These Are a Few of My Favourite Things…

February 4, 2014 By Kanchan Char 7 Comments

“As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. ”

― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

To the great embarassment of my family, I tend to take pictures everywhere…I stop people that I find interesting and ask them if I can photograph them. I’m grateful that I’ve never been turned away – I don’t ever take that lightly! I’m sharing a few pics with you (because pics are a big chunk of “what-I-do!”:P ) There is no perfect beauty – that’s the master stroke of your own mind; what I find beautiful, some might find droll and likewise! After all, I have been known to take pics of ready-to-use fishing kits at a local store; who mercifully took me to be a tourist! My family is very used to hearing me say, “I see Beautiful things!”, it’s kinda lost on them now! 😀

To me, photography isn’t stopping to take a picture of something that you immediately find beautiful… you bring something more to it. You bring the sounds that interest you, the movies, the books that have kept you awake at night. The people you’ve loved- It’s all of you! You’re probably in that moment, a participant in someone’s mortality as you capture something in their life that will never return again. I know I sound blithe, clichéd…but clichés wouldn’t be clichés if they weren’t so oft repeated and acknowledged 🙂 There are endless summers in our lives as we relive those frozen moments again..and you can never put a price on that! 🙂

If you’ve never heard M. Ward, here is a fabulous song by him and one of my favourites! Why don’t you listen to it as you go through my gallery 🙂

{~*PLAY*~}

[cincopa AwCAFfrmg08o]

I’ve been reading Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing again… his hard-hitting simplicity speaks to me like nothing else! He’s one of those you either love (passionately!) or loathe (despicably!) A proper polarising brand -like Marmite..Star Wars(?), definitely Dr. Who!! ◄ Here is where I get mobbed and lynched 😀

Well, this is a small excerpt from what I’m reading – it’s a poem from which he made his legendary song.

A Thousand Kisses Deep !

You came to me this morning
And you handled me like meat.
You´d have to be a man to know
How good that feels, how sweet.
My mirror twin, my next of kin,
I´d know you in my sleep.
And who but you would take me in
A thousand kisses deep?

I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat.
You see, I´m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet,
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second-hand physique –
With all he is, and all he was
A thousand kisses deep.
I’m good at love, I’m good at hate
It’s in between I freeze
I’d work it out but it’s too late
It’s been too late for years
But you look good, you really do
They love you on the street
If you were here I’d kneel for you
A thousand kisses deep

The Autumn moved across your skin
Got something in my eye
A light that doesn’t need to live
Doesn’t need to die
A riddle in the book of love
obscure and obsolete
To witness tear and time and blood
A thousand kisses deep

And I’m still working with the wine
Still dancing cheek to cheek
The band is playing Auld Lang Syne
But the heart will not retreat
I ran with Diz I sang with Ray –
I did not have their sweep –
But once or twice, they let me play
A thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat
You see, I´m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet,
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second-hand physique –
With all he is and all he was
A thousand kisses deep

But you don’t need to hear me now
And every word I speak
It counts against me anyhow
A thousand kisses deep!

As I leave you today, I realise that his words speak again and fill the gaps between what I’d like to say: “Friend, when you speak this carefully, I know it’s because you don’t know what to say.” I will never, ever have words to explain Leonard Cohen! 🙂

In my world of itenerant living, I’ve had to construct a portable life-one that I know I can put into a bag and house where I lay my head down next. Photography, music, poetry – not something you can lose easily. For wherever I am, they will have a place with me. 🙂 xxx

If you’ve liked reading this, you might also like to read :

“To dream of Caramel, and think of Cinnamon…”

Abba or Wham! You know who to blame!

Woody Allen, ‘Fell-apples’, Borscht and Lurve!

January 17, 2014 By Kanchan Char Leave a Comment

My husband usually jokes about how though I’m not Jewish, you’ll understand me better if you were!! I grew up in a very culturally emaciated household-my parents were born into a culture that they didn’t particularly hold dear or even identify with and so they role-played; needless to say the self-consciousness rubbed off on us as well! As a Jewish saying goes- ” A Jew is his most Jewish self in the face of a Gentile”; that was largely true of us too – we were our tradition-fluid best in the face of any tradition-richness that befell us!

Woody Allen, Annie Hall, Diane Keaton, iconic film, — Diane Keaton and Woody Allen – Annie Hall

With Woody Allen’s winning the Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe being all-pervasive news, and it being accepted by none other than his Annie Hall collaborator, Diane Keaton, catapulted me back to a very significant time period in my childhood in which both had a part to play! (Watching Diane Keaton deliver her acceptance speech also cleared up the ‘Did Ralph Lauren make Annie Hall or the converse, controversy’. I’ve come across that sartorial debacle often enough since the film entered my subconscious about whether Ruth Morley, who officially designed Annie Hall, or Lauren, the all-American, preppy designer (who walked away with the accolades), was responsible for the signature androgynous look the film toted! Glad Keaton cleared up all that murkiness by choosing a made-to-fit Ralph Lauren pantsuit for the ceremony! I did miss her pastel polos and boat shoes, though! My greater takeaway from the speech was a song I can teach my children and rest in the knowledge that the best of celebrities still live with bad looking nails! )

My earliest association with folklore were those of my father’s persuasion! He was a war fiction enthusiast, studied history of the two World Wars and read a whole lot about Jewish culture and religion! He was hardly what I’d call a sociable man! I grew up hearing stories about Mottel the tailor, Tevye the Milkman and The Fiddler on the Roof. I didn’t know about the movie till decades later as for the longest time I believed that Sholom Aleichem (on whose works The Fiddler on the Roof is based), was my father’s creative construct…really, who goes through life with that name?! We had Jewish family friends, Dan and Iris- Hasidic Jews on the fringes of Hasidim who were liberal enough to befriend traditionally-fluid Indians! My entire memory of them can be crystallised in the one evening we spent at their house celebrating Rosh Hashannah… the Jewish New Year! There was such a lead up in my own little world where I scampered around telling everyone that I was going to be spending a whole evening, a whole evening with my parents’ foreign friends, and that they were making foreign food for us! My mother had told me in the typically fantasmagorical, story-telling way that parents have when they talk to their young about an impending adventure – about having Challah which was the soft-test bread in the whole world, and borscht- the pink-kest soup in the whole world, and there would be fell-apples, that mummy was learning to make fell-apples as well, so it was all going to be a whole day of being immersed in another world! It was all very Lewis Carroll, and I couldn’t wait to go down the rabbit hole!

It seems awkward now that that was really the meeting of two polarities – one family running away from tradition, the other thirsting for every last drop! In all honesty, Indians and the American Jews have enough of a cultural similarity to get along jauntily! Let me iterate that with a American Jewish joke :

It’s time for summer holidays on the East Coast of the USA, and a plane full of New York jews is heading south to Miami. After a while, a woman stands up at the front of the plane and shouts, “A doctor, I need a doctor! Is there a doctor on the plane?” There is a pause, some discussion among passengers, then a young man stands up and replies, “Excuse me madam, but I’m a doctor.””Good!” says the woman, “Come here and meet my daughter, what a nice wife she would make!”

WATCH: ->”Traditions, traditions. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as… as… as A Fiddler on the Roof!!”

Ritual Jewish Bread Challah — The Jewish Ritual Plaited Bread – Challah

Well, the day came and I was carried throught it on the merit of sheer childish exuberance, and as the night carried on , I realised to my dismay that the metaphorical clock had struck! My late ’80’s polyester frock had gone from being my dizzy-with-delight party gown to something scratchy and non-sleepingworthy, my carriage went back to being a pumpkin, and my horses – mice!! The borscht wasn’t something I could have more than a few spoonfuls of, the smoked and brined lox (smoked salmon) and cream cheese, again- lost on my palate! The falafels, made from the best of Knorr, was a vegetarian bajji! The challah I schlepped around, slathered with butter and chewed on it’s crunchy crust as the families settled in to watch Annie Hall, which would go on to become one of my parents’ favourite films! Ethic food and children? I’d wait till they realised that the world was a large, indomitable place, not necessarily one that revolved around them! ! So I sat there, clutching my bread and winding the end of my mother’s handloom saree, still fresh with the smell of handprintable dye, around my finger, watching an absurd film where the talking never stopped.

Family for me has always had multifaceted meanings- some of them not entirely comforting! I’ve often noticed that when one grows up with a particular disability; physical or emotional, one seems to have a heightened sensibility of things that touch or resonate against that shifted core. By that stretch, a blind child grows with a keener sense of touch and hearing, as does a deaf one-with keener sight and smell perhaps. I for one, seem to have grown with a heightened perception of family ties. Bonds of touch, love and belonging. Those that go deeper than blood. And of small, everyday things that change and alter those very bonds as they continue to grow together; in love or apart.

Allen’s neuroticism pierced through me in patches that night; when Annie asks him if he loves her, he says love is really too weak a word, he actually lurved her, you know, loaved her, luffed her, two F’s!!! I learned that night that you need to love with more than just love! I also learned the way another culture saw the power of my life – Iris, the Jewish woman with a wig, who knew to read life’s signs said to me that I was born under the strength of an air sign! Air moves over the earth and the water, it controls both whilst being controlled by none. I could make any path I chose to if I used all my strength to make it! That would be my biggest argument for thinking outside the box and the need to interact with a cultural ethos different to your own. Those words changed my inner landscape! I was viewed as an entitled, hyper-irritable annoyance in my own world! And then the talk of Dan quoting Allen’s recently said” Eighty percent of success is showing up!” A dictum that holds me well, even on mornings when I cannot wait for the peace of post-schoolruns or feel like the vilest of parents! I showed up, and in doing so, there was success!! I heard those lines often! My parents almost always concurred on Allen, if not much else!

On a regular basis, as an Asian living in England or even just plainly as an Asian, I revisit Annie Hall and especially revel in the Easter scene -the clash of the relatively calm socio-cultural niceties of Upper East Side Manhattan and the often chaotic, rapidly-fluctuating emotional personality of Brooklyn! The similarities are glaring – clearly, we aren’t all in this together! 🙂 In a family, a lot is unspoken, a lot is said in the high-pitched tones of conviviality …or the silence! I learned to understand a philosophy through it’s jokes!

Keaton aptly said whilst accepting the award on behalf of Allen, that women love to star in his films because “Woody’s women can’t be compartmentalised. “…I mean, they struggle, they love, they fall apart, they dominate, they’re funny, they’re flawed. They are, in fact, the hallmark of Woody’s work. But what’s even more remarkable is that absolutely nothing links these unforgettable characters from the fact that they came from the mind of Woody Allen. And there you have it.”
Probably the reason I love his work so much… and because “Woody’s films have been changing the way we think about life, love and the pursuit of neuroses forever”!

Leaving you with scenes from one that’s seminally touched mine…X

Raising My Children My Mother’s Way! :)

January 10, 2014 By Kanchan Char 23 Comments

*I write this post as a rememberence to my mother who I lost almost 18 years back, and it’s meant to be a celebration of what she meant to me! 🙂 I think holidays/milestones etc are often hard for those of us who’ve had to deal with loss and hope that what I feel resonates with those of you who sadly know what it is to stand in my shoes! I hope that in my journey as a parent, I also bring alive the memory of grandparents my children haven’t met! This is not a tear-jerker, and even as I love and miss her, it fills me with panic that my trajectory toward becoming her is nearly complete!! :D. Read on….

I’ve often heard people say that when you raise your children, you also raise your grandchildren – you never really see that till you hit your 30’s and you realise that the battle against becoming your mother is largely inevitable! You can run, but you can never hide!! I’ve been thinking about my mother increasingly these last few months, and realised (with a healthy dose of hysteria) that I’m quite a bit like her! I always thought that would happen to my sister! Throw in yawning at 10 pm and some serious anxiety over restricted baggage allowances and you’re ready to go to that place of no return! 🙂

I remember odd things when I think of my childhood. I remember my mother, who quoted Virginia Woolf to pre-adolescent kids in the face of any human conflict. We were to always remember, like we did our names, our telephone number and our address, that if we were to truly understand any human being, we were to see them in the context of their surroundings and the experiences they grew with.

Since we could never completely know the above mentioned parameters, it was eminent that we would never totally understand whoever we had the conflict with. Hence the conflict would lose its center – being not a conflict, but the natural outcome of human interaction!!

Base premise – humans are essentially never to be wholly understood. Virginia Woolf! One of my mother’s most appreciated lessons!:D

Another of my earliest memories of when I was a little girl, was wanting to be in the kitchen because it was warm, and that’s where my mother was. You never lose that feeling – although I clearly didn’t pick up much more than that in all the time I spent there! As I’ve mentioned countless times before, I have no culinary skills and have begun to think I was probably dropped as a child resulting in a significant blind spot where one processes culinary-anything, Sci-fi, Gaming and Twitter!

Skillet, Balloon Whisk, cooking, kitchen, light — By Kanchan Char

When it’s 1 AM and I’m craving pancakes : As my children grow up, I, like so many of you, find that quite subconsciously, we’ve formed our own family traditions. Some are rooted in what I did with my mother, and make an attempt to reinforce that with my children as that’s the only way I can make my mother real to her grandchildren! For instance, the other night, both my girlies were up late and wouldn’t go to bed without a midnight feast..they were off school anyway so my otherwise regimental self agreed that it would be fine. We decided to make pancakes, my childhood solution to any malady, celebration or setback!! My mother passed this onto me, it was the only thing I ever learned from her! I’d have to say it was the most emotionally satisfying hour I’d spent with my children in the longest time. 🙂

Pancake making, children, mini boden nighties, eggs, vanilla, sugar, sweet, dessert, comfort — By Kanchan Char

“It’s a plié, Mummy, a plié!” : Aren’t winters just the most apt time for nostalgia and stocktaking?! Or maybe that this December was spent with me in largely hostage situation-husband away visiting family, one child down with the flu and asthma attacks, power cuts and storms, and I’ve had a significant amount of time to ‘ponder’! 🙂 This winter, I passed down another thing to my children that harks back to my own childhood! When I was 10, my mother’s very good friend gifted me Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes. She said to me gently and very well-meaningly “, I know you haven’t the body for ballet, but you do have a keen, imaginative mind that can make this story come alive. Every little girl should should have something to do with dance.” Clearly, either the words or the books made an impact – I fell in love with ballet and adoption! 🙂 I gifted my ballet-enthusiastic children their own copy though I have my 20-year-old copy still kicking around, far from their grubby hands! Of course, I’ve had to modify the language as I read to them…like so many classics, it’s hopelessly politically incorrect for our times!

Ballet shoes, noel streatfeild, old ballet shoes, pointe — Ballet Shoes- Past, Present and In-between 🙂

Autumn is when every leaf’s a flower: At the start of every autumn, we make it a practice to go out and see the leaves, see the brilliance of nature and how seasons turn and change! Apart from the fact that we don’t do summer and are therefore very pleased to invite the cold, the payoff is priceless! To see the wonderment on my children’s little faces as they stamp on leaves and rustle through them is more than anything money can buy. Autumn/Winter is big at our home…we do walks, celebrate the nip in the air, have countless cups of hot choolate and babbycchinos laced with cinnamon. We incessantly and hopelessly watch movies! No better time to feel that “this is my family, I belong to them and they belong to me and there’s nothing more I could ever need more! ” Growing up, my aunt would make us traditional drinks made with milk, clarified butter and lentil flour (Besan ka doodh) when the cold set in, and we brought out our thick jumpers to get ready for it! Such magical memories of traditional bonfire nights and warm roasted bonfire foods! 🙂

I know that in a few years we’ll also have the danger of the shared tradition of the lot of us sat in the same room on our various devices, in silence !! We hope to get so much in before selfies, twerking, video games and dragging them out of bed become a part of our lives!! I think back to all the little things my mother did with us and believe that like us, these experiences will feed them throughout the happy and trying times of their life.

Autumn leaves, seasons, children, mini boden,teepee, winter, cold — By Kanchan Char and Daniel Simm

For all of us who try so hard and then fall off our saddles trying harder; I think of how all the most perfect memories I have of my mother are those that she would probably get shivers to, if she knew of them! Our generation puts so much emphasis on ‘memory making’ and the complex ways we think we need to accomplish that…expensive holidays, high-investment gadgetry and other whatnots.

I remember the way my mother’s arm smelled as I rested against her on a journey somewhere… I don’t remember where to, though!
I remember her smile as she tried to drink a rotten cup of tea I made her (I suspect strongly that it never got drunk). Good parenting doesn’t need martyring yourself . My mother was a right rogue, very often telling me things right as they were…she believed in reality checks! She was a fabulous cook but the best thing I ever ate was something she put together for me, randomly on a rain-soaked day when I hated the stew she cooked for the family. She could never replicate that dish. It was for that one moment only!
She was someone who didn’t shy away from saying that every time I said I hated her, she knew she was doing the right thing.
I remember her absolute uncool dancing as she cleaned the house, unaware that I was going to retain this in memory without any desire to, believe you me! 🙂
I remember her perfume, her lipstick, her having a good and bad hairday. I knew her fake smile; and her corny laugh! I knew that her friends loved her, and she loved them back. Children know so much! 🙂

Good parenting is showing your child you’re there, you’ll always be there in them, even when you’re gone physically. Showing them the way for them…giving them the vision of their best self and telling them you believe they’ll get there, albeit after they finish hating you and life and their hair! Home is where you know you can always go back to, even if it’s just to find your corner, get into sweats and skulk around for a week before you decide to speak! I often have people say to me that my mother was the best mother ever, like so many other lovely mothers who’re no more. I say, yes, she was the best mother she could’ve been – to me!! She was funny, pure evil, loving, a rogue, a great friend! And I am so much of all that, at 6.5 and 5, I’m sure my daughters will already attest to the first two 😀

I haven’t had my mother around for more than half my life now…and never has a day passed when she’s not been around. I say that with the biggest smile… 😀

She’s left too big an imprint on me, and now- hopefully on mine! x

*I’d love to hear about a family tradition that you do with your family, whether as a remembrance or just because it’s sweet 🙂 !! *