HUM Magazine June-July 2015 by Hum Magazine

JUNE/JULY 2015

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As the wise sage up over yonder mountain once said, “Age is just a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” So true. There she was, as we crawled to the passenger pick up section of the construction-plagued Hobby Airport, having an animated conversation with her awestruck wheelchair attendee, brandishing a very visible tenner tip in her fist. Like always, she was dressed in one of her signature silk sarees and carefully chosen “have to match” accessories along with a pashmina shawl and an aura of importance to top it - as if to declare with silent fanfare that “here comes a celebrity, make way”. Please, let’s not forget the the color-coordinated bindi on her forehead! To me, she is not only a celebrity, she is my mother. Amma flew in from San Jose, unaccompanied. She is a veteran traveler. Goes back home to India every year - as she has over the past 40 years. In the USA, she dashes from east to west, and west to east with frequent Houston stops to let her four offsprings living in those parts of the country borrow her every now and then. She is just 95 years young! But times they are a’ changing. Today, amma needs help with almost everything she does. To her, an ounce is now a ton, an inch a mile, and a moment never-ending. It is hard to believe, and impossible to accept, that this hardly five foot petite lady, some six decades ago, naturally delivered an eleven pound baby boy - more than ten per cent of her body weight. That was me. I have little doubt that it brought her great relief then. I hope I can bring her more now while she is visiting with me.

Krishna Giri

CEO & Founder HUM Magazine Ev’ry season hath its pleasures: Spring may boast her flow’ry prime, Yet the vineyard’s ruby treasures Brighten autumn’s sob’rer time. So life’s year begins and closes; Days, though short’ning, still can shine; What, though youth gave loves and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine.... Thus may we, as years are flying, To their flight our pleasures suit, Nor regret the blossoms dying, While we still can taste the fruit. ~Thomas Moore, “Spring and Autumn”

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June/July 2015

CONTENT June/July 2015 HUM Magazine June/July 2015 JUNE/JULY 2015

Mariam Issa

The Torchbearer Who Illuminates Lives SOWMYA NANDAKUMAR

About Houston. 10 It’s And You!

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Father’s Day,

Bollywood Blitz

From My Perspective LISA BROOKS

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

Daddy’s Enduring Script

PRADEEP ANAND

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Mariam Issa the torchbearer who illuminates lives

Photo: Krishna Giri

BY Sowmya Nandakumar It is unimaginable for those of us living in the occident to even fathom getting by without electricity, indispensable for our everyday lives. Should I lose power for a few minutes on account of a severe thunderstorm or a hurricane, I am rendered helpless because my internet is down, my hi-tech gadgets including the iPad, iPhone and the likes of them are not functioning. I am flustered and annoyed! Could I perhaps take a moment in my super charged day to think of several parts of the world, countless pockets in countries including India and Pakistan where there are people who get by without the most basic electrical aid - LIGHT! Mariam Isa urged me to give this a serious thought. Mariam, true to her name, has spent the last decade of her life being ‘the mother’ of many a household in rural Pakistan. She has invested her financial resources, much of her time and efforts being a torchbearer — spreading light to brighten up some of the darker corners of the world. A devout Muslim, Mariam was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1940 to Ibrahim Maker, a rich businessman and owner of Jyothi Silk Mills in Surat. Her family moved to Pakistan during the partition and her father’s business to Karachi. At that time, their silk mill in Karachi was one of Pakistan’s first and finest industries, termed the Pride of Pakistan. Mariam nostalgically recalled the era of her father’s business glories, when the Government of Pakistan had invited several dignitaries including Queen Elizabeth to tour his mill. Hailing from a rich merchant’s family, Mariam never lacked anything growing up. As she boldly stated, she has “always been blessed with money”. Mariam’s father was a business man-philanthropist — In Karachi, he opened free clinics for the poor, and supported 15 widows’ families. When he passed away, she remembers that her father’s funeral was attended by numerous people who fondly expressed their love, respect, gratitude and admiration for his spirit of generosity. She strongly believes that the deeds of a person while living earn one dua (blessings and good wishes) of others. The positive energies of dua go a long way. Observing her father helped her develop a keen sense of charity, empathy and sensitivity to the sufferings of others. “I inherited my charitable sensitivities and resposibilities from my father,” expresses Mariam.

Photo: Krishna Giri

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June/July 2015

Mariam got engaged at 18, married at 19 and had her first son at 20 and later on her daughter. In 1967, she moved to Dubai with her family and spent 10 years there. Her husband’s steel re-rolling mill in Dubai was one of the first Pakistani business establishments to be set up there. In 1977, Mariam moved to Houston and has lived here ever since. “I have always been a housewife,” confesses she. While she comes from a family of businessmen, Mariam’s identity, passion and satisfaction lie in her charitable endeavors. She believes that, “God has given me money to help the needy. That is the least I can do”. Mariam’s work began in Baluchistan and Sind in Pakistan, seven years ago. She worked with a local Rotary Club to provide water pumps. While she raised the funds, the Rotary Club coordinated the ground work of drilling and installing the pumps. This ran into roadblocks after two years — many times, after drilling very deep, there would still be no water. With limited funds and a relatively smaller scale of operations, this was not sustainable charity for Mariam. She was in a predicament about how she could continue to enrich others’ lives. At this time she happened to visit the holy shrine of the 12th century Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in the city of Sehwan Sharif in Sind, Pakistan. Here, she befriended Mehdi Shah, an eye doctor by profession, who by virtue of being the eldest son in his family, had inherited from his father, the responsibility of being keeper of the shrine and tomb of Shahbaz Qalandar. Mariam learned that there were many families living in the middle of the mountains and valleys, in little huts with barely anything to eat, with just a few utensils to cook, in abject poverty — and dire darkness. It saddened her to think that 67 years after independence, there were people living without electricity in Pakistan and with perhaps no hope of having it anytime soon. Mariam thought, “perhaps lighting lives is a possible channel for my work.” Then, Mariam attended a Sufism conference where one of the lectures was given by Pervaiz Lodhie, owner of LEDtronics, Inc in Torrance, California — a leading lighting solutions provider for Fortune 500 companies including General Electric, Cisco Systems, Siemens, Caterpillar, IBM, etc. Lodhie’s expertise in producing custom lighting solutions has also been called upon by the U.S. Government and its agencies. In Pervaiz Lodhie, she had found a working partner in the maker of lights. Mariam firmly believes that it wasn’t merely coincidence that she met Mehdi Shah and Pervaiz Lodhie on the very same day — but a God send; direction from the Saint Shahbaz Qalandar unveiling a potential avenue for her work. She acquainted Shah and Lodhie and Mariam became the lady with the lamp! She has supplied about 5000 solar lights over the last five years. Mariam raises funds and gives it to LEDtronics, Inc. Lodhie donates lights at the highly subsidized cost to this very noble cause of illuminating lives. Mehdi Shah takes care of the grassroots level distribution of solar light panels, maintaining a transparent tab of where and to which families these lights go to. Every solar light only costs $25, “a very affordable amount for those of us living in the West”, Mariam said. She explains that these lights not only have a life span of over 25 years, but come with free repair services should they not

work. There are two factories in Karachi where families could get their lights repaired and sent back to them for free and Mehdi Shah supervises that as well. According to Mariam, beneﬁciaries of these solar lights save bus fare to the city and buying kerosene for their hurricane lamps. Light after sunset enables the women to stitch Sindhi quilts and generating an income. The money saved and earned creates funds that could be diverted for their children’s education. Mariam has not completely abandoned the vision of supplying water to villages in Pakistan. With Lodhie’s help they are supplying water pumps too, although that project is yet to assume the large magnitude they envision. Mariam Issa is very popular in Houston’s vibrant sociocultural communities. She has served on several boards, including that of the Asian Paciﬁc American Heritage as President, Pakistani American Women’s Association as President, Asian American Coalition, Pakistani-Association of Greater Houston as President & Trustee, Ancestral Films Festival, Blaffer Gallery, Express Theatre, Asia Society, Advisory Board of UNICEF, Census 2000, Asia World Expo and as President of the South Asian Chamber of Commerce. She also served as Vice-President of the Houston Mayoral Advisory Board for International Affairs and Development-Asia, Houston 80/20, the Asian American Voter’s Coalition and that of PAL-C on Capitol Hill. Mariam is also no stranger to being a recipient of awards and titles. In 1996, Houston’s Channel 11 selected her as one of “Houston’s History-makers”. Channel 39 selected Mariam as WB39 Unsung Hero for her hard work and outstanding efforts in the community. She was also nominated for the Mayor’s Award for Outstanding Volunteers Service. Among a long list of other awards, she also received the Rotary International’s Paul Harris Fellow Award for installing 500 hand pumps in Baluchistan and Sindh in Pakistan, Pakistan American Council of Texas for Outstanding Leadership, Volunteer Dedication and Community Empowerment Through Political Activism in Mainstream America, City of Houston from Mayor Brown for continued services to the Pakistani Community and South Asian Chamber of Commerce for Service and Dedication. Mariam Issa is also very active in politics. She has participated in fundraising campaigns for President Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Vice-President Al Gore, Governor George W. Bush, Governor Rick Perry, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Senator Rodney Ellis, Mayor Lee P. Brown, Mayor Pro-Tem Gordon Quan, Congressman Chris Bell, State Representative Martha Wong, Council Member Michael Berry, Mayor Anise Parker, Council Member Carrol Robinson, Kerry/Edwards, Barak Obama for Senate, Richard Morris for Congress and Gene Wu for State Representative but to name a few. In recent times, she attended an address by the Dalai Lama in Washington, where he said, “I don’t care what religion you belong to but be a good human being. That is religion”. Mariam lives by this philosophy. She implicitly adheres to the principle of honesty, which she says is the core of everything she does — simply being truthful makes her requests for help genuine. As this torchbearer endeavors to illuminate lives, it might help the cause immensely to hold in our minds that $25 is all it takes to brighten it up for someone else.

Sowmya Nandakumar holds a Masters in Mass Communications, University of Houston, and is an alumnus of Stella Maris College, and the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. She has worked as assistant director for three feature ﬁlms including Vaaranam Aayiram with Gautham Menon. She is a certiﬁed Yoga instructor teaching in the Houston area, learns ballet and is studying Carnatic music on the violin. She enjoys writing and freelances for The Hindu occasionally. She may be reached at sowmya1310@gmail.com

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It’s About

Houston.

The Greater Houston Metro Area has seen phenomenal growth in the ﬁrst 15 years of the 21st Century. Though primarily fuelled by energy, Houston economy is trying to smooth out the deep troughs of energy cycles via increasing commerce through the Port of Houston, top notch universities, country’s leading medical center and a growing diverse population. Challenges are enormous to sustain this growth and establish Houston as a leader in the Global Economy in the next 10 years. This requires a concerted effort from the Houston businesses, residents and you.

Houston 2025 and Beyond is a self-standing 501(C)(6) non-proﬁt organization established with the mandate to bring together thought leaders from various ﬁelds in Houston and Beyond to chart a path for the future we want for Houston and Beyond. We want to dream, brainstorm and set about on achieving the future we want in 2025 and keep the growth going.

Asoke DeySarkar

Sutapa Ghosh

Forum Advisor and Co-chair

Asoke DeySarkar was born in Jharkhand, India; attended Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where he earned a B.Sc. in Chemistry (Honors) as well as B.Tech in Chemical Engineering (Honors), where he was Ranked 1st. He then attended University of Greater Manchester (Salford) in UK and earned his Master’s and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. He also has an MBA from University of Houston. He further worked as a researcher at University of Waterloo. His wife Ruma and he are involved in various projects like propagating Tagore’s message, creating a Petroleum Engineering Department at IIT Kharagpur. Asoke has developed his expertise in Hydraulic Fracturing, Fluid Rheology, Reﬁning and Consumer Products by working in various capacities at Dresser Industries in Houston and at Pennzoil Products Company in Houston. Asoke embarked on starting a company called “Products for People” in Houston. This company formulated products for automotive after-market and distributed to the retail chain store. He also developed another line of products based on GUAR - a product used as a thickener for water in fracturing of oil/gas wells. This business is now run under the umbrella of PfP Industries headquarted in Houston, TX with branches in various locations around the United States. PfP Industries, LLC is now under its umbrella with several other companies and is ranked as one of the top 100 companies in Houston.

You! And You

Sutapa Ghosh is a true leader and a goal-oriented performer who has been recognized as one of the “100 most Creative People in Texas”. She came over to the United States for her education over two decades ago. She holds a Master’s Degree in Marketing from Rhode Island University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Music. She began her career in the telecommunications industry, and soon, her entrepreneurial spirit guided her to film production, the entertainment industry and finally to the oil and energy industry. Her keen acumen for business and excellent communication and analytical skills are reflected in her proven track record of sales and marketing. She is also an advisory board member of Houston 2025 and Beyond. Sutapa is also the Founder and Festival Director of the Indian Film Festival of Houston which was voted the Best Film Festival in 2014 in Houston. Two award-winning, feature films, Utsab and Titli, produced by Sutapa, were both directed by the acclaimed Indian film director Rituparno Ghosh. Join us at the Houston 2025 and Beyond (see pages 12, 13) Date: July 9th and 10th, 2015. Venue: Hilton Americas – Houston. 1600 Lamar Street, Houston, TX 77010 For registration and detail information on our inaugural forum, visit www.houston2025.org

Jayant K Roy Choudhury

Shiladitya Basu

Forum Co-chair

Track lead: Future of Energy)

Jayant K Roy Choudhury is a highly accomplished and results-driven team leader with twentyﬁve years of experience in the maritime industry with a strong background in strategic planning, auditing, team leading, quality assurance, project management, regulatory compliance, risk analysis/mitigation, sales support and safety. Before joining Crowley in 2012, Roy worked with Teekay Corporation, Canada and Great Eastern Shipping, India. His areas of responsibility at Crowley include engineering strategy and selection and procurement of major capital equipment. Roy’s interests include energy efficiency and promoting entrepreneurship. He has worked extensively on crude oil heating procedures for Oil Tanker and co-founded Blue Water Trade-Winds; a leading provider of crude oil heating consultancy for ship operators. Blue Water Trade-Winds received 2015 Lloyds’s award for Technical Innovation for Crude Oil Heating Solutions. Roy is a Marine Engineering graduate of DMET (India) and has a Master’s degree in Business Management from Bauer Collage, University of Houston.

Soovo Sen Forum Co-chair Soovo Sen is a budding executive who has always strived for excellence and has led by example. He came over to the Unites States of America twenty years ago to pursue higher studies and holds a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University. Soovo began his career at Applied Materials in the Silicon Valley as a Junior Engineer and spent eight long years there maturing into a strong engineering leader. Later on, he joined Thermo Fisher Scientiﬁc and worked there seven years in different roles including Engineering Manager, Product Manager and Business Development Manager for Reﬁning and Petrochemical. He is now the Vice President of Engineering for Petroleum Analyzer Company and leads the companies Research and Development efforts. An effective communicator and visionary, Soovo is also an advisory board member for Houston 2025 and Beyond. Soovo spends much time in helping the community and is the President of Houston Durgabari Society.

Shiladitya Basu was born in India and completed his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in Aerospace Engineering. He attended graduate school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in aerospace engineering with concentration in progressive failure of composite laminates. Besides academic course work, he was also involved in dramatics, quizzing, mentoring local area schools, scouting and photography. For the last decade, he has been working with Granherne/KBR and pushing the envelope in deepwater production and ﬁeld development planning. He is actively involved in the prestigious Offshore Technology Conference as author, session chair and reviewer. At Houston 2025 and Beyond, he is leading the Future of Energy: Innovation, Sustainability & Diversity track. His goal is to help the future generations tackle the problems of energy production and consumption.

Dipankar Sinharoy Track lead: Fracking to LNG Dipankar Sinharoy is responsible for the oversight of the Global Portfolio Management with FMC Technologies, focused on close interaction with market participants and strategic accounts to facilitate the adoption and deployment of solutions globally as well as for strategy and direction. Roy has twelve years of operating experience, with senior operational roles at leading manufacturing-technology ﬁrms such as FMC Technologies. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from India, and an MBA (Finance & Operations), from the University of Houston, USA.

Forum Committee Members: Raja Roy, Hirakesh Roy, Mrinal Chaudhuri, Indrani de Sirkar, Surupa Shaw, Subrata Dasgupta, & Nirmalya Roy.

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June/July 2015

July 9th & 10th, 2015

P. Harish

Honorable Consul General of India at Houston

Prof. Ramanan Krishnamoorti Chief Energy Officer University of Houston

Janiece M. Longoria

Chairman, Port of Houston Authority Commission

Christopher Caswell

Director, Gas Monetization Development at KBR

Rustom K. Mody

VP/Chief Engineer - Enterprise Technology, Baker Hughes Inc.

Dr. Akhil Datta-Gupta

Professor & LeSuer Chair, Texas A&M

Mickey Callanan

Chief Operating Officer, PfP Industries

Richard E. Green

Region Segment Lead, Unconventional Oil and Gas, DNV-GL

June Ressler

Owner, President, Cenergy Companies

Rashed Haq

VP and Sapient Fellow, Sapient Global Markets

Sean Riccardelli

President, Riccardelli Consulting Services

Ajay Batra

Director - Business Operations, Cheniere Energy, Inc.

Nameer A. Siddiqui

Managing Director - Global Natural Resources Group, Goldman Sachs

Vikram Rao

Executive Director, Research Triangle Energy Consortium

Tony Teo

Matt Clark

Technology and Business Director, Keppel

SVP-Natural Gas Trading & LNG Development, Sumitomo- Paciﬁc Summit Energy

Graeme A.E. Pirie

Dr. Sergio Kapusta

VP-Business Development, DNV-GL

Manager, Technel

Ruth Liao

Editor-LNG Americas, ICIS Heren

Tim Armitt

Global NDT inspection supplier, Lavendar International

It’s About Houston And You

Join the best minds from Houston and beyond for a refreshing and exciting brand new Forum, Houston 2025 and Beyond.

Future of Energy How does STEM and Innovation lead us to a sustainable energy economy and sustainable future; how does Houston beneﬁt by learning from leaders like Norway? Celebrating the Port of Houston Celebrate the Treaty of Friendship and Trade between the Port of Houston and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust of Mumbai Fracking to LNG Discuss avenues to lower production cost; discuss regulatory issues related to pipeline and understand the risk management of LNG trading and FLNGs

Day 1: July 9, 2015

15:00: Registration 15:45 – 16:00: Forum Opening Ceremony 16:00 – 18:00: Future of Energy 18:00 – 19:00: Cocktail and Networking Hour 19:00 – 20:00: Port of Houston Authority & JNPT, Mumbai Treaty of Friendship and Trade Cooperation 20:00 – 21:00: Gala Dinner and Entertainment

Day 2: July 10, 2015

8:00: Registration 08:00 – 09:00: Breakfast 09:00 – 10:00: Doing Business with India and Bangladesh 10:00 – 11:30: Fracking to LNG: Optimizing Operation Costs on Surface Drilling 11:30 – 12:30: Lunch 12:30 – 13:30: Fracking to LNG: Energy Infrastructure Impact of HSE and Future Regulations 14:00 – 15:00: Fracking to LNG: Operations and Future Trends 15:00 – 16:00: Fracking to LNG: Marketing and Trading A multi-modal Perspective; Future Trends and Risk Management 16:00: Closing Remarks

Dinner table sponsorship is available for $2500 (individual ticket for $250). Corporate sponsors will get dedicated table for 10 (ten) at dinner and entry to forum sessions. They will also get logo on forum website and onsite banners. Forum attendees will get entry to forum sessions on July 9th and 10th and breakfast and lunch on July 10th. Individual two-day tickets are available for $25 (students, 18+ with valid ID) and $50 (general). For detail information on our inaugural forum, visit www.houston2025.org. Houston 2025 and Beyond is a 501(c)(6) organization.

Father’s Day,

From My Perspective BY LISA BROOKS Father’s Day brings up a messy tangle of emotions for me. I’m not a father. I am a mother. I have four wonderful children. Some emotions I feel on Father’s Day include gratitude, sadness, regret, awe, empathy, and hope. I’m forever grateful to my ex-husband for the children we had together. My children are the light of my life. The only thing I can ever remember really wanting to be when I grew up is to be a mother. No matter what has happened in my life, and a lot has happened, I am and will always be grateful for the gift of my children, a gift I would not have had without their father. The bruised sentiments that Father’s Day conjures are overwhelming for me. I have a daughter who is adopted. I am sad that her birth father (and mother) will never know what an amazing young lady she has become. I empathize with children and their mothers who have lost their fathers and husbands. I’m sad for the children who never even knew their fathers. I am sad for the children, and adult children, who have difficult relationships with their fathers. My particular situation is one that ﬁlls me with pathos for my children, as their father has not maintained any semblance of a relationship with most of them. I am sad for the fact that he is missing the opportunity to know his children, and that he hears what is going on in their lives second hand. I feel helpless for my children who miss him, and also experience some anger regarding how this signiﬁcant relationship has devolved. I also regret that I had to make a choice to save my family, which meant having to end my marriage. The emotions wrapped up in this decision are so complicated, that I cannot share them with my children, so I also regret that there are many things they don’t understand about not having a father present. The awe I experience around Father’s Day is at the people my children are growing up to be, regardless of their difficult or nonexistent relationship with their father. They are whole, sound, and in spite of all the typical teenage struggles, are happy and healthy. I am in awe of, and profoundly grateful for the positive male role models who are present and generous in the lives of my children, including friends, teachers, mentors, coaches, and relatives. I honor each of these men on Father’s Day for the roles they’ve effortlessly

undertaken. Because of my own circumstances, I can now relate to other single parents on so many levels. I know that many of them also experience what I do around the holidays honoring parenthood. And what about those men who desperately want to be fathers, but are facing infertility issues, or those who have lost a child, or have made the difficult decision to give up a child for adoption? I’m sure that Father’s Day is full of not-sohappy emotions for the longing or loss that these men must feel. There are also fathers, who married women who had had children already. They became stepfathers, and often were very much the father ﬁgures in the lives of their stepchildren. But, if a marriage ended, then the relationship with those children was likely profoundly changed, if not eliminated entirely for these men, and the children involved. However, all these musings would not be true to who I am as a person if I didn’t talk about hope. I’m an optimist. My sense of optimism informs my mothering style, and my lifestyle. Optimism truly deﬁnes who I am as a mother. I have hope that as adults, my children can move past their hurts and disappointments and develop a relationship with their own father whatever form the relationship might take. I’m hopeful that my boys will grow up to be wonderful life partners, even though that has not been modeled for them in any traditional way. I hope they will grow up to be role models for other children in addition to their own. I hope that those who have or have had difficult relationships with their own fathers learn to believe that they are great human beings with tremendous potential, even if they never felt they quite met expectations of others. Humanity is messy sometimes. Fatherhood, motherhood, parenthood is messy almost all the time. And yet, people grow up, grow whole, and become successful individuals in spite of the mess. Messy keeps life interesting, and challenges us in many ways. I’m even grateful for the mess. So, I’m not going to wish people, with the exception of a few, a happy Father’s Day. Instead, I wish peace to all in their relationships with their fathers, as fathers, or those who are not the fathers they would like to be. Even though it is a messy business, people, especially children, are resilient. We are together in this mess, and there is always someone who has your back.

Lisa Brooks is the proud mother of four wonderful children, a Comparative Religion teacher at Congregation Emanu El. She also owns and operates a small home organizing business. Lisa enjoys writing, reading, and exploring both in Houston, and around the world.

It was a Dark and Stormy Night BY PRADEEP ANAND Memorial Day, 2015, will be remembered. It was the day when two childhood friends came home to visit us. Raj Melville, who now lives in the Boston (MA) metropolitan area, came late morning. About half an hour after he left, Francis Brito, another childhood friend, who lives in the Seattle (WA) area, came by with his son, Rahul (Austin, Texas). They were all visiting relatives too in the Houston area. Wonderful conversations that ranged from jolly reminiscences to how the world can be changed and to altruism. This lasted about six hours, after which I decided to take a nap because I was exhausted from a hectic Saturday and Sunday in Austin, celebrating Aneesha Mayekar’s graduation from University of Texas, Austin, on Saturday. We were looking forward to the commencement address and the fireworks thereafter but the Weather Gods willed it differently. That Saturday’s events were cancelled because of bad weather, especially frequent lightning. I thought it would have been cool to see fireworks set in a background of lightning illuminated skies but safety does come first. We drove back to Sugar Land (TX) on Sunday, just in time to don celebratory outfits for a wedding reception at the local Marriott. We were tired after the trip to Austin but the reception rejuvenated us. We met old friends and family and the parents and families of the bride and groom. We enjoyed the drinks, the hors d’oeuvres, speeches, the dances and the dinner. The company at the assigned table were old friends, which contributed greatly to a wonderful evening. We were exhausted when we got home that night. We have a dog, Cookie. She is a creature of habit. She wakes up every day of the week at 6 AM and so do I. There is no respite after a late night. Later my friends arrived and we were having such a great time that I completely forgot about

my sleep deprivation. However, the body does not. As soon as Francis left, I lay down on the sofa to supposedly read a book, when I must have fallen sleep. I woke up at about eight o’clock, when Sujata asked me, “When does Seema’s flight arrive?” “Ten o’clock,” I replied and turned over thinking that I could catch an additional 30 minutes of sleep. “Can you check if the flight is on time?” she asked. A quick visit to United Airlines web site revealed that the flight had departed a little later than the scheduled time and that it would arrive at about 10:36 PM. Our home is about 40 miles from the Bush Intercontinental Airport. On a holiday, with light traffic, it would take me about 45 minutes to reach it. It would take Seema (our daughter) about fifteen minutes to get out of baggage claim after the plane landed. That meant she wouldn’t be out of the airport before 10:50. So, I told Sujata that I would leave home at about 9:50 PM. She brought to my groggy attention that it was raining and that I should expect some delay due to it. “Okay,” I said. “I will leave at 9:30.” I did so, right on schedule. However, before I left I checked out The Weather Channel app and moved quickly to the radar. I was shocked to see the severity of the storm that I was going to drive in. Amongst a lot of green (light rain) areas were large patches of yellow (moderate to heavy rain) areas, and unusually substantial amount of red to dark maroon (very heavy rain) areas. However, the optimist in me was somewhat pleased that the front was vertical and about 20 miles thin, and moved steadily from west to east. I guess that by the time I reached the airport, Seema’s flight would have made a safe landing, and we would be home by about 12 PM, albeit in some rainy condi-

tion. No big deal. This wasn’t my first rainy rodeo. I left home at 9:30, as promised. Five minutes later, I was on US 59 (new name — Interstate 69) and I guessed that I was in the red to dark red area of the weather map. The downpour was relentless, and as I got closer to the section of the freeway, I became very cautious. On a normal dry day, people in the second and third lanes have to drive at 65 to 70 miles per hour to stay abreast with traffic. People who respect the speed limit are in the fourth and fifth lanes. On that dark, stormy night, I turned my hazard lights on and brought my car to a relative crawl of about 40 miles per hour, as I approached that overpass. That section over Dairy Ashford and Alternate 90 (Alt 90) is dangerous on any rainy day because water does not flow away easily and there are patches of water “puddles” that could easily contribute to hydroplaning at any speed and total loss of control at high speeds. Having experienced these in the past, I was my cautious best as I approached this section. The puddles were more like pools. The inclinations and gravity of the freeway could not evacuate the accumulated water faster than the heavens were pouring down on us. I watched foolhardy drivers, especially some in pick-up trucks, almost lose their vehicles and themselves as they went through this section at somewhat normal speeds. As I drove downhill, I was relieved to see that all surrounding vehicles had made it safely through this treacherous wet terrain and that there were no accidents. But, now it was raining so heavily, I could barely see the vehicle in front of me. Worse, none of us could see the lanes we were driving in. I have driven on this freeway regularly for more than twenty-five years and intuition told me that I was in the third lane that would automatically put me on Sam Houston Toll Road, headed north. Cautiously, I drove over the overpass to the toll road. Again, I knew from experience that a lane would merge from the right and I stayed on the left lane, giving consideration to another who had to be out on this nasty night. It’s one thing to have the weather front at your car’s back and another to have it on your side and front. It was raining so hard, I couldn’t see beyond the hood of my car. All automobiles had their blinking hazard lights on and were going at a crawl — 30 miles an hour — with at least ten car lengths gap, for safety. We could barely see the lights of the car in front of us. At times, all drivers experienced a gorgeous son et lumiere that even the best of Hollywood special effects folks haven’t replicated. The Texas sky is expansive and the view of the firmament from the height of an overpass on the West Toll Road was just awe-inspiring. That night, nature added another dimension that I hadn’t experienced before — a network of lightning streaks that crackled through and illuminated the dark clouds for an instant. For that moment, the freeway and its vehicles were displayed by this eerie, white-gray light. Counting the seconds to divide by seven, a habit I have had since elementary school, I waited for the accompanying thunder. Those sono-

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rous, rolling roars were not more than a mile or two away from my location. Yes, I was in the red area of the storm. Again, experience and intuition put me in the correct lane meant for EZ Tag users at the toll gate. But then, the car in front of me slowed down and stopped. I pulled close to the car ahead and stopped. Cars in the other lanes were breezing by (or so it seemed) but our lane was immobile. And then I noticed that the cars ahead of me were changing lanes, going to the faster lane. As I reached my spot behind the hurdle, I saw a sight that froze my blood. A man in a white T-shirt trying to push his broken down car in the pelting rain. I don’t know how he could have taken his car across six lanes on his right or three lanes on his left, to safety. More important, why was he standing at the back of his car? He was a senseless road-kill waiting to happen. On a night like this, he and his stationary car were barely visible and any driver who was slightly short on being extra cautious that night could kill him. I stayed in the second lane and then moved to the first as I approached the sunken area near Memorial Drive. Several sections of the Houston Freeway system have linear scales on their walls. They show heights from the road surface and they go as high eighteen to twenty feet. These scales are placed in low areas to indicate the height of flood waters. I pay special attention to the positioning of these scales in the city and I keep them stored in my mind for nights like these. I was about to encounter the first of my scales. I slowed down to probably 20 MPH and surveyed the scene. The scale showed that the water had already reached 3.5 feet or so, on the right side of the road. The left side of the road is inclined higher. I cautiously drove towards the left, like the driver before me and crawled through the now accumulating water. I could see that my car was making substantial waves. As I drove out of the water, I braked a few times to heat my brakes and evaporate the water. I drove out of the low area into high ground, making a mental note that I was not going back home this way. I needed an alternate route. The trip to the next toll booth was more of the same — stay in the second lane, keep your hazard lights on, follow the car ahead of you at a safe distance, drive at about 30 miles an hour, focus on the road and surroundings, and admire and enjoy nature’s majestic show from within it. It was a joyful drive. I have always enjoyed the monsoons, when I was growing up in Bombay/Mumbai, India. It was the only season of the year when the air was clean, devoid of pollutants and allergens. The monsoons were the three months of the year when I could breathe freely and live a healthy life. I rejoiced in the rain and played soccer in wet, soggy fields. The mud, the slush and the floods were my friends. And today they were still my friends. I missed seeing their displays from my balcony in Dadar and, this night, the rains were putting on a show that more than compensated the (almost) four decades of my not feeling their power, grace, effusion and warmth. Turning west onto the North Toll Road, the Weather Front was now at my back and progress was a little faster. We were going at about 40 miles per hour. Again, routine and experience took me through the toll gate and I was headed for the JFK exit, again, in what I thought was the second lane. Nothing on the

ground was visible, and even if it was, it was confusing because of recent efforts at re-marking the lanes and adding more lanes by eliminating a shoulder or two. I stuck to the old second lane embedded in my memory, went over Interstate 45 and steadily reached the JFK exit to the airport. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Water accumulation was not that bad but the rain was unrelenting. “Stick to the right lane,” I said to myself and veered towards lanes and exits that would take me to the Terminal C Arrivals area. As I crawled over the final U-turn, a bus, a cab and a limousine speedily overtook me, sending three quick, consecutive sprays on my windshield. The furious wipers did their job but for a moment there, I thought I was going to lose control of the vehicle during this turn. But, all was well instantly. The skies lit up with lightning and the road was illuminated. I navigated safely through the turn. When I pulled into the arrival area at about 10:30 PM, the security person waved me into the first lane of this covered area. It was a relief to finally stop, that too in a brightly lit area. I stayed in the car and called United Airlines about the arrival status of the flight. The response was 10:51 PM. Not bad, I said, for a night like this. Flights are still landing. And then I waited and waited. Seema should have been out by about 11:05 PM or so but even at 11:15 there was not word

that she had landed. She usually texts me when her plane lands. I checked the airline’s web site. It told me that the plane had landed. A phone call to United told me that the plane had landed. Just then I received a text from Seema that her flight was hovering over Austin, Texas, some 180 miles away and that ETA was about 11:30 PM. Safety first is not an empty motto in this town. I was glad that United had embraced it too. Later, I got another text saying that ETA was about 12 Midnight. All this while, I was doing my own interpretation of the radar on The Weather Channel. I was confident that the front would pass through by the time Seema came to the car. However, when I checked again, I noticed that the North-South front had turned into a Southwest-Northeast front, headed east and collapsing towards the South, perhaps drawing moisture from the nearby Gulf of Mexico. In other words, the front, the heavy rain red and dark-red areas, were aligned exactly on top of my path back home. This was going to be a difficult ride home. But, first Seema had to make it to the car. At about midnight, she texted me that the plane had landed. Fifteen minutes later, she sent another text that the plane had to wait for an available gate. Still later, I learned that United wouldn’t allow its employees to operate the available gates because of lightning. Safety first, again, but I was hoping that the firm also had its

stranded passengers’ safety at heart. Since I was in a covered area, I had not noticed the turmoil in the skies. I was just happy that the security officers were kind and courteous and allowed us to stay put rather than circling around the airport, like we are usually requested to do. In fact, the officer even allowed me to step away from my car and take a restroom break. Many others took my lead. A little after 1 AM Seema came running out of the airport and ran to the car, saying, “I am so hungry.” I gave her the food — chicken curry and rice — that her mother had made and prepared for her. While she ate her very late supper, she recounted how this was her worst flight ever. Despite being in her early twenties, she’s a veteran air traveler, having travelled to India more than twenty times and to other continents a dozen times and, now, ever since she joined the American workforce, she travels somewhere over every long weekend. So, her worst flight was among a large sample of flying experience. The foul Weather Front stretched from Houston to almost to the southern border Minnesota and Seema was flying from that state to her home. The shortest route was through the storm but the airplane skirted around the front at times. And, perhaps, came uncomfortably close to it. No surprise then that her flight was incredibly bumpy. She added that she had a window seat that gave her an aerial display of the lightning storms that her plane was avoiding. That scared her. She was glad when they hovered over Austin, while the storms battered Houston. She hoped that the plane would land there. She graduated from the University of Texas, Austin, and she welcomed this opportunity to visit her favorite city. No such luck. The airline and the airplane persevered on to Houston and landed there, only to wait on the tarmac for an hour, waiting for a gate and a gate-operator. “I am so stressed out,” she exclaimed, as she hugged me. After her hunger was satiated, I asked her if she would be my navigator. I told her that Beltway 8 West was not feasible and I needed an alternate route home. We decided to rely on Google Maps, which told us to go down JFK, then turn on to Hardy Toll Road South, Loop 610 West and then South, take the Hidalgo exit and make our way on Post Oak to US 59 South and head home. Seema has never experienced rain of this intensity. The dense downpour scared her but she was calm. We made it down JFK, onto Hardy Toll Road South. We were the only car on the entire ten mile stretch from North Belt to Loop 610. I was praying that my car wouldn’t break down for any reason in this area. As I headed South, I saw that police had placed their cars with headlights on most exits, indicating that there were flood waters ahead. When we turn on to Loop 610, we began to see some of the mayhem and havoc the rains had caused — hundreds of abandoned cars on the road, with hazard lights on. As we headed east, we saw trails of stranded cars at every exit from Interstate 45 all the way past the exit to US 290. When we headed south of Loop 610, we saw that the exits to Post Oak Blvd and San Felipe did not have police cars preventing exits. Seema remarked, “Dad, maybe, we should go to my office and spend the night there.” We decided that we’d better off home www.hummagazine.com

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and headed towards the Hidalgo/Richmond exit that Google Maps had recommended. We were very disappointed when we discovered that the exit was blocked and there were hundreds of cars waiting to take that exit. Additionally, there was another trail of cars on the exit from 610 to 59. So, I decided to stay on 610 and head further south to perhaps, Alt 90. Google Maps now recommended taking the Bellaire exit, which was also blocked and had a hundred cars in a trail; likewise, at the Beechnut exit. “I guess, Google Maps are not optimized for floods,” Seema said. It was the insight of the night. We were back in the dark red zone of the front and we could hardly see anything in front of us. All the cars on the road were either stranded or abandoned. There were no cars moving on the road except ours, when Seema asked me to stop the car and wait for the rain to abate. I pulled into the shoulder on an overpass and waited. When the rain abated, I renewed my drive towards the Post Oak exit, heading for Alt 90. The intensity and density of rain got worse. As we went past and over West Bellfort, Seema said that she had seen a Kroger grocery store on the right. “Why don’t we go and spend the night there?” Great idea. We would have shelter and food. I took a U-turn and as I was driving towards the turnaround, I noticed that the entire area was flooded. She suggested I take the high ground to the near McDonald’s. I did but I also saw the prospect of rising flood waters trapping us here. It was not an area I wanted to be trapped in. I got off the high ground into the water, drove along the feeder and got back on Post Oak but headed the other way towards 610 North towards the Galleria. Interestingly enough there were no police cars blocking exits off of 610 on this north-bound trip. I was tempted to call Chris and Divya but I wasn’t sure we would make it to their home. As we approached the exit to US 59 South, we wondered if we should just stay here on the freeway, waiting for traffic to move on that lane that would help us head home. I parked the car on the right shoulder and watched intently if there was any movement on that lane. After some time, I decided that I was better off being in that lane, rather than just observing it from a distance. Besides, Seema’s phone’s battery was dead and mine had entered the dreaded “Low Battery” red zone. Seema kept Sujata informed about our progress, or lack thereof, in short bursts of texts. We couldn’t afford to have a dead phone on a night like this. Another insight of the night — get a battery charger for the car. I could not imagine what Sujata was going through. We could not keep her verbally and regularly apprised of our situ-

ation about how we were still quite mobile, looking for that relatively safe path home. Her information choice would be local news channels, who would be bombarding the airwaves with extreme, bad-news situations about floods and abandoned cars, with drenched reporters in raincoats at stationary locations. Seema’s text bursts went out periodically to assure her that we were fine. After a while, we saw the futility of just waiting in this stationary lane that would take us from 610 North to 59 South. Nothing was happening; it could be eons before we would see some movement. Additionally, there was only so much attention I could pay to my environs. It was about 2:30 AM, when Seema re-suggested her idea about going to her office. The drive to the San Felipe exit was quite smooth. We were now in the green zone of the Weather Front; a fair amount of rain. We went past San Felipe on the feeder road, when we noticed a few motels on the way, but decided to check out Seema’s office building first. As we attempted to turn into Post Oak, we noticed a stranded/abandoned car that blocked both eastward lanes of the road. I decided that it was okay that night to drive on the left hand side of the road and took the west bound lanes eastward to the office; the abandoned car there blocked only one lane. In less than a minute we reached our destination. It was nice to be in a dry parking lot, with no water around us. It was also brightly lit. We lowered the backrests of our car seats, and stretched out to relax. I couldn’t stay that way for too long. I would have fallen asleep and I had to be vigilant. I sat erect, while Seema went to the back seat, to lie down. We were there, in those positions, for about fifteen minutes, when Seema suggested, “Why don’t we just go to one of the motels we saw on the way here?” We drove down through back-roads of the area and the first motel with an open gate was a La Quinta Inn. When we approached the clerk, I told him, “We need shelter.” This genial African American said, with a smile, “Yes, we have a room but we will have to charge you for it.” No problem. He also told us that twenty-five other people had sought shelter that night. At about 3:30 AM, we were in our room. We probably fell asleep at about 3:31 AM. When we drove home at about 10:30 that morning, The sun was out and the sky was blue. Birds were chirping and the day was new. The grass was greener And the air was cleaner. T’was, as if, was the monsoons.

Pradeep Anand is the President of Seeta Resources (www.seeta.com), a strategy consulting ﬁrm that focuses on accelerating revenue and margin growth of its client ﬁrms.

Cindi Rose

Photos by Herb Hochman

d o o w y l l o b

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Rachel Siliburk & Maribel Henderson

Dr. Monica Patel

June/July 2015

Laura Max Rose and Ben Rose

Beautiful supporters at the Crimson Lounge

Chesley and Tanaz Choudhury

e girl

Champagn

Erica Rose

Neera Patid

Stefani Harris, Gregg Harrison, and Stefani Palder

Peta-Gay Chen Ledbetter

Lexi Overman, Hannah Haest, Janie Stewart, Connie Kwan-Wong & Alice Phipps

Gregg Opendoef and Angela Lipsy

Azar Teleghany

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Photos by Herb Hochman

Jesus Guerrero and Ashley Holm

Silhouette artist and historian Cindi Rose at the Ballet Ball in a period costume

Cindi Rose with a young patient at the Texas Children’s Hospital

Cindi Rose’s scissors cut silhouettes for school fundraisers

24 SilhouettesbyCindi.com and TheHollyRoseRibbonFoundation donate art for hospitals

Living butterﬂy silhouette by Cindi Rose for March of Dimes luncheon she chaired

Bravo to hostess Dr. Monica Patel and Chair Cindi Rose for putting together a breathtaking Bollywood Blitz extravaganza in just under three days. Three hundred guests attended the themed event at the Crimson Lounge and helped raise over $30,000 to benefit Enslaved No More and The Hope House to stop sex trafficking. Television star, Dr. Erica Rose, of The Bachelor fame flew in all the way from Los Angeles to support the cause. And, as if to add more excitement, she brought in Bachelor star Cory Shivar on her arm to chaperone her. Amazingly, the chairs and committee members, founder Angela Lipsey, Amanda Abiassi, Vanessa Derks, Crystal Saldivar, Neera Patidar, CEO Gregg Optekamp, did the impossible and made a hugely successful and meaningful night in but a few days! The CEO of Hope House George Mills and Shira Mills drove in from Louisiana to talk about the importance of Hope House in shielding sex victims. The evening had live snake charmers, fashion show with models featuring designer Connie Kwan-Wong crystal clutches and Joe Vilaiwan fine jewelry, a photo booth by lawyer Gregg Harrison, a champagne girl in a champagne cage, a DJ, henna flash tattoo artist, unlimited wine, Indian dhol drummers, Bollywood themed décor and food, and a solo Indian Bollywood dance by Dr. Monica Patel. Somehow the gorgeous crowd found and adorned in detailed Indian attire including arms lengths of Indian bangles and head gear. A live auction was emceed by Judge Eric Andell. William Lloyd and wife Nikki Araguz donated a fine art jewel crusted painting, Azar Talleghany donated a gorgeous jeweled Buddha necklace, Connie KwanWong donated a one-of-a-kind crystal clutch and a Vilaiwan necklace from a collection that Joan Rivers once had. Monica’s boyfriend, Imad Kalil, donated a red Mitsubishi car which sold for $20,000. Other guests at the soiree included Gigi Huang, Lily Paxson and Enrique Salinos, David Fink, Allison Reeves, Merissa Littell, Betsy Benton, Gregg Optekamp, Ben and Laura Max Rose, Sharon and Michael Brier, Alex Martinez, Beth Cassidy Garcia, Darian Ward, Michael DeMarse, Stephanie Signaigo, Dr. Pavan Grover, Chesley and Tanaz Choudhury, Beth Cassidy Garcia, Mahzad Mohajer, and Butch Gutzman who brought in a signed, framed J.J. Wats Jersey that went for $2,200. Proceeds from Bollywood Blitz will be donated to Enslave No More and The Hope House located on 32 acres in Southern Louisiana where sexual victims are taken to safety and given food, shelter, education and rehabilitation. “Sex trafficking is a 350 billion a year business. Of the 6,000 runaways that find their way to Houston each year, one in three is sex trafficked within 48 hours of arrival,” informs Cindi Rose. Houston is considered one of the worst cities in the US riddled with the problem of sex trafficking. If you suspect anyone being victimised, please contact Crime Stoppers.

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Daddy’s Enduring Script BY AMARA BAVANI DEV

Four decades after her father passed away, a daughter celebrates his priceless legacy Daddy quietly wrote into the night, and I sat huddled in a blanket opposite his desk and watched

Seated in our living room, Daddy quietly wrote into the night, the green ink from his fountain pen turning thoughts into words in his beautiful handwriting. My mother and little sister would be fast asleep in the bedroom. But I sat huddled in a blanket on the cane-chair opposite his desk and watched. It was the 1960s. We lived in Chennai, in a smiling modest house with whitewashed walls and green windows, a big garden around it and an inviting porch. To help make ends meet, my parents had rented out half the house. Daddy was a freelance writer contributing short stories to Tamil magazines and scripts for movies, although the movie offers were few and far between. Before I was born, he’d once held a steady, well-paying job in Trivandrum as a Malayalam newsreader, his name Nagarcoil K. Padmanabhan known to All India Radio listeners in Kerala. He’d suddenly resigned from AIR to pursue with relentless passion his dream of being a writer. Among Daddy’s early friends in Chennai were actors Gemini Ganesan and Nagesh, the comedian. Ganesan continued to visit us even after he became famous. I would look out, star-struck, as his blue Fiat drove in. He’d tease my handsome Dad; calling him “Maapilai” [Tamil for bridegroom] and the two would go on talking shop. One thing Daddy had gained early from his writing was Mommy. An English literature graduate and avid reader, she was a fan of Daddy’s magazine stories. The two became pen pals, met and got married, although the doe-eyed beauty from Bangalore was no Brahmin like Daddy. It was a huge leap of faith to marry inter-caste in those days. As I sat there watching Daddy, I wondered what he would write every day. I knew how he always worked on his next story at night, even

as he was working on his current one at the film studios. “My big hit is just a script away,” he would smile, his deep dimples showing. “Aren’t you sleepy?” “No,” I’d mumble, although I’d often doze off in the chair and he’d carry me to bed, next to Mom. I would dream of reams of white paper filled with green writing, and of valiant heroes — good always triumphed over evil, and Dad’s heroes were always good. When I was ten, he gave me Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, a rather new book then. “Just one story like that is enough for a lifetime,” he said. I sensed the longing in him. He had had a body of work by then, but a big hit eluded him. The novel made a great impact on me, and how right daddy was. Harper Lee never wrote another novel, yet became a legend with her only book. Summer nights, Daddy would regale us with tales about the film shoots. He was a good mimic with his radio star’s voice and was an excellent actor himself. And I would sigh — what a wonderful thing it is to be a writer! On Sundays and holidays, I would go up to the attic, where I hid my journal, and write endless stories of my own. When Daddy wrote scripts for Telugu producers, they would be in English. Sometimes he would ask me for a particular English word, which I’d supply. My heart would swell with pride that I was a part of his writing. My sister Anuradha and I studied at Chennai’s Holy Angels’ Convent, a most exclusive school, which my father could ill afford. Still, he wanted us to study and speak English well; an “entitlement,” he’d say. Then, one day, I heard my parents whisper excitedly of a lucrative offer that had come to Daddy for a Telugu film. At last, we would be rich! And Mom had promised me a red frock, some stationery and a new doll. There was an air of suppressed excitement in the house, of dreams that were finally coming true. I had a school picnic to go on, early one morning. The evening before, Daddy had come home tired from work but took me out to buy snacks and sweets for the picnic. My basket was crammed with goodies. I was bursting with joy. Daddy set the alarm for five in the morning, ironed my clothes for the next day, and went to bed. The next morning, the alarm clock went off. I got up but Daddy did not. He had passed away in his sleep — a coronary thrombosis, the doctor explained. I was 13, my sister Anuradha, eight. Daddy was just 41. Along with his body, our dreams too went up in flames. But Nindu Hrudayalu, the Telugu movie he had scripted with superstar N.T. Rama Rao in the lead, had celebrated its 100th day. The producer sent some additional money to my mother for the Hindi distribution rights of the film. The

movie was a blockbuster, and the first in its genre. Daddy’s script became a recurring Bollywood theme: three brothers separated in childhood, reunited as adults… avenging their parents’ misfortunes. Another Telugu producer had visited us to offer his condolences. He remarked ruefully that my father’s script for him was left half done. “I know the story,” I told him, “I could finish it for you.” He looked at me with kind eyes. “Are you sure?” I nodded. “Daddy discussed the treatment with me.” He smiled at my use of jargon. I completed the script for him. My mother, who’d been a teacher before her marriage, went back to work to support the family. We left our beloved home and city, moving to my mother’s ancestral home in Bangalore. Then, as the years rolled by, life meandered in different directions for Anuradha and I. But our love for language and the written word stood us in good stead. Studies completed, Anuradha became a marketing professional, while I became a mathematics teacher. We soon had our own families and children to raise. Even so, Daddy’s unfinished dreams lingered on. Both Anuradha and I continued to write. I brought out a collection of my poems, while my sister published her anthology of short stories and a novel. In 2003, my entry, For a Horseshoe Nail, in the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association’s short story competition won a HighlyCommended Prize, “Selected from 3700 stories, the competition was tough,” the judges informed me. “Your story was beautifully told, and very wellwritten.” Centred on an organ-donation racket, it was set in a remote Tamil Nadu village, but read across the world. A UK doctor used the story as a topic for debate among his university students. The following year, it was Anuradha’s turn. She too won a Highly-Commended Prize for her story. Today my elder daughter, Darshana Ramdev, is a journalist with Deccan Chronicle. She always wanted to write. My younger one, Deeksha, studying computer science, is also an ardent writer and has an active cricket blog, The TeaTowel Explanation. “I’m going to be a cricket writer, one day,” she says, as if it were a warning. “Let me finish my engineering.” Daddy passed away in 1970. Two generations ago, I’d say. But his single-minded devotion to writing still glows like a beacon among his children and grandchildren. Anybody can die. Yet, as I finish one more piece — this story you’ve read — I know something for sure about Dad. His writing never stopped.

Sometimes I’d supply Daddy with a particular English word. My heart would swell with pride that I was a part of his writing.

Amara Bhavani Dev is a freelance journalist who likes to write about lifestyle, travel and food. She does a daily column in Deccan Herald, Bangaluru called Astrospeak with Amara Bhavani Dev. She has contributed articles for India Today and has also freelanced with Ink Publishing, Singapore which brings out the in-house magazine for Spicejet. Amara writes short stories and has won the highly commended prize in the Commonwealth Short Story Competition in 2004. Her collection of poetry called The Garland, was published in 1999 under the auspices of the British Council, Bangaluru. www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

Corporate Social Responsibility Panel, from left, Genevieve Moullerat, VP of Project Construction for TOTAL; Ana Paula of Petrobras; Natalie Stirling-Sanders, Global Manager of Supplier Diversity and Sustainable Procurement for ExxonMobil; Paulino Jeronimo, Executive Administrator for Sonangol E&P; Mary-Grace Anderson, VP of Safety, Environment and Social Performance at Shell

OTC 2015

Stewardship and Social Responsibility

in Global Energy Industry BY TAJANA MESIC

Photos: Tajana Mesic

Houston sits at the epicenter of the energy industry. With the price of crude oil hovering around $60 per barrel for some time, I was eager to see what the mood and crowd would be like at the annual Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) this year. Most Houstonians know the OTC as the premier tradeshow for the oil and gas industry in North America. It took place from May 4 through 7 at the NRG Stadium complex. With an impressive international presence and a huge range of vendors and solution providers from across the industry, OTC organizers boasted over of 2,600 exhibitors, an alltime record for exhibitor space. These ranged from national oil companies, like Petrobras to equipment manufacturers, engineering ﬁrms, and automation and controls providers. World’s leading companies such as Europe’s second largest steel producer Tata Steel, Nigerian Nestoil Limited, and China’s National Petroleum Company held prominent booths to exhibit their technologies and products through static displays and touchscreen interactive maps. Even with the depressed environment surrounding oil and gas capital expenditures and continued lower oil prices, the attendance, while somewhat smaller than the record-breaking numbers in 2013 and 2014, was still around 95,000 guests. The key question I asked myself was how the oil price slump would affect the stewardship and corporate social responsibility efforts of major oil and Conference attendees look at exhibits

Water ﬁltration company exhibit gas companies. I was looking forward to hearing best practices and challenges that they faced while building a business case for social responsibility. The Corporate Social Responsibility panel on Thursday addressed the corporate social responsibility efforts and results of oil and gas companies, including Shell, ExxonMobil, Petrobras and TOTAL. The issues discussed by the senior executives were associated with the foundation of a “Net Positive Impact” in the countries where they operate by creating shared values with the local economies and residents. Over the years, oil and gas companies have improved their ability to develop programs with local authorities generating in-country value on a large scale. These programs encompass, in the long term, several aspects including biodiversity management, engagement, education, support to regional entrepreneurs, extending local suppliers network, capacity building, technology transfer, infrastructure development, access to energy, etc. The panel sought to answer a number of questions that come up in any location and to share best practices. What are the oil and gas companies doing to develop in-country value programs? What are the roles of international and national companies? What is the yardstick to measure this value? Most panelists focused on the teamwork and in-country value their companies provide to the people working in the country, as the exploration and production operations ramp up.

When asked how they determined and measured effectiveness of the selected local programs, their impacts and continuity in changeover until the full vision of the company is achieved, most agreed that focus on companies, trained staff and communities is paramount. “First, ﬁnd out what the community really wants by work-

Attendees in the Exhibit Hall

www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

A view from the press room onto the central Exhibit Hall

ing collaboratively with the local representatives from the community and then leverage what has already been done to make success of it for lasting impact,” said Natalie Stirling-Sanders, Global Manager of Local Content, Supplier Diversity and Sustainable Procurement at ExxonMobil. A growing body of research focused on women shows that investing funds in the health and safety of the community by working with local women entrepreneurs has reverberating effects. Mary-Grade Anderson is the Vice President of Safety, Environment and Social Performance at Shell. She stressed the importance of early policy integration and implementation in corporate social responsibility project management efforts. “If we integrate CSR at the beginning of the project, it becomes an opportunity,” she said. Ana Paula of Petrobras said that involving the contractors very early in the process into the corporate social responsibility initiatives is a best practice that can’t be ignored and results in a long term solution and increased safety on the project. Panelists all experienced a learning curve in international projects. Not every local entity represents the entire community, so companies developed expertize in identifying the real issues with highest priorities and forging collaborative efforts with the key stakeholders. To create projects to protect marine environment and ecosystems, most focus on ﬁnding a tie between the local society and the environment, identifying groups with ties to marine mammals. Shell works with such groups in Alaska. Petrobras has programs around turtles, whales, and dolphins. TOTAL has programs focusing on sea otters and turtles, and are very concerned to keep a sustainable environment. Although most of the panelists report their environmental and social performance using standards reports such as GRI G4, the conclusion was that there is always room for more opportunities to create a win-win situation. In summary, it seems that the temporary slump in oil prices might provide an opportunity for increased focus on integration of corporate social responsibility and stewardship into the oil and gas players’ operations, so that increased efficiencies are rewarded when the market goes back up.

President and CEO of Nestoil Limited, Dr. Ernest Azudialu, at the Nigerian booth

Deepsea exploration process depicted in the exhibit hall

Tajana Mesic is a sustainability consultant with GGG Sustainability Solutions, a speaker and a City of Fulshear Councilwoman. GGG is a full-service sustainability and corporate social responsibility advisory ﬁrm. We work with corporate teams to help integrate corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiatives into operations. To contact Tajana, visit www.greengrovegroup.com.

O HOUST

U-Haul Destination No. 1

Movers, Not Rain, Flooded Houston in 2014

The rains immersed Houston and other Texas cities in recent weeks, giving Harris County its wettest spring on record and creating trying times for families and businesses that sustained ﬂooding and even loss of life. Now, Houston can embrace a more navigable reign – one that has it atop the U-Haul Top 10 U.S. Destination Cities rankings for a sixth consecutive year. Houston has been named the No. 1 destination for 2014, meaning it was the top drop-off location for one-way U-Haul truck rentals for the past calendar year. The migration report was compiled from more than 1.7 million one-way U-Haul truck transactions in 2014. All U.S. cities were considered, regardless of size. While migration trends don’t correlate directly to a city’s population or economic growth, they are a strong gauge as to how well cities are attracting new residents. Houston has been attracting do-it-yourself movers by the truckloads since it took over the top spot in 2009. The U-Haul report echoes Forbes’ annual America’s Fast-Growing Cities report from January 2015, which ranked Greater Houston No. 1. “This accolade is a testament to Houston’s reputation as a city of opportunity,” said Bob Harvey, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership. “Whether you are looking for a great job, affordable housing options, an outstanding quality of life, or all of the above, Houston is a city with limitless opportunities.” “We are pleased to see Houston earn the No. 1 spot on UHaul’s Top 10 U.S. Destination Cities for the sixth consecutive year,” he added. Three southern Texas cities made the destination countdown with San Antonio fourth and Austin seventh. Houston held off Chicago and Las Vegas for the top spot. A cutting-edge medical sector, collection of celebrated tech companies and established energy giants have sustained a strong economy in Houston’s nine-county metropolitan area – even with a slumping oil market that has eliminated some jobs. College graduates are making Houston a top relocation choice, according to a recent report in the New York Times. “Houston seems to grow by the minute,” said Matt Merrill, marketing company president of U-Haul Company of West Houston. “There are new apartments, housing communities, high-rise office buildings, restaurants and small businesses opening everyday. “Exxon is currently building a huge complex to relocate families here. Having two major airports allows for quick travel with many direct ﬂights across America. For families or singles, it’s a

great place to live because there is anything and everything here. If you can dream it, it exists in Houston.” Troy Pelkey, a 23-year Houston transplant and owner of commercial truck repair shop Cemco Services Company, joined the UHaul dealer network in 2014. He noted that widespread growth has its pros and cons. “I moved to the suburbs and it’s not really the suburbs anymore – it’s another mini-Houston coming in with all the building going on,” said Pelkey, whose business is relocating to 6127 Aldine Bender next month. “I remember when the infrastructure of the city wasn’t very nice, but over the last 10 years, they’re tearing down the ugly, old buildings and making townhouses or new office buildings that are appealing to the eye. “The cost of living is great here. You get more for your money than just about anywhere in terms of housing and land value. The taxes are real good. And I like Texas. The people are the best part. They’re pretty friendly considering how big a city it is.” In addition to its universities, professional sports and entertainment options, and expanding rail system to help counter the traffic gridlock, Houston is known for the resilience and perseverance of its caring people. The May floods were not the first natural disaster to strike The Bayou City, nor will they be the last. U-Haul sympathized with those who suffered losses and offered 30 days of free self-storage to anyone in the area affected by the storms. “Locally, we have had one U-Haul store destroyed by a tornado and a storage facility that flooded from the rising flood water,” Merrill said. “In these times is when you see the true dedication of our employees to our customers. U-Haul had moving helpers, free boxes and plenty of staff on hand to help our customers during these unfortunate times. “Many customers came in to take advantage of the free selfstorage and can’t believe there isn’t a catch. This is another way we can say thank to residents of this great area for allowing U-Haul to be in business for 70 years now.” U-Haul is the authority on migration trends thanks to its expansive network that blankets all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. The geographical coverage from 17,000-plus U-Haul neighborhood dealers and 1,540 U-Haul stores offers a comprehensive overview of where people are moving like no one else in the industry. To read more about what U-Haul is doing to assist others, check out In the Community section of myuhaulstory.com www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

Cosmic Connection

The Deity... The Devotee... The Dance Seetha Ratnakar has over forty years of experience in media. She started her career as a copywriter in advertising before moving on to directing programs for state-run television network Doordarshan from 1975. Seetha is a trained Indian classical dancer. She has studied Bharatanatyam under Kalaimamani K.J. Sarasa and Kuchipudi from Padma Bhushan Vempati Chinna Satyam and has performed all over India and abroad for over a decade before switching gears and transitioning into dance programming. At Doordarshan, she had the privilege of directing the performances of almost all the leading dancers of India. These recordings have been preserved in the Doordarshan Archives. Seetha has also directed several

dance ballets for television, notable among them being Rasavrishti, a thematic dance picturisation on the many facets of Lord Krishna, which was India’s official entry at the Golden Prague Festival in 1985. A true testament to her artistic vision is the documentary A Tryst with Tradition, about the iconic founderdirector of Kalakshetra, the legendary dancer Rukmini Arundale. During her career span at the Doordarshan, Seetha has contributed greatly to the development and preservation of dance through aesthetically designed recordings and in-depth coverages of dance festivals, among them the famed Natyanjali Festival of Chidambaram, which she covered for twenty-ﬁve years. Her most memorable experience was the millennium celebration

Seetha Ratnakar (center) with temple priests and Doordarshan staff in front of the OB van that serves as a recording studio at the Chidambaram Natyanjali festival 2012

of the Brahadeeswara temple in Thanjavur, Tamilnadu in 2011, where over a thousand dancers performed together in glorious harmony. Spending long hours admiring the majestic architecture of the temple and watching dancers perform with single minded devotion had a profound inﬂuence on her. Her latest artistic endeavor is the documentary Cosmic Connection, her homage to Lord Nataraja, for being her guiding force as a dancer and director and keeping her connected with amazing art and culture all these years. Cosmic Connection won the Golden Remi Award in the Ethnic/Culture category at the 2014 WorldFest Houston International Film & Video Festival. The 42-minute documentary will be screened under the

aegis of Samskriti, Society for Indian Performing Arts at the Kaplan Theater, Evelyn Rubinstein Jewish Community Center, 5601 S. Braeswood Blvd, Houston, TX 77096 at 4:00 PM on Sunday, June 28. Following the ﬁlm screening, there will be a short Bharatanatyam performance by visiting artist K. Shanmugam, Director of Sarasalaya, Chennai, one of India’s most talented male dancers and a featured artiste in the documentary. This event is free and open to the public, and is made possible by grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and through a generous donation from Schlumberger. For further information, please visit www.samskritihouston.org, or call 832 275

www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

Ramesh Anand with rescues Rocky Anand (left) and Maxx Anand adopted by his son Tarush & his wife Nehal Anand

s e n a c i r r u H & s l a m i n A BY RAMESH ANAND The Atlantic Hurricane Season officially begins on June 1st and ends November 30th every year. Along with humans, pets and wildlife are the worst affected by hurricanes, storms and flooding. Each year, thousands of animals are relocated, lost or killed by adverse climatic conditions. Volunteers across the country work handin-hand with various wildlife and animal shelters to assist those that cannot speak for themselves. In recent times, I have received several calls from folks who have found a bird or a deer in distress and wondering how they could help and what they should do. The Wildlife of Texas alone took in 95 animals the very first day of the Memorial Day 2015 storm and continued with 75 animals each day for the next many days. Hurricanes and storms displace wildlife of every kind — from birds, including their babies that fall off their nest to raccoons, turtles and more. During a hurricane, wildlife is affected by: Winds – It is not uncommon for birds to be dislocated to hundreds of miles away from their usual habitat. It is said that the eye of the storm can carry birds away from their location and drop them many miles away. Some sea creatures too are affected by winds. Sea & fresh water – When sea water floods in and

blends with fresh water or in the reverse due to flooding in water sheds, fresh water may flood coastal bays and estuaries. Wildlife used to one kind of water is fatally affected by consuming the other. Turbulence in the sea - It is said that about 9 million fish were killed by the huge waves created when Hurricane Andrew hit Louisiana. What can you do? During a hurricane, firstly, you need to make sure you are safe and secure. It is common for birds to be blown far away by wind gusts. After a hurricane, keep your eyes open for wildlife that may be dislocated. Experts recommend that one should not touch the wildlife unless one have been trained to do so. You should contact Wildlife of Texas, who will take in the wildlife, heal and release it back in it’s environ. Useful contact information for The Texas Wildlife office in Greater Houston: Wildlife Center of Texas 7007 Katy Road, Houston, TX. (713) 861-9453 Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Coalition 10801 Hammerly Blvd, Houston, TX. (713) 468-8972

Pets in a hurricane We all remember Hurricane Katrina. Did you know that thousands of pets were killed by the hurricane? They were either lost or left behind by frantic owners who were trying to fend for themselves. There is this story of a family that lost their pet in New Jersey during Hurricane Sandy. After 18 months, the family decided to bring in another pet and went to the local shelter. To their surprise, they found their very own lost “Reckless” come running to them and licking them all over. Alas, such happy endings are few and far apart. Subsequent to any hurricane or storm, most local shelters are overﬂowing with stray pets and it is only a question of time that your loving pet may ﬁnd itself euthanized due to want of space. What you as a pet owner should do? Being prepared is half the battle won. Do not leave your pet behind to fend for itself. Most of them will not make it alive. They are as domesticated as your child and depend on you for their survival. Microchipping – I am amazed with the number of pet owners that do not microchip their pets. It is not necessarily the cost but a misplaced belief that their pet (unlike others) will never run away. A microchip is the size of a grain of rice and has almost the same level of inconvenience as any annual shot that a pet receives. The cost ranges from a onetime fee as low as $5 (at some local shelters) to $35. This ensures that if your pet is found anywhere in the country, any vet, shelter or pet store can scan and get your pet back to you. Survival Kit – Hurricane season is here! Get a pet survival kit in place. The Humane Society of Louisiana has recommended the following:

PET FIRST AID KIT, BASIC PROVISIONS •Alcohol wipes •Tweezers •Bandage •Cold Pack •Scissors •Antibiotic ointment •Bandage tape Gauze pads (assorted sizes) Conforming bandage •Iodine •Latex gloves •Wash cloth Keep a pet friendly friend handy – During Hurricane Katrina, pets were not allowed into many shelters. Stay in touch with buddies who are pet friendly, who can keep and care for your pet temporarily during the period of the hurricane. When evacuating, keep a crate with the pet name and your own name and number on the crate. It is common for a pet to be separated from the owner and a crate can help you being reconnected with your pet. Hurricanes and storms need not be the end of the world for you. But, it can be so for your pet if you are not prepared. Remember, they depend upon you. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR PET BEHIND

Pet food – 2 week supply; don’t forget the manual can opener if you bring canned food Water – 2 week supply Pet bowls, leashes and/or harnesses, medications including heart worm and flea preventative Pet carriers, labeled with your contact information, pet identification folders, vaccination history including rabies license and tags and other medical history documentation Emergency contact numbers such as your veterinarian’s phone number List of pet-friendly hotels, shelters, and boarding facilities Maps with evacuation routes (Contraflow maps are available at Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Walmart locations) Pet toys, pet beds, and/or blankets Treats, litter box, litter, and scoop, dog-poop bags paper towels trash bags, flashlight, batteries and radio

Saidev, younger son of Udipi Cafe owners, Sangeeta & Satish Rao with Harry Rao, the ﬁrst pet rescued by Ramesh Anand www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

Sairaj, son of Udipi Cafe owners Sangeeta & Satish Rao with their two rescued adoptions - Rocky Rao & Harry Rao What you as a non-pet owner can do: During and immediately after a hurricane or storm, many pets are lost. Most pets are in a state of panic and anxiety. Do not approach them unless you have been trained and comfortable interacting with unknown pets. A few actions you can take: •If you are comfortable with the pet, try and get it into a safe place such as your garage or backyard. •Dry it and provide some food and water. •Take few pictures without its collar or any special markings. Post the pictures on social media without revealing specific information like color, sex, kind of collar etc. Similarly, create a flyer for a “found pet” with a picture and some basic contact information. Do not place the flyer outside your home but probably in the next lanes in your subdivision. The reason for avoiding too much information is to ensure that the pet does not fall in the wrong hands. •If possible, take the pet to a nearby vet or pet store and scan it for a microchip. You may find an extremely anxious owner, who may have lost many things in the hurricane but will bless you for having found his pet. •Call your local shelter and let them know the kind of pet that you found and that you are holding it for the owner or let them pick it up. •If you are not comfortable with unknown pets, take some pictures and contact your local shelter and let them know about the pet that is lost in your neighborhood. You can also text them a picture. I cannot emphasize enough number of times for all pet owners, at times of Hurricanes or Storms do not leave your pet

to fend for itself, the probability is extremely high that it will not make it out alive. A few animal shelter locations in the Greater Houston area BARC Animal Shelter – 3200 Carr Street, Houston (713) 229-7300 Harris County Animal Shelter 612 Canino Road, Houston (713) 999-3191 Houston Humane Society 14700 Almeida Road, Houston (713) 433-6421 Sugar Land Animal Shelter 101 Gillingham Lane, Sugar Land (281) 275-2364 Missouri City Animal Shelter 1919 Scanlin Road, Missouri City (281) 403-8707 Fort Bend County Animal Shelter 1210 Blume Road, Rosenberg (281) 342-1512 Rosenberg Animal Control 1207 Blume Road, Rosenberg (832) 595-3490

Ramesh Anand has worked in the headhunting profession for over thirty years. He is President of American Personnel Resources LLC. He may be contacted at ramesh@aprllc.com. He is also the President of Tysons Pals Rescue tysonspalsrescue@gmail.com

Asian Chamber of Commerce

Mayoral Forum

Associates of the Asian Chamber of Commerce with Houston mayoral candidates, sitting from left, Ben Hall, Bill King, Chris Bell and Marty McVey. Sheriff Adrian Garcia also attended the forum

BY MICHELLE LEIGH SMITH The Asian Chamber of Commerce and its strategic partners hosted its ﬁrst international business mayoral forum in June at the Asia Society Center of Texas. “We turned away attendees as we wanted to maintain the Chamber’s philosophy of engaging our presenters with our audience in providing them access to leaders in the community,” said Linda Toyota, president. “It gave many a ﬁrst chance to hear and learn about those running for this important position. It provided a close-up view of their personalities and what drives their purpose for running for office.” This link to the forum went worldwide, with the opening in Chinese but post-forum interviews are in English. http://www. newhana.com/home.php?mod=space&uid=224&do=blog&id=301 85#axzz3csp9l8kX Candidate Chris Bell, a Meyerland resident who served both on Houston City Council and in the U.S. Congress, says he thought dollars could be better spent on modernizing technology rather than on marketing slogans such as “Houston’s hot.” “Do we really need anyone to tell us that?” asked Bell. Former City Attorney Ben Hall said he studied in Germany and recently sent his 17-year-old son to China. “Before that, he was not drinking tea or trying to speak Mandarin every day as he is now,” said Hall. Former Kemah mayor Bill King said he thinks the permitting process should be streamlined to make Houston more business friendly and not cost new business owners a minimum of $5,000. Marty McVey wants to create a new economic development office, consolidating the city’s various international relations under one department overseen by the mayor, and highlighting Houston’s vibrant artistic and cultural communities. At present, there is a small office under Andy Icken at City Hall

with three people. San Antonio has 11 in their economic development office while Dallas has 17. Former Houston City councilman Peter Brown noted Atlanta has economic development offices in several European countries. “There are 480 Houston companies with offices abroad, in 144 countries,” McVey noted. Adrian Garcia said he improved international relations starting back in 1994 when he worked with the anti-gang task force, abating graffiti and he says he hired the ﬁrst Asian on the Harris County Sheriff’s team when he ﬁrst took office. One of the most targeted questions elicited answers about who new international residents wishing to open a business in Houston should call at City Hall. Now, many of the Asians turn to the chamber with questions, a job board and for advice on resources at (713) 782-7222 or www. www.asianchamber-hou.org Catherine Le, chair Asian Chamber; Gary Ilagan, chair, Philippine Chamber of Commerce Texas; Jerald Broussard, Australian American Chamber of Commerce Houston; David Kim, Korean American Chamber of Commerce; John Chen, Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce; Virginie Striebel, French American Chamber of Commerce; Co Chan, On Leong Chinese Merchant Association; Kenneth Li, Asian American Business Council; and Dawn Lin, Asian Real Estate Association of America Houston Chapter. Shams Rusli of the Malaysian Investment Development Authority, as well as new residents Fatima and Natasha Kazmi of Pakistan were also in attendance. Steve Moore, owner of the transformed Gardens of Bissonnet apartments at 7400 Bissonnet, said he was thrilled to hear such a positive focus on job and business creation for international residents. “They will be able to pay more rent,” joked Moore, who is installing a splash pad at the complex, a property that he’s completely cleaned up and renovated. He serves on the board of the Brays Oaks Management District.

Michelle Leigh Smith is a Houston based journalist. She is a graduate of Rice University and serves on the Executive Board for the University of Houston’s Friends of Women’s Studies, as Program Chairman of the Rice University Owen Wister Literary Society and on the 2015 Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo’s Lamb & Goat Junior Auction Committee www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

The

Mango Tree

BY ARCHANA LAXMISAN The rusty lanterns swung creakily in the breeze, groaning on the lower dry branches of the mango tree. It had rained earlier in the day, and the humidity hung heavily in the air in spite of the warm summer breeze. Anu walked in to the small compound, latching the iron gate behind her, lifting her saree carefully. With her other hand she clutched at the banana leaf, a makeshift receptacle for the prasadam- sandalwood paste, a small ripe banana and ﬂowers and a mixture of jaggery, dry rice ﬂakes and grated coconut, that she had reverently carried back from her trip to the temple. A strange sadness gripped her at the time, making her pause for a sec-

ond, looking around at the garden. Hibiscus flowers and bougainvillea vines brightened up the lush green garden. The kolam had not quite washed away, streaks of white mixed with earth near the small pedestal that housed a solitary tulsi plant. A lump formed in her throat and she rushed inside the old house, kicking off her sandals caked with drying mud. Today would be the day she left home. Her bags were already packed, and the house hummed with excitement. Her father was in the garage supervising the driver as he cleaned out the old car that would take her to the airport. Her mother was in the kitchen packing the delicious fried foods and fragrant spices that would disappear into her already crammed suitcases. Anu walked to the back of the house, exiting to the verandah where her grandmother sat, arthritic legs stretched out from underneath her, her quick but gnarled fingers expertly weaving flowers together for the evening pooja. Anu sat by her grandmother and thrust out her hand with the banana leaf, “Paatti, prasadam,” she said. Her grandmother, looked up, smiling softly, eyes twinkling behind dark-rimmed glasses much too big for her small wrinkled face. She took the proffered leaf and smeared the fragrant sandalwood paste on her forehead, taking a pinch of the dried rice mixture and placing it in her mouth. She then took a string of flowers from the leaf and beckoned Anu to turn around. As she did, her grandmother paused for a moment. Anu cocked her head to the side. Odd, her grandmother never strayed from their ritual. Anu would always go to the temple and return as she had with prasadam. Her grandmother would then always take flowers from the leaf and place them in her hair, gently pulling strands of braided hair around it to keep it in place. She would then push Anu off, clucking at her to go study before dusk arrived. Instead, this time, her grandmother started to comb her long curly hair with her fingers. Anu relaxed, her shoulders sinking backward, her breath deepening as her grandmother continued to

wordlessly braid her long hair, working the string of jasmine flowers in with the braid. When she was done, Anu’s paatti rested her hands on Anu’s shoulders. “You will be gone soon, chakkare,” addressing Anu by her nickname. Anu nodded. Tears welled up in her eyes, dropping silently from her bent head. She turned around to face her grandmother. Her grandmother smiled, but her eyes seemed suddenly sad and dark, as if some distant memory had eclipsed her usual mirth. Placing a finger under Anu’s chin, she said softly, “I will not see you again, my chakkare. Be brave, my little one. Your time has come. Things will get worse before they get better.” “Wha..!”, spluttered Anu, confused. “Anu, there you are! You are going to be late!” cried her mother, appearing at the doorway. “Go get dressed! Your dad is grumbling already,” she said, pulling Anu up by her elbow. Anu got up quickly, flustered. The prasadam fell off her lap, scattering flowers and rice flakes across the rough stone floor. She frowned, but her grandmother motioned her away, sweeping up the debris with her hands. “Hurry now, chakkare, don’t keep your dad waiting.” The driver honked the car horn outside, impatiently. Anu hurried. Later, she would wistfully come back to this moment. Wishing against hope that she had more time. So many words unsaid, so many questions unanswered. If only she had known. The car pulled away from the driveway, Anu turning around, straining against the glass window for a final look. Her mother stood at the gate, waving, and her grandmother stood by the door of the house. Her paatti had always seemed taller than she now looked, a fading figure, small and bent wrapped in her nine-yard saree. Anu

blinked away the easy tears, gazed at the road in front of the car, and willed herself to smile. These were happy circumstances, after all. She was on her way to join her new husband in New York, the land of new beginnings. They had been married only a few weeks, a whirlwind wedding set up by her parents. Her husband lived in NYC, and his father was a childhood friend of her father. When Anu had insisted on leaving to the US, having snuck an application for a Master’s degree to NYU and magically getting accepted, her parents had initially revolted. The thought of their only daughter living alone in a large alien city had alarmed them. But Anu was adamant, and her usually reticent grandmother had defended her. Her parents disagreed at first, but her father remembered that he had an old friend with a son in NYC. A few phone calls and a trip to the town astrologer later, he had announced that she could leave, but as long as she got married. Anu, unwilling but resigned, had reluctantly agreed. It was not unusual for marriages to happen as quickly as this in her little town, and many of her college classmates were already married. A few months later, her soon to be spouse had flown down to her little town. She was married the next day, her new husband flying back on her marriage night. He was a “successful” engineer, according to her father. She frowned at the memory. He was a handsome man, but had seemed cold and distant. They had barely talked, but her parents had brushed away her fears as inconsequential. Only her grandmother had listened, not saying a word. Anu wondered what her grandmother had meant earlier. Just as she began to recall her words, the car pulled in to the tiny airport. “Time to go, Anu,” her father said, his voice hoarse.

“Be good.” Anu stumbled out of the car. After hugging her dad, she followed the peon, who carried her luggage on his head and shoulders into the terminal. ***The Present*** Anu looked out at the verandah. Now, nearly twenty years later, everything had changed. The broad wooden beams were covered in dust, but the enclave still stood green and overgrown with weeds. Some people stopped and stared, taking in her bobbed curly grey hair, fair skin and jeans, a few snickering openly. New high-rises obscured the horizon. Music blared from the loudspeakers ﬁtted onto a car, that wound through the traffic. Anu’s mind wandered reluctantly back to her early days in NYC. She had arrived in late winter and the cold temperatures plagued her dearly. She was struck by the lack of color in NYC, a tall imposing city of grays and blacks. But most of all, she was unprepared for her new marriage. Her husband’s apartment was small, gray and dingy. Her husband was indeed, cold. He would only speak to her when he returned home drunk, and then he would only berate her for being ugly. He made fun of her nose-ring and her long braid. He laughed at her awkward English. He called her stupid and ignorant. Anu never complained, worried that her parents would not understand. Her husband stood over her when her parents called, never allowing her to talk for very long. Only her grandmother seemed to notice her absence of words. A few weeks after, her father called her, gently breaking to her the news of her grandmother’s death. She had passed away peacefully in her sleep, as quietly as she had lived. Anu had cried, inconsolable. Her husband had grabbed the phone from her in disgust. www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

That is when the nightmare really began. One particularly violent night soon afterwards, her husband grabbed her by her braid and chopped it off with a pair of kitchen shears, kicking her savagely as she collapsed on the floor. He raped and beat her until he tired himself out, to pass out drunkenly on the small bed. Anu picked herself up gingerly, stumbling to the small bathroom to examine her injuries under the flickering orange light. Blood streamed down her face and arm. Stifling her sobs so as to not wake her drunken husband, she gathered her coat and a bag into which she stuffed a few of her clothes and her now bloody braid. She then did the unthinkable. She walked out. Anu knocked on the neighbor’s door. An elderly couple lived there, with whom she had exchanged a few shy words. The old gentleman who answered the door, took her hand and her coat and wordlessly led her in. The police arrived a few minutes later. The next few months were a blur. Her husband turned out to be employed at a coffee shop, having lost his job because of his alcoholism. The social worker who worked with her was relieved that Anu still had a valid visa issued by NYU. The international office helped Anu find a job and student housing. The bruises healed eventually, but the most painful wounds had not been inflicted by her husband. When Anu had called her parents to tell them her story, they were at first silent. Then her mother sobbed as her father stated that she must have done something wrong. The groom they had selected for her was too good, too perfect. Their horoscopes had matched. He had come from a respected Brahmin family. Of course, he did not drink. She must be lying. When Anu protested, her father cut her off. She was told to go

back to her husband, like the good girl she was raised to be and not shame her family. She was asked to get pregnant, which would then increase her husband’s affections toward her. No daughter of his would be divorced. She might as well be dead to him. Anu did eventually get a divorce. And her father stopped speaking to her. Her mother would call her once every few months, often crying over the phone despite Anu’s insistence that she was doing well. Always a bright student, she had excelled in graduate school and landed a highly paid position with a ﬁnancial group soon after graduation and quickly rose in ranks to an executive position. Her hair remained short to remind her of her past, but was now cut into a stylish bob. She avoided “friends” who reminded her of her shameful “divorced” status. The few Indian men she had met treated her indifferently, often shying away from her when they learnt she was divorced. She remained shy and reserved in her personal life, unwilling to re-visit the ghosts of her past with a new relationship. But that had changed about ten years ago, when she had met Steve at a friend’s party. Steve was a kind, gentle giant of a man. Brought up in the old South, he opened doors for women, spoke with a warm rumble and had an easy toothy grin. In turn, Steve saw her as a sweet, brilliant, petite brunette with sad lovely eyes and a smile that made his heart dance. They were married a few months later, their small wedding attended by his family and a few of her friends. Her parents were conspicuously absent, her father having disavowed his sinful daughter who had further insulted him by re-marrying out of caste, to a white Protestant. “Not even a Hindu,” he would mutter to Anu’s mother. “Mom!”, a young boy called, shaking Anu out of reverie. “Look at

this place! Did you grow up here?” Anu looked fondly down at her charming son. Only eight years old, a bundle of energy and the apple of her eye, he had her dark curly hair and his father’s blue eyes. “Yes, Ethan. Do you like it?” “Like it? I love it!” Ethan announced, jumping off the verandah and racing away to the mango tree where the gardener was picking off ripe mangoes, with a fascinated Steve watching from below. The mango tree had not had a crop for the past twenty years, since she had left, Anu’s mom had said. “Your paatti had planted that tree the day you were born. Your father could not bear to cut it down.” Last week, she had received an unexpected phone call from her mother. Her father had been sick and the local doctors had given him only days to live. However, he had made a miraculous recovery and wished to see her and his grandson. Anu had taken the next ﬂight back home with Steve and Ethan in tow. “Anu, why don’t you cut up some mangoes for Ethan?” asked her father as he walked gingerly up to her on his cane. Placing his hand on her shoulder, he said, “They were always the sweetest, just like my little girl.” Anu smiled, those easy tears springing once again to her eyes. “Paatti told me that things would get worse before they get better, Appa,” Anu said softly. “I miss her. How did she know?” “She always knew such things. Your paatti was a very wise woman,” her father said, stopping as Ethan bounded up to them. “Taata, look!” Ethan said, holding up a ripe mango. Anu watched as her father indulgently took Ethan’s hand in his, cradling the golden fruit, as they walked towards the tree. Anu paused, watching them - young and old, Ethan’s soft pale hand in her father’s brown gnarly one. She smiled.

Archana Laxmisan is an aspiring writer who hopes to have more success with a word processor than the proverbial monkey. When not concocting stories in her head, she practices as a general internist in the greater Houston area. She is the current President and CEO of SoS (Share Our Secrets), a Houston-based organization based on lifelong development, personal and professional growth. http://www.shareoursecrets.org

The Extraordinary Story-telling Murals of Ramalinga Vilasam BY PROFESSOR ANNA L. DALLAPICCOLA Ramanathapuram, formerly known as Ramnad, lies 117 km southeast of Madurai, on the road to Rameswaram. This town rose to prominence in the late 17th century as the capital of the Setupatis, also known as Ramnad rajas, who began their careers in the early 1600s as feudatories of the Madurai Nayakas. They derived prestige and income from the control of the setu, the isthmus leading to Rameswaram island, hence the name Setupati, which means ‘the guardian of the isthmus’. During the course of the 18th century they were involved in the struggle against the British and the Nawabs of Arcot, but were defeated by the forces of the East India Company in 1772. Eventually, in 1792, Ramanathapuram surrendered, thereby bringing to an end the Setupati power. The Setupati palace was established by Kilavan Setupati (1674-1710), though little of this period survives. The Ramalinga Vilasam, on the north side of the palace complex, is its most interesting feature. It was constructed around 1700 to serve as the rulers’ audience hall, and this function is reﬂected in the

generous size of the building, as well as in its lavishly decorated interior. On entering the Ramalinga Vilasam, the visitor is transported into a vibrant world of color; superb murals cover, from ﬂoor to ceiling, the walls of all the four rooms of the building. The majority of the paintings bear explanatory captions in the Tamil language, and occasionally in Telugu. This extensive set of murals is of pivotal importance for the study of 18th century mural traditions and material culture in the extreme south of India. The artists had a keen eye for details of costumes, jewelry, headgears; they delighted in the representation of everyday objects such as bedsteads, vessels, fans, ﬂy-whisks, but above all, textiles. The sheer variety of textile patterns, which can be observed here bears testimony to the skill and inventiveness of the Indian weavers. The creation of these paintings is connected with the rule of Muthu Vijaya Raghunatha Setupati (1710-1725) whose name appears in two of the murals. It is possible that some of the paintings were executed before his rule and some after

his death. It is known that they have been repainted at regular intervals, as recorded in the diary of George Patterson who visited the Ramalinga Vilasam in 1773. He writes: ‘while we were there, black painters were busy repairing deficiencies in these voluptuous ornaments.’ Even today, water seepage during the monsoon is the main cause of damage; despite regular conservation work, especially during the past decade or so, some of the paintings have been irretrievably damaged if not totally lost. The ground floor is divided into three rooms of different sizes, the first hall being the largest, followed by the intermediate room, and the third, the audience hall, the smallest, located at the back. In the latter, a narrow staircase leads to the upper storey, in which there is one room, known as the ‘king’s bedroom’. From here, a staircase gives access to the roof terrace, the ‘king’s seat’, with a splendid view of the town and the surrounding countryside. In the front hall, measuring about 100 feet in length, 50 in width and 15 in height, the murals must be read from left to right. The first painting, on the southeast wall near the main entrance, is of crucial importance for dating the murals. It is an ambitious work depicting the battle waged in 1720 by the Setupati – identified by an inscription as Muthu Vijaya Raghunatha – against Sarfoji I, the Maratha ruler of Thanjavur. Proceeding further along the south wall, the Setupati, an imposing figure easily recognizable by its size and dark skin, is shown in a courtly setting, granting audience to local and foreign visitors, possibly French or Dutch. The last portion of this wall shows a number of important Shaiva temples in the region, which the Setupati visited as devotee and patron. The north wall of the first hall is occupied by the depiction of the avataras of Vishnu, of a sizeable number of Vaishnava holy places, the divyasthan-

ams, and by the second part of an extensive set of murals showing the life of Krishna. The first part of the Krishna story, from the beginning to the episode in which the god lifts Mount Govardhana to shelter the cowherds and the cattle, is laid out on the four walls of the intermediate room. Some of the paintings in the first hall and intermediate room are damaged. The walls of the audience hall, at the back of the building, are adorned with a detailed depiction of the Balakanda of the epic Ramayana. Here the artists found ample scope to dwell on the renderings of courtly pageantry and ceremonies. Unfortunately, here too, some of the scenes are either damaged or have totally disappeared, such as the weddings of the four princes and the large Ramapattabhisheka tableau at the centre of the west wall of the room. Yet another set of paintings is found along the undersides of the arches, which spring between the hall’s sixteen columns. A substantial number of the representations are inspired by the court life of the Setupati, such as the ruler receiving the scepter of the royal family by the family deity, Rajarajeshvari; listening to an exposition of the Ramayana; watching dance performances; amusing himself with the courtly ladies. One of these, unfortunately in a bad state of preservation, is of particular significance for dating of the murals. In this mural, the Madurai Nayaka adorns the seated Muthu Vijaya Raghunatha Setupati with gems (ratna pattabhisheka). The Tamil caption identifies the main characters as well as specifying the occasion, establishing thus that the paintings were executed around 1720. Yet another theme illustrated on the underside of the arches is the episode in which Krishna steals the parijata tree and brings it to earth to please Satyabhama, an episode very popular in eighteenth century dance and drama that oft appears in the present day repertoire.

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June/July 2015

As already mentioned, a narrow staircase leads from the audience hall to what is commonly known as the ‘king’s bedroom’ on the first floor of the building. Patterson describes this room in his diary as: ‘ornamented all round with numberless paintings on the walls, all of them representing amorous combats in a variety of most voluptuous attitudes…’ Needless to say, the British were particularly fascinated by it, because of the erotic nature of many of its thirty-six murals. Here, too, the paintings have to be read from left to right. The underlying theme of the painting is sensual enjoyment. In one of them, immediately above the stairs, the king enjoys a sumptuous meal served on a large plate surrounded by small cups filled with various vegetables and relishes. Other paintings, but to mention a few, depict the king watching a music and dance performance, going hunting accompanied by courtly ladies, in the intimate company of one, or more, of his queens, and celebrating the Vasantotsava, the spring festival, one of the most important celebrations in

the ritual calendar. Manmatha riding on an elephant, and Rati, mounted on a horse, have the features of the Setupati and one of his queens. This is not the only case in which a deity is given the physiognomy of the ruler. In this room, the Setupati is seen in the role of Krishna stealing the clothes of the queens who play the part of the gopis, and sporting with them in a lotus ﬁlled tank. There is no doubt that this extraordinary variety of murals, intended as a celebration of the power, wealth, and piety of Muthu Vijaya Raghunatha Setupati, would have had a strong impact on the very few and selected visitors to whom he granted audience such as ambassadors, local dignitaries, wealthy traders – giving them an impressive picture of his royal status. The same is true of today’s visitor; after visiting the Ramalinga Vilasam, one cannot fail to be awed by the Setupati’s ‘larger than life’ personality.

Professor Anna L. Dallapiccola has a Ph.D in Indian Art History, a Habilitation (D.Litt.) from University of Heidelberg, Germany. A former Professor of Indian Art at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University from 1971 to 1995, she was appointed Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University in 1991, and has regularly lectured at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. From 2000 to 2004 she was Visiting Professor at De Montfort University, Leicester. She, along with Drs. Michell and Fritz, participated in the Vijayanagara Research Project from 1984 to 2001 writing mainly on sculpture and iconography. Her Catalogue of South Indian Paintings in the collection of the British Museum has been published in May 2010 and the monograph The Great Platform at Vijayanagara in August 2010. Her Indian Painting: The Lesser Known Traditions, proceedings of an international conference held in Houston in 2008, was published in April 2011. She resides in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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Demystifying the Raga BY KANNIKS KANNIKESWARAN Every world culture chooses to deal with music on its own terms. Just we have the multi-part harmonic/polyphonic approach to music in the western world, the maqams of middleeastern music, and the polyrhythms of African music, we have a uniquely Indian approach to music that is based on the concept of ragas. The Indian way of life regards music as a means of spiritual liberation (moksha) and therefore grants an exalted status to this gandharva veda, or the art of the Gods. While western art music is all about the idea of functional harmony where much emphasis is placed on ensemble performances, Indian music is entirely about individual self expression. Over the centuries, western music has progressed in the direction of creating soundscapes blending the tone and timbre of a multitude of instruments playing their own parts in perfect synchronization under the baton of a conductor while Indian music has laid emphasis on exploring the depth of melodic intricacies at the microtonal level through the performance of ragas. Naturally, Indian music is independent of keys while western music always speciﬁes the key (e.g. C, A, etc.) in which a piece of music is to be played. Raga based music is unique to India, as it represents the shared commonality between what we perceive as the two divergent Indian Art forms of Karnatic music and Hindustani music. The word raga or ragam as it is known in South India takes on a multitude of meanings. In the most colloquial sense it just means a tune, or melody. When someone uses the term ‘nalla ragam’, they are complimenting a good tune. ‘Ragam’ also refers to an improvisatory free ﬂowing segment rendered in kucheris (concerts). ‘Raga’ also refers to a unique melodic

concept that distinguishes one form of melody from another. Karnatic music kucheris feature anywhere from eight to thirty ragas while Hindustani music (khyal and instrumental) concerts feature detailed renditions of just a handful of ragas. Dhrupad concerts sometimes feature as few as two ragas in a concert. Ragas are not only a purely-musical concept. Ancient ragas have personalities of their own. Ragas are relatable to moods and expressions. Thus there are ragas that convey happiness as well as pathos and anything in between. There are ragas for the monsoon and other seasons. Ragas are associated with the time of the day. Thus there are morning ragas, afternoon ragas, sandhya ragas and even midnight ragas. There are ragas that are even said to have the power to invoke the natural elements. It takes years of training for one to become an exponent of ragas; it however only takes a committed listening effort to become a connoisseur of ragas. In this day and age, with widespread access to concerts and recordings it is only a matter of interest that transforms a general listener to a raga aficionado. Let us take a look at some traditional definitions of a raga. The older definition of a raga is that it is a framework for improvisation defined by a collection of related melodies inspired by the archetypical melodic patterns. Take the raga Desh for example. The patriotic song Vande Mataram is composed in the raga Desh and is an archetypical Desh melody. So are the Tamil songs ‘Tunbam nergaiyil’ and Sindhu nadhiyin misai’. Songs that bring you the fragrance of the Indian earth fresh after the first monsoon shower. So does the passionate song Sarfarozi ki tamanna tuned by AR Rahman in the film Bhagat Singh. What is common to these compositions? It is the similarity in melodies that is instantly recognizable as Desh.

Similarly the stamp of the raga Kedar is felt in the Vasant Desai melody ‘Hamko manki shakti’ or in the Surdas bhajan ‘Darshan do ghanshyam’. Or take the song ‘Yaar taruvaar inthe ariyasanam’ which screams ‘Athana’ in every phrase as does the classical composition ‘Anupama gunammbudi’. The traditional definition above is based empirically on the performance aspect or the lakshya and it is immediately relevant to older ragas such as Malhaar, Navroz, Kurinji, Khamboji, Mohana (Bhupali), Bhairav and others that have been around for centuries. The 2nd half of the 2nd millennium CE saw a rise in attempt to classify and group ragas based on their lakshana or grammatical foundation. Such definitions require an understanding of the underlying framework of svaras or pitches. The constant drone of the sruti that you hear in any concert marks the tonal center of a performance. We refer to this position as sa. The fifth note or svara from this position is referred to as the panchamam or the pa. An octave spanning sa to sa includes five other svaras, ri, ga, ma, dha and ni with each of them exhibiting more than one flavor. The seven svaras are collectively referred to as the saptasvaras. The lakshana of a raga is defined by the svaras used in the raga, the sequence of svaras used in the ‘arohanam’ as one ascends an octave and the sequence of pitches used in the descent or the ‘avarohanam’. The lakshana also specifies the relative importance given to the various pitches. Thus, the raga is a set of melodic possibilities defined by the set of pitches used and their relationship to the tonal center ‘Sa’. The theoretical developments of the 17th century gave rise to the development of newer ragas such as Vagadisvari, Hamsadhwani, Latangi, Sarasangi and many more. Theoretically an infinite number of ragas are possible. In today’s Art Music world however, we have several hundred ragas in which compositions are rendered. Though not every theoretical possibility realized is considered pleasing to the ear. Ragas come to life in a Karnatic music setting through kritis written by composers, particularly by the triumvirate Tyagaraja, Dikshitar and Syama Sastri (1750 – 1850) collectively referred to as the trinity. They come to life in Hindustani

music through performances centered on khyals and gats (short compositions) in vocal and instrumental settings and through dhrupads. Ragas exist in practice. Theory helps understanding a raga. Theory paves way for the discovery of newer raga possibilities. New ragas have been brought forth in our lifetime by stalwarts such as Balamurali Krishna and the late sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar and have gained acceptance even during their lifetime. The test of a raga is its ability to weather the passage of time. The ragas of India have inspired film music as well. Early films were based on musical themes and early film music was based largely on ragas. Even later composers such as Naushad and modern composers like Illaiyaraja handled a multitude of ragas on their own terms in film music. Multiple Grammy and Oscar award-winning composer and musician A.R. Rahman, who effortlessly straddles a multitude of musical genres and soundscapes, has incorporated Karnatic and Hindustani ragas in his musical framework. So how does one get to appreciate ragas? It is through incessant listening and relating to compositions that one develops an intimate relationship with ragas.

Certain myths about ragas. Is every composition set to a raga? No. You can sing a melody without conforming to any raga. You can compose a musical piece without adhering to ragas. Does adherence to a raga make a melody superior? Adherence to a raga just shows the composer’s awareness of the raga. The superiority of a melody has little to do with its raga affiliation and everything to do with its ability to touch the listener. Can one understand ragas by studying the theory behind them. Theory alone doesn’t suffice. One can develop intimate familiarity with ragas by expanding their listening horizons.

Kanniks Kannikeswaran is a proliﬁc award-winning visionary musician, composer, music educator and writer with several recordings, productions and scores to his credit. Often referred to as ‘The Magical Musician from Madras’ Kanniks’ skill lies in his ability to create captivating music easily accessible to a broad audience base, blending complex features of diverse World Music forms. All of Kanniks’ projects are consistent with his vision of building community through the celebration of threads of commonality between diverse peoples and cultures. www.kanniks.com - http://www.shantichoir.org www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

How To Stimulate Your Child, Fill Their Summer Days, And Keep The Peace BY LOREN ALLARDYCE It’s that time of year again – that beautiful time of year where you as parents get to spend a seemingly endless summer entertaining your children – filling their empty days out of school, and trying to limit their television viewing and tablet playing hours. It used to be that summer was for riding bikes, playing by the creek and catching a fish here and there. Maybe you built a boxcar with your friends, climbed a tree, and sipped on slushies at a local youth baseball game, but those simple days of country living don’t seem to exist anymore. What is out there to keep your children occupied, stimulate them, but won’t break the bank? I did some grass roots research with some clever moms and they gave me some amazing ideas! Reading. Yep. The timeless activity of reading! As you read this magazine, what is being described to you is possibly information that you already know – reading improves your smarts. But did you also know that reading reduces stress and gives one a greater sense of composure and tranquility? And along with those smarts is a more inquisitive and logical individual with a greater vocabulary. Reading for at least twenty minutes a day is the minimum that your child’s teacher will suggest during those off-school months and the benefits exceed intelligence and a greater vocabulary – it also helps those kiddos prioritize their time, set goals and improve their writing skills. Keep in mind that reading to your child does not have to stop once they learn how to read. Listening to another person read also improves one’s reading skills, at any age. It might just be worth it to push a little harder, fight the fight, and make reading a priority throughout summer. And imagine – twenty minutes

of quiet time for mom and dad? Jeez, you just might get a book read yourself! Make a kid-friendly bucket list. This idea was hijacked from a very creative mom whom I greatly admire. We seem to associate bucket lists with individuals as they age or as an illness has set in. A bucket list is also suitable for children and is not only a way for the child to creatively and imaginatively think of activities that they would like to do over their summer break, but it also sets goals and promotes achievement. For example, one might create a bucket list such as this: •Play golf •Tie-Dye T-shirts •Go on a hike •Bake cookies •Cook a full dinner for the family (with or without assistance) •Have a water-balloon ﬁght •Build a campﬁre and roast Smores •Fly a kite •Discuss diversity with brown and white eggs – discuss how they are the same inside •Go camping •Call a friend for a play-date •Make a popsicle stick puzzle or a statue •Make dinner for grandma and grandpa and take it to their home •Go to the library and explore

•Get a haircut •Do a science experiment •Make rock candy •Make dinosaur fossils using play dough and dinosaur characters •Build a model train or car •Play a board game •Play a card game •Make a driveway mural with colored chalk •Complete a puzzle – this can last for weeks – do a little bit each day •Use glow sticks in the bathtub •Get a library card with the child’s name on it •Build a pretend business – make business cards, use monopoly money. Discuss development and hard work. •Have a sleepover and let the child plan the activities and menu •Catch insects •Take a bike ride •Pick fruit at an orchard •Visit a farm Creating the child’s customized bucket list is a parentchild activity list that will last all summer – and the likelihood of completing your list is slim, therefore leaving some activities for next summer or for holiday breaks. The list is something to build together and it not only generates excitement, but a sense of accomplishment once completed. Another way to present daily activities might come in the form of BINGO. Pre-make BINGO cards with a daily activity. Daily activities might include: •Walking around your neighborhood and counting all of the animals that you hear and see. •Count the windows in your house •Go to a museum •Build a sandcastle

•Write a short story •Take cookies to a neighbor •Write a note to grandma, grandpa or another family member, address it and send it in the mail BINGO prizes should be personal and include favorites for the child. Maybe the child gets to choose the restaurant where the family will dine or they get an extra half hour of free time and can choose what they would like to do with it. Game charts can also include daily chores. Make a chore chart with daily responsibilities such as making the bed, putting the dishes away, taking out the trash, rinsing out the bathroom sink, and caring for a pet. The child should also take part in creating this card, which will in turn, give them a sense of ownership. The age old war of to reward or not to reward for chores will go on forever, but if this is a daily battle for you as a parent, rewarding might be a necessary and beneﬁcial step toward making this a natural habit for the child. The rewards can be as simple as a token received for completion that the child saves and once they meet a speciﬁed amount, they can choose a prize, such as staying up late, going to a movie or having an extra hour watching television or playing a computer game. Keep a schedule and a routine for the whole family. Routines and structure allow children to feel a sense of security and it teaches self-discipline. During these summer months, planning activities and keeping a routine will help your child stay focused, keep the enthusiasm, and stimulate those brain cells. For the working parent, these ideas may seem out of reach. But, it is possible to accomplish something of this nature as day-off activities or evening activities. Customize the list – individualize it to meet your family’s schedule and needs. A daily activity may not be something that is feasible for your family, but you can always schedule activities for weekends or days off, thus creating even more anticipation to meet goals, be creative and complete tasks. It is amazing what results come when one actually is part of the creation process for activities, chores and goals. Your child might end up loving the activity they once despised.

Originally hailing from Indiana, Loren Allardyce has a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from Ball State University and a Master of the Arts in Voice Performance from the University of Michigan. Since moving to Houston in 2003, she has worked for the Original Carrabba’s and currently works in the home office as the Assistant to the Director of Operations. Loren is married and has two children, Aila (4), and James (2). lorenallardyce@gmail.com www.hummagazine.com

June/July 2015

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Summer Haute Tips

Preventive steps for sun and chlorine damage to hair BY MICHAEL DEMARSE

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Summer is here and the swimming and outdoor activities are great but hard on hair color and condition. Here are a few tips and tricks I would love to share with you. Chlorine is the one of the biggest damaging effects to hair and hair color. Chlorine acts like glass when it attaches itself to the hair. This glass like property explains the over shiny hair noticed with regular swimmers. You can actually hear it crunch when cutting with professional scissors. The tangles are almost impossible to remove. Careful examination shows most with a brassy tone due to color fading even from natural hair. Sun strips hair color out of natural hair let alone artiﬁcially colored hair. Always cover your hair when outside with hat, scarves etc. My new clear conditioning treatment helps reduce fading by

up to 50% and adds more body and shine to ﬁne hair. Another trick I have used over the years is to apply conditioner to the hair before you go swimming and using a swimming cap too. The tendency is the chlorine will attach itself to the conditioner or at least be partially blocked from entering the hair. Most public pools use several times the recommended strength of chlorine to kill bacteria. Use a chlorine removing shampoo and conditioner is highly recommended. Neutrogena is good for store bought brands; Aveda is great for salon version. Due to the amount of chlorine in public pools highlighted hair can turn to a greenish cast. To cover your hair as often as possible and soak with conditioner will help reduce sun damage, fading and chlorine buildup. Always consult a professional.

Michael DeMarse has over 36 years experience as an image consultant. He has been on countless Television and Radio shows, featured in International Magazines Author, speaker, educator and innovator of Tri-Color(C) highlighting technique, Instant Glamour(R) the 5 Minute Makeover and French Layering cutting technique. He is the stylist to models, actresses and socialites. He is one of the few total makeover artist in the world. Michael is involved with over one dozen charities here in Houston. His number one motto is “When you look good, you feel great and when you feel great, you can accomplish anything your heart desires.” For a personal appoint with Michael DeMarse call (281)- 222- 3062 - www.instantglam.com

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