Vedasri Siddamsetty

Bhutan is a country steeped in values, with a beautiful cascade of mountains, this Himalayan kingdom displays ideals as lofty as the mighty mountains that they are envelopes by. Equally stoic, calm and composed is our travelista who slays it in the Indian courts as she does on this exquisite solo trip that presented to her experiences like no other and had her literally transformed. When the King of Bhutan introduced for its people the metric of gross national happiness that world noticed this beautiful country, it did turn a few heads, but did you know that the constitution of Bhutan mandates the country to maintain a green cover percentage of 75 percent. Imagine something so environmentally conscious listed in a national document that too stunning with its specific nature. The people of Bhutan are extremely friendly keeping people grounded with closeness to nature. Fast may be a word that isn’t listed in their dictionary but think of a daily soap that actually describes man’s reaction to nature than the usual nature of soaps that define interpersonal relationships! What I personally loved about Bhutan this lovely dame tried to bring back to India after an 8-day trip, pure clean delicious air! From trekking to the Tigers nest Monastery, to living like a local, from capturing the essence of the national dress, to spending time in the Bhutan courts, Sravya Katta does it all, an in true Bhutanese style, slowly without an underlying agenda!

The essence of stoicism is in being un-flustered irrespective of the turn of the wind. Sravya Katta, an advocate, adventurist and travel junkie does her travels in groups or solo but travel she does. In this episode she gives us a dekho into the delicate land of Bhutan where the environment is greater then the king and quite rightly so. She’s captured the essence of the country in being transformed by its simplicity and alacrity. Living like a local, taking the less taken path can sometimes make all the difference. Listen in before you take that trip to this Himalayan kingdom that is lofty and grounded at the same time or be inspired to set sail on a solo adventure just like Sravya!

Follow the link!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2BONQQyYPI7zP6O9EdURTM?si=uGaIboXWR2e24ofxHBtzsA

Alright and the Queen dies so God Bless the King and in all its mighty history it’s time that King Charles does finally what ought to be done during India’s independence. Yes, return the Kohinoor and probably a mighty of the other loot that was taken from the country. It could be gesture of gaiety and wonder that could set diplomacy ties into a flurry. Britain was never India’s aide, from the east India company to the 200 year period of rule that followed India was looted at best and broken at worse. The partition may have not been necessary at all.

But coming back to the Kohinoor, a diamond mined from the Deccan Plateau during the Kakatiya dynasty between the 12-14th century is is about 793 carats uncut. From the Kakatiya dynasty it is said to have reached the hands of the Mughals, the Persians and the Afghans. The Sikh maharaja Ranjit Singh brought it back to the climes of India after having bought it. It was during the annexation of Punjab forcibly that it reached the hands of the East India company who snatched it from the 10-year old king Dunjeep Singh. The company then probably forcibly handed the diamond to the Queen, on whose Queen Mothers crown it sat on over the many years that followed.

While Elizabeth the II’s largest claim to fame may have been keeping the monarchy relevant, in turn the crown relevant, the royal family of England is today mostly a sentiment. And with that sentiment alone I believe it’s their imperative duty to return visible signs of plunder and loot rather than adorning them in the crown. As Britain ushers in new eras, modifying the roles of the royals, it’s time they modify the crown too. Why the palace rooms have been refurbished many times over just as the Crown Jewels have been rotated. The Church of England too has been quite lenient when it comes to the personal lives of the royals. Why even the Princes and Princesses are given privacy and allowed to wear jeans, the women aren’t corseted anymore.

While there have been different Kings and Queens in the past, all bringing their uncharacteristic doom or glory, it’s their vivacity to adapt that still has over a million viewers watching their personal events whether them be weddings or funerals. They could remain the heads of their states but nothing that belie the fact that the United Kingdom is a democracy. Wearing stolen jewels could only spring bad luck, one must never underestimate the power of gemstones, in India there is a whole industry based on altering one’s stars by the generous use of gemstones. As Liz Truss helms modern day England, King Charles and Queen-consort Camilla begin their crowned roles, Prince William and Princess Kate dote on their kids in a park, Harry and Meghan return to their chores, it’s time the Brexit star mends a few of their wrongs and that can start with a #returnthekohinoor among other things.

Project Data Type: Naresh & Bhavna Residence

Location: Bangalore, India

Area: 3200 sft

Year: 2022

Photographs: Self

Designed with a keen eye for detail, this “Eccentric Minimalist” home for four, a couple and their two lovely daughters, captures the essence of beauty in its every nook and corner. Custom-made cabinetry swathe the walls while sculptural partitions make for a duality of space. The entrance to the home is flanked by a swanky wall-paper, in cheery welcome and opens up to the living room. The living room, with its concrete and metallic feature wall, is closely curated with elements of color and plants, to frame the cabinetry that is inspired by the gardens of yore. The metal frame cabinets in clear proportions play canvas to the families curio collection that comes down several decades. The living area opens into a green balcony that brings in perfect westward light all through the day. Designed circular light fixtures frame the ceiling and wash the wall with a medley of ambient and focused light. The Pooja cabinet looks into the eastern part of the living room. It is framed by a golden frame and is designed to hold the family Gods apart from the bells and the lamps that are lit everyday. The open kitchen is flanked by a utility area and the dining room. The dining table is a sculpture in its own right with a resin art and solid wood top and a metal brass bottom. The resin art table is an ode to the beauty of the universe. The commissioned art piece is designed to artistically interpret the universe.

The metal frame concept from the living room, is carried into the kitchen and then the dining as the open metal shelves punctuate the boxy cabinetry that is essential for storage in a home. The break in syntax is entirely flourished with a subtle interplay of color in the laminate. The dining area is further highlighted with a peppy yet subdued wall paper, some funky graphics that echo with the sentiment of the owner and a blast of accessories that are both calming and inspiring. The plant in the cabinet is then just absolutely earthing. The girls bedrooms pay special attention to the study area making the study units a place of wonder. In one of the initial briefs the client mentioned how his daughters, the girls would not study if they didn’t have to, and it would like to pack in book shelves or a study that would inspire study! With that brief in mind, and my love for studying in general, we worked on bringing in as much life into the study areas. While one room takes to the power of linearity, the other room leans into the power of symmetry. The color scheme of one room leans into the calming blues, purple and pink, the other hinges on the background of light turquoise and mauve against the grainy textures of wood. The master bedroom is both stylish and suave in its own right. With deep rich colors delighting the walls, the deep wooden smoked chestnut furniture crackles the space just as a golden line streaks across the headboard wall vertically. Every bed is designed to fit into the vocabulary of the room specifically. The master bedroom looks out to a terrific sunset as we hope the sun never sets in the home of these glorious people!

The language of this design in Interiors is Eccentric and is Minimalist to a large extent, doing away with the unnecessary but showcasing the essential very happily. It speaks a design language that is quite aspirational yet deeply rooted to the climes it is set in. The beauty of it keenly inspires in the dweller a feeling of joy, of sheer joy. Happiness is an important by-product of Eccentric Minimalism, the ratio and proportions of which mostly inspires. With a touch of class, a vibe that turns on the bass, accessories having a blast, the home hopes to play host to memories that last!

I didn’t know that I had it in me. I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t know it could be life-changing. I didn’t know it could have far reaching consequences. No I did not yet win the Nobel prize. For my life to change I literally didn’t have to travel the world, or have certain beings out of my life, I just had to delete three social media giants and battery draining (both my phone and mine) super houses from my phone and my life – Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And that was quite a revelation. Quite done with Insta filters I installed a couple of filters of my own!

And then, for a month or so I managed to yearn to know what everyone was up to. In the next month I still had some level of interest to know, for after all knowledge is power. Finally in the third month it’s not knowing that keeps me going, in fact when someone speaks these days I actually listen cause most of my information now comes literary from the word of the mouth, or newspapers and podcasts, again word of mouth. And my that one filter itself, a lot useless information stopped coming my way, those include irresistible offers and crazy products pedalled by influencers that now I know nothing of.

With that empty mind space, I have no clue about what my dear friends and dearer acquaintances have been up to, what they’ve been eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner, what they’ve been wearing as ootd and what milestones they or their kids have been crossing. That feels like I am a tad left out, in fact my Instagram page that I had happily been updating my recent work (as an architect, that was quite useful) has now halted, but I have moved my portfolio building offline and sometimes through a video on YouTube. I have begun doing a podcast on Spotify and would love for you to hear, but apart from that it has indeed been a lot of mindspace to get my stuff done in the day to day.

In all that going, I have terribly missed news from Insta but have found newspapers carrying stories, citing sources as Instagram! Looks like people have been simply become their own broadcasters and Instagram is the touted press conference. So easy then to build one’s own brand. While I have not been influenced by the gram lately I have been influenced by books, real people and events in and around the city. I haven’t yet gotten back to myself just yet I must say, though in this time I have discovered 3 grey hair on my head. Now I don’t know if it were always there and I hadn’t noticed or they sprung up now with the anxiety of not being on the gram and hence not knowing the happenings!!

Being the least informed person may have its ups, while we aren’t cramming the brain with information the brain gets a breather to make connections and hence get creative. Going by my painting output in the last three months, there have been creative juices flowing rather bountifully. In my six month challenge, given by my Dad, to stay off social media I am safely halfway through, and even with all the platinum blond flyaways quite comfortable and leaning towards keeping it this way for life!

Anti-social media = fully social personality ?

P.s this blog is still marketed by a tweet, just have not got to disabling the feature just yet. That is social media harakiri and would take a lot more of courage! Besides WordPress, YouTube and Spotify seem to have become my go-tos leaving images for my personal filing!

The blessed don’t claim to be blessed

The wealthy don’t claim to be wealthy

The beautiful don’t claim to be beautiful

The talented don’t claim to be talented

The stylish don’t claim to be stylish

The fit don’t claim to be fit

The intelligent don’t claim to be intelligent

The happy don’t claim to be happy

The sensible don’t claim to be sensible

The wise don’t claim to be wise

The well-read don’t claim to be well-read

The lucky don’t claim to be lucky

For more you know, you know

There is a lot more to know

And therein lies the paradox of life

The most recent book I read by Shwetabh Gangwar, tries to articulate the insane benefits and affirming knowledge of knowing “How to think” rather than “What to think”.

The Rudest book ever is actually not a rude book, but rather an honest account of what actually works in life. “Know thyself” is the premise of the book and the author champions the reader to actually know themselves and thus do away with a host of unnecessary thoughts pertaining to ego, jealousy, comparisons, desires and complications entailed in keeping up with the Jonases. When one knows oneself and well that too, then what others do or how the world functions may not be of concern. In that Gangwar asks the reader to limit external influences and to understand and be intelligent about analysing the perceptions obtained in life. But the most important thing is to know what to make of life based on one’s own individuality.

And those thoughts quite echo with what the Buddhist students are taught at the end of their study of Buddhism. While different opinions or stances are good to know what is most crucial is to give up the crutch of a guru. A good master does not make the student dependent on him, a good master empowers the student to think for themselves and in that lies all the difference. All desire causes suffering and life is full of suffering so we might as well suffer for the things we’d actually like at the end of the day!

Is it just me or is the world spinning faster these days?! As I run from pillar to post, or rather tree to tree, I can feel the universe, or at other times it’s just my 4 year old, making me wait it out and jeez that’s quite a feeling. Just like I keep my son waiting sometimes deliberately, just cause research saying getting bored or impatient is a great in fact the best way to get creative and be creative. That and then walking and meditating. I am told there is literally nothing better to open up the mind than to take it out for a nice long walk. Mind wandering is a real thing. It is an act of suggesting a topic to the brain and then taking it out on a long walk where the mind wanders as you do, to connect dots and bring things up. For people who don’t get around to meditating, this is a wonderful alternative.

What does one do while one is waiting then? One breathes and that brings me to the book I am currently reading, Breath written by James Nestor. Breathing is a rather natural phenomena and we all do it involuntarily, but sometimes we mind our breath and do it voluntarily. Here’s the thing when we do it voluntarily and modify the we breathe we can modify the way we feel and the body parts coaxing them to even healing. As when we are agitated the breathing pattern changes involuntarily we can even change the way we breathe and will ourselves into another level of agitation altogether. This isn’t news exacting and anyone with a little knowledge of yoga would be aware of how wonderful breathing exercises of Pranayama makes us feel. So elaborating on a serie of experiments, Nestor convinces the reader to one, breathe from the nose, the advice he precisely gives is SHUT YOUR MOUTH, in caps, two, to exhale completely, the advice he gives is to not let any residue air remain before breathing in again, three to breathe slowly taking in about 6 breaths per minute ideally or 13500 breaths per day as the ancient Chinese doctors prescribed or even levering up to 9 breaths per minute as the Tibetan monks do, four, to breathe even lesser air in those six breathes, he says one must sip the air through the nose and exhale atleast twice if not more the time taken to inhale, breathing less means to extend the length of time between inhalations and exhalations, the less one breathes, the more one absorbs the warming touch of respiratory efficiency. The next most crucial aspect of ensuing open airways, unconjested nose and windpipe is controlled through the act of chewing!

Did you know?

The lungs are the weight-balancing organ of the body. And all the fat that we lose is actually exhaled through the nose. The calories burnt as we colloquially say are actually calories exhaled, there is no burning of fat, just exhalation of fat. And in that regard even doing the nose breathing exercises of Pranayama are just as effective in raising the heart rate to in effect lose weight.

The samurai warriors would check if a soldier is ready for war by placing a feather under his nostril. Only if the feather did not move was the warrior ready to fight. That calm would he have to be before he could be trusted to fight.

When we breathe too much, we expel too much carbon dioxide, and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide, pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic, yet all our cellular functions occur at a sweet spot alkaline acidic at a pH of 7.4

Breathing, paced breathing is prayer. If one inhales for 5.5 seconds and exhaled for 5.5 seconds, one completes 5.5 breaths in one minute! That is the entire cycle required to chant, ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’, the Ave Maria, the Sa ya na ma chant of Kundalini Yoga, the Hindu hand and tongue poses called mudras through a technique called kechari. Incidentally the optimum amount of air we should take in at rest per minute is 5.5 liters. The optimum breathing rate is about 5.5 breaths per minute. That is 5.5-second inhales and 5.5-second exhales.

Mammals with the lowest resting heart rate live the longest. They are also consistently the same mammals that breathe the slowest. The only way to retain a slow resting heart rate is to breath with slow breaths.

The Yogis life is not measured by the number of his days, but the number of his breaths said BKS Iyengar, India’s foremost guru on the practise of Iyengar Yoga. A sickly child, he learnt yoga and breathed himself back to health.

The perfect oral posture means holding the lips together, teeth slightly touching, with the tongue on the roof of the mouth, holding the head up perpendicularly to the body without kinking the neck. While sitting or standing the spine should form a J-shape-perfectly straight until it reaches the small of the back, where it naturally curves outward. While maintaining this posture, we should always breathe slowly through the nose into the abdomen.

Stomping on hard food as the molars grind up food chewing hard, stem cells actually grow bone at the back of our mouths. As our ancestors spent hours a day chewing they managed to steer clear of all orthodontic issues that impact airway systems in our bodies and hence had no issues with their teeth.

Inner fire or Tummo meditation 🧘‍♀️

Expression is the opposite of depression! ~ Chuck McGee III

One can breathe themselves sick just as one can breathe themselves to health, the only criteria being the speed of the breath or how deep or shallow breaths are. The sympathetic nervous system receiver signals are located on the upper half of the lungs, the parasympathetic nervous system receiver signals are located on the lower half of the lungs. Hence deeper inhalations activate the parasympathetic nervous system and hence keeps the calm.

Tummo breathing – lie down, breathe into the abdomen and then the chest, breathe out in the same order for 30 cycles. At the end of 30 cycles, exhale to hold a quarter of air and hold as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your threshold take a huge inhale and hold for another 15 seconds. Slowly exhale circulating the air all over your upper body. Repeat 3-4 rounds, adding in some cold exposure a few times a week. Conscious heavy breathing allows us to bend so we don’t break.

Now, this was one book that I truly savoured or should I sipped, for I did not want these bits of information to slip through my mind at any cost. Plus the way Nestor presents facts is extremely charming and needless to stay I slowed down reading, slowed down breathing and in effect slowed down my life. So much that soon it felt like I wasn’t waiting for life anymore but life was waiting for me, to breathe on!