In defence of sluts

‘Just because I’m bindass doesn’t mean I sleep around’, goes an ad campaign for Bindass TV Channel. Its part of a well executed campaign targeting the youth by speaking their language. Good for them. But why sleeping around must be spoken of in the same vein as drugs, atheism, farting in public and laziness beats me. Does sleeping around imply pre-marital sex, or promiscuity? Giving this college kid in the ad benefit of doubt, assuming she isn’t referring to pre-marital sex (although I suspect most of the people reading do), promiscuous females aren’t known to have higher chances of being terrorists, schizophrenic, heartless or broke either. The last time I checked our population disaster wasn’t attributed to urban sluts. So I don’t see why they must be targeted on bus ads like this. Especially by a channel that produces a show like ‘Emotional Atyachar’. Just because I’m bindaas doesn’t meant I want to test my partner by hidden cameras either. Breaching your relationship’s trust by trapping him on primetime TV is as horrible as cheating on your partner I would think.

The backstory of this print ad lies in the TV ad, where the college kid is dancing rather sensuously i.e feeling herself up in a nightclub, while a letchy guy checks her out. This is probably the most clichéd bit of the whole ad. More purverts harass you in a Mumbai local than a Mumbai nightclub. It annoys me how an ad that is otherwise so sophisticated and unconventional should melt into such a clichéd worldview here. For that matter even Bollywood has discarded such clichés for sexually proactive heroines, without portraying them as morally depraved.

I studied in a convent school and in a college where the ratio of females to males was 8 to 2, of which one would’ve been gay. As a result most of my close friends were hormonally driven girls, who went from obsessing over boy bands, cricketers to frantically searching for a touch & feel boyfriend, settling for any chump who came along. There came a point when emancipation meant plain and simple ‘wake up and smell the coffee’. The boy you spent months chasing just wasn’t interested and worth it. In order to assert yourself, you had to move on, date as many people as you could lay your hands on to regain your self esteem. Losing self-respect seemed like a good way of finding it.

All of them turned out fine. None of them are junkies, STD ridden or even repentant for that matter. They’re young ladies that the college kid in the ad would aspire to grow into. Many are on the threshold of settling down. Which is when double standards in all colours of the rainbow pop up.

Firstly there is the myth of a soul mate and the perfect love story. In this, the boy and girl roam around like lost souls, twiddling their thumbs till they come across each other and find happiness. Marriage, is a sign of that happiness. A wedding, is a celebration of that happiness. It’s unfortunate how one’s past; love and lust included get totally whitewashed, when probably each of those brought you a step closer to where you stand today.

I just finished reading a great little polemical book called ‘Sanskara’ in Kannada by Ananthamurthy. It’s about an earnest, learned virginal Brahmin who is forced to question his worldview after tasting good ol’ Kama in a dark forest. Experience, he realizes, is a neutral term. It is we who paint it in black and white.

It’s sad that all sexual experiences are understood as promiscuity, and that promiscuity has a gender. Slut has a gender. Think about it, what do you call the male equivalent of a slut? Playboy? Loose? Jerk? None of them come close.

For some reason, we seem prepared to accept women as sexually active, but sexually proactive? Pleasure seeking? Nah, that’s where our liberalism ends. There’s something worse than sex, which is actively seeking it.

P.S- there is also another ad where a bearded guys picture is juxtaposed with the line ‘Just because I’m Bindass doesn’t mean I sleep with guys’. I wont bother with that one, hoping the change in Indian laws will breed greater acceptance of homosexuality in India. Being gay isn’t the same as farting in public once again.

Incident of the lost ring OR morality of desperation

I returned to volunteering with street children at Churchgate after almost a year. Hamara Footpath is a community group that teaches street kids on the pavement itself, hoping to make the streets a learning environment for its kids. Luckily, managing manic toddlers gives you no time to get nostalgic, to marvel at how tall some have grown, how some girls have transformed into young women overnight. It gives you no time to offer your condolences to the street woman who lost her husband and son on Diwali, standing in a dark corner and watching. The key to holding a crazy 5 year olds attention, is to never let it slip in the first place. Be constantly on the move. Do anything, stand on one leg or jump, but keep the pace and keep innovating. Don’t give them the space to think or get bored.

But even with no time to think, a realization creeps in. Something that gets me down once in a while. Nothing has changed. We have been teaching the same things for 3 years. The kids are still treading on razor sharp edges of the city, begging, working, vulnerable to abuse and accidents. Who would’ve known at that moment that a week later, Sonu, the 10 yr old smiley kid who won my ‘Langdi’ (hopping) competition, would have an accident, fracturing her foot grievously.

So imagine this.

Its 8-30 pm. The city’s winding down, people are heading home from work and evening walks. You are winding down by teaching street kids the Macarena. You’re aware that it only takes a minute for the dance lesson to turn into a riot, and make steps as you go. You’re also aware that you are overwhelmed with feelings you can’t express.

And while you’re caught in this commotion of Macarena and muted emotions, a huge foreigner passes through your class on the street, and lifts each toddler in the air. The kids climb all over him in their excitement. He gives you a welcome break of 5 minutes. But when he walks away, you notice that the kids have gathered around something. You discover it’s a ring that must have slipped from the foreigner’s hand and pocket it. You call it an evening, and go ahead to catch up with other volunteers.

But the kids don’t leave you alone. They’re slyly putting their hands in your pocket, looking for the ring. You yell at them but it makes no difference. Soon their parents have surrounded you, arguing about f&*% knows what. They want to know what business you have taking a ring their kids found. They suspect it’s a gold or diamond ring worth thousands that will solve all their problems. They suspect you have the same idea as them, i.e selling it.

They make a group and follow you to the train station. A passerby asks if you if need help, and you politely refuse. To be accused of pocketing rings after 3 years of volunteering with this community, to be distrusted in your intent to find the ring’s owner hurts you. It angers the crap out of you, and you yell on the streets like a hooligan. At 9-30pm, Churchgate station, there’s no difference between you and the street people.

You’re sitting in a lonely compartment, watching billboards whizz by. You still can’t figure out what exactly do you feel, when you get a call. Lakshmi, the 60 yr old street lady you’re fond of, who’s never raised her voice at you before, starts hurling accusations. She is desperate. Lakshmi, who’s daughter found the ring lost her husband and an adult son few months ago, leaving behind her, a mother of ten, and a daughter-in-law, mother of 3. The men didn’t earn much, but atleast they shared the burden of uncertainty. They are shattered. And helpless. In such a situation, if your child finds a foreigner’s ring, you can’t be blamed for thinking god is finally showing mercy.

After hanging up, I pulled the ring out of my pocket. It was brass with something inscribed. It couldn’t be worth more than 50 rupees. If only the parents knew. I was desperate to make sense of the Latin inscription, find out what it meant. It seemed like a holy ring of sorts.

Bombay is an assault. Even to the lucky few who’ve lived a privileged life in it. When you land, the first thing to slap you is the humidity. The first people to hug you are your parents, who’ve longingly waited for you the while you danced in Turkey. In ten minutes, you are re-introduced to family gossip, insane traffic, insane pollution, with lepers and magazine vendors sticking their faces at your window at most signals. They are kids. And that detail kills you. If you were aware of the violence, the hardships they face, you’d probably have anxiety attacks at most traffic signals too.

I will be honest here. Living the glamorous life of a dancer in Turkey made me kind of homesick. Months in hotels made me realize the value of a kitchen, if only to use the kitchen sink to wash fruits. Surrounded by ladies in constant make up made me appreciate the simple luxury I enjoy. I can look like myself at all times.

So where does that leave me? I’m happy to be back. But just not prepared to encounter the complexities of Bombay life. In my world, when we find a lost ring, we search for the owner. When someone tells us otherwise, we give them a lecture on morality. But sitting in this train, the ground under my feet felt rickety, awfully unstable. It didn’t have the rhythm of a choreographed reality. If I had the energy, if I could give myself a reason to cry, I would have.

Over the next few days, I kept telling myself that there are no perfect solutions, and happy endings. You win some, you lose some. It’s important to know what’s worth losing, and what must be kept at all costs. I decided to give the ring to the family, so they can see for themselves that there are no miraculous solutions to their problems. To tell them that sometimes, goodwill is wiser than material gains.

While walking to Lakshmi, a week later, I kept reminding myself there are no perfect solutions. What I needed to focus on was the future. I was nervous. I was ready to yell. I was ready to fight. I was wound up. Luckily, Lakshmi wasn’t. She smiled when she saw the ring, and smiled when I asked her to promise she wouldn’t yell at me again. If she or her family yelled at me again, I would stop visiting. To cut the long blog short, her daughter-in-law Dhanno is keen to start working, something her husband never did. We’ve decided to help Dhanno buy knick-knacks to sell in the local train. The first batch will be bought by us, and the remaining hopefully with the profit she earns. We expect her to give us weekly accounts.

So, I apologize to the poor foreigner who lost his ring 2 Wednesdays ago. Inshallah, the spirit of what’s inscribed in them comes alive. Yes I don’t know what it means, but I have a feeling its something good.

For anyone interested in supporting Dhanno’s business venture of local train selling, or treating Sonu, the 10 yr olds fracture, let me know.

And thankyou Nihalf. Like the ring, you forced me to push the fences I built around myself.

dancing the Halay in front of a Doner shop at Sultan Ahmet

My Belgium performance, or the lack of it….....

A visa refused, first glimpse of Aya sofia, matured love, pumpkin dessert, 2 Indonesians, 1 Peruvian and me dancing in the lobby..............

Nine and a half hours before our departure for Belgium, with 90% of the my packing complete, pumped up on a good rehearsal, 4 of us fellows, (2 Indonesians, 1 Peruvian, and 1 Indian to be exact) were told that our Belgian visa didn’t come through. For no real reason, except our nationalities.

I have been travelling in Europe, US and Asia for more than a decade now. It’s the first time my visa was refused. I’m as surprised as I’m angry that such blatant racial discrimination still exists in our world, in the name of diplomacy. It takes me back to the 1920s when Gandhi was thrown out of a railway carriage in South Africa, even earlier to the 1800’s when Dadabhai Nowroji was thrown out of a hotel because of a signboard that read ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’.
And people thought we were primitive because we eat with our hands.

I didn’t see this coming for miles. Of all the visa stresses I have had in the past few months, Belgium wasn’t one of them. I had spent the last days before our Belgium tour daydreaming about Belgian waffles, fruit beer, chocolates and fries.
Infact, it is only after 2 months of practice, 2 days before Belgium that I began to enjoy dancing! For the first time in this dance fellowship, I knew the choreography well enough to switch off my thoughts and enjoy dancing for the sake of dancing. I had finally re-learnt the phosphorescent sea wave dance without looking at others for cues. I heard the soundtrack like half a dozen times till I could hum the song and do the steps.

There was another choreography called ‘dance of the skeletons’; a poetic reference to Cassandra’s prophecy that even skeletons will return to fight the never-ending Trojan war, a dance I had learnt but wasn’t selected to perform on stage. On the last day of our rehearsal, while all the chosen skeletons practiced the dance, I joined them from the margins. I enjoyed walking the robotic, break dance inspired walk of a skeleton. I enjoyed the collective rhythm, now also my personal rhythm.

So when the four of us were called into the co-ordinators office after practice, I didn’t consider it ominous. When Daniella said she had a feeling we’re not going to Belgium, I told her off for being pessimistic.

I am confused. Sometimes, when I think of the bliss I felt in my last rehearsal, the irony of being unable to perform in front of ten thousands of people feels almost exquisite. Like the taste of the Turkish dessert Kadak, pumpkin soaked in sugar, served with walnuts to be exact. I shall explain the reasons behind that simile few lines down. It’s taken me 48 hours to regain my composure enough to write, surely you can wait a few lines.

Sometimes, when I think of the last minute shock value of the moment, I feel like the hapless participant of a reality show. Or Anil Kapoor from the Bollywood film Lamhe to be precise. When he see’s the lady of his dreams, devastated by her fathers death, running towards him, he opens his arms wide. Only to see her skip him and run into another guys arms, someone who wasn’t even in the frame till then. In short, I feel jilted!

I don’t quite agree with the philosophy that everything happens for a reason. Pointless things are good for health. If you need a reason for everything you do, and everything that you couldn’t do, then you think too much.
48 hours after the disappointment of not performing in the biggest stadium in Belgium, after all the consistent effort a writer could possibly pour into her groove, I know one thing. When I do perform again, it will be for an audience that wants me.
There’s a paradoxical argument most Americans give, about how Americans didn’t want George W. Yet he ruled as president for 10 years. A similar argument was given to me now. The Belgians don’t have anything personal against poor people, yet their embassy refused ONLY the developing country dancers and admitted the rest.

I somehow can’t buy that argument. If the government of a country the size of my palm, with the population of a burgeoning neighbourhood, housing the EU headquarter; if the government of such a country doesn’t reflect its people’s wishes, then democracy is a lie! (It probably is, but rants aren’t known to make astute arguments).
At the end of the first day of moping around in our Istanbul hotel, Oya and Faruk, our adopted Istanbul parents took us out to their favourite fish restaurant for dinner. Which is when I tasted the fantastic Turkish orange and pomegranate juice, cake-like savoury Black sea corn bread and an ‘ooh la la’ array of desserts.
While drowning my frustration with good food, I couldn’t help but notice the silent glances exchanged between Oya and Faruk. The two got married in 1985. When I asked Oya how they met, she gave a succinctly answered how they began as good friends, he, the girlfriend she could gossip and depend on. Till one day they went for a meal and returned as lovers. Before I could extract the menu of this meal from them, Faruk corrected Oya in soft-spoken Turkish. By the looks of it Oya had got things grievously muddled up, forgetting the long distance and two boyfriends she dated in between. While Faruk, the astute historian of their love remembers the date of their dates, 30 years on.

Oya loves fruits, and Faruk his Raki. She enjoys heartfelt, honest conversations. And he loves watching her. I noticed this because I sat between them, and only Faruk noticed the unnoticed speck of food on Oya’s face and passed on a tissue to her.
Watching the couple; siblings, lovers, old friends at once sharing their favourite meal with us was a special moment. It sliced through my cocoon of frustration and anger. It inspired me to each twice as much dessert, especially the pumpkin heaven called ‘Kadak’ and masterfully subtle ‘helva’. My better half will be visiting me in a month, and I must have my list of top Turkish desserts ready by then. On our first anniversary, he took me on a dessert buffet. It’s the only part of the meal we agree upon.

While I am the oldest fellow in this fellowship, Maulvi, the Indonesian boy is the youngest. He insists on playing the Troy soundtrack everywhere we go, and practicing the folk dance ‘Halay’. That evening, Danny, my Peruvian pal and I found the music unsettling. While walking back to our hotel Danny threatened to cry if he played it again. And I just threatened him to stop. By the time we had entered the whirling motion of the revolving door though, I got this intense urge to practice my Halay, to fix one of my many ‘out of rhythm’ steps.

So I asked the gang of dejected nationals if they wanted to dance the Halay in our hotel lobby, since it needs lots of space. And they agreed. While the rest of our fellows were performing in Belgium, in a basketball stadium, we, the left-behinders performed the dance at approximately the same time in our hotel lobby at Taksim Square. A confused man by the lift tried to look as normal as he could while the 3 of us danced to music from Maulvi’s mobile.
Something dawned upon me, 2 things to be precise. A professional will sulk at the thought of not performing in front of thousands, an artist will dance none the less.

I am an artist.

A 19th century fort, a five star palace, the desert, lost loves and my first 3 performances…..

“Ban Shubhangi, danseciyim”. Hi, I’m Shubhangi, I’m a dancer. I practice this introduction many times in my head. But when I do meet new people, I just say, “Ban Shubhangi, Hindistan liam”. I’m from India.

After a month of training in the luxurious prison of Gloria Resort in the Turkish Mediterranean city of Antalya, we finally left the place to join the dance troupe ‘Fire of Anatolia’ in Abu Dhabi on world tour.
We had 3 performances, the first in the traditional Al-Jahili fort in Al Ain, the other two in the opulent Emirates Palace hotel. It is difficult to sum up my experiences in Abu Dhabi in a coherent way. Memories of the relentless, burning sun in the Arab desert make my eyes water.

It is a wonder how such an artificial, concrete monster of a city can leave me with such tender moments. I sunk my fingers into the city like a fistful of sand, and lifted them to see moments slip away, like streams of sand escaping.
Moments where faith meant having the balls to sit in a car just after you’ve had a car crash. (Go right back on stage after you’ve goofed up royally to be exact.) When the pervert seemed endearing because he spoke your language. Moments when putting magenta eye shadow felt routine. When the world didn’t feel as big as you thought, people closer than you had imagined. When the taste of dates stuffed with orange rinds bring memories of your love’s skin.

In life we give undue eminence to all our first times. Like first pay cheque, first bike ride, first smoke, first kiss you mistook for love, first time you ate sushi, first time you went clubbing, first rains, first time your teacher said you wouldn’t go far in life, first time you wore a bikini, first adult film you saw, first time you stayed awake the whole night to see the sunrise blah blah blah..
I wonder why though. To me the second time is always more interesting. You’re not completely clueless. Yet you don’t know what to expect. My second performance in Abu Dhabi is probably the most memorable. I screwed up. Everyone noticed. And I got an ultimatum.

Since these were our first set of performances, most of us amateurs were given relatively simple roles on stage. As the biggest amateur around, I was assigned a handful of invisible appearances, beginning with Troy’s bazaar scene where we admire the market belly-dancers and greet the army. In my second scene, Helen is welcomed into the Trojan palace. While all the oriental dancers entertain her with their shimmies and gyrations, I stand in the absolute end and fan the royal couple with a palm leaf. The third scene is the closest to dancing I got. It is the scene where Hector bids goodbye to his wife Andromache. She pleads with him not to fight the invincible Achilles, favoured by the gods. And while the couple are torn between duty and longing, while the gods are busy mapping Troy’s defeat, while Achilles is somewhere losing his temper or sleeping with boys and Paris is frolicking with another mans wife; the sea, is glowing with phosphorescent waves.

And I am this minor detail. Rather I am the third row, 5th person in this minor detail. As part of the phosphorescent waves, I had to wear a glittering hat and gloves and poke my head and limbs out of a 10 meter long cloth.
It’s looks like a simple dance, and it is. I wasn’t nervous about it. However, 10 minutes before we were to go ‘live’, backstage mayhem ensued. Heads and limbs were poked into the wrong openings of the 10meter long cloth, when the curtains opened, I found myself to be the 1st, instead of 2nd dancer in 3rd row. This meant that I couldn’t look to my left and copy my neighbor’s steps. Now, everyone has their unique way of learning. When it comes to choreography, I just follow someone else. And I practice it so many times I can do it on autopilot at the same time. I wouldn’t call this cheating. It’s just mirroring.

So you can let your imagination go wild and visualize 5 dancers standing in the 3rd row, wearing a single piece of cloth, with one dancer out of sync. How I wished no one would notice me. The role of an extra is paradoxical. Your job is to create the backdrop yet remain invisible. How I wished to remain invisible when I left the stage. In the group meeting after the show, Mr. Erdogan, the godfather of the dance troupe, looked in my direction and made gestures of snipping me off with scissors. After the meeting, his words were translated from Turkish for my benefit. One more mistake, and I’d never perform with ‘Fire of Anatolia’ again.
When you give something your best, and fail, it doesn’t make sense. You feel cheated. You feel like someone has snipped your beautiful globe into a square. It doesn’t make sense.

The next performance was in less than 24 hours. If I were the author of a self-help book, I would’ve put the nonsense behind me and believed that everything teaches you something. I would’ve resolved to practice, redeem my name and come out stronger.
I sulked instead. I decided I didn’t have enough time to relearn the dance without looking. I decided to skip next day’s performance, instead focus on getting in right in Belgium, our next stop on the world tour. So it came as a shock when the next day, 4 hours before the performance, I was told that I couldn’t do that.

It was also the time I was introduced to rule no.2 by Muge, our fairy god-dancer. “If you can’t perform immediately after you screw up, you can never perform again. It’s like sitting in a car after a car crash.” She also explained that the dance troupe needs each one of us, and I would be letting my team down if I didn’t perform.
Before I went on stage, I feverishly searched for all our senior dance teachers, their feet in particular. I believe that nothing is possible without the blessings of your elders, especially your gurus. At home, I always touch my parent’s feet before a big day, as they are my teachers, my deities, my everything. I didn’t bother explaining to my Turkish teachers why I touched their feet to my forehead with this inexplicable reverence, but they seemed to get the drift. Oguzhan Hocam, perplexed, would say ‘Thank-you’ each time I touched his feet.

Muge made sure that we were all in the right place this time. I made sure I didn’t goof up. After the show, Mr.Erdogan looked at me and gave me the ‘soyle-boyle’ look. My performance was so-so this time. Not entirely there, but nothing blasphemous either.
I’m not mature enough to comment on faith. So I don’t know if faith could have pulled me through from performance no.2 to no.3, but I know rule no.2 did. If you can’t do it now, you never can.

Which brings me to rule no.1. And performance no.1. Muge, like Brad Pitt from ‘Fight Club’ introduces us to a new rule with each performance. Before our first performance, we all, the group of 13 international fellows were selected to perform the various dances we had been training on for a month. A few got to be in all, while the majority got probably one. Many fellows were disheartened. Ironically, the ones disheartened were also the ones in most dances. It seems they wanted to be in all. While people like me, who were just in 1 or 2 seemed to be fine with the idea. It’s difficult for an ambitious person to realize that you can’t do everything, you can’t be everywhere at once. Whereas slow learning, or being the wrong size makes you humble. It makes you count your opportunities, at times even appreciate the ten fingers you have intact to help you count.

Such insecurities and the Aladin inspired Al Jahili fort formed the perfect backdrop for rule no.1. Professionalism. You may be exhausted, you may be messed in the head, may feel wronged or suffering from loosies for that matter, but when you go on stage, you don’t let anything betray your state of mind. You perform your role the best you can, backstage too. You must keep the group spirit high.
A profound, yet simple insight. It seemed to fit in with the simple yet magical setting. Imagine a cardboard coloured fort constructed out of chubby 10 yr old’s imagination, come to life in a desert. That’s Al Jahili fort. It seems like a place Aladin’s flying carpet could crash into.

Our first audience looked like an endless row of symmetric black triangles from where I stood. A princess from some royal family decided to grace our show with her presence. As a result the entire show was turned into a female only show in minutes, as royal lasses can’t be seen enjoying dance musicals with strange men. According to some dancers there was a lady in the audience with moustache and beard inside her hijab. I wouldn’t know. I was too busy looking left and right to copy the steps.

UAE and the violation called buffets

I love UAE. And I hate UAE. It’s always been a transition point between Europe and India for me, a patron of Gulf Air. It’s the other side of the Arabian Sea. The horizon for me, like most Bombay people, is a vision drawn with an Arabian sea below.

It is at the Gulf airports that one begins to pick bits of Hindi/Urdu and names like Laxman and Kuruvilla. Homely Biryani is as common as exotic Hummous. And there are penguins everywhere, males in their white Arab outfits and females in black. You can’t help but smile when you see a hairy, pot bellied man flick his dish dash back with the grace of a retired actress. You cant help but melt when you seen the same man rub his nose against another man as a greeting. And you can’t hide your surprise either when you see the length of fake eyelashes or heels adorned under a burkha.

In the past whenever I’d halt at the UAE, like most foreigners, I’d look down upon the vulgar artifice. Mock at their vision of a Star War skyline and continent shaped islands. It’s probably the only place that has traditional Arab styled theme housing alongside cowboy and Caribbean themes. They’ve made their own culture into a theme! Bit like having a Dandiya theme birthday party in Bombay.

But this time, after having lived in the bowels of artifice, i.e a 5 star European resort, landing in UAE almost felt like a return to reality. Living on buffets is far more vulgar, more artificial than you would’ve thought. It is like a red light district experience, where lust, not real taste or desire drives you to fill your plate. Buffets are absolutely unsustainable, ecologically and on principle. They encourage you to burden you plates, which lead you to either overburden your tummy or overburden the dustbin. The colossal wastage of food is criminal. For just a bite of 3 different pastries you waste the entire plate. All this passed of as sophisticated behaviour.

I was told it’s European culture to get a separate plate for each course, and a corresponding side plate if required. It’s uncouth to re-use your own plate. Also, the cultural hypochondria recquires you to have your own little bottled water. Unlike Asia, where people mostly eat with their hands, touching food with your fingers here’s blasphemous. Because each person is a source of germs. In India we look at the world as 6 billion people, and not 6 trillion germs.

5 star hotels, like airports and Mcdonalds are the same everywhere. If you didn’t have the city specified on the letterheads, you wouldn’t know if you’re in Turkey, Casa Blanca or Timbuktu.

Another tragedy called Buddha

The spa at Gloria resort has two big statues of Buddha greeting you at the entrance. 5 steps away is a billboard of some Indian spa treatment, which has a naked white man with a saree looking loincloth, lying on a bed. I loved the swimming in the indoor pool in the spa. But each day, the sight of the Buddha unsettled me.

Poor guy. He abandoned his family, starved himself, lived in the forest and went crazy to achieve salvation. To be reduced to a capitalist logo for indulgence, for spa treatments and herbal teas.

Back to the point

There are times when I feel I could eat hummous for the rest of my life. There are times when you can spot a city’s soul in its people, not buildings. There are times when the landscape from Al Ain to Abu Dhabi distils into pure sand dunes. Even in the cooling silence of an AC bus, you can’t sleep. You’re distracted by the mountainous dunes, the stuff daydreams are made of. You are transfixed. The desert begins where your thoughts end.

There are no germs here. No artificial trees and glass buildings. No doubts. No dreams either. No old friends, no new friends, no family, just you and the dunes.

And performances to look forward to….

Flirting with Istanbul by night

This is probably my favorite self portrait, you can see my silhouette in front of the bar. Despite the jet lag and dirty taste in my mouth I was super excited to see the Istanbul skyline- the Bosphorous, the Sultan Ahmet, Hagia Sofia, Topkapi Palace, world famous bridge connecting Europe to Asia; the monumental sites nestled among sleepy apartment buildings, half open windows giving a glimpse of urban Turkish life at 9pm. What I found the most endearing were the mellow yellow lights preferred by every household I could peer into. I was standing on the rooftop restaurant ‘Leb-e-Derya’ in Taksim, an area that prides itself as the heart of Istanbul.