The Pits and Pieces

  “Every day’s a good day when you paint.”  —Bob Ross (1942–1995) Yesterday while searching around on You-Tube for painting tutorials, I stumbled across Bob Ross. I knew about him, vaguely, as an American painter who taught painting on PBS for years. I’d never watched the show (The Joy of Painting), as I had no interest in painting then. But now, as I watched one You-Tube tutorial after another, I was mesmerized by his soft voice and gentle encouragement, as if he was speaking directly to you, telling you that no matter how much of a beginner you were, you could do it, make something beautiful.  I was so curious about this man that I googled him, discovering that he has a huge following, even today. His paintings are mostly about nature (mountains, lakes, forests, Northern Lights) and he never claimed to be a fine museum-worthy artist. He simply painted for the joy of it. In his military career, tired of being barked at, he vowed never to raise his voice. If you watch his...

Well, another Covid Christmas has come and gone. And let’s hope that’s the last of them. Just when we thought there was a light glimmering at the end of the tunnel, turns out it was a freight train coming at us, full of a cargo of Omicron. Yes, I know that cargo is for ships and I’m spewing out clichés and mixed metaphors here. But that’s the thing with this pandemic: it twists and turns and mixes up your thoughts and emotions.  One minute you’re dreaming of a White Christmas at a big family gathering, the next you’re shaking your fist up at the skies. More clichés. Just when you thought: but most of us did everything right. In the early days of the pandemic, we grocery shopped just once a week to prevent putting a burden on grocery store clerks and healthcare workers. We got double-vaxxed. We kept our distance and changed our routines. We masked and double-masked. But the truth is – this virus finds the weakest link, the population where the majority are not vaxxed or don’t have a...

I am thinking of Christmases Past; very far in the past, in that two-bedroom apartment in Bahrain where I grew up. I am thinking of that tiny artificial Christmas tree that was hauled out each year. It was no more than three feet tall (if that) and stood in a small wooden block, but oh the grand festivities of decorating it. We lived in a desert; there were no real Christmas trees. Several weeks before Christmas, the sweet-making began. My mother made traditional Goan Christmas sweets and there was some friendly but unspoken rivalry amongst all the Goan households in our Arabian part of the world as to whose Goan Christmas sweets were the best. Christmas meant visiting the families of friends and tasting all the sweets. My siblings and I helped in this creation of Christmas goodies; sometimes the neighbors showed up to assist as well, or we went to their houses to pitch in and observe (and mostly taste) and maybe go home and tell my mother what they did differently. This is what my mot...

The other day I was wondering about struggle and conflict, be it internal or external.  Struggle is pivotal to books and movies, drawing us in, keeping us reading or watching. And yet, when struggle or conflict happens in real life, we want it gone. Immediately. But it’s not that easy, to simply wave a magic wand and, within the hour, like in a movie, everything is resolved. It sits with us, hour after hour, day after day, asking to be included with everything else that may be going on in  our lives. But those were yesterday’s thoughts. Today I’m wondering about easy and how much simpler it is to sometimes take the easier route. Which doesn’t mean you don’t care, but simply that you save your efforts for things that matter more, things that align with how you want to live your life, and let go of what you think is expected of you or the need to ‘accomplish’. It’s been several years since I let go of Christmas must-do’s or must-haves. I take the easy route now, with minimal dec...