Square Peg. Impressions of an exile. India. 1.

Posted on by
Reply

I see that I meant to write this on 17 October, soon after arriving back in Aotearoa but got occupied otherwise. So many times I ran the text of this intended blog through my head and edited it such that I could write short, sharp stuff rather than ramble on-which I tend to do.

Many times, in the weeks after I came back to Auckland, I caught myself just standing in my living room, in the silence that surrounds my house, staring at the little artefacts scattered, nah strategically placed all over. The shells from various Auckland beaches, the mini papier mache Eiffel Towers and Arc De Triomphe from Paris, the Ganeshas from Bombay and Banares, clapper board from Berlin, the books, Tibetan paintings from McLeodganj, the $30 couch from Salvation Army, the ‘donated’ television set on which I cannot watch TV One or TV2…I still do not have a proper coffee table and I dine Indian style crossed-legged on the floor. They all spoke to me. About my journey so far in life. That I am finally at a place where I can be comfortable with myself.

It took me a long time to figure out that I was/am a misfit. I was a curious child, always asking questions and not very happy with the answers. Consequently angry and disobedient. Hence bad. Not in a ‘black sheep’ way but someone who apparently needed to be firmly on a leash and kept within the patriarchy. Life was meant to be an education (a formal, school type education-for which I am very grateful), a job, a career making money, then marriage and kids. Until the day you die. No wonder I was a misfit. Going back home I am still a square peg in the round, all-sucking, Indian hole.

It took me a long time to figure out that it does not have to be like that. To get over the guilt of not thinking like everyone else, to reach this space and place that no one, not even me, thought could be a reality. Now I have to justify living this space; the unshackling and the so-called lack of responsibility in my life. I try to be blase and so does everyone else back in Bombay but the sub-text is too obvious to ignore. Then I just meditate to keep me calm.

Come back, they say. India has changed. You can be as free as you want. Be single, do live-in, shag around, whatever. As if this is what matters. What about the enquiry of existence? Or challenging the existing? Blackberry in one hand, vodka in another, designer mini dress  and preparations for karwa chauth. How is that a change? In a parallel universe I live this life. With straightened, bottle-blonde hair.

Not that I am not a misfit in New Zealand. Here I am a dark-skinned ‘ethnic’. Always classified as Indian-not that I mind it because I do not have to justify this or anything else. Such as being single, living on my own, working in mainstream media. No one tells me I ask too many questions or why can’t I be like everyone else. That is the difference. Palpable freedom with inherent responsibility and respect for choices. Of course it is not without problems, this society. It is still conservative and closed and racist and not as egalitarian as it makes out to be. But I am not judged by the money I make, the car I drive, the clothes I wear or the caste and religion I belong to. I can fully participate in the civic, democratic process without affiliating myself one way or the other.

It is true that I don’t do structure very well. Not structure imposed on me anyway. Because I work with the structure of the universe. Because nothing really is unstructured. That is where I fit in, in the bigger picture. For all my square peg-ness. New Zealand lets me be and I will go back to India only on my own terms. In conjunction with the universe.

Summer gardening.

Posted on by
Reply

Before I get into my travels and related angst. Pictures from my urban garden. First the beans. Broad beans I planted in autumn.

Don’t they look just beautiful? Although I would not know what to do with just 6-7 pods. I think I will put them in a ziplock bag and freeze them until some more grow. Then maybe I will saute them with garlic in olive oil.

And here is the mint. This is the naughty child in the garden. It was in the herb planter but I uprooted it and put it in this little pot and in a corner. This is the only way to control it. Not like I need a lot of mint in my cooking.

BTW the ants were back but I had my weapon of mass destruction ready. Ant Sand! Now to see if they invade my tomatoes and brinjal.

Bees in my garden.

Posted on by
Reply

The bees are a-buzzing, even in the winter. This one on my broad beans. Hopefully I shall see the beans soon.

Good Hair; Fair Skin; Feminism Or What?

Posted on by
8

It all started after I watched Chris Rock’s documentary GOOD HAIR. Now I know. Honest to god. Why do African American women straighten their hair? It is like asking why Indian women bleach their face or use fairness cream. Ideas of acceptable beauty, that is why, to put it simply.  First about the documentary-I had no idea hair is so intimately connected to African-American female identity that even Michelle Obama uses relaxer to manage her hair. There is no other way she could make it so straight. For ignorant little me I always wondered what kind of influence people like Oprah and Beyonce had on the image and identity of African-American women. Never seen Oprah with ‘bad hair’ nor seen Beyonce Knowles with black hair actually. (Although in this image it looks like her real hair.) Apparently it is not just women but African men too who have an opinion on female hair. After all the idea of beauty can be very culture specific and it is what you don’t have that you covet. In this case to be white. Straight, silky hair for African women and fair skin for Indian women (and men).

At one level I guess I am the last person to comment on hair. I was born bald. Then I had to undergo some bizarre Hindu tonsure ceremony at the age of one that made me bald again. As I grew up in middle-class, aspirational, globalising India, when hair colour first came to our parts I decided to go red. Before that we used sparingly use hydrogen peroxide on a lock or two just for ‘style’. But my hair never took to colour rather, colour never took to my hair. It remained black as. I gave up. Until I moved to New Zealand. That first year at university, egged on by my girlfriends, I got red and purple highlights at the campus hairdressers. It was supercool, I thought. Long black, wavy hair with darker highlights. My then boyfriend, generally averse to consumerism, thought it suited me too. But I never thought of straightening my hair. Not even after my sister called me boring. Not even when Indian hair was meant to be coloured blonde/caramel/chocolate/whatever and then straightened with a middle parting. I like my wavy hair. Could not have it any other way. I like being boring too, if that is the term. It is a pretty simple routine, looking after my hair, and so Indian! Oil my hair twice a week, henna every six weeks. Good shampoo, conditioner, serum. Sometime I massage yogurt into my scalp before a wash. No chemicals and rarely the hair-dryer. Of course I indulge in shades of blue-black sporadically, like now in the winter and I do style it for the odd ‘red carpet/cocktail’ event. Because I believe in impeccable, neat appearances; to be pleasing to the self and to others but not enslaved to ideas of beauty. I also like the colour of my skin and sometimes wish it was darker. However it took a long time to arrive at this comfort zone.

Growing up, considered ugly because of my snub nose and weird because of my temperament (you know, asking too many questions, having an opinion and unquantifiable dreams etc), I tried to fit in. To be a good Indian girl. Which means to get high education and marry well. Within that context feminism meant smoking, drinking, wearing mini skirts and being sexually promiscuous. Freedom of thought and expression, challenging the status quo or the inherent ability to choose were not part of the discourse. There was no discourse actually. Nor were there role models. The only ‘feminists’ were single, dowdy looking women whom men and other women poked fun at. They lived in another world, far away from middle India. On the other hand, as my mother insisted, economic freedom was important but only in the context of the family, for the husband and children. Individuality isolated you and community meant caste and patriarchy. So it was a strange place to be. I think it still is, I feel, every time I go back to India or talk to Indians here. Success is equated with beauty pageants and titles, being on television, working for a multinational company, acting in Bollywood films and still being a good Indian girl at the end of the day. Who would be considered successful, Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan or Arundhati Roy?  I can go on about Aishwarya being a product of a consumerist, Indian middle class entrenched in the patriarchy but then Arundhati on the other hand is still from the upper class elite so she can afford to be what she wants. Where does that leave someone like me? Give in or move out.

Non-white women have to create their own paradigms and parameters of female liberation/feminism. It is a constant, continuous battle with the self, your native culture, with the community and the whole wide world. Then there are men. And the media. Images that bombard you with ideas of beauty. Blonde, blue-eyed, super skinny beauty. Or exoticism that underscores the ‘OTHER’. Or losing your femininity completely to become man-like. Hairy armpits, unwaxed legs, a moustache…what do you do? I cam read Bell Hooks. when I did a paper in feminist film theory at university. It took me some time to understand that feminism does not have to be white, it does not have to be anti-world or anti-men neither is it about burning your bra or not threading your upper lip. It is about self-esteem and resisting against the patriarchy. It is about truth, love and empowering your children. It works on a spectrum that gives us the freedom to choose and be. If an African-American woman wants to relax her hair or not, as long as it is an exercise in self-awareness, it is fine. I compare Indian women using fairness creams to African-American women straightening their hair. It is about the capitalist patriarchy and conformity; it is about race and gender politics. I just have not found any discourse or analysis about fairness creams. Yet. ~

PS-Here is some follow up on this post about hair.

More Urban Gardening

Posted on by
Reply

Winter is not a great time to grow plants but in mid-autumn I planted a bunch of broad-beans on the advice of a mate. Had no idea what to expect. The first thing that happened was that the pot got infested with ants. I have a lot to say about ants @$$$£$^&*&! At my Buddhist/Zen best I want to let them be because they are fellow creatures. At my human depth I want to kill each little bastard individually. These ants ate my egg plant and chilli plant in the summer. I’ve never known ants to eat chillies, Indian chillies too. They got into the pots and fed on the roots. I got one, ONE, brinjal and a mere handful of chillies. I love my plants. I love potting them, watering them every day, talking to them, touching them, feeling them…get the gist? And this was no time to be Buddhist. For my first attack I got ant/insect spray from the supermarket and sprayed it all over my balcony and around the back door. There was respite and I rejoiced. Round one to me. Not for long. I discovered they had snuck into the broad-bean pot and were proliferating. When Arjun was facing his cousins, the Kauravas, at Kurukshetra, wondering how he could kill them, Krishna, his charioteer said that sometimes the call of duty is greater than brotherhood. So the call of seeing my plant actually bear fruit was bigger than love for those little buggers. It was all out war. The enemy had to be killed with the deadliest Weapon of Mass Destruction. Ant Sand, supposedly safe (for humans). I sprinkled it all over the pot on the soil, around the plot and into the gaps in my balcony. There was no escape! I am pleased to announce the enemy has been destroyed 🙂 The war has been won, no insurgency expected. The plants are flourishing, thank you. They’ve flowered and the beans should not be far behind.

Meanwhile the Calendula and the Lemon Grass are doing very well. The LG was plucked out from another garden and by the time I drove home and potted it, it was as good as dead. This was towards the end of the summer. Then a mate of mine, the same one who gave me the broad-beans, said I should keep the faith and keep on watering it, coaxing it.Used in my Thai curry chicken some weeks ago.

My fenugreek (methi) experiment has failed though and I’ve got a mere two shoots. Keep trying, keep trying, that is mantra. I love gardening and having plants around me, some flowers, some food, some decoration, some edible. I think I should feed it some supplements. Next on the agenda is to plant strawberries and flax. Let’s see how that goes. Yeah it is not strawberry season. Yet.

One last thing. That can happen only in Auckland (or New Zealand). Last month I went to my old street and plucked all the red guavas I possibly could from the tree that everyone ignores. Only the rare person in that neighbourhood cares about this free kai (food in Te Reo Maori). Delicious little red guavas that I never knew existed. I was only aware of the green variety back in India. Here’s a look at the beauties.

Shrinking, dithering fusspots!

Posted on by
Reply

I was all ready with another blog (s) about good hair, meditation,  Maoists and Arundhati Roy haters when I changed my mind in reaction to the constant refrain from the New Zealand media about security at the Delhi Commonwealth Games. So the bomb blasts at Bangalore before the IPL cricket match were a shock. Of course. Yet the game was played and Indians carried on with their life.  If you know India then you also know that the blasts could have been the work of any kind of group. From the mafia to religious fundamentalists to even someone who wants to take revenge on Mr Lalit Modi (just an idea).  To terrorise is to intimidate by coercion and violence, as most dictionaries describe. How easily the New Zealand media is creating the space in which to ‘terrorise’ its own people about going to India for the Commonwealth Games.  By coercion, subliminal coercion. Just like any other mainstream media does in any country to keep its people in the realm of fear-for-the-self-and-mistrust-of-the-other.  Oh are our sports people safe in India? Oh, there is no security there. Oh our cricketers were outvoted over whether to abandon the IPL match or carry on. Oh there is such chaos in India. Oh the sheer madness. Tich and tach.

India has been the subject of terrorists attacks from homegrown as well as external terrorists for many years now. I cannot harp on enough about the 13-in-a-row bomb blasts that went off across Bombay on 12 March 1993. The first ever such terrorist attack anywhere in the world but then only brown people died so why should the Western world have cared? My sister was in the Sea Rock Hotel when it happened and one of my patient’s came home with glass shards lodged in his arms and tears in his eyes because he had seen his colleagues blowing up (in the Air India building). He was standing at that spot just a few minutes before! Innocent people died. They always do. But life went on.

On 26 November 2008, Pakistani terrorists went on a rampage in Bombay.  This time the images were broadcast all over the world. I wept on TV3 News. It was my neighbourhood, my city, my love. What did the New Zealand media want? They first called to ask if I knew any New Zealanders who might be in Bombay. New Zealanders=white people.  When word came out that the Deccan Mujahideen might be responsible, a bright thing from TVNZ asked me what ‘Deccan’ was. Oh and do you know of any New Zealanders there? As if the shock and loss of Bombayites, now New Zealanders, did not matter.

Would there be such a fuss if the Commonwealth Games were held in London? There is better security there no? Oh hang on, I remember something that happened on the Underground network on 7 July 2005 and later on at Glasgow Airport too.  Perhaps the Commonwealth Games should move to the U.S.A. Plenty of security. Except that Oklahoma City marked the 15 anniversary of the bombing two days ago and more Tea Parties are being held across the country than ever before. But New Zealanders will be safer in the Western world. India is chaotic and corrupt right?

Displayed in the Beehive is a tattered New Zealand flag recovered from the 9/11 rubble of the Twin Towers. What does that flag convey? New Zealanders might not be able to visit Gallipoli this year on Anzac Day because of the volcanic eruption and flight disruption. Why do New Zealanders want to pay homage to those that were commanded by colonial powers to be fodder in a losing battle? How did Sir Peter Blake die? Why is Sir Ed Hillary so revered? I have a mate who is in the Himalayas now planning to climb another mountain. He failed to make it to the peak of the Everest the first time he tried but then he did it the second time around. It is better to die trying than be afraid.

Would New Zealand media prefer if our sportsmen sat at home because of supposed lack of security or immerse themselves in the Commonwealth Games in spite of the lack of security and come back with medals?

This security business is just an issue created to make news. The Commonwealth Games in Delhi is a matter of prestige for the Government of India. Delhi will be chocker with all kinds of security. What is a minor bomb blast? You can die here when police cars take u-turns on roads or someone throws a beer bottle at you or from drink driving or just bad driving or drowning. Seriously. You can get dehydrated by the runs after eating spicy Indian food. That is more dangerous! Perhaps the fact that New Zealand and India are working on a free trade deal might be more persuasive to the media. A no show would be a bad look.

Yeah, best not be shrinking, dithering fusspots. Not only will there not be any medals, chances are economic benefits might slip away too. I don’t think the government would like that. No no.

Urban Gardening (conted) or part 3…

Posted on by
Reply

So the eggplant has borne vegetable. Almost into autumn.

The lone coriander shoot that did grow and flower is now bearing seed. I have planted one into a pot but I think I need to wait until the seed is brown or after winter.

The lemon basil has flowered too

and some are cushioning the seeds.

I get an average of 4 seeds per flower so there will be quite a few by the time the entire plant flowers. I ate these seeds and they taste delicious. Which means I will not only have enough seeds to plant for the next summer but also to use in salads, soups and other cooked foods. Perhaps I should try these seeds on grilled chicken? Any other suggestions?

Urban Gardening 2. My Plants Bloom

Posted on by
Reply

My tomatoes are ripening. Check this out the photo.

And the calendula too.  Although the coriander has failed to grow and my experiment with pomegranate too.

I wonder now if I need to buy coriander seeds from the plat shop…perhaps mine are genetically modified terminal seeds? The argument for and against GE/GM interests me no end. Of course I am no expert on it but the thought of genetic engineering makes me shudder. This is not paranoia. As a qualified medical professional I know the importance of science in saving lives and decreasing human mortality as well as morbidity. A lot of the world’s population would be long gone without chicken pox, polio, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and all the other vaccines we take as part of our immunisation schedule. Small pox was eradicated because of a rigourous schedule implemented by so many countries. Cervical cancers are probably going to reduce in prevalence because of vaccines (and smears that will catch the cancer in situ). So I am not against scientific advances in food or food technology. There has to be a way to reduce world hunger and food prices are going to go up no matter what because there is only so much land to till. That is why I guess for me it is an important part of my life and existence to grow my own food. Some of it anyway. The beauty of Auckland (and New Zealand or even Australia) is that no one looks at you like you are a nutter if you say you are into gardening. My friends in India don’t get that. We never grew up with a culture of growing your own food. Not in Bombay anyway. Old Bombay, Girguam, congested, chaotic, crowded and low on water. We used to and still get our water supply from the great Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika (or the good old Bombay Municipal Corporation-before the parochialists screwed it up) at 5am in the morning. I filled up buckets and tanks and pots for years. My mother still does it. So there was no culture of growing any plants except maybe for decorative purposes. I think that should change. I think with modern technologies we can grow some of our food in our apartments and share it with our neighbours. We can create our own compost-if we follow the rules and respect each other-and use the product to fertilise the land. Give back to Mother Earth. I now dump some of my kitchen scraps in the worm farm that my neighbour offered to share. It is full of gorgeous little creepie-crawlies and other microscopic organisms that do what they are supposed to do. Keep this ecosystem going.

I guess it is hard to spot all the little living things in the last photo but they are all amazing! What we as humans have to do is understand the ecosystem and that we need it for our survival. Long after we are gone due to some nuclear holocaust, when cockroaches are the only survivors, they will continue to evolve. My greenie, hippy heart looks for the day when it will dawn on more people than those of us fringe dwellers that ‘green’ does not mean some decorative useless plant and food does not have to come from supermarkets. In Auckland, up at Bastion Point, in the Orakei Marae, replete with so much history, the local iwi Ngati Whatua are growing food and bringing back native flora. In a project called Ko Te Pukaki the entire land is being re-forested and there are vegetable gardens, kumara pits and all kinds of flax being grown. Even Auckland City Mission send their homeless clients (is that the right word?) to tend the gardens and a lot of the food goes back to the Mission kitchens. The oh-so-dynamic Ngarimu Blair is the driving force behind this project. (Watch out for him..he might be PM one day.)

Yeah so one day I hope more people start being pro-active about growing their own food, understanding where our food comes from and how we consume it. The other good thing about Auckland for me is the fruit that grows on streets or in communal backyards. The feijoa in my backyard is already giving fruit

and I wait for the red guava tree on my old street to start fruiting (right word?). I did not know red guava existed until I saw this tree. They taste really good, slightly more acidic than the green guava I used to have in India. Apparently you can make jam from guava. So maybe if I gather enough next month I’ll try that (and write another blog).

Before that one last picture. The brinjal I planted i just beginning to flower. Another month before I get anything edible.

Plants (that feed) In The City.

Posted on by
Reply

Just a real quick blog before I go to bed. There are many things to write about and as usual my resolution for 2010 is to be regular. Whatever. However, this one is to begin a new category I’ve categorised as ‘my urban gardening’. Now that I have moved into an apartment it calls for a change in the way I grow my food. In the last blog I lamented about the lack of composting and the heartache I got after throwing my kitchen scraps in the rubbish bin. Two months and still living through a fabulous summer I have got an eggplant, a chilli plant and a tomato plant. I also got herbs. Rosemary, lemon basil, mint and parsley. The right corner of the planter is

empty because my third attempt at growing coriander failed. (Just started a new experiment today, the results of which I shall know and blog about soon.) For the moment I’ve planted calendula which is medicinal, edible and smells nice.

Yeah so there is great pleasure in seeing Mother Earth give you food. I was thrilled when the first chillies sprouted on the plant. I have seen this many times and I never cease to be amazed. So it was with the tomatoes too.

I used the chillies today when I made a savoury from puffed rice. The tomatoes are not ready yet but boy have they grown. Here is how they look now, the tomato and chilli plants. The white arrows indicate the number of chillies that have grown on it. The eggplant has not yet got ‘fruit’. All I do is to water the plants every morning before it gets too hot. There is no plan to add fertiliser-and anyway the potting mix has fertiliser that will last for six months, by which time it will be winter.

Apart from using the herbs for cooking (lemon basil goes really well with Indian food), I made a pot-pourri from them. It is easy. I dried rosemary, mint and lemon basil leaves, lavender leaves plucked from a hedge on my street and used oolong tea leaves.  All I need is one of those fancy little silk bags in which to bundle them up.

The next step is to begin composting. I had a chat with my neighbours downstairs this morning and they offered me use of their worm farm. Nick opened it up for me-it looks fabulous with the creepie-crawlies, the earthworms and the ‘earthworm poop’ (as little Ryan put it) that comes out from the waste. (In my next blog about urban gardening I will insert the photo.)

None of what I am doing is new or ground breaking but the pleasure of growing one’s own food, or some of the ingredients, in an urban environment; reading and researching about gardening and techniques that allow humans to adapt ‘farming’ to new environments; watching a seed germinate and ultimately give fruit are all activities that bond me and the land. Homo Sapiens tamed wild vegetation for aeons to make food from it and now we have to learn how to take that further through changing landscapes and civilisations as if cultivating an apple tree in the  your flat’s balcony is a normal thing. Why should food and farming be a distant, rural concept?

Moving house; uncluttering my life

Posted on by
Reply

It has been a hectic December. Moving house is unsettling. After flatting for six years it was time to move and the adamant, pedantic and particular being that I am, it took me months to find the perfect place.  I am a city girl. Love the bush and the ocean; the sounds of silence, wilderness, living absolutely basic but I am also a ‘culture-vulture’. Cannot do without my films and visiting art galleries or just walking on Karangahape Road. I practically live on Queen Street during the Auckland International  Film Festival going from one theatre to the other and then work in-between! It had to be a city suburb. Easy to drive out of Auckland into the Waitakeres or the West Auckland beaches. Thirty minutes max. Besides, I cannot do ghetto nor do I envisage death by suburbia! Imagine living with inquisitive Indian neighbours! Or somewhere within endless rows of characterless houses enclosed by ‘new development’. Not to say it is all like that…yet… the whole point of living in Auckland or out of India is to be able to be amongst all kinds of peoples and ethnicities and they exist in Auckland. (181  ethnicities in Auckland at last count.) A global existence. Even if that makes me snobbish.

So, moving house.  I despaired at first. There were the usual cold, dark Grey Lynn villas and the hugely expensive Ponsonby flats or places in Kingsland, Mt Albert and even Sandringham. Not all were bad but neither did they call out to me and few lived up to their description in the advertisements. I even went to the local real estate agent to talk about what I wanted. (No, not much to say about real estate agents that has not been said before. They are not answerable to their customers neither do they care because they know that house-hunters don’t have a choice.) Then suddenly there were three apartments available in Herne Bay. I would have never thought there would be apartments in Herne Bay. It is where the terribly posh people live in their seaside mansions. Or atleast that is the reputation. So I went along blindly to  one apartment, the first place I inspected. There were a lot of people there. Couples confabulating with each other as they scrutinised the space. As usual I was the odd one out by myself. Never had to scout for a house before and did not really  know what questions to ask the real estate agent/property manager. Not that I learnt much because the second flat I saw, which I liked, the real estate agent was superficial and distant. It was an experience, that one. I asked to rent the place straightaway and filled out the form. ‘The landlord is away so I’ll let you know in two days’, she said. Ya cool I thought. I waited and waited. The landlord is still away, she told me. It took me while to fathom. The woman was, in typical Pakeha (white) Kiwi fashion, covertly racist. She did not want to tell me perhaps that an Indian would not do. What if the flat stank of curry eh? Otherwise what other reason is there not to give me the flat? It is not like negotiating to buy a house is it? Renting a house in New Zealand is simple and straightforward particularly for residents and citizens. I have never encountered blatant racism especially not in the industry that I work in. You are capable so who cares about the colour of your skin. That place was not to be mine. For a good reason.

My current flat/apartment is a gift from the universe. The first time I saw it, from the end of the driveway, I fell in love with it.  Brick edifice of eight flats built in the sixties/seventies. Four downstairs, four upstairs. A common garden in the front and at the back. The beach across the road and two more on adjacent streets.  Fruit trees and nice neighbours. Perhaps a pain in the winter but perfectly suitable for little hippy me. So I moved in.

And started to unclutter my life. I am a hoarder by nature. Inherited it from my grandmother. I’d hoarded bits and pieces, pots, pans, kettles, computer cords and all kinds of things. I’d need it all one day when I moved or so I thought. But then I’ve come to live the reduce, reuse, recycle motto. The triviality of material possession is an absolute truth that cannot be emphasised enough. I really only had/have my computers, my mobile phone, car, dvd and video player. Being the good Indian girl 😉 I had a well-equipped kitchen including my steel thalis, katoris and glasses. The rest of my belongings only tell the story of my life, my journey so far and only I value them. At this moment I sleep on an air mattress and have just bought a faded, velvet green sofa from the Sallies. My dining table is the floor. A kind friend donated the television and I have rented the refrigerator. Of course I have a collection of shoes and some really nice clothes, sarees, bits of jewellery, make up, perfumes…mere requirements for a slightly bourgeois existence, occasionally self-indulgent.

The next step is to stay green. Yeah, yeah planted the herbs, chillies, tomotoes, even egg-plant but what about giving back to Mother Earth what she gives us? In my old flat I composted my kitchen scraps. For six years! When I moved to the new flat I had to explain to the property manager that composting can be done in an urban, apartment environment. My little greenie heart breaks every time I chuck my tea leaves into the rubbish bin rather than into a compost bucket. So now I am thinking Bokashi. One of my ex boyfriends was anal about research, a habit I picked up for better rather than worse. So, next year perhaps, after Googling up as much as I can, going to the green shops and talking to the experts I shall have much knowledge, enough for another blog. 🙂