Contemplations and Ruminations

I started this blog back in 2006, I liked the idea of having an online diary. Looking back now on those initial posts.... memories flood my being, working in a special school with amazing children were some of the best days of me life, the surreal choir practices under the blue skies with the colony girls who have become my lifelines now, and all the little happenings in a village at the tip of the Indian Peninsular. Okay, there's no point in being nostalgic now... all that is still going to remain on the blog but in another space.  Yeah, I have a new website http://xavierkaren.com/ Do drop by and say Hi... 

The title is a line from The Chosen , a TV series about Jesus and his disciples, that has taken me by surprise. Many portrayals of Jesus depict him as a solemn man who walked around preaching and talking to his nondescript bunch of disciples. You couldn't tell one from the other, only Jesus stood out from the rest of the characters and everything else was pretty standard story telling from the bible. But The Chosen is a world far away from the one we've usually seen or heard about Christ. For starters the disciples are wonderfully fleshed out; the impulsive and brash Simon, his dashing brother Andrew, the delightfully odd Mathew who has Asperger's Syndrome, the open minded Nicodemus who really wants to know more about what cannot be explained or understood. And Jesus, just one look at him and you can feel the warmth in his gentle eyes touching you. There's so much depth to the characters that now when anyone talks about Simon or Mathew, the actors who play them pop into

     So the virus is in town, the corona virus which gives rise to the symptoms termed COVID_19 and we're in lock down mode. The whole world is more or less in the same situation, everybody cooped up at home. I don't know how long it will last... it's not bad, I do my yoga, play shuttlecock in the evenings followed by zumba, cook/ bake something in between, watch documentaries about our universe and black holes and all the massive energy and explosions happening out there where everything is in constant motion; a cauldron of intense activity as compared to the eerily deserted streets on earth today.      I wonder about the people who have no homes or enough food, migrant people caught up in the lock-down, unable to go home or rest anywhere. What about the daily wage earners... I do hope they are getting their due share from the government which has rolled out many PDS (public distribution system, commonly known as ration shops) relief schemes. I don't know what to ma

         The dawn of another year and there's so much happening in the world, what with the bush fires in Australia, the CAA/NRC protests in India, the Trump and Iran situation; it is good that we stay updated and take an interest in world affairs, that's probably all we can do. We cannot influence such events that take place on a global scale, but we sure can work on the smaller issues that relate directly to us. The other day, I was taking a walk in my locality during the first week of January and I came across a rather sorry sight. My locality is usually clean and people do not throw rubbish everywhere, so I was taken back when I saw a pile of discarded sticks and wild grass (used to construct a Christmas crib) along with a few plastic Christmas stars lying on the road. What a harsh sight it was, a reminder that Christmas was over, and thus all the things that made it a beautiful season have to be dumped right on the road.      How can we celebrate a festival one week

Another year, 2020, how fast the years roll by... the transition from 2019 to 2020 was fun enough, surrounded by family, friends and  an influx of angels. I saw a paper doily angel online and since then this is what I have been making in December, an army of paper doily angels... To be placed in the crib, a t last count there were about 23 angels in the crib in my hometown... Ah, Christmas is fun even though I couldn't get into the whole giddy Christmas mood this year. I don't know why, I kept listening to Winter Song by Fernando Ortega and My Favourite Time of the Year by The Florin Street Band , to get into the high spirited mood of Christmas... and though that helped a bit, everything was kinda subdued and serene. I guess Christmas as a festival just isn't appealing anymore, but Christmas as a time where love comes to stay in the form of family and friends who travel home for the holidays is more meaningful. Christmas is more than the lights on the tree,