Here’s the thing.
Things fall apart.
Nations. And people.
I’ve weathered enough extremes in my life, represented by this image – as I expect you have as well- to understand we rise and fall, experience pain and triumph in cycles.
Both on a personal and meta level.
When I reflect on the meaning of true peace, it’s obvious that our lives are knotted with history. The personal is public: the public is personal.
In this spirit, I’m sharing this quote by @davidjimeditation (stumbled on my friend @parasmoghtader feed) and it goes something like: “if there is to be peace in the world, there needs to be peace in between the nations; if there is to be peace in between the nations there needs to be peace in between the neighbours; and if there is to be peace in between the neighbours there needs to be peace in the house; and if there is to be peace in the house, there needs to be peace in ones heart ❤️ “
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On days it all feels just too heavy, reflect on that, fellow life warriors ✌🏼🤟🏼
Choose your idols.
Wisely.
If they don’t measure up,
Be your own hero.
And recognize
What a fortunate thing it is
When life alters you without warning.
Under the Banyan tree.
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@elsewheregoa @ntara.g
Look, life may not be a bed of fair roses on 🌏these days, but look on the bright side: at least you’re not a crocodile
Artist @k5fuwa
Life in flip flops just IS better. Aguada Fort, Goa, India
👼🏻
What is needed in these times?
An army of Peace.
An army of Peace.
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#JNU #StandwithJNU #StandwithStudentsalways
Image via @sukeshmotwani
My word for 2020 is D E V O T I O N
With this intent baked into every action, thought and project, here’s a peek at something special I’m working on….
#inthestudio #2020freshstarts #closetothebone
Podcasting for #BooksandBeyond with these lovely ladies.
#ClosetotheBone
Repost from @anahachattaraj using @RepostRegramApp – To live is to feel.
And lately i have been feeling everything a bit too much.
This morning while I was at a hospital, helping my father go through a test that was making him very stressed out and uncomfortable, I ended up making him laugh and eventually he was able to focus on his breath, calm down and get through the test quite well.
In between this I read these appropriate lines from @lisaraniray ‘s amazing book, ‘Close to the Bone’, “Everything can be made spiritual with attention.”
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A line her Buddhist nurse said to her, while she was in the middle of a rather testing stem cell transplant.
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So many #goosebumps, it transformed the clammyness of this moment in the hospital for me instantly. And that’s when the humor flowed. As did the rest of the test.
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Sometimes living can be uncomfortable, and precarious.
But everything can indeed be made spiritual with attention. The art of paying attention to the mundane, and perhaps scary moments, can transform how we look at things, and life it self.
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Tune in. Notice the love around you, even in the middle of chaos and pain. Suddenly its not so bad.
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PS: thankyou @lisaraniray for writing a masterpiece of a book. Each time I read it, it resonated with whatever moment I was in!
Last few pages left and its one of those books, I dont want to end🧡
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#hospitalruns #healthchecks #artofliving #spiritualmoment #attentiontodetail #artistsofindia #artistsofkolkata #artcurators #supportlocalartists #artistsoninstagram #kolkata #kolkatacafes #kolkatabylanes #lbbkolkata #kolkata_lanes #art #instadaily #insta #braveart
The big send off last night. Saligao may never be the same 😜
#aurevoir2019 #hello20s @dipikablacklist
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” Albert Camus
Long. Live. Love.
Via @ankurtewari
Oriented towards the future with a strong spine, soft heart and a commotion in my chest.
Wish you all multitudes of blessings for 2020
And may humanity and peace prevail
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@elsewheregoa
So proud of be part of this campaign
Facing the world
FEARLESS and DIGITAL DISTORTION FREE .
Repost from @graziaindia using @RepostRegramApp – Every day, women face a relentless stream of media images displaying narrow and unrealistic portrayals of beauty. To represent, include and celebrate women exactly as they are was the guiding light that inspired Dove to create Project #ShowUs – the world’s largest stock photo library created by women to shatter beauty stereotypes and offer the most inclusive vision of beauty. We featured ten women with ten different stories who #ShowUs a more inclusive vision of beauty. #BeautyStandards #BeautyInclusivity #BeautyStereotypes #RealBeauty #DoveIndia @dove
Some highlights from @mumbai_gallery_weekend beginning with Jitesh Kallat’s spectacular #Ellipsis @famousstudios, through @chatterjeeandlal to see a thoughtfully curated exhibit of design maverick and artist Riten Mozumder finally culminating @chemouldprescottroad to take in the whimsical social commentary of N. S. Harsha.
Thanks to my #modernfamily for such an utterly satisfying outing ✌🏼
@preetasukhtankar #MumbaiArtWeekend
Here’s an unfiltered photo to digest (where’s the apocalypse emoji)
Repost from @ghoshuvo using @RepostRegramApp – This is very very not good.
Smoke from Australia’s fires covering the skies of Auckland.
💔🙏🏼
An honest memoir offers few answers, if any. The quality of the questioning is the thing. It’s Skywalker’s journey, not Yoda’s. And when written well, what is recalled feels like it is happening NOW, the narrative unspooling as unpredictably as life. Beginnings and endings get blurred, revelations occur in medias res…between breaths…and catharsis comes as unexpectedly as a cloudburst.
Lisa Ray’s memoir #closetothebone is a scintillating page-turner if you simply follow the outer husk of her life. A mixed Polish-Indian child from a Canadian suburb rises to sudden fame in India as a pinup model, stars in award-winning films (and all the dubious pageantry that comes with boldface headings on celebrity gossip pages). It’s a variation on the theme of a common Disney trope: an idealistically lonely girl relentlessly pursues public affection and material success, and, in the end, becomes victor. And, of course, there are Princes (in this case two who bookend her life: the unshakeably kind and humble father, and the giving, impossibly-handsome husband-to-be). But it is during The Great Unpeeling, when she pushes past the many surfaces, that Lisa’s life forces you to pause, crease the page, take many deep breaths. The car accident that left her powerful mother a quadriplegic when it could have just as easily been her; the relationships that nearly snuffed the breath out of her life; the rare cancer that everyone feared she would never “graduate” from.
I knew nothing about Lisa Ray when we met at a mutual friend’s home. I only understood she was going through some challenges. When I read her Yellow Diaries online, I knew that of the multitudes in her, she was also a poet and spiritual guide. To be able to stretch out Susan Sontag’s ideas by making her own illness, particularly during the stages of her stem cell transplantation, THE metaphor for self-renewal and re-seeding…these are the rare qualities of a good writer, when shakti and poetry intersect to force the utterance of the next sentence.
CLOSE TO THE BONE is a courageous act of grace and gratitude. So many of us deserve it, and the rest of us, well, we need it.
By @chefsangkim
Humbled and grateful. Thank you for sharing your thoughts 🙏🏼 Repost from @idreamzero using @RepostRegramApp – ‘How fortunate it is when life alters you without warning.’ These lines were an introduction to a memoir by @lisaraniray called Close to the Bone. Honestly, I had no intention of reading it. Ms Ray’s life did not hold any meaning to me simply because I do not know her. I just knew her as that supermodel who surprised everyone by doing Water. (A must watch BTW) and survived Cancer. That’s all I knew.
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So when I did start reading it, I was already prepared to leave it. Perhaps it was to be a lesson about how assumptions can kill something before it is even allowed to grow. .
But reading Close to the Bone does what well written memoirs do, they let you feel each emotion, choice, flaw, brilliance, darkness and state of mind of the writer. There is a certain strength in telling your story and that strength is contagious. That’s how I feel. .
I am glad I read her memoir. Please give it a read. Looking forward to more of Lisa Ray’s literary works in the future. ❤️🖖
Lyrical and wise words from one of my favourite poets. Repost from @soupgram using @RepostRegramApp – “When language is subjected to great heat and pressure, it grows in intensity, in voltage; its chemistry is altered. That’s one reason why poetry seems like such a mysterious form. It is also a verbal art that uses pauses so consciously that it becomes an invitation not just to music and meaning, but also to silence,” says poet Arundhathi Subramaniam in her lyrical interview with @ankita.shah_ for the thirteenth edition of Writers on Reading.
To know more about her work, her practice and her selection of the finest of India’s contemporary poets, click on the link in our bio.
Art by Bhargavi Rudraraju @inklinkelements
Repost from @sayantansunnyghosh using @RepostRegramApp – Happy 71st birthday, Haruki Murakami.
Thank you for being the constant reminder that it’s okay to not be able to fit in, and helping people find cure for their loneliness in written words instead of other people.
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#harukimurakami #murakami #solitude #birthday #words
Next read.
#Underland
There’s few whose book recommendations I take very seriously. When @sujstyle tells me to read something it jumps to top of my list.
