Skip to main content

Featured Post

2023 - The Year That Was

Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with

Game Time at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum!

Have you ever seen this? In Tamil, we called it 'Pinnal Kolattam'. 



Each of us held a different coloured ribbon, and then, moved around in sync, as the ribbons wound themselves into a beautiful plait...



When was the last time you played Hop-scotch? Of course, you might have called it by another name, such as ‘paandi’ or ‘tappri’ as we did.



When was the last time you skipped?



Or played snakes and ladders without a board?





And this one, played with small shells or cowries, was simply called ‘chozhi’….



This game varied from place to place. We called it ‘Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras’ and Samhith calls it ‘Bomb in the city’. We simply ran around as someone clapped hands, stopping at different cities when the clapping stopped. The clapper called out a city name and all those who stood there were ‘out!’



Do these take you back down memory lane? If you, like me, grew up in the seventies and eighties, before the advent of TVs and Computers, chances are, you would have played these games too, and many more.

This weekend, the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum at Byculla, Mumbai, gives us a chance to go back down memory lane, remember all these games, and re-learn them…. Introduce our kids to show them just how much fun they are!

These games are on at the Museum over the weekend…. Tomorrow is the last day, so if you are in Mumbai, do not miss this chance.

And in case you do miss the chance, you can download a book I collaborated on, with my fellow writers from Pocket Cultures. Titled ‘Gamesfrom around the world’, the book will surely give you some ideas!

While you are the museum, you have other things to feast your eyes on… The museum of course has some fascinating works of art – ivories, metalwork, and representations of culture and myths. There are stories galore always on display. But, at the moment, there is another story too being displayed – a story told through photographs and reproductions of letters. Ghiora Aharoni’s ‘Missives’ is inspired by love letters written by his mother as an adolescent in the 1950s. Accompanied by thousands of vintage photographs, and  reproductions of fragments of the letters on delicate Japanese paper, the installation is a delight to experience. This is on display till the 30th of November.







And then, there is also the exhibition of photographs of properties in Bombay owned by David Sassoon. Most of us have heard of the Sassoon Docks and the David Sassoon Library, but the photographs show us a legacy so much bigger than just these two. The beautifully preserved and displayed photos show us Bombay as it must have been, and make me wish I lived then. It made me want to explore more of the Mumbai today, and see what has become of those buildings today. The exhibition is on till the 24th of November. 

Comments

  1. great stuff, i'm going to go tomorrow!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanx to your blog, i finally visited this awesome place and i am already planning to visit one more time ! Keep it up :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks so much for stopping by. Please leave a comment for me so that I will know you have been here....

Popular posts from this blog

Gokarna Part II – The Five Lingams

We continued our Gokarna trip by visiting four other Shiva temples in the vicinity, all connected to the same story of Gokarna. The story of Gokarna mentions the Mahabaleshwara Lingam as the one brought from Kailas by Ravana, and kept at this place on the ground by Ganesha. (See my earlier post- Gokarna – Pilgrimage and Pleasure). However, the story does not end here. It is believed that, in his anger, Ravana flung aside the materials which covered the lingam- the casket, its lid, the string around the lingam, and the cloth covering it. All these items became lingams as soon as they touched the ground. These four lingams, along with the main Mahabaleshwara lingam are collectively called the ‘ Panchalingams’ . These are: Mahabaleshwara – the main lingam Sajjeshwar – the casket carrying the lingam. This temple is about 35 Kms from Karwar, and is a 2 hour drive from Gokarna. Dhareshwar – the string covering the lingam. This temple is on NH17, about 45 Kms south of Gokarna. Gunavanteshw

Review of Executive Lounges at New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS)

During my recent trip to Uttarakhand , I was faced with a problem I had never encountered before. We were passing through Delhi, but we had hardly any time in the city. On earlier visits when I have had to change trains/flights at Delhi, I have always arrived in the morning and left again at night, visiting relatives in between. This time, I was arriving in the city at night, and leaving again early in the morning. There was hardly any time to visit people. I would only have a couple of hours with them before I’d have to leave again. For the first time, we considered booking a hotel, but there again, we were hesitant about the actual hotels, the costs involved, and the logistics of getting from the airport to the railway station and then back again from the station to the airport.  That’s when we remembered reading something about a corporate-managed lounge at Delhi station. We soon figured out that we could book online and pay by the hour. Besides, we also learnt that there wasn’t ju

Rama Temple, Gokarna

To my right , the waves rush to the shore, eager to merge with the sand. To my left, the same waves crash against the rocks, their spray diverting my reverie as I ponder over the beauty of nature, and wonder what first brought people here. Was it this beauty that encouraged them to build a temple here, or was it the fresh, sweet spring water flowing from the hill here that made this place special? No matter what the reason, I am glad my auto driver brought me here. We are at the Rama temple in Gokarna, just a few minutes away from the Mahabaleshwara Temple, yet offering so different a perspective.