Gold is a Neutral

I'm currently cuddled up in an armchair in front of a fireplace the height of my shoulders, surrounded by bookcases built into the cold grey stones of an old English manor.  Oh, and the manor is in Mussoorie, a small town nestled into the foothills of the Himalayas.  If you haven't heard of Mussoorie, if you haven't ever been to the Himalayas - much less the foothills - please oh please jump a plane (or two, or three, or however many it would take for you to arrive).  Make sure you bring your dramamine for the drive up the mountain, and after you've settled in and had your tea in the rose garden (OH the dahlias!), being your amble down the thin and windy roads to make your way into town.  Smile at all the locals that you pass, and, as you enter the village, open your eyes.  

You can have ANYTHING made here.

And by anything, I mean the only things a girl really needs: clothes and shoes.  

I had read about the cobblers before coming to Mussoorie and was intent upon having a pair of shoes made just for me.  As I peered into the open-air shops, I saw a gold-coloured Mary-Jane-esque flat.  I asked the cobbler just how long it would take for him to make a pair of shoes for my feet, and he told me 3 days.  I was leaving in 36 hours, so that wasn't going to work. As I started to leave, he gestured with his head towards the gold Mary-Janes hanging on the wall and said, "But if these fit you, you can take them."

He must have been my prince, because the shoe fit. And you'd better believe that I bought it!  Next door, my wish of having a sandal fit to my foot was fulfilled - one turquoise, and one metallic gold slipper.  Ooh lala!

Two pairs of gold shoes in one shopping trip.  It doesn't get better than that, folks, but some of you may be wondering why on earth anybody would need 2 gold pairs of shoes.

And here, dear friends, is the answer:
If there is one thing that I have learned in India, it is this: Gold is a neutral.
Seriously.

Ok, yes, I've learned many, many other things as well; if you've been reading Saahasiga since its inception, you are probably thinking, "3 years on her own in India and all she has learned is that gold is a neutral?"

For those of you who aren't colour-inclined, a neutral is a colour/shade that goes with anything.  Cream, beige, black, grey, white. etc.  Most consider gold a glitter, a jewel-tone, a metallic, or just plain blingin'.

But in India, gold is always a neutral.  In today's larger fashion world, gold is now considered a neutral as well, but I like to believe that India is responsible for its debut.

We learned of the maxim when my roommate was buying a sari to wear to an Ooty wedding (they're crazy!) and was searching for the perfect blouse material.  Nothing was an exact match for her sari, so the tailor whipped out a shimmery bolt of fabric and said, "How about a nice neutral colour - like gold?"

It tickled us pink to hear him describe gold as a neutral and only served to reaffirm our love of the way of life in this country that is bursting with the unexpected.  Live life beautifully, it says.  Live life expecting the unexpected, it says.  Don't save the gold shoes for a special occasion - wear them every day!

Oh, don't worry...I will.

The Motorcycle Diaries

Have you read The Motorcycle Diaries?

I bought it ages ago

(well, the end of November)

Because my sister and cousin and I 

made big plans to motorcycle 

across South America 

in approximately the year 2017.

But I just started reading it yesterday 

- the timing was perfect - 

and I absolutely love it.  

Confession: I cried while reading the introduction.

Let me give you a few of these beautiful phrases that made me smile so hard my stomach burst:

"...he filled his whole life with youthfulness and matured his youth without diluting it"

"...with the sole purpose of getting to know the world..."

"our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner..."

"having the spirit of a dreamer.."

"never to give up until we had realized our dream"

"the enormity of our endeavor escaped us in those moments; all we could see was the dust on the road ahead and ourselves on the bike, devouring kilometers.."

"i felt myself lifted definitvely away on the winds of adventure towards worlds i envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations i imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be"

"an expedition has two points, the point of departure and the point of arrival. if your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means - because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as manymeans ars there are different ways of "finishing." that is to say, the means are endless."

"...when in reality we had only just begun..."

And a picture of some of Che's observations of life, of injustice, that pricked my heart, pinched my mind:

"...we will see whether some day, some miner will take up his pick in pleasure and go to poison his lungs with a conscious joy."

"...the need to build schools that would orient individuals within their own world, enable them to play a useful role within it..."

"the need to change fundamentally the present system of education, which, on the rare occasion it does offer Indians education (according only to white man's criteria) simply fills them with shame and resentment, rendering them unable to help their fellow Indians and at the severe disadvantage of having to fight within a hostile white society which refuses to accept them..."

"The semi-indigenous features of the curator, his eyes shining with enthusiasm and his faith in the future, constituted one more treasure of the museum, but a living museum, proof of a race still fighting for its identity."

Oh. Oh. Oh.

The Inspiration Room

I have a room in my flat that I like to call The Inspiration Room.  It has housed craft supplies, magazines, empty paper towel rolls, etc. from the day I moved in.  At the beginning, I could craft on the floor. Before long, its use as storage [how uninspiring] pushed my workshop into the living room.
But in October, I resolved to change that.
I emptied the inspiration room, washed down the walls, cleaned the floor.

And then...it sat empty.
And I pondered what I could do to make it inspiring once again.

In December, I went to buy my Christmas tree [aka bamboo ladder] and wandered next door to the carpenter.  His shop seriously looked like Santa's workshop to me.  It was beautiful.

I took out a piece of twine that I had used to measure the width and height of my inspiration room, and I asked if he could make me a shelving unit and a wide sturdy tabletop board.  He could.  I picked it up a few days later, and enjoyed the special bonus of being introduced to the carpenter's 3 goats as well. Lucky me.

The makeshift desk moved immediately into the inspiration room, and it fit. Yippee!  I moved all the craft supplies etc. back in, and was oh-so-excited.  In the holiday rush, however, I hadn't had a chance to appropriately prepare the inspiration room for use.

So today, in honor of my New Years Resolution to be intentional in setting time aside for creativity, I listened to some music (Elton John and the Dixie Chicks, if you really wanted to know).  I put up some pictures.  I lit some candles.  This is what it looks like now:

And then I did a little bit of painting:

Behold!  The first finished "work of art" to come from the new and improved [and inspiring] inspiration room!  2013 is off to a brilliant beginning.

What has inspired you so far this year?

Children's Day

Today is Children's Day in India, a holiday that we don't commemorate in the U.S.  Why?  I don't know.  When we celebrate children, we celebrate their innocence.  Their joy.  Their laughter.  Their potential.  We want to encourage them.  Empower them.  Learn from them.  Treasure every moment with them.

 Precious.  Precious is this child, and precious is her life.  She is an Adivasi child, living in a small cement house in the clearing of the jungle in Wayanad.  She is the majority of India.  She may fight many odds, but she is the future of India.  She is precious.

 Deepa.  Deepa means light, and her smile brings just that.  

When I see this photo, I can hear the laughter.  Feel the trust. The attitude is carefree; I want to capture that feeling and their love and have it with me always...and then I want to jump into the picture and play, too.