Where the mind is without fear...

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-Tagore

This poem is so beautiful and rings so true that it hurts. "ever-widening thought and action" makes me think of how we all seem to choose what causes to be sensitive to, what is important to us. And then we are all undoing each other's work -- some working for human rights but causing immense suffering by consuming animals, others working for animals rights without a care for the amount of waste they produce, others working for the environment but unaware of how they emotionally abuse people around them. Each person stagnating within his particular ideological construct. For 'ever-widening' love, sensitivity, compassion, awareness to be awakened seems quite different.

Recipe: Enchiladas

Angie made enchiladas for dinner yesterday, in honour of Apurva's birthday. There were four of us doing the kitchen work, and we found that dinner was surprisingly simple to make, not too time-consuming, and very tasty! Adi baked a cake, so we ended up eating only two enchiladas each, but under normal circumstances I think a person would need a couple more. Here is a rough recipe that makes about 12 enchiladas. This is based entirely on the enchiladas Grishma, Minti and Nikita made -- thanks! ;)

Tortillas :

Mix 3 cups of maize flour, 1 cup of atta and add salt to taste. Knead with water as hot as your hands can handle to make a firm dough. Roll it out into tortillas and cook on a tawa.

Stuffing:

We used spinach (about 4 cuts, without the stalks), 3 onions , a packet of mushrooms, 3 cobs of sweet corn and a packet of coarsely crumbled tofu. Any combination of vegetables would work, though; cooked beans would make a good addition. Saute everything, add salt to taste, mix up.

Tomato Sauce:

Slit crosses in the tops of about 16 tomatoes. Put them in boiling water until the peel begins to wilt. Remove and peel. Grind with about 4 onions and 15 cloves of garlic. Add salt, a little bit of jaggery (syrup) and herbs to taste (we put in dried basil and oregano). Cook.

To assemble the enchiladas:
On a baking tray, heap enough stuffing onto one half of the tortillas, fold over, then top generously with tomato sauce. Bake for about 10 minutes, and they are ready!

Children's Book Illustrations I Love

Gary Blythe: The Whale Song

Lisbeth Zwerger: The Gift of the Magi

The Little Mouse, The Red, Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear: Don and Audrey Woods

Flip through the whole book in this video. A four-year-old reads it out for you too :)

Recipe: Corn and Rice with Fresh Tomato

We all loved this, and it was extremely simple and quick. It tastes great both hot and cold: Angie wants it for her next packed lunch! :)

Ingredients:

• Cooked rice
• Sweet corn, taken off the cob
• Tomatoes, deseeded and diced.

For the dressing:

• Oil
  
• White wine vinegar
• Basil, fresh or dried
  
• Jaggery
  
• Salt and pepper

1. Coat the corn with some oil and salt and roast in in an oven until slightly browned (very roughly 15 minutes on 250 C)
   
2. Mix the dressing ingredients. I didn't measure quantities, so just go by taste. The ratio of oil:vinegar should be approximately 3:1.
3. Mix the rice, corn and chopped tomato.
   
4. Add the dressing and mix up well!
   

The Colours of Pots

A Wish

I wish I could show you the glory of that tree in evening light, its honeyed leaves trembling in almost still air then shivering splendidly in breathless gusts of breeze, light and shadows flickering over me as I lay beneath, my back arched and pampered in Setu Bandha Saravangasana.

(Is it true that when you've finished reading 'Setu Bandha Sarvangasana' you've forgotten everything that came before? :D)

Paying Wages

On Sunday, for the first time in my life, I was faced with a request for a salary raise.

Rudramma, who has worked at my parents’ house for a long, long time, comes once a week to clean our place. She is an exceptional woman: she works hard and fast, cleaning shelves and hidden spaces without being asked, arranging and organizing as she cleans. I do not mind this because it is only once a week – after she has gone, I put things back where I think they belong!

We discovered early in the year how difficult it is to clean the house regularly after tiring days at school. Having to cook, wash dishes and manage other maintenance is difficult enough. In those first months, it felt like there was always something that needed to be done– the bookshelves to be dusted, or the floor or bathroom or fans to be cleaned! So we decided to have someone come in once a week to ensure that at least one regular, thorough cleaning was done. We preferred her coming in just once a week because we could then pay her a reasonable amount, and we didn’t have to have someone around the house all the time.

So when Rudramma requested a raise, we were already paying far, far above the general hourly rate around here. It is quite likely she was just pushing her luck, as my mother tells me she tends to do. But despite all the rationalization and economic theory, I do not really understand why she should be paid any less than I am. I do not earn very much: what I do earn is more than sufficient for me right now, but it would be only just enough -- perhaps not even enough -- if I had a family. And I live a fairly simple, inexpensive life.

How does one decide how much to pay someone? I do not trust the ‘rates’ – they may be the norm, but what makes them fair? On the other hand, it seems presumptuous to try to calculate how much a person ‘needs’. Then how does one decide? The only solution I have found so far is to pay according to how much I value the service provided. How much would I be willing to spend to have somebody else do this work?

I have so little experience with money that I do not know if this is viable. Insecurities come up – will I save enough, am I paying too much given my own earnings, will people take advantage of me, what is the most sensible thing to do? And there is the other kind of question - is it just conditioning that prevents me from paying more, am I being over-cautious, what is the right thing to do?

Somewhere I sense that perhaps money is something that should be used to give rather than to accumulate. And many moments come with the intense realisation that I must just trust life and what it brings, instead of protecting myself from it.

Since Angie and Adi were unreachable on the phone, I made the decision myself, after a quick consultation with my mother. I took the middle path: raised her wage, but not as much as she had asked for. Her wage is creeping close to ours now, and the next time she asks for a raise, I know I will go through the same whirl of questions!