Twenty- five Seven

Personally speaking

Recent Posts

  • A smiley face in the #Mumbai night sky

    It was the end of the week and I was looking forward to the weekend after a bit of a hectic time with the grandchildren.

    R and H were home and we were unwinding with some good 12 year old Yamazaki – a single malt Japanese whiskey that I was having for the very first time. We also had a good meal ordered in from Royal China waiting for us when I heard the wail of Baby G. I quickly got up before the wails became uncontrollable and was giving her the last feed for the night when I happened to look up . I  saw a young crescent moon surrounded with a cloudy halo which looked like a smiley face in the Mumbai night sky.

    I just had to take a photo and as soon as Baby burped, rushed to click my handy iPhone. Sadly when I clicked the snap it was far from the dramatic reality. What looked like a smiley face in the sky turned out to be one big blob!

    young moon

    But not one to give up easily, I took another shot and this time I was more successful. Here’s my smiley face in the Mumbai Night Sky.

    But what I really liked was the lights across the bay with the stadium lights ablaze.

    Lights on the Bay
     But I wonder why my pictures are so grainy? I thought the iPhone 6 camera was the best bet for faultless photos. 
    I’m linking this post to Skywatch Friday and Write Tribe ProBlogger Challenge.

  • A life in exile – Book Review #The GameOfLife

    For an avowed book lover, I’m afraid my book reading these past few years have been scanty to say the least, restricted largely to doing book reviews for Blogadda. However, this year I decided to join Corinne Rodrigues #Outdo Yourself Reading Challenge and pledged to read a modest 12 books a year which makes it just ONE book a month. Surely that is a target I can hope to match despite my time crunch.

    So, fellow bloggers  joining the challenge, this is my first book for 2016 and there are 12 more to go. In order to make this a more meaningful reading year for me, I plan on posting short two sentence reviews about the books I’ve read, more as a record rather than as a review.

    Game of Life

    Having reviewed  Shubha Vilas’ earlier books Shattered Dreams   and The Rise of the Sun Prince, I was looking forward to the third in his series. This time, I was approached by the author himself to review the book and I was thrilled because this is the first time really that an author has asked me to review the book.

    (more…)

  • In danger of dying: a thing of beauty #MondayMusings

    Daughter No 1 was in town and wanted to visit the Bhau Daji Lad Museum at Byculla. For those of you who don’t know it, this is a delightful museum city museum located in, of all the places, Mumbai’s zoo ! Long before it became famous and fashionable, my daughters and I would regularly visit this quaint museum with its collection of things from everyday life. (I actually used to think it was a repository for other people’s junk till it was lovingly restored under the able stewardship of Ms. Tasneem Mehta, the museum’s current Director).

    The Museum organises several cultural events and this weekend was our last chance to see handicrafts made by artisans and craftsmen from India.

    Now we all know that a  handicrafts exhibitions is a pseudonym for  tacky, crude and  often poorly made artefacts  but this exhibition was different : the stalls had exquisite stuff, well finished and designed  with a modern sensibility and an aesthetic that makes you proud to know that they are MADE IN INDIA. They weren’t just objects, but things of beauty that took your breath away.

    I particularly loved the lamps and decorative items made by Jagadish of Jaggusays. Made out of material like dried leaves , onion skin and pencil shavings, his artistic creations have another worldliness about them with their delicate and fragile beauty.

    I can go on and on about all the exquisite pieces that I saw. These craftsmen had come from all over India and were hoping to make a little money on objects that had taken hours to make.

    How many hours must go into these handicrafts so lovingly made with skills that have been passed on and nurtured through generations? Monday MusingsMany of these craftsmen have children who want to abandon their traditions and go on to getting an education that will make them “employable” and land up either as clerks or low level office staff. I want to go out and tell them NOT to turn their backs on what is so obviously a God givenskill. Don’t you think these crafts deserve to be protected, nurtured and kept alive?  Don’t these people’s talent deserve recognition and due value? 

    Sadly, in our homes these days,  utility and practicality have replaced beauty with  plastic and mass produced .

    Isn’t this a shame?

    I’m linking this up with #Monday Musings on The Bespectacled Mother

     

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