maya ravan @ nova

Last evening I spent watching Shobhana and her troupe of 7 perform the dance drama - Maya Ravan..: a fund Raiser for AID India. This venue was a last minute addition to her schedule and with just 3 weeks of advertising and organising the MD AID chapter did a good job of getting the house full. Some stood the whole 2 hour show as tickets were oversold.

And what a show it was!

Shobhana has always been a good dancer and an award-winning actress in Malyalam. [I specify as her telugu roles weren't really what she was meant for.] Versatile as she is and the maturity she exhibits on stage is remarkable. Of course she has the added advantage of being born into a family of dance and arts, but then good genes can only take you so far. What I admired in the performance was her creativity and how she broke away from the norm in bringing Bharatnatyam to the common man.

When you think back, arts all over the world have been privy only to the educated, and the rich. The language used, the medium and forms was hard to understand by the common man. This way of breaking down classical steps into more layman’s language by using Bollywood music, the western classical, flamenco, while still holding onto the raaga, the bhava and the taala requires a certain grasp and understanding of not only the art but to consciously force an open mind. To quote my favorite line “think outside the box, the options are limitless”!

Yet, anyone can choreograph and direct dance. I can too, and if you’ve dwelled in it for a while, the confidence drives you to experiment. To make it commendable and make even the staunchest of connossieurs nod their head grudgingly, as well as get the ignorant to tap their feet requires a certain dedication, foresight, skill, sensitivity and command.

Maya Ravan is a good blend of all of the above. Shobhana’s portrayal of Ravana is at best simple. Therein lies the depth. Kids in the auditorium laughed when she smirked and goofed as clumsy Ravan, a few clapped with joy when she portrayed Ravan beaten in the war kid his wife with a wine goblet, the way she’d shrug her shoulders, swagger on and off the stage as the haughty ruler. The lift of the eyebrow, the smile, the lust in the eyes as Ravan tries to grapple with Seeta, the mockery, the taunting, the anger, the quizzical confused looks…

The nuances are plenty. The mannerisms such that though theatrical seem common placed. Like you could be doing that in your living room with a Poker buddy, with your wife to make her laugh, to cajole, to win her over when she pouts, while brusquely showing off your muscles and establishing your place.
The English dialogs - Indian English add a whimsical authenticity to the show. Naseeruddin Shah, Milind Soman, Suhasini, Jackie Shroff, Revanthy lend their voices. Funnily, apart from Naseeruddin’s gravely voice, I could not place anyone else’s! Maybe because they spoke English, and I was expecting to hear Suhasini in Tamil or Telugu, or maybe I was just too taken with Shobhana’s body language that I couldn’t distract myself any other way.

One can’t help flash back to the farce that’s called SethuRam project now, as we watch on celluloid the monkey brigade build the bridge. The imagery as the clip played for us, was strikingly beautiful.

I absolutely loved her AR Rehman’s rendition of Vande Mataram: depicting India in all its glory, as dancers moved across the stage enacting the various facets. The epics, the history, the great people who walked our roads, the modern world, the fashion shows, the pagaentry, the India as the world knows now. The crowd clapped in glee, when all dancers lined up as seated in cubicles, and dramatically enacted us [yes, u and me] behind our laptops furiously clacking away at the keyboard. Vande Mataram could not have ended any better than with a portrayal of our good old cricket, as a dancer rolls on the floor with her hand raised in catching an imaginary catch, Shobhana raised her hand to signal ‘out’ amidst laughter and claps. Defining moment I tell you!

The costumes are new, colors subdued yet defining. Some wondered on how they could change a whole outfit under 2 minutes, all I can say is “it’s an art, and it comes with practice” :)
Her troupe is remarkable, and each one deserved a special mention and applaud.

As a dancer myself, it is with excitement that I watched as the familar steps and body movements could be intermixed and produced with such sringara, such bhava, and such novelty. Refreshing.

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you can click can’t you?

Early this year at my yearly physical my physician told me something I never expected to hear. She felt 2 lumps during the b.r.e.a.s.t exam. Of course me, ever the cool cat, lay there processing the information casually as if she was talking about the weather. For reality sakes, she even made me feel it. They are the size of a pea, she pointed out. How appropriate that women break everything down to the cuisine, I grinned and she laughed back. Not until I got dressed and sat across the table did the gravity of it sink in.

Lumps?
Really? Me?

After hearing some statistics and probabilities, it came down to what I had to do about it. Medically. She asked me to monitor it and come back within a month. I left in a daze. Denial rocks. I informed the husband as a btw piece of conversation while cooking dinner. Did I mention he’s a cooler cat than I am? After a hmm.. and okay and silence, we addressed the issue late in the night. We took the doc’s advise and decided there really was no point fretting or thinking about it until next month when by freak luck the lumps could disappear or grow and either case shall be handled as deemed. Then.

The next 30 days were spent normally. If checking various websites and forums at least once every few days, reading up on all things lump-related, mammogram, ultrasounds is normal. Then there was the issue on the worse-case scenario. The baby was not 3 yet, the daughter was just becoming a teen and I had a son teetering on youth and still the child in most regards. It seemed uncanny that perhaps by sheer destiny, history would repeat itself. My maternal aunt was diagnosed with cancer of the intestines at exactly my age and with her children roughly the same ages as mine. She passed away wasted after 10 months of suffering and agony. I clearly remember her last day. I was 10. Her baby then is now a handsome successful IIT-alumni and is making his own destiny on the west coast.

It didn’t seem to make any sense letting anyone else know, and so didn’t.

Month later, I was back in the same room on the same table. Nothing had changed. Get the mammogram and the ultrasound done asap within the week I was told grimly. I came home and made the appointment. The earliest was in the middle of the day 4 days later.

On the day, after the kids were in school and the baby at the sitter’s, husband at work, I drove down to the place. It was like going for a spa treatment. Same pleasant atmosphere, with women of all sizes, shapes, colors each hiding behind a magazine. Women behind the counter in white, laughing, and going about business - assistants nicely manicured and coiffed escorted each to a smaller sized cubby with fresh smelling robes and fluffy white slippers. Such guile I thought to myself scanning a Cosmopolitan, as a red haired lady sat across me chatting nineteen to the dozen on the deals she made on Zappos. A plastic surgery magazine lay on her lap and was showing off before and after pictures of women enhanced.
If only one had any left once we leave the place I thought morbidly.

Going through a mammogram is like getting caught between 2 cold hard metal pieces squeezing the living daylights out of you with no escape in sight. It’s a slow torture. You get clamped up slowly and as u let out small howls and ouches, the assistant would only mutter ‘I know sweetheart, just a little bit more” and then more pressure. As you think you are going to pass out, she eyes her artwork suspiciously from all angles, runs behind a partition, checks on the monitor, and God forbid she can’t see the mass, we repeat all over again. And so I was repeated. Twice. And then there are angular views that one must submit to because of the shape of the offending organ. So 2 times 2 and it seemed like eternity before I was allowed to escape the dark room.
Fighting back tears I swore, I wouldn’t let drop, I was put back in the spa room again to wait for the next test. Ultrasound. This I’ve gone through enough times - it’s messy and cold, but doesn’t hurt or pinch or pull. I can handle it. Or so I thought.
The old doctor was neither considerate, smooth, nor gentle. He flattened, plucked, and shifted the wand in various angles and pressures, and just as I could take it no more and screamed, he said “But I don’t see anything.” As if to believe his own touch than the machine’s image, he prodded me around and again declared with almost a hint of resignation “no, I don’t feel anything. Maybe they melted away.”With a shrug, he left the room saying they’d communicate with my primary.

I felt numb.

I sat in my van watching a toddler break free from her mom and race across the parking lot and the mom sprint after her. It reminded me of my own probably napping at the sitter. That’s when the tears hit and broke free. I broke down in the lot, face buried in my hands hearing Reshma sing ‘Badi Lambi Judai’. Irony rules my life.

Relief, pain and fear.

It was not pleasant, but if I had to go through it again, I would. Coz what I felt in that parking lot was worth it all for the anxiety, uncertainty and risk of 4 weeks. Despite the discomfort, the test proved that I was not going anywhere, I still had time on this earth to do what I want and can. Life is certainly a gift.

If we could help give that certainty and assurance to one other woman, a mom, a daughter, another human being, and all it takes is a click you would, wouldn’t you? Please click on the link below and do the needful.

A favor to ask, it only takes a minute….

Please tell ten friends to tell ten today! The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on “donating a mammogram” for free (pink window in the middle). This doesn’t cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.Here’s the web site! Pass it along to people you know.

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

I don’t check stats [more on that later] but wordpress has this handy little feature that shows the links that a visitor has clicked on from your page and keeps a count of it. Hope to see this link reach a nice number. Thanks.  :)

Update 5.35 pm: 

I have 9 comments, 44 views of this post, 201 hits to the blog, yet only 9 clicks to the breastcancersite! Cmon lurkers!

Update 9.04 am est on oct 4th:

Yesterday was 9 clicks and Today [WP starts the day at 8pm est for me, GMT and all that] it is up to 11. Grand total of 20 mammograms given out!  THANK YOU!

 

A scholar for a dollar

Education has always been priority. It would always be for most of us who come from modest beginnings back home where it’s dinned into our head that we are nothing if we are not capable of a decent degree. A consequent pride in the knowledge that’s either ingrained or gained from hours of pouring over books and the speed at which we are able to reproduce facts and figures. A school of thought (no pun intended) where it is told to you a zillion times that the letters behind your name is what defines you. Especially if you are a girl. As was the case in our family.

I, for one am fortunate to have gotten my more than fair share of knowledge that comes out of a rigid curriculum and also to be able to explore to a certain extent of what excited me and what perhaps I could later on build a figment of a career. Some was thrusted on me, some I accepted willingly, but fortunate enough I was to have had that opportunity, to at least have tried. I think back and indeed there are no regrets, just unfinished dreams.

But then again, I look at articles and appeals like these, and I am ashamed that I even complain.

Moving west has in fact de-sensitized most of us to the actual state of many children in various pockets of India who are struggling with learning, struggling with not having the ability to dream and dream big. For many parents who want to see their kids get ahead of them by just 1 measly step. To not work the same fields they do, to not bear the same load they are, to be able to sleep well at night and not wonder if there would be a square meal the next day.

I think back on the few times my dad and us individually and as a whole have helped in small ways the various children, orphans and young men and women who accosted us on the streets and home with an ernest appeal to part with a little cash to further them in their climb towards freedom and independance.

My dad was big on studies. Having spent most of his youth bailing out his siblings without enrolling in a proper school/college while his dad forsake the family fortune and time behind freedom struggle and leaders alike. The value he placed on his sacrifices and his youth broke free with his undying passion for all things scholarly, and pedantic which later on provided the impetus for him to be where he is today. For us, his daughters to be where we are today. He is a self-made man and I am proud of whatever little I have inherited from him. What I also am amused is how much of a chord it strikes in me when I am hit by such appeals. He would always go out of his way and spare a bit of cash or buy a book for the fellow in need, even despite not having much to spare. In a very simlar vein, I feel strongly about wanting to help folks who deserve it. To go that extra mile when it comes to want to be a part of someone’s future. I’d rather help long-term than providing short-term happiness as in the next meal, a shirt that he’d outgrow, or a home that he might just leave or be driven from.

Today is Teacher’s day. Back home, while it was a day when we’d get together and put a skit for them, treat them and basically not study. It was a holiday of sorts, to goof off with all permissions intact. After I left school, I’d think back fondly on some of the ones who did make an impact on my life.

Ms. Susan John’s elegance, and how she made Biology the most exciting thing ever for me.
Ms. Rajyam’s strictness while dealing with Math, and how I was in awe that she could provide answers from the top of her head, and do the logic in thin air.
Ms. Rao’s undying love for Hindi poetry and the thrill with which she discovered that I did have a flair for it after all.
Ms. Mathews keen ear and sophisticated taste for English lessons and literature.
Ms. Vishalam’s way of relating all things Physics to life. How much I’d hated it up until she made me do a whole project on Optics, and who knew, I’d actually major in that?
Ms. Brinda’s who was more like a friend to me than a teacher. We could talk about boys, periods, and sex, all during Library and she’d explain it all with patience and clarity.

DR. LG, Dr. GS, Dr. SKR, Dr. KRS, Dr. BS, DR. SG, and a few more whom I admire. Brilliance and wisdom rolled into one as each shared with me little snippets of themselves while I skipped through 4 years of school.

I’ve wanted to be like each of them in a little way possible.

Ms. Susan’s elegance, Dr. GS’s calm, Dr. LG’s depth of things neuro-ophthalmic, Dr. SKR’s knack of differential diagnosis, Ms. Vishalam’s mothering, Ms. Brinda’s art of staying friends with anyone irrespective of age differences, and not the very least, my own dad’s spirit and zeal that he carries on no matter the odds and walls he runs into.

So when a friend sent me a mail asking me to see what best I could do, I agreed right away. As a tribute to ones who did help me become part of who I am, and also in my small way to give back to the community and being instrumental in perhaps forging a kids’ dream through helping the teachers. AidIndia is a worthy organisation and apart from having a friend who’s actively involved in the Boston area and back in India as well, I have regard and trust in the way they run things.

To drive home the point, watch this video, and come back here! [Don't ask why i couldn't embed, it just didnt work for me!]

Now tell me you didn’t smile and you didnt reflect back on your own days of wearing crisp cotton uniform and doing PE exercises, of covering notebooks with brown paper/newsprint, of being scared of the teacher’s hand/eye, the exam-fear.
Now tell me you don’t want to share that with scores of other kids out there.

I clicked on this link and made a small contribution of what I could afford now.

So what would you like to equate your contribution to?

A pizza dinner?
That cool golf bag you’ve been eyeing?
Tickets to the opera?
A ball Game
A wii?
An iphone?
Pink snazzy heels?

It doesn’t matter what you did, as long as you did take out that little plastic card and typed in the numbers.

Thanks y’all :)

 

recycling or donating anyone?

Ok, so how many of you have donated or recycled something that was originally yours?

How about all those salwars and saris going over to your maid’s daughter or aunt
The bicycle that you once rode now handed off to a cousin
Recycled paper to do your bit in protecting the trees and the woods
How about Nike shoes, the old pair of glasses, jeans and shirts that don’t fit you anymore to the RedCross

If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, let me ask you this, have you ever recycled a deeper part of you? No, am not talking about thoughts or ideas but something more valuable and physical, tangible.

Like given Blood?

Or registering at your local DMV as an organ donor.

One day we’d al move on anyway, it’s just a matter of time and the how, so what’s the most that you could give away that belongs to you and to truly you. Your organs, the ones that make a difference to someone else while useless to you.

My personal experience with donation you ask?
From my short stint as an optometrist at SN, I’d seen at least 2 opaque corneas a day. If enough people donated their eyes after they passed on, we could make a difference of light and day in that many more people’s lives. I’ve personally fit corrective lenses on corneal transplant patients and the joy in their face and the gratitude they mumble through tears is, simply put -touching.

I remember one sweet kid of 10 years who came in with a disorder that essentially dimmed the opacity of the cornea. As is with visually handicapped people, his hearing was amazing and he’s pick up on everything I spoke [in hushed tones while discussing his case] and flash me back with intelligent questions. I then also remember him coming back for a post-operative fit and as I slid his lens on, he jumped off his seat with joy. He looked at me and said ‘Thank you sister, mein abhi cricket khel sakta hoon, hain na? Mama, mein ab Tendulkar jaisa batting kar sakoonga nain?’ as the mom sobbed into her pallu. I was silently choking back my emotions and trying to remain “professional” as I scribbled off diagnoses onto his chart.

I know that probably sounded like a script off of any Bollywood movie, but ironically art does imitate life.

Since that incident a good decade ago, Ive been regularly donating at our local drives, and my drivers license has a little heart on it. Having medical background, this made absolute sense to me and I couldnt think of a better way to give back on my way out. Up until now I have never felt the need to urge, convince or justify my stance or belief.

Switching tones, the purpose of the post which has been on my draft board for over a week now was to why a compelling piece of news made me want to write on a sensitive and personal topic as this. I wanted to throw my 2 cents on it.

Blood is more universal that we can ever imagine. Thank God for the sameness that connects us all.
Unfortunately, we are also made of our own little genetic matters, in the face of it, it does matter where you are from and who your parents were, and which race you do belong to. Those little markers play truant with decisions on who gets what part of you when you are out there offering it. That alone makes us want to reach out to our own folks - the bond of connection being in the tiny mapping of DNA and deep within that says we are all Indians.

Vinay is a representative of the many who are waiting in hope that they find a match. The statistics are astounding and moving. All it requires to register is a swab. If you get picked, then the procedure is detailed here.

It isn’t as scary as it sounds and if you have ever been nicked or sticked in your arm, leg or bottom, this is just a little more sore than that. I know am registering myself this weekend.

Stop for a minute, think of the benefit of this small gesture, the nobleness and practicality of it, and am sure you’d agree it’s worth the time, distance and the thought.

 

dance fundraiser in DC

A group of dance schools are putting up a collaborative show in Maryland - on May 12th 2007. This is a fundraiser and all proceeds go directly to the listed organisation - Aasai.
I am familiar with the dance schools and if you are remotely interested in philanthropy, education, art and/or Indian dance, your evening would be well spent. There are different classical styles as well as fusion so it’s not all heavy on the ears and eyes.
Please contact the oragnisers below for your tickets.

NATRAJ SCHOOL OF INDIAN DANCE & AASAI
Presents
“MATHRU DEVO BHAVA”
(Salutation to Divine Mothers)

A Cultural Extravaganza of Indian Dance Styles

Performed by various dance schools in the Washington area

FUNDRAISER FOR RURAL SCHOOLS IN THE VILLAGES OF TAMILNADU, INDIA

Saturday May 12th, 2007 @ 5:00 pm at
Gaithersburg High School
314 S. Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877

Directions: From 495 take 270 N, take Exit 8 towards Shady Grove Road East, turn north onto 355 (S. Frederick Avenue), turn left onto Education Blvd. at the third light, the school will be up on the right

Tickets: $15, $25 (under 5 yrs – free)

Your tax-deductible contributions are payable to ‘AASAI’ - a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. AASAI accepts matching gifts from all companies/employers that support charitable organizations. To find out if your company/employer has a matching gift policy, please contact your employer.

Ticket info.
Daya Ravi: 301 – 528 – 5851 www.thennangur.com

Lakshmi Swaminathan: 301 – 266 – 0876 www.aasai.org
Janaki Rangarajan: 703 – 462 – 9558

Donations are Welcome!
Anandhi Rajesh: 571 – 213 - 6935