Quiche, Coffee & The Morning Pages…

Quiche, Coffee & The Morning Pages was featured (on Sep 17, 2013) as a Guest Post on Indies Unlimited. Indies – the happening website for independent publishers worldwide!

It’s the Manhattan winter of 1992, less than three months since I’ve left my mate of fourteen years, losing, in one fell swoop, all the solid props of my life. To stay financially afloat, I take on freelance administrative gigs in arguably the planet’s most frenzied and high-stakes city.

Weeks are busy, but weekends are poisoned with a high-octane cocktail of anxiety, guilt and confusion; I cannot seem to extricate myself from the tangled nest of viperous thoughts that paralyze me into a state of chronic despair. Have I done right in placing personal integrity above the comfort of family and economic security?

Sunday morning dawns and my neighbour Leanna calls to invite me over for brunch. She hands me a copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artists’ Way. “No thanks,” I say ungraciously. “I’ve enough to read.” She presses it on me, betraying a pity that turns my proud stomach. “This will free your head up, honey,” she says gently. “A bunch of us got together and did the exercises. They do work, you know.”

Shiva’s Spectacular Gender Divide – Part 2/6

I grew up in a more or less traditional home in south India, dysfunctional as most homes all over the planet inevitably are, whether on the surface or deep in the bowels of core relationships. The tacit understanding that men ruled the roost certainly permeated our domestic atmosphere.

Despite his liberal attitude towards educating all his children, my father was the undisputed patriarch. None of us—least of all my dutiful and submissive mother—dared challenge even his most ridiculous orders. A brilliant and charismatic man who could enthrall a roomful of guests with his easy raconteuring, my father’s rage could incinerate, while his scathing tongue could eviscerate—and so we obeyed him without demur, at least on the shifting surface of things.