Since A and I have known each other for so long we sometimes joke that we have partially brought each other up. It’s funny seeing how your own personality affects your own partner’s and vice-versa. A has made me a far more organised person than I ever was (of course he will claim he sees no evidence of this!) and wrought some very important emotional changes.
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Many of you said very nice things about my name. Thank you. I wasn’t too happy with it as child. A lot of people thought it was inauspicious (think of the Mahabharata). Someone I know once had a daughter, many years after I was born, and was told by the astrologer to name her with a name starting with “U.” She wanted to name her the same as me but her family didn’t let her on the grounds it was unlucky.

Then there was this woman who teased me by pronouncing it wrong and said “neechey uttra!” Some of my Tam and Mallu friends and relatives still pronounce it that way, so I am forever climbing down (but Yesudas does a brilliant job here in the madly named Danger Biscuit). And of course in the UK hardly anyone can pronounce it all, which often results in my giving people like taxi firms my surname as my first name. I think I am just growing into accepting my name.
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I went for a long walk in one of London’s woods with a friend who is Druid. The fact that London has woods in the middle of the city and Druids is wonderful. Also that I have druids as friends is wonderful!
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Have landed in India and am in happy/mad rush. The guy next to me on the plane announced on the phone to his friend at the start of the flight, with great glee, that he was going to drink lots of Bacardi. Which he did. And then snored for the rest of the night as I had expected .

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The trends this season are shoulder pads and sequins (I TOLD you the 80s were coming back, said R2 triumphantly, while picking me off the floor of Primark).

Now scattered sequins in moderation are all right, but I don’t want to be sheathed in them. As for shoulder pads, they look all right on scrawny shoulders like mine, but I remain dubious about them. The one dress I liked and that fitted me like a dream round the waist bunched and ballooned all around the shoulders. Looked like I had two sets of wings.
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We have a terrible relay habit of unsettling everything at night. About five minutes after the lights are off and we have finished reading and have snuggled down, and I have arranged the duvet just as I like, arranged A where I want him and heaved an end of day sigh of relief, his voice pipes up in the darkness announcing he has to go down and check that the door is properly closed. Much heaving and moving of duvet takes place. He goes down, astonishingly discovers that the door is closed and comes back. We settle down again. Five minutes later he announces his hands/lips are dry and he needs moisturiser. The cycle of heaving starts again…by which time I am awake and need to go to the loo/start reading again.
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I am getting ready to leave for India and am tying up all sorts of loose ends. Music sir is making me sing every morning on the phone/skype and my frail self is finding that exhausting. His favourite word/command is “again.” But I love it. All ye in India please inform me about temperatures in Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. Mumbai will, I know, be pleasurably and predictably hot, just as I like it.
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Am reading SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique by Lata Mani and enjoying it. Hope to manage a review before I leave. But if you see it in a bookshop and questions about religion and secularism trouble you, buy it. The essays are very short, easily digestible and very meditative. Unlike the heatededness that can surround the discussion of these issues.

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I have had enough of besura and unprepared children belting out Carnatic music on youtube. Adoring parents, please note, they are not “prodigies,” whatever your shruti challenged ears might believe.

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Every instrument is lugged along to accompany various singing hopefuls on TV contests, mridangam and tablas, veena and harmonium, but the Tanpura, which should be the backbone of this orchestra, remains too “heavy” to transport. The electronic box is enough for all.

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I am really glad to be back to my own space, my own study, my own bathroom, my own kitchen, my own bedroom and my husband. Now to somehow shift of all these to India.

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This year:

Heavy Weather and Hailstorms

Diwali gives one the excuse to make everything look romantic and fulfill fairy tale fantasies!
Magic Staircase

Dining table and lights

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Being an inquisitive sort of child I demanded an explanation from my parents. The reason I was given was that (quoting from wikipedia) “…in some societies including India, it is customary to use the left hand for cleaning oneself with water after defecating. The right hand is commonly known in contradistinction from the left, as the hand used for eating.”. This made sense to me.

It followed, I concluded, that lefthanded people like myself would in fact clean ourselves with our right hands, and eat with our left. At the next family function an elderly relative attempted to swat my left hand away from my leaf plate and force me to eat with my right hand. I said indignantly, disgustedly and (this is the important bit) loudly “but I wipe my bum with that hand!”

Pandemonium occurred.

Really glad she caused that pandemonium and retained her left-handedness. A was left-handed too. But his teacher at Mother’s International school in Delhi beat him until he wrote with his right hand. Fortunately he left that school, but writes with his right hand to this day. If I ever find out who that teacher is, I will take out a contract on her life.

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