The journey some papers take!

“To think if pieces of paper can have such a journey and story!”

About 3 years ago, a packet, for me, was delivered to my parents’ home in Chandigarh. It had a pack of 500 very good quality origami papers and a handwritten letter. 

The letter told the journey this pack had already had… 

“This paper meant for Japanese artwork was made in Germany and imported to Kansas. From there it was delivered to California, where another colleague got it to Delhi and yet another colleague got it to Bombay. From where my friend couriered these to Chandigarh with the hope that I will carry them to Angola where they will turn into exotic shapes and bring smiles to someone’s face!”

He knew all about my volunteering with kids in Angola and also knew that I took back supplies from India as it was very hard to find good and cheap art supplies there. We had been talking about the legend of 1000 origami swans and because he couldn’t find any good origami paper in India, he asked some of his colleagues who were coming back from the US to bring some. Of which one was sent my way for my kids.

In Angola, these papers brought many a smile when we turned them into windmills, and frogs, and hearts, and many more shapes. 

And then I left Angola and the stack went into storage with all of our other stuff. A year later it took another long journey, this time on the big seas as it came with our shipment from Angola to Romania. 

It was only after almost 2 years that the stack came back to life. This time again at a learning space for street children. From being a perfect square, it went on to become a hearts, tulips, fish, whales, and birds… bringing many more smiles 🙂 

And we have just begun! No one knows the journey and the stories these will create! Waiting to be an instrument and a witness to it.

Oh! the journeys some papers take. I can write an essay on myself as a paper. I remember in primary classes we used to have essay topics like “the autobiography of a paper!”. This was a perfect journey for that 🙂

 

generosiTREE: Random acts of Kindness in Herastrau Park

“It’s a generosiTREE.. did you get it? TREEEEE…”

I heard a teenager explaining her surprise and excitement at the play of words to her younger sibling.

Couple of weekends ago, I had this simple idea of some random act of kindness in Herăstrău Park.

We had gone to the park as part of my husband’s team community run initiative and initially we hung the board on a tree where most of us had collected. It was great to see the excitement, both of adults and children.

Within our group everyone took one act to do either during their run or on their way back home. Later we went around the park with the board to offer them to everyone in the park and that’s when it hit me. We were very excited with what we had done and felt everyone will be open to it. But it was difficult to even have people listen to what the idea was… everyone thought we were out to sell something… We would approach asking if we can have a minute of their time… and the response will go like “I don’t speak English”; “No.. I don’t want to listen to you..”; “We are very tired, we can’t do this” 

People who agreed to listen were an exception. Which is not difficult to understand because the world that we live in, we are all vary of strangers and strangers approaching with big smiles and a board with colourful post-its! “They are out to get something from me!” 

Even those who listened, would ask, “okay so what’s the story? What are you promoting? What cause do you work for? What do I have to do after I do the ask? Where do I need to share it?” And when we said the story for us ended with them picking up an idea and they can choose to do it or not do it and then possibly pass it forward. They would be totally surprised. “That’s it! We just pick one act?”

“Yes! You just pick one act.”

And that’s when the frowns will turn into smiles! The best moment 🙂 “Wow! that’s a great idea!”

Slowly people who overheard, were interested when they realised that we didn’t belong to any organisation. One guy picked up “Turn off unused lights” and said that he and his wife were just talking about how to reduce their energy consumption! Another picked up “Give a group hug to a tree in public” They were a family of 3, with a toddler and they said their little daughter will love doing that act! 

An elderly man was so touched that we came up and spoke with him that he was almost crying! 

For us it was a joyous practice both when people took the notes and when they didn’t. The people who took, offered us a gift by receiving our idea and those who didn’t taught us humility and gave us reasons to step-it-up! 🙂

 

PS: If you wish to get all the ideas we had put up on the board, feel free to message me and I will email the to you!

 

The beauty of a few concentric circles

It’s amazing how a few concentric circles slowly evolve into a beautiful mandala. Each line emerges on its own. Most often inspired by something seen in the nature or work of friends. These mandalas started as a gratitude offering to the universe, for everything that I have been generously bestowed with.

I am no artist but once I learnt how to make mandalas with a basic template of concentric circles, there is no stopping 🙂

While making these mandalas or stitching the hearts I experienced a beautiful calm that would take over me. I haven’t been able to sit in stillness in a long time. I think it has been almost 6 months that I was able to sit for an hour. Whenever I started on these little gifts, my mind would soon forget its entire chaos and the ordering of the “to-do” list and just focus on one petal to another or one stitch to another. Even though I wasn’t sitting in a specific position or had my eyes closed; it was akin to meditation for my mind and body.

When I start, I have no clue how it will turn out to be. I have no clue of how the design will grow. Sometimes I will start with a pattern and then look it from far thinking this won’t look good. I wasted a card. But then I will go on and complete it only to realise that each has a life of its own and each is beautiful. I often felt like my hand was just a tool and someone else had the design in mind :).

Some of the mandala cards I made. Some original, some inspired, some copied 😀

With the heart bookmarks, I wanted to write a quote on each one of them but was lost on which ones to pick. Just then Vandana didi started on this beautiful project of one-canvas-a-day with quotations and I found my quotes right there. Every day is a beautiful start with her paintings and quotations.

Every morning Vandana didi sends us a picture of her beautiful art. I would say it is her sadhana!

I usually try to sit down for making any art when I am in a happy space but a recent turn of events showed me how art is the best therapy. When I was so stressed that I could do nothing else, I would sit down with a pen and paper and soon my mind will be lost in thinking about how to extend it and just for those few moments forget the impending problem and relax.

All these cards and bookmarks have gone as gifts for friends and strangers. I don’t know when, how and who will receive these or has received them. I am so grateful for having this opportunity to be able to gift some love through these little cards. Each one of them brought me a lot of peace and I hope it does the same for the noble friend who receives them.

Heart bookmarks! The bright African fabric were scraps given by a friend who uses them to make wonderful bags. I love these prints!

With all my love

Feito com Amor

It started at a morning tea session, when a friend of mine said “For Christmas, I want to make a nice gift bag for the ladies with dry food items like rice, milk powder, oil and some sweets”

The ladies here are the patients of a local maternity hospital. Every two weeks, my friend makes 100 sandwiches and goes to the maternity hospital to feed the ladies waiting for their labour and their families who all wait and live outside the hospital on the road for days.

I started thinking of how we can raise funds for this. The easier option was to just ask in our immediate circle but I wanted to do something more and reach out to more people so that they can all be a part of it. And I just didn’t want to ask money. What was it that I could offer?

Paper. I love paper. I love the way I can turn it into something beautiful. And I was at it. For almost a week, I made gift bags, cards, gift tags, quotation cards, fortune cookie stars, bookmarks… anything that I could think of. My whole room was full of craft material everywhere 🙂

Then I gave them to friends who I knew hosted many gatherings and offered them as wisdom crafts – no price tags; the price of the product is what the buyer is inspired to offer. I put up a paper explaining what they were for and asking people to give from their heart.

What was amazing was how more and more people joined in. One girl came up and said, I know you are making those bags.. I had these felt sheets at home, can you use them?

Another one came and said “I have these glitter tapes I haven’t used for months.. I am sure you can use them for your cards..”

Ribbons, more craft paper, sequins, paint everything started coming from unknown friends!

 

Naama, who runs a non-profit organisation, came to know of it and asked me if I could make 30 bags for their Christmas gifts for their supporters.

At first I thought I will make all of them the same. But as I started decorating the bags, something came over. Each bag spoke for itself and each was different. Before starting I didn’t have any set idea on decoration but slowly every bag’s decoration unfolded as if they were speaking for the person who is going to receive them.

Naama then insisted I create a tag for all of them and thus was born “Feito com Amor” [Portuguese for Made with Love].

D-I-Y newspaper gift bags

Holiday season is coming up soon! The season for sharing and gifting. And what better than homemade gifts? There are some great activity ideas, on pinterest, to do with your kids at home during holidays.

Next week I am starting a new, once a week, project with children at the foundation where I volunteer –

“Christmas gift for my family”.

We got a donation of lots of beads from a girl who was leaving Angola and that is what started this idea. Over the next 4-5 weeks I’m planning to teach kids, how to:

• make a gift bag using old newspapers
• decorate the gift bag with colourful cutouts and make gift tags- we will try to reuse empty biscuit boxes, wrappers etc for this.
• Make a Christmas card for their family. This would include writing a letter to their family as well. Telling them what it means to be together during the holidays :).
• make bracelets or keychains or other small trinket using the beads we received.
• make christmas ornaments for the tree at home.

Being Palanca

This post was first published on Volunteer Weekly – a platform for celebrating volunteerism.

Palanca is an endangered species of the Angolan wildlife but it is more than just that. It’s a national symbol that represents – Peace, Tolerance, Unity, Self-esteem and preservation of biodiversity.

About a year ago, the foundation brought together 10 artists who gave a blank wooden palanca their expression of these values. The exhibition, called ‘Being Palanca’ ( ‘ser Palanca’ in Portuguese), served to raise awareness among the Angolan people about the importance of the values at hand: peace, unity, tolerance and self-esteem, and to the significance of the Palanca as an endangered species and as the national symbol of Angola.

Going through some of the old material, I found files of the “ser Palanca” or “Being Palanca” project and together Ana and I thought of doing this with our kids at the  foundation. We imagined it would be a great way to engage the children towards thinking about these values and give them an expression.

We started the day with a discussion on each of the five values — what it means, is it important and why? can we live with one without the other? The discussion went into talks of how somewhere lack of tolerance for the other is the cause of current conflicts all over the world. The children were also quick to explain by themselves how peace is the blanket under which each of the other values thrives and vice versa — that without unity, tolerance or self-esteem and a respect for our biodiversity, we cannot have peace.

I was intrigued by that. All the children were born in peace time but 30 years of civil war meant that each family had stories of loss and tragedy passed on from parents to children and it was clear how they valued peace more than anything.

After the discussions, each child chose one value that they most identified with and started to give expressions to their thoughts on paper. Each value was depicted by a single colour so each painting was only in one colour. In the end we brought them all together to create one big Palanca. The idea was that the density of each colour in the collage will clearly reflect which of the values the children most identified with.

Does it mean something that most works were on Peace and Unity?

I am Peace. I am Unity.

Go chalking!

I love chalk 🙂

Here are pictures of the first few chalk messages…

I didn’t think much before starting these everyday chalk messages but its become quite exciting! My neighbours say they now look forward to reading what’s new on my window everyday!

A new magic every day!

It’s already 9 days into the new month but for me the month practically starts today. The first week of June was just busy with packing and travelling and settling back. Finally this week life has returned to some normalcy. While I was in India, I made many plans for the things I want to do once I get back to Angola (don’t know how many will start :P!):

• Learn how to make a website using wordpress
• Get back to sketching and learn to paint
• Experiment with food more. For some reason in Angola I had just fallen into regular cooking routine. It has been such a long time since I tried something new and in this trip my sister inspired me to do more with food and flavours! 🙂 So hopefully My Weekend Kitchen will also get its activity back!
• I want to do more art for gifting to strangers. I met Swara after a long time and she told me how our one day’s activity of writing letters to strangers had motivated her and she continues to do so even now. When she told me this I felt how I need to pick this one again. So I will be doing more art to gift. I even brought lots of handmade paper, colours and pens with me! 🙂

But one thing that I brought from home and I’m very excited to use is my box of coloured chalk and a small slate! I fell in love with chalk as a medium of art after seeing Lahar’s beautiful creations all over Sugad campus during Moved by Love retreats. Her hands would create magic on the floor and one thing which she said that stayed with me was the beauty of impermanence that chalk brings. Your creating is cleaned the next day and every day you start with a clean slate! Every day a different magic comes alive through your hands…

I was also inspired by the sidewalk chalk projects that many people have been doing all around the world and while I don’t think I will have enough chalk to do that; I plan to hang my slate on my window/ balcony with a beautiful quote every day and that would be my gift for each day for those who read it 🙂

I started yesterday, these are my first two!

Mirror mirror on the wall….

What’s the last thing we check before leaving home? What’s the last thought on our minds before stepping out of home? It’s a very subconscious action, but I recently observed that I always brush my hair with hand as I am stepping out of home. If there was a mirror at the door, I would definitely have checked if I was ‘looking’ fine.

The first thing we look into after a shower? The mirror. And so was the case on my first day my in Uttarakhand. After having a bath, I was searching for a mirror everywhere in SNC. After a futile search, I let it be. Brushed my hair with hand and went on with my maths classes. The kids didn’t care how I looked. They cared about what I was teaching.  After a couple of days I wasn’t even looking for a mirror. Days passed, work was happening and one day I came across a mirror. It was almost after 20 days. As I looked into my reflection, it suddenly struck – how liberating it is when I don’t care about how I look! It was almost like discovering a new source of joy! 🙂 A new sense of freedom. I can’t really put it down in words but being able to let go of the ‘need’ to look in the mirror was almost like being free.  

Souls Connected by Service

Souls connected by service

17th October 2013; 7am; kotma, Uttarakhand

Gopal kaka is 88. Joseph ji is 45. One lives in Ahemedabad, the other is a seeker and a wanderer. They have never met. Yet I felt a beautiful link between them. This post is about that.

Almost a year ago, few sadhaks from Ahmedabad went on a journey to Narmada. As they were walking on the road, one girl noticed that Gopal kaka would keep bending down, very frequently. On a closer look she saw he was picking up stones and throwing them on a side. Why?, she asked.

“The stones may hurt someone who steps on them.”

Unbound, unconditional love and selfless service.

About a month back, I started on a journey in Uttarakhand with Joseph ji. Our journey involved long walks and one day I noticed Joseph ji would keep bending down on the way. And I remembered Gopal kaka. But its not possible that Joseph ji is picking up stones. Simply because then he would keep put in one place as after the floods there is no road as such but stone paths. So what is he doing? I went closer and looked. He was picking up earthworms from the road and putting them on the side. Why?, I asked.

“The earthworms may get hurt if someone steps on them”

Unbound, unconditional love and selfless service.

I looked up and wondered at the funny ways God unites all of us. Two people, generations apart, who have never met, yet are connected in spirit 🙂 I have a feeling they will meet in real world soon!