Colour is one of those aspects of life that everyone experiences, or at least most humans, and many other animals do, and most of us experience it without much conscious thought.
I have always had an unusually intense relationship with colour. From a very early age, I noticed colours, and talked about them with anyone I could find. I remember the colours of many things and environments that were around me. Sometimes, colours are all I remember about an experience. The colour of the car of my first love; the colour of the wall in my second love’s bedroom. The colour of the dingy carpet in my first apartment, before I removed it. The colour of an eccentric purple and orange house in a Massachussetts suburb. The colour of tea with milk that would be the perfect cup of tea to my mother. The colour of my baby’s brother’s favourite stuffed toy fifteen years ago. I even remember the dark blue tint of my own first pram, which I must have been in between the ages of two and four.
Last year, I joined a website called ColourLovers. This addictive site allows members to create palettes of any combination of up to five shades of colours. There are also millions of seamless patterns, many of them incredibly beautiful, that members can use to colour with any palette. There are lots of amazing, talented people on this site, who create these pattern templates that others can colour. I have ended up using a few of my coloured-in patterns on some of my other sites.
I will be featuring some of my work from this site on my blog. All these will be available under the Colours category here.
If you like colour, or have any comments or questions, I would love to hear from you! Share your thoughts as a comment here.
The fact is that violence against women is an everyday reality for millions of girls and women around the world. There are many kinds of violence. The word “violence” is related to the word “violation” – and each time a woman’s right to be a full, self-determining human being is violated because she is a woman, violence against women is committed. From media and advertising depictions of women as vapid damsels in distress worthy of little more than objectification for men’s pleasure, to domestic abuse, workplace sexual harassment, date rape, marital rape, the misogyny of religious fundamentalisms, and sexual assault and gender-based violence, women, girls and trans people are still much more likely to be at the receiving end of violence and violation. These problems are usually worse for women who are not white, not from the upper-middle classes, and those of us who straddle multiple social-cultural identities as immigrants and children of immigrants. Continue reading ‘National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women’»
So, I’ve been experimenting with cooking with new recipes. Here are some photos of a Gujrati Indian snack I made for the second time today. It’s called Dhokla.
If you’ve never tried it before, Dhokla is a spongey cake-like snack but it’s salty and spicy instead of sweet, and while there are multiple versions of it, this particular kind is made with Semolina flour, yoghurt and herbs and seeds, all mixed up and steamed together, then seasoned with mustard seeds and sesame seeds. The Chutney in the middle photo is a simple Tomato and Tamarind chutney that I improvised, and it came out delish! There’s nothing quite like having this rich, multi-textured Dhokla with a cup of hot Chai! Oooh! Everyone who’s tried this so far (especially yours truly) is HOOKED!
This is all part of my new found love for cooking, something I never got into before, but lately have been exploring more and more. Experimenting in the kitchen is something that seems to run in my family. I only just decided to flex those muscles. Along with working out regularly and trying to eat healthier, I’m also going to be experimenting with and trying out recipes of various cuisines from around the world. One of my other specialties is Fettuccine Alfredo with Shrimp, Broccoli and Mushrooms. Wait for those pictures in the next week!
Earlier this summer, my partner and I bought these cute, functional, folding bikes that have already become our primary mode of transportation. I used to bike when I was a wee teenager, growing up in New Jersey, while my partner had never biked before.
So lately, we have been going out biking almost everyday, getting used to the rules and routes of the city, it’s a whole other world when you’re on a bike. I noticed that when I first started driving years ago too – your perspective of the space you inhabit changes based on your mode of transportation – subways make me consider the underground routes to get from one part of the city to another, cars make me consider the highways, the one-way streets, the alternative smaller streets I can take to avoid heavy traffic. And now, biking is teaching me to notice even more things like where the ramps are, where the road is most uneven, where there are long blocks versus short blocks, and where the road is on an incline and where it’s on a decline, where cars tend to cluster and where there are bike lanes in the city.
I love noticing this shift in perspective, and I would encourage everyone to try different modes of transportation in whatever area you’re in, to get an idea of the perspective shift – try walking around for a week instead of driving to wherever you normally go in your neighborhood. Or take the train or the bus, instead of driving to a distant destination. Most of us are so hooked on cars and highways and parking lots, that we rarely just walk, or bike anywhere. I urge you to try it sometime, especially if you live in a part of the planet where it’s the later half of the summer season now. Just go, go out, and walk, or bike if you can get a bicycle (hint: they’re also a lot cheaper than cars!). You’ll love it!
My heart goes out to the families and loved ones of the victims of the Margalla Hills plane crash in Pakistan. It’s always a tragedy when something like this happens, but I’m sure that’s no relief to those who lost someone they love among the 152 who died in this tragic incident. May they rest in peace, and may their loved ones find the strength they need to survive this awful event.
I’d like to share my personal view on the burqa (face mask) controversy. My views are not based on the black-and-white, binary, false dichotomy presented too often by both supporters of the face-mask ban and those who wish to defend the garb.
It’s got 103 of the most interesting figures of history juxtaposed together, and in some cases, interacting with each other, in a timeless image. From Bill Gates to Plato, Bruce Lee to the Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, Margaret Thatcher to Audrey Hepburn, Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein, Sigmund Freud to Jack Kevorkian, Albert Einstein to Che Guevara, Charles Darwin dressed as Noah, to Osama Bin Laden and the 72 Houris. Check it out!
Originally painted by three Chinese artists: Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi, and Zhang An, in 2006; oil on canvas.
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