And we are off ....

The work to renovate and refurbish Rose Home has started in earnest as of yesterday - this will undoubtedly occupy a lot of my waking and sleeping time in the next few weeks but Adam and I have only been able to move this forward because we have had some incredibly generous donations from friends and corporates who understand the significance of making a difference. Please watch this space and pray and hope that all will go well. We are dealing with contractors, plumbers, carpenters- you name it. If you want to contribute please please do, as this is the time we need your help. Please go to 

http://www.salaambaalaktrust.com/   and or get in touch with me directly by sending me an email on
marina.marangos@gmail.com

The Home today

Child rearing in India

I am going to give you two examples, both widespread, but clearly there are others in between.

The one is a wealthy middle class family with three children. The family has four servants for the children alone, one child, the youngest, has two as he is a handful and needs ayas on a shift basis. These kids are woken, dressed, bathed, fed and taken to school, if they are of school age, and collected from school by the servants. They come home in the afternoons to a host of tuition ranging from music to tennis to maths. They barely see the mother or the father and I suspect that since they are not around much and the servants are not allowed to discipline the children there are not many boundaries set for them. Some children, by the admission of their parents themselves, are unable to feed themselves as they have always had food shoved into their mouths by exhausted and badly paid servants who for the most part are extremely loving and loyal to these kids.

The other one also involves three children, but this time the mother works on a building site and the three children, a child of about 8, looks after the toddler and the baby, while the mum carries bricks on her head and large bowls of cement. It is so labour intense. She earns probably the equivalent of 100 R ( $2 a day ) and brings the children to the building site every day. The kids barely have any clothes to wear so much so that in the winter months I was horrified to see how thinly dressed they were and I went out and bought them all warm clothes.Clearly they will not have the opportunity to go to school. The toddler plays in the heaps of sand and stones on the edge of the site and the baby is quiet and seemingly content in the arms of an older sibling.

Both, you might say, are lovingly reared within their own means but I see the seeds of complacency in the one and a certain hopelessness in the other. Or in reverse hopelessness in the first and resignation in the second. Whichever way you choose to look at it and there may be several , what I can say is that it is hard to build solid lives from such shaky foundations in either case is it not ?

Bollywood's Birthday

 April 21st 1913 was the date that Dadasaheb Phalke featured his film "Raja Harishchandra" at the Olympia Theatre in Mumbai. This was the first truly indian feature film produced.

Today Bollywood enters its 100th year and marks a moment when festivities, awards, commemorations and nostalgia will all take centre stage on the Bollywood scene.

There was no looking back from that date- Indian film production has gone from strength to strength.  It was only the other day when I was introducing Bhachain Patel whose recent book called "Bollywoods Top 20" celebrates  some of Bollywoods greatest stars through a series of essays. His book is a timely reminder of  20 of the greatest stars in Bollywood particularly those early stars of the fledgling industry. I read with interest the stories of how they rose to stardom as with the unassuming K. L Saigal and the more recent  Bollywood branding giant ,SRK. 

For anyone living here there is a must see list of Bollywood films. After asking some friends, the recommendations are :

Mother India 1957

Mughal el Azam 1960

Ram Aur Shyam 1967

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro 1983

My name is Khan 2009

Three Idiots 2009

Today India is the largest producer of movies in the world. The movie industry has come a long way in 100 years.

Marriages are made in Heaven

"In a thousand different ways God guides us through our lives .Who we marry is all up to Him. But there is nothing to stop us from lending Him a hand by filling the form below"

This is the wonderful heading to a Times of India advertisement for its Matrimonial Pages which caught my eye. The sub headings were Wanted Bride and Groom with respective age groups and then an unbelievably long list of specifics ....

Agarwal,Bisa,Brahmin, Chandravanshi, Kshatriya, Charasia ....these are castes ...

Then the religion / area Gujarati, Jain, Yadav, Agha Khani, Jehovah Wintess, Assamese, Bengali ....

Foreigners are all in a special category too: British, European, Gulf Muslims ....

Specific personal detail like disabled, widower, second marriage ....

and finally professions accountants , Architects, banking and business....

So once you have gone through all these categories believe me it would be as close to a match made in Heaven as it could ever be. There is even a Pay for 2 and get 1 free !

Not a bad deal for a life long partner.

Something about my thinking space

There is something about my thinking space which seems to attract all types of creatures.Distractions of a different kind that is for sure.  So while I was sitting at my desk this morning I felt a little tickling on my right foot. Silly fly I thought and looked down to shoo it away and found this climbing up my leg UGH

A couple of months ago it was a snake slithering from my box files next to my desk.

Mercifully it did not sting me and I live to tell the tale.

Walking T

I get more upset these days if I dont walk T then T does - she is getting old and is a little arthritic and sometimes I push her to go on a walk but invariably when we do it is always a smaller or greater walk of discovery. Yesterday was a greater one in my eyes because we came across this. It was lying in the undergrowth and my eye found it because of the colours and it lay still and motionless, so I picked it up thinking it might be injured but sadly it was dead. Isnt it just exquisite and for the twitchers in our midst this is a purple sunbird Nectarinia Asiatica.

Indian Post continued

For those of you who read the blog entry about Indian Post I have good news - a birthday card I posted last year for the 7th of January birthday has just arrived in time perhaps for Easter.

It clearly does work at times.