"the world with tibet"

yesterday i attended a film screening organised by the friends of tibet and presented by tenzin tsundue who i last saw at the jaipur lit fest. i've been finding myself more and more interested in buddhism and wanted to know how a buddhist nation fights for freedom. turns out, it doesn't. it just quietly marches along and keeps repeating its request over and over as loudly as it can. the film, "the sun behind the clouds", was a good primer on the tibetan freedom struggle. first there was tenzin tsundue smiling, with that signature hair. then he was on the screen with a military buzz cut, getting ready to be arrested.

so on one hand is the dalai lama who travels the world, lives in a lovely home in dharamsala, speaks of love and freedom and non violence. and then there are the tibetans who live as oppressed minorities in tibet or as refugees outside it, cry for him to return to tibet and lead the movement and lie prostrate every time they see him on the tv. why is there always such a distance between us and those we worship. isn't it easy to be god when you don't have to live in human reality?

when we went to ladakh, i often saw world maps and globes in cyber cafes and restaurants with tibet drawn onto them with a felt tip pen. yesterday, they gave us these maps with tibet represented as a large white area. it says, "the world with tibet." the map's gone up on this random grid of things on my wall. there, now my world has tibet.

one of two things

Flavors.me from Jack Zerby on Vimeo.

flavors.me's new demo video. it really is awesome how simple + pretty it is. seems it took a helluva long time for someone to make a website creation service that's this braindead simple and delivers a really good looking result. but at last.

another website that's awesome on the simple-but-pretty front is aviary, which is a web-based photo/video/audio editing service with tools exactly like photoshop etc. i have no idea why it's free to use, it's that good. the learning curve there is a lot more than with something like flavors, but its usp isn't simplicity but giving people access to the tools of otherwise expensive softwares.

i think everyone should just do one of two things with their lives--make stuff or make it easy for others to make stuff.

flay-vur

http://flavors.me/tanushri

my new website
(whose background image changes with my mood)
is a compilation of everything i do online
hosted on flavors.me, a really sweet, simple service
that recently started allowing registrations
the url is a little dinky at the moment
but i'm working on it

speaking of walls

the prettiest wall in leh
behind which the young donkeys grazed
while their minders sat in gossipy circles
knees a-folded, skirts hitched to the calves
in crass womanly poses
flashes of turquoise and silver
skin curling under the barking mad ladakhi sun
that doesn't forgive anyone
why did you have to travel so far,
it seems to say,
to find this place

"

i'm not sure why one day i decided to paint this column in my room orange
but i'm giving it purpose now


it's going to be my quote wall!
with all my favorite quotes in one continuous inspiring stream

camels

in delhi on 26th jan
seemed awful to be missing the parade
but flagging a rickshaw outside the TOI building
the universe sent a little excerpt my way
yay

p.s. someone teach me how to make animated gifs please.

jaipur literature festival highlights part 3: mad dogs and englishmen

many little-little more gems from the festival, many of which i can hardly remember.


there were kites in the trees


and women with the most gorgeously appropriate bags

and geoff dyer whose reading from jeff in venice, death in varanasi had people running out like mad dogs to buy his book (me too and made me realize reading a book is a vastly different experience from listening to it being read by the author and can often seem totally disconnected, unrelated literary experiences)
and s. anand of navayna press whose talk i attended quite randomly (and also adored) and later happened to travel to delhi with
and chugge khan who is a mad man on the khartal
and tony wheeler! and tony wheeler at mrigya!
and, oh, the bauls! william dalrymple performing nine lives with the bauls whose videos i will certainly not put up, it would be a sin really.
and the pretty diggi palace rooms
and snakey lunch lines and people "insinuating" themselves into queues (a sweet word thing i have officially imbibed from geoff dyer)
and silver shopping (maharani market rocks!) and whining authors (amit chaudhury, you know who i'm talking about) and witty new discoveries (omair ahmad with the gorgeously pronounced name) and flamboyant displays (coughcoughsunilsethicoughcough) and many lunches with ndtv royalty later... jaipur lit fest was over, and delhi started saying pack those skirts away and hurry up and get here already.