my assignment for screen play writing at TDSB Learn4life Fall 2014 class

The forest at the edge of the Himalayan Mountains was thickly wooded, dark and cool. There were places in the forest, where even the sun’s rays could not penetrate through the thick branches of the trees.

This forest was home  not only for the hundreds of birds& beasts, plants & trees, reptiles & fishes, rocks & caves, lakes & rivers but also for many of society’s outcasts and oddities.  Rumor had it that not only did people seeking God lived here but also the lunatics, the robbers and thieves, the lepers and the other outcasts of society.  There were huts with monks who meditated upon God in this forest. The simple people of the nearby villages, walked to these huts to give alms and seek blessings, advice and holy ashs from the monks. Fearful of the wild beasts and the robbers who were supposed to inhabit the forest, they never came singly but in groups.

Some villagers said they saw this leper or that lunatic entering or leaving the forest. Some claimed to have seen fierce looking dacoits with huge mustaches entering the forest, in the early hours, carrying booty. If everyone’s story was believed, the forest seemed to hold more people, than a city!

Little boys played at the edge of the forest during the holidays from school when could escape the watchful eyes of their parents. Only the boldest of the older boys strayed a bit farther inside the forest to prove he was not scared of the ghosts haunting the trees in this forest.

Several tales about this forest made their rounds. One tale is of a brave hunter & his servant who entered this forest many years ago. People spoke in hushed tones about the hunter who never returned and his servant who was a babbling idiot when he emerged from the forest. Another was the tale of a band of robbers who lived in the forest and hid their booty in one of the caves. No villager dared to enter to hunt for this treasure and wild tales of the treasures hidden grew as the stories passed on from one generation to another.

Kiran, a teenager from the city, who spent his holidays with his grandmother, who lived in the village at the edge of this forest, played with the boys, by the river running between the forest and the village.  He loved the wide open spaces in the village. He loved swimming in the river and keeping an eye out for the cunning croc, added a delicious sense of danger to the swimming.  Kiran found the mangoes tasted sweeter only if he stole them! He enjoyed the scary thrill when the old man guarding the trees gave chase to him and his friends.  

Kiran heard the stories about the forest from his friends. He was fascinated by the story of the ghost which had chased a man who took the shortcut through the forest to reach another village. He was curious about the treasures in the cave. He was most curious about his grandmother, who let him do almost everything he wanted but would never let him go to the forest.

One hot day, when his friends were busy helping their families with harvesting the crops, Kiran, was by the river fishing and looking across at the forest. He tried to peer through the trees, but could see nothing but trees and a family of monkeys doing what monkeys do…. Kiran  looked longingly at the forest.  He had only a few days left before his school, in the city started. He thought of the forest, the people in it, the treasures in it, the wild animals, whose roars in the nights, sent shivers up his spine. He thought of the robbers and killers who lived in them, though he had never seen any.  He wondered if he would ever see the King Cobra with 5 hoods and if he would ever get the Nagaratna from it’s hood.

Kiran’s longing to go into the forest got stronger and stronger, as the day for him to depart to the city got nearer and nearer. But his grandmother was adamant that her grandson, who came to stay with her should return to the city, safe and sound. She would not hear of Kiran, even setting foot on the other side of the river. Kiran, who loved his grandmother was torn between obeying her and his longing for the forest.

He thought of the forest all the time. He spoke less to his friends and lost interest in his games. His mind was full of the forest and he thought of it during the day and dreamt of it at night.  Will he return to the city without searching the forest?

Michael Robotham and others...I read in summer 2014

My colleague and friend introduced me  another nice author, previously unknown to me... Michael Robotham.
I just finished reading two of his books i.e. The night ferry and Watching you. Enjoyed both.
Ordering other books by  this author and hope the other books are as thrilling as these two.  The night ferry is a thriller told in first person by a Sikh lady born and brought up in England and working in the police force. It tickles me to think that a male, non-Asian person wrote this!

Watching you is a thriller with a psychologist in it and as I am in the mental health field, I was sort of curious.

I hope I have a great summer with lots of great books to read! I am currently enjoying the TV show, Psych. My husband who usually refuses to see TV is also hooked to this and we see about 2 epidodes per day. I love this show! It is fun, not at all serious, the guys Shawn and Gus and all of the cast are fun. We do miss the shows we were watching and all of which have stopped now and will hopefully restart in fall. The shows we are hooked to and not airing now are Homeland, White collar, Justified, True detective, Republic of Doyle, House of cards, NCIS, NCIS Los Angles and God knows what else...I can remember only these now.

One of my dreams if I win a lottery ticket is to buy the dvds of all my favorite shows and give it to my friends in India who have no access to these shows. I would LOVE to do that! I want my friends, especially those who are having problems with their husbands to watch the shows such as Good wife, The Closer, etc...I feel it would empower them at least to some extent and make them stand up for themselves, more than they are doing now. I also think/hope that these shows would change the mind set of the people who continue to think that Indian culture is great, that women should obey their husbands, that family is the most important thing for a woman and that women sacrificing themselves is the only right way.
Surfing on Netflix I discovered a funny enjoyable , old show called The job...it is about a police Precinct in New York city and it's not serious and I feels relaxed watching this...I love the characters, and the fact that things were so easy -going and less grim or less criminal  in those days..or at least in this show.


A few of the other books I enjoyed in Summer of 2014:
Maximum city by Suketu Mehta This is a must read for people who want to understand the 'Real' India !


Lachlan Smith's Bear is broken and Lion plays rough...both are set in San Fransisco, are the first two books by this writer and is crime fiction and about Criminal Lawyers...What I liked about this book is that it is realistic.


Sara Paretsky's  Warshawski series about a female P I in Chicago  I liked these books but found some of them a bit slow... I was surprised to get a Detroit feel about the book (the poverty and crime made me think of Detroit). I liked it because it was realistic(I am over-using this word but cannot think of a different one!), and loved the fact that it is a female P.I...I have only seen male P.Is till now.
Loyalty by Ingird Thoft...this too has a female private investigator
The magician's accomplice by Michael Genelin...this is the first crime fiction set in Slovakia that I am reading. I really like it as it's fast paced, easy to read, believable characters. I  have already booked books by the same author, to read when I am done with this one.
One great non-fiction book, really well written is Human Traffic and Transnational Crime edited by Sally Stoecker & Louise Shelly.


Linwood Barclay's A tap on the window....I love most of his books as they are fast paced.


 And one more thing...Either because I am aging or because today's crime fiction is different I have observed one thing about myself. I  remember the plots clearly of the books I read 10-30 years ago. But the books I read today... i.e. modern crime fiction, I enjoy them as they are quick paced, well written and have characters I can identify with or like... but I  forget the book completely within a few days after finishing them! I am trying to figure out why.


The books I read ages ago but remember very well are all the classics, and  books by James Herriot, A.J.Cronin, Georgette Heyer, Dick Francis, etc and crime fiction by authors like James Hadley Chase, Alistair Maclean, Lawrence Sanders, Earle Stanley Gardner, etc


The books I read today but forget completely include those by Linwood Barclay, Harlan Coban, to name two. The books I have read recently but remember are books by Martin Cruz Smith, Stuart.M.Kaminsky's Rostinkov and Liberman series, Tom Rob Smith's trilogy, to name a few.
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books read in fall of 2014:
Random Violence by Jassy Mackenzie : female PI, set in South Africa (My first book with the story set in South Africa). It is very violent (I don't like this amount or this kind of violence) but the writing is fast paced and I would have enjoyed it more if the violence was a bit less
I have borrowed another book by this author but still to start i.e. Pale Horses

Sea glass by Lake Ontario in Bluffer's Park, Scarborough

Sea glass

 

I don’t remember when or how I discovered about sea glass but now, it is my latest obsession. I had no idea about sea glass when I was in India. A few years ago, when I was searching for something else on the internet, I discovered sea glass … I think. Ever since I discovered sea glass I have fallen in love with it and have spent several hours trawling on the internet and even borrowing books from the library to read about it.

While drooling over photos of sea-glass on the internet, I was lead into the world of other fascinating things such as sea pottery, sea brick and beach stones. I enjoyed seeing the photos of sea brick and sea pottery, though there is less about them on the internet, compared to sea-glass.  I also started reading about sea-glass related things such as the sea glass museum at Fort Bragg in California and the sea glass events held in places like USA & Canada, and UK.  I saw the lovely art work and jewellery people have made out of sea glass in the western world. I also recall seeing, in a Baltimore jewelry shop by the harbour, lovely glass earrings …the  glass was supposed to be from Rome and  produced in B.C!  I hope it’s true! I love the idea of earrings made of glass from over 2000 years ago!

During my childhood, I had loved sea shells like any other child and still love them but I am no longer obsessed with them now. I now feel sorry for the sea animals in shells which are picked and killed for their shells and I don’t want any part of that. I pray and hope that someday, People will accept that even molluscs feel pain and stop torturing/killing them. (“Yo turtle-eater. Put yourself in the place of the turtle and try to imagine how it feels to have your skin/shell ripped out of you, even as you are living and breathing”.)

About a month ago, we went to Scarborough Bluffs as part of ‘show-Toronto-to-visitors-from USA’. And while walking along Lake Ontario in Scarborough’s Bluffer’s Park, I found my first beach glass (less tumbled than sea glass but quite pretty and pretty good!) I was thrilled! For me, it was like finding a treasure!

 I soon found and collected quite a bit of beach glass…about 50 pieces maybe. Most of the glass was milky white or a very pale green though I did find a few dark or bright shades such as cornflower blue, stout brown and a bright red. Most of the glass pieces had not been in water for a sufficient time …many were yet to lose their jagged edges and become rounded … but it was good enough for me!

My ceaseless talking about sea-glass seemed to have infected my husband too and he too began searching the beach.  Being picky, he collected fewer pieces but they were really smooth and worthy of being made into jewelry. We returned to Bluffer’s park again after a week (you do not have to pay for parking from start of winter till end of April) specifically to pick the beach glass. And this time I picked up other stuff  like sea pottery, sea brick and round speckled stones which may actually be pieces of concrete with embedded stones …the concrete pieces have become round after being smoothened by the waves of the lake.

 I loved the bricks on the beach this time! These are bricks with the edges rounded off by the waves and the holes in them look cute and they could be made to hold tiny plants or flowers! Another reason I am simply amazed by these bricks is that I compare these bricks of Toronto with the lousy quality bricks I have seen in India (Bangalore and Karnataka especially in the 70s when my dad was getting our house built). The red mud bricks in India were so weak that they would break if they fell from a height of three or four feet! And some  bricks in India were so poorly burnt that they would crumble if it simply rained on them! While these bricks from Toronto which have been in Lake Ontario, for years have only their edges rounded off! It makes me angry thinking of the poor quality of so many things in India.

The red bricks in Toronto are almost like rocks! As people in Toronto (and many parts of US & Canada) have seen, there are millions of exposed  brick houses and brick buildings which are over 100 years old…these brick houses are not covered with stucco or concrete and the bricks are exposed to the severe winters, to rain, snow, summer’s heat and yet, they remain strong! I have seen brick streets in Etobicoke and the distillery district, with vehicles running over them, yet they remain strong.

The rounded concrete pieces too were pretty intriguing for me. I have put the photos of all I found here and when you see the photos, you will know what I am talking about.

I did not see any sort of shells by the lake here…I don’t know if it’s too cold for the molluscs here in Lake Ontario near Scarborough…or if there’s some other reason as to why I did not find any shells here. We found plenty of pebbles and beach stones…they were beautiful, but I did not pick them.

My husband made these ear-rings and pendants which I wore with glee, the very next day. And I am planning to arrange the pieces of beach glass in different patterns, photograph them and save the photos. Unfortunately, I am not as creatively gifted as my husband and the only thing I can do is collect these glasses and weave fantasies about them!

Another topic of interest to me is driftwood. But I am yet to find interesting pieces and make something of them.

Books I am reading in January 2014

Bitten by the Black snake: the ancient wisdom of Ashtavakra by Manuel Schoch
This is one of the best philosophy books I have ever read, I am considering buying it.

The Mughal World:India's tainted paradise by Abraham Eraly
Anyone who is curious about life of the Mughal kings, the people of his court, and the lives of common people such as farmers, soldiers, merchants in India,  in the Mughal period India, should read this book! I had been curious about lives of people in India as a teenager but the social studies books I had as texts were useless. All they had was the names of kings, the wars and their dates, the places the wars took place. The books were so dry and the facts were so boring to read and retain, without a body of information to back them. (I am cursing the Karnataka State Government text books of the 70s and early 80s).
After moving to Canada and borrowing the books from Public Library,  I am learning so much about Indian history. Abraham's books is one of the best---highly readable, informative and this books gets into why people behaved in the ways they did and why things happened the say they did....why for example, the farmers in India   became thieves; how the artisans lived in poverty and  this lead to art slowly dying out, etc
 

Delusions..Allen Frances's Essentials of Psychiatric Diagnosis responding to the Challenge of DSM-5 (The Guilford Press, 2013)

........It is not the wrongness of the belief that defines a delusion, but rather it's being held in the face of universal consensual invalidation. Of course, this distinction is difficult to apply and can lead to some strange paradoxes. Galileo might accurately have fit this definition of "delusional", given the consensual state of scientific knowledge in 1600. And Jim Jones might not have been considered delusional, given the fact that his Jonestown cult provided consensual validation of his wacky and dangerous beliefs..........

This sentence gave me such a joyful Eureaka feeling, when I read it, I cannot express! I have been reading the definitions of delusions  since the last 30 odd years and until this wonderful definiton by Frances,  the definitions always stressed on the falseness of the belief('A delusion is a firm, fixed, unshakable false belief held by an individual' etc,etc,etc)
This description of delusion especially the fact that it is NOT THE WRONGNESS OF THE BELIEF THAT DEFINES A DELUSION, is so right and I am wondering why no one ever thought of it before...I thought of it but did not state publicly what I truly felt and this person Frances has done it!
This description of the delusion makes so many things easy and clear to me.
I can use this aspect of the delusion when I do CBT with clients ........
I can stop getting into arguments when I am accused of being delusional by thinking of this !
I can understand  better and empathize with delusional people...especially those who are not diagnosed with delusional disorder but those millions of people who are doing the same thing over and over again, with little success but strong beliefs.........Like a madcap I know who keeps buying arid agricultural land with high-interest-borrowed-money as he believes the value of this land will go up and up and up.


Normality and abnormality of human behaviour and  the criteria for mental health and illness in various cultures and situations is one area which has always facinated me.  I have written about my take on some aspects of mental illness in other articles of this blog. I will be writing more on delusions(my take on delusions...not regurgigated from other articles on the net or from texts) as delusions  facinate me; it is not the dramatic, exotic and obviously psychotic delusions that facinate me but  the subtle ones, which hover between non-delusional and delusional. The same behaviour falling at different points in the continum from  non-delusion to delusion, when it occurs in different cultures, times, places, genders, etc.
Let me give an example...
a girl of 15 refusing to step out of her house after 6 pm in Cairo as she is afraid of being attacked verbally or physically ..is she delusional or right or over cautious
This same girl of 15 has moved to  a small town in USA and is refusing to step out of her house after 6pm.

 I have written an article on judgement(What causes poor judgement? in 2012) which is sort of about delusions to some extent....poor judgements  are caused in part by delusions

Bangalore Stories-2013

Bangalore Stories

I visited India recently and these are a few of the stories I heard from people I know and people I just met off the street.

Wishing to visit Fab India next to Seva Sadan in Koramangala, I hopped into an auto driven by an old Muslim gentleman. He said he did not know Seva Sadan but would take me to Koramangala and then he said instead of wasting our time, trying to find it, it would be best if we took another auto. We told him, not to worry and we would not mind searching for the address when we got there. We then told him, how much we appreciated his being upfront about not knowing the address and his asking us to take another auto. The conversation ball was set rolling by us and he then told us, how he had been duped by a young stranger (a Muslim) exactly a week ago; he gave 22 thousand rupees to this stranger who vanished with it!! He was visibly upset and told us that he did not drive the auto for three days as he was so ashamed of being duped, so angry, so depressed, so humiliated and that he did not give a police complaint as his wife told he would be the laughing stock of their friends and relatives if people knew he had been cheated. I felt deeply sad to hear his tale of woe and livid with the stranger who duped him. The young conman had apparently spoken to this old driver asking him about his family and our driver had told him about his children, their search for a job and also asked  if this  guy could help his sons get a government job. The conman then told the old man, that he could help him but he would need money and the old man’s photo and a copy of his driving licence, etc. Our driver said he felt mesmerized by this young man’s talk or that the young man had probably done some sort of magic on him, and that though he had never ever trusted a stranger, he did trust this guy and gave him his entire savings of 22k. The young man took the money and told the driver that he should get one more photo and that he would wait while he got one more photo. The old man gave the cash and went to fetch one more photo…when he returned the young conman was gone…so was our driver’s money!
I encouraged the old driver to report to the police and explain everything as the young man must be conning a lot more people in the same way. The old man, even had a couple of phone numbers the con-artist had given him (but no one’s picking the phone now). I gave him one thousand rupees, when I reached my destination, which the old driver initially refused, but I insisted. He then broke down crying. I told him, that he was depressed by his loss and that he may need three months to recover from the depression and that he will feel better in a while. I left him with tears in his eyes…and my heart burning with rage and sadness at his plight.

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My friend works at an NGO. She has the good luck to work with a fantastic team of people…her colleagues are intelligent, dedicated, radical and passionate…..unlike most people, they are not working just to make money; they are the kind of people who care about society, the downtrodden, have adopted children, though they have their own, they are not running after wealth and other typical Indian middleclass mainstream ambitions…if you know what I mean.

My friend told me this tidbit about one of her colleagues which fascinated me…this colleague of hers, is a Hindu from a distant city, young, beautiful and with a post graduate degree. She has met and married a Muslim, who, like her, is different from the mainstream middleclass people one normally sees in Bangalore…he is a writer, into film making, has been working in the editorial section of magazines, and so on. The fascinating thing about their marriage is that she has kept her marriage a secret from her family for the last eight to nine years! The few people, who know about her marriage, have closely guarded her secret! If her brothers knew, she was married to a Muslim, they would definitely kill him and probably kill her too! I find this so sad and scary…she cannot have children, even if she wanted to….hiding something as big as a marriage for so long, from so many people is to be constantly on guard and constantly fear being found out.

This would make a good plot for a love story in a movie…but I cannot imagine living a life like this…for 8 years and forever!

 

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Continuing on this topic of Hindu Muslim hatred, I discovered that I had been too optimistic and naïve, in believing that this hatred has reduced or disappeared in Bangalore. A driver whom I had hired was chatting with us and when we passed a certain Muslim dominant area, he commented how dangerous and untrustworthy the Muslims were in really colourful Kannada! An aged Brahmin priest who was with me commented in a neutral tone, that, after all was said and done, the Muslims were devoted to their religion and that, this it was admirable. Then the driver responded by saying that he was not saying that all Muslims were bad, that there were a few good Muslims too! I really appreciated this aged Brahmin priest’s admiration of Muslims! This Brahmin priest, is probably highly religious due to his priestly profession and he was probably disgruntled by the Hindus diminishing faith and interest in Hinduism… and he was appreciative of Muslims whom he perceived as highly religious(This priest is unlikely to have ever interacted with a single Muslim…all he knows about Muslims is hearsay)

I realized that this distrust of Muslims among the lower educated Hindus (this distrust of Muslims is possibly present in Hindus of all levels of economic strata, education, class, caste, whatever…and definitely much worse in smaller towns and villages) still persisted in 2013 and the passage of time has done little to reduce this blind hate.

Living as a Muslim in many parts of India must be really difficult for so many reasons…I don’t want to go into that now but I feel really sad and ashamed about it. If an Indian Muslim cannot feel welcome or feel  at home in India, if an Indian Muslim has to constantly be on guard, not knowing if his Hindu friends are really his friends or not….his life is not worth living!

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The Brahmin priest in the above story had officiated the wedding of four siblings in one family over a range of 18 years. Due to his advanced years and frail health, he was  reluctant to officiate at the last wedding but agreed when the family insisted.  While interacting with the first of the brothers whose marriage he had conducted 18 years ago, he discovered that the guy was childless. Even though the guy insisted that he did not want to have children and that it was by choice that he was childless, the aged priest was  upset and wondered if he had done some mistake while performing the marriage rituals and if this was why the couple did not have any children! The childless guy laughed and told the priest not to worry but the priest, pulled this guy's wife forward and asked her if she had stomach pains! He even  asked the rest of the family to leave the room so that he could speak  to the childless wife in private!
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I went on a bus trip to Hampe. It was a KSTDC sleeper bus and was surprisingly comfortable! (I found it comfortable….my standards are pretty low and I am easy to please!)

The bus started late and then stopped for people to pee and have coffee. I got off the bus and asked the conductor where the lady’s toilet was and he pointed in the direction behind the teashop. I went off in the dark behind the tea shop only to find myself in the open field, with men from the bus, walking from the other side of the tea shop into the fields to pee!

I was scared to sit down to pee for two reasons: a snake or a scorpion biting my bum when I sit to pee;2. The men who were peeing may be able to see my exposed butt(even though it was dark, I had this fear). I did not pee but walked back to the bus. I could not sleep the rest of the way as my mind busy thinking about peeing! After a few hours, the bus stopped and the driver announced that the road was going to become bumpy and he asked us to pee (He was afraid we would pee in our pants, when the bus hit the potholes on the road). I got down this time too as by now I really wanted to pee. But this time, there was only open space on both sides of the road…not even a tree behind which I could discreetly pee! I was furious and got in again without peeing. Bus drivers and conductors being men, have no regard about women travellers I think!

Around 6 in the morning, when I felt my bladder would burst, I went to the driver and asked him to stop as I wanted to pee. He asked me why I did not pee earlier and I asked him, how the hell I was expected to pee in front of men in the open space, with no privacy at all. He asked the conductor why the conductor had not told me about peeing at the first stop and the conductor told him that he had informed me (about the women’s pissing area behind the tea shop). I demanded that the driver stop the bus and let me out and also not to let any of the men to get down until I finished. He then pulled over and I got off the bus, crossed the road and walked into what might be a forest…there were trees, plants and grass growing wildly with rocks and stones lying around. No signs of  any people such as fields, huts or houses. I walked into this growth, until I felt I was hidden from the bus and with great pleasure and hurry, tore my pants down and squatted down for a loooong pee! When I was relieving myself of this gallon, I was lucky enough to see a fox walk just a few yards from where I was..it seemed to look in my direction and then it vanished. I was so thrilled!  To see an animal in the wild in India is sort of rare and I had got to see this beautiful fox by sheer chance!

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Current cost of a Middle-class Hindu wedding in Bangalore: I attended the wedding of a close relative in October 2013. Friends and relatives of mine were comparing the cost of recent weddings with this one. I was shocked to see how the prices were escalating year after year, while the income of many people remained stagnant.

This is the break up of the cost of the wedding I attended (October 2013). This is the wedding in a middleclass family, in Bangalore.

Cost of hiring the wedding hall: about one lakh rupees per day that is two lakhs for two days(it’s not two days actually but the second half of the first day and first half of the second day)

Cost of flower decorations for the hall: 80,000-00 ( I thought this was too much and not worth this money…but the family had to hire this guy for flower arrangements as the wedding hall owner allows only this guy to decorate the hall and not any other decorator…and the people hiring him are forced to pay what he asks(he shows photos of  a few decorations with varying costs and you choose what you want)

Food: four and quarter lakh rupees(a simple meal for a few(100-200 guests) and a grand dinner for reception(thousand guests) the first day and breakfast (for about 150 guests)and grand lunch(for 500-600 guests) after the wedding, on the second day). I think it was about 250-00 rupees per plate for the lunch and dinner

Use of gas, electricity, etc for cooking: about 40 thousand rupees (paid to the hall…not part of the rent)

Coconuts for tambula: about 15 thousand rupees

Wedding cards : each card cost about 40 rupees and about 500 cards i.e. 20,000 rupees plus cost of printing(I do not know how much the printing cost). Cheaper cards were available but the bride wanted cards which were grand-looking and of hand-made paper ( I understand that much more expensive cards than these, exist)

Cost of saris: The bride wore about eight or nine new saris over two days’ time, for various rituals ( Gourie pooja, sari when she entered the wedding hall, sari for the engagement, sari for reception, sari for the bangle-wearing ceremony; sari for the wedding; sari presented by in laws, sari to enter groom’s house) her saris must have cost anywhere between 75 thousand and a lakh. Apart from this, new saris and clothes to be worn for two days for her mother, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, parents, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law. And then, the gift of clothes to her closest relatives and to the groom and his family.

I was shocked to see the cost of getting a sari blouse stitched these days! I have not been in India for over four years and the inflation in India has simply zapped me! I feel out of breath when I hear some costs! Another major change I saw this time was that women, especially young ones, no longer wear simple blouses! The blouses have become terribly fancy and have embroidery and cost a fortune to stitch! I could not believe that one blouse with embroidery costs over two thousand rupees to stitch! My lovely silk wedding sari, over a decade ago, cost less than what it costs to stitch a blouse today! Factoring in the cost of stitching several blouses not only for the bride but for about 6 other women, makes the wedding budget bloat like anything.

The family also bought about a hundred and fifty blouse pieces to be given to guests. I do not know the cost of this, but will find out and add it here later. (each was a one meter of cotton  blouse material of good quality, bought wholesale, in Avenue road)

The bride’s family hired cars and drivers not only on the wedding day but also to distribute the wedding cards. It cost them about one thousand rupees per day, as far as I know and their wedding-related travel cost would have come to about 50 thousand rupees or slightly more.

They also had to spend on jewels such as the ring and a chain for the groom; the bride already had a pair of gold bangles, a chain and earrings at time of wedding and did not  buy jewels for herself for the wedding(the jewels she had is really minimum, when compared to what her cousins had when they got married).

The makeup lady cost about 50 thousand rupees for two days and I think this was way too much!

Expenses below ten thousand rupees each included the cost of (1)pooja items, (2)cost of hiring the priests, (3)cost of building and taking down the chapra in front of the house of the bride, (4)the cost of hiring the bangle-seller to come to the wedding hall to put bangles on the bride’s hands and other women,(5)musicians(Volga) during the wedding,(6) the taped music during the reception,(7)tips and gifts to servants in the family and the workers in the wedding hall,(8) accessories for the bride such as artificial jewels, slippers and purse for the wedding, artificial jewels, accessories for her female relatives, (9)things to take to the wedding hall for guests staying overnight at the hall itself(towels, soaps, toothpaste, locks and keys, etc)

Both families hired photographers and the bride’s photographer charged them about one lakh rupees (Don’t know, will find out and put the exact amount later) for photos of the two days (reception and wedding) and the Gauri pooja, which was done earlier at a different venue.

I am afraid to add up the cost as it seems such a lot to me…and friends assure me that this family has spent moderately and not lavishly!

I might have missed out some other expenses but this is all I can recall now. I am writing this for myself and also hope it is useful for anyone wondering how much a middle-class Hindu wedding in Bangalore costs now..in 2013.

 

I dread to think how much more this wedding would have cost if the groom’s family had demanded dowry or demanded the bride’s father to “celebrate the wedding in a grand way”. Fortunately, this was not a typical arranged marriage…in this wedding the bride and groom had chosen each other and the typical drama which occurs in arranged marriages was pleasantly absent.

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In the context of discussing wedding expenses, a friend of mine (he belongs to the business caste of Shettys) told me of a wedding he attended (Oct or Nov 2013) recently. I was shocked to hear of the expenses of that wedding. The flower decorations alone in this wedding cost 65 lakh rupees!! Apparently, the flowers were flown in from other countries and they were rare and expensive ones such as orchids. He also told me that as the decorating takes time, the wedding hall was hired for six days! That the road was blocked off for decorations. That the family also hired a ? Rolls Royce to roll the bridal couple in I think at the cost of about 50 thousand rupees per day! I was appalled…65 lakh for flower decorations and the flowers would be thrown out after the wedding! You are throwing out 65 lakh rupees…. I and a lots of Indians believe that most business class Indians do NOT PAY TAXES and they simply want to get rid of their money, in case the tax department raids them…they get rid of the money by spending lavishly…They would rather spend like this i.e. buying flowers worth 65 lakhs for a wedding , than give a raise in salary to their under-paid and over-worked employees; they would rather waste money like this than pay their taxes; they would rather waste money like this than donate to a hospital or pay for some poor student’s education….

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Another person of the Shetty community told me how worried he was about his niece’s marriage. Apparently, the Shetty singles, going in for arranged marriage, were demanding incredibly huge amounts as dowry. The parents of these Shetty single males had strictly warned the marriage brokers to prevent the brides’ fathers or whoever was negotiating for the brides from even having a peek at their son’s horoscope, if they could not give the money or property expected. My Shetty friend told me that, now the dowry was in crores and not in lakhs, like before. He said that he was so glad that the relative whose marriage I attended had found her own partner and had not gone into arranged marriage…I was shocked to hear him say this as this is a guy who was once pretty conservative and had himself gone in for an arranged marriage! Now that his own niece is struggling to get married, he is favouring ‘love marriages’.

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Talking of weddings, my cousins and I were discussing how weddings have changed over the decades and the changes are tremendous!  Let me tell about the weddings in rural areas about 50 years ago ( I was not born then but this is what I heard). The relatives who came stayed in the houses of thier relatives in the village where the wedding was held; these days, no weddings are ever held in the village! The villagers couduct thier weddings in nearby towns. Food was cooked by the women of the wedding party in huge containers on wood burning stoves, outside the house in those days. Now cooks are hired. Previously, the food was fairly simple except for a sweet dish or two. Now, even village weddings have a range of foods served during weddings. The 80 year old priest with whom I spent some time said, that people did not go and get a brand new cloth to hold as the screen between the bride and groom (part of the Gowda wedding ceremony) in those days. Instead, the person conducting the wedding would ask for a dhoti and one of the audience would take off his dhoti (and stand in his underwear, until his dhoti was no longer needed!) and hand it over to be used as the screen! I found this hilarious but the priest insisted that it was true. My grear-grandmother was married to a widower more than thrice her age, when she was just 10 years old. She was sent to her husband's house as soon as she attained puberty and bore 5 children (or more assuming some died in childhood). Now of course, there are no child marriages ( I hope!). In those days, farmers, did not want their daughter to marry into a family which stayed even a few miles away from their village but now, women are ready to marry and move even across continents, as distance is not a big problem now. (My grandmother told me how, in her childhhood,  they  travelled for months, to Tirupathi and back to her village in Tumkur   by bullock cart !) Thanks to prosperity or other reasons, now it is not just the bride or groom who buy new clothes for the wedding, but all family members. In those days, it was just the bride and the groom. My own wedding, 17 years ago, did not have much by way of  decorations. All we had was the traditional banana plants at the entrance of the wedding hall but now, city weddings, even middle class people's weddings, cost a fortune for flower decoration of the wedding venue.

 

Theft in houses by servants was a topic which seemed to dominate several conversations I had. I was so disturbed by this as I cannot tolerate having anyone inside my house, whom I cannot trust. I would rather have a dirty house or clean it myself than have servants whom I cannot trust. Theft is so much that one cannot leave a single item of even minimum value outside the house (and inside the compound) as someone was bound to flick it in no time. This particular house I visited depressed me no end….let me tell you why.

The kitchen knives and the scissors in this house were so bad, that though I offered to help in the chores by cutting vegetables, etc, I could not do it as the knife was so terrible. I then asked why the family did not use the good knives sent to them by their son from USA. I was told that all the good knives had got stolen by the hired help! I offered to buy them from India or Canada and they vehemently declined stating that it would be stolen in a week’s time or less! Every suggestion I made was turned down. They cannot manage without servants; they cannot find good servants who do not steal; they do not believe in finding servants from an agency; they cannot follow the servants when they work as the servants ask, “why are you following me? Do you think I will steal something?”; they cannot lock away everything, everytime;

I was so depressed and angry about this situation. When I grew up as a child in Bangalore, theft was not this high. We left things outside the house and things were never stolen. When I was a child, I only heard of clothes being stolen from the clothes line, where they were hung out to dry. Now even the ugliest things of the least value go missing..things such as dust rags, used brooms, broken vessels, brushes used to clean bathrooms. How miserable can the thief be, that he or she needs to steal these miserable things?

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Books to read in August 2013

Rickshaw Boy by Lao She

The Taliban Cricket club by Timeri N Murari

The Casual Vacancy by J.K Rowling

Borrowed these from the Toronto Public Library i.e. The Lillian H Smith branch.
 Has anyone noticed that some branches of the TPL seem to have more interesting and a wider range of books than others? Books by authors from other exotic countries, books from countries from which books rarely come out of...The Lillian H Smith, The North York Centre's library and  The Reference library at Yonge and Bloor  are three such branches. If I had not actually visited this library and wandered around, I might not  have discovered these books  and not read them!
 Did the authorities deem these libraries worthy of carrying more interesting books  due to the people and type of organizations  near these locations??? Or the large size of these libraries permits a bigger &  better collection? I dont know. But I am grateful that I can walk from work to the Lillian Smith Library in minutes.

Why did I borrow Rickshaw Boy? Maybe because I loved The Good Earth by Pearl.S.Buck and hope this book will throw more light on China of those days...China as  seen through Chinese eyes

The Taliban Cricket Club---because of the name Murari which is so south Indian! and of course the incongruity of the book's name and  curiosity about this country, which has reached the bottom of the pit, thanks to various factors.

The Casual Vacancy...Curiosity again. I am wondering if J.KR can pull it off with an adult novel.

I will write more when I finish these books.
Once again, I kiss the earth of this beautiful country Canada in gratitude...if I had not come here I would not have had access to these books from all over the world...free of cost...to read and enjoy!
 I am sure The Taliban Cricket Club is banned in Afganisthan and other such countries...people do not have freedom to read a book which is neither about sex or violence or religion or anything blasphemous or evil.
 In India, I may have the freedom to read but I cannot afford to buy and the public libraries do not have such books; In rural parts of India and half the world, there are neither books nor libraries nor even people with literacy...anyway in many parts of the world, people would rather have good food, drinking water and shelter than books such as these
 

The closer...my new time-pass entertainment

I recently discovered a really good enjoyable television show called "The closer". The beauty of seeing an old show(not 'old-old' but all seasons have been aired and the show has been completed) is that I can see an episode daily until I have seen them all! And I am seeing it on the internet with no ads interrupting me!! And when I manage to wrestle the laptop from my husband for a long enough time, I even see two or three episodes at a stretch...And that, my friend is pure  bliss.

I love this show for so many reasons. It is humorous and it is a crime show ....humor and crime are both a must for me.
The main protoganist is a woman!! And how rare is that !
I love the acting of everyone and the writing is really really good. The plots are good, the crimes seem realistic and the dynamics between the people is interesting...I especially like the one between Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson and Detective Sgt. David Gabriel. Platonic relationships are rarely seen in the western tv shows and maybe that is one reason I liked this.

I am not much of a music person but this is one show where I really sat up and noticed the music. I loved the music in this show...not only at the end when the credits roll but all through the hour. For the first time ever, I checked out who the music composer  for a tv series was  and discovered that  it is James S Levine for 'The Closer'.
After watching The closer, I started paying attention to  the music of other shows. In comparision, to The Closer,  the music for' Law and Order, SVU' is not pleasant especially when they do that loud dramatic sound when they begin some scene...........but then, maybe, the music was meant to be  harsh ... to make the viewer experience discomfort instead of  pleasure, associating the unplesant harsh music with the heniousness of the crime.

I now recall that  I had loved the music at the beginning and end of  many Indian and western shows(but not really noticed the music during the show) ...I think I loved the music of Malgudi days, Mriganayani, Buniyaad and disliked the music of Ramayana and Mahabharatha. I liked the music of shows like the Practice, Boston Legal, Republic of Doyle.....
I have seen at least a 100 different shows  and I cannot remember these shows names now... let alone their music............am I forgetting or the music of these shows  are forgettable???

I am in the middle of the third season of The closer  and I  have several days of bliss to look forward to!
It's summer now and so  there are no new shows on  tv to fill in my evening hours....  the  new shows are aired  in fall and winter. At least, no new shows on the 6 channels on my tv...I dont have cable and I get these these 6 channels through an antenna.

The Closer  (and a million other such shows) should be seen by people living in male-dominent societies. It may at least make the people view women differently.... than the usual way of perceiving  women as dependent on  and inferior to men. I am trying to imagine the effect of this television show  on men and women in countries like Saudi Arabia, Afganisthan, Pakistan....... even  India, Russia or Japan. Male Chavunism is so rife in these countries (and of course several other countries too,) that people.......especially  men simply cannot accept  even a fictional female leader in a fictional  television show ...let alone a real female leader in real life! I am picturing the men I know in India and their comments about The Closer....
Some men would say that Brenda(the female and lead role in The Closer) is an American and American women are better than Indian women; they would accept this lady but not accept that an Indian lady too could have the strengths of Brenda.
Many many many ordinary Indian men I know,  think like little children...so they would be making fun of the weaknesses of Brenda such as her driving, her losing her way when she drives and so on. They would focus on these and lose sight of the bigger picture or her overall strengths.
Even attempts by girls and women to   achieve something or show ambition would be cut down by men(parents, brothers, friends, etc) who would comment by saying"Dont think you are a Brenda Lee Johnson".  How many times I have heard people putting down the attempts of people who try to achieve in India by making negative comments such as "Do you think you are Gandhi? Do you think you are Einstein?" and so on.

I recall the struggles of a female school principal in Hosur who could not get the men working under her to follow her command. They simply did not like taking orders from a woman and would do what was needed only when a male, much junior to her asked them to do their duties. In many Indian  offices, factories, even farms, it is difficult for the  female bosses or female  proprieters to get the men working under them to do their job with compliance.

I wonder when this gender inequality will change in India? What factors will propel this change ?  What factors will hasten the speed of change?
 Religion will definitly not help...it only hinders. The !@#$%^  Manu smrithi quoted by Hindus and the rules of Islam are both anti women.
Politicians are useless in making these changes
The Indian movies and television shows which have such great influence on Indians are not using their full potential to change this attitude towards women. I have not seen Indian movies for the last several years and so I cannot comment.....but I do know that Indian movies/tv shows especially the Kannada mainstream ones still depict women as good if they 'obey' men in thier lives such as husbands and any female who is  assertive is 'bad' .....

Even if women in Karnataka have better education, access to employment, economic strength, greater say over their choices (career, marriage, child-bearing) than 30 years ago, the movies and tv shows continue to be  dated in their depiction of women. I know this because I was forced to see Kannada tv shows last year, when my relatives from India stayed with me!

I definitely do not want a Malashree-type doing Brenda Lee Johnson's role in a Kannada version of The Closer! That would be an over-the-top, parody, impossible to take seriously or believe.
 I strongly believe that if roles like Brenda's were depicted in Indian movies and tv shows, it would go a great way to change people's attitudes towards women.
The more I think about  Brenda's role in an  Indian  version of The Closer,  the more impossible it seems! Let me explain why.....
The ever-present,  subtle but distinct effects of  various hierarchies will change the dynamics between the different roles played in this show...caste hierarchy, economic hierarchy, superior-subordinate hierarchy, male-female hierarchy, old-young hierarchy, poorly dressed-well-dressed hierrarchy, in India will prevent a realistic version of Closer in India.

As Brenda is a female boss, the Indian guys playing her subordinates will have difficulty taking orders from her; if she was a lower-caste woman, giving orders to a chauvinistic Brahmin male subordinate....will he follow a single order from her....definitley not unless he is an exceptional guy!
If she were a lady from south, giving orders to guys from say Harayana or MP...in a police station in any state of India....

This is getting depressing...though I am not really a staunch feminist!



 

Mulberry tree in Toronto & my village in India

Finding the mulberry tree in my backyard in Toronto was a plesant surprise. I cannot believe that a plant which was cultivated in my village by farmers for rearing silk worms, is growing without any care  from gardeners in Toronto!

Fields of mulberry plants were cultivated in my village and in the nearby villages(of Tumkur district) from nearly 30 years ago. The farmers, realizing that growing mulberry and rearing silk worms will bring in a lot more money than growing rice or ragi, stopped growing  rice and started mulberry. Of course, they did not do this all at once. They were cautious and each one started by growing half acre of mulberry, buying the eggs of the silk worm from the government agencies and carefully rearing the silkworms. Rearing silkworms is a delicate process and it had to be done in the rough and tumble world of the homes of poor farmers! If I remember right, many bought fans for the first time into their homes. They, the human beings had tolerated the heat & humidity and mosquitoes of their homes for centuries  but the silk worms were too delicate to withstand the heat and humidity of farmers homes!

I hope some sociologist has documented the changes in the fabric of rural society brought about by the rearing of silk worms in the towns & villages of Karnataka. Let me write what I recall and what I inferred here.

People who grew rice and ragi, started growing mulberry instead and so for the first time(I guess) started buying rice from government ration shops! This was something new in my village as most farmers ate what they grew.( I am not going to explain   'government ration shops'. please google it dear reader!) Food grains were coming to homes of farmers instead of the other way round!

The wealth increased and probably greed did too! Farmers could now buy gold jewels for their wives and daughters, more land, dig more wells, more quickly than before.

Silk rearing is a skill which many farmers lacked. So they hired skilled workers. If I remeber right, the workers did not accept pay but got a share of the profits.

The silk worms were delicate and those who could afford or who had the sense, built huge rooms with good ventilation so the rooms could be cool.( By huge, I mean huge for a poor farmer's home in karnataka! The rooms may looks small to  people from other cultures or backgrounds). Most old village houses of Tumkur district have tiny windows and some rooms have no windows at all. The old houses not only housed people  but  cattle too and therefore there were these huge mosquitoes in the houses whose bites were extremely painful! Believe me, the mosquitoes in the village (called 'dhanada solle' and the translation is "cattle mosquito") were worse than the city mosquitoes! The silk worms would die if bitten by mosquitoes and so farmers who built these huge rooms, put mesh on the windows. That was another new thing in my village.

 The silk worms were put into large circular things woven out of bamboo wood  and these structures were  placed in such a way that ants could not get at the worms. If the worms were on a table, the four legs of the table were placed in saucers of water to prevent the ants from climbing on to the table! (The ants would not get into the water; the water in the saucers would dry up and had to be replaced by the women...god save them if they forgot!)I wish I had photoes to show. A single photo will be a good substitute for a thousand word explaination!

There was such a rapid increase in wealth by selling the silk cocoons that people   brought a lot more  land under silk cultivation which lead to a drastic reduction of rice and ragi cultivation.
 I had read somewhere that India is home to about 300 varieties of rice. I do know that the rice grown in my village was not available in the shops of Bangalore. Now, these varieties of rice are missing! I feel really bad about this. I suppose no one ever thought, this would happen one day.
 My family grew a type of rice which was red skinned and so sweet that you could eat it raw. Now, that variety has disappeared! We would infact get gunny bags filled with that rice, every year to Bangalore and live on it the entire year. It was torture for me to eat the rationshop rice when we ran out of the rice grown on our farm.... but now my family is forced to eat the rationshop  or shop bought rice.
The new generation i.e. the children in my family of today are not aware of the rice we were growing in our fields, the name of the rice variety we were growing, it's taste, it's looks. I feel such a deep sadness that so many varieties of rice, fruit, plants, insects, etc are disappearing in India, with the increasing population, unplanned farming, etc.

There was definitley jealousy between the farmers who were 'lucky' in the silk-rearing and those who were not! Some farmers's silk worms repeatedly failed to thrive or died at some stage. No one ever scientifically and systematically studied why some silk crops failed.The skilled workers were in such high demand that they were running from village to village, trying to earn more.

With prosperity, came additions to the house and the item which was the most interesting and most ruinious according to some was the television! Only one house had a television in the beginning and everyone in the village would come and sit on the floor and watch tv in that house. I have heard farmers complain that work was not done by thier workers and children as they wre sitting in front of the tv. Before tv came to every house, there was a phase when workers would work, only in houses which had tv! Farmers had to come and drag their workers away from the television set in another farmer's house! All work was done on the floor, in front of the television! Workers, would chop mulberry leaves, with their eyes glued to the  kannada songs from movies on the tv!

Selling the cocoons is another interesting phase. The rates of the silk worms cocoons would chage everyday and would vary from market to market. If I remember right, the Ramanagaram market near Mysore was supposed to offer the best rates and farmers would haul thier cocoons in buses to Ramanagaram. If the farmer felt that the rate being offered the day he reaches was not good, he would wait for a day(sleeping in the market by his cocoons bags!) but he would have to sell, whatever the rate next day...it is not possible to keep the cocoons for long as they would start hatching. If the cocoon hatches, then, we cannot get an unbroken silk thread  and so the hatched cocoon had little value.

The guys who buy the cocoons, sell them to people who put the silk cocoons in boiling water and extract silk thread from it. As silk thread is obtained by boiling the poor worms alive inside their cocoons, followers of Jainism, do not wear silk clothes! I have not seen this process but I have accompanied my relative to the market to sell the cocoons.

Farmers returning from selling the silk cocoons(or rice or whatever) always carried the money in their drawers' pockets for safekeeping. Now men(in cities and maybe villages too) buy undergarments from shops. But in the 70s, men got their drawers stitched by a tailor and the drawers always had deep pockets in them. Villagers wore dhoties over the drawers and there was no way a pickpocket in the crowded buses could get his hands into one of these farmer's drawers! ( men of my fathers' generation got their drawers stitched;  their fathers i.e. my grandfathers generation, wore what is called a langoti i.e. a piece of cloth tied over the private parts.  Maybe my dad wore a langoti as a child and started stitching these 'knickers' or 'chaddis' in the typical striped cotton cloth(called "patta-patti") whenever they came into ?style.

I heard of reports of farmers returning from selling the silk cocoons getting robbed on the way. It made me so bitter to hear that. These men have slaved for 3-4 months and to be robbed of their money is so evil and unpardonable. Therefore, any robber caught is beaten up nearly to death. The sad truth is that even a person suspected of robbing can be beaten, without evidence. I sometimes wonder why Indians are so primitive and savage? Is it the poverty? Or lack of ethics>>>i.e. we only think of survival and nothing else?

These silk worms are so damn delicate that many times, many die and sometimes farmers lose the entire stock. This death can happen at any stage...if it happens at the end, it is , of course very very frustrating. The silk worm is so delicate that even chemical fertilizers are not used as the plant absorbs the chemicals and the worms which feed on the leaves die. The mulberry plant is fertilized only with cowdung and dead leaves.
 I have heard of one family savagely beaten by a farmer who suspected this family (the two families are old enemies) of spraying his mulberry crop with pesticide. His worms died eating the leaves and he somehow concluded that his mulberry plants had been sprayed and the toxic leaves had been fed to his worms.

In recent times, there has been a decline in rearing of silk worms in my village. I am not sure what are the reasons for the decline. Currenly, the monsoons have failed my village and surrounding villages. People are desperate and frustrated. Many have taken loans from the banks and dug borewells but not got water. Now they are even more frustrated with this damn bank loans added to their burden! I can go on about this but wil do it in another article.

When I think of the trail of silk, I realize that the one who makes the most money is the shop-keeper who does the least work and takes the least risks! It is such a shame!

The stages according to me:
government (at least in those days) was growing silk worms which laid eggs. These eggs were sold to farmers at affordable rates.
Farmers bought these silk-worm eggs from the government; cultivated mulberry plants in thier fields...irrigating the plants, cutting the leaves, taking the leaves home and feeding the eggs once they hatch with finely minced leaves and then with less minced leaves, until the worms grew and build thier cocoons.
The cocoons were gathered in bags and sold at a market for silk-cocoons to ? middle-men
The middle-men sold them to people who then threw the cocoons into boiling water and extracted the treads. The threads were probably extracted by hired labour who are probably poorly paid.
The threads are sent to ?dyers in ? Tamil Nadu
The dyed threads are bought by weavers or middlemen who sell to weavers.
Weavers work in government factories or private factories or in their own homes
The thread is woven into cloth and sold to buyers, who sell it to shops to sell to buyers who will buy small lengths of it and give it to a tailor to stitch/ OR
The threads are hand-woved into saris or hand-woved into churidar or skirt  materials. This involved LOTS of work such as weaving gold threads in designs (these designs are drawn by craftsmen on graph papers and then the design is woven into the saris or cloths as borders or even in teh body of the cloth)

In the entire process, the maximum work is done by the weavers. but they live lives in such poverty, you cannot imagine! The maximum profit goes to the sellers of silk cloth and saris, either wholesale or retail.
I wish I had  information to put in here below... Information such as
(1)time taken by farmers and their expenses and profits, labour, time, etc
(2) profit per kg of silk cocoons made by the buyers
(3) time, type of labour, profits and losses, inputs of the cocoon-boiling stage
(4)Details of expenses and profits of the thread making and thread dyeing stage
(5)The labour involved in the sari making stage, inputs , time, profit
(6) how many silk worms go into making of one sari?
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ladybird publications illustrators I like

I'm a huge fan of the old Ladybird books. It's a bit of a shame that the recently published ones, don't quite live up to the quality of their predecessors. These pictures are from, 'Learning With Mother', illustrated by Harry Wingfield, 1970. Aren't they beautiful?

Below is, 'The Discontented Pony', illustrated by P.B. Hickling, published 1951. I've got quite a few unhappy pony stories from this time. It must have been a common problem! I hope these days ponies can find the help and support they need to lead happy, horsie lives!

 

and Eric Winters for books written by Vera southgate

Things I hoard

Plastic bags, paper bags, any bags
Books
I dont throw old magsazines, so maybe tose too
Old clothes
Basically anything which comes into my house, is a prisoner for life!


why?
I may need it sometime