The Magic That Is India

Daily living in India is shit. The traffic, the yelling, the garbage, the patriarchy. And I so often forget the Delhi I grew up with, the Delhi I love.

Every morning my mother wakes up and goes to the wall dividing our neighbor’s house from ours. Every morning she finds a steaming cup of tea waiting for her, with a plate of biscuits. Sardarni aunty or sardar uncle make it and put it out there for their friend every morning.

Every so often, we’d come upon a two-wheeler scooterwala pointing repeatedly to a closed car door, with a dupatta or sari palla hanging out of it, trying to notify the woman inside that she’s closed the door on her palla. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. Because no other women in the world wear a sari. (hehe, sorry).

Indians are the greatest friends in the world. They will always fight to pay the bill when dining out. The limits of intimacy are best transgressed by Indian friends. At a local swimming pool, octagenarians would get together every Sunday for a swim and one of them would be pakodas for their Sunday brunch. A few Sundays went by, and they didn’t see their friend, so they called. Found out he was sick. ‘Oh, if you’re sick, at least come by, don’t swim, but get our pakodas.’ And that’s not the end of the brazenness of this request; the friend came with the pakodas. ‘cause we be intimate like that.

When I was a child, I went to visit my mother at work, at the American Cultural Center. The security guard behind the bulletproof glass wasn’t paying attention to me waiting to be let in. The Chief of the American Cultural Center, who was on the phone at the security booth, was. She tapped the guard on the shoulder and pointed me out. I broke into an inadvertent smile, and nodded my thanks. In acknowledgement, she winked at me. To this day, I am amazed at that trust – in a culture where winks are seen as disrespectful, she wasn’t being ignorant. Her wink reached across our skin colors, and culture, to establish her playfulness and an innuendo of a statement ‘we gals gots ta stick together’. At my age, she trusted that I’d get all that.

Another time I was tricked by another American. We had been invited to dinner, my twin sister and I, by a friend of my mum’s, an American diplomat. We were ushered to a dining table, our host graciously asked us if we’d like dinner. ‘No, no’, we protested. He placed pastries before us. Loving the sight of them, but loath to abandon our manners, we didn’t reach out a hand. He placed them in our plates. ‘No, no’, we still protested. He said, with all the mischief of an elf, well, they’re in your plates now, you might as well eat them.

Bobby uncle is a neighbor whose house I’d walk into any hour of the day or night. One day I said to him, I wanted to call to see if it was okay to come over. He said, the day you ask me for permission to come home, I’ll break your legs.

Such are Indians. Such is their love. This is my India: where people go out of their way to be hospitable to strangers, neighbors, friends.

Religion and Homosexuality: Vasu Primlani on Newslaundry

Vasu Primlani is interviewed by Abhinandan Sekhri and his guests: Maulana Abdul Hameed Nomani, Father Dominic Emmanuel, Narayani Malik of Patanjali Yogpeeth on whether homosexuality is unnatural, can be cured, should be condemned.

My Father Raised Me

He used to kiss our bums when we were little (I’m a twin). He’d clean us, bathe us, give us horsy-rides on his back.

He loved kids, and was called ‘toffee-uncle’ to the children around the block. One day a new girl came up to him and asked, ‘Are you toffee uncle?’. He replied in the affirmative. She held her hand out for a toffee. He said he’d give her a toffee the next time he came back from the market, he was fresh out. So she kicked him.

A favorite pastime with him was picking up one of the kids clamoring around him, hang him upside down over his shoulder, and ask the rest of the gang ‘Where’d he go? Where’d he go?’ And when the children would frantically point behind him, he’d spin around, child and all, and ask, where? Where? The children would choke with desperation trying to point out a fact so obvious to them, to help out the dim-witted uncle, and the dangling, upside-down child would try and keep as still as possible, choking down giggles, hiding in broad daylight.

He used to love our tiny hands in his hair. So he’d bribe us. ‘I have lice in my hair. For each one you find, I’ll give you 10 paise. And I’d spend hours pouring over every inch of his scalp looking, with no success, through his scalp while he fell fast asleep. I remember one afternoon, disappointed as usual, sitting on his tummy, I decided to try my luck elsewhere, and combed through his chest hair.

I would whimper all the time when I was born. So I was dubbed cranky baby. It wasn’t till five years later when I was old enough to point, that I pointed to my ear. They found a severe ear infection that took a year of regular visits to the ENT specialist to clear up. My father will tell you, ‘no one loved her in her infancy’. ‘Only me, and our housekeeper. He raised me with these stories: at first, I took pity on you. Then after a while, I truly started loving you.

And it was thanks to my father’s love, on his lap, that I grew strong and flourished. He was in the II world war, and raised me with that discipline. He taught me to be honest, telling me stories of how bank managers would give him loans on his verbal assurance alone. He taught me, my word was my bond. Growing up, I was called Satyavadi Harishchandra, after an honest king who sold his son and wife into slavery rather than break his word. Now I’m called T N Seshan. He taught me what truth and justice are, what civil society is, how men ought to treat women.

My father raised me in his image. Even today, we both flex our muscles for strangers ‘feel that!’. Even today, he walks his many kilometers at the age of 94.

Today I am a grown woman, strong, with a father who stood by her in everything she did. And today, I still sit on his lap, and he is just as proud to have me there as when I was a child. I will always be his baby.

Vasu Primlani’s Comedy Special on NDTV

Meet one of India’s leading comedians’ story. See Vasu Primlani’s history of comedy, her shows, what motivates her.  Meet the woman behind the comic! Featuring snippets from her performances in Delhi and Mumbai.

Of Exquisite Moments and Lactofermented Ginger Ales

Sitting in the upscale Dramz Single Malt Whisky Bar & Lounge (LINK: http://www.dramz.in/) in New Delhi, India. Late November, the weather is slightly chilly. I am wearing Scottish stockings under my dark chocolate-combed cotton dress from Lands’ End with a cream color collar. Love that dress, but that’s not the point. My friend and I settle into the leather upholstery of the sink-in extra large couches. My eye falls upon the green leather chairs with brass tacks. Nice. I like being with this friend: I can be myself with her. As Toni Morrison said, “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order,” with Ella Fitzgerald’s singing Everytime We Say Goodbye I Die a Little, I sigh, and surrender into the loving arms of African American women, the smell of the sun on their skin, their word and their song. My friend browses their extensive whisky list. Being a teetotaler, I run over the mocktail list. She orders an ultra-rich, ultra smooth, Laphroaig 10-year-old Scotch. She said that it’s the woodiness that she loves. I said, “Yes, the woodiness,” That’s what I was going to say. The woodiness of the nimbupani, the twigginess of the sugarcane juice. Well, no matter. Intrigued by the Orange and Dates Mojito, I decided to get that. My eye also falls upon the last mocktail in the list: the Chocolate and Mint Sensational. Always a fool over hydration, I order both. They bring our drinks. And then a third — the Dramz house special, on the house. The chef shows up, the effervescent Chef Pankaj Sharma (@caramelnpankaj) all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He and I ran into each other, and loved each other right on the spot, as people are wont to do. Whenever you are near there is such an air of spring about it… With his impeccable manners, he throws me off with his story of his origins. He’s from (of all the places), Jharkhand — “So what will you have?” he inquires. I know this man knows his food. I never deign to tell a chef I trust what I choose from his menu. “What will you give me?” I ask. “Well, you had a fish last time, so I’ll give you a lamb rack with vegetable charcoal.” I can burn vegetables, I think. “Sounds great,” I say. He recommends a braised pork belly with quinoa and chipotle sauce for my friend. It changed from major to minor… Now I make fun of molecular gastronomy as much as the next person. ‘Citrus foam’ (what causes oranges to foam in the mouth?) ‘wilted greens’ (like, doesn’t that happen to 3-day old greens anyway?) ‘rice cooked on hay’ (like I can tell the difference!). But when this man says something-fancy-I-can’t-pronounce, he means something-fancy-I’m-going-to-love-without-knowing-why.

Betwixt and between the chocolate sensation and the sultry Ms. Fitzgerald, I am transported squarely into the land of the exquisite. Those moments when time stopped, and submerged itself into the viscous ruby red pool of the exquisite. I was reminded of summer mornings in Los Angeles with a lazy fan whirring contentedly on the ceiling, waving each time a blade swung by. Of swimming in the Atlantic, off the coast of Florida to look down and see fish swimming by my belly. Of struggling in an overhang in a cliff 60 feet in the air, to climb past the line of dusk, into the face of the full moon above. Of looking into the eyes of the beloved, a moment before you tremble your lips upon hers. The exquisite moments when all was well with the world, when my life was made of butterflies and rainbows, people who said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘excuse me’ when they bumped into you.

It’s not an East or West thing, an urban or rural thing. This is an abundance and scarcity divide. A manners and viciousness divide. I closed my eyes and wept silent tears at what I’d been through. I wept like the otter who remembers the sea urchins on her belly floating in the shimmering sea, now with her foot jagged and bleeding in the animal trap set by hunters. Hunters whose imagination limits them to raping and pillaging, knives held high, reeking of penury. And here in India again, here are those moments. I can feel the desperation, I can sense the entrapment. People walking around villages and cities in India, prisoners of their minds and imaginations. Threatening and bullying everyone in their path, being vehicles of devastation. Inviting them to masculine brawls, laughing at ‘wimps’ who refuse to engage. What an accolade to their lives – ‘ruined xx lives’.

Everytime we say goodbye…

And I come back to these moments, I suppose I can die now. I have known true love, I have known the magic of the moments and the sharp intimacy of mountains. I have felt the presence of all three in my being, have felt the breath of all three in the span of my lungs. The Chocolate and Mint Sensational is sensational, and this moment is perfect.

Somatic Therapy: the Bridge Between Mind and Body – III

It certainly isn’t new, though – Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) brought body awareness into psychoanalysis by introducing physical touch, which was anathema to the profession of psychotherapy. Pierre Janet predated him in referencing the body in his psychotherapeutic studies. In terms of popular science, somatic therapy is definitely the new kid on the block.

Over the years, I have developed a deep and abiding respect for the wisdom of the body in trying to protect itself from harm, and equally, by the profound and almost immediate impact somatic therapy has on alleviating trauma and its concomitant symptoms, however severe and inexplicable they might seem to conventional medicine.

Societal implications of somatics: We are an amalgamation of emotional, psychological, biological and evolutionary aspects, and ‘shape’ or form ourselves through social, economic, cultural and historical forces. The way men walk on the street in patriarchical cultures, the way women cower, the generational impact of slavery on African Americans, the impact of the holocaust on Jewish families, including health and somatic impacts passed on to their children who did not witness the trauma personally, are examples of how we shape ourselves. Trauma is passed on from generation to generation, not just culturally, but epigenetically – by changing the functioning of genes.

Within a lifetime, children who are abused are more likely to be in abusive relationships, I suspect because it is the ‘familiar’. When children grow with the concept of familiar and comforting to be what is destructive, when the child grows, s/he will reach for the same in his or her adulthood. Studies with soldiers returning from war inexplicably showed them experiencing exaggerated stress during peace, and them calming down when shown videos of war. In these instances, while intellectually they know they are safe, they know this relationship is ‘wrong’ for them, but their body knowledge seeks what is damaging to them, somatic intervention is needed.

As a society, we are a sum of the parts. Look at increasing incidents of road rage, hypertension, cancer, environmental devastation around us. As a society, we cannot create peace until we have peace in our own selves. Unless we transform ourselves holistically, incorporating somatic transformation, we as individuals would only manifest what is within us.

What are we as Indians today? As Jews today? As African Americans today? What do we stand for? A snapshot of our physical, medical and environmental wellbeing depicts deep and abiding trauma. When Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Be the peace you wish to see in the world’, I suspect he was suggesting that changing the world begins with you. All of you – your mind, and your soma.

Somatic Therapy: the Bridge Between Mind and Body – II

To me, the most exciting part of somatic therapy is the bodywork. Once the therapist establishes the suspected cause of trauma and the symptoms through attentive dialogue with the client, we can decide to start with bodywork. We work with bones, the skin, sinew to establish a direct dialogue with the body. In my years of therapy, I have found that psychological therapy has limited application to somatic trauma. In some ways I have found it to be the only key to the problem of visceral vestigial trauma. In my personal experience, somatic therapy is less concerned with what caused the trauma, than how the trauma resides in the body, and how it manifests itself in physical, emotional and functional ways. To me, it presents a more direct approach in providing the body what it needs to release trauma, often with immediate, palpable results.

Almost all of my clients are unaware of how much trauma and concomitant pain they carry at all times, often times for years. One client was brought to my attention by a friend of hers. I asked her to pay attention to the pain, and rate the severity of the pain from 0 to 10, 0 being the absence of pain, and 10 being the maximum she’d ever experienced. She scored a 21 on a perceived pain scale, and sat right up when I touched her bones. It was entirely unbearable to her. Another client came up for therapy and she said her life was unraveling about her. I don’t know if it would make sense to you, but it is incredibly beautiful to see a person bloom under your hands. I checked in on her the next day, and (forgive me again for an arcane reference), it was as if moments of time had dropped around her, and she was back in her self, having entirely discarded the trauma she’d been struggling with for weeks on end.

Children are known to suffer from psychosomatic ailments. The stresses they undergo in their family or school can take the form of physiological complaints. A study of 1,000 children by a British pediatrician John Apley analyzed stomachache. He found that 90 percent of the cases had no physiological etymology, and found the most common causal trigger pointed to stress at school.

Trauma early in life can set the basis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for later in life. For instance, the Casey Family Northwest Alumni Study conducted in Oregon and Washington, with collaboration from the Harvard Medical School noted that the rate of PTSD was higher for adults who’d spent one year between the ages of 14 and 18 compared to combat veterans. The recovery rate of those adults was half the rate of the general population, indicating a severely retarded recovery to well being. And no wonder – a study conducted by Dubner and Motta found 60% of children who were sexually abused in foster care had PTSD, 42% of children who’d been physically abused showed PTSD symptoms, and PTSD was found in 18% of children who hadn’t been ostensibly abused. Even witnessing violence or being threatened with real or perceived parental abandonment can cause severe trauma to a child.

Trauma travels well. Across time, and across the body. It stores well, so well, in fact, that the science of epigenetics now confirms what psychologists long believe: that trauma can have a cellular-level impact so significant, that if pregnant women are exposed to it during the third trimester, can pass on a tendency to PTSD to their infant genetically. Epigenetic modification is the environmentally induced change in DNA that alters the function rather than the structure of the gene.

Somatic Therapy: The Bridge Between Mind and Body – I

You have come across the word somatic before. In ‘psychosomatic’, psycho refers to the mind, and soma, to the body (roots in ancient Greek). If you think of psychiatry treating the mind, and western medicine treating the body, somatic therapy builds a bridge between the two with a focus on direct bodywork.

The lodging of trauma in the body is a well-known phenomenon, and in somatic terms, the body has a mind of its own. So what is it good for? A surprising amount of diseases have a basis in trauma, ranging from clearly psychological disorders such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), to arcane-sounding diseases like fibromyalgia and temporomandibular joint dysfunction. Other established psychosomatic diseases are: migraine, back pain, chest, stomach, facial, vaginal pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, non-epileptic seizures, Gulf War Syndrome and various chemical sensitivities.

Some claim that even cancer can have a base in inability to effectively cope with trauma. It is particularly relevant for children: common examples of psychosomatic illnesses in children are hives, eczema, bronchial asthma, diabetes, and stomach ulcers.

The causes of trauma are manifold: domestic abuse, childhood abuse, being robbed, being in a war zone, any event that incurs feelings of terror, lack of control, and helplessness. When trauma gets trapped in the body, it can show up in incredible physiological ways: impacting the skin, internal organs, cognitive abilities, and severely debilitating the individuals’ daily functionality.

Men report the biggest causes of trauma to be rape, combat, and childhood neglect or physical abuse. Women reported sexual molestation, physical attack, threat with a weapon, and childhood sexual abuse. PTSD can be accompanied other disorders such as lifetime alchohol abuse or dependence.

ABC news: Vasu Primlani in the Australian RAW comedy trials

Vasu Primlani is not afraid to use comedy for social messaging. Vasu’s excerpt begins at 2:20.  www.vasuprimlani.com

10 Weirdest Responses to Being Lesbian

1. Remember with a little twist, and you’re bi(sexual)
2. You might think you like vanilla, but it might be chocolate you are really after
3. So who’s the man?
4. Then you have AIDS
5. So now you’ll be sleeping with anyone who comes up to you
6. GOD made Adam and EVE. Not Adam and STEVE!
7. Oh you should meet Nancy – you’d like her. She’s also gay.
8. But don’t you miss it? Something big inside you?
9. So what happens? You have some sort of orgasm?
10. I think men have bigger orgasms than women do… it must be really mild and pleasant for you