Red eyes from swimming or is it the computer?

Voices against my working on the computer all day began in a trickle, but have now joined together to form a raging river. First it was V, then Big N, then my parents, now even B, the lady who helps me around the house.

I came back from swimming today with bloodshot eyes. My eyes bother me every time I go swimming, but today was particlarly horrid. B took one look and said I had too much heat in my body and moved on promptly to blame the hours I spend in front of the computer.

Watching The Chronicles of Narnia on Christmas Day

Christmas Day 2005 dawned grey and drizzly in Virginia. All hopes for a white Christmas melted away in the unseasonably warm temperatures. As is the case every year, the question of what we would do the rest of the day was hanging in the air. Most of our Christian friends were busy with church and family and Christmas lunches and dinners. Most of our friends who were in the same boat as us (i.e., were not busy with Christmas) had gone away to visit family during the holidays or lived in Maryland and we did not feel like driving all the way up and around the beltway to meet them.

During past Christmases, we had ended up going to the temple and to the free performances on the Millenium stage at the Kennedy Center before going out to dinner at any restaurant that was open (usually an Indian restaurant).

This time around we were at home in Virginia for three weeks on a "home" visit from Bangalore where we currently live. It was good to be back again, back among shops (Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market), restaurants (Big Bowl, Panera Bread, Chipotle, Romano's), streets and landmarks that were sorely missed for over a year. How good it felt to drive around in the car (without the need for a driver) and tune on the radio to listen to NPR or Eliot in the Morning on DC 101 (someone said he was gone, hope it's not true!).

Best of all, it was good to be home, be able to bake in my oven (my son was probably happier about that), to be able to cook the dishes I couldn't in India without going into a whole lot of trouble (penne pasta with that chicken sausage from Trader Joe's) and to just sit on the sofa wrapped in a fleece blanket and watch the snow flurries settle on the deck and the tall trees in the backyard.

We'd been home about a week and a half by then and had just begun to get over the jet lag, a particularly ferocious one this time around which had us crashing by five in the evening and waking up every morning at two am. Although the weather was inhospitable, we did not particularly feel like staying cooped up indoors. So after breakfast, we hatched a plan to watch a movie. We had wanted to see Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe even since we got there and we decided to try our luck. Were movie theatres open on Christmas Day? We could not remember, but we were going to find out.

In our absence from Virginia, a brand new theater had opened up about ten minutes away from our house. We decided to head out there. By this time, it was pouring. We piled into the car and drove to the movie theater. Aside from church parking lots, all the roads leading up to the theater were deserted as was the theater itself. It was around 11:30 am by this time and we resigned ourselves to not being able to watch a movie that day.

Just then, a car pulled up behind us, a man got out of the car, pulled his jacket up over his head and ran towards the ticket counter. A young girl in the movie theater uniform came out of the building and got into the ticket kiosk. Hurray! There's going to be a movie after all! So I went in as well and found out that Narnia was playing at 1:30 pm.

The good news was that there was a movie; the bad news, we had two hours to kill. We decided to make a quick trip to Washington, DC. There was no traffic to speak of, so it would take us hardly 15 minutes to reach downtown. We hand't gone into the city at all since we arrived and it would be good to see all the monuments, museums and yes, even the federal buildings.

After a whirlwind tour of DC and a viewing of all the watery, hazy monuments that flowed down our windows onto little rivultes on the streets, we headed right back. Lunch had to be taken care of. We headed to a Thai restaurant, the only one that was open in the mall across from the multiplex. The only other guests in the restaurant were a family of four, decked in all their Christmas finery. They must have just finished Christmas church services.

Lunch was the usual green curry/yellow curry items with a dish of Phad Thai thrown in. It was delicious. We had a view of the ticket counter from the restaurant and we could see a crowd building. It was time to go.

Once inside the movie theater, we headed for the last row of seats and pretty soon there were enough movie goers for families to have to split up and sit rows away from each other. Right next to us was a Middle-eastern family and most of the other audience members looked like they did not have anywhere else to go on Christmas Day either.

As the movie progressed the irony of this situation was not lost upon us. Here we were, in this temple of entertainment, gathered together to watch a tale of the triumph of good over evil, of sacrifice, forgiveness and of the savior rising from the dead.

What is a sad dream?

Big N woke up this morning and said he had a really tough time falling asleep last night. Finally, he fell asleep around midnight (a bit of an exaggeration) after he'd had a sad dream.

What was the dream, I asked.

It was about a monster who could not scare anyone, he said.

Crying at the Movies

It was pitch dark in the small Odeon Theater in Washington, DC. The movie had ended, the screen had gone black, but there was none of the creaking of seats, the quiet conversations or shuffling that usually marks the end of a movie. Everyone was rooted to their seats. The only sound audible was the sniffling of a hundred noses punctuated by a few sobs here and there.

Finally, as the movie theater staff came in to clean up the popcorn cartons and the soda cans and bottles, people slowly rose out of their seats and filed out quietly, many still sniffling and sobbing.

The movie was Life is Beautiful (the much more mellifluous La Vita e Bella in Italian). We had all laughed, shook our heads in wry understanding and become tense as the father, played very endearingly by Roberto Benigni, desperately tried to save his own life and that of his young son and tried even harder to save his son's innocence in a Nazi concentration camp. Benigni's antics had kept our spirits up and at the edge of our seats for much of movie. Even his character's death towards the end had evoked shock, may be a little bit of sadness, but not the kind to bring forth tears.

It was only when - after the allied forces had liberated the camp - the young boy suddenly came upon his mother on the road to their town and had fallen into her outstretched arms screaming in joy at having found her at last that tears started pricking the back of my eyes. As mother and son hugged and fell on the ground laughing and crying at the same time, we had all cried, our tension released at this sudden, surprising and happy development.

The reasons why I'm lachrymose at movies are various. Sometimes it's because the character whose voice speaks to me the most loudly and clearly is going through an intensely sad experience; sometimes it's just the connection at a very basic level between two characters - where one shows an act of kindness towards the other, for example; at other times the tears are brought on by an intense feeling of relief at the resolution of some conflict.

The movie I cried hardest at was Cinema Paradiso in the scene where Salvatore finds out that the old reel operator (the projectionist) at Cinema Paradiso, a movie theater in a small village, had carefully spliced together all the bits of film lying on the projection room floor and made a reel for him. As a young boy, Salvatore had begged the projectionist to give him the bits of film but the projectionist had steadfastly refused. Salvatore grows up, moves away to the city and loses touch with small town relationships and values.

He comes back to his village one day and discovers that the old man is dead but has left something for him. It turns out to be the reel. As Salvatore watches the reel with tears rolling down his cheeks, you see, through an adult's eyes, how absurd it was to have wanted the bits of film. Spliced together, they make no sense. But the reel is a symbol of the profound emotional connection between an old man and a young boy brought together by their love of movies. With enormous affection and love for the young boy, the old man had taken the trouble to make something that he knew Salvatore, even as a grown man, would appreciate.

Then there was Boys on the Side in which Robin, Mary Louise-Parker's character, is dying of AIDS and Jane, Whoopi Goldberg's character, sings her Roy Orbison's "Anything you want, you got it." Of course, Robin can't have anything she wants because she's dying. The scene is made more poignant because Robin and Jane start out being crabby at each other but then reach the kind of mature understanding that everlasting friendships are made of. Suffice to say I bawled.

Munnabhai M.B.B.S. is another one of those bawl-worthy movies. The movie had me in stitches for the most part, but certain scenes suddenly brought on tears, such as the one in which Munnabhai impulsively hugs a janitor who's been having a bad day.

Father of the Bride evoked a rivulet of tears when the father, after several desperate attempts, is unable to connect with his daughter before she goes off on her honeymoon; Veer Zara, when Veer pulls out Zara's anklet from his pocket and Zara pulls up her skirt just that little bit to show she's been wearing the other one by itself for all of the years they've been apart.

The thing is I never cried at movies, and would stare, fascinated, at any one who did. As a teenager, I couldn't understand why any one would cry at movies. Didn't they know that movies were not real? That so-and-so is not really dying?

I really couldn't tell you why all that changed or exactly when. Perhaps, as you grow older, your repertoire of emotions grows and you are more able to appreciate, understand and identify with a broader range.

Whatever the reason, my tear glands are getting a lot of use these days.

T + L launches T + L South Asia

Travel + Leisure, one of my favorite magazines, launched its South Asia edition this month.

According to the Editor's Note, "Sophisticated and experienced travellers from Karachi to Kathmandu and Colombo to Chennai now have their very own edition to bring them the best new destinations, travel trends and up-to-date news.... You can look forward to seeing fresh and unexpected itineraries in the region and abroad, a selection of luxurious and unique travel experiences and the most user-friendly information to help you plan your adventures."

The glossy travel magazine filled with exquisite photographs is a sight for sore eyes, but I wonder, Why launch an issue with a South Asia focus? Is the focus on South Asian destinations or is the focus a South Asia clientele?

The first issue contains a cover story on Goa, "Exploring Goa, Its Heart, Soul and History", by blogger, novelist and journalist, Sonia Faleiro, a story on Kochi, "Jewel of India", by Tad Friend, a story on the latest "designer dens in Delhi", by Monalika Namchoom, a story on fashion accessories available in India, and Anindita Ghosh's piece on The Imperial in New Delhi. Other than these, small items in the Reports section on Paparazzi, a new restaurant in Bangalore, a Salvatore Ferragamo store in Mumbai, a heritage hotel in Kathmandu, a luxury yacht in Male and accessories from Mauritius, a roundup of four spas (in Uttaranchal, Chennai, Mumbai and Udaipur) round out the first issue's coverage of South Asia.

The rest of the magazine is given over to other international destinations such as Africa, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Armenia, Paris, London, Orlando, Rome, Middle East markets, etc. that you might find in a Travel + Leisure magazine if you picked one up in the US.

I'm sure the American or Australian readership of T+L magazine will be as or perhaps more interested in Faleiro's nicely done story on Goa accompanied by warm and loving photographs by Prabuddha Das Gupta and will equally enjoy Friend's wonderful commentary and Overgaard's scintillating photography (check out the one of coconuts laid out to dry to be crushed for coconut oil) in the Kochi article.

At Rs. 150 per copy, the South Asia version is as expensive as its American counterpart (in terms of exchange rates), but a tad more exclusive in that it is a tiny part of the vast and populous South Asian market that can afford the price. If there is even a little doubt as to the magazine's intended audience, it is banished the moment you turn to the page on the fashion accessories - there is a Louis Vuitton scarf for Rs. 12,500, Louis Vuitton sandals for Rs. 34,000, a straw hat for Rs. 1,790. You get my drift.

The magazine's initial print order is apparently 80,000 strong and judging by the ads in the magazine (around a quarter of the 160 page magazine is filled with ads for high end products, including quite a few pages advertising T+L magazine itself), many advertisers have reposed faith in the reach of the magazine.

As you make your way through the issue, you conclude that the intended reader is a South Asian resident, the one with a lot of disposable income and an appetite for high-end consumables. And such a reader will not rest satisfied with traipsing around his own backyard, now, will he? Hence the alluring descriptions of a Byron Bay in Australia and that tiny vineyard in Provence.

One hopes, however, that having the luxury of producing an entire magazine focused on South Asia will prompt the publishers to look beyond the clichéd South Asian destinations and overrun hotspots. It would be a great pleasure indeed to open the magazine, flip through the pages and never have to read about Bali.

You Really Should Not Read Bill Bryson in Public Places

I had ignored the warning on the cover of Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island. "Not a book that should be read in public, for fear of emitting loud snorts", said a blurb from the The Times' review.

I was reading it not in any ol' public place, but in one of the very busy lounges at the Frankfurt international airport. There was not a chair to spare as far as the eye could see. Passengers were milling about, the chairs, stacked closed to each other, did not even lose their warmth as one passenger left and another took his place, there was a steady buzz in the area from many conversations - in short, it was as public as a public place could get.

I had started reading the book a couple of days earlier and was now almost at the end, trying desperately to subdue a snort that had started at the pit of my heaving stomach from exploding out of my nose.

I really should have heeded the warning because I am, very famously, given to snorting when laughing.

I had valiantly suppressed a rather long stretch of giggles until then, only the gentle shaking of my body, the swishing noises coming out of my mouth and tears running down my face betraying my helpless condition. In the end, it was no use. The snort exploded any way. Before I could recover from that one, another one followed and then another.

I put my head down, resting my forehead in my palms. That was no help at all. I stole a quick glance around my immediate vicinity. There was a Scottish woman talking in earnest to my husband about her trip, her lilting Scottish accent only slightly eroded by years of living in Canada. That was it. I couldn't take it any more. I slapped the book shut and rushed to the bathroom to compose myself. Five minutes and repeated washing of my face later, I made my way back to my seat and picked up the book. I wasn't done yet.

I picked up where I left off, with some trepidation, but I could not stop myself.

Bryson's trip around Britain is coming to a close in Glasgow, Scotland. As he is wont to do in all of his trips at the end of a long day traipsing around town and wandering in museums, Bryson fancies himself a drink and a sitdown at a pub. What follows is entirely to blame for the snort fest.

He enters the bar, which he describes as dark and battered and spies two "larcenous" looking men sitting together and drinking in silence. He waits at the other end of the bar to be served but no one comes out for a long time. He does all the things people do when they're trying to express impatience - he puffs his cheeks, drums his fingers on the bar, and "makes assorted puckery shapes" with his lips. Then follows some brilliant-as-usual introspection on why we do the things we do when we're waiting for someone. He adds cleaning-of-nails-with-thumb-nail to his routine, but still no one comes.

Eventually I noticed one of the men at the bar eyeing me.
"Hae ya nae hook ma dooky?" he said.
"I'm sorry?" I replied.
"He'll nay be doon a mooning." He hoiked his head in the direction of a back room.
"Oh, ah," I said and nodded sagely, as if that explained it.
I noticed that they were both still looking at me.
"D'ye hae a hoo and a poo?" said the first man to me.
"I'm sorry?" I said.
"D'ye hae a hoo and a poo?" he repeated. It appeared that he was a trifle intoxicated.
I gave a small apologetic smile and explained that I came from the English-speaking world.
"D'ye nae hae in May?" the man went on. "If ye dinna dock ma donny."
"Doon in Troon they croon in June," said his mate then added: "Wi' a spoon."
"Oh, ah." I nodded thoughtfully again, pushing my lower lip out slightly, was if it was all very nearly clear to me now.

Then the bar man comes out and he's in a foul mood.

"Fucking muckle fucket in the gucking muckle," he said to the two men, and then to me in a weary voice: "Ah hae the noo." I couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement.
"A pint of Tennent's please," I said hopefully.
He made an impatient noise, as if I were avoiding his question. "Hae ya nae hook ma dooky?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Ah hae the noo," said the first customer, who apparently saw himself as my interpreter.

"Interpreter" was where I had sunk my forehead into my palms.

You might say that this passage is the written version of slapstick, and I might agree, but it is also a sterling illustration of why Bryson's books exist in that rarefied atmosphere reserved for wildly successful and popular writers of travel memoirs. I am certain that this is not a faithful rendition of what transpired in that bar, but, as he says, his writings are faithful to his memory and perceptions of that day, and give the reader a wonderful sense of a place - which is what I'm looking for when I crack open a travel memoir. If I want straight facts and a report of what a city is all about, I'd reach for a travel guide.

Bryson's books are a heady combination of many factors, each one of which, on its own, is praise-worthy.

He conveys facts in terms that help you grasp them instantly (for example, in Down Under (also published as In a Sunburned Country), while rendering facts to illustrate how scantily populated Australia is with its population of 19 million, he compares it to the fact that China grows by more than that amount each year). He approaches all the things he sets out to see with an endearing sense of wonder - he might end up being disappointed in them, but he will hardly hesitate to tell you that.

He leaves himself wide open to all experiences, pleasant or unpleasant. His enthusiasm and appetite for travel - which after a while can approximate the daily grind - are nothing short of infectious. His books are filled with passages resulting from insight into and introspection about the human condition, a virtue we could all do with a little bit more of. To top it all, all this is conveyed with a remarkable sense of humor and comic timing.

I'll leave you with this passage from Down Under. Bryson is listening to cricket commentary on his car radio on a lonely drive from Canberra to Adelaide on Sturt Highway. Ironically, you will need to understand cricket to enjoy the point of view of a man who was born and grew up in a non-playing country.

After two whole pages of some rather insightful thoughts on cricket ("there's nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry", "I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way", "It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distration" and many such gems), including a passage in which he compares cricket to baseball for all his American readers, he carries on.

Neasden, it appeared, was turning in a solid performance at square bowel, while Packet had been a stalwart in the dribbles, though even these exemplary performances paled when set beside the outstanding play of young Hugh Twain-Buttocks at middle nipple. The commentators were in calm agreement that they had not seen anyone caught behind with such panache since Tandoori took Rogan Josh for a stiffy at Vindaloo in '61. [A sentence which conveys Bryson's perception that the bowling run up is long.] This was repeated four times more over the next two hours and then one of the commentators pronounced: 'So as we break for second luncheon, and with 11,200 balls remaining, Australia are 962 for two not half and England are four for a duck and hoping for rain.'

I may not have all the terminology exactly right, but I believe I have caught the flavor of it.

Indeed.

Call for Papers: Book Titled "Women: Balancing Home and Profession"

If you are interested in writing an article for a book titled "Women: Balancing Home and Profession" to be published by ICFAI University Press, please contact Sukhvinder at the following address at the earliest for details:

sukhvinderUNDERSCOREmATyahooDOTcom

Some Memories Haunt You

Growing up, our radio occupied the pride of place in the family rooms of the various houses in which we lived. The radio was a wide, rectangular, wood-paneled Phillips model with gray serrated knobs for dials and square, off-white, push down buttons for the different wavelengths. Ameen Sayani's voice filled our home with his dulcet tones and simple commentary introducing beloved songs from Hindi cinema.

My aunt (my paternal uncle's wife) was a gold medalist at the state level in Carnatic music. My maternal grandmother played and taught the veena and the harmonium. My father and another of my paternal uncles broke into "Lambodara, Lakumikara" at the drop of a hat.

So there was no way I was going to escape from having to take music lessons.

Being the first grandchild on my mother's side, everyone was in awe (rarely justified, I will confess) of my supposed abilities at numerous activities. Singing was one of them.

My mother found a Carnatic music teacher for me when I was in fourth grade. We lived in Tumkur then (we moved every two years to a different town going wherever my father's work with a bank took us). My classes were in the evening, after school.

The teacher's house was about ten minutes away from our house by walk. His house itself was very modest. My teacher's family owned two cows and they supplemented their family income by selling the milk. The cows were tethered to the right side of the front door.

Inside, in the main room of the house (the "hall"), they had a large wooden vessel sitting on the redoxide floor and a long wooden stick resting in the vessel for churning butter out of buttermilk. The wooden stick was tethered to a pole loosely near the top and about three quarters of the way down, and in the center, it had a rope that had two large knots on either end.

The process of churning the buttermilk with this contraption is really simple and if you did not have to do it every single day, even fun.

You stand with your feet planted firmly against the vessel and hold on to the rope with both hands with the knots serving to hold your grip. Then you pull on each end of the rope alternatively. The wooden pole spins clockwise and anti-clockwise repeatedly and churns the buttermilk. After a while, you see chunks of butter floating to the top.

If I went in early and if my teacher was not ready to take my class yet, I churned butter while waiting. Dipping your fingers in and popping a fingerful of freshly churned butter into your mouth is everything it's chalked up to be, I assure you.

The room in which my teacher taught me singing was on the first floor, up a very narrow and steep flight of stairs at the back of the house.

One day, as my teacher and I were climbing up the stairs, I spied the moon between the trees. It was a spectacular full moon, creamy against the starless, velvety sky.

"The moon is so beautiful! You've got to see it!" I burst out.

A nanosecond later, my heart dropped. I wished the stairs would just fall away and take me with them. I was so ashamed, horrified, aghast at my own colossal stupidity. It is one of those things whose memory makes you cringe even years later.

A long, awkward silence followed at the end of which my teacher just cleared his throat. As he reached the top of the stairs, he ran his left hand along the wall, reached the door to the room on the left and slowly ran his hand along the door till he found the light switch.

He turned on the light. It was for my benefit alone because it was of no use to him. He knelt down and felt around the floor under the switch for the mats. He handed me one, spread one out for himself, sat down with his back against the wall and asked me where we had stopped last.

The class began. But it was a life lesson I learned that day.

Romanies: The Forgotten Victims of the Holocaust

Hegel once said: "what history teaches us is that men have never learned anything from it". One lesson we must learn from the Porrajmos (the devouring), as the Romanies described their fate at the hands of the Nazis, is that there is one holocaust as the ashes of the Romanies mingled with the others in the ovens of the death camps. We lose our humanity when we arrogate to ourselves the exclusivity of suffering while diminishing the suffering of others.

[...]

By the act of denying or ignoring other holocausts, we rob history of its meaning and commit the folly of not learning from it.

C.R. Sridhar's very interesting and informative post on the Romanies killed in equal proportions to the Jews by the Nazis.

Travel Essay: Dreaming of Rajasthan

Given my experiences in and around Bangalore, I'm justifiably leery of road trips. Even so, when we were faced with the choice of waiting in an Indian Airlines lounge at the New Delhi airport for six hours for a delayed flight or getting in a taxi and driving to and reaching Jaipur within five hours, we chose the latter. Everyone (including the Indian Airlines customer service desk attendant who was happy to refund us the air fare rather than having us wait for the flight) assured us that the roads were good.



And they were. The roads were wide, very well paved, well maintained and devoid of traffic. Suffice to say it was one of the best drives I've had in India (the drive from Jaipur to Ajmer to Pushkar and back is equally good).

As we entered Jaipur around 2 pm, we caught our first of many glimpses of Amber Palace sitting majestically on top of a hill to our right.


Amber Palace

There are three ways to get to the top of the hill - by walk up a winding path, by elephant, or by car. With the April sun beating down on us and with me less than two months away from having a baby, we decided trekking up the hill was not the best option. And apparently, the elephants are mighty popular. They were all taken by 9:30 am - all twenty five of them!


An elephant gets ready to ferry people back down from the palace

Amber Palace is a wonderful combination of brute strength and delicate beauty. The kings and queens paid incredible attention to art and architecture within the walls. The walls and the exterior of the palace are themselves foreboding and somber. The road leading up to the palace is lined with imposing, ancient houses in which ministers and courtiers lived.







Once inside the palace, you will find that the structures are a marvellous coming together of form and function. There is an intricate, latticed vent through which air and water flowed to keep things cool - a sort of an ancient cooler,



lawns laid out in the design of a carpet for the viewing pleasure of palace residents,



mirrored and bejewelled ceilings and walls that retained warmth or rendered the room cool as the season demanded,


Yes! That is a ceiling!



and latticed fronts that served to shield the women folk from the men but at the same time allowed the women to witness all the action outside.


The eldest queen sat at the window in the center to throw flowers at the king as he entered the living quarters

There is one courtyard, a rather large one, flanked on all sides by what appeared to be separate apartments (each section was walled off from the other) that has a rather fantastic story that our guide took enormous pleasure in recounting. The king that built the courtyard, one of the Mansinghs, had twelve wives. Yup! You'll have to use your toes too for that one. And, he did not want any of his wives to talk to the others (even though some of the women he married were cousins). So he built this elaborate apartment complex around that courtyard, three apartments to each side. There were also watch points "manned" by eunuchs to enforce that rule and to make sure they didn't pass notes to each other. (This photo was taken from one such watch point.)

See what you can accomplish with inexhaustible resources? Why, you can even keep all your wives apart!


The Mansingh Courtyard

This outdoor hall used for musical performances brought on a sudden, intense longing for scallops. Wonder why.



As you may have noticed, nature seems to have painted much of Rajasthan with a single palate. Which is why I think the thing we most associate with Rajasthanis is - color. It is everywhere. It is painted onto the buildings,


The ultra-famous Hawa Mahal (another elaborate latticed front to hide the women folk

and it's most definitely an inextricable part of Rajasthani couture.




Umbrellas used in Rajasthani weddings. I thought they'd make cool parasols



The other thing that catches your eye is how ubiquitous camels and elephants are. Camels are like what cows are in south India. The elephants, we were told, are a vital part of Rajasthan's tourism and film industries. In fact, the day we visited the palace, there was a shooting going on with a few elephants thrown in (see the lawn carpet pic).







Can you imagine this rush hour? Traffic jam!

The Rajasthan tourism department has done some wonderful things to encourage tourism. The roads are worth mentioning again. At the palace, we could hear local guides jabbering away in German, French, Japanese and Spanish to their wards. Our guide went out of his way to arrange an elephant ride for my son.

We ventured out of Jaipur, by road again, to Ajmer to visit the Dargah and to Pushkar to visit the only Brahma temple in the world.



The Brahma Temple
I must say, the most striking thing about Pushkar was the clothes available for sale there. They were many, many shops dedicated to clothes, almost all of them selling western fashions. It was obvious they were targeting the insane number of foreign tourists Pushkar gets every year and not only during the annual camel fair.

But even as I appreciated this "know your market" attitude, I was totally unprepared for this:

"Every Shoe Tells a Story"

We wear our hearts on our soles. "Shoes are the best indicator of how poeple are feeling", says June Swann, a shoe historian based in Northampton, England. To hear Swann tell it, you can chart the rise and fall of prosperity from the elevation of a heel; hear the distant rumblings of war in the configuration of a toe; measure social change by the thickness of a sole.

Every shoe tells a story. Shoes speak of status, gender (usually), ethnicity, religion, profession, and politics (the Russian writer Maxim Gorky said a strong pair of boots "will be of greater service for the ultimate triumph of socialism ... than black eyes"). Last, far from least, they can be drop-dead gorgeous.

Every Shoe Tells a Story, in September's National Geographic magazine. Do read. And take the National Geographic poll.

Are beautiful shoes worth the pain that sometimes comes with wearing them? Hell! No.

What say you, Shoefie?

Tagging Along

I've been tagged.

So here goes.

Eight things about myself:

1. Am a mom.

2. Am sleep deprived, but that's my normal state of being.

3. Am doing at least two things at once at any given time.

4. Am an extrovert, very talkitive.

5. Don't like talking to people about personal issues.

6. Love to cook once in a while for a lot of people, tolerate everyday cooking as a necessary evil.

7. Get grumpy if I have to tell people what to do.

8. Love to see new places.

I'm not going to tag anyone else, but if you do decide to follow this tag trail, please do and let me know when you do.

Girl Escapes From Captor 8 Years After She Was Kidnapped

What a story!

Yesterday Natascha's father, Ludwig Koch, said he recognised his lost daughter immediately. In an interview with Austria's Kurier newspaper, he said she looked in bad shape physically and had wasted away. "She has very, very white skin and marks all over her entire body. I don't want to think about where they came from," he said. After being reunited on Wednesday they had both wept. "She told me: Papa, I love you. And her next question was, Papa, do you still have my toy car?'

"I told her I did, and we had never given it away. We still have all her dolls as well."

Career Women's Houses Are Dirty, and Other Male Delusions

There's a bit of a brouhaha on the Internet over an article published on Forbes. The article was originally published on August 22. The following day, Forbes took the article down. A few hours later, the article was back up on the site, but this time right alongside an article with a counterview.

What was all the fuss about? Well, the article in question, written by a Forbes.com news editor Michael Noer, is titled "Don't Marry Career Women". That should explain it all. Right? But wait, there's more. The title is merely the tip of the iceberg. The article itself - in which rocky marriages, husbands' ill-health, dirty houses, dysfunctional kids, divorces, extra-marital affairs and lower rates of childbirth are all blamed on working women - is priceless.

In support of his assertion that men should not marry working women, Noer quotes many "studies". However, in many instances, the author's paraphrasing of the studies, or the quotes he uses, talk about "individuals", "spouse", "people" and not about women specifically. Here are a few examples that Noer ropes in to argue that career women are more likely to cheat and run away with someone:

• When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase they'll meet someone they like more than you.
  


• According to a wide-ranging review of the published literature, highly educated people are more likely to have had extra-marital sex (those with graduate degrees are 1.75 more likely to have cheated than those with high school diplomas.) Additionally, individuals who earn more than $30,000 a year are more likely to cheat.
  


• "I also find that the incidence in divorce is far higher in couples where both spouses are working than in couples where only one spouse is employed," Johnson [who "examined data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation"] says.
  

It is baffling that the author relies on these statements to conclude that only working women cheat, run off, have extra-marital sex and are responsible for the rise in divorce rates. In a similar vein, Noer makes an argument about "labor specialization" - if both spouses work, the household suffers. Again, the argument should not and does not translate to mean that women should stay home.

Furthermore, people - men and women - will cheat if they are so inclined and if the opportunity presents itself, whether they stay home or go out. What about spouses who stay home and are exposed to the mailman (or mailwoman), the fedex man (or woman), the pool boy, the baby sitter?

The essay is chockfull of other "insights" into marital relationships.

• Households in which the women work are dirty, he says. Really? Is it any surprise? This is a reason why men should not marry career women? And is this really a problem? Where are the men in the equation? Do they really expect the house to be spic and span? If they really do (which I doubt - someone should go check out some bachelor pads and see how they stack up on the cleanliness scale), why not pick up after themselves, take the trash out, mop and dust a little, eh?
  


• Husbands in households in which the women work are more likely to fall ill, he says. Are men really such babies? Did anyone check to see if the women in households in which the men work are more likely to fall ill? No? Why not? Because women are expected to take care of themselves, but the men need handholding and need to be taken care of or else they fall ill?
  


• Husbands will be unhappy if their wives make more money than they do, he says. Well, all the men need to do is to tweak their attitudes a little bit. How about feeling happy that the family is earning more money? How about feeling proud that your wife is earning more than you?
  


• Wives will be unhappy if they earn more money than their husbands, he says. Well, don't worry Noer. This character flaw won't last long. I suspect this feeling stems from having a crabby husband around and women will stop caring what their husbands think or feel if their illogical behavior lasts long enough.
  


• If women quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy, he says. Sure, there will be some sadness. There's bound to be unhappiness over lost friendships, over the loss of professional connections. But that's life. Priorities change when kids arrive. But is this a valid reason not to marry a working woman? That's a myopic view if I ever saw one. And what about the unhappiness a non-working woman may feel that she doesn't work? Does this not count?
  

Just in case the men reading his essay are horrified and are thinking they will never ever marry, Noer exhorts men to marry. Do marry, he says, because marriage is positively correlated to higher incomes for adult men. How wonderful! If you want to make more money, you want to be happy, have children and children who are well-adjusted, stay healthy and have a clean home, marry. Please do. Just follow Noer's advice and make sure the woman of your dreams doesn't have a college degree and makes less than $30,000 a year.

The puerile and inane ideas expressed in this essay are trumped only by Forbes first pulling the essay from the web and then republishing it with a counterview written by Elizabeth Corcoran, also with Forbes. If Forbes did not think that the essay would not stand on its own merit, why did they publish it in the first place?

And oh, before we go, please do read Forbes? You Suck. Lively and quite on point.

Comments

Comments are back on! Thank you for your e-mails and feedback on this topic. They all made a lot of sense. While I may not be able to reply to all comments, I do look forward to reading them. Thank you for reading and commenting.