Category Archives: Musing

For the love of reading

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loveofreading2I have always been a reader, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a book in my hand, reading anything and everything I came across – even newspapers wrapped around purchases! Growing up in India in the eighties, there were not many opportunities to read books, unless you had access to well equipped libraries or had relatives who were willing to buy and bring back books from the west. So most people depended on school libraries with public libraries being more of a joke than anything else…I used to haunt my school and college libraries, so much that I used to use up my quota of books and then ask/beg friends to lend me theirs too.

for-the-love-of-books-logo-smallComing to Singapore and then finding out about the library system here was akin to water to a thirsty man in a desert! Initially I used a family member’s card and then quickly got mine done as well. When BB & GG were born, I only waited two weeks before I went and got their own library cards. We’ve been borrowing books since then. GG loved reading right from the begining, but BB took a bit of time to start reading fiction. His choice of books were restricted to non-fiction, especially those relating to cars, trains and planes! His reading choices have improved a lot these days though!

The last few weeks, I’ve been reading a lot about how reading habits have been declining in Singapore over the years, especially among the younger generation. The 2015 National Literary Reading & Writing Survey showed that only 44 percent of Singaporeans read one or more literary books in the past year and this is when ‘literary’ has been given a very broad and generous definition!

3fa12852da5900ddc02651b3bd4d0df2I guess smartphones and other digital distractions have been a big contributors to this decline. I can see this even in GG & BB. Even though we regularly go to the library and borrow books, their phones still seem to have a stronger pull than books. Sometimes I have to take away their phones and get them to read instead. I don’t emphasise physical books, even an e-book is better than not reading at all!

The benefits of reading are well documented and widely established. Research has shown that not only does reading improve grades in school, but also opens their minds to a world beyond their own, one which allows them to go places and meet people they would never have met otherwise.

Schools, especially primary schools do make reading compulsory in schools. Every school has time set for reading before school starts (about 15 minutes before the bell rings) and some secondary schools also continue this, where children can read before school starts. However, this, according to me is already late. The love for reading should start earlier, maybe in pre-school! Preschools should read to and get the children, especially the older ones in K1 and K2 (5-6 years old) to start reading on their own with teachers helping them, in both English and their Mother Tongues. This will help the children develop language fluency at an early age and get them to love reading as well.

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Hopefully this will change and people start reading more….As for me, I am glad I live where I can indulge my love for reading anytime and anywhere I please. My only hope for BB & GG is that they continue to love books and reading and read more and widely and experiment with different genres and authors.

What about you, do you live to read or read to live?

 

 

 

 

In My Hands Today…

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A Home in Tibet – Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

When her mother dies in a car accident along a great highway in India, far from her country and her family, Tsering decides to take a handful of her ashes to Tibet. She arrives at the foothills of her mother’s ancestral home in a nomadic village in East Tibet to realize that she had been preparing for this homecoming all her life. Everything is familiar to her, especially the flowers of the Tibetan summer. She understands then the gift her mother had bequeathed her: the love of a land.

A Home in Tibet is a daughter’s haunting tribute to a mother and a homeland. A story about the love between a mother and a daughter who only had each other as family and refuge, it gestures to the journeys made by those exiled from their lands, and the dreams of daughters.

Life’s Current Bucket List

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I keep thinking of life in and after May when I will be unemployed and I have decided that I am going to start keeping a list of things I want to do, something like a bucket list. These are all things that have been in the back burner for a while now while I was busy, but now that I will have the time, I plan to start working on them. Knowing me, I know I probably won’t do all, I am hoping I get to accomplish at least 75% of them….

The list, which may change as I go through them, is below and I am putting it here to make myself accountable. I’ve sorted them into groups so that it makes more sense to me. they are in no particular order, in fact they are as they occurred to me!

Self Improvement

Study: Aha, caught you on this right! While I do want to study based on my interests, what I meant by study is to actually do BB & GG’s coursework. With no income, I don’t have the money to spend on tuition, which is very expensive for secondary school. The hourly rate is in the rate of SGD 100 and with more subjects where they may need help, I definitely can’t afford this. So one of my goals is to start studying their syllabus and then teach them. It can’t be that difficult right? I mean I have a Masters degree and this is high school stuff! But whom I am kidding, I’m terrified and fear that I’ll mess up. But this is something I need to do and will do. Humanities should not be too difficult since I was a humanities student during college, it’s the maths and science subjects which terrify me!

Self-Learning: Speaking of studying, I keep getting emails from Coursera and I am quite tempted to take up some courses. I will do that as well as learn about photography from websites and videos. I’ve wanted to take photography courses for ages now and this is the right time to do it I think. I also want to learn how to put on makeup. My usual daily make-up is moisturizer, sunscreen, some CC powder and kohl pencil and a swipe of lipstick. I have no clue on how to apply other makeup and this seems to be a good time to learn. This is a fun thing to do I guess and also as GG starts growing, I am sure she will start wanting to experiment with makeup sooner than later and if I know something about it, it’ll make her learning so much simpler.

Investing: I have been fascinated with investing for a while now. I am student of Economics and Finance (though my studies seem very far away these days) and I plan to use this time to really study investing. I am going to study the Singapore stock market for a while and then based on what I have learned, I plan to invest a hypothetical SGD 10,000 on some stocks and track them for a few months. If I manage to get even 10% returns, I will do this with real money! May not be as much as my hypothetical money, but it will be a start.

Online Shopping: Another thing I’ve been trying to understand for a while now, but not gathered the courage to do much. I do buy online, but am always wondering if I have gotten the best deal? I did some work on e-commerce a few weeks back as part of my work and saw the power of the Chinese e-commerce sites, especially Tabao. So I want to research these sites and see if it’s really that worth it and try to do some online shopping!

Writing: I’ve always written and I think one of my long established dream is to be a published author. I’ve never really taken steps to do this and this will be the time I actually do something about it. My interest is in books and stories for children and I want to write some stories and send it to a publisher to see if they are good enough. I don’t have any creative writing background and so will also use this time to research on this – if there are some online courses, I am going to take them, or even if I can find something in my local universities. I also want to research and write some decent articles for this blog.

Work: I am also contemplating starting something on my own – there was an article on the Straits Times this weekend on freelance work and to me it seemed like a sign. I’ve signed up in one of the freelance sites I’ve used in this company before. While unemployed, I need to see if this will be to generate some income.

Exercise and eat well: My perennial favourite! I want to start walking again and this time I have a good reason – to beat my diabetes once and for all! I want to start walking again on a regular basis and eventually move to running. This time I plan to see if this works for me or no (I’ve tried running before but couldn’t keep it up) as well as eat well and avoid mindless snacking. I am also very seriously planning to go without sugar. I’ve seen some videos on what sugar does to you and this is quite tempting. It will be easier if everyone does it together, so I am going to have to brainwash my family to be in it too!

Home Improvement

Organise: Do a thorough clean-up and organizing of the house. I have tons of ideas and want to get rid of stuff (I am a certified pack-rat) as well as do some organizing projects.I plan to split this room by room over a period of time so that it does not get too overwhelming and I lose steam before I finish.

Housekeeping: I’ve never been a great housekeeper, preferring to do all the other, wonderful things you can do with your time. I’ve pretty much always relied on outside help to do things I don’t like to do and this is what I plan to change this time around. I plan to research the best way to clean my home and also figure out the best way to schedule my cleaning, such that with an initial effort but not much after that, the house is in good condition all the time. I also want to do work I don’t like and get those out of the way. I have a very low ‘icky factor’ and this is something I want to work on.

Food: My cooking in the last few years has been mundane and routine. Once R leaves, this is another area where I want to improve in. R’s repertoire is quite limited and the children and S get quite tired with the same old dishes week after week. So I want to plan menus where I can do international cuisine, both which can be taken to school as lunches as well as slightly more elaborate ones for weekends and dinners. While I am decent cook, Indian cooking does not really leave itself to much baking skills. Add to the fact that we are vegetarians, so my baking skills are really sub-par. I want to use this time to really start baking, not only making cakes and cupcakes, but also things like quiches and scones.

So there you have it! A ton of projects to do. And since I have committed it to doing it here, I really hope this will help me be accountable to myself. Let’s see what I can accomplish and how long!

Growing up in Mumbai

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Matunga – for any Tambrahm in Mumbai, especially those of a certain age, the very word evokes the feel of home. Sometimes called ‘Mini Madras’, Matunga in what would be some where in the centre of what is the original city (as opposed to the suburbs) was probably the first place the initial immigrants, young, eager, bright and wide-eyed, came to from Dadar station when their trains from the south arrived in Mumbai all ready to conquer the world, with an introduction to perhaps, if they are lucky, to a relative (distant or otherwise), or maybe someone from the same village they belonged to, or even a relative’s relative!

While I am not sure if this is 100% accurate, from what I’ve heard from my parents and grandparents, most young Tamil Brahmin boys and men started arriving in Mumbai (or Bombay as it was called then) somewhere in the early forties, some years before India would finally throw off the yoke of British dominance and become independent.

Both sets of my grandparents arrived in Bombay somewhere in the early to mid-forties, luckier than most as both my grandfathers had an older brother already settled in the city, in Matunga as it were! If I were to probably measure the distance my paternal and maternal grandparents live away from each other, when they first arrived in the city, it should probably be a maximum of 1 km.

Matunga is the heart of the Tamil Brahmin community in Bombay and as such the roads are filled with the sights and sounds of temple bells and the smells of filter coffee and delicious food!

Temples like Bhajana Samaj, Astika Samaj and Sankara Math, shops like Mysore Concerns, Giri Stores and the row of flower sellers in the road outside the post office along with the vegetable sellers who have carts close-by are all hallmarks of the Tamil Brahmin community in Matunga! Who can forget the Ram Navami and Navaratri celebrations in Bhajana Samaj, the Diwali sweets that always were sold in the hall in Sankara Matt, the banana leaf sold by the vegetable vendors during any major festival, the gaggle of priests, outside the temples, the sound of the temple bells and sugarcane stalks just before Pongal?

When their families grew, both sets of my grandparents moved from their family homes and out of Matunga. But they both didn’t’ pull the umbilical cord too much and move far away. Both of them moved another kilometer away from Matunga in opposite directions actually, and that was where my parents were brought up.

So growing up, we lived in another area which was a fifteen minute walk from Matunga, which was in the periphery of our lives, without actually living there. We used to go to Matunga for literally everything and my mum still goes there atleast two to three times a week for her weekly ‘fix’. This area in Bombay is the lifeline for the community and even today when other mini Matungas have sprung up across the city and suburbs – like Chembur, Chedda Nagar, Bangur Nagar, Mulund, Dombivili, Vashi, etc you can still people who have moved away from Matunga come here on weekends to catch-up with family and friends, eat at childhood haunts and buy essentials which you don’t get anywhere else in the city.

Growing up, there was always this disconnect – we were Tamilians, but without the accent which is usually caricatured in movies and television and always had questions on why we needed to wear a bindi on our forehead or flowers in our hair. In my and my sister’s case, it was compounded by the fact we didn’t go to the school that most of our Brahmin friends and relatives went to (which was a school run by a Tamil trust where the language was taught as a second language)!

Growing up also we were quite insular. I would say this with the benefit of hindsight. Every Tamilan I knew at that point in time was a Brahmin – either from one of the districts of Tamil Nadu or from Palakkad (from Kerala who are called Kerala Iyers or Palakkad Brahmins). Where we stayed, while not in Matunga, was in fact another Tamil conclave, with almost all the 30-40 buildings in the area having a sizeable Tambrahm population each. My building had 19 flats and with the exception of 2-3, every flat was a Tambrahm flat! This was pretty much the case (the percentages being slightly more or less, with some exceptions) for the other buildings in the street I lived in. Even in school, my friends who were Tamil were Brahmins. In fact, coming to Singapore with its vast Tamil population was actually a culture shock to me as I had never seen so many people from so many Tamil communities and the temples were the biggest shock – I had not heard of all the different Gods that were worshipped there (all the temples I visited prior to this were my community temples or the other temples in Mumbai)

Since most of the community emigrated to Bombay around 60-80 years back, the dialect of Tamil, we speak is completely different from what is spoken by the community in places like Chennai and Singapore. Bombay Tambrahms have retained the words and cadence of their speech from all those years while communities in Singapore and Chennai have adopted more of the local language. So the Tamil we speak may actually seem strange to those who don’t speak like this! S used to tell me that they used to be made fun of in school when they spoke Brahmin Tamil, which is why his Tamil sounds more like how it is in movies while mine is the one they make fun of in movies!

Writing this post has made me so nostalgic. I think the next time I go to Mumbai, I will try and capture all the sights and sounds of the city so that every time I miss Mumbai, I have these to see and hear! Also this post has made me realise I need to pen down more about my life, so that GG and BB know what that was like….

Colouring for Adults: Have you tried it?

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There’s something so soothing mindlessly colouring, the only thing worrying you being whether you should be using red or carmine for this particular spot!

When GG & BB were younger, I used to print loads and loads of colouring pages for them, based on their favourite character of the day. In the process I also used to print some for me or used to sneak out some from their stash!

Even before adult colouring books became so popular, I loved colouring. But, and a big rider to this is that I only like to colour specific things. I love geometric shapes and mandalas and last week when I was cleaning out a cupboard, I came across a fat file full of mandala print-outs all ready to colour.

These days, these colouring books for adults are all the rage, the book which started this craze is Secret Garden which I hear has sold over 2 million copies since it was released in 2013. We see loads of such books in book stores, some even specifically themed. GG & I saw a Harry Potter coloring book and GG wanted me to purchase it for her! These books are quite expensive, retailing over SGD 35 per book and each time I see them and am tempted to buy, the price always puts me off!

But what is the lure of these books? Some people believe that the repetitive motion and confined space in which you have to colour triggers some kind of mental nirvana and gives you the peace of mind that digital devices distractions are forever chasing away. These help you to unwind and kick off the stress of the daily grind. I’ve since discovered that Carl Jung, the pioneering analytical psychologist often used colouring therapy as a means to get his patients to relax way back in the early 1900s and himself used to draw and colour mandalas every morning.

Colouring also trains our minds to focus, so that we do not go out of the line and live in the moment, which is getting to be critical life skill in our lives. It’s a given that colouring helps with fine motor skills because it requires both hemispheres of the brain to communicate and this activity improves fine motor skills and vision.

When I realized I could not get myself to buy the colouring books, especially since there were not many books which catered to what I like to colour, I discovered colouring apps! I can’t remember now where exactly I heard of them, but once I did, there was no stopping me. Most of these apps are free to use with in-app purchases. I’ve yet to pay for any, so keep reusing the same free prints that are available.

I downloaded a bunch of colouring apps and then deleted some of them almost immediately. Like I mentioned before, I prefer to colour geometric shapes and mandalas and those that didn’t have a good selection of those, didn’t make the cut and were deleted.

Colorfy is one where I where I mostly use the blank geometric patterns and make my own. This one has around 2 free palettes and a free daily palette which is usually shades of a single colour.

Another good one is Adult Colouring which seems to have a good mix of pages or books as they call it. Their free colour selections are also the most extensive, but sometimes the colours tend to overlap in palettes and it gets confusing after a while.

ColorTherapy is the last one I frequent. Again a good mix of themes to colour and this one also has a lot of festival-centric pages. Free colour selections are limited though!

All the apps above are from the Apple App Store. I do not know if they are available on Android phones and are free/with in-app purchases.