Well thanks to Ryze mucking up :( I lost all the personal info and am now redoing it. I suppose it's my own fault as well... I forgot to back up!

So here I am doing it from memory, and with some new injections of thoughts and words...

Here's my take on being Indian... again!

At 17 when I visited India, I was aghast about many things and felt dreadfully homesick. Now, I love to visit India. I find it fascinating and above all I am proud to be Indian. Yes, it is a far cry from my teens and youthful 20s when Western culture was so much a part of me.

I still possess some of those Western facets, but oh how I have changed. :) I love to wear selvar khamis (have I spelt that right?) I love to listen to Adnan Sami. I like to watch Tamil and Hindi and Malayalam movies. And India is now the land of my soul.

Years ago, when told by a friend in Holland that my genes actually developed in India, I more or less ignored this. But now I know fully what he means. My being Indian is a special thing.

It means more than my love of things Indian, it means that I am indeed the sum of all parts of India and that while I cannot speak a single Indian language (I am not proud of this) I can relate to Ghazals and instinctively realise the most beautiful part of them. So when the captivated audience listening to a Ghazal performance goes wah, wah, wah... in my heart I go ahhhhhhh...   I am Indian and it's beautiful to be Indian.

TALES OF INDIA

The story continues in bits and pieces...

One of the memories that I will preserve of my most recent visit was the scene at  the Trichi railway station. My uncle and I had quite a bit of time to kill before our train arrived, so we sat in the waiting area designated for men. Yes, there weretwo other women there as well.

What got my attention however, was the behaviour of a group of men, in their 30s and 20s. The first guy in this group, obviously a senior person and popular with the rest of the guys (they were all railway security men)  quickly put on a sarong overhis trousers and then whisked the trousers off.

(It was NOT rude behaviour, but indeed common behaviour for men who wanted to catch up on their sleep as they waited for their respective trains. These men also had simple bedding which consisted of a sheet on the ground and most often an overnighter case which substituted for a pillow.)

Soon, the first guy was surrounded by his friends. One of them was very conscious of dental hygiene and he went off to the washroom with his toothbrush. The same guy possessed a very nice mobile and one that could play MP3s. He decided he would provide some music that  night. (There were actually six guys all sleeping in a group.)

One of his friends decided he would play a prank on the guy with the fab mobile phone and first switched off the charger. But when the mobile continued to blare music, he finally unplugged it. Laughter emitted not only amongst these young men but also from me. I could not but giggle.

I found the sight of these young men so undeniably sweet. It took me back to a time when friendship with the same sex never had any sexual connotations and when gay meant being just happy. These young men were just so cute. They expressed their warmth and camaraderie with infinite sweetness and it was all pure friendship. I thought them absolutely darling.

SOME USEFUL SITES

Visit this link if you want an online dictionary OneLook Dictionary Search

Visit this link if you want an online currency converter XE – Universal Currency Converter

Visit this link if you want country calling codes International Country Calling Codes and World Time Zones

As for sites with my poems this site has a number of my poems but unfortunately I don’t seem to have much time to work on it DiamondEyes’ Homepage

Another site which also has many of my poems is Songs from Helena’s Heart

Finally, I wish all of my visitors happiness! And what do you know? I finally deciphered some html formatting and got my links to work!!

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