The Ganesh Festival is a ten-day festival celebrated with great pomp and festivity. This festival falls in late August or early September. It begins on the fourth day of Bhadrapada Shukla Paksha and concludes on the fourteenth day of Bhadrapada Shukla Paksha, as per the Hindu calendar.

During British rule over India, freedom fighters were prohibited from gathering in public places. To circumvent this restriction, India’s revolutionary freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak, popularly known as Lokmanya Tilak, organized the Ganesh Festival in Maharashatra in 1894, promoting it as a public festival. During the Festival, they performed stage shows and used other means to keep alive and spread the need and importance of freedom, while also creating a social solidarity among the people. Today, its celebrations are held throughout all of India, and more particularly in Maharashtra. This Ganesh festival is considered an essential part of Maharashatrian life and they celebrate it wherever they are, whether inside or outside of India. It is a festival for worshipping Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles and conqueror of the soul and mind. All Hindus worship Lord Ganesha before any important function, praying to the Lord to remove all obstacles to prosperity.

This custom springs from the mythological story of God Shiva and Parvati who had remained childless for a long time after the birth of their first son Kartik. While Lord Shiva went to the Himalayas for tap (religious austerity), Parvati, in order to avoid loneliness, created a statute of clay in the form of a son and using her divine power instilled life into Ganesha. (more…)

Appears haggard brainwashed
AK 47 drags, heart-beat trauma
Probably 9 or 10 years of age
Boy or girl conscripted in war
Bush-bred deprived of school
Ordeal to survive, hungry soul
Blurred speech irrational mind
Effects of hallucinogen drugs
Dangerous kid fantasy of war
Mandated extinction life itself
Kills and rapes blood or alien (more…)

A child cries the seas
and in your eyes my lady
there is not any tear an apology
a lover begs the fates
and you burn the hearts
and implant in the memory
the denials!

To when this decision is?

you know that the seas are
waves and a movement
and the love
Is coming with insistence
what is after it an insistence!
Then, you seize the chance
and end this escape (more…)

When one mentions Mexico City in the US, it’s not the beach resorts that come to most people’s mind. Rather, people think of crime, pollution, corruption and impoverishment. But while the crime rate (mostly thefts and burglaries) in Mexico City has reached significant levels of concern, one of the highest in Latin America, there are many other global cities that echo the same issue.

So why does Mexico City seem to stand out as the epic center of metropolitan crime, pollution and poverty? Perhaps the apparent rundown barrios or slums make it difficult for the ever-present media not to focus on them. But this is not how the majority of Mexico City is. Living here for several months, I discovered that the City has an overwhelming rich history, culture, and a unique architecture deserving the worldís attention. I spent five months in Mexico City teaching English to a variety of students. Coming from the U.S. where one can see many films that depict Mexico in a one-dimensional and conventional way, I was relieved to discover a world contrary to the common stereotypes of shady dealings and dirt roads.

Mexico City’s rich history layered with modern advancements outshines the standard dull images of the city I, coming from the US, was accustomed to seeing.
My days would typically start with grabbing some breakfast from one of the many vendors in the Centro Historico, the historical centre of Mexico City, with its colonial architecture. The Centro Historico, in addition to the famous Zocalo plaza, demonstrates the well-preserved Mexican history stemming from the Aztecs and the Spanish colonial conquerors. The Zocalo is the largest plaza in the Western Hemisphere. It was also the site of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán. (more…)

Walking briskly, almost at a half run, Hema loped around the track. She couldn’t believe how much space there was here – so much space to drown herself in. She loved it. Basked in it. Being alone on the track didn’t bother her – indeed she looked forward to these stolen moments at lunch. Instead of eating she would take off, run towards the track, the bottom half of her pantsuit exchanged for flowing cotton pants. Summer on the East coast was not arid like the heat of Calcutta and by the time her legs, unaccustomed to pantyhose and sneakers, hit the asphalt of the track, she was already sweating.

The dark circles forming under her arms and around her neck would later disappear when she exchanged this twin set for a fresh one. For now however, nothing mattered but her and the silence. She tried to imagine the vastness inside her, tried to compare it to the circle of the track. She wanted to picture her lining inside, red, soft and cushiony, waiting to nourish their baby. The image was fuzzy in her head because she kept getting distracted by the doctor’s voice, “Keep trying, keep trying. There’s nothing wrong with either of you. You’re both perfectly healthy.” Hema had wanted to slap his smug face. He had beamed at them from behind a desk cluttered with pictures of a chubby boy with a toothless grin and a dimply girl in a children’s bathing suit. They were in various poses, sometimes with a woman, sometimes on their own smiling into the camera. Each picture was in its own frame. Six in all. The images of their pale white skin haunted Hema’s sleep.

Her legs drove her onwards; she pumped her hands as she had seen the elderly women in her neighborhood do every evening immediately after dinnertime. She could feel the cotton rubbing slightly across her hips, chafing with the rotating movement of her thighs. The shell of her twin set hung directly below her navel and she fought the urge to feel for her bellybutton. She was fascinated by this hole. Its emptiness was evidence of her lifelong debt to her mother. She tried to imagine a cord stretching from between her legs to the center of a squalling, blood-covered infant. She couldn’t. (more…)

The calling came as an ache in my heart, a space that could only be filled by Africa and her people. After training for three years in a rural Zulu homeland, I graduated in a three-day ceremony as an African traditional healer, one of the only white ’sangomas’ to have graduated in Southern Africa.
In the years that followed, my love and understanding for the Zulu people deepened and in September of 2003 I found myself travelling to West Africa, to the heart of Zulu ancestry.
Gabon is off the West coast of equatorial Africa, and is one of the only countries left with pristine rain forest. There are plants here that are of particular interest to the African herbalist.
Tabernanthe iboga is a shrub native to Gabon and is considered sacred for its magical properties. Especially interesting to me were the Bwitti ceremonies associated with the consumption of iboga. These ceremonies are seldom performed outside of Gabon and are done in a strictly religious framework.
My intention was to locate an ancient tribe living in the very hilly forest region of Ngounie. This Mitshogho’pygmy’ tribe are the forefathers of Bwitti culture and live in dense forest near turbulent rivers, making it difficult to access.

The mist was thick when the little aircraft landed in Mouila, the last airport stop on the edge of the high forest. I felt very insignificant flying in over the large expanse of jungle and landing in the forest clearing. (more…)