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'Kathaa: Folklore From India' At Charter Oak Cultural Center

Blissed-out, ecstatic union with our divine selves — we seek it at raves and rock concerts, and in the desert with the Burning Man. I try to get there when I’m jamming with my band — but I didn’t realize until I wrote The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu how much this longing relates to West African spirituality, and the Voodoo concept of possession.

Vodou (the proper Kreyol/Creole spelling of Voodoo) is a neo-African religion that evolved in the New World from the 6000-year-old West African religion Vodun. This was the religion of many slaves brought from West Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean.

Vodun was brutally repressed by slave-owners, yet its powerful beats, ethics and aesthetics endured. We owe our concepts of cool, soul and rock and roll to it.

The roots of rock are in a West African word for dance — rak. As Michael Ventura wrote in his important essay on rock music, “Hear that Long Snake Moan”:

Vodou possession is not the hokey demon-possession of zombie movies; it’s a state of union with the divine achieved through drumming, dancing and singing. It’s becoming “filled with the Holy Ghost” in the Pentecostal Christian tradition or attaining yogic bliss through the practice of kirtan, singing the names of God — Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.

In the Yoruba culture of West Africa, being able to connect with one’s inner divinity is called coolness (itutu). In Yoruba morality, generosity indicates coolness and is the highest quality a person can exhibit. In American culture, we say that nice person is cool, or that a musician “has got soul.” We notice “Southern hospitality.”

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade carried these ideas to the New World, particularly as slavers burrowed inward from Senegambia on the West African coast to the Kingdom of Dahomey, a Vodun stronghold.

Dahomey spread across much of today’s Togo, Benin and Nigeria and was heavily involved in the slave trade. Vodun practitioners were shipped overseas by the thousands when the Fon people of Benin conquered their neighbors, the Ewe, in 1729. Many Fon were also kidnapped and traded into slavery in exchange for textiles, weapons, brass pots, Venetian beads and other European goods.

Vodun is a Fon-Ewe word meaning God or Great Spirit. This supreme creator was represented as the giant snake Dan carrying the universe in its coils. Today, in Haiti and American Vodou strongholds like New Orleans, Dan is worshiped as Damballah, the Grand Zombie (the Bantu word nzambi means God). He’s John Lee Hooker’s “Crawling Kingsnake”.

Branching off from this almighty God-force are spirit-gods called loa. During Vodou ceremonies, a loa may descend the center post of the temple to possess or “ride” a worshiper who has reached a sufficiently high state of consciousness. The morality implicit in this is stated in the Haitian proverb, “Great gods cannot ride little horses.”

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Debra Devi: I'm a Slave 4 That Voodoo That U Do

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Delhi: Iskcon temple priest booked for sodomy

Recommended reading, available online:

“Hearing loss linked to 3-fold risk of falling.” American Association for the Advancement of Science, Feb. 27, 2012.

Hearing loss a hidden — and correctable — problem for seniors by Anita Creamer. Sacramento Bee, April 16, 2012.

Evelyn Glennies Hearing essay, 1993. Glennie is a 47-year old Scottish virtuoso percussionist, the first full-time solo percussionist in 20th-century western society. She has been profoundly deaf since age 12.

“Geriatrician-managed program reduces falls and fractures,” by Jim

Kling (Medscape Medical News, May 9, 2012).

A hearing aid that cuts out all the clatter. John Tierney, New York Times,

October 23, 2011.

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SENIOR POWER: Gerontology 101: Now Hear This

New York, May 7 : Internationally distinguished haute couture designer Mandali Mendrilla is dedicating her newest atelier collection Slave2Love (S2L) to her husband who died in a car accident in January.

Croatian born New York (USA) based stylist, designer and artist Mandali, who has several award winning collections to her credit, was working on S2L when an auto accident took the life of her husband Elisha Nitai Drury, 31; who was an artist, visionary, director of the Krishna Kitchen and founder of non-profit Food for Life Experience.

Mandali says that S2L is an expression of the fragile nature of the human form versus the eternality of indwelling spirit.

Inspired by Chuang Tzi’s butterfly metempsychosis and the eternal wisdom of the ancient scripture Bhagavad-Gita, the fluttering organic hand painted cloth expresses a longing for attainment of undying worlds within, she adds about S2L.

This new collection, which was originally scheduled to be premiered at the Fall/Winter 2012 Fashion Week, was instead silently launched on her website www.mendrilla.com on her late husbands birthday, April 29, and is now available for viewing as art.

Meanwhile, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) Monday, applauded Mandali for exploring ancient Hindu civilizations and reinventing ancient Indian dressing codes and artistic traditions for her collections and getting inspiration from Sanskrit epics.

Mandali Mendrilla points out that she has dedicated her artistic abilities to the pursuit of truth and beauty.

She thinks that humans can use clothes to help communicate, explore, enhance and discover their inner selves rather than consider dressing as an external act.

She has already exhibited her work in Italy, Croatia, Germany, USA, India and United Kingdom.

Keeping with the spirit of her dedication, Mandali will not exhibit for the remainder of 2012 but will serve blessed vegan food in her husband’s legacy project Krishna Kitchen. (IBNS)

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Mendrilla dedicates new collection to late husband

Yoga all in a twist By Neeta Lal

NEW DELHI – A spate of unsavory controversies in the United States is cracking up yoga’s wholesome image, with accusations of financial fraud, sexual misconduct and copyright issues involving asanas (positions) plaguing the community.

As a result, India, the land where the physical, mental and spiritual discipline of yoga began in ancient times, is truly getting itself into a twist.

The intensifying debates around yoga seem all the more pertinent considering the staggering reach of the discipline and the exponentially growing business around it.

An estimated 16 million Americans practice yoga, which generates, according to the Yoga Journal, US$5.7 billion annually in class fees, books and video sales, sale of mats and other

accessories. There are about 100,000 yoga instructors in the US, while an unofficial estimate puts the number of teachers in India at 175,000.

Often, it is the issue of “ownership” or copyright/trademark over a particular system of yoga that is the bone of contention. This is because apart from a spectrum of yogas – Hatha yoga, Tantra yoga, Ashtanga yoga or Hot yoga, to name a few – the practice has mutated into countless sub-strands that are being embraced by millions across the world.

This has resulted in many yoga studios and instructors claiming copyright to their “style”. By 2008, the US Patent and Trademark Office had issued 150 yoga-related copyrights and 2,315 yoga trademarks.

The most recent case involves Bikram Chowdhary, founder of the “hot yoga” school known as Bikram Yoga, who has copyrighted a sequence of poses in the US and licensed these to teachers.

Trouble began when the Bikram Yoga Studio in New York – which offers hugely popular $25 sessions for workouts in 105-degree heat – received competition from a nearby studio (Yoga to the People) that started tagging its “traditional Hot yoga” package in 103-degree heat at just $8. This resulted in a “yoga war”, or a legal battle between two yoga studios.

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Yoga all in a twist

Free food programme for attendants of in-patients will be launched at Gandhi and Osmania hospitals soon

From now on, everyday, piping hot lunch cooked in the state-of-the-art kitchen of at Patancheru will be served to the attendants of patients at Niloufer Hospital.

On a daily basis, close to 1,000 new cases get admitted to the hospital. Now, the attendants of these patients will be able to relish the clean and nutritious food without having to worry about shelling hard earned cash for it.

This is not all. Very soon, Bhojanamrita’ free food programme, launched at Niloufer Hospital on Sunday, will be introduced at Gandhi and Osmania General Hospitals. Everyday, attendants, who can hardly afford to buy food once in a day, will be provided free lunch.

Kitchen at Patancheru

The unique programme, taken up by Hare Krishna Movement (HKM), Hyderabad, an ISKCON, Bangalore initiative, was launched by Minister for Civil Supplies, D. Sridhar Babu. The HKM collaborating with city-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd. (MEIL) to make it possible to supply quality lunch to 1,000 attendants daily.

While MEIL will provide financial support for one-year, the actual preparation of food will be carried out at the hi-tech kitchen managed by HKM at Patancheru. The kitchen is already being used to prepare food under the midday meal scheme for 40,000 children in the capital and the nearby Medak district.

This initiative was possible because of MEIL and the State government. In few months, we will launch a similar programme at Gandhi Hospital and OGH. Already, we are feeding 250 in-patients at Basavatarakam Indo-American Cancer Hospital, said president, HKM, Hyderabad, Satya Gaura Chandra Dasa.

Additional beds

Civil Supplies Minister Sridhar Babu after inaugurating Bhojanamrita’, lauded ISKCON for taking up the initiative. Hopefully you would be able to implement programme in all tertiary government hospitals. By November, we also hope that 450 additional beds will be added to Niloufer hospital when the construction of the new building will be finished, he said.

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‘Bhojanamrita' to feed 1,000 persons at Niloufer daily

Kareena Kapoor is seen as a ‘gao ki gori’ in a latest Heroine still. Here’s a look at the actress shooting for Madhur Bhandarkar’s film.

The two will reportedly be seen playing brother-sister on screen. This unison of the two top actors of

Zoya has been busy with the script of the film for some time now and only recently managed to convince Ranbir and Kareena to portray the lead roles, reported Mumbai Mirror.

“Both Ranbir and Kareena were always aware that they couldn’t pair romantically for any film. So for them to come together for any project, it needed to have an extraordinary script. Zoya narrated the idea to Kareena while she was shooting for Talaash. Kareena immediately loved it. Ranbir too has given it his consent. The film will now go on floors by the end of this year,” a source told the tabloid.

This idea has been explored in the past too. Zeenat Aman-Dev Anand in Hare Rama Hare Krishna and Shah Rukh Khan-Aishwarya Rai in Josh are some of the examples. “Zoya will be reviving the brother-sister relationship genre. And she has now managed to cast real life siblings Ranbir and Kareena for it,” the tabloid quoted the source as saying.

Post the success of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, expectations are sky high from the Akhtar girl.

Kareena-Ranbir in a conversation.

Follow @htShowbiz

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Puerto Rican poet Jack Agueros, who is being conferred with Asan World Prize 2012 on Saturday, is recognised in Latin American literature as a man of versatile talent. His son Marcel Agueros and daughter Natalia Agueros, who have arrived in Thiruvananthapuram to receive the award on his behalf, talks to Sangeetha Unnithan about their illustrious father.

Jack Agueros remained an active figure in modern Latin American literature until eight years ago when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s’ Disease. Because of his illness, the 78-year-old poet will not be able to make it to the award function. Known for his evocative sonnets that reflect the social conflicts and complexities of modern life, Mr. Agueros is also a well-known activist and administrator, who has remained a vocal critic of the Americanisation’ of his country.

His son Marcel is an assistant professor in Astrophysics at Columbia University, New York, while his sister Natalia is a student of Environmental Technology at the university.

It is really extraordinary and unbelievable that we would come down to the God’s Own Country to receive an award on behalf of our father. But after reading Kumaran Asan’s poetry, we have discovered that there are a lot of parallels in the two poets’ works. We wish our father could come along with us, the duo said.

According to Natalia, it is the concern for social inequalities and social exploitation expressed in their works that has connected their father with the Malayalam poet.

Our father has been an unequivocal critic of American colonisation in Puerto Rico, which is currently an unincorporated territory of the United States of America. There are debates over whether becoming a part of the super power would be good or bad for Puerto Rico. But our family, and especially our father, has always been in support for the independence of the country, she said.

The siblings said that although their father has won numerous awards, he has never won a national literary prize, possibly because of his unabashedly political poems. Many of them deal with the issue of imperialism and the resulting erosion of cultural identity.

Some of his acclaimed works include Dominoes & Other Stories from the Puerto Rican’ (1993), Sonnets from the Puerto Rican’ (1996), and Lord, Is This a Psalm?’ (2002)

They said that even as the U.S. presses for integration of Puerto Rico, Latino art, literature, and culture are kept separate from Anglo or African-American literature even today.

Speaking about Mr. Agueros’ association with Indian literature, Mr. Marcel said his father was familiar with Indian classical literature such as the Bhagavad Gita and the works of Rabindranath Tagore. However, he has never been to India. He would have loved it to be here today, he said.

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Blurring boundaries, their poems lash out at injustice

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