Meditation music

Here’s a lovely piece of music that you relax or meditate to.

Hope this piece helped you relax!

(Click to read older Spiritual Sunday posts)

Friday Frame #9: Merry Christmas!

Wish all my readers a Merry Christmas! Hope you all are having a beautiful time on this joyous occasion!

Digital collage created by Modern Gypsy.

If you have any artwork or photography to share, please leave a comment, a link back to your blog and your e-mail address, and I’ll feature it on an upcoming Friday Frame!

Looking back 2010: food and drink

Fez Dining, New Delhi

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. ~Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story

This simple pleasure has become such a huge minefield in recent years, with the media telling you that almost everything that tastes good is actually bad for you. If you were to believe all that’s thrown at you, you would have to eliminate from your life red meat, bread, chocolates, pastries…everything that tastes so divine that it gives you a little glimpse of heaven each time you bite into it. (You might want to read why I think the Twinkie diet is a breakthrough for dieters.)

Large, naked raw carrots are acceptable as food only to those who lie in hutches eagerly awaiting Easter. ~Fran Lebowitz

I think that’s enough of a pre-amble to establish the fact that I am a foodie! I love, love, love food! I constantly try out new restaurants and different cuisines, experiment with new dishes at my favorite hangouts, and enjoy collecting and keeping recipes – it’s a different matter that I’m an extremely reluctant cook, but, oh well!

10 of my favorite meals and drinks in 2010 would have to be…

Fez Dining, Malcha Marg, New Delhi – This Eastern Mediterrean bar is one of my favorite places to hang out. I love their ambience, and their food is to die for! You can close your eyes, flip through the menu, place your finger on an item and order it, and you wouldn’t go wrong.
Recommended: To eat: Shish Taouk (succulent pieces of charcoal grilled garlic and saffron flavored chicken served with hummus and a divine gralic dip), Tas Kebap (braised lamb cooked in Turkish spices served with rice – yummy!). To drink: Pasha (orange juice, cherry liqueur topped with champagne), Moroccan martini (saffron infused vodka, vermounth and orange juice)
Brazilian chicken, made by a good friend for a farewell party she hosted for me recently. Surrounded by friends, music, laughter and lots of alcohol, this was one party that turned out to be surprisingly fun!
Basil Leaf, Gurgaon – This small little eatery in a sleepy market is a hidden treasure. It offers Pan Asian and Italian cuisine, as well as delectable deserts. Each item on the menu has a blend of flavors that will explode in your mouth, sending you to orgasmic highs! 😉
Recommended: Oriental sea food soup, Basil chili stir-fried shrimps, ravioli in tomato sauce, grilled vegetable pizza, blueberry cheesecake
I never realized how much I enjoy hosting parties until we hosted a card party at home this Diwali. First, hosting parties is the best way to clean up the house. Second, it’s fun to have friends over, laughing and enjoying themselves in your house. Most times my friends just invite themselves over home, we never get around to inviting people, but in 2011, I hope to change that!
La Pizzeria, Bund Garden Road, Pune – Excellent Italian (vegetarian) food at really reasonable rates. My entire family (parents, the husband and the little sis) had a 3-course meal for Rs. 1,500 — in Gurgaon, you’d pay that much for two people, main course only!
Recommended: Spinaci Salsa (spinach and cream dip with crisp bread), Ravioli in tomato sauce, Gnocco (pasta stuffed with three types of cheese, spinach, Italian herbs and tomato sauce sprinkled with parmesan), Tiramisu
My ultimate soul food, apart from chocolate truffle pastries,m has to be prawn rice. The flavors and the warmth of this dish fill me with joy.
Monk, Galaxy hotel, Gurgaon – Serving up Chinese cuisine with a twist, this is the place to head to if you’re tired of “chinjabi” Chinese food. Their sticky rice bowls and udon noodles are to die for!
Recommended: Five-spice chicken dimsums, seafood sticky rice bowl in celery sauce, sticky rice bowl with prawns and greens in XO sauce
When I was home ill sometime in the middle of this year, I was overtaken by a sudden, over-whelming craving for chocolate cake. I was not too well to drive out to the market to indulge, so I did the next best thing – made a 5 minute chocolate mug cake! Yummy!!
Swiss Cheese Garden Restaurant, ABC Farms, Koregaon Park, Pune – I went to the restaurant the last time I was home. Done up in wooden logs with dim lighting, the restaurant has an excellent ambiance, whether you’re with family, friends, or someone special. Recommended: Cheese fondue! That’s what they’re most famous for
Some of my best weekends this year have been spent with friends. Be it an impromptu visit or a planned one, I’ve had great times with P at her house, eating, talking, standing out on the terrace capturing pictures of the sky; and with J, experimenting with new restaurants or getting together for drinks and dinner.

Great food is like great sex. The more you have the more you want. ~Gael Greene

What were your favorite meals in 2010?

Linking up with Jade:

Looking back 2010: journeys

Prayer bells, main monastery, McLeod Ganj

For someone who loves to travel, this year has not been too great. I’ve taken only two trips this year (boo!), with one to come in the last week of December (yay!).

So from the two trips I took in 2010, here are the 5 things I enjoyed the most:

McLeod Ganj, May/June 2010

This was the first time the husband and I traveled with friends; we generally travel alone. It was a different experience – we quite enjoyed ourselves.
Carpe Diem, Jogiwara Road – excellent food, a must visit at McLeod Ganj
Norbulingka Institute, Sidhpur – located about 7 odd kms from McLeod Ganj, it’s an excellent place to stay, even if just for a night. If you don’t want to stay far from McLeod Ganj, do visit the institute – they have a lovely monastery, a beautiful doll museum and artisans at work.
The Monastery, McLeod Ganj – courses are held here when the Dalai Lama is in residence. The thangka paintings and statues are magnificent.
Shopping – avoid the shops along the Monastery – they’re overpriced and rude. Explore the many tiny shops along the three main roads in McLeod Ganj, you’ll be sure to find plenty of treasures!

Read more on my visit to McLeod Ganj.

Jaipur, November 2010

Johari Bazaar, Jaipur

1. All girls trip – no husband, no men – fun!

2. Silver shopping! We went to Johri Bazaar and explored the many silver shops there. Found one that had awesome, unique stuff – went back to him thrice!

3. Getting fooled at Johri Bazaar – and finding out and giving it back to the shopkeeper. That was fun! Once we got to know he sold us fake stuff, we went back to his shop, created a scene, made him give us our money back, and made off with the earrings we had bought from him to boot! Served the bastards right, I say! 😉

4. Discovered three excellent places to eat and hang out –

Flow at Diggi Palace – great ambiance, good food.
Clark’s Amer – rooftop bar – great drinks for cheap
Anokhi cafe – excellent range of organic tea, coffee, pastries, and sandwiches.

5. Late night talkathons over drinks and snacks.

I haven’t written up a blog post on this trip, but you can read more about Jaipur from an earlier post I wrote on my travel to this wonderful city.

What were your favorite trips this year?

Linking up with Jade:

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

I do not love – Pablo Neruda

Meditation Music: Zen garden meditation

Wonderfully relaxing music – maybe that explains the name of the clip, because it doesn’t really have anything much to do with Japanese Zen gardens otherwise.

Hope you enjoyed the clip!

(Click to read older Spiritual Sunday posts)

Friday Frame #8: Tulip macro

Click to view eyesplash Mikul's photostream

(More Friday Frames)

If you have any artwork or photography to share, please leave a comment, a link back to your blog and your e-mail address, and I’ll feature it on an upcoming Friday Frame!

Book review: Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi

Late for Tea at the Deer Palace is a hauntingly beautiful ode to Iraq. Told from the perspective of the Chalabi family, one of the most influential families in Iraq for most part of the 20th century, the novel recreates the country’s majestic past. It is also one of the few books that really brings this country alive for the rest of the world, much in the way that Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner brought pre-war-ravaged Afghanistan to life.

Starting in 1913, the book traces the history of the nation and the rise and fall of the Chalabi family, from the decline of the Ottomon empire to its destruction at the hands of Saddam Hussein and to Tamara Chalabi’s first look at her homeland.

As she traces her own roots, Chalabi take the reader along on a journey into the culture and psyche of Iraqi nationals and gives us a look at what the nation could have been if it wasn’t for Islamic clerics and Saddam Hussein, who brought its progress to a grinding halt. Chalabi’s vivid descriptions and the many pictures she uses in her narrative breathe life into the characters and bring Iraq alive.

He wore the typical attire of a sophisticated urbanite: a traditonal robe tailored in Baghdad from sayah, a delicate striped cotton material bought in Damascus, over white drawstring trousers. On his head he wore a fez, decreed by the Sultan in Istanbul to be the appropriate headgear of the modern Ottoman Empire.
– Late for Tea at the Deer Palace, p 33

Reading this book was even more poignant for me because my mother often spoke longingly about Basra, where she spent her first few years of married life with my father. She would often tell me about the cobbled streets, the outdoor cafes and her life there. When Basra was bombed during the Iran-Iraq war she was grief stricken, because she had always wanted to return for another visit. Reading this book, I was better able to imagine what Basra, and Iraq, were like in their hey day.

As I read about Ahmad Chalabi’s struggle to get a hearing with world leaders on the story of Iraq, his fight to free Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein and how he and the rest of the Iraqis who wanted to fight alongside US troops were ill-treated, I begin to understand their frustration with world politics. And as I read about Chalabi’s return to her homeland for the first time in 2003, I’m struck by recent news on how Iraq’s struggles are driving many refugees out of the country (read the article on NY Times). It makes me wonder when and how this nation’s suffering will end.

I’d willingly recommended this book to anybody — not only is beautifully written, it also gives readers a rare glimpse into the history, culture and psyche of Iraq — giving us a clue about why Iraqis are not satisfied with the help received from the US, why they might have not got closure to Saddam Hussein’s reign, and why the nation continues to be in strife.

The book will be available in stores from 18 January 2011. You can pre-order the book through HarperCollins’ website.

Looking back 2010: top 10 songs on my playlist

Music is the soul of life. I typically listen to a wide variety of music – rock, jazz, instrumental, and everything in between. I’ve tended to stay away from Hindi music, though, because until recently, most of the songs were quite terrible. But since a couple of years, Bollywood’s been surprising me — not only have there been some excellent Hindi movies, the music has been great too! So here is my list of the 10 songs I totally loved this year, in no particular order. I’ve thrown in YouTube videos for the Hindi songs, so my non-Indian friends can listen in if they’d like.