In this video Kiki meets lucid dream experts – the Dream Team – authors of the book
“A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming”.
The experts say – nightmares are great opportunities for healing, transformation, and self-discovery.
I have learned a lot from these guys and now feel my dream time is for growth and wellness.
Get the book, learn lucid dreaming, check out the Dream Team’s channel:
www.dreamlabs.io
To learn more visit: dreamlabs.io
The Sphinx is a big old flirt.
By big I mean the biggest monolith in the world. At a whopping 73.5 meters long, 6 wide and 20 tall, he’s huge.
And by oldest I mean 5000 years old.
As for being a living playboy, well, when you meet him you’ll agree, his language may be dead but he’s awesome. A total hunk.
Our fling started with a nuzzle and a purr.
And ended with a kiss.
I want go London
I want go America
sing the chorus-kids while high stepping across a mountaintop in the Shah Rukh starrer Pardes.
But their sentiments change as they reach the refrain
I love my India
I love my India
Ye mera India
The closest I ever got to hunky Shak Rukh was the backseat of an auto-rickshaw.
Hot stuff. Auto-rickshaw, collage by Barry Silver.
The backseat’s where the driver curates a poster gallery of filmi celebrities.
The stars are usually presented in pairs, so the passenger may find herself seated between pretty Preity ZInta and three-thumbed Hrithik Roshan.
Third-wheeling in a three-wheeler, I am happiest squeezed between he-man Shah Rukh Kahn and green-eyed goddess Aishwarya Rai.
Shah Rukh and Ash, East Sixth Street, NYC.
I love Shah Rukh.
Love him because he remains a phenomenon even unto his own self.
In Filmfare interviews, he beautifully boasts
There is only one Shah Rukh.
There will only ever be one Shah Rukh.
Shah Rukh is not worried about upstarts and pretty boys.
Nor should he be.
No, Shah Rukh and every other Kahn should only worry about flying into Newark.
I love my India.
But I also love books about other people’s India.
I have a long list.
Here’s a start.
A Bend in the River
V.S. Naipaul
This is my favorite author and this is an awesome novel, held (by those qualified to make such claims) to be one of the greats and to have revolutionized the form. The story is set in Africa among an Indian community of merchants during the collapse of colonialism and the violent yet fragile rise of self-rule.
Naipaul grew up in Trinidad of Indian parentage. His first novel, A House for Mr. Biswas, depicts the varied cultures, challenges and hardships of the island, his family and childhood. It is a great work, fat to bursting where A Bend in the River is lean and pointed.
White Mughals
William Dalrymple
This is a non-fiction work by a wonderful historian. It is the history of 18th century Brits in India. It reads as great fiction: entertaining, sensual, shocking, and suspenseful. The only reason to put down the book is to refill the hookah.
A Suitable Boy
Vikram Seth
At 1400 pages, and with each chapter introduced by a sonnet, this book is not a casual encounter but a serious commitment. It also requires carpal tunnel syndrome-free wrists. As several families and generations cross paths, the novel reveals the diversity and multiplicity of a single nation. At the heart of it: a widow seeks to marry her daughter to a suitable boy.
Interpreter of Maladies
Jhumpa Lahiri
This Pulitzer Prize collection of short stories precedes the author’s celebrated novel, and now film, The Namesake. These stories are stunning and nuanced, each one far superior to the disappointing Namesake. This is a diverse collection of Indians abroad and Indians in India.
The Glass Palace
Amitav Ghosh
A novel woven from remarkable histories of Burma, India and Malay. A shifting of powers, peoples and precious resources from colonialism through World War II. An unbelievable tale based in world history and that of the author’s family.
Being Indian
P.K. Varma
This non-fiction treatise on India explains the culture better than I ever could and I’ve been trying since I first traveled there in 1995. Written by an Indian diplomat who is current president of the Nehru Centre, Varma’s volume is part think-tank/part tough love.
Maximum City
Suketu Mehta
In this non-fiction book, Mehta leads the reader inside contemporary Mumbai’s purgatory of corruption, gangsterism, dance halls, Bollywood power cliques and religious extremism. Fun, thrilling, and exhausting. Read this and save on airfare; it’s just like being there.
A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales of India
A.K. Ramanujan
Collected oral folk tales of India gathered by the celebrated folklorist. These tales tap the subconscious dreams and fantasies of a people and their culture; a dark and honeyed sap. Here are worlds where fools are wiser than kings and unspeakable suffering may or may not transform and transcend. Haunting and unforgettable.
Buddha of Suburbia
Hanif Kureishi
A novel by the screenwriter inspired by his youth and teen years in suburbia and moving on up to pretty and punk London. Witty and hip.
Kiki and rickshaw professional Bharat. His name means India.
A lovely weekend in the Hamptons.
Beach, bay, and pool side, cityfolk assumed country ways. They Mingled. Pitched-in. Asked questions. Stuck around for answers.
I imagine the city self, slave to the breezy weekender.
A bifurcation.
Kiki and her hostess Stacey Platt on a bluff over a bay, Saturday.
My first trip to the Hamptons was decades back as guest of my Avenue B neighbor, T. He worked summer chef for a wealthy couple at their swank South Hampton manse.
Neighbor T knocked often to share his luscious bakes. He also handed-down some vintage gems including a black Spanish lace shawl (muy flamenco) and a blonde Dusty Springfield wig. The wig played catalyst to a solo downtown-club career.
A Dusty Springfield wig worn back to front. Presto! It’s a Farrah. Whispers Night, Pyramid Club, Avenue A, 1986
Why do I mention the wig, the shawl, and the buttery crusts?
Just to say, neighbor T was gay.
I am not stereotyping.
I met his lovers on the landing.
Our porcelain bathtub lips curled to opposite sides of the same kitchen wall.
Our doors bolted on the same jam.
Imagine my late-night South Hampton surprise when T fell to bended knee and begged a cuppa sugar from my bowl.
T was handsome, fit, clever and capable, everything a girl (and a guy) could want. But I had “never thought of him in that way.”
Gentle “no”s and emphatic “no”s.
Both unhappily received.
Though I managed to beat a hasty retreat, how to sleep whilst T whimpered at my latched door scratching and yowling like a Tom Cat?
Sleep I did and woke to bright salty air to find T asleep under open sky, dew dappled in a teak pool recliner surrounded by a protective ring of long-spent green citronella candles.
Oh T, handsome, genteel, and, even in his grief, beautifully art-directed
His mood was crap the remainder of my visit. Mounting more obstacles to my ever “thinking about him in that way”.
So that’s the ramp up.
New Yorkers behave differently in the Hamptons.
Here’s the query.
Are they more themselves?
Or less?
Kinder?
Gentler?
More “oh yes, we can”?
Kiki phtographed by Sebastian Li, somewhere on Long Island 1986
Don’t let a gray day color you gray.
Or blue.
Paint your nails sun-shiny.
I just did.
It’s a cheap trick.
But it makes me happy.
They say it’s the little things.
In 1970, Mom got me my first-ever yellow nail polish. As for the green she gave my older sister, I made off with that too.
The yellow was Colmans Mustard and was a perfect match to cover dings in a bachelor-driven custom-painted MG.
The green was guacamole. Pretty enough to eat. Or at least gnaw off your nails. Which, though temptation ran high, I never would.
I like Orly’s Hook Up Yellow. It’s enhanced with its own pearly swirl. Ricky’s, every last one of ‘em, offers a great range of prescription-free mood boosters.
A bold cocktail ring is a great add-on. I got this sunburst of Murano Glass beads in Venice.
If you still feel blue, tag along with a pal to the beach and get your toes in the sand.
And then take off your dress.
Tempt the sun out from behind the clouds.
