Ganesha Puja at the Elephant Junction

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I felt so grateful to be a witness to this beautiful ceremony today. In Hinduism, puja is an offering ritual. The purpose was to bless ancestors and future generations. The puja was for Lord Ganesha to help remove obstacles. The occasion today was a special new moon that is very good for this particular puja. It was especially sacred because there were elephants there that participated in the ceremony. It was about four hours long. It was truly amazing to watch. I felt inspired to learn more about Hinduism afterwards.

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WED 2013 : Learning To Finish That Meal…

WED 2013 - Raxa Collective

On June 5, we’ll celebrate World Environment Day. This year UNEP focuses on Food waste/Food Loss. At Raxa Collective we’ll be carrying out actions and sharing experience and ideas. Come and join us with your tips to preserve foods, preserve resources and preserve our planet.

As a child, I was always told to finish eating my meals because there were starving children in poor and faraway lands that would gladly trade places with me.  I could not exactly picture what that meant, and the rebelious part of me always wanted to stick a postage stamp on my plate and send it to these children.  No one who grew up with such abundance, I think, could trade the fresh memory of a full meal for a clear picture of hunger.

Being from Texas (and proud of it, so don’t mess with that), with its long “bigger and better” history and wonderful mythology of abundance and its can-do certainty, I did not “get it”.  Now, the hazy memories of those dinners and parental wisdom are coming into perspective with my ability to follow and understand news from around the world.

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“I found love when I was 6”: A Story of Tattoos and Love

There are many things I could have named this blog post, but I decided it should sound scandalous, it should sound crazy, it should sound epic. I mean, what is more scandalous, more crazy, and more epic than falling in love when you’re is only 6 years old?

Getting a tattoo? No.

Getting a tatttoo at 6? No.

Getting a tattoo of your true love at 6? Now that, my friends, is crazy.

Kamal's Tattoo of his wife's name, Meena

Kamal’s Tattoo of his wife’s name, Meena

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Bonds In Theaters

Here on the southern coast of Nicaragua, I have tracked reviews of the latest Harry Potter movie without yet being able to see it for myself.  My parents and brother went to see it in Kerala today.  Their review was less about the movie itself than about the fact that being in a movie theater in India is a kind of spectacle in its own right, apart from whatever may be happening on screen. I’ll describe the Indian experience in more detail later; for now I think back in time.

In 2006 my family was living on a small island off the coast of Dubrovnik (that is the view from our home in the photo above). About 150 people lived on the island, mostly the families of fishermen, who only spoke Croatian and maybe a little Italian.  The old city of Dubrovnik had a small cinema that sometimes played movies in English.  I recall when the latest James Bond film, with a new actor whose performance everyone was eager to review, started playing in this theater–in English with Croatian subtitles. “Casino Royale,” the movie was called.

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Back to Nature

I was recently walking around in a neighborhood park, and I saw birds splashing in a pool of water.  I watched a pair of squirrels play tag up and down a large oak tree, and I admired an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand in a flower garden.  Then, I heard a car door slam and my eyes beheld children entering the park hardly lifting their gaze from their electronic devices as debris flew from their car.  As I raced to retrieve and dispose of the litter, my mind quickly volunteered pieces of itself to give to them and their parents.  How could this world’s future generation be so oblivious to the natural environment?  And especially when global climate issues are so prevalent? Continue reading