What are words worth?

Mornings demand multitasking. For most of us, whether we work at home or elsewhere, it's a time when we are rushing to open the door to ten different service providers from the milkman to the newspaperwallah to the trash collector to the next-door neighbour asking for a cup of sugar, while the phone rings to give you the latest on whether the bandh will affect your organization or your child's school or not,  and the other phone, of the mobile variety, beeps insistently with messages ranging from bill alerts to not-to-miss sale alerts. Breathless already? Well that's the reality most of us whizz through every morning--we just don't stop long enough to make that list! When the morning is complicated by a television turned on and tuned into Oscar fever, things don't get helped much. The milk boils over while you are watching Jake Gyllenhall smile at Amy Adams or trying to not watch Aish and Abhishek sound trite and plastic. The toast burns in the toaster that doesn...

Anyone who has driven in Hyderabad, or has been a participant of some kind in what passes for traffic here, will empathise with the daily frustrations of dealing with bad road etiquette, the total absence of lane consciousness, the aggressiveness of large and small vehicles, and the absolute belief that one's schedule and need to reach a destination supersedes every other person's.  Until recently, I was able to block out the madness by losing myself in a book, safe in the back seat, while my driver battled the daily cruelties of the city's streets. About a month ago, my driver decided to move to greener pastures (and possibly, a more interesting route to navigate each day) so I was back behind the steering wheel and had to leave my set of unread novels in the back, so I could concentrate on the road ahead (not that I had at any point planned to bring my reading to rest on the dashboard). I face a fairly long drive each morning. Twenty six kilometers each way, through the...

I've been thinking of doing this for a while now, as a sort of personal tribute and a series of memoires for those who care. I look at my life and am overwhelmed by the presence of these wonderful people in it. While my life, perhaps like that of most others, has been helped along considerably by both men and women, I now live in a house full of women--until three years ago, it was four generations thick. Each one of these people, and the many women outside my home that I have been fortunate to be touched by, is special, in a different way. And I just need to do this for them. And for myself. So, about painted bottles and patchwork.... People who walk into our home marvel at the Thanjavur paintings on the walls and the patchwork covered cushions on the divan. And more recently, a walk into the kitchen might reward them with a view of sunlight dancing off the painted glass bottles that hold a variety of dals and spices. My embroidered sarees and block printed duppattas have fe...