touches to your work.  It's good to make sure that every item is perfect and that nothing goes wrong. In conclusion, we can say that dinner in two hours means different things.  It depends on the people involved and the particular circumstances.

Many thanks to Pixabay for the imagery.

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members
The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are  Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum,  Raju, Shackman, Srinivas and Conrad. 

Letter to God the Father in Heaven, the Creator and Lord of All Things

2020-11-06T00:30:00.004+05:30

Image by Andrea Don from Pixabay - Praying
The topic for this blog post was 'Letter to Santa - What I Want for Christmas'. It was suggested by Padmini from Chennai, a veteran blogger and a good friend. But it won't work for me. I don't believe in Santa and probably haven't done so for the last 50 years. However, there is one person whom I know very well, who is empowered to grant my every wish if he so desires. That's God the Father in Heaven, the Creator and Lord of all things. I know there are many religions and many paths to God. We Christians are rather notorious for thinking that we are the ones who have a special relationship with God as His adopted children. This is considered as blasphemy by one particular community, who considers that God is way above humans and that humans are not good enough to be adopted by God as His children. But that's the miracle of it. We aren't good enough, but we are adopted anyway, if we desire it. We Christians also believe that this relationship is available to anyone who wants it. It's not a closed-door for people of other faiths. Basically, everyone is invited. It's their call whether they wish to avail of it or not. So I'm writing to my Father in Heaven about what I would like for Christmas. And forever.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Abba, my Father-in-Heaven, Creator and Lord of all things, I give you glory. You are great, You are almighty, You are above all things. I come to You in the Name of Your Only-Begotten-Son, Jesus Christ. I know You will always hear my prayer if I ask in His Name, with full faith in Your Goodness and Love, as Jesus told us to do. Abba, it's very hard sometimes. I love you that much that it actually makes me angry when people look at the mess that humanity made of the world and blame You for it. I must have driven innumerable people crazy telling them that bad things happening is not Your Will. Telling them that we live in a fallen world, that humanity (Adam and Eve) sinned and gave their authority over your creation to the enemy. I do not want to write enemy with a capital letter. He'll get no glory from me. The enemy has scourged and tormented the world since forever and still reserves the right to do so. The father of lies, no less. I do not wish to dwell on that horrible creature. I wrote a poem about his seduction of Eve once, which I know you must remember. For the benefit of any interested readers, I'm including a link to that particular piece of creative writing.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Why do people blame you when someone dies in an untimely manner? Why do You allow them to? Death wasn't even Your idea. That's the infernal father-of-lies whispering his falsehoods into their ears. The one who Jesus told us was a liar and a murderer from the very beginning (John 8:44). The same cunning creature who points to the wicked people who infiltrated Your Church and blames you for them. As if you had anything to do with it. But if people continue to listen to those lies, we're all on the road to destruction. I do wish you'd send Jesus back before it's too late. There are going to be so many lost souls because of people blaming You for what you did not do. Anyway, I'm sure I don't know better than You do.

So, Abba, the reason why I am here before is to ask you for what I would like you do give me if it fits in with Your Holy Will. I will always go with Your Will. Or I will try to, if it's going to be difficult. What would I like? I would like many things. Here are some:

Protection for me, my family and friends, blogging group and anyone for whom it's within my power to pray, from the Covid-19 disease. I would also like to pray for good health for all within
Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay

my prayer umbrella. Also, for protection from criminal attacks, terrorist attacks and road accidents. Protection at home and protection outside. Always, without exception. Please.
I pray for a long, healthy life. I would like, naturally, to remain youthful for the longest possible number of years if it's not against Your Holy Will. I would like to be of indeterminate age to all who behold me. You know how beautiful some nuns are. The ones who spend a lot of time in prayer. They could be anything between 30 and 70. If it means I have to spend more time in prayer, I'm ready for that. I do not wish to be a shrivelled corpse of 90 before I have actually expired.
I pray that my children will find good and suitable parters-in-life and be freed from soul ties to unsuitable people. I pray that they will remember what they were taught about You and will always look to You in every undertaking.
I pray that my spouse and I will continue to find joy in each other and give a great example of an interfaith marriage. There is still time.
I pray that the world will emerge from the Covid-19 crisis stronger and better. I pray that the world leaders will tackle environmental issues on a war footing.
I pray that all the people of the world, whatever their gender or orientation, will come to truly know You and love You.
I pray that the creeping anti-family agenda seeping into world awareness will fizzle out. And stay fizzled out.

Image by James Chan from Pixabay

Abba, I thank You for hearing me out. I realise that some of my requests are too big for a single person. If so, I pray that other like-minded people will pray for them too, so that they may come about. Jesus sacrificed so much to save humanity from destruction. I pray that His Sacrifice will never be in vain. Thanks for all Your Help and Love and care not only for me but for everyone in the whole world. I know in the end that everyone will know You and who You are. There is so much goodness and love in you that people just don't seem to know about. Abba, please make yourself known to everyone. You give me so much hope for the world for the future, I want everyone to have that too. I remain as always, your loving daughter and worshipper.

Many thanks to Pixabay for the imagery. Thanks to blogger Padmini (Padmum) for suggesting the topic.

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members

The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srinivas and Conrad.

My Best, Worst and Most Likely Case Predictions for the World in Five Years

2020-10-30T04:24:00.002+05:30

This week's blog topic had me stumped at first but slowly, I began to realise that I had plenty of ideas to write about. I suppose with the way times have changed so rapidly this year alone, we all wonder how things will be in a few years time. Being the opinionated sort of person that I am, it didn't take long till I discovered that I have quite a few opinions on different matters that are relevant to the times in which we live. I'm going to share those opinions right now. If you're reading this and disagreeing wildly, or else feeling some kind of agreement with me, I'd love if you might like to comment at the end so we can have a good conversation about it.

My Best Prediction: The Environment Will Heal

Image by RÜŞTÜ BOZKUŞ from Pixabay

When the lockdown first happened in India, everyone stayed at home. Well, almost everybody. Thousands of people started working from home. It was amazing. Then something strange started to happen. With fewer flights taking off and fewer cars on the road, the environment started to heal. Here in India instead of swallowing pollution in the air, we were enjoying clear skies and fresh air. I hope this is the start of the countries of the world taking the environment much more seriously. It's terrible that it took a pandemic to show humanity what what our world could be like. Yet if we learn this much, the terrible misery and losses suffered during the pandemic will have somehow had a purpose. Nothing, of course, can make up for the lives lost and the tragedy suffered. It's now being whispered that the pandemic was no accident of nature and has been engineered to force people into staying put. If so, that's terrible. But apart from that, I feel there is a real opportunity for humanity to redeem itself on the environmental front.

My Worst Prediction: Growing Intolerance

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I think that most right-thinking people are in agreement that in the western world in general and in certain countries in particular, there was systematic oppression of people of colour. Although there were black people who did well in society, many black people and people of non-white background experienced prejudice and discrimination because of the colour of their skin and it was totally and utterly wrong. We all need to educate ourselves in matters of oppression and discrimination. We know that Nazi Germany oppressed the Jewish people. We rarely heard until later that it systematically oppressed gay people as well. That was all wrong. Hopefully, now that people are seeing the world with new eyes, history will start to be rewritten. Having said that - I see a systematic hatred of the Catholic religion and its faithful followers in no less a place than Ireland. After many years of falling in and out with the Catholic church, I am back to stay. I was told I'd 'turned Protestant' a few years ago and I was happy enough. Protestantism shook up the people of God and made us get the scriptures in our own language. As they say in the west of Ireland, fair play. It was only right. But my heart has always been with the Catholic church and always will be. But I've noticed a hatred of Catholicism in the media. For example, as I mentioned on Facebook, I read an article in the 'Irish Times' in which a writer decried the 'bad old days of Catholic Ireland.' I was appalled. She used the word 'Catholic' as if was interchangeable with 'evil'. I wrote to her and to the newspaper editor complaining about it. Of course, I was ignored. Yes, I know there were abusive clergy and that many people, unfortunately, have horrible memories of the Church. Those people were wronged and nothing justifies that. But they don't seem to understand that these abusers were bad and now they're gone. The 'Irish Times' form of persecution is to slip condemnation into anything to do with Catholicism. Recently, the former Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar, of mixed Catholic/Hindu parentage, referred to the then opposition leader in the Irish Dáil as being like a Catholic Priest who preaches to people to be good and then goes away and sins in secret. Varadkar, who was taken to task for his remark, apologised in due course. But it's appalling that people think it's okay to criticise anything to do with Catholicism in

Image by Thomas B. from Pixabay

that way. I know it's a backlash against abuse, but not everything to do with Catholicism means abuse. Any abuse that may be taking place is being rooted out. Accountability is greater than ever now, but that ever-present hatred is being felt. I detest it. In the west it's like 'happy Diwali to all our Hindu friends', 'happy Eid to all our Muslim friends,' but when it comes to Catholicism, don't mention it. It's creeping intolerance and it's happening. It's all wrong.

Most Likely Prediction: We Will Live Mostly Online

Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Nowadays, I live online. I get Mass online. I read my daily prayers online. I shop online. I get the daily papers online. I write online. I publish online. Welcome to the new normal. You can shop and spend your money online. Now the Internet, in the last decade, has started to have currencies of its own, like Bitcoin. Currencies that cross borders without losing anything in exchange, not even bank fees. Dang it, you can get exercise classes online. The bonus is that the more

Image by Anrita1705 from Pixabay

people stay at home, the less they move out. They don't spread Covid-19 and they don't cause petrol pollution and overcrowding on the roads. As mentioned, I read a suggestion on the Internet that the pandemic was initiated to ensure that people didn't go out. Could it be true? I don't know, but I do think that's possible. The problems of the future may be very different. Fewer opportunities to discuss office politics and more talk about juggling work/home responsibilities. Companies will probably prefer using remote workers where possible. No overheads and pay when you get good work, not for time for your workers to sit around drinking coffee.

My Predictions

Image by Jean Didier from Pixabay

Anyone who knows me well will know that Tarot cards and crystal balls are very distant from me. Apart from a mad visit to a Dublin fortune teller when I was in my twenties, just for the experience, I keep far away from predictions of the future (BTW I know for a fact that a few Irish writers have visited that fortune teller, because I read about visits to the fortune teller in at least two books and they were almost exactly like my own experience). The Bible instructs us to trust God and not to try to find out the future by clairvoyance. On the other hand, Jesus Christ mentioned in the Gospel that when we see the signs of things, we know what is coming. So I've seen signs and I feel I think I'm on the right track.

Image by Jean Didier from Pixabay

All going well, our world will be saved and we'll be mostly staying at home in the future. I think we're already talking to our friends by Facebook and video calls. Hopefully, the intolerance I talked about will not flower into full-blown hatred. I do not want to be right about that.

Thanks to Pixabay for the imagery.

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members

The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srinivas and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Conrad.

A Day in the Life of Duggu - Life in the New Normal

2020-10-23T00:30:00.008+05:30

Duggu

Hello and woof! You may be surprised to see that today, gaelikaa's diary has been taken over by a canine. That's right. I'm Maria's dog, Duggu. If some of you out there have ever called to our house, you will certainly know me. I take my guard dog duties very seriously indeed and bark the place down if anyone I don't know shows up at the gate. The doorbell on our gate doesn't work very well and it's a matter of pride to me that it's not needed. If an unknown person arrives on the gate, I bark so loudly that everyone comes out to see who is there. I can get a bit over-excited at times, though. I upset a few visitors to our house down the years by being a bit too enthusiastic in carrying out my guard dog duties. I suppose that's why the only place in the house where I'm allowed to roam freely is the terrace yard on the top of the house. Which must be locked at all times when I'm there. However, people who have visited here and taken time to get to know me will tell you that I'm actually quite friendly and always welcome people whom I consider to be my friends. I can't really help that I'm so defensive about my home. I'm an Indian street dog. Guarding and defending my territory is bred into me. My breed has had a hard struggle for survival, living for generations on the Indian streets. So that's what we do. We hold our territory and guard it with our very lives.

I was found outside the Loreto Convent in Lucknow as a small puppy, less than a month old. A girl

I was the size of a football

called Saumya took me home and asked her father if she could keep me. Her father was unable to agree for some reason. I believe he had ordered a labrador pup who was due to arrive a month later. At school, Saumya asked the other girls if they had space in their homes for me. Maria's daughter Manvi was in Saumya's class. She asked Maria if I could come to live with them and Maria agreed. So, Saumya brought me over there on Sunday with the driver in the family car. I was very scared being left alone with new people. But they gave me nice food to eat and lots of affection. Soon, I was attached to all of them.

There were four children. Two boys, Manu and Manan. Two girls, Manvi and Riya. They all spent time with me. I was their first dog, so they had no idea how to handle me. They played with me when I was small. As I got bigger, they were a bit at a loss as to how to relate to me. But it's okay now. There was one major problem back then. Manvi's father, Mukesh, was a very busy man, commuting to the next city for work. Maria needed to ensure that it was okay with him for me to stay. She put it off at first, waiting till he was more relaxed and more inclined to have a positive outlook on having a dog in the house. The moment I finally met him, after several weeks, I lay at his feet adoringly and he said I could stay. I have now been here for six years. Indian dogs can live up to 15 years, so I'm still a relatively young dog.

With Manvi

I'm quite a large dog and not really a pet, owing to my rough, street background. But I love my family and make the best guard dog, because of my protective and defensive instincts. Nothing gets past me. The meter reader and the postman are a bit scared of me. You should see how terrified they are if they have to come in. I suppose that's why Maria keeps me tied up all the time. Who needs Rottweilers or Dobermans when you can have an Indian dog? We cost nothing. We are not fussy eaters. We are hardly ever ill and I can proudly tell you that apart from vaccinations and a small road accident, I haven't cost my family much in vet bills. There was a slight problem when the cleaning lady came too close to me and I reacted. Maria had to pay the doctor a lot of money to give anti-rabies injections to the cleaning lady 'just in case'. Maria apologised to the cleaning lady, gave her the week off and cooked meals for her family and sent them from our kitchen every night. Last year, during Diwali, when I was very disturbed owing to fireworks going off, I upset some neighbours who came too close to me. Those neighbours were regular visitors, but not one member of their family has stepped inside our door since then. Maria says that for this year, during Diwali, they will tie me up somewhere inside the house. She doesn't want me to get too upset in case there are any loud fireworks this year. Because times have changed, we're not sure how Diwali will be this season.

Duggu and the New Normal

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

By the time the new normal started, the number of our family members who live here had already decreased in size. Manu and Manvi have gone to Ireland. Manvi's father had retired and finished his long commute to the next city. So those of us who are left are together 24 hours a day. It wasn't too difficult at first. It was a bit like a holiday. Plenty of rest. Less pressure. Maria has always worked at home anyway. Once her children grew up, she started writing and blogging from home. She still does that. I am very happy that there are less visitors coming in. I can be less defensive about my territory. But if anyone I don't know comes in, I still bark the place down. The difficult part was when the lockdown came to an end. Some people didn't seem to realise that it is still important to wear masks and maintain social distance. Some old visitors of ours have often appeared in our living room (having got past me, but then, I'm tied up when people come in) without masks, to Maria's horror. But as the weather gets cooler, it's easier to invite people to sit outside and talk to our family members. The minute Maria hears me barking, she comes out to see who it is. If it's a courier with a parcel, she makes special efforts to maintain contactless delivery and use masks and sanitiser. It's just as important now as it was at the beginning. Even if Maria forgets, her son Manan is very particular about reminding to maintain that.

A Day in Duggu's Life

Maria and Mukesh are like owls. They prefer to rest in the day and remain active at night, so they are not early risers. As soon as one of them shows up in the morning,

Image by krustovin august from Pixabay

I get my morning walk. If Mukesh appears first, he brings me out on the road for a few minutes. Since I grew up to full height, Maria is not comfortable with bringing me outside. She never lets me off the lead and came crashing down a few times when I took off unexpectedly after some other dog. She usually brings me up on the terrace. She allows me to roam without a lead on and seems to get a lot of pleasure from seeing me chasing after balls and frisbees. She thinks it's a good exercise for me.

The cleaning lady doesn't come into the house nowadays. Everyone allows their cleaners in, but Maria's children are adamant that until the Covid-19 risk reduces substantially or a vaccine is available, cleaners should not be allowed into our house. The cleaning lady is a

Image by Deen Alexey from Pixabay

responsible woman who wears a mask and uses sanitiser. So she usually sweeps outside and does the dishes outside the house. Maria and Mukesh clean up inside. Once the cleaning is done, I sit inside on the marble floor and lie at Mukesh's feet as he sits in the chair reading his paper. In the afternoon, he brings me out again. Then I take up my position outside watching the gate until evening.

As for food, I eat a lot of porridge. Maria loves to tell everyone that I grew tall and strong on wheat porridge. I am definitely head and shoulders taller than my street-based counterparts. At night, I eat chapatis, a type of flatbread made from wheatflour along with milk. Many people believe dogs should be fed some meat and probably they are right. To ensure I'm getting proper nutrition, Mukesh buys some pellets of dog food for me in non-vegetarian flavours. When we go for our late night walk, Maria often brings some biscuits for the street dogs. They get all our left-over food too. Many people forget to feed street dogs nowadays. That is sad. Street dogs serve as a type of neighbourhood patrol here and people who feed and look

Image by Priyam Patel from Pixabay

after them have often found the most amazing paybacks. Many a family who helps street dogs have been saved from burglaries. When the local street dogs notice strangers going in at night, they create a racket and scare away the intruders. There are some wonderful people in our housing estate who not only feed their street dogs but get them vaccinated and sterilised too. This is great work.

Since the new normal took over, there's one thing I'm very glad about. Our cleaning lady doesn't bring her children anymore. She used to bring them very often and they would wait while their mother finishes her work. However, they don't come anymore because of the danger of spreading infection. I don't miss them at all. They hate me because I upset their mother. They see me tied up and they laugh at me and tease me and make funny faces, driving me mad and making me angry. Maria always stops them, but they continue when she goes away. It's much more peaceful here without them.

So the new normal suits me very well. A quiet life, fewer visitors and my family at home all the time. It's great. What more could a dog want?

The images of Duggu are my own.

Thanks to Pixabay for the illustrations.

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members

The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srivatsa and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Shackman.

Recipes for my Grandchildren

2020-10-16T00:30:00.004+05:30

Recipes for my grandchildren. That's my blogging group topic this week. I don't have grandchildren. Well, I do, but not actual descendants. On the Indian side of the family, I have an adorable baby granddaughter named Araina, who looks like an angel. As she is my nephew and niece-in-law's daughter, I'm really her great aunt. But I love her as if she was my own grandchild. Having said that, Araina, already has four doting grandparents and she's the centre of their lives, so I'm a spare grandmother. I come in on her paternal grandfather's side. The paternal grandmother, like me, is one of four siblings, so this baby is inundated with grandparents. That's the Indian way. It's one of the things I actually love about Indian life. We don't say cousins here. All cousins are brothers and sisters. Parents' cousins are also honorary uncles and aunts. Grandparents' siblings and in-laws, are also grandparents.

When it comes to cooking I'm not the best, but I can get by. I didn't cook much in my pre-marital life. When I lived at home, as a young, working girl, along with two of my siblings and my mother, our family usually assembled weekly for a Sunday dinner, depending on who was in Dublin that weekend. The rest of the week, we were all busy with individual lives and projects. My mother always made sure the cupboard and freezer were well stocked with food like rice or potatoes, vegetables, and handy protein items like fish fingers, tuna and frozen burgers. When any one of us reached home, throwing together a 'meat, potatoes and two veg-type meal' in a short span of time was entirely possible.

When our son left home a few years ago to live in a student flat in Ireland, we, meaning myself and himself (or 'my husband and I' as the Queen might say) faced the same worry as other Indian parents. 'How will he manage his food?' Yes, my friends, food is a focal point of Indian family life. I'm Irish for sure, a Dublin woman and proud. But I raised my family in north India, so I'm a compound of cultures, so to speak. An Irish mammy who cooks curry every single day. Your typical north Indian meal has four main elements and numerous other attachments. I gave my son a crash course in this before he left home. I'm sure he listened enthralled as I described how to wash rice and soak it a couple of hours before turning on the heat on an induction cooker. I'm sure he hung on to my every word as I lovingly instructed him in the noble art of taking half a cup of dal beans (lentils will do just fine, moong beans are even better if you can get them in Tesco's) and washing them, soaking them and cooking them in salt and turmeric before boiling and tempering with a mixture of hot butter oil (refined will do!) with some jeera seeds, asafoetida and chilli powder which should not burn. Otherwise, the whole house would be coughing in agony. That's not even the half of it. But that's as far as I got.

The third element in a north Indian meal is the bread. Which is made from scratch. You take the wheat

Image by M Ameen from Pixabay

flour and some water and knead a dough. Then you take balls of dough off and roll them in flat circles like pancakes and cook them on a flat pan called a tawa until they're puffed and ready to eat with your ....oh, yeah, the curry. No point in making the breads if the curry's not ready. Now there are simply hundreds of curries that can be made and they're all different depending on which part of India you're from. There are gravy-type curries and dry curries. I learned to start cooking them with gravy. And there are at least two main types of gravy. Yet a basic curry gravy would consist of one or two onions, grated and fried to golden brown, to which some a grated tomato or two is added. I've seen this basic mixture made hundreds of times now and no single cook seems to agree on when is the best time to add the spices. My in-law family always creates this mixture. Take a quarter of a teaspoon of turmeric powder, and the same amount of chilli powder and the same amount of coriander powder, to which some salt has been added. Sometimes, I skip this stage and just use a teaspoonful of curry powder. Much easier. When to add the spices? When I'm cooking alone, I decide myself. When I'm cooking with someone else, I let them decide. I've always found it better to add my my curry powder mixture to a little water before adding it into my tomato-and-onion mixture. Some people prefer to add the spices when the onions are frying, long before adding tomato. I can't tell the difference once I'm eating the curry, but it could be because I'm not the most expert Indian cook. Once your basic curry sauce is prepared, you can put whatever you want into it. Chopped boiled potatoes, cooked chickpeas or kidney beans, frozen vegetables, cooked, chopped chicken, anything. You can also make an 'onion-free' version of this sauce as some Hindus avoid onions on certain days and stages of life.

Image by ElasticComputeFarm from Pixabay

When I reached Athlone in 2017 with my son, the place where he would be studying for the next two years, I knew he could make his and rice, but I wasn't sure about his curry and rotis (breads). Then we visited Lidl, the supermarket down the road from the student flats, We got a pleasant surprise there. I found that Indian-style rotis/chapatis(flatbreads) were available in packets. You could buy six or twelve at a time. They were actually based on a Mexican recipe and called 'tortilla wraps'. They may have contained baking powder and a few herbs, yet my son and I enjoyed them wholeheartedly and found them to be a perfectly acceptable substitute for the freshly hand-rolled rotis. If my husband had to live in Ireland, he might find these a bit bland. However, he loves pitta bread, so that is an acceptable roti substitute for him. But the curry sauce was the thing I dreaded most. Manek was trying to figure how to make a curry sauce, but I wasn't sure if he was really 'getting it', so to speak. But another visit to Lidl put a stop to that fear forever. I noticed a product in Lidl called 'Kanpur Garden Curry Sauce'. They had a mild and a medium version. I looked in vain for a very hot version, but had no luck with that. . We took it home, heated it up and added some frozen vegetables which we had already thawed with hot water into it. There it was. The curry was all done. Thanks to the tortilla wraps and the curry sauce, I knew my son would be able to survive, eating the food he loves. Take the easy way out would be advice that I would give to any grandchildren I might have in the future. By all means cook what you want. But we're not always in a creative, cooking mood and sometimes we need to cut corners, especially when other things are going on.

A Photo of My Microwave Soda Bread

In comparison with India, Irish food is quite simple. In Ireland, we have good meat, plenty of potatoes and vegetables like turnips and peas. There are a few Irish items that I adore, however. One of them is Irish soda bread. I'm not sure how it came about but apparently, the Irish found it difficult to get their hands on yeast for bread-making. So they used baking soda to make bread. I don't have a regular oven, just a microwave with convection action. But I learned how to make soda bread in the microwave and this is a recipe I'll be happy to share with my future grandchildren, if they are interested. Here it is.

IRISH MICROWAVE SODA BREAD

Ingredients

4 standard cups of flour

Half teaspoon of salt

Half teaspoon of baking soda

Buttermilk, use as required.

Method

Strain the flour with the salt and baking soda. Mix it around to ensure it's evenly spread. Take a cup of buttermilk and introduce it to the flour. Add a few drops every so often as required. Knead the mixture by hand, only adding enough buttermilk to make a firm dough. The finished dough should be soft but firm and not too sticky. Many experts recommend not to over-knead soda bread as they say it becomes too tough.

Put your loaf on a greased baking sheet. Cut a deep cross in the loaf.

For a gas or electric oven, preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. whichever is relevant to you. It can be baked for forty five minutes to an hour, but you need to watch it.

If you need to make it in the microwave like I do, ten minutes on full power is enough. Make sure you use a microwave-friendly baking sheet. I use a microwave-compatible glass plate. As the microwave can dry out food, it's a good idea to put a microwave-proof container about the size of a glass, filled with water, inside the oven while your bread is baking. Make sure to remove it when your bread is baked.

This is a a very plain recipe. You can do a Google search for Irish soda bread and find a lot of fancier recipes including honey and other interesting ingredients. You can use those if you'd prefer. A word of caution. If you can't finish the loaf straight away, you can break it into quarters and freeze the rest. It should keep for a good while. Defrost each portion as you need to use it.

TRADITIONAL DUBLIN GUR CAKE

Thanks to 'Your Living City' Stockholm.

Gur Cake was always a popular piece of confectionary in Dublin. It's not exclusive to Dublin. It's found under different names in various corners of Ireland and the UK. The British might know it as Chester cake. It's a handy way to use up stale bread. I read somewhere on the Internet recently that Dubliners call this cake 'gur cake' because it was a favourite of Dublin young people known as 'gurriers'. That's impossible. The word 'gurrier' is used to describe a rough, criminal type and it's not at all flattering. I think it got its name from the fact that unrefined, brown sugar, known in India as 'gur' is the main ingredient. The Hindi word word 'gur' doesn't rhyme with the English word 'fur'. In Hindi, the north Indian language, 'gur' rhymes with the English word 'good'. Except that instead of finishing the word with a 'd' sound, it's finished with a hard 'r' sound instead. It's almost a 'd', but it isn't.

My friend and namesake, Marie Perry in Dublin, recently published her grandmother's own recipe for this delicious cake, on Facebook. I grabbed the recipe to try it out one of these days. When I realised that this post was about recipes for grandchildren, I know that this is one recipe I would dearly love to hand down. Mrs Perry and I are not relatives, to the best of our knowledge, although our family trees may intersect at some point. In Ireland, 'Marie' and 'Maria' are more or less the same name. I'm often called 'Marie' rather than 'Maria' by my sisters. I was born into the Perry clan, while my friend married into it. As this is Marie's grandmother's recipe, she calls it after her grandmother. It's interesting how Irish people often call their grandmother 'nanny'. In India, mother's mother is always called 'nani'. That's the name my children called my late mother. Many thanks to Marie O'Farrell Perry for sharing her grandmother's recipe.

NANNY PALMER'S GUR CAKE

Ingredients:

Pastry:

500 gram plain flour

250 gram margarine

Cold water

Filling:

300 gram of stale bread

350 ml of fresh, strongly brewed tea

150 gram of mixed fruit like raisins, sultanas etc

150 grams of dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons of mixed spice

1 egg

For the Pastry:

Mix the flour and margarine until you have a mixture that resembles breadcrumbs. Add water until the pastry consistency is fine. Break into two pieces and roll one half for the bottom of the tray and one half for the top.

For the Filling:

Remove the hard crusts from the bread. Place the bread into a medium-sized bowl and pour the tea over it. Allow the tea to soak in and soften for a minute or two, then mash well by hand or with a fork. The mashed bread mixture should be stiff rather than liquid. So pour off excess liquid. Then stir in the fruit, sugar, spice, and egg. Mix it well and leave it for an hour.

Baking the Gur Cake

When you're ready to bake, preheat your oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6.

Place the filling on the first layer of pastry. Then top the filling with the second layer. Prick the filling with a fork and brush the top with a little milk or egg wash.

Bake the cake for about 35 minutes until golden brown. Then enjoy this cake with a big mug of tea. Yes, it's a Dublin recipe all right.

NB: 'Mixed Spice' refers to a spice mixture that's often used for making English cakes. It usually contains nutmeg and cinnamon.

Handing Down Traditions

As I said earlier, there's no harm in cutting corners, sometimes. But these are two traditional Irish recipes I would love to hand down to my children and my grandchildren.

Thanks to Pixabay especially to Bruno /Germany from Pixabay for the blog banner image, and also to Living City Stockholm for the Traditional Dublin Gur Cake image.

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members

The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srivatsa and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Sanjana.

Power!

2020-10-09T00:30:00.326+05:30

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay

The topic for today's Blog Friday post is 'Power'. What a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted topic it is, too. You could approach this topic from numerous angles and come up with all kinds of approaches. They'd all be equally valid and equally fascinating. It's such a huge subject that there could be no end to it. I'm just going to share a few observations of my own about this topic. Some of them may resonate with readers. Or they may not. It all depends on their viewpoint.

Power Corrupts

In 1887, John Dalberg Acton, the 1st Baron Acton, wrote: 'Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. Strange, I always thought that George Bernard Shaw said those words. Wise words indeed. When a person attains power, they should always keep in mind that it's something they hold in trust. Accountability for the misuse of power is extremely important. Common wisdom holds that we shouldn't speak ill of the dead. No, we shouldn't slander or smear anyone's name wrongly, whether they're alive or dead. But if it turns out that someone who has died abused power that was entrusted to them, it's important to make it known. When Jesus Christ set up His earthly ministry that we now know as the Church, his right-hand man was Simon whom he called 'Peter' (from the Greek 'petros') or 'kepha' (Aramaic). The name Jesus gave this disciple means 'rock' and Jesus said, 'upon this rock, I will build My Church' (Matthew 16:18). In his life, Jesus clearly showed that if you want power, you must become a servant. The Gospel, the part of the Bible that deals with Jesus' life, tells us that Jesus close disciples (Apostles) and even their family members, dreamed of earthly glory, but in fact, their glory was of a spiritual nature and not for their own benefit or enjoyment. In his last chat with his followers, Jesus said 'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat', according to Luke 22:21 (New American Standard Version). So the enemy of mankind demands the right to tempt and try the people who get spiritual power in this world. No wonder so many Church people fall by the wayside. In the bad old days when there was no accountability, a lot of Church officials fell by the wayside. The enemy knows that if people with spiritual power fall, it will discredit the Church and many souls will be lost. That's why I don't let these stories of corrupt leaders shake my religious faith. It's also why Christians must pray for their leaders instead of pointing the finger when they fall. Just saying........

Rest in Peace

Image by Colin Behrens from Pixabay

Nowadays, when an activist dies, whether he or she falls in action or after retirement, the followers often bid them 'rest in power' rather than 'rest in peace'. I've seen that message around the Internet a lot, but I find it unpalatable. 'Rest in peace' had a quiet dignity about it. The more recent 'rest in power' gives me a horrible impression of the deceased ruling and influencing events from the other side and it really gives me the creeps. The older version is just fine as far as I'm concerned. Power is nothing to rest in. The image in the adjoining photo shows a lightbulb plugging itself in. A humorous little photo, but it's another way of looking at power. Electric power. It keeps us cool in hot weather here in India. It keeps us warm when it's cold. I suppose it could be done without. But we'd be the poorer without it. When I was in school, I sat through a lot of debates on the subject of nuclear power. We were all very concerned about the bad effects of nuclear power. We knew that there weren't nuclear power stations in Ireland. But we knew that they were out there in the world. We were terrified at the thought of accidental radiation leaking into the air. Not to mention the horror of nuclear waste, poisoning our universe for millennia to come. I remembering being very concerned for the environment and wondering if natural power sources were really viable. Interestingly enough, environmental power sources are holding up pretty well. Scientists are doing research. The menace of the build-up of plastic waste is also giving concern. Apparently, a plastic-eating bug has been discovered. Well, they should put that bug to work and try to remove that mountain of plastic. That can't happen soon enough as far as I'm concerned. But leaving bugs aside, clean and environmentally-sound sources of power are a great idea. I'm so glad they're working out.

Image by Alexander Droeger at Pixabay

When I visited Ireland in 2017 I paid several visits to Athlone in the Midlands, getting the bus between there and Dublin several times. It always cheered me to see windmills like this in the fields. It makes me think that it could be possible to one day live in a clean, green world. If we try hard enough, we probably could produce enough power from natural sources. Ireland would never be able to do much with solar power as we don't get enough sun. But wind power is certainly present and definitely could be harnassed for the good of the country and of the environment. I really hope this can be done. I hate hearing about burning fossil fuels as well as nuclear power usage. There has to be a better way.

The Power of Nature

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Nature is a force of power. The natural forces that govern our planet and our climate were always respected in the past. Lately, man has been thinking that he's invincible and that he has power over the forces of nature. I don't think that this can ever happen. Nature has a way of unleashing natural disasters on unsuspecting mankind. Not all of these disasters are preventable, but one feels that the arrogance of humanity is very often the cause of some spectacular natural disasters. The melting of the ice cap at the North Pole is not being taken seriously enough in my humble opinion. Many people love taking shots at the President of the

Image by Skeeze from Pixabay

United States, Donald Trump, and decry everything about him, his arrogance to his attitudes. I don't wish to join the number by criticising the Head of State in a country which I've never even visited, but when I heard that he was considering the revival of the coal mining industry, my heart sank. We really don't need to plunder the earth any than we've already done. We don't want more fossils fuels being burned and discharging toxic gases and heat into the atmosphere. I always think of nature as being a wild beast who might be tamed for a while. Yet it's important not to get too comfortable because one day when you least expect it, it could just turn on you and cause tremendous damage. We should always try to keep that in mind. We should never, ever think we have nature under our control. It's only because of nature's benevolence that there are not more natural disasters, in my humble opinion.

Royal Power

Once upon a time, royal power was the power that struck terror into people's hearts. The right of royal power came through a bloodline. The English royal lines usually conferred the power on the eldest, legitimate heir of the previous King or Queen. So did most of the royal lines in the western world, and maybe even in the eastern world. The Irish had a more tribal outlook. So did the Scottish. In Ireland or Scotland, any one of the male heirs of the previous King was entitled to try his hand at becoming King. This could be sons, nephews, brothers, even uncles. In modern times, republics have taken over from monarchies, although monarchs still exist. Like India, Ireland had a lot of royal families ruling over different regions. So no strong royal family emerged in either country and both are now republics

Image by Skeeze from Pixabay

. Many people are under the impression that royalty doesn't have power anymore. I don't believe that for a second. The Queen of England may give the impression of being a benign figurehead, but she is a force to be reckoned with. She's a strong lady who serves her people with full commitment. I am no admirer of royalty, but Queen Elizabeth II has all my respect for her strong principles and her commitment to her job. She is well into her 90s. I'm 57 and she was the Queen when I was born. The day she is no more is the day when I'll probably accept that I'm getting old. Because only then, every single leader in the world will have changed since I was born. In King Henry VIII time, there were always nobles being executed for disloyalty to the king. Thankfully, that doesn't happen nowadays. Today, when the power of royalty has diminished, the crown is still a strong symbol of power.

Grateful Thanks to Pixabay for the Beautiful Images

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members

The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srivatsa and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Sanjana.

Living in the Now! A Tribute to Sharon Cahill RIP

2020-10-03T00:42:00.008+05:30

Sharon Cahill RIP (photo by Talita Marie Cahill)

My blogging group has come up with the title 'Living in the Now' for this week's post. I could have written a post about Covid-19, the new normal, social distancing and hands-face-space. But my 'now' is currently a time of mourning. A dear cousin of mine has departed suddenly, leaving me with lots of memories, tears and nostalgia. No, it wasn't Covid-19. A heart attack carried off someone who was no different from a sister to me.

Sharon Cahill and I weren't sisters. Our mothers, Nuala and Carmel, were. They were the best of pals and they fell in and fell out down the years. The two sisters died in July 2016, within about thirty days of each other. Aunty Nuala hadn't been well when my mother died, so she never came to know my mother was gone. Sharon and I joked on FB Messenger that the first thing her mother would say when she saw my mother in Heaven would be: 'how did you get in here before me?' Now Sharon is with them in Heaven. I believe that Sharon is certainly in Heaven. She definitely got in there before me. That's not surprising. She was and is an angel.

Sharon and I were close and spent a lot of time together as children in Dublin. We even went to the same school for a while. When we were very young kids we had a slight problem. One of our younger uncles was getting married. The bride got to pick one of the groom's nieces to join the bridal party. She picked me. I was only four and Sharon was perhaps five. Sharon was very sad. She had begun to understand the importance of different functions. She wanted to be a bridesmaid. No, I wasn't a bridesmaid. I was like a little mascot, a flower girl. In fact, I did have a rather important job. Aunty Mary had a very long train behind her wedding dress. That was the fashion of the times. This was in the sixties. I'd seen my mother's wedding album and she wore a short wedding dress, but fashions change all the time. It was my job to hold up the bride's train as she floated down the aisle to get married. I was rather immature and I didn't understand what an honour it was to be a bridesmaid, even if it was a very junior type of bridesmaid. Sharon had begun to understand the significance of all these things and she was very sad to be overlooked. She scolded uncle Brian and told him that if he'd loved her, he'd have told aunty Mary to pick her. I had a great day at the wedding and felt like a little star, but looking back now, I can understand how sad poor Sharon must have been. It just couldn't be helped, but I wish she had been picked instead of me.

My father was one of those people who came alive in company. He was very entertaining, especially when kids were around. He used to bring us to visit Sharon's parents' house every week. A few years ago, I posted a photo of my father on his birthday, wearing his signature Elvis quiff. Sharon posted a comment about my daddy's hairstyle and added 'miss you uncle Eddie.' I was really touched. She threw four decades out of the way and let me see my dad again, as I saw him when I was a little girl.

Sharon was very sad when her parents separated owing to relationship problems. This happened to her around the time my father died. At dad's funeral, lots of people came up and hugged me and my siblings and told us how sorry they were. Sharon observed 'I lost my dad too. But no-one is even thinking about me.' There was no jealousy here. It was her honesty. It's hard to be only fourteen and to realise already that life can be so hard. A few decades later, Sharon's parents reconciled and her father died in peace. That must have been very consoling, but it didn't undo the fact that Sharon's dad was away for much of her young life.

Sharon got into a relationship and became a mother at quite a young age. My eldest is 25, her kids are around five to ten years older than that. Our paths didn't cross much after Sharon had the kids. But whenever we met, we were delighted. We'd give each other a big hug and reminisce about the good old days. She ended up as a single mother, facing life alone. But she was a strong, courageous woman. Her commitment to her kids never wavered. The fact that her marriage broke up wasn't her fault because she gave it 100 per cent commitment. The same commitment she gave to her kids. She was always by their side in good times and bad. She was a devoted grandmother too. I feel sorry about the great loss to her children and grandchildren.

When her kids grew up, Sharon went to college. I remember her telling me she was doing a course in the Women's Education, Research and Resource Centre (WERRC)founded by Ailbhe Smyth at UCD. Ailbhe Smyth is an amazing woman, one of the activists behind the recent Irish abortion referendum. While I admire Ailbhe Smyth's commitment to social causes, I totally disagree with her abortion activism, as I hold pro-life views. Still, it takes all kinds to make a world. Sharon and I enjoyed talking about the course she was doing. She was interested to know I'd met Ailbhe Smyth a few years earlier, while I was still in Ireland. I am glad Sharon had the opportunity to study and expand her horizons. She used to encourage me to live my own life and 'let go a little bit' regarding the children. She was so wise. She was a devoted parent, as I am. But she encouraged me to give the kids a bit of space and start building a life for myself.

Sharon bought a house and worked hard to pay the mortgage. She worked on security at Dublin airport, on various shifts. I'll always remember her gentleness, her kindness and a very dry sense of humour. I reached out to a few people I knew who knew her and they all say the same thing. She was a lovely person. It's true. She suffered from various health issues down the years. With all her problems, she never became hard. She was a warm, friendly and funny person who was loved by many people. Her daughter describes her as 'my rock'.

Just two days before this post was written, Sharon passed away suddenly. She was on a visit to her sister who lives in Turkey. She and her sister Pamela were very close. Every so often, she would visit Pamela in Turkey and enjoy catching up together. As I write, her family is working hard to bring her home to Dublin for her final farewell. Gone way too soon. Sharon was no more than 58. If there's one thing I've learned from this, it's that now is all we have. We have to live in the now and enjoy every moment we can, If I got the chance to say one thing to Sharon, I'd say 'well done, Cuz, you got your angel wings already'. You're going to be missed for a very long time to come. Fly high, Sharon, with the angels. Be happy forever. See you in a bit.....

Please Visit the Other Blog Friday Group Members

The other seven bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srivatsa and Conrad.

The Mystery of Medicine

2020-09-25T20:52:00.003+05:30

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

I truly believe we were never meant to die. Most of my opinions are shaped by my Christian faith. In our early years, from our mid-teens onwards, we are biologically equipped to become parents, but at the age of 45 or so, our bodies lose that particular ability. At least the female of our species does. I am sure that there's a reason for that. Looking after children, nurturing them, teaching them and protecting them, takes up a lot of our time. We also need some time for ourselves. This is nature's way, or maybe God's way, of ensuring that this happens. However, in the Bible, there are several stories of women conceiving children late in life. The Biblical matriarch, Sarah, the wife of Abraham, is one such woman. She conceived at the age of 90, according to the Bible. When I reached India at the age of 30 and got married, I was told by several tactless people that my marriage was 'too late' and that my husband and I would be 'too old' to be much use to our growing children. Thankfully, I don't remember who gave me this bad news. They were wrong, in any case.

Why Do We Die?

Many religious people, in various religions, say that we die because of 'God's Will'. I think that's nonsense. God's Will is never for death. He is the Author of Life. His Will is 'let there be light'. And certainly, let there be life. So why do we die? We die because we feel we are too old. When we get older and face different medical problems, we blame old age. We accept it. When your mind accepts old age and death, your body will automatically follow. That's how powerful the mind is. Also, I believe we live in a fallen world. Bad things can and do happen. There are horrible diseases out there, like cancer and Covid-19. Sometimes cars go out of control and cause fatal accidents. Sometimes the mind goes out of kilter and we end up losing our sanity. With some people, dementia can set in in their 40s. My late father-in-law, Krishna Swarup Bhatnager (or 'Papaji', as we called him) died in his early 80s. He didn't want to become very old and be a burden to anyone. Right up to the last six months of his life, he was slim, fit and healthy. He had the stamina of a man half his age. Apart from the fact that he had grey hair, he didn't look his age at all. My mother saw him stripped to the waist, sweeping the yard at our house in India. He believed in doing as much manual labour as possible. 'Oh, my God,' she gasped. 'That man has the body of a thirty-year-old'. She wasn't wrong. His final illness was very difficult but mercifully short. He took about six months to leave us. He died as he wished to do so, in his early 80s, having accomplished everything he wanted to do in his life. My beloved mother was a woman of great faith in God. Alas, she had a relapse of cancer and didn't survive.

Image by Jukka Niittymaa from Pixabay

A Regulated Life

Papaji's philosophy for a healthy life was simple. Do everything on time. Get up on time in the morning. Go to sleep on time at night. Eat your meals on time. Eat food that is simple, vegetarian and well-cooked. He met his friends every day and loved to laugh. He prayed to God every day. I do wish he could have stayed with us for a few more years, but I learned a lot from him. I don't know what lead to his final, fatal illness, but I think his own acceptance of early death had a lot to do with it. I'm sure he could have lasted another 20 good years had he wished to do so. Most people, however, are not disciplined about life. I include myself in that number. We should eat only good, simple food. Alas, my love of sweets and chocolates makes that difficult. But I feel as I head towards my 60s, I should take a leaf out of Papaji's book and start living in a more disciplined manner. From all I've seen, heard and read, it seems that keeping your immunity strong is the key to a healthy life.

Systems of Medicine

When I lived in Ireland, I knew only one system of medicine. That's the usual system of medicine. What Indian people call 'Angrezi Dawa' (English medicine) or 'allopathic medicine'. What we in the west would call 'medical science'. In India, I learned about many more systems of alternative medicine. There's Indian 'ayurveda', the ancient Indian system of medical science. The Muslim community in India favours a system called 'Unani medicine'. That's Greek medicine. 'Unan' is the Arabic word for 'Greek'. There were great Arab scholars in the early days of Islam who got their hands on the ancient Greek medical works and translated them. From my university studies in science, it appears that both Unani and Ayurvedic medical systems are simply the ancient world's response to the medical needs of their time. They are not in conflict with modern medicine. They are an early evolution of modern medicine. They are more herb-based than chemical-based. But anyone who believes that the ayurvedic or unani treatments are without side effects and are totally natural should be very careful. Down the years, some of the Indian athletes were disqualified from their sports for dabbling in drugs to enhance their performance. In their defence, they claimed they were only using herbal preparations of an Ayurvedic or Unani nature. They were probably telling the truth, but you can't be too careful when it comes to medicines.

Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay

Hahnemann Crossroads

Ayurvedic and Unani medicine are not the only alternative medicines I've encountered in India. In our district, Gomtinagar in Lucknow, there is a crossroads '(choraha') called the Hahnemann Choraha. I always assumed it was the 'Hanuman Choraha'. A very favourite Hindu deity in Lucknow is Sri Hanuman, or Lord Hanuman. In the ancient Indian epic, the Ramayana, Sri Hanuman is the devoted follower of Lord Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu of the divine Hindu trinity. He is closely identified with the 'langur', a species of monkey indigenous to north India. It is also claimed by some Hindu mystics that Sri Hanuman is an incarnation of Lord Shiva, another member of the divine Hindu trinity. I should explain that Hindu worship is built around a supreme trinity of gods, who in turn, are worshipped and followed by other deities. Any Hindu is free to worship whichever form of God with which he identifies. Sri Hanuman is loved in north India for his simple devotion and love for Lord Rama. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that 'Hanuman Choraha' was, in fact, 'Hahnemann Choraha'. Who was Hahnemann? There's a huge statue of him at the Hahnemann Choraha. He is someone completely different from the deity, Sri Hanuman. Hahnemann was a German researcher who lived in the 18th century and discovered what is today known as 'homoeopathic medicine'. This branch of alternative medicine has a lot of followers in the USA and India and very little followers anywhere else. Homoeopathic treatment has been found to be most effective in skin and stomach ailments. My late Papaji was devoted to homoeopathic medicines and always kept some of them in the house to use as first aid. I always used arnica to help me recover after my deliveries and also I used it if the kids fell down and hurt themselves while they were playing. The children always loved to take those little sugar pills and felt better immediately.

Medical Treatment - Stopped in its Tracks

No article on medicine today can be complete without a mention of Covid-19. One of the effects of the pandemic is that you cannot get the treatment you need for anything unless you pass a Covid-19 test. One of our family friends died recently waiting for dialysis treatment as he failed the Covid-19 test. It's a tragedy. Medical personnel in Ireland, India and everywhere else in the world are stretched to their limits because of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the biopharmaceutical industry is making every effort to source a vaccine for this horrible illness. One minute, you read on the Internet that three or four countries are on the verge of producing a vaccine. Then you hear that we're a long way away from a vaccine yet. It's hard to know what to believe.

Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

Blaming the Doctors

In general, Indian doctors are excellent. On the upside, if a doctor gets a name for being excellent at the management of disease and is known to cure many patients, he or she can become very renowned and make a lot of money. Some people in this country (India) where I live to proclaim 'the doctor is next to God'. That's a bit strong, isn't it? I always thought so. But there's a downside to being a doctor that most people just don't want to know about. When a patient dies here in India, particularly a patient who is gone before their full lifespan, there can be terrible consequences. Particularly if the family of the patient decides that the doctor is to blame. I have so many stories about this particular subject. Nearly 20 years ago, I was in the maternity hospital in Lucknow. I was pregnant and suffering from hypertension so the doctor took me into hospital for observation. One evening, my husband's recently married niece came to see me along with her husband. They told me that there were huge crowds outside the hospital and it appeared that a riot was being controlled by the police. My husband arrived later and told me that he'd found out what had happened. A newly-delivered mother had just died, leaving her infant behind. How did it happen? She was, apparently, a weak and thin young woman and she had just delivered a baby by caesarean operation. She was heavily stitched as her operation had been complicated. Some of her relatives gave her some dates to eat. Dates are very good and nutritious, but sadly, a piece of date got stuck in the patient's windpipe, causing her to cough violently. She almost choked and coughed so badly that her stitches burst and started to bleed. Once her attendants realised her situation, they saw to it that she was rushed to the operating theatre. Unfortunately, the doctors were unable to save her. However, lots of people from her village came running to the hospital. They surrounded the hospital and threatened the doctors. The doctors were locked inside and were terrified to come out. I don't blame them. Doctors have been left for dead here in India after angry relatives have attacked them because of a patient's untimely death.

Image by Parentingupstream from Pixabay

Nobody's Fault

I remember when I first came to India, telling the children in my in-law family that my own father had died of cancer when he was just 41 years old. It was some 17 years later, but everyone was horrified at the thought of a man dying so young, with children still growing up. One of my nephews got very tearful about it. 'Aunty, why did your father die so young? Was there no good doctor? Was there no good hospital?' he asked. I was very touched by his concern. But I realised that whenever he heard anything like this in his young life, the explanation was invariably given that that the hospital or the doctor was to blame. I tried to calm the child down. I told him my dad was in a very good hospital and got great treatment, but sometimes, people just die. It happens and we have to accept it. But he had terrible trouble accepting this. This was something he wasn't used to hearing. When my first pregnancy was confirmed, I told the doctor about a close relative of mine who had given birth to a baby about two years previously. Unfortunately, the child had expired a few hours after death in spite of the hospital's best efforts. The lady doctor seemed very disturbed when I told her this. In fact, I had been instructed to share this information with my doctors in order to pre-empt possible problems in my own pregnancy. One day, on one of my visits, the doctor asked me 'did your family blame the doctor when your relative's baby died?' I was honestly astonished. 'No, not at all,' I replied. 'Why should we blame the doctor? It wasn't their fault.' She seemed very relieved. I didn't understand this at the time, but now I do. Irish people in general, were never in the habit of blaming doctors because what human is powerful enough to hold a life in their hands?

Better Become a Poledancer

A fellow blogger and blogging friend of mine, Dr Roshan Radhakrishnan, writes a powerful blog called 'Godyears'. Once, he famously blogged that he would rather see his future child become a pole dancer than become a doctor in India. This is because of the terrible violence and retribution that has been faced by doctors even for following the law. That 'pole dancer' remark was even picked up by the BBC. This tendency of blaming doctors for deaths which can't be helped has lead to terrible consequences. But there's no room to discuss that here and now. Maybe next time.

Please visit the other group members.

The other five bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srivatsa and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by me.

Thanks to Pixabay for the images

What's All The Fuss About?

2020-09-19T01:17:00.003+05:30

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

Recently, I was watching Ireland's Late Late Show hosted by Ryan Tubridy. This talk show has been running for over 50 years now. Every aspect of Irish life eventually gets discussed here at some stage. There was a music group featured called 'Irish Women in Harmony'. It was recorded during lockdown by a number of Irish women singers, who put their voices together to create a song for release in aid of domestic violence victims. The song is called 'Dreams' and was originally recorded by an Irish music group, the Cranberries. The line-up of singers includes the wonderful Moya Brennan, a traditional Irish singer, always a favourite singer of mine. She's from my time, that is to say that her career was already in progress when I still lived in Ireland. At the younger end of the spectrum there are singers like the talented singer/songwriter Una Healy and another young singer called Erica Cody, with whose work I'm not yet familiar.

Image by Sublimeantc from Pixabay

"Dreams" & Reality

So Ryan Tubridy, the show's host, interviewed the ladies after their performance. Their excitement was palpable and they had obviously worked hard together and bonded beautifully across the generations. It was nice to hear them chatting about their achievement. They performed their song in a powerful manner. It couldn't fail to make an impression. But not long after the 'Irish Women in Harmony' spot on the show, I would have been hard-pressed to remember the tune they had performed so beautifully. That's the problem. It's a Cranberries song. I left Ireland in the mid-1990s, and the Cranberries were only starting up. When the Irish Prime Minister and now Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar recently shared that the music of the Cranberries was all around him when he was growing up in Ireland, I realised that he's from a different time to mine. A much more recent one. There are huge gaps in my Irish experience because I left Ireland over two decades ago.

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Don't Know the Cranberries

In Ireland we love popular music and quite a few international music acts like U2, the Corrs and the Boomtown Rats have come out of the country. The Cranberries were different because unlike most of the famous Irish bands, they were not from Dublin. They were fronted by the charismatic Dolores O'Riordan who was, by all accounts, a colourful character. I remember one or two of their songs from the early days. However, neither song left a lasting impression on me. You could say I missed out on this group. There's nothing new about a bunch of artistes getting together to record a song. Live Aid got there first. There's also nothing new about a bunch of Irish female singers recording together either. The excellent 'A Woman's Heart' project from around 1993 would have covered this angle too. 'A Woman's Heart' featured wonderful singers like Mary Black and Maura O'Connell. So I feel the IWIH is really for the younger generation, not mine. With no disrespect to the Cranberries, I can't tell the difference between their music and supermarket muzak. I'm sure they are least concerned. Other people get all excited about them and I'm like 'what's all the fuss about?'


	Image by Masum Ali from Pixabay

About Covid-19

Some people are wondering what all the fuss is about when it comes to Covid-19. Many are protesting against having to wear masks and restrict their social activity. I agree that it's very hard. But to keep our health, we need to observe the instructions. Hopefully, the day will come when we can move about freely. But that won't be for a while. One Facebook user I know is quite furious about the Covid rules. He comes across as uncouth. His FB page is full of expletives. His posts usually begin by cursing people who actually wear masks and observe social distancing (f***ing idiots, he calls them). According to this fountain of wisdom, more people die of TB in the world than have died of Covid. I replied to his post by explaining that as TB is a disease usually prevalent in developing countries like India, there's probably no hurry on getting it sorted. The minute a contagious disease like TB starts affecting people in wealthy countries like the USA, it will probably be tackled on a war footing and gone within a year. Anyone who thinks that fears about Covid-19 are exaggerated should remember the victims who have died in agony. This is nothing about which to be complacent.

Image by Juraj Varga from Pixabay

Not Yet Time to Unlock

Because my late father-in-law was someone who was very welcoming to guests, like any traditional Indian person, our house tends to be the type into which anyone can just walk in. Not any more. A few people, particularly people from households including Covid-19 sufferers, just walked into our house lately. I have my hands full asking people not to enter the house, sit outside, wear a mask and use sanitiser. Not to mention keep a safe distance. I have no intention of relaxing the rules at this juncture having come so far. I heard a sad story lately about a woman from south India who didn't step outside the house for six months. Alas, she caught Covid-19 from a vegetable man who brought deliveries to her house. So you can bet I'll be making a fuss about Covid-19 for some more time. There has been a movement against something called 'Covid shaming'. I wouldn't shame anyone for the world. The trouble is that while Covid runs its course in healthy people, it's fatal for others. It's not something about which we can afford to take a chance. That is tragic, but calling out people for 'Covid-shaming' will backfire. It's a fact.

Please visit the other group members.

The other five bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srivatsa and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by me.

Why My Blog is Called gaelikaa's diary

2020-09-14T03:12:00.004+05:30

Image by Werner Moser from Pixabay

I began blogging around 2007. My kids were aged between 4 and 12 (they're now between 17 and 24). I was swamped with caring for the children and trying to manage a marriage that was pressurised by a long commute. My husband travelled to the next city every day. I also had a lot of pressure from the in-laws. They had full control of the household. They watched everyone closely.That was difficult for me. The youngest had started school and once a week, I used to visit a friend of mine who lived in the city centre. I always arrived home before the kids came in from school, but my in-laws didn't like that. In their eyes, a good woman stays at home and has no desire to step outside. There was a lack of privacy and personal space which was suffocating. I'm not saying they were intentionally being mean. Because they were from another culture, they were probably caring for me the only way they knew how. But it wasn't easy to adjust with this. As I'd always loved writing, it became my outlet. I started a blog and poured my heart and soul into it, sharing a lot of the pain in my daily life. Amazingly, people read and responded. I had a message from a woman whose mother was Irish and whose father was Indian. The family had ended up returning to Ireland and this woman was now married to a resident of central Europe. That's where she was living. She told me that reading my blog had opened her eyes. Until reading it, she had never realised how difficult life had been for her mother in India.

Image by William Iven from Pixabay

Blogs were Anonymous

Back then, blogs were anonymous. I had a bit of fun crafting a blogging name for myself. Because I'm Irish or more correctly, 'gaelic' which is a more ethnic label than a nationalist one, I wanted my blogging name to reflect that. Back then, a lot of popular names for girls in India ended with 'ika', like Sonalika or Ishika. The previous generation, 'ita' had been a popular name ending (names like Sumita, Amita). Sometimes, because of the popularity of numerology, some people added an extra 'a' to their names. So the writer Shobha Dé became 'Shobhaa Dé'. So keeping all this in view, I came up with 'gaelikaa'. If you can take it that 'gael' means a person of gaelic extraction and that 'ikaa' means a feminine name, 'gaelikaa' could mean an Irish woman, Considering the 'ikaa' is Indian, it could mean an Irish woman in India. It could also mean a Scotswoman. Scots are also gaelic, or 'gallig' as they call it. But a Scotswoman might prefer gallikaa. Or gadhlikaa.

Image by 377053 from Pixabay

Two Blogs and More

The first blog was simply called 'gaelikaa'. I always kept the first letter small. I was never 'Gaelikaa'. Only 'gaelikaa'. I liked it that way. I also pronounced that final 'aa' as if it was just one 'a'. Then I got adventurous and started playing around with layouts and headings. That first blog which contained long, reflective posts was ultimately called 'gaelikaa - Out of Ireland, into India'. However, I got tired of long, reflective posts and began to enjoy writing shorter posts. So I started 'gaelikaa's diary', which was meant to have shorter, daily posts. This blog has been a nice place to discuss the differences between the two cultures in which I've lived. It was abandoned for a long time too but I always meant to come back. The original 'gaelikaa' blog still exists, but it's been inactive for a while. It's time to remedy that, I suppose. I reposted a lot of the material, duly treated for indiscretion, on this blog. There's also the book blog, where I haven't reviewed books in ages. Not to mention the writing blog, where I'm trying to get people interested in my content writing skills. I even have a blog about religion.There are about three posts on it. They could all do with updating.

Image by 8212733 from Pixabay

Google Lifts Anonymity

Once Google lifted the anonymity on blog writers, it was time to drop the 'gaelikaa' pseudonym. But it had served its purpose. I retained the name on the blog, though. I put too much thought into this name to throw it into the dustbin. As long as this blog remains, the name will too.

Thanks to Pixabay for the Images

Please visit the other group members.

The other five bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman, Srivatsa and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Conrad.

The Sky is the Limit?

2020-09-04T09:28:00.003+05:30

The post title has been turned into a question. I'm back to group blogging, with a group that's like a reformed Loose Blogging Consortium. The LBC is a group with which I blogged for years. I'm glad some of us are still ready to blog and share thoughts on common topics of interest. So here's my take on 'The Sky is the Limit', suggested by group member Sanjana.

Many of us are limited by our circumstances. Or rather, many of us think we are limited by our circumstances. Sometimes we are right and sometimes we are not. It all depends. It depends mostly on ourselves if we're honest. We programme ourselves with the idea that 'I can never do that', or 'I can never go there'. In fact, many of us, are our own worst enemies. Whenever I think something is impossible, I find myself thinking of the bumblebee. According to the laws of aerodynamics, it shouldn't be able to fly. Yet he does. It seems that no-one has come straight out and told it that it's not supposed to be flying. Let's hope no-one ever does. Its feat is a triumph of positive thinking.

No Limits on Imagination

Do you like this highway photograph? I do, but I have very mixed feelings about it. It's entitled 'Fantasy Highway'. I like the fantastic colours, but it looks a bit like the cover of a Meatloaf album. Loads of dark references to the abode of the evil one. Count me out, I'm giving him no glory. In those colours I see the wonder and beauty of God's wonderful creation, in all its splendid and magnificent glory.

Accentuate the Positive, Avoid Negativity

Many of us struggle through life, worrying about this problem and that problem. Yet our lives are full of rich assets and we don't realise it. This reminds me of Jim Dromgoole(not his real name). He's an old neighbour of mine in Dublin. Jim is ever youthful, as is his wife. ever since they married around 40 years ago. I kid you not. I don't have a photo of this couple to share .However, I do have something to share. It's a poem I wrote with Jim in mind.

In a Cottage By A River

Sipping one’s supermarket sauvignon

In one’s local authority dwelling (so fortunately addressed)

One reflects on the vicissitudes of fortune

Yes indeed, one is truly blessed

Check the online account and you’ll wonder why

I don’t dwell in a cottage by the river with the swans swimming by?

I don’t work for a living – perish the thought! The world needs those such as me

To reflect, ruminate and do what I ought

Making works of art share with the world for free

See my creations and you’ll see they imply

I live in a cottage by the river with the swans swimming by.

Satiric? No, Never!

Did you get what the poem was about? In nutshell, Jim's unemployed. He's been so for years. I suppose most people would have slipped into despair by now, but not him. He's happy. If you get to study his outlook, you would see great faith and optimism. You may notice a sense of me (writing in his voice) being satirical. I may be making fun of him to some extent, yet it doesn't mean I don't appreciate his qualities. You see, Jim has an Internet account. He posts pictures from his life. Should you ever visit his page, you will very likely see beautiful photographs. You may very well think that Jim is an artist of some merit. Well, he's what we in Dublin used to call a government artist ('your dad's an artist, love, he draws the labour!'). That is to say, he reluctantly accepts the unemployment benefit he's forced by circumstances to take every week. If you ever visited one of his online pages and took a good long look, you'll imagine that the poster is living in an artisan dwelling (or a country estate), surrounded by beautiful works of art and rolling countryside, full of unspoiled natural waterfalls and glorious meadows. You may fondly imagine that the account holder feasts on local produce, lovingly hand-picked by the servants, purchased at a weekly, country market. What you will not think is that he's living on the dole, in a local authority house, and does all his shopping as cheaply as possible in the local supermarket.

Optimism and Gratitude

Jim's posts feature close-up photos of special things. New-laid eggs, vegetables from the garden, a single, beautiful tree. An almost-ancient parish church, one of the few old buildings in our modern, built-up neighborhood. So people from the US and Canada view these and think that Jim leads a life of quality and graciousness. And here's the thing. He does. He finds joy in all the activities going on around him and he's thankful for them. He doesn't allow himself to be downed by his circumstances, making the most of everything. In some ways, I think Jim is what we in Dublin call 'a bit of a chancer'. On the other hand, I also think he's great and I would like to be just like him.

What's the Lesson Here?

Just because your life is not what others might define as successful, doesn't mean you can't be happy. You can enjoy museums, art galleries, television, and movies. You can read books and chat with other readers about them. You can enjoy the beauty of nature and fantastic works of art. They are as much yours as anyone else's. So what if you buy cheap wine in the supermarket? It's absolutely okay.

Please visit the other group members.

The other five bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Sanjana.

Top Image: Zeppelin courtesy of Pixabay

Middle Image: Fantasy Highway courtesy of Pixabay

Lower Image: Building courtesy of Pixabay

Kipling Got it Wrong! Or Eastern and Western Culture - Reflections

2017-08-07T15:41:00.001+05:30

What Is Culture?

I’m opening this blog post with a question. What is that elusive concept which is commonly known as ‘culture? Culture is way of life. How we live. What our values are. Our customs, attitudes and perceptions. And also, I suppose, how we express ourselves in art through, such as music, dance, theatre and cinema. It’s quite a comprehensive area and not too easy to define, really.

Travel between east and west is common nowadays

The Journey

I was born in what is commonly known as ‘the west’. I lived in Ireland for the first thirty years of my life. When I was thirty, I married my husband and came out to India to live here with him. That was the beginning of an interesting journey, which is still evolving. I must have had some east/west comparison stereotypes in my head. But in India, I found that the people I met had huge stereotypes in their heads about what they called ‘western culture’ and ‘western way of life’. Not long after I arrived in India, I was struck by the number of people who said things to me like ‘in the west, family means nothing. In the east, it means everything’.

Family Means Nothing In The West?

I wouldn’t say that family ‘means nothing in the west’. The ‘west’ being most of the developed world, Europe and north America. Family is the basic unit of any society, be it east or west. It would probably be true to say that in eastern cultures, people tend to be more emotionally dependent on family. In the western world, people tend to grow away from family as they evolve into lives of their own and build close relationships with friends. But neither type of life is absolute. Friends, especially ‘family friends’ are a rich part of Indian life. And families come in many shapes and sizes in western life, with nuclear and blended families being very much a part of the scenario nowadays. In my humble opinion, family and friends each form a significant part of the rich tapestry which is called life. I don’t think that people should be under the rule of their family either. This can lead to the most awful scenarios, such as gay people being forced to deny their orientation and marry someone of their family’s choice, bringing misery and ruination to their life, their partner’s life and not enriching the family tree. But I digress.....

Pride of British India - Victoria Memorial Kolkata

Religion Means Nothing In The West?

The same was often said about religion. As in ‘religion means nothing in the west, but in the east, it is everything’ I remember being furious one Sunday here in India when I went to Mass and heard the priest preaching a sermon in which he bragged that many Indian Christians had a ‘higher ancestry’ in Christianity than many ‘western’ Christians. My knee-jerk reaction was ‘so what’? I was reminded of Jesus’ famous remark about God’s being able to turn stones into sons of Abraham, in the third chapter of Matthew. It doesn’t matter how high your Christian ancestry is. Once you accept Jesus, you’re a new creation anyway. Silly priest!

Anti-British Feelings

I met my husband’s young cousin Shubh, not long after getting married. An earnest young fellow, he talked at length about India’s history. When the British were mentioned, Shubh’s features clouded with something like hatred. I was shocked. I told him that the old colonial system was now obsolete. I mentioned that the Britain was only one of several nations which had played the colonial game. I also reminded him that my country, Ireland, had, like India, also been colonised by Britain in the past, but that hopefully, we’d all moved on to a more evolved and aware state of consciousness. I do hope I contributed something to the lad’s awareness of the east/west equation. I think I did. He’s living happily in the USA with his wife as I write.

An Indian giift to the world - Buddha

The Immoral West?

Back in pre-Internet days, there really seems to have been a lot of ignorance, probably as much in the west about India as there was in India about the west. I remember, one day, when I was out shopping here in Lucknow, meeting a young American woman who had come to India to study meditation . We chatted for a while about our impressions of India and its people and also about Indian views of the western world. “They have a very bad opinion about western life”, my new friend observed. “They think that everyone in America is screwing around. And getting divorced”. That observation made me laugh. These things can happen to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Jail Delegation

I remember reading in the local newspaper about a delegation from the jail service in Uttar Pradesh, the state where I live. This delegation had gone to England to study the jail system there. The group made observations and wrote about their findings. They compared the British jails they had seen with the Indian jails. Then they gave a press conference to the local newspapers about it. One of the observations they made, was that prisoners in western jails were more likely to be in solitary confinement and therefore, suffering from depression. Indian prisoners in overcrowded jail cells, it was reported, were far less likely to be depressed. My late father-in-law found this hilarious. “At least our overcrowded Indian jails have some reason to feel proud “, he said, laughing out loud.

An Asian child monk

No Relationships In The West?

However, when it came to the rehabilitation of former prisoners, the most interesting observaton was made. The Indian jailors shared that Indian prisoners were generally welcomed back into their families once their term was served, but western prisoners often had no family to which they could return. The Indian jailors put this down to the fact that ‘In the west, there is no concept of family or relationships”. I remembered reading in a magazine around that time that female Indian prisoners were likely to be deserted by their families and their husbands often divorced them and remarried while their wives were still in jail, whereas males could still return to their wives. The Indian jailors didn’t have a thing to say about that.

Artistic Discipline

Indian classical dances are truly beautiful. The dancers are disciplined and give their teachers the same reverence they would give to God. They have to practise their art for many hours to achieve perfection. This was pointed out to me by some of the people I encountered here. What they call ‘western dance’ is often a series of disconnected movements, shuffling to the beat of popular music. I asked a couple of questions and it subsequently realised that the people who were extolling the dance forms of India had no idea that we have classical and traditional dance forms in the west too. The same goes for music. I mean, our western culture has many traditional arts which are based on discipline and which are wondrous to behold. I get goosebumps when I hear opera by composers like Bizet. And ‘Swan Lake” (that’s a ballet) leaves me breathless. Both east and west have many wonderful cultural art forms. Whether it’s opera or Irish sean-nos traditional unaccompanied singing, the west has no way less to offer than the east when it comes to the likes of the performing arts. I firmly believe that.

Christianity Is Not Western

Asians often have the impression that the western outlook is based on Christianity, I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. Christanity is middle-eastern in origin, as is Islam and Judaism and can as easily be found in Asia as in Europe. In fact, I’ve heard it said that the western philosophical outlook is based on the teachings of the classical Greek philosophers. They are definitely pre-Christian. Interesting, huh? And western philosophy is known to be quite atheistic in comparison with its eastern counterpart. I’ve been surprised to come across Roman Catholic priests here who are referred to as ‘Baba’ or “Swami’ rather than ‘Father’ and who dress in the style of Indian hermits, with their dhotis and kurtas. These are not very common, but they are definitely around. The Hindu religious traditions and Christian traditions complement each other beautifully once an effort is made to do it. It’s something I’ve noticed many times.

Irish sheep on a hillside

Internet Increases Awareness

I’m really glad to say I don’t hear as much ignorance here about ‘western culture’ as I used to hear and it’s perhaps due to the spread of the Internet.

Third World Countries?

What’s a third world country? The correct term is, I believe, ‘developing country’. Yet it’s surprising how many enlightened bloggers from western countries can be found referring to ‘third world countries’ in their blog posts. I had to write to more than one very famous blogger and ask them why they were doing this. It’s kind of gratifying to see that they took my observations on board.

An Irish beach in turbulent weather

The Twain Shall Meet

Rudyard Kipling famously observed that ‘east is east and west is west and ne’er the twain shall meet’. But the world is turning into a global village. The Internet has accelerated that growth. There are a lot more east/west marriages nowadays than their used to be, just like my own. These marriages may encounter problems because the patriarchal influence on Asian males is a lot stronger than it is in males of western origin. But no problem is insurmountable. The main problem is to understand the reason for the difference in attitudes and to work on adjustments as required. Understanding is everything. It also helps to be a bit open minded and realise that there are more attitudes in the world than just our own. Unlike Kipling, I truly believe the twain shall meet. In fact, they already have. I consider myself and my family to be the living proof that Kipling's theory is wrong.

I blog with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday, although, owing to overwhelm, I haven't blogged in ages! Sorry, everyone. The current blogging members of this group are: me Ashok,, Ramana, Chuck, and Pravin. Thanks to Ramana's reader Tikno from Indonesia for suggesting the topic.

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Images: Courtesy of Pixabay

Peace

2017-03-16T10:57:00.000+05:30

What is 'Peace’?

Peace. Pax. Shalom. Salaam. Shanti. It’s a popular word in so many languages. And a popular concept too. But is it really as popular as we think it is? I remember reading once that there are about 100 given wars going on anywhere in the world on any given day. Apart, of course, from the obvious great wars of the last century. Cold wars. Hot wars. Proxy wars. Everyone says they want peace, yet wars persist. Why is this?

Why is peace difficult to obtain?

Because for reasons best known to certain countries and individuals, peace is not acceptable at any price. Yes, everyone wants peace. But they want it on their own terms. Our terms may not be acceptable to others. That is the crux of the problem. Are our terms acceptable to others? If not, why? And are others’ terms acceptable to us? Maybe not. How do we get everyone on the same page, wanting the same things? It’s not at all easy. Ask any negotiator.

Striking a balance

As societies grow, change and evolve, conflict emerges from time to time. Old orders change and new awareness grows. Sometime there’s a lot of tough resistance to change. Older generations often despise innovation. The world as they know it turns upside down and in order to keep the world familiar, with an order they can appreciate, they fight innovation every inch of the way. Yet it is conflict that is the lifeblood of progress. Remember the story of the Luddites? The people who resisted progress but ultimately couldn’t stop the industrial revolution! And they made life a lot harder for themselves as well as everyone else.

Inner peace

Apart from the actual absence of war, peace is an internal matter also. Inner peace is a very desirable state. What brings about our inner peace? In no particular order, some factors could be:

Knowing that we and our loved ones are safe and secure.
Knowing that we have a higher power who has our best interests at heart and takes care of us.
Feeling secure about our future.
Having a rich inner life with regular meditation and surrender to our Higher Power.
Knowing that we have made correct decisions and have done the right thing. Wrong decisions will rob us of our sleep and peace.

Religious viewpoints

There are many religious viewpoints. There's the Christian 'peace and goodwill to all men’ (must have meant all humanity, can you imagine a world without women?). There's the Islamic ethic of the peace which comes from submission to the Almighty. There's the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain search for inner peace.

Helen Keller's peace quote

I remember reading a quote from Helen Keller, a physically challenged woman who overcame her speaking and hearing disabilities to become one of the most profound thinkers of her generation. She said that she didn't want the ‘peace that passeth understanding’. She wanted the ‘understanding which bringeth peace’. It all sounds wonderfully wise, and indeed it is. But Helen Keller got her 'peaces’ confused, I think. She was referring to the quote from St Paul in Philippians 4:7. St Paul, or Saul of Tarsus as he was known in his time, was an amazing man, on fire for Jesus and the kingdom of Heaven. He was originally an orthodox Jew who persecuted Christians. However he encountered the Risen Jesus and was forever changed. His 'peace that passeth understanding’ refers to a supernatural, inner peace which can keep one sane even in situations of war and conflict. The peace to which Helen Keller was referring was understanding between nations and the absence of international conflict. We have to understand that there are different kinds of peace. Internal and external and even super-external. They are all dimensions of each other but they are not each other. Not exactly.

Symbol of peace

The current international symbol of peace is the dove. It's also the symbol of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Christian understanding of Who and What is God. Once, when I worked in the Embassy of India in Dublin, I got a call from a psychiatrist. He had seen a Government of India Tourist Office poster of a statue of Lord Buddha, the founder of the Buddhist faith. The poster was so peaceful and serene to look at that, that this psychiatrist wanted a copy to put up in his waiting room so that patients waiting to come in and see him could become calm and peaceful during the wait.

What a peaceful idea…….

Whoever you are and whatever you believe in, I wish you peace. Inner peace, outer peace and absolutely every other kind.

I blog with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. The current blogging members of this group are: me, Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to Rummuser for the topic/prompt 'Peace". I was extremely late with my post owing to the Holi holidays, which are very important in north India.

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Images: Courtesy of Pixabay

Five Ways Social Media Has Changed Our Lives

2017-03-01T19:24:00.000+05:30

Has social media changed the way we live? You bet it has! I’ve been in India for 22 years and have visited home in Ireland maybe half-a-dozen times. The biggest challenge about this, for me, has always been coping with the difficulty of making contact with old friends and family. However, that’s all over now, thanks to Facebook. I check my phone every morning and read that uncle Ned in Dublin is furious over the biased referee in the boxing match or that my cousin Paula in Dublin went to see Take That in concert (or whoever!). I speak to my cousin Veronica in Scotland every few days thanks to WhatsApp. We haven’t spoken this frequently since we wrote to each other as kids. Social media has definitely changed our lives forever. I can think of at least five ways that social in which it has affected life as we know it.

Social media makes the world more accessible to us. This is a fact. The world is at your fingertips. Find out which of your friends and family are on Facebook and once you keep your page updated and they keep theirs updated, you’ll be in touch forever. You don’t even have to write. You can wave to each other across the world every so often. That’s it.

Social media makes us more accessible to the world. Yes, well this is probably one of the downsides. My friend Ruth had an alarming experience recently. A friend of hers asked to add her to a WhatsApp chat group. Ruth is a Christian, which means she belongs to a minority group in India. Her friend Seema is also from a minority community. Seema said a relative of hers wanted to discuss Christianity, so Ruth agreed to join the group. The ‘relative’ turned out to be a middle east-based male named Kamal, who had an extraordinary interest in religious matters. Ruth felt irritated when the gentleman continually quoted the Bible to her to prove to her that Christianity was an erroneous religion. Then Kamal contacted Ruth on WhatsApp, independently. Without Seema’s restraining presence, Kamal started trying to sweet-talk Ruth, saying her that he felt drawn to her attractive personality and that he felt as if they had some kind of bond. Ruth was really upset and confused over this. She’s married and so is Kamal and she didn’t want to say anything offensive to him for Seema’s sake. Which brings me to my next point.

Ruth realised she'd probably been targeted as the next 'victim'

Social media helps us discover information we really need to know. Ruth went on Facebook and discovered that Kamal is a member of an active religious group based in the middle eastern city where he lives. This group holds various functions in which solemn-looking (male) speakers in eastern ethnic dress give speeches in Arabic, Urdu and English on religious subjects, usually rubbishing Christianity. Their page also features videos of Christian people converting to the faith of Kamal and his friends. Also featured are screenshots of FB and WhatsApp Messenger conversations with Kamal himself, in which he persuades alleged Christians to deny their faith and he literally walks them through proclaiming themselves members of his community. So Ruth realised that Kamal had obviously targeted her as his next ‘victim’. She took immediate action and blocked him from her FB and WhatsApp pages and couldn’t care less what Seema thinks about it.

Social media has given a voice to those who have none. Okay, so I'm being a bit dramatic! But seriously… I live in a country where I have residency rights, but not citizenship. I don't happen to live in the country where I have citizenship. So I have no vote in either country, which I think makes me a second class citizen in both countries. When I think of how, in the past, women chained themselves to railings to get the vote, I feel great regret for what I've lost. My vote doesn't matter, therefore I don't either. But social media has helped me a great deal here. There are so many petitions being shared on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, that I make a point of signing and sharing petitions with which I agree and which I support. I may not be a full citizen of either of my two countries, but I am a world citizen through the power of social media. Petitions I have supported have gone to government ministers and other higher authorities and have changed lives and if there's something I feel strongly about, I can even start a petition of my own. It makes a huge difference to know I have a voice that matters. Also, if I have a complaint about the service offered by the pizza delivery company, the Internet service provider or even the mobile wallet company, leaving a message on their Facebook page or sending a Twitter message often gets better and quicker results than the phone or email. I know someone trying to set up a bank account abroad who was able to contact the desired bank through Twitter and is now well on their way to achieving their goal. So believe me, the power of social media is making it possible for more and more people to get their voice heard.

Nowadays, social media has varied platforms

Social media has platforms to fit almost everyone. Okay, Facebook is not for everyone. It has its share of detractors and certainly, if the user isn’t careful, it’s possible to get into danger from befriending the wrong type of person online, so caution is important. But leaving that aside, even the most avid Facebook hater will find a social media platform which suits them if they look around. A family I know in Ireland, the Dromgooles (names changed), make very diverse use of social media. Jack, the father, is very busy with his work, but when he gets time to relax and unwind, he loves to take artistic, still-life photographs. For him, Instagram is the social media platform of choice. He has gathered a loyal group of followers who enjoy his photography and leave appreciative comments. Jack has no interest in Facebook and leaves it to his children to spread the family news. Jack’s wife, Penny, also has no interest in opening a Facebook account but gets a lot of enjoyment from Pinterest, a search engine of ideas. Penny is a keen crafter and she also has huge interest in organic food. Her Pinterest boards have quite a following and help her to find people on the Internet who have similar interests. The two adult children, Jack Jr and Frances, use LinkedIn, a corporate networking site, to connect with people in their industries and advance their careers. They also use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. The youngest child, Faith, is still in school and therefore not allowed by her traditional-minded parents to open any social media accounts, but she gets to enjoy seeing the photographs which her sister and brother post on Facebook, not to mention her father’s photography. Whoever in the family has a phone uses WhatsApp to keep in touch by text or voice message, so everyone is available to each other at the flick of a touchscreen.

These are just a few of the ways in which social media has changed the way we live over the last few years. There may be even more ways. If anyone reading this post can think of anything to add to this list, please write a comment below and let me know. I'm very keen to find out more about the many ways social media has changed the lives of people, hopefully for the better.

I blog with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. The current blogging members of this group are: me, Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to Shackman for the topic/prompt 'Life With Social Media".

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Images: Courtesy of Pixabay

Consumerism

2017-02-17T17:30:00.000+05:30

There has been more than one culture clash in my life recently. Attitudes to money would be the main reason for that, in my humble opinion.

My husband grew up in an era when one rupee (that's the Indian currency) had some value. Money was hard-earned and didn't come easily. When money had to be spent on items other than food, it was spent on items that were expected to last. That was the era of the lifetime guarantee. It would have been similar in some ways for me, although things had begun to change in the western world by the time I was growing up.

Life has totally changed. I remember when I bought my first mobile phone ten years ago. It was a solid little phone, no bigger than a bar of chocolate. It could make phone calls and had a little calendar in it. I loved it. But one day, when I'd had the phone about three years, it broke down. I brought it to a repair shop to get an estimate for the repair. The repair cost was the price of the phone itself. I knew it was time to get another phone. My next phone had a similar 'candy bar' design, but amazingly, it had Internet. The Internet recharges were reasonably priced and it felt great to have a mobile Internet connection, even if the screen was tiny. But no mobile phone of mine has ever lasted as long as my original one.

You'll still find the steet vendors here

Years ago, when people bought goods like clocks and tables, they were made to last a lifetime. Now, a 'lifetime' means three years. It's incredible. If I have a phone I love, I would see no reason to change it. But no-one seems to have interest in something after it's a year old. I know that sounds a bit extreme, but things have gone that way. And it's quite a culture shock for people of my husband's generation, many of whom are grandparents now. They would see themselves as working hard for whatever money they can get and when one of the grandchilren needs a new mobile, the older people would see the money as simply being wasted. It's hard to explain. I suppose things have moved along pretty fast during the last few years.

A fabulous Asian mall

The older people in India have a habit of saving money, which was inculcated into them as youngsters. But when I mentioned this to a relative living in Ireland, I was told that nowadays, people live a credit card lifestyle. Apparently, the habit of saving is obsolete. No one has savings. No one holds on to old stuff. It's all update, update, update.

What's really complicated about Indian life is that there are several layers of society here. There's a layer of affluent, English educated elite who enjoy a consumer lifestyle, with all its benefits. At the same time, they enjoy some of the benefits of living in an economy where there are a lot of poor people. So you have families where the kids eat pizza and chat on 4G mobiles while there is a servant (maybe even a child servant, though that's against the current law) washing the floor in front of them.

Because Indians follow traditions of giving their daughters and sons-in-law a lot of gifts at the time of marriage, this puts tremendous pressure on parents of girls about to be married. One doesn't wish to send one's daughter away to her marital home with household goods which are not of a high standard. Everything has to be up-to-date and state-of-the-art. Even if there is no demand for these items from the boy's side, the pressure remains. So one has to have plenty of savings to fall back on while keeping up with the consumer society. Talk about having the worst of both worlds!

Despite modern trends, traditional vendors are still around

Nowadays in India, you can buy your vegetables in a modern supermarket. But you can still buy them off a barrow on the road or in a roadside vegetable market, if you prefer. Recently, while shopping for clothes for my nephew's marriage, I enjoyed a trip in Lucknow's Aminabad market, buying bangles to match whatever saris I was planning to wear at the various wedding functions. My friend Babita is an expert shopper in these traditional markets. An Irish friend, Aine, who was coming to the wedding, was with us. Babita told Aine and me to just select whatever bangles we wanted. Then, when the shopkeeper tried to charge an exorbitant price, Babita argued him down the right rate, with a skill that comes from years of practice. This wasn't only shopping. It was entertainment.

Outdoor vegetable market

As for me, I like nice stuff. Nice phones, nice computers, nice clothes. But I tend to use all my possessions until they fall apart. I do not care who is impressed or who isn't. And even if anyone gossips about my 'cheap lifestyle' I'm not strong in Hindi, so I can't understand them anyway.

Some of the wisdom of the East seems to have influenced me. One should be less materialistic and more spiritual in order to maximize one's satisfaction in life. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

I have recently resumed blogging with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. I'm an old member of this friendly group and delighted to be back. The current blogging members of this group are: Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to Rummuser for the topic/prompt 'Consumerism".

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Image of 'Young Woman Talking On The Phone While Shopping For Clothes' by 'nenetus', courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
All other images courtesy of Pixabay

Impatience

2017-02-13T19:31:00.000+05:30

Many years ago, when I lived in Dublin, I met someone nice and started dating. I wasn't serious, I just thought we could have nice interesting discussions about India, which I found absolutely fascinating, as I was working in the Embassy of India back then. I had no intention of getting attached with a foreigner, with all the attendant cultural problems. I was happy living in Ireland and the idea of marriage couldn't have been further from my mind.

We both thought we could just keep things in control. One day, after a lot of emotional turmoil and denial, it hit us both that we were in love. Truly. Madly. Irrevocably. To the point where we couldn't live without each other. I'd known about the Indian system of arranged marriages and when it occurred to me that he would probably be married off by his family as soon as he returned to India, I felt physically ill at the thought. We are both tenacious and patient people. We realised that bringing our two worlds together would not be easy. There is no need to go into why we couldn't get married right away, but it finally happened. By the time we tied the knot in 1994, we had been in a relationship for more than seven years, most of it long distance.

Even now, I find it difficult to believe we held on to the relationship for so long. Bear in mind that this was back in the days when there was no Facebook, no WhatsApp and certainly, no Skype. We got to see each other roughly ever two years at one stage. Sometimes, the letters we sent (I wrote practically daily, he wrote a lot less then that) didn't reach. But somehow, we made it. I'm in a Facebook group of women who are partners in inter-cultural relationships, many of them still in the long distance phase. It's very hard to explain sometimes that when we were at that stage, even a very short phone call was a very big deal.

We finally beat the odds and got married. We now have four kids, two already adults. We've been married over 22 years now. I often wonder how come we lasted so long.

The answer is simple. We were both patient. And we had enough faith in each other. My husband was born and grew up in an India where nothing came without waiting patiently. Even though I grew up in a country which was very different to India, I'd seen some difficulties in my early years and I had also learned that if we want something good to happen, you have to wait and not give up too soon.

I notice a huge difference in our children. They have grown up in an age where almost anything is possible. They have instant photos on the camera and can speak to their Irish relatives at the flick of a button. I can't imagine any of our kids having the patience we had to wait it out as we did when we were waiting to be with each other.

While I feel very proud of the fact that he and I had the patience and the tenacity to wait for each other for seven years, I have to say that the very patience which helped us get together has also let us down in a lot of ways. We started off living in my in-laws' house. Since the very beginning of my marriage, I have dreamed of my family having a home of our own. That never happened until now and maybe never will. My over-protective in-laws didn't want us moving out of the family home. Well, the elders didn't. They were afraid that people would fool me and that I would end up coming to grief in some way. So I learned to keep my thoughts to myself and just make the best of things.

I feel sad that I've never had a home of my own to enjoy. Even a slight difference opinion between my spouse and I and everyone knows about it. The rooms allotted to our side of the family are former common family rooms and right behind the front door of the house. So people, into whose rooms we wouldn't dare trespass even by accident, roam in and out of our section, without a care in the world for our comfort and privacy.

I try not to think too much about this, but when I do, I really wish I hadn't been so patient and adjusting. Impatience would have worked much better for me in this case.

I have recently resumed blogging with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. I'm an old member of this friendly group and delighted to be back. The current blogging members of this group are: Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to Pravin for the topic/prompt. Sorry I'm late with this week's post, guys.

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Image:courtesy of Pixabay

The Supernatural

2017-02-10T22:53:00.001+05:30

The supernatural...

Do I believe in the supernatural? Yes, I do. My husband and I were both raised in homes where faith and religion were given the utmost importance. Although the religions were different, certain basic beliefs were the same. We both learned, in childhood, that this natural world is in a certain dimension, but there are other dimensions which cannot be easily seen or sensed in this one. We believe we have come to this life for a certain purpose and that there is a higher power, known as God, to whom we must answer when the time comes for us to cross over into the next dimension after our death in this world.

Common knowledge and belief

What's so unusual about that? Millions believe the same thing, in some form or another. Even the most primitive human communities live in constant awareness of the supernatural dimension. In fact, they're even more aware of it, living, as many of them do, at the mercy of nature.

My native Ireland is full of supernatural stories. Stories about banshees, women of a supernatural race who would wail loudly when the death of a member of certain families was imminent. A particularly popular myth in the southern part of the country concerned 'changelings'. A family with a particularly beautiful child had to be careful not to brag about it. For if the 'faerie folk' came to know, they'd kidnap the beautiful infant and leave an ugly one in its place.

Could it be that those changeling stories resulted from the replacement of dead children in wealthier families by babies from poorer homes because servants were trying to avoid blame? There was a custom of children of noble families being fostered out to families of a similar status who lived in different regions of the country, in order to foster kinship. Who knows how many changelings resulted from such situations? Two times of the year when a lot of supernatural activities occurred in Ireland were spring and autumn, when the world slips into a different season.

Common Ireland/India traits

Pre-Christian Ireland had a mythology of its own, with gods, goddesses and festivals aplenty. Hindu India was no different, having a plethora of spiritual deities and as many religious festivals as anyone could want. And strangely enough, a lot of supernatural activity went on around the spring and autumn seasons in India too.

The supernatural and faith

I consider myself to be a faithful Christian, but I've always had a bit of a fascination with the supernatural. I sat up late many a Saturday night in Dublin, watching horror movies about vampires and mummies, although they're not really in my comfort zone. I once listened to a song about a bunch of kids getting excited about telling ghost stories late into the night. There was a line which said: 'It's kind of fun getting scared when you know it's not for real'. That is certainly true.

In the Book of Genesis, the Bible tells us that God was tired of being ignored by the human race, which had turned away from Him and started to worship other spiritual entities. So he communicated with Abraham the patriarch and made Himself known as the eternal Father God. He took Abraham's descendants (those which came from Abraham's especially promised and very blessed son Isaac and his younger son, Israel) as his own people and kept them separate from the world, until there was a conducive atmosphere for Jesus Christ, God's only-begotten Son, to be born as a Man. Once Jesus Christ performed His work of redeeming the human race from the clutches of death with His own Blood sacrifice, He returned to His Father. But when the Father was preparing the great grandsons of Abraham and their descendants to be the people from which God the Son would be born, he was very careful to instruct them to stay away from any kind of unauthorized supernatural activity. The Israelites were forbidden to practice mediumship and also forbidden to indulge in the local religious festivals of the land of Canaan, in which they were to settle. They were also forbidden to cut their skin or even to have tattoos applied. Apparently, the Canaanites carved religious symbols of their own into their skin. The sooner the Children of Israel lived a life pleasing to the Father, the quicker the Will of God could be done. The Israelites disobeyed numerous times and it took about a thousand years for the Father's Will to be carried out in Israel and ultimately, the world. If we want to please the Father, we have to steer clear of idolatry and superstition and concentrate on reading the Scriptures He has given us. The Father desires to be worshiped 'in spirit and in truth' (NT John 4:24).

The Supernatural - personal experience?

I don't have much personal experience of the supernatural, but one recent experience comes to mind. I used to bring my dog, Duggu, for a walk down a certain road every morning. I noticed that when we walked on a certain stretch of the road, the dog became very aggressive and disturbed, jumping around, pulling on his lead and even seizing my arm in an aggressive manner. Duggu is a big dog, so that was a scary experience. When I talked to a couple of friends about this, someone pointed out that the stretch of road where Duggu went crazy was beside the cemetery of a particular community. I hadn't been aware of the fact because there are no headstones, just flat soil and lots of overhanging trees. Obviously, Duggu could see things that I simply couldn't. Despite not possessing human intelligence, it appears that dogs can see into the other dimension to some extent. Scary, eh?

Who knows what Duggu saw in those overhanging trees? I avoided the cemetery road after that discussion and the situation immediately improved. As God taught the Israelites in Biblical times, it's better to stay within the set boundaries and not move over the edge of this dimension. I truly believe that.

I have recently resumed blogging with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. I'm an old member of this friendly group and delighted to be back. The current blogging members of this group are: Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to my Shackman for the topic/prompt 'The Supernatural'. Sorry I'm a week late with the post, guys. I'll do an extra post this week to catch up!

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The Missing Bride: Loyalty - A Different Perspective

2017-01-30T19:42:00.003+05:30

Recently, I connected with Nabeel, a young man of a particular community through a mutual interest in comparative religion. This happened as a result of our meeting through a WhatsApp chat group. This young man is of Indian origin and extremely erudite. He is very well-versed not only in the Holy Qu'ran, the scripture followed by the various Muslim communities, but he has also read and studied the Holy Bible (King James Version). It isn't difficult to track down people once you know certain contact details about them and I soon discovered my invisible friend's Facebook account. I took a good long look at his photographs, both past and recent. It appears that through the maturity which comes with age, my distant friend, who resembled a Bollywood hero just a few short years ago, has now 'got religion' in a big way. His appearance fairly screams his religious affiliation in a way that it didn't just less than three years ago, when he took unto himself a wife, as the Bible would say. I found the wedding album on Facebook.

There's nothing as nice to look at as a handsome bridal couple, I always say. Well I looked and I looked. The groom was all present and correct, as they say. Absolutely perfect, not a thing wrong with him. But something was missing. Something integral. Can you guess what it is? There was no bride to be seen anywhere. No women either, in any of the wedding pictures. I was quite shocked, I can tell you.

So I got on FB Messenger and asked the gentleman about the missing bride. The answer I eventually received was a revelation. He told me that his wife considered that her beauty was for him alone and not for everyone to feast on. I replied that that was absolutely fine as long as it was her choice. I respect people's choices. But seriously, no criticism intended, what's a wedding without a beautiful bride? In India, well, usually in India. as well as Ireland, the bride is the centre of the whole party. There can't be a wedding without one.

But it got me thinking. An attitude like that comes from a mindset which is totally alien to the thinking where I grew up. Okay, I'm an old girl now, although I still scrub up well when the need arises. Like, on a good day, when I've had my sleep, my vitamins, the required amount of water and a little makeup to repair the damage, I can pass for being in my (late) thirties if the light is good. But even when I was young and a bit better than average looking (so I've been told), it wouldn't have occurred to me that my "beauty" was for "himself" alone. I met him when I was 23, so I guess you can say I managed to 'trap' him when I was the best-looking I've ever been. Yes, I even had blonde highlights back then, long gone because I'm unable to maintain them in India owing to the scarcity of blonde hair dye in my city. But I digress......

A few years ago, I switched on the television and found myself watching a religious discourse. They're on the television here around the clock and probably everywhere else too, owing to satellite. An earnest gentleman, with a wispy looking beard and a skull cap, was pontificating on the place of women in society. He was defending the fact that men in his community were allowed to have more than one wife. He explained that in a society where men are scarce, he would rather see his sister as the second wife of a devout man than as a single lady. Because according to him, no single lady can be virtuous, she is simply a 'public property', particularly in the western world. What an assumption! We don't wear veils and we speak freely with people whether they are male or female, so we western women are, if unmarried, 'public property'. If I'd had something heavy nearby, I'd have thrown it at the television screen. Such nonsense! That person should understand that women from western countries, whether or not they prefer to wait until marriage to enjoy intimate relations with someone (their choice), have standards and don't just go with anyone.

I have a close friend, Nasreen, who has helped me in so many ways. Nasreen, for me, is an ideal woman. She's beautiful, dignified and although she belongs to the community in which many women cover up, she never covers her face. But the truth is, Nas doesn't need a veil to cover herself. Women who have dignity and self-respect have a virtual veil in any case. Nobody can just move into their personal space and start treating them like public property.

Nabeel's wife may, because of the social customs in her community, feel that not showing her looks to the world is a special gift, a way of showing loyalty to her husband. But it's entirely different for most modern women, as the mindset is different. Limiting our interaction with the outside world means that we can't contribute to society as effectively as we'd like to do and from that, our husbands would gain absolutely nothing. We don't need to wear a veil to prove our loyalty to our marriages. But in societies where the ethos is different, it's another story. And it's sad that many people who live in cultures where veiling is the norm judge women from other cultures so negatively. Well, some do.

As Nabeel himself very reasonably says, everyone has their own thinking.

As for hiding our beauty? Personal choice of course, but we should not be too proud of our looks. Physical beauty is temporary in human life, inner beauty is forever. I love this verse from Proverbs 31:30 (NIV translation)

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.

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I have recently resumed blogging with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. I'm an old member of this friendly group and delighted to be back. The current blogging members of this group are: Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to my dear brother Ramana for the topic/prompt 'Loyalty'. Sorry I'm late with the post this week, guys.

Global Lucknow Gathering

2017-01-20T19:39:00.000+05:30

Global Lucknow

Lucknow's Glorious Past

Once upon a time, Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, was a cosmopolitan city with a distinct and renowned culture. A sort of 'Paris of the East'. In modern India, Lucknow doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. It has become just another state capital, appearing to lag behind the more prominent Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. But it really shouldn't be that way. A survey, jointly conducted by marketing company IMRB International and electronics company LG, found Lucknow to be one of the happiest cities in the country.

Global Lucknow - Registered Society

Bina Krishna and Sunita Aron of the GLC

With its graceful elegance (apparent in the manners of the city's inhabitants, as well as the the heritage buildings), its Persian influence and its amazingly absorbing atmosphere, Lucknow has a fabled, glorious past. A few of Lucknow's citizens got together recently to set up the Global Lucknow Society, a registered body which is dedicated to promoting awareness of Lucknow's place in the diversity that is modern India. Lucknow's glory isn't just enshrined in the past. This lovely city continues to welcome people in the present day and visitors cannot fail to be moved by the unique atmosphere which prevails here.

Inter-cultural Gathering

Lilia and Igor from Moldova

On the 15th January, 2017, at La Martiniere Girls College in the city, the Global Lucknow Society hosted a function to bring together the small but varied expatriate community of the city. Lucknow's native and foreign inhabitants, from places as diverse as Chile in south America and the Pacific island of Vanuatu, mingled together for a few, precious hours, enjoying discussions, reminiscences, some singing, dancing and even a short yoga demonstration.

International Mingling

Rodrigo and Vanessa from Chile

For a very long time, Ireland has been represented at Lucknow gatherings by a small group of Loreto nuns from Ireland. However, Indian nuns make up that same community today, as the last of the Irish Loreto nuns in India are now staying in Kolkata. Ireland was represented on this day by me and my new friend Aine Browne (pronounced 'Awnya', Irish for 'Anne') who arrived in the city recently, along with her Italian husband and two young children. I was delighted to meet Adity Chakravarty, the wife of a former Indian Ambassador to Ireland, who was, for me at least, an honorary Irish woman. She told me that she still sometimes misses Dublin, so we have lots in common. I also met a Brazilian lady, Marcia, who, like me, is also married to an Indian and lives here in Lucknow.

Highlights

Indian husband, Brazilian wife. Santosh and Marcia

Dr Amrita Dass of the Global Lucknow Committee (GLC), who is a leading career consultant, welcomed everyone to the function. Mrs. Sunita Aron, Editor of the Hindustan Times, Lucknow, introduced the various local and international members of the gathering, some of whom shared short, cultural performances, showcasing the culture of their native lands and some of whom shared their impressions of this city. Mrs. Bina Krishna, with a perfect choice of song, 'Those Were The Days' (a standard sing-along song at Irish weddings, I remember) lifted the mood of the gathering. Odette from Portugal, who is an able choreographer, got the entire crowd on its feet. Mr.Chander Prakash of the Universal Book Stores shared an interesting story about his surprise at being recognised as a Lucknowite in Scotland, of all places. Lilia from Moldova, accompanied by her husband Igor, sang a Moldovan song, which was sung in a very low key and conveyed a really hypnotic quality. Rodrigo and Vanessa from Chile entertained the gathering with an attractive dance performance.

Odette leads.....

....and others follow

Conclusion

This enjoyable evening came to an end way too soon, with some refreshments. I hope there'll be lots more gatherings like this in the future.

If anyone reading this post supports Global Lucknow's ideal of promoting awareness Lucknow's glorious heritage, as well as inter-cultural exchange, please like our Facebook Page. You can reach there at this link: Global Lucknow

Logo: courtesy of Global Lucknow Registered Society
Photos: Courtesy of Dr Amrita Dass

Short Term Pain, Long Term Gain

2017-01-20T15:58:00.000+05:30

Dear Pravin,

Fellow LBC blogger, you will notice when you visit here, that I've completely changed the title of your blog topic. While I love the challenge of getting my head around the latest group blog post, I like to put my own, personal take on it. I treat it more like a writing prompt than a topic.

One of the amazing qualities which Indian people possess, I have found, having lived in the sub-continent for over two decades, is the ability to save money. No matter how little a person earns, they will nearly always manage to save something out of it.The recent demonitisation drive in India bought hidden savings literally crawling out of the woodwork. Every Indian budgets in both the short term and the long term. I couldn't believe how much cash which even poor people had squirrelled away.

When my husband lived in Dublin three decades ago, he was friendly with another man from north India. Ranjeet had left his wife and family behind in a rural village and had come to the western world to find work. And he certainly worked. He had little education and could speak hardly a word of English. He found a low-paid job in a typical curry house. He lived in a shared, rented room with a few other men in a similar position. He budgeted carefully, ate simply and refrained from smoking and alcohol, which made him rather unusual among his companions. He was completely focussed on his goal. Eventually, he rented a small shop.

Around thirty years later, Ranjeet's condition has improved considerably. His business did very well, thanks to his hard work and dedication. He was able to bring his family to Europe from their rural, Indian village. They live in a large, beautiful house and all the children have adapted well to western life. It's great to see Ranjeet enjoying the fruits of his hard labour. However, he still works hard, as he has always done.

My husband had another friend here in India, Ranajit, who hailed from eastern India. Same name as Ranjeet, but a different spelling. Ranajit was a disciplined man who worked in a respected financial institution. He lived on a strict budget, had no car and always used public transport. He took a lunchbox from home and never bought snacks outside his house. He, too, was from a village background and had, apparently, known financial poverty. But when I saw his house, I was shocked. It was huge. He seemed to have built it so that all his children could live with him and his wife after their marriages. Sadly, however, Ranajit passed away a few years ago and his children have decided not to live in the house he'd built. I find that very sad that he never got to achieve his dream.

It seemed that Ranjeet, our north Indian friend, had gone through the pain of separation for a few years and ultimately was reunited with his family. But Ranajit, sadly, took a lot of pain throughout his life and didn't get to enjoy a long post-retirement period surrounded by grandchildren, as he'd hoped to do.

If you decide to go undergo short-term pain with a long-term goal in view, it's good to achieve that in the end. Short-term pain and long-term gain is a very good thing. But long-term pain with no long-term gain is really sad.

I have recently resumed blogging with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. I'm an old member of this friendly group and delighted to be back. The current blogging members of this group are: Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to Pravin for the topic/prompt 'What Would You Do In The Long Term?'.

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Politics - Too Big A Topic For A Mere Blog Post

2017-01-13T06:30:00.000+05:30

Dear Shackman,

Fellow LBC blogger and conspirator,I don't know you personally, but believe me, if we ever manage to meet in person, I shall have issues to discuss. Why? Well, what in Heaven's name inspired you to give us a topic like politics for a group blogging post? Of all the subjects there is? Well, I'll tell you this much, as they say back in dear old Ireland, it would take more than a blog post to cover this topic! A whole series of blog posts wouldn't cover the likes of a topic such as this.

Politics - US elections

Coming, as you do, dear Shackman, from the United States of America, it's not difficult (in a way!) to understand why exactly you went and picked a topic like this one. Oh, yes! While the whole world looked on, aghast, in recent times, the USA went and democratically voted for a president who, apparently, nobody wants. Now that's a good one, as they might say back home in the Emerald Isle. A very good one indeed! Oh, yes! Well, I suppose you couldn't expect anything less, from a country with really prides itself on being the cradle of democracy. Well, one of the cradles, if not THE cradle.

What should I write in a blog post about politics? The art and the science of governance? Or the art and science of getting oneself elected to govern? Or if not govern, to sit in on and even contribute to debates about the various laws which are about to be passed? Political ideologies? The electoral process? The left? The right? The centre? I wouldn't know where to start!

Politics - my take on it

People,in general, I've found, say horrible things about politicians. There's the judgmental comment about politics being the world's second oldest profession, not too different from the world's oldest profession and we all know what that is. This remark is usually accompanied by derisory sniggers. But let a successful politician appear and you'll see people fawning all over him.

I remember, many years ago, reading an interview in an Indian magazine (can't remember which one), with Selja Kumari, an Indian politician who was had just begun her career. I can't quote, but I remember her saying that when you're nominated to run for elections, everyone loves you and wants to know you. But followers ready to bask in your reflected glory will drop you like a hot potato if you lose. Interesting....

Politics tends to attract people because of the promise of power. But when a politician falls, it can be painful indeed. I read somewhere on the Internet that Mrs. Hillary Clinton had some kind of breakdown after she lost the US elections. If that's true, it's not difficult to understand why.

My brush with politics - albeit brief

Many years ago, in Dublin, when I was but a young, innocent girl, I was sleeping my brains out at home one Saturday morning, having danced the previous night away in one of Dublin's nightclubs (and imbibed several drinks). Considerably hung over, I didn't know that my mother had gone for her Saturday shopping. My sisters were out of the house and I was alone, holding the fort and I didn't even know it. Irritated by a persistent knocking on the hall door, I rose from the bed, pulled on a particularly horrible-looking dressing gown (because no-one's going to see it, right? Wrong!) and answered the door, muttering a few curses under my breath as I did so. I was never in the best of form after a night out on the town.

I was greeted on the doorstep by an enthusiastic young worker for the Irish ruling party at the time. He informed me that the new candidate for the local seat of TD (we call MPs TDs in Ireland, did I mention that?) was on a walkabout, ready to meet his future constituents. Panic gripped me. "I....I...can't meet him.." I stammered, all bashful and coy. "Sure, I'm only in me nightdress......"

The party worker stepped aside to reveal The Politican, in all his glory. Handsome, suited, debonair and reeking of a particularly tasteful and expensive brand of aftershave, he resembled the stereotype Mills & Boon hero. Yes, it was Ivor Callely himself (he was subsequently elected and served as a politician for many years. Bear in mind, this was Ireland, around thirty years ago).

Was I speechless? Yes, I was. The Politician took my hand in a firm grip, looked deep into my eyes and uttered some immortal words which have stayed with me forever. What were those words?

"If every woman came to the door to meet me in a nightdress, I'd be a happy man." Yes, those were his very words. Then he was gone, never to return. The scent of his aftershave lingered in the air, leaving this young, impressionable girl all of a flutter, charmed by the unexpected and ever-so-brief encounter.

Ivor Callely's career may have had its ups and downs since that fateful morning.However, for me, that moment is forever etched in my consciousness. Even here, today, in Lucknow, India, thirty years later, the memory still lingers.

Conclusion to blogging group post on politics

You know, Shackman, Uttar Pradesh, the state in which I live in India, is having its state-level elections soon. Sadly, I'm unable to vote. As an overseas citizen of India, I cannot do so and as a non-resident Irish citizen, I can't vote there either. But I shall enjoy watching television reports and reading the newspaper articles about the various electoral shenanigans, which, in Uttar Pradesh, are far more entertaining than any soap opera.

Shackman, I particularly look forward to reading Hindustan Times journalist Sunita Aron's analyses of all things electoral. A superb writer who knows the political terrain of UP inside and out, she's more than qualified to write a blog post on politics. She's written several books on the subject, actually.

So, dear Shackman, it appears that I've been able to come up with something to write about your topic after all, even if it's not exactly an in-depth analysis. 'Something' is the main word here. And that, of course, is better than nothing. I don't think the search engines will get too excited about this post, but at least I've got my group post ready. And as we say in Dublin, 'that's something'.

I have recently resumed blogging with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. I'm an old member of this friendly group and delighted to be back. The current blogging members of this group are: Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to Shackman for the topic/prompt 'politics'.

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Falling from the Train

2017-01-10T16:20:00.000+05:30

The Railways' importance in India

The Indian trains and railways have long been a source of fascination for railway enthusiasts as well as Indiophiles. Who doesn't know how the British administration built a huge railway network in order to get around the sub-continent efficiently? Not to mention transport the Indian treasures such tea, precious stones, etc straight to the ports to be shipped off to England.

But for us today, in India, the railways are the main form of transport for nationwide travel. In a land of large distances and close family ties, the railways offer affordable and usually safe travel facilities, keeping family members in touch over long distances. Not to mention keeping the wheels of commerce rolling.

Indian Railways have a major role in the life of the average Indian

I Fell from the Train

We went to Char Bagh Railway Station in Lucknow last week, to see off our daughter. She was returning on the Lucknow Mail train to college in Delhi, after the winter break. As we reached her seat in the carriage, we met the friends with whom she'd be travelling and started chatting. So easily distracted, we totally forgot where we were. Until we noticed that the train had started moving! We hastily said our goodbyes, moving towards the carriage door. My husband quickly jumped out and ran alongside the train, holding my hand. I was still officially on board.

"Jump," he urged. "I have you." Whatever move I made, I jumped and found myself sprawled on the railway station platform, having landed on the ground, on my left side, still holding my husband's hand. No bones broken, thank God, but one couldn't help but feel highly embarrassed. A friend was waiting outside to give us a lift home. I phoned my daughter from the vehicle on the journey home, making light of the incident. It was the only thing I could do, really.

Reflecting on the Fall from the Train

Quite late in the night, I noticed my husband was still wide awake. That's unusual for him.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Can't you sleep?"

"I'm still in shock over your falling out of the train," he replied. "You could have fallen right under the wheels. I can't believe you're okay."

Fallen under the wheels? The thought hadn't even occurred to me. And to be honest, I'd really rather not think about it.

Well, wouldn't you?

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Use Your Imagination!

2017-01-06T15:23:00.001+05:30

If there's one thing for which I remember some of my teachers at school in Ireland, it's their sarcasm. The type which brands itself on the mind of an unfortunate youngster, who may, in certain cases, never recover from the shame and embarrassment. One may be branded for life as a result and I'm NOT joking. If any of my readers is interested in studying further on this topic, I suggest checking out the following link to a video entitled 'D'Teacher' ('The Teacher') by the satiric comedy outfit 'D'Unbelievables'. This explores the Irish teacher in further detail. But be warned. The thick Irish accent may be difficult foreign ears to understand. However, if you persist and listen a couple of times, all will become clear.

"Maria Perry! Will you kindly repeat what I just said?" is a sentence which intruded on my daydreams many a time, as I gazed out the window during classes at school (Usually maths classes, if I'm truthful. Or any kind of science, be it biology, chemistry or physics). Subjects which didn't interest me left my mind wandering. Then my imagination would take over. "Ah, she's away with the fairies! Or maybe gone off down the road with those people she was watching from the window." As the sarcasm persisted, I would literally burn with shame. My schooling didn't consist of traumatic beatings and brutality, but there was a high degree of shame and embarrassment at times, along with the related trauma. Having said that, I was blessed with some excellent science and maths teachers. Thank heavens not all teachers were like that.

Ironically enough, when it came to the English or Irish language classes and essays figured in the homework, there was a regular piece of advice. 'Use your imagination'. I suppose if there was one thing I learned in school, it was that everything is good when the time is good. In other words, imagination, in the right context, is an excellent thing. Bad when you have to be practical and good when you need to be impractical. Like writing stories and articles for example. Except in writing, you have to be practical when it comes to getting facts right, especially for articles and of course for making stories credible.

Imagination plus practicality is an awesome combination, particularly when used in an appropriate manner.

I have recently resumed blogging with the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a group of bloggers who post on the same topic/prompt every Friday. I'm an old member of this friendly group and delighted to be back. The current blogging members of this group are: Ramana, Chuck and Pravin. Thanks to Ramana for the topic/prompt 'imagination'.

Banner courtesy of canva.com. Images courtesy of pixabay.com