Remembering grace

Someone who combined dazzling intellect and scholarship with humility, humour and a genuine curiosity about the lives of everybody she encountered, be it a housemaid or an XYZ chair of Weighty Studies at some Ivy League University or a troubled kid, is that rarest of rare human beings: a truly wonderful one.

Here's the obituary that captures Meenakshi Mukherjee best of all- Farewell, guide: to Ma'am, with love

And a comment that captures her erudition perfectly: "She never assumed the privilege of the pioneer..."

If only all pioneers were such.. and if only we'd just dropped in with that bottle of wine. And if only we could have met again after the last book; RC Dutt would have made such fun conversation. If only... Have fun, Meenakshi, wherever you are.

Knock me down with a feather

This bit of verse just slays me. It's a Molimo song of the pygmies of the Congo (I don't know what that is, but it's stuck in my head all these years), and I've long dropped out of touch with the chap who pointed me to it many years ago. Here it is..

"If you must be candid, be so beautifully,
For there is a man in the neighbourhood who is dying"

The Uniform Project

This impromptu resurfacing is solely aimed at plugging an old friend's fundraising project.

Read all about Sheena and the Uniform Project on HuffPo, the Guardian, Change.org and a zillion other websites.

All of this fuss over S has triggered just one pointless, existential doubt within myself: if she's classified as a "Brooklyn native", I certainly hope I am not classified as a "Bloomsbury native". Resident, not native.... we are 110% indigenous to South India (w)only. Besides, I am quitting my neighbourhood in 2 months for warmer climes in a warmer hemisphere.

V day

Watched an in-house production of the Vagina Monologues in March. I'd already seen Eve Ensler's HBO production, one snowed-in January night in Birmingham in 2003, chancing upon it quite by accident whilst channel surfing. It was riveting stuff.

The College does a Vagina Monologues production once every few years; the last one was in 2005 and I missed it. So when the V-Day posters sprung up this year, I knew that I wanted to see it. However, I am not all there these days and I tend to... well, forget, blank out etc. I've even got four white hairs, see. Or is it five?

I remembered 3 days before the show. Tickets, I was told, were sold out. I wrote to the director. She was all charm; I found mine just in time. I went in first day, first show. The company was great; I bumped into S, a Glaswegian journalist married to a Cuban who he'd met whilst living in Havana for 8 years. He's friends with TL, but we'd never really had a conversation. So we grabbed some beer, and hunkered down on some prime sofas to chat. He told me about Havana, since I am hoping to visit next year. I told him about Cuban diagnostic systems. We swapped notes about Santeria and Son. The girls came on, we settled back. It was great, in every way. A whole bunch of intelligent women, thoroughly enjoying themselves, which showed. Unlike TV, real people doing it had all the rawness and immediacy of passionate am-dram. I loved the Bosnian bit, because the woman doing it was actually Bosnian.

I wanted TYL to watch, but she couldn't get tickets. I've since been contemplating telling her that her company could think of an Indian production using Bharatnatyam, but felt that it would perhaps be a bit too explicit for Indian audiences.

I was wrong.

I saw this today. I am impressed. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

This doesn't mean that I am a feminist, as one person who reads this blog seems to think. I am no ist of any kind. At all.

Close encounters of the cool kind

Two things happened today. My supervisor came back after 8 months, chemo-radio finished tumour blasted, looking as chilled out and ice-blonde as ever, padding around in customary ghostly fashion in the usual kurti-drawstrings-socks-sandals ensemble. Suddenly things are looking up. I just wish the bloody woman had kept everybody in the loop, instead of vanishing without a trace with no return address or number. Gah and double gah. I mean, for fuck's sake, I thought she was fricking dead.

High on this and engrossed in Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania, I was leaning against a post outside King's Cross Station waiting for either the No. 45 or 46, when a Black Cab stopped right in front of me and a man hopped out. I looked up absently and behold! a certain Nobel Prize winning economist stood hardly 3 feet from me.

Needless to say, I stared. I caught his eye (not that he had a choice, my mouth was probably open and I was plonked right between him and the station).

I am happy to say, my dear readers, that my courtesy did not desert me. I dipped my head gravely, smiled and said "Hello".

So did he:-D!!

Amartya Sen was last spotted wearing a black mac and carrying a (was it brown?) leather suitcase, hurrying into King's Cross Overground Station at around 1830 GMT.

Unity in diversity

I have lived in Bloomsbury for many years, which is near the St. Pancras' church of the nursery rhyme in Orwell's 1984. As I was planning today's running route from Regent's Park back to Bloomsbury, I stumbled upon the Church website.

It said something striking:

INCLUSIVE CHURCH.net, A Declaration of Belief

We affirm that the Church's mission, in obedience to Holy Scripture, is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.... We acknowledge that this is good news for people regardless of their gender, race or sexual orientation. We believe that, in order to strengthen the Gospels proclamation of justice to the world, and for the greater glory of God, the Church's own common life must be justly ordered. To that end, we call on our Church to......... to celebrate the diverse gifts of all members......... and in the ordering of our common life to open the ministries of deacon, priest and bishop to those so called to serve by God, regardless of their gender, race or sexual orientation.

If you ignore the obviously religious bits, this is a rather remarkable and heartwarming assertion. It is a Church of England church, which is probably one of the most egalitarian and liberal religious establishments I have ever seen. I mean, they have women priests (hope that is the correct word), gay bishops etc. As far as I know, they welcome just about anyone inside their church, regardless of religion, unlike the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Churches. Rather like Buddhist temples, though I think Buddhists are the most tolerant of the whole lot.

I wish the Catholic Church, the Hindu religious establishment and the Muslim religious establishment had the basic human decency to say something. similar And as an Indian, I wish all temples, mosques and churches in India had something like this posted at their gates.

Now that would be a first step to solving a lot of problems.

Small pleasures

I have got through a lot of my days in the past 6 months by "muddling through somehow". Not efficient, but still effective.

My therapist (I have accquired one recently, hurrah! Now I can move to California) thinks I am mildly depressed or dysthymic. Dysthymic is a medical euphemism for miserable, btw. It means nothing and everything, depending on your state of mind on that particular day and how you look at the whole business of 'labelling' the human condition. There are many reasons for the misery, from my supervisor falling ill (leaving me effectively to sort out a project/programme grant: impossible) to my not being able to get along with a deeply unpleasant clinical boss. My psychotherapist thinks I set impossibly high standards for myself. And I can't figure out how to fix that one.

And so I muddled through today. But feeling miserable for no particular reason is not nice when it's time to go to bed.

So I tried the chanting machine in the bedroom, which is an Indian metal box with a chip inside that plays 16 different mantras. This usually helps me unwind.

Then I remembered that someone had asked me for a reference. So I settled down in the living room to write it before I went to sleep. Since I couldn't hear the mantra machine from here, I reached over and turned up the music system, which had been playing softly for a while . Almost without thinking.

The music that came through seemed vaguely familiar.

And as I listened, my whole mood lifted. It felt as if a happy smile had materialized from somewhere and settled on my mind.... soul?

It was Ravel's Bolero.

I hadn't heard it for years. And it is absolutely my favourite piece of classical music.