Happy Birthday Swami!

This past Friday was a very auspicious occasion, as we celebrated the 82nd birthday of our spiritual guide and teacher, Sri Satya Sai Baba…

Thankfully for Leicester’s large South Asian population, I found a few Sai Centres and got in touch with some devotees here. So on Friday, I attended a program at the Leicester Ram Mandir.

I couldn’t believe how many people kept coming and filling the massive hall. Only in India have I seen a larger gathering of Sai devotees. The program started with about 20 minutes of Veda chanting (chanting of verses from our holy scriptures) by a group of youth boys. Everyone sat with their eyes closed and just meditated to the sound of the chanting. Then the youth conducted bhajans (devotional songs praising God). Many of them sang so sweetly and the musicians played their instruments with such skill – I was really impressed with their talent. The centre had also set up a screen, projecting video and images of Swami listening to bhajans in India from previous occasions so it gave the feeling that he was actually there – well, I know Swami’s always there…but you know what I mean!

The SSE children performed an informative but also hilarious play titled “If God had voicemail”! Basically, the premise was set around this girl who felt very frustrated by school, friends and family. So she has a dream that she calls a hotline to speak with God. She reaches an automated recording where the operator says:

“Hello, you’ve reached Guidance On Divinity, also known as GOD. Unfortunately all our Gods and angels are currently occupied. Your position in the queue is 108 – but don’t worry, that’s a very auspicious number! To leave a message for Ganesh, press one, Hanuman, 2, Krishna, 3.”

And then they show what all the different Gods are doing…Hanuman is giving this conference on bridge building to several monkey students, and Ganesh is climbing the Himalayas with some friends, etc…it was so cute to see all the little British children dressed up!

Of course at the end of the dream, God calls the girl back on her mobile, and tells her that she doesn’t have to call to reach him, but she just has to say Aum (the sound of creation) to connect, and that connection with God is stronger than any other technological connection possible!

A former student at the college in Prashanti Nilayam (compound where Swami lives) gave a very candid speech about his experience living there, and the interactions he had seen and heard of Swami. One of them was about a time where Swami won an arm wrestling match between himself and these two wrestlers. The wrestlers were convinced he had used some kind of divine power to beat them, but Swami explained he didn’t, but infact beat them because since birth, a negative thought had never entered his mind, he had never doubted himself – and so he won by using the strength of his mind. The student also gave the analogy of the Sai organization being like an ocean, where Swami is the epicentre. If a pebble is thrown into the water, it ripples throughout the entire ocean. If Swami says in a discourse this month to meditate more, people across the globe immediately start to mediate more. Anything Swami says or does has an impact on the rest of the world.

Of course the best part of the whole evening was the grand finale. Everyone started to sing a special Happy Birthday song for Swami and a giant cake was brought out, along with balloons, sparklers, confetti, Happy Birthday signs and little children dressed as different planets rotating around a poster of Swami.

I felt such peace being there that night. When events run smoothly and are well-organized and rehearsed it truly shows how much love and devotion went towards making it successful. I’m looking forward to attending future events here – it’s such a relief when you can connect with communities like the Sai organization away from home. I guess it’s just having some familiarity in your life that helps to keep you grounded.

(quick update: Z is back to her healthy self, and everything else is great!)

Just call me Dr. Mom

Well this weekend was pretty much a 180 from our last weekend. Zainah came down with possibly the worst bug ever. We tried everything: I made her chicken soup from scratch, put tiger balm on her forehead, gave her vicks to inhale. She took tylenol cold & flu, advil and paracetamol. Nothing worked! She couldn't sleep for two days because she was so stuffed up, feverish and in pain.

Then last night her tonsils got really swollen and at 6 this morning, we took a taxi to the infirmary. I felt so bad for her. But God bless the UK health system. They didn't ask for any i.d., all they took was her name and contact information and within 10 minutes we were seen by a doctor. Not a great doctor though. Infact, he was actually quite dodgy. First of all he was just wearing a knitted sweater with the words: Ghana in red on the front and a pair of khakis. No white coat, no name tag, nothing. He could barely speak any English, and he was afraid of catching whatever Z had. He would stand as far away from her as he could to take her temperature and check her throat. Then he just left the room, and came back in with two boxes of medicines. We had to ask him what was wrong with her.

He said she had tonsilitis and she needed to take a course of antibiotics to get rid of the infection. He also gave her some extra-strength ibuprofen for the pain. When we got back home she was finally able to get some rest. And now she's slowly recovering...and I am dosing up on echinacea and vitamins as well as disinfecting the house to make sure I don't catch her tonsilitis!

It's been a slow week otherwise. The weather is finally starting to cool down now. November is supposed to be the worst month in terms of rain and climate. So we're bundling up and doing our best to keep warm and dry :)

Oh, we have this new professor for our "Processes and Structures in Mass Media" class. He's really interesting. This week we were learning about how large corporations buy the rights to all sorts of images, and then sell them to advertisers or newspapers who need them. So for example if the Toronto Star had an article about the war in Iraq and they need an image of 'war' they'd pay one of these businesses like www.gettyimages.com to use one of their pictures. But the problem is these pictures aren't real. For the most part, they're models that are posing and they've been made very ambiguous so that one picture can be used in a variety of contexts (you make more money that way).

Another really interesting aspect to these companies is that when you search for let's say, images of Women and Freedom the pictures that show up are for the most part of women doing yoga on a beach or jumping in the air with their hands to the sky. So the question becomes: what does this do to our perception of these concepts? Why aren't there more political images of women trying to attain freedom? And what happens when our reality is constantly being symbolized as this perfect, symmetrical world, rather than documented as images that are true to real life? I found it all so fascinating because it builds on the stuff we learned about in semiotics - this idea of signs connoting other metaphorical meanings.

It also relates to advertising because a lot of advertisers use these image banks to associate their company with certain values portrayed in the image (which is what branding is all about). T-Mobile for example has these pictures of people doing yoga on the beach on their phone cards (yoga on the beach is a very popular image for some reason)...now what does that have to do with the services they're offering? Nothing. Except that I guess those values of peacefulness and freedom somehow become part of T-Mobile's values. So that when you realize you can only use the phone card once and then all your minutes are gone, you don't get as upset because the card has this tranquil person on it!

My next essay is going to be based on this topic as well. I'm hoping to examine how images in our newspapers, magazines and advertisements have changed over time and what role these image bank corporations have played in this transition. So it's much more interesting than my last essay, and I'm really looking forward to starting it.

Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to blog about next week! Hope you're all doing well back home - miss you lots!

Attack of Attila the Hun...

That's right! I'm back from Budapest!!! Did you miss me? Ok ok, we'll discuss formalities later...onto more important things, like the actual trip...

Friday:

We landed around 8 pm, Hungary time - which is an hour ahead of us in the UK. Exhausted from the 1 hour bus ride to the airport, and the 2 hour plane ride there, Z and I decided to get some food and get to bed early. Our stay was made even more comfortable by the fantastic appartment-style hostel we booked. It was cheaper and better than a hotel, and walking distance from metro and bus stops, as well as a few of Pest's sites. Oh, I don't know if I've already mentioned this in other entries but Budapest is divided into 23 districts. The Danube river cuts between the two most common regions - Buda and Pest (hence the name of the city). Buda is known as the mountainous, rural area while Pest is the urban, city centre region.

This was the view from our balcony...most of the buildings in Budapest are very old...we think that those holes in this building are from bullet shots during war time.

Saturday:

We thought it'd be best to get the shopping out of the way earlier in the trip so that we wouldn't have to worry about last minute gifts and souvenirs, and maybe find a little something for ourselves along the way (ahem). Unfortunately, Hungarian isn't the easiest language to pick up quickly. Infact, nothing is pronounced the way it's spelled. For example, the famous pedestrian shopping street, Vaci Utca is actually pronounced Vaat-see Ut-sa (Utca just means avenue or street). So when we were trying to read the map and ask for directions, most people had no clue what we were looking for. I have to admit, I forgot how difficult it can be to navigate your way around a city where few people understand English and everything is written in a foreign language.

We ended up at the largest mall in Eastern Europe (I guess that's what people thought we wanted when we said "shopping") and found someone who spoke fluent English and gave us clear directions on getting to Vaci street. And this is where things get ugly, because it required taking the metro.

Now usually, you would buy your ticket, get on the train and you're good to go. Not in Budapest. What you're supposed to do is pay a certain amount depending on how far you need to travel. That much we figured out. What we missed was that you are required to validate your ticket at this little punch out machine when you get on and off the train. We did neither because a) the ticket lady never told us we had to and b) these validation machines are easy to miss. So two stops later Z and I hop off and head for the exit when we're accosted by this cross-eyed Hungarian man asking for our tickets. We show him our tickets and he says "No good. You did not validate ticket. You pay 5000 HUF fine each" (sidenote: 350 Hungarian Forints = 1 Pound). We argued with him for a good 10 minutes explaining that the ticket woman never told us, meanwhile he's saying that there are signs everywhere (in Hungarian which we speak fluently of course). I ask for his boss (which he pretends not to understand) and start writing down his identity number and name. Z asks if we get a receipt for paying the fine and when he shows us the paper his hands are trembling so we knew something wasn't right. Then he demands to see our passport and we said we didn't have it with us so he threatens to dial the police. Anyways, long story short, we noticed a group of Spaniards being harrassed by this man's partner in crime and banned together with them to rebell against the security people and leave. We didn't pay any fine, no police were involved, and we later validated our tickets just incase at another metro station.

So after being sent to the wrong shopping district, riding the metro and nearly getting arrested, we finally made it to Vaci Utca! It was a lot of fun - tourists all over the place window shopping and buying authentic Hungarian souvenirs. We never got used to seeing prices in the thousands or paying with a 5000 HUF bill.

Sunday:
After Saturday's stress, we deserved a day in a Turkish bath-house. Budapest is known as the city of baths because of the many spas leftover from Turkish rule. There are also many natural hot-springs which is where the water comes from for these thermal bath houses. Z and I took the bus across the Danube into Buda, to visit the third best thermal spa in the world - The Gellert. We soaked our sore muscles in the marble baths and were massaged with peppermint oil, and the most stress-releasing part of it all was that we paid under 20 pounds total. Oh how I love exchanging pounds...Unfortuately I couldn't take any pictures inside the pool area but just to give you an idea of the beauty, here's a picture of the main hall.

When we left Gellert, the skies of Budapest graced us with the most perfect snow. It was ideal for taking pictures of the Gellert Hotel and our surroundings:

And then when we got a little too cold, we found a traditional Hungarian cafe and enjoyed an authentic Hungarian lunch - Z tried Goulash which is apparently like a minestrone but with beef. I had a turkey dish with parsely potatoes. Hungarian food in general is meat and some kind of potato. They also tend to cook with a lot of paprika (Hungarian spice which means "one that is hot"; there are 8 different varieties). Initially I was worried that I wouldn't find anything to eat in Budapest. I was expecting a lot of pork and bland food. But surprisingly, their cuisine is very tasty and well-prepared. And when you get sick of Hungarian dishes, there's also Turkish restaurants on every corner!

On our walk back to Pest, we also captured some beautiful night-time shots. What wasn't so beautiful was trudging through all the slush and snow, so please appreciate the great lengths we went to getting these photos!

After a cat-nap, we headed out for our last dinner in Budapest! On our way back to the hostel, we met these three Italian guys who were lost and trying to find somewhere to eat. They were so happy when I started speaking what little Italian I knew with them, and I was even happier that I actually got to put my Italian to use! It was nice to know that Z and I weren't the only tourists having trouble finding our way around...

Monday:

We decided to make the most of our last day in Budapest by visiting some of the sites we had missed over the weekend. We decided to try taking the metro again (this time without getting into trouble) and found one of the most popular 'postcard' places in Budapest: Parliament.

We were determined to climb up the citadel to get the panoramic view of Budapest, so we made it our final goal. I can't describe how high this mountain is unless you see the view it gave us of the city. We climbed up stairs and stairs within the mountain for about 30 minutes but once we reached the top it was well worth the effort :)

After we climbed back down and ate some lunch it was time to go back to the airport for our flight home. It's hard to explain the experience other than what we saw, ate and did. Part of me still feels like the entire weekend was some crazy dream that never actually happened. Sure we had our down moments where we got lost or we couldn't find anyone who spoke English but that's all part of the experience. We didn't get to see all the monuments or sites (that would take atleast a week) but we saw as many as we could, tried the food, did some shopping, and got a feel for Hungarian culture. Overall I'd say it was a great start to my European travelling, and I'm ready to do some more! Well, almost...I need a few days to recover...

Vogue India?

My fellow CCIT alumna Stella had this posted on her facebook account...it's so relevant to my dissertation topic I couldn't resist sharing it with you all...any thoughts?

Vogue India Shows Appreciation For Indian Beauty With Caucasian Model

Highlighted originally published by Seattle Slim at Happy Nappy Head



This is the cover of the inaugural issue of Vogue India. Unfortunately, I don’t see much of anything distinctly “Indian” about it. I see them highlighting Australian model Gemma Ward, flanked by two Indian women, who may as well wear signs saying “sidekick” around their necks. To add to the affront, the Indian models both have blue eyes.

I know that most will say that it may not be too much to worry about because most Indians have bigger fish to fry like poverty but Vogue had a greater responsibility to do right by India and it failed.

Sad to say, this isn’t the first time. Vogue pulled the same stunt, with the same model on the cover of Vogue China’s inaugural issue.

I’m sorry but when I look for a Vogue India, I want to see beautiful Indian models all over the magazine; I want accurate representation.

Gemma Ward pales in comparison to the lovely Aishwarya Rai, so why isn’t Miss Rai on the cover? What about Shilpa Shetty? Looking at the other models, they didn’t even need Ward on the cover. Their beauty speaks volumes.

Unfortunately, their beauty wasn’t allowed to grace the cover without Gemma in the middle. What does speak volumes is Vogue’s subliminal message that unless a Caucasian female is associated with it, it’s not beautiful. The use of models with blue eyes (or possibly color contacts?) further cements Vogue’s idea of what women of color should look like in order to be considered pretty enough to stand next to a white woman’s beauty.

If this the way Vogue is going to operate when launching magazines for perspective countries, I shudder to think what Vogue Kenya may be. I can just see it now.

This is why we should be extra vigilant to the messages that the media sends children of color and protect them from deception. I wouldn’t bring this magazine into my house to line a bird cage.

Vogue’s message is loud, clear and pathetic. If this is the best Vogue can do, they should be ashamed of themselves. Gemma isn’t the standard of beauty in this photo, in all reality, she barely makes the cut.

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When I (Dee) first read this article, I wasn't sure what to think...I mean really, is Vogue to blame for representing what the majority of South Asians believe is beautiful? This has been an ongoing issue in South Asian culture - why point fingers at a fashion magazine trying to sell copies? Why not point fingers at the millions of people who buy into this industry of lightening potions and lotions?

The author suggests putting Aishwarya Rai on the inaugural cover. Great. That's just what India needs. Yet another cover with fair-skinned, blue-eyed, lack of acting ability Aish propagating the same message as Gemma - and even worse since she's actually Indian. Atleast with Gemma you could say Vogue was trying to make a statement about society breaking down international barriers and globalization taking effect. Instead this author takes a stab at Gemma, saying she barely makes the cut in comparison to other Indian actresses. How ironic is that - complaining about standards of beauty in other countries while judging Gemma's beauty in the same breath - hah.

You know what does make me happy about this cover? That for once, they haven't snapped photos of bollywood actresses with beaming lights on their faces, making them look 10 shades fairer than they are. Sure, maybe they have on blue contacts (which I can hardly notice), but atleast the shadism argument is out of the picture.

To me, this isn't so much an issue of beauty as it is one of race. If you're making a statement about globalization, fine. But why put the one white lady in the middle - flanked by her two b-class, brown-skinned, Bollywood actresses? And honestly, who did the photography? Couldn't you have asked Gemma to turn down the "deer caught in the headlights" look just a smidge?

Meh.

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November…

I don’t know how many of you have actually seen the film V for Vendetta, but I was quite surprised to learn that they actually do celebrate November 5th here. It’s known as Guy Fawkes day, and they used to burn him in effigy, as a commemoration of his failure to blow up the parliament. But now it’s turned into a giant bonfire and fireworks (which we’ve had to tolerate for the last 4 nights in a row).

I apologize for the delay in this week’s post. Yesterday while most of Britain was celebrating the demise of Guy Fawkes, Z and I were celebrating the demise of our first essay! Everything went quite smoothly – no work was lost the night before, and we tried to spread everything out over several days. I felt a little rusty after not writing a paper in nearly 5 months but in the end, I submitted what I think was a decent piece of writing. Most importantly, I did pick up a lot of helpful information for my dissertation. One of the authors I reviewed talks a lot about proper methodology in media audience research. A big problem according to him has to do with researchers wanting to start with the media and then somehow draw connections to the audience. So for example, if you’re looking at how violence on television affects people, a common starting point is the television shows with scenes of violence, and then trace the viewers to measure their reactions. Well in that case, of course you’ll find some kind of conclusions in your favour (for example, increased heart rate or shorter tempers or what have you). Anyways, what this guy says researchers should be doing is starting with the people who are violent and working your way back to the cause of their behaviours (which may or may not include certain media outlets). I never really thought about conducting research in that manner because in our discipline, we’re always so quick to link most of society’s attitudes and behaviours to the media as the sole and direct cause. Even with my research, I was thinking of starting with advertisements and working my way backwards. But after reading this book, I’m more tempted to start with the young women and then examine what factors have shaped their representations of beauty culture, focusing on media’s role of course.

Speaking about dissertations, we had an entire lecture today about the whole process of writing our dissertation and conducting research and acquiring ethics clearance…it was nice to finally get a breakdown of how this is going to work. It doesn’t feel like such a daunting task now that I know what those 18,000 words are made up of. What does sound like it’s going to be a pain in the butt is getting my ethics clearance for my research. There’s a lot of bureaucracy involved…if I want to work with any human subjects under 18 I need a background check done by their criminal department which can take months for international students (but luckily once I get it it’s international – so I can test subjects in the UK and Canada without needing a separate check). So I think the toughest part of this is going to take place before I can actually start writing my dissertation!

To be honest, not much else has really been going on this week other than us working on our essays. Oh, we did go to a Halloween party that the Canadian Law Society held on the 30th. Z went as Aphrodite and I was a belly dancer. It was fun but I think both of us were feeling so anxious about our papers we didn’t really enjoy it as much as we could’ve.

We have a couple days before we head to Budapest (we leave Friday afternoon). So tomorrow we have to come up with a list of sites we want to see there and things we want to do. For sure I need to spend at least half the day at one of their spas…Budapest is renowned for their Turkish bath-houses and spas. Apparently, the natural hot springs are so hot that they have to add cold water to them so people can bare the temperatures! I don’t think it’s hit me yet that we’re really going to Budapest…what an adventure! I never thought I’d have the guts to just take off like this with nothing but a backpack and visit a completely foreign place. It’s such a surreal experience being here.

Christmas decorations are slowly creeping onto display windows in town. It’s exciting to hear the ads on the radio and the Christmas sales starting – England is supposed to be beautiful at Christmas time – dripping in multi-coloured lights and evergreen trees. I think instead of planning a specific trip somewhere in December, we might just take several smaller trips around England and maybe Scotland or Ireland at that time. Save the Mediterranean for warmer weather : )

I promise I’ll have much more to say next week – wish us all the best on our Hungarian excursion! And Happy Diwali for those I don’t speak to before we leave!