air pollution, climate change, earth, environment, featured, health, India, New Delhi

What motivates me to fight for clean air in India

I have practiced clinical medicine and public health in India for over 20 years in a number of roles, including academic researcher, educator, corporate medical director, and patient-centered clinician.  In 2015, after six years of living and working full-time in New Delhi, I thought I had undertaken every precaution to keep my family healthy: pesticide- and hormone-free food, purified water, mosquito protection… you name it, I had probably investigated it and figured it out.

The one thing I completely neglected to protect against was the air pollution. In fact I was oblivious to India’s air pollution until, in our final month in New Delhi, my then 9-year old daughter required emergency room care for sudden-onset asthma attacks. Coincidentally, in that same month, the World Health Organization announced that New Delhi was the most air polluted city in the world.  We had no choice but to move away, not just for an upcoming job transfer, but simply to protect our children.

I was grateful that we were moving to live in clean air, but both professionally and personally, I felt I had left behind a huge problem, affecting everyone I knew and loved there. I could not let it go. I now travel to India every few months, in part to support a non-governmental organization that raises awareness and advocates to mitigate India’s air pollution crisis.

A few days ago, a young New Delhi-based reporter asked me for my “expert opinion” on how air pollution harms children in India. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote:

“Children born in air pollution face shorter life expectancies compared to their counterparts born in cleaner air… Children suffer physical health harms, including diminished lung growth and development, and increased prevalence and severity of pneumonia and asthma… [they] risk functional health harms including suboptimal cognitive development and sports performance. Air pollution is associated with depression, anxiety… and contributes to cancer and lifelong chronic diseases in adulthood including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and dementia…”

These health facts are easy to summarize, but they do not convey the whole story.  What is more difficult to articulate is the stress and suffering that air pollution has created for millions of Indian people.  Including me.

I hate all the coughing. It starts within three days of my landing in New Delhi. Every friend is coughing or suffering some respiratory symptom. The plane is full of coughing passengers when I depart.

I cannot fully enjoy Diwali anymore.  I dread the futile arguments my friends and family will have with neighbors who insist it is their “right” to set off illegal firecrackers.  I dread the off the charts toxic air my friends and family will breathe in the subsequent weeks. I mourn the loss of elderly neighbors and relatives who have died of respiratory illness in the post-Diwali smog.

I hate that I discouraged my 75-year old father from visiting India for his elementary school reunion last November, because I was worried that the toxic air and ill-equipped health care system would seriously harm him.  

I feel sad for scheduling my children’s India visits only during the monsoon season, when the heavy rain reduces the air pollution. I feel guilty for limiting if and how long my children can play outside for those few weeks, knowing that their friends practice sports in worse air, every day.

Air pollution is not just a health problem harming our bodies. Air pollution compromises our moods, how we celebrate weddings and holidays, and how we live, work, play and travel. It is a crisis, affecting families just like mine, every single day.

Ultimately, for me, the only marker of success in this fight is India achieving clean air, for every person, every day.

I now know many of the experts and activists in India engaged in this fight, and I join forces with them.  We lack a sure path to clean air. Yet, we know that solving this crisis is entirely possible. Other countries have successfully cleaned up their air.  And Indian history has proven the country’s will and capacity to dramatically change.

India can and must overcome its air pollution crisis.  We have to believe it is possible, bring our skills to it, and keep at it. Not just life, but more importantly quality of life, is at stake, and worth fighting for.

by Gita Sinha MD MPH
children, connect, friendships, parenting, relationships

Girl Friends

“Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.”

George Eliot

What would women do without our girlfriends?

I have different girlfriend groups. My primary group is one that started when we had young children- my “mom friends”. We first met when our children were toddlers. We got together so the children could play and then found ourselves lingering to talk more. Initially about mom stuff, then other things. All of us are artists in some form, some do it professionally, the rest of us as a hobby on the side. We connected through being mothers of Indian descent, trying to celebrate Diwali, Dussehra, and for a few memorable years even Holi together.  As our children grew we could lean on each other not just to help each other out with kid stuff (pickups, drop-offs) but also with deep personal losses and sadness that come as you get older. Through illness, losses, health scares, surgery, divorce, and emotional breakdowns. We took care of each other and each other’s children. The children are teenagers and young adults now, but we still meet. One from our group moved to Australia but she’s still on our group text. We push each other to do better or more, to open our horizons. We’ve cheered each other on to professional and personal successes. We support each other through failures. We are sisters, our bond is deep and I hope unbreakable.

My other friend group consists of my friends I trained with during my residency. I’ve known these women for almost 29 years. We don’t meet as often but we have a “book club” where we try to get together a few times a year to talk about the book and catch up on each other’s lives. These are the women who understand what I do as a woman physician, who went into medicine sharing the same idealism which has turned to pragmatism. We still love our patients but not the baggage of corporate medicine. We struggle with balancing personal and family needs with work and the need to do “more” to make the world a better place. These women inspire me and also “get” my professional struggles.

Then I have my painting friends. We meet alternate weeks at each other’s homes to paint together and share painting techniques. I never paint on my own, there is always something else more urgent that must be done. But when I get together with these ladies for two hours we just paint and talk about art, politics, families, books, and movies.

I have work friends who have my back (and I theirs’), family (lovely sisters in law), and other friends I don’t meet as often as I’d like to. I’m lucky enough to have a mother who is also a girlfriend. She lives across the ocean in India but as a working mom herself, a child psychologist and an author she is my role model too. We talk several times a week, email and text. We talk about her grandchildren of course, but so much more. I get my love of art, books, travel,  and gardening from her.

Debra Tannen the author of a You’re the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships states- “Talk plays a larger role in many women’s friendships than it does in many men’s, and when times are tough, talk can come into its own. Telling a friend what you’re going through can make you feel less isolated.”

This talk seems to be the secret of why friendships are important to women. Socially isolated people are at greater risk of poor health -high blood pressure, heart disease, infectious diseases. When we seek out friends we are following a biological need as well. People with strong social relationships have higher survival rates and longevity. Underlying our friendships is biochemistry, an increase in hormones that help us stay happy and calm (oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine, serotonin) and a decrease in hormones that are associated with stress (cortisol). There seems to be a deep biological need for these social connections.

Strong social bonds are important for survival even in animals, not just primates, but also dolphins, giraffes, deer, bison, elephants, birds, to name a few species. These bonds are most common in females of the species.

Our women friends comfort, nurture, sustain, feed and elevate us. As Julia Child said “Remember, ‘No one’s more important than people’! In other words, friendship is the most important thing―not career or housework, or one’s fatigue―and it needs to be tended and nurtured.”

by Svapna Sabnis
featured, health, lifestyle

Navaratri

It is the morning after several nights in a row. Nine nights, to be precise. The gods are carefully divested of their crowns and garlands, their long black tresses tied back with wispy cotton threads, packed into recycled plastic bags and put away in the big black trunk that holds the history of inter-continental crossings and multiple house-movings.

The living room reclaims its position as marginal to the life of the household- so maybe it is more correctly named the “(with)drawing room” (we don’t really live there, do we?)- after having served these ten days as a site of communing with friends and family from a variety of circles, many of whom we see only once or twice a year. But there’s a temporary void beneath the window where the steps stood, making space for the descent of the gods from the storage area off our terrace to the level of our everyday. It will take a couple of days before the mundane reasserts itself and the memory of green and blue-tinged bodies, and their other-wordly aura, fades. “The room seems so empty now,” my mother in law remarks after we’ve cleared the last of the festival paraphernalia.

Navaratri, like almost every other festival, brings up all kinds of ambivalent feelings in me. There is nostalgia, of course, for uncomplicated times and the innocence of childhood, where the only protests had to do with getting up early or having to take an oil bath or going around with the invitational kumkum bharani, exposing oneself to the curiosity of the neighborhood aunties who would comment on the length of one’s hair or the inadequate number of bangles on one’s wrist. But that was always made up for by the innumerable varieties of sundal and sweets that one was offered by those very same aunties. And I was also one of the fortunate few who was never asked to sing for my sundal, having deftly sidestepped those obligatory Carnatic music classes that most of my contemporaries in the Tam-Bram circle were privileged to attend. Much to my parents’ regret, I suspect (and truth be told, to my own as well).

Now that I’m an auntie myself (as my children often remind me when I show embarrassing signs of forgetting), and I am the one offering the sundal and sweets, not to speak of being the one who has to spend that extra time in the kitchen cooking it all up, the ten-day festival (even though it is technically nava-ratri or nine nights) represents not just the opportunity for silk and music but also… work. And that work, and everything it represents, is implicated in all sorts of politics that my academic self cannot ignore.

My friends who are more deeply rooted in the progressive academic discourse would have much more to say about this discomfort and its relationship to modernity but for now, I’d just like to lay out some of the contradictions that I am constantly trying to reconcile (and why one even needs to reconcile them is another question, for another time).

–how does one deal with the notion of the oppressive Brahminical without discarding everything that is beautiful and good in tradition?
–how does one hold on to the aesthetic aspects of culture while also refashioning the meanings held within the form(s)?
–in other words, how does one appropriate the form while discarding all that this very form may have represented in the past?
–how does one learn to take pleasure in the social and cultural opportunities that such festivals offer in a truly secular–and egalitarian–way?

Each year, I try to deal with these questions, sometimes subconsciously, as I put the bomma golutogether and make my list of people to invite and balance my time between the demands of work and the extended kitchen time. Many of the dolls that we display have a special meaning for my family; the main pieces were made by my mother in law over forty years ago, lovingly and painstakingly, and each time we bring them out is a chance for her to recall her younger, more agile self and take pleasure once again in the sense of crafting something. Each year, as we prepare the display, we listen to stories of the making of the dolls, the years the family spent in Shillong, the many people who came and saw and what they said. This invariably leads to conversations about other navaratris in other places, and my children (if they happen to be here) and I are treated to glimpses of the past which tend to stay buried the rest of the year as we go about our regular business. We remember people who have turned into faded faces in our photo albums, and get a sense of what life was like before modern telecommunications.

So clearly, the sense of ambivalence also derives from another sort of nostalgia, for the loss of neighborhood, of the ease of getting around, of dispersed families, of a calendar that respected the personal and the familial and recognized the need for a periodic slowing down of the professional. The days leading up to the festival, I’m anxious and nervous about managing things, and I allow a resentment to build up, telling myself that I am only meeting expectations, that I am doing things that are not part of my modern-liberal psyche. But that’s only partly true. I am myself loath to give up the practice, because it is tied up with so much that I value and respect, with so much that–when I allow myself–I truly take pleasure in.

And in the doing of things, in the ritual of setting up the display, the resentment fades. While those questions and contradictions remain, I set them aside for another time, another space, another context.

by Usha Raman
connect, featured, lifestyle, parenting, relationships

Feminist Mom-ent

I hadn’t heard the term “feminist parenting” until I was way past the age of raising kids, and well into raising young adults who thought they were well past the age of being raised. But I’ve been a feminist ever since I can remember, even before I knew the word or grasped the full implications of the feminist fight. I’ve never regarded myself as anything other than perfectly capable of doing the things I wanted to do—whether it was the short-lived dream of becoming a world renowned molecular biologist or a drug-designing organic chemist, or the other one of writing that killer investigative story that would win me the Pulitzer—or at maybe the Ramnath Goenka Award. And not for a moment did I attribute not being able to do the things I wanted to do to my gender. Looking back, of course, with a keener—and more critical eye—I can see the points at which an unconscious response to deeply entrenched expectations on my part and a structural orientation on the part of society, nudged me in one way or another, or made a certain choice easier—or more acceptable–than another.

So when my children were born, one lovely girl after the other, there was no question that they would be raised as human beings, first, and human beings last. This is not to say that there were no gendered paraphernalia in their lives; given the plethora of adoring aunts, uncles and grandparents, they had their share of little-girl gifts. At different points they wore pink and purple and lace and frills, they fantasized about being princesses and mermaids, they demanded Barbie dolls and glitter, which I gave in to reluctantly and always with a bit of a deconstructive lecture. But they also had swimming and soccer, karate and cycling, and were encouraged to climb trees and when possible, mountains. They watched me and my husband share tasks and responsibilities, they watched him defer to me on some things and me to defer to him on others. Yes, we also found ourselves and our ideas often hemmed in by the expectations of a traditional South Indian family structure, but despite this, there were spaces for conversations that steered around and through these constraints, acknowledging them yet offering possibilities of resistance and change.
It helped (and helps) that they are surrounded by female strength of different kinds: grandmothers with a strong sense of self and their own respective passions; aunts who laughed heartily, unafraid; cousins who had made unpopular choices and those who had adopted convention but retained a measure of choice. And it also helped (and helps) that there were many men in their lives who never used the words “you’re a girl, so…”.
It’s never easy being a parent, and it wasn’t easy for me–who had strong feelings about the ills of the world and what to do about them. It’s even harder when you are constantly trying to resist conventional wisdom while keeping the peace. I’m not a natural non-conformist, and I hate to rock the boat…I’m the kind of person who will nudge it sideways, a little at a time, believing firmly that the course will eventually change.


But ideology has not really been a conscious part of the parenting approach—although, one might argue, our political beliefs form the subtext even of our domestic lives. They surface occasionally in our interactions with family members, run through the arguments we have in spoken and unspoken words, the ways in which we treat those who work for and with us, and in the manner in which we approach the market. But I suppose the ideology would have been evident in the books we bought for the girls, the activities we enrolled them in, or the ways in which we dealt with the ups and downs of life, or in our interactions with people and the world.
So it was no surprise that daughter number one made choices that were fiercely her own, challenged only in relation to how they spoke to her mind and soul rather than their “value” in the employment market, that there was no question that she would follow her heart no matter where it took her and how long a journey it would be. And it was no surprise that daughter number two found her passion in sports, that there was no question that she too would stumble through those highs and lows in her own way, that we would neither shield her from disappointment nor set any ‘external’ standards.
What I have done is try to be (pretty much) transparent. I’ve talked with them about my own uncertainties, frustrations, hopes and dreams. I’ve shared with them my vulnerabilities and my anger. I’ve also done things I’ve enjoyed, and taken my space as and when I’ve needed it. But there is one thing I haven’t been able to do, and that is, to lay down my own guilt in the face of not meeting imagined expectations. Fortunately, though, they see the futility of that guilt and often try to talk me out of it. It’s in the middle of those conversations that I stop and think, “Wow, they have grown up, indeed!” 

Perhaps in the final analysis, feminist parenting is really about creating a space where there is both conscience and consciousness, a space where self-concept is untethered to the limitations imposed by expectations of [gender or other] roles. It’s not to say that things have been ideal. They still have to deal with the [gendered] anxieties that arise when they’re out late or in unfamiliar contexts. They still need to offer justifications about being safe. But I can see that the same anger I feel simmers in them too. It’s an anger that leads one to uncover narratives of oppression in popular culture and the other to rally against discrimination in sports.

But still, twenty-seven years later, when my daughter admonishes me fondly upon my asking if my dangly earrings look “too young for me”, saying, “Ma, what sort of a feminist are you?” it makes me smile inside.

by Usha Raman PhD
art, connect, featured, litArt, relationships

On Belonging

I could say many things about the upcoming two person exhibition and my collaboration with Lois Bielefeld. I could load this post with art theory terms, postcolonial phrases, race and political commentary and technical jargon. But it will not explain what this work has meant to me over the last two years. I will simply tell you a story.

Two years ago, I came back from one of my trips to India to experience what felt like a different country. With a new president, each day brought sensationalist headlines, new announcements and events that highlighted an increasingly polarized America. I needed to wrap my head around what was going on, observe, read, speak to mentors and friends before I returned to the studio, questioning whether my work was relevant anymore.

An idea slowly began to emerge that demanded more courage from me than I have ever given before. For the first time, I included my physical self in the production of a body of work. I reached out to Lois Bielefeld, who I did not know at that time, with the idea to explore how race is perceived visually through garment and skin color and how intimately tied the body’s relationship to place is. I donned each of my barely used saris and worked with Lois to produce photographs that show me overtly performing difference while exploring and embedding myself in the landscape of Milwaukee. We titled this work Reaching Across 5 1/2 yards / 8497 miles. It spoke to both the length of the sari fabric and the distance between my place of birth and the place I live in now. Over the next year and half we traversed Milwaukee’s pocketed and  segregated spaces and experienced each other’s personal sanctuaries and the city’s public places of power. The result is a visual quilt of photographs that reflect different facets of Milwaukee.

Nirmal walking in Milwaukee, “overtly performing difference.”

Throughout this journey, Lois and I had many conversations- on her childhood memories of Milwaukee, on religion, identity, politics and art. We were walking by the Milwaukee Riverwalk one day and came across the American history engraved on its boardwalk. This led to discussions on how each of us understood this history, mostly written by white men. The burden of America’s violent and racist history weighed heavy on us as we discussed the Muslim ban, riots in Charlottesville, Standing Rock protests, police brutality against African Americans, border walls, shootings at Sikh Temple of Wisconsin and Olathe Kansas in addition to other racist incidents against people of color. I made a rubbing of the history engraving onto 30 meters of organdy fabric which then became a prop for another body of collaborative work with Lois. We titled this work that included 12 performance based photographs, What is Recorded / What is Remembered.

The rubbing of engraved American history on an organdy fabric sari.



We expanded this work by reaching out to our friends, diverse women of different ages, races and sexual orientations involving them in a performance based three channel video work. It was magical to see how generous and willing they were to perform with us not knowing what the end product may look like.

The circle grew even larger with the production of an audio archive that not only included the women we invited to perform but also community members we admired and respected. This is an ongoing project that explores how each of us contend with history- personal, national and global and includes our hopes and fears for the future in addition to how we have come to understand what being American is.


All this may sound confusing –  with subjects that are vast and complex, but it all comes down to the personal, the self and moves outward to the community like ripples. We hope that our work is the pebble that causes those ripples. What was an impulsive act of reaching out to a stranger in a desperate need to understand and build something together, has led to a special friendship and incredible learning. I have come to understand my community better, to gain comfort through human connection, learn from wise and knowledgeable women, listen to the hope in young people’s voices. These are the intangibles that are behind the work. We hope that you may feel these intangibles, invisible as they are, filtering through the exhibition and for those of you far away, perhaps through the images and links on our websites.

It takes courage to reach out to a stranger who is different from us. To have conversations that are uncomfortable and new, but if we approach it with a spirit of inquiry and learning, we may realize that we all have the same fears and concerns. You never know what might come of that interaction.

No art can be shared without the support of space and visibility. We are incredibly grateful to The Warehouse, John Shannon and Laura Sims Peck at Guardian Fine Arts to generously host this exhibition at their 4000 square foot pristine gallery space. A space large and generous enough  to hold this work and share it with Milwaukee.

On Belonging
opens March 8th and will be up till May 31st,
The Warehouse, 1635 W. Saint Paul Ave., Floor 1, Milwaukee, WI 53233

Opening reception is on March 8th, 5-8 pm
The gallery is open by appointment Monday – Friday. Please call 414-252-0677 or email info@thewarehousemke.org

Nirmal Raja
Lois Bielefeld


connect, featured, food, health, lifestyle, meditation

Aircraft or the body?

When you take up a big task or a project which is going to take up your mental and physical time, you should be discreet about how you use your energy. Viveka means to be aware and take steps to wisely use the resources. But what are the resources and where are they located? They are the mind, body, the physical space around you, the breath and sleep. These are all connected. How are these connected?


If you are sleep deprived, how will be the state of the situation?
How is your mind when the food you eat is either less or more?
How is breath connected with energy? One question leads to another and you see there is a pattern to this connection.

Let’s look at each of the resources individually and as we do that let’s use the analogy of an aircraft to represent the physical body. There are all kinds of aircraft and different levels of care that is required for each of them. The level of care and caution that is given to a two seater, a passenger aircraft and a fighter plane is different based of the use they have. Whatever be the type and need of the machine, we give it the fuel that it needs in the right quantity and right quality.

You don’t substitute diesel for petrol or you don’t put extra fuel in a two seater because you fancy it moving faster- you cannot do that. Similarly, we give our body the right quantity and quality of food. Not too much not too less.

Taste has types, tamasic, rajasic or sattvic.

Rajasic taste is when you eat for taste alone and hence don’t know when to stop. Sattvic taste satiates the mind and body. The food nourishes the body and makes it available for optimum use. Sattvic food keeps the body free from disease and dullness, the less the digestive system has to process the better it is for the physical body which will be available for a variety of endeavors. Food then is one of the resource.

Sleeping recharges our cells and calms the nervous system. With too much sleep and with too little sleep we are not giving our best. An over used aircraft and an aircraft rotting in the hanger, both are not of any use.

There is no fixed standard measure of time that one must sleep. Each body is different and has different sleep requirements. We need to strike our own balance.

Breath, is addressed last with a definite purpose. It is the link between the body and mind; memory and intellect. It’s like a kite and a thread, the kite is controlled by the string and we use our breath to navigate our mind. Keeping the connection with the body to the mind, via the breath is what keeps a balance. Moving away from the roots or disconnecting due to the changes in the breath, causes immense pain in body and mind and reduces our capacity to give our best.

The practice of yogasanas and meditation brings in the balance. Using the aircraft well and giving them a rest in the hangar make for a long lasting and productive machine. Living wisely leads to high productivity, you don’t fall ill often. You don’t feel sluggish when you are expected to be giving your best.

With a little effort in maintaining the breath, to bring the mind to the NOW, to come back to the source is meditation

by Meena Waghray
featured, love, relationships, wabi sabi

From our reading pulpit
Paromita Vohra, whose work we follow, is featured here as a share. She is a filmmaker based in Mumbai.


“Where is the room for secret, dark places in our nature, where strange flora, petalled and bacterial, bloom, alerting us to our own leanings? This fertility, in dark, wet, sometimes lonely places of the self, is an emotionally inefficient but regenerative process. There are no relationship agreements to be made here, no guarantees of love or success, and the permanent risk of being inconvenient to some and irrelevant to others.

The business of being yourself, or becoming yourself, is mostly a helpless act, often bloody and cyclical, born from the risky collisions with other minds, hearts and bodies.”

addiction, featured, health, lifestyle

Children and Media -Screens in Teens

At first, it was insidious. I would be at a restaurant with my family and I would see another family dining nearby. The children were using some kind of device, maybe a GameBoy to occupy them before their meal arrived. I noticed that the adults were able to have a real conversation. It was tempting to consider getting such devices for my kids as well as we dealt with children who interrupted our talk and demanded our attention- like normal children would. Growing up, I was a voracious reader, and I remember my mom making me put my books away and insisting I join the conversation at dinner. So I persisted with the rule for my children- no books or screens at the dining table.

I never had any absolute rules on computers and video games. Things were negotiable if a reasonable argument could be made. My older son made it easier on me by preferring being outdoors to video games. Luckily for me, he set a precedent and my younger son didn’t realize he could have asked us for a game system.

Now it seems like the devices at dinner time are ubiquitous, and it’s not just the children anymore. Everyone is checking their social media, texting their friends, catching up on the news and seemingly going out of their way to avoid human connection and conversation. I’ve seen kids connect by looking at each other’s social media accounts and comments they receive. That’s the entire conversation! They are often sitting in the same room texting each other instead of talking or playing, or maybe texting someone else because they don’t care to spend time with the person they are with. I find that incredibly rude, and yet  I catch myself fishing my phone out to check something non-urgent when I’m with friends. I avoided social media for a long time, but I recently succumbed to Instagram, mostly to keep up with my talented artist friends. I love seeing what they are up to and sharing my own amateur watercolors. I discovered that my niece who lives in another state is an incredible artist. Although I really signed up to see what others were creating, I suddenly find myself checking on whether people are commenting on my posts.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to look things up whenever I need to, read my newspapers, do my crosswords, play words with friends, check my email. I can even put in prescriptions for my patients on my phone.

My 16-year-old uses his phone to keep in contact with his friends, play games, browse some social media but also to do school-related activities. The lines are blurred between work and fun. I bought him a flip phone in sixth grade and a smartphone in eighth grade. With the smartphone came new rules (responsible use, parent access to his phone and any social media). Phones can be used to play games that are fun, entertaining, educational or destructive. I have preteen patients develop sleep problems because they won’t (or cannot) stop using the phone or playing video games. I’ve read that kids have shadow social media accounts that their parents follow, and real accounts that their parents don’t know about.  I’ve read that one can hide porn behind the seemingly innocent Calculator app. Kids have always known how to fool their parents. At some point, you have to throw your hands up and hope that you taught them well. But every child’s maturity level is different. Smartphones can be dangerous in the hands of an immature, impulsive child. It can be used to bully, threaten, intimidate, access porn, post inappropriate selfies or pictures of others, destroy a reputation, or ruin a young life. I had patients (really all girls) who shared nude pictures of themselves with boys which were then forwarded to the boyfriend’s friends. The girls were traumatized, grades plummeted, and they became anxious and depressed.

Smartphones are incredibly convenient and frighteningly addictive. And we put them in the hands of young people who have not yet learned to moderate their impulses. We wouldn’t give them unrestricted access to alcohol, drugs or cigarettes, would we?

Pandora’s box has been opened! We can use our phones for good and for evil. As adults let’s put our own oxygen masks on first, examine our own use of media, and then help our kids have better balance. Let’s get them back in the yard with their friends, balance the screen time with outdoor time. Maybe some star gazing, a hike, have real adventures.

For American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines on Children and Media https://tinyurl.com/y95q9w4c

And if you really want to learn about the importance of play in children’s lives I recommend Malavika Kapur’s book “What’s the Hurry? Let Children be Children”. Disclaimer- she is my mom. https://tinyurl.com/ycx97ke3

http://Other interesting articles https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/digital-divide-screens-schools.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/business/media/google-youtube-children-data.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/raised-by-youtube/570838/

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/the-dangers-of-distracted-parenting/561752/

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/zero-to-eight-childrens-media-use-in-america-2013

by Svapna Sabnis
featured, health, lifestyle, meditation, mindfulness, movement

One round of sadhana or practice

You start your day on a beautiful note, you are already happy because this is your time and not anyone else’s. Everyone can wait because it is 4.30 in the morning and the whole world around you is asleep. Nobody is likely to wake up, you know that for sure. For a yogi, it is very important that you are on your own, just for some time, so that you can enjoy the time with everyone around you later. You don’t want to be alone all the time!

So what do we do and how does it start? You take the yoga mat and get ready. You stand on the mat and you are thinking, what do I do? Do I do the Surya Namaskar today or a full stretch or do I do my own personal sequence? That confusion is going on in the mind and you are debating and enjoying the debate and finally you decide. And as you are doing it, you are moving your body, you are doing your warm up. Once the warm up is over, the body is naturally flowing into a comfortable rhythm of stretches. The hands automatically go up, the shoulders go up, the feet are firm on the ground and your attention is on your breath, eyes are closed and you decide- today you decide that the plan is to stay in the asanas- so you start with the Surya Namaskar.

Everyday you can decide to do something. You can do a lot of asanas one day or you decide to focus on the breath or you only move the body slowly. You will decide sometimes that to go deep into the posture or sometimes you may not be well, and have a pain or a catch somewhere and you decide to focus on that for a few minutes, dwell on that and see where it goes. Each day is a new decision on the yoga mat. The unfolding of the mat is a new story and what the body does, the mind helps out- it is far from a rote mechanism.

You start breathing, you start listening to the silent sounds around you. Actually, there are no sounds at this time in the morning, apart from one or two stray vehicles moving on the road. Your practice is going on and it’s almost like 10-15 minutes of asanas, stretches with deepening them and enjoying on the mat.

From far away, you start hearing a familiar sound which says it is that time. It is almost a quarter to five now because the birds wake up at this time. This is your company every morning, these are all familiar people to you, you are aware of these sounds. You are aware of your breath, aware of your body. You take deep breaths and continue into your asanas, continue into the movement. Something makes you continue in the asanas, you recall how you saw this person do this complicated stretch and say let me give it a try. Let me get into this complicated version of the pigeon pose and you try to get into it, you get it right on the right side of the body and not on the left side of the body- it is okay to do that. It probably needs a little more practice- it will happen eventually.

With that in mind, some happiness is swelling over within you already, some peace is turning within you and you are enjoying that. You are enjoying that your breath is becoming easier, body is becoming lighter. Now you want to sit and do the pranayam, the breathing excercises. You sit, absorb the effect of the asanas and allow the body to meditate for a few minutes, maybe 4-5 minutes then start the pranayams. You get into vajrasana, and do the first stage of pranayam with the awareness of the Ujjayi breath, slow and sure. You remind yourself that you will be doing the pranayams like a warrior. The pranayams, one by one, make you more calm and soft in the mind. Now you are done with the pranayam, you do the Sudarshan Kriya. You take a decision that you will do the Kriya like it is the first time you are doing it.

You become aware of the sohums, the in-breaths and the out-breaths. The patterns, the counts and you are lost in them and then you have reached the last round and you close your eyes and just sit. So many thoughts would have been going on all the time, so much planning going on all the time in the mind since the moment you started to climb on the mat. Now it has all vanished, it is just silent. You are aware of the birds chirping but something in the mind is silent. Very silent and calm. You don’t know how much time you spent sitting after the Kriya and meditation, but you know for sure there is no rush, nothing to rush about. There is plenty of time. Everything will be rushed during the day but this cannot be rushed. Slowly you get up, you open your eyes. A chant is forming on the lips- what is that? You say the chants, and again for a minute or two, you absorb the sounds of the chants and feel a burst of energy inside you. As if you can conquer anything, the assurance that nothing is impossible. And that calm is going to see you through the day, is going to see you through many days to come. And that is nothing but the high energy that the pranayam brings, the warm up and yoga brings. You feel the energy- it is a strange feeling but people who do this everyday, feel this. You feel new again. And this is the one round of sadhana or practice.

by Meena Waghray


books, lifestyle, literature

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“We forget that novels continuously are introducing errors of life we haven’t thought of before; that haven’t really been in the public consciousness.”

“And no- writers do not have to be visionaries.” #Doris Lessing

When one loves to read, some values get imbibed by default. For example, being true to ones-self and knowing who we are and working hard to be the best one can be. By this analogy, to also know that when we read, we find interesting spaces to explore, to find insightful answers to questions we have struggled with and given up on.

For us, exploring this aspect of reading and finding a flaw in our thinking, clarifying it with the world around us, is something that we are enabling on this platform. Share here what you have read and how it has shaped your person.