On the 7th day, it's still the same!

It's Sunday! For many it's a holiday and for others it's just another day that holds the same routine as the rest of the week. I fall into the later category and I know that this often elicits an "oh poor thing" response, but in truth I cannot imagine what different routine I could fit myself into, other than what I do each day as my normal practise!

Of course I often hear my self prattle on about "wishing I had a day off", but those around me know only too well that I would be completely disoriented and at a loose end without the structures of work that define my time. There are many like me who really enjoy what we do, and have assimilated both home and work as interfaced spheres that do not disrupt one another. Though the clock ticks longer on some days, it also offers a wider spectrum for multitasking that is magical in what it finally can accomplish as a result!

However nothing is ever effortless in this world, and so achieving a balance of co-ordination in which conflicting needs do not collide within such management continues to require an alertness, and most importantly, the ability to adapt and be flexible at all times. As a working professional and as a home maker I rely not merely on the prescriptive, but on the personal inventiveness that I can apply to solve and manage situations. Everything is possible if one has the desire to make it happen, and time has an amazing elasticity if it is valued and used correctly.

Let the unexpected in to your life too because with it comes so many lessons and I find I learn more about myself in such times. Life may not always be exactly as you imagined it, but if you get a 6 out of 10 score on your wish list, you have yourself a great deal going to be proud of. Also savour and enjoy life as you live it because chasing a Utopian dream may limit the possibility of examining a reality that has in fact much to offer.

I have lunched with you whilst writing this, and am off to my studio to finish a triptych painting titled "Pukar billi -billi. There is only a small detail left to finish within it, and so if the paint is dry, it is only a few hours work that remains. After which I will finish my packing for my trip to Ahmadabad tomorrow. In between these two things a multitude of other work will also get attended to.....like always!

Black or white.....?!

The fascination we have for lighter toned skin colour in India is pandemic in nature. You can throw a dart at any corner of the Indian map and you will find a prevalence of such attitudes rampant in that geographical location. Why we possess this fetish may churn up a variety of answers, but none of them are plausible for me. I would like to see this bias and bigotry laid to rest, especially since a large population of our society is dark skinned, and it is time for us as a nation to reclaim our pride for it. The greatest negative impact this has is on our girl child, as we repeatedly underline our preference for fair skin as being the epitome of beauty.

For me a perfect example of beauty is my niece Raji. She is the complete package of female specialness where beauty, intelligence, grace, confidence and the goodness of human spirit all come together and shine through the vibrancy of her personality. For me she is my ideal of feminine beauty as she tackles life with a desire to empower herself and define her independence through knowledge.

The television and bollywood stereo-type of fair skin as being the ultimate prerequisite for female beauty gets further endorsed by the beauty pageants that we conduct in India. Show me one contestant who has won the crown who is ebony in colour and representative of this ethic factor of India. The matrimonial advertisements all share this commonality when asking for a bride: fair skinned girl preferred. She could be a criminal, but please let her be fair! What fools we are to stay locked up in our cliches and perpetuate our stupidity decade after decade, and do nothing about it whatsoever.

Parents, siblings, teachers, friends, lovers, professionals, religious people...........whatever the sphere maybe, the rot of such bigoted thinking exists. Break this mould, and break it soon. Progress is not just about rocket science and techno gizmo's, but about attitudes and thinking processes too. So it's time to give this one thought, and evolve beyond the typical. Let us finally wear the colour of our skin proudly......be it black or white!

Won't you come into my parlour said the spider to the fly....

I am sick to my stomach seeing images on TV of Indian students being brutally attacked abroad by racists. That these countries continue to seek out foreign applicants to their educational institutions and make a profit by charging them fees that are more than what the the local students pay, is discrimination enough, and then to turn a blind eye to the repeated incidents that are life threatening and dehumanising, is in fact criminal. Politically correct statements are paraded via the media by these nations regarding these shameful acts, but nothing that rectifies the problem ever gets implemented.

I too have studied abroad and know the agony of racism first hand. There were many instances, but the two that impacted me the most is when, on one occasion, I had plastic bags of human urine hurled at me and the second abuse was being knocked to the floor on a subway train, and being kicked in the ribs repeatedly by skin heads. The humiliation of such attacks stay with you forever and the pain you feel over the injustice of it all, is not something that can never be described or shared with another. Ultimately for your own dignity to survive, you just have to dig really deep into your inner self and find the way out of that dark tunnel of despair on your own.

The appalling fact remains that what can be done by authorities to provide safety to foreign students is often not considered a necessity by them, and harassment and targeting foreign nationals becomes an amusement and pass time for the lumpen elements within the youth of countries like Australia and the United Kingdom, where racism has a history.

But then we in India are no better with the ragging on university campuses and in educational institutions such as boarding schools, where perverse means of degradation become accepted ways of welcoming new students. Must death and bodily harm become the wake up calls that finally bring our attention to the parameters that we need to establish as acceptable codes of conduct within a civilized society. The golden rule should be to treat others as we would want to be treated. I don't know why this is such a difficult thing to do.

Thank you Alice Walker for reminding me....

In moments of despair, my library is where I hide my grief and can transport myself to a place of serenity and quiet contemplation through images of my favourite art works. This allows me the escape to spaces of knowledge that can repair my damaged spirit and guide me to find the timber of my own spiritual pulse. I have been reading Alice Walker and Maya Angelou for so many years. Returning to their verse and prose, or sometimes merely snatching a paragraph or just rubbing my hand on the covers of the books, and in doing so find that it never fails to bring back my spirit of hope and optimism.

Today was one such day where my spirit needed a little help, and a morning talk with my son and a stanza from a poem of Alice Walker brought back the tautness of my own tightrope of life. I know I want to walk this tightrope without faltering, and not fear that there may not be a safety net to catch me if I fall, because the balance that I must keep actually lies within my own grasp, at all times.

So let me share the stanza from Alice Walker's poem with you.....

Be nobody's darling;

Be an outcast.

Take the contradictions

Of your life

And wrap around

You like a shawl,

To parry stones

To keep you warm.*

(* Taken from What Can I Give My Daughters,Who Are Brave ? A speech delivered at Spelman College on commencement day - 1995 - From the Poem Be Nobody's Darling)

Old wounds still bleed.....

Women's worst enemies are often women themselves. Sad but true. As a woman who early on in life knew that my feminism would come with a price, I never thought it would mean that my own gender would often hold the arsenal that would wound me the most, and for reasons that defy rational comprehension, because the strength of a woman should not be viewed as a threat or challenge to another woman. In stead it should be seen as an embrace.

The morality of women unfortunately has always been an easy target of attack for centuries by those who wish to dis-empower women, and though we proclaim that the 21st century implies progress and evolution of ideas, we still find that women are repeatedly stigmatized by assumptions that aim at "sullying" her moral integrity. Whether in social, political or economic environments, this becomes a strategy of harassment. Women battle to break down the stereotypical expectations that patriarchy imposes, and the double whammy comes when we encounter women themselves being salacious about each other.

What is tragic is that the process of "Chinese whispering" cements these falsehoods, making them fictionalised truths. In my own life I have encountered many women masquerading as Judas. It is paradoxically women who may seek to shelter in the comfort of sustenance from the emancipation and empowerment that sisterhood can offer, who are the one's who often negatively impact the goals of gender equality the most. Perhaps their inability to leave the imprisonment of conservative gender dictates turns them into enemies of their own dreams. The casualty is sadly the death of their inner spirit over time; where fear compromises their spiritual journey.

As women we all abhor the use of rape as a weapon of war. Yet do we comprehend that as women we rape each other daily through these regressive attitudes we continue to propagate. Do we wish to defeat the achievements of choice and hamper the process of equality? Do we not respect this hard won territory by women for each other, and not know it to be a legacy for our daughters? Why do we trample on the seed of our own fruits ?

I want my adopted grand-daughter (whose parents are our dearest friends), to know the strength of solidarity and not be put down by the insecurity or the pettiness of her own gender, simply because we remain ignorant of what we need to nurture within our gender. I want that she should expect woman to uphold the stories of one another with trust and dignity, respecting that the endeavours of each generation of women to empower is precious; and that it is this which compiles the tapestry of our collective ancestry. Let us not make this tapestry a shroud of shame, but a flag that embodies our rightful liberation as equals within society held aloft by every woman in every corner of the world..

Much ado about nothing?

There is so much being talked about regarding the crisis in the art market and it's effect on art. I find it all a bit confusing because the people making the most noise about it isn't always the artists ! For many of us, we joined art schools knowing fully well that it may not be a profession that may ever yield huge profits in our life time, and what led us to being artist's was our own need and desire to use methods of creative expression to articulate ourselves.

The patronage of art is not new to India, and ever since I left art college I have had the fortune of opportunity to be a full time painter, because others have supported my belief in myself by engaging with my work. The gallery system in India has always been a hugely supportive enterprise where the directors of such institutions, especially the premier galleries of India, choose to forge extremely close and caring relationships with their artists. These friendships transcend mere professional gains and are cherished spaces of human rapport.

For me the romance of being an artist is still something I wish to preserve. The specialness of the time I spend with myself in my studio, and my own involvement with my work is the ultimate meditative space, and I hold this as being one of the most relevant factors of my existence. I am not in any way refuting the freedom one receives through monetary stability, but it is certainly not this alone that drives me to paint each day. Survival is an essential fact of life and whether I was an artist or not, I would have always had to factor that condition of independence into my life.

I love being a painter and know that it isn't possible for those who do not know it's delight, to ever comprehend the pure joy of that time with ones work that suspends all else. It is therefore my humble request to all those who think that the first question they must confront me with should be about the recession and it's effect on the art world, to please do think again. My world of art will always exist, and I will always paint through the ups and downs if any; and I hope that immaterial to what the stock market heralds as the forecast, there will always be someone out there who needs for their sensibility to be intoxicated by the nasha of another's creative sensibilities, and for art therefore to always have it's rightful audience and be something coveted and desired!

Let's celebrate girl power!

I was so happy to learn that the girls in high school had fared so much better in their board results than the boys this year! It once again proves the equal potential of women to succeed and their ability to front runners, if not held back by conservative ideas regarding the role of women within society that prevails.

The endless Indian bias to have a male progeny infuriates me, as it is based upon completely wrong assumptions that suggest men are more capable than women. I have personally never known this bias within my family because my parents had always wanted to have daughters instead of sons. So I am truly brought up with the crown of pride for my gender very firmly placed upon my head since infancy and I believe that I wear it, till date, with great responsibility and respect for the legacy of strength that it empowers me with.

We continue to encounter far too many cases where marriage for daughters becomes an obsession and an insisted upon institution by parents, whilst sons are allowed more freedom in this matter. My women friends, both young and old, are very competent women and I am saddened that some of them often need to resist the pressures placed upon them to conform to these archaic fallacies, by their families. Practicality, intelligence, capability, professional success, financial ability, confidence, ingenuity, creativity, articulation, management skills, entrepreneurship, loyalty, survival skills: you name it and women embody it all, and much more.

So the next time you encounter situations in which even the subtlest gender discrimination presents itself, I beg of you don't be silent!State the truth as it is, because it's out there in the open to perceive : Women are strong and capable and are equal to men, so let's not be blinkered about it any more.