Srivi Shares

When I was in Beijing for the first time recently, I sometimes felt I was living in the future. There was no apparent visible poverty, at least not in the touristy parts of Beijing. The Olympics area that we stayed in for a few days, with its colossal "Bird's Nest" and giant water cube stadium, seemed like from another world. It was like being in a "Planet of the Apes" movie, with its majestic skyscrapers, multi-lane highways, and high speed trains. In this world of the future, English has very little role to play. Since my Chinese vocabulary consists of exactly two words, nihao and xie xie, my attempted conversations with Beijing natives was quite entertaining, mostly comedic. My rudimentary acting talent and rusty drawing skills came in handy. You can only imagine my plight when I had to communicate my travelers' diarrhea situation to a pharmacist who did not understand a word of English. Thoughts in my mind, "what if the pharmacist misunderst

Recently I made my first ever trip to China. There has been a lot of curiosity and interest amongst my friends and family to know what my experiences were like there. So I thought I would share some of my observations and insights in a few blog posts. There is much talk around the world about the idea of "Chindia" these days but the exchange of ideas, goods, and people across China and India has a very long history. Traveling scholars such as Hsuan Tsang, Fa Hein, and Boganathar served as cultural ambassadors and bridges across the two ancient revered civilizations. Of course, the silk road symbolizes this flow in a very visible, concrete manner. Buddhism serves as a spiritual connection between both lands that have coexisted peacefully across thousands of years. However, the influence of Hindu scholars such as Bhoga who laid the foundation for Zen meditation, taichi, the idea of yin-yang, and Shaolin martial arts traditions is also undeniable. By the early third c

Concluding my series of entries about my lived experiences during my visit to Chennai, this blog entry focuses on ways of communicating that help us remember and honor the living and the dead. One of the sub-fields within Communication is Family Communication. Among other things, it analyzes the ways in which families share their stories with one another and how narratives play an important role in remembering family histories. In Western cultures, we have such things as genealogical research where archival documents and even DNA testing are conducted to find out our family history. Not so in families like mine. We remember our ancestors through an elaborate ceremony once a month. Every new moon day, my parents spend an entire morning remembering each and everyone in our immediate family who have now passed on. They started doing this ritual once my paternal grandparents died, by which time I was already in the U.S. It was only during this trip that I had the opportunity to sit

If you enjoyed my other posts in this series on my morning walk and on the Marina Beach , you are likely to also like this entry on food! Summer is mango season in Chennai. For a mango-lover like me, it is like visiting paradise. We are enjoying my mom’s mango milkshake, mango lassi, mango pickles, and mango moar-kuzhambu. Discussions about which variety is best (there are hundreds of them) are commonplace at the dinner table. One can never go wrong with the most popular banganapalli but sometimes the heart seeks an imaam pasand, alphonso, malgoa, rumaani, neelam or salem. But there is nothing to beat the joy of plucking the fruit straight from the rooftop terrace of one’s home.  My Monday dinners are typically fruit-meals. Being in Chennai on a Monday was a great time for me to experience some lesser known tropical fruits. The fragrant palaa pazham (jack fruit or durian), naaga pazham (deep purple wild berries), mangosteen and nongu. I also like guavas, litchis, and I