Last year I lost a handbag with cash, cellphone, keys, credit cards, drivers license and so much more. The bag itself was precious, but lost it on a bus in Bangalore. The bus was crowded. I had just landed in Bangalore one day prior to this. I had quite a few things in the bag, luckily I had taken my passport and left it at home just before this. I was traveling in Asia before I went to Bangalore. I was so afraid of losing my passport and credit cards while traveling elsewhere and I was so careful. When I went to Bangalore, I was not on guard. Two women with a baby came so close to me and the next second my bag was gone. It took me a few seconds to figure out, by then they were gone. I got off when the bus slowed down for signal and I was running through Bangalore roads. I did not know what to do. Then it took me days even to file a complaint in Bangalore. The police needed so much proof. The first time I went to a police station which had the jail units as well. I saw many men inside looking at me. It was weird. For some reason, I made peace with the loss right there. I thought it was just cash and stuff. May be some really poor people had a few meals off of it.

Losing a passport in a foreign country is a scary thought. I watched a film a last year, wah do dem which was so well made with a great soundtrack. This guy loses his passport, money and clothes just about everything in Jamaica. It was a hilarious film, but so real. In some ways, you do learn not to get too attached to things.

People who steal are ayogis (awful people), shortcuts don’t last for long. I prefer people asking for a quarter instead of these thieves. But, the biggest thieves I come across are my banks, mortgage and the regular accounts. I wish there was a better way to keep my money.

It is a cooking class with Zen priest and chef. This is a film about Zen chef Edward Espe Brown who has penned many Tassajara cookbooks. It is quite a fun film that talks about food as a way of life. There is a bit of zen advice too. He talks about how long it took him to finally understand the Buddhist ritual of offering food to Buddha, when you know for sure it is not going to be consumed. You make your effort and then you offer it. You say this is my offering and then you leave.

According to Ed Espe Brown, if you cook and make an effort at it, a lot of problems can be sorted out. For when you cook, you are not just working on the food, you are working on yourself and the people who eat it. When the cook is joyful, everyone is relaxed. When the cook is anxious, it gets passed around. When you work on food, you are using a lot of acupressure points. You feel connected to the source when you cook. When you don’t cook, you have just lost that important connection. For food and nourishment should not come from a box.

One of the chapters talks about anger- western culture likes to control things, when the object does not do what you want it to do, you just whip it to submission. If the object/people/countries don’t respond, you destroy them. He explains how this is not a sustainable solution from the point of view of Zen.

Another chapter deals with affluence. There is so much food everywhere. Food is not precious, it is just commodity, a thing that gives you energy to move. It has become too much effort to cook. Encountering a potato makes people nervous. I could totally relate to the affluence and waste.  It is too much effort to cut down waste. Even after dozen years of living in the west, it does not cease to shock me every single time I see so much food being offered at restaurants. Except at fancier places where the meal costs half my paycheck. Then I come out being really hungry. That was the main course? I thought it was the appetizer.

I also got to know there are people who use the food that the supermarkets have left out as they are past “Use by” date. This does not mean the food is bad, but the super markets cannot sell them. To stop going it to waste, there are people who use them.

This is what Ed B says about cooking (and maybe living in general).

Make sincere effort, this means the blemishes show. Make your best effort, it is not perfect. It’s not like there are no mistakes or faults, it is not like you are working on a masterpiece. You don’t have to produce a masterpiece. Just take care of something. Make a sincere, honest effort, you will have something to eat.

In short, if you cook and understand the food, you can understand way more of  life. It definitely gave me a lot to chew on.

FreeGeek takes in all the unloved computers, tests them to see if they are actually usable or if the parts can be extracted. Reuse before recycle is key.

It is a lot of work that goes into this process. Most of this work is handled by volunteers. FreeGeek is a non-profit organization and some of their money comes from the precious metals like gold, silver and copper found in the motherboards. They also help in regulation of ewaste. They stop of lot of toxic material from the computers being sent to the poor countries. Most of the ships that bring in goods into the US and Canada may be leaving with tons of toxic material. Even though this is illegal, there are some loop holes in the procedures. The toxic material ends up elsewhere in the world.

Even though I like most of what FreeGeek does, I was quite appalled at what gets reused. For example, if the keyboard is even slightly dirty, it gets discarded. Black is preferred to white keyboards. It involves too much labor to clean it. This is sent to yet another recycler who figures out what to do with them. The reused components get built into reincarnated computers and sold at the thrift store or given away free to volunteers.

Interestingly, this is one place where Macs are not considered cool, in fact they are despised. They are a headache to recycle. FreeGeek loves PCs but dislikes Windows. Linux and Opensource is what is loved at Freegeek.

It talks about how important it has become for black women to have straight hair. They have been constantly bombarded with the images of European women having hair that moves. Apparently a lot of black women spend more on their hair than the rent or mortgage and the pain that one needs to go through to obtain a man made standard of what is considered good looks.

I enjoyed the section where Chris Rock goes to India to check out how Indian hair is exported to Los Angeles. All the way from a temple in Thirupathi. This section of the movie was quite hilarious, but I had not known that human hair was exported, it was sold and more precious than gold. The temples in India are such a rip off. They sell the hair that is offered to God as prayer.

There is still no luge track in India, where Keshavan was born 28 years ago 2,500 metres up in the Himalayas.

“We use the natural facilities, the natural track,” Keshavan explained. “With a few friends we get together. You beat a ski course and you beat a luge course.”

Even after having competed in a few Olympics before, he says he simply puts together his own equipment. He is compared to the Jamaican bobsleigh team that competed in 1988 and went on to become the crowd favorite.

I cannot help finding parallels between Timothy and so many yogis that I meet, including myself. This is a typical day in Mysore, for the westerners who hang out there for months. They return to Mysore summer after summer, just like Timothy going back to Alaska. Their agenda is fascinating.

The yoga class for the morning supposedly starts at 6 am. But all the yogi nutcases  are there by 5.30 am. So the class starts at 5.45 am instead of 6. This can happen only in Mysore. After this, they talk about all things mind, yoga, stillness and mostly what sounds like onset of madness to me. Most yogis then attend a back bending session which is one of the toughest classes, I hear. Then some more self practice or free classes by yogis. At the end of the day, yet another astanga class. I am usually done for the day after my first astanga class in the morning and do not seek enlightenment at such a pace. But the Timothy yogis do yoga all the waking hours running from one class to the other watching their grizzlies and sometimes recording it on film. I am not sure who the grizzlies are in this movie. May be it is the wild minds of the yogis. The Mysore story ends with the mind eating all the yogis. Consumed, that’s what it is.

I wish someone would make a spoof of this film with Mysore yogis as Timothy.  That would be such a fun film to watch.

It is one of the immigrant stories which was fresh, light, funny and sad. Life in Palestine seems like being in a prison and the move to America is not without issues. The confusion between Jews and Arabs cannot be quite explained to the Americans.  It is a well made film and has a sense of humor.

I also learnt that checkmate is an Arabic phrase. Shah mate in Arabic means the king is dead, which is borrowed in English as checkmate.