एक यादगार शाम

After a long time, I finally got the chance to sit at my PC today. To be honest, I have never been very comfortable working on a mobile phone, so it feels good to be back at my desk. Sharing some special glimpses from an If tar party on social media today. It was an honour to be in the company of Shri Naveen Jindal Ji and Shri Shah Nawaz Hussain Ji. सफ़दरजंग की वो शाम, जहाँ अपनों का साथ था और दुआओं का दौर। २१ मार्च २०२६ की इस इफ्तार पार्टी में राजनीति और उद्योग जगत की दिग्गज हस्तियों—सैयद शाहनवाज़ हुसैन जी और नवीन जिंदल जी के साथ बिताए ये पल हमेशा दिल के करीब रहेंगे. मेरी बेटी विपिन, मेरी बहन और बच्चों के साथ इस रूहानी माहौल का हिस्सा बनना वाकई सुकून देने वाला था। चेहरे की ये मुस्कान गवाह है कि अपनों के साथ और अच्छे दोस्तों के बीच बिताया गया वक्त ही असली दौलत है.

xoxo

Ancient Singing Tradition

How an Ancient Singing Tradition Helps People Cope With Trauma in the Modern World

Riitta Excell wore a pair of homemade wool socks: white with red floral patterns and rounded blue toes. Around her were women sipping tea and enjoying plum pastries and chicken feta pie. They wore homemade wool socks, as well.

It was nearly 3 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and Pirkko Fihlman’s living room on the outskirts of Helsinki was filled with black-and-white family photos, porcelain figurines of angels and birds, and embroidered rococo chairs. The clink of tea cups fell silent, and then Excell squeezed her eyes closed, clenched her fists, and began to sing a lament in Finnish.

“I took pills for my depression

just to smother my emotions.

Doctors said that I would need them,

but I learned to cry without them.

So I stopped taking the tablets,

then I let my feelings rise up

for my mother when she passed on,

for my marriage when he quit me,

left me as a single mother,

with a hard job and no weekends.

Now I weep without taking pills,

yet I still feel very angry,

and the fury seems well-founded,

but the feelings will not hurt me.”

Excell’s lyrics may be modern, but the style of singing comes from an older place.

“Lament [singing] is a very old, traditional way to express your feelings,” says Fihlman, a lament teacher and matriarch of the group. “If you are hurt or you have sorrows or you want to express your feelings, you cry it out. You let it come out. That’s what they would do in the old times.”

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In Finland, the ancient musical tradition known as lament singing is seeing a revival.

In the past, the custom was observed at funerals, weddings, and during times of war. But today, practitioners have a modern application for it: musical therapy. By providing an opportunity to process emotions through song, lament singing can confer mental health benefits to modern practitioners.

“[In lament] people can express themselves,” Fihlman says. “Very often people [in my courses] make laments of their grief. They miss their parents or they have troubles in their marriage or maybe they were hurt in childhood and they never had a chance to bring it up.” 

While the custom resembles many “new age” practices, Finnish lament singing has a feature that those neo-spiritual systems don’t: It teaches a tradition specific to the region instead of borrowing from other cultures.

Originally, the tradition wasn’t about emotional healing.

“The function of [lament singing] was to establish positive contact with your ancestors, the dead, and help them in some way,” says Jim Wilce, a professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University and author of numerous books and papers on lament singing around the world. Originally, he says, the tradition wasn’t about emotional healing.

Which, according to Wilce, is what makes the revival so unique.

“In every traditional lament … you have a connection with what I call ‘the divine powers,’” says Eila Stepanova, a folklore studies Ph.D. at the University of Helsinki. “[This isn’t] a Christian god. It’s something in between—an older layer of traditional beliefs.”

Riitta Excell sings a lament. Photo by Katri Heinämäki.

While lament singing exists in communities from Bangladesh to New Zealand, according to Wilce, and has even been documented in the ancient poem “Beowulf,” the form being practiced in Finland has its roots in the area now known as the Republic of Karelia—the region on the Russian side of the Finnish border. Stepanova says the traditional laments—sung for funerals, weddings, war—were performed to help people move from one world to the other, be it to the land of the dead, to a new family, or to the battlefield. At ceremonies for the dead, for instance, laments were sung to wake deceased members of the family in the other world to meet new arrivals.

But traditional laments weren’t simply a style of song: They were a unique language in which nothing was ever named directly.

In lament singing, positive descriptions are used: Things are sweet, light, bright, dear, or wonderful.

“For example, you have substitute names for all personal relations [and] for objects or phenomenons,” says Stepanova. “So in lament language, when you talk about your mother, you don’t use the word mother. You say, ‘the dearest woman who brought me [into] the sweetest world who carried me,’ or ‘my dear carrier,’ or ‘my dear cherisher.’”

Other examples include the sun, which can be called a “golden disk,” or arms, which can be called "shoulder branches.” And in lament singing, positive descriptions are used. Things are sweet, light, bright, dear, or wonderful. The one exception is any description of the lamenter herself.

“She is always the miserable [one]. She never says the word ‘I,’” explains Stepanova. Instead, when describing herself, the lamenter might say she’s the “miserable body,” “woman of great sorrows,” or “body made of tears.”

Stepanova’s mother published the first lament dictionary in 2004 documenting approximately 1,400 different metaphors for words used in the songs. Like any language, it’s evolving with modern times. Cars can be “headless horses,” phone calls can be “messages that come through metal strings,” and televisions can be “talking boxes.”

But while Finland is seeing a revival—instructor Fihlman says she has conducted nearly 200 courses with almost 2,000 students—other parts of the world are seeing a decline in the traditional practice.

Lament singing existed in rural communities for generations, but it was viewed as a pagan tradition.

Wilce says that around the world lament singing is threatened. In Bangladesh, for instance, practitioners often face physical violence in rural Muslim societies.

“People are being shamed by their relatives,” says Wilce. “By fundamentalist Christian missionaries in Papua New Guinea and [in] other places by the values of rationality and urbanizing modernity.”

Yet in Finland, the tradition is blossoming, despite a history that has often threatened its survival. In Karelia, Fihlman says that lament singing existed in rural communities for generations, but it was viewed as a pagan tradition by Orthodox and Lutheran Christians and often driven underground. Urbanization also threatened the continued existence of lament singing. In the last century, as young people moved away from their hometowns to find jobs and schooling in cities, villages began to disappear, along with lament singers. And in the early days of the Soviet Union, authorities often employed lament for ideological and propaganda efforts, creating laments that expressed support for the Soviet system and its leaders.

Stepanova says that, eventually, only old people told ancient stories and sang antique laments. “They were museum items, and they stopped being a living tradition among people,” she says.

 

But somehow, adds Fihlman, it survived. “We don’t have those old people anymore,” she says. “But [now] we have this new generation.”

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Minna Hokka wore a candy-striped turtleneck sweater in chartreuse, cream, and maroon. Fihlman, Excell, and other lamenters looked on as she raised her head and began singing. Unlike Excell’s lament, Hokka’s was a historical ode recalling Karelia’s bitter history with Russia.

“To the people of Karelia,

souls and spirits born in beauty:

Through the windows were your green fields,

in the blue skies larks were singing,

saints and icons stood in silence,

watching over wooden log homes.

Kanteles echoed in the dark rooms,

and the stars blinked in the night sky,

but your thoughts were wrapped in darkness:

iron hail rained on your rooftops.”

Hokka, 41, is part of the new generation learning from Fihlman. She says she hopes to start composing laments for young people struggling with addiction.

“Nowadays crying is seen as losing face, so people avoid and fear it,” says Hokka. “Finland needs its tears.”

For Hokka and other lamenters, the practice isn’t just a hobby: It’s an ancient tradition now finding contemporary use. And in Fihlman’s home on the outskirts of Helsinki, it’s taking root with a new generation, one sad song at a time.

“Does [lament singing] have connection to the past? To tradition? To beliefs or values?” Stepanova says. “Or do we make it a museum item behind glass and go and think, Ahh, nice, yes, and forget about it? It depends on us.”

This article originally appeared in Yes! Magazine at https://www.yesmagazine.org/democracy/2017/05/16/how-an-ancient-singing-tradition-helps-people-cope-with-trauma-in-the-modern-world.

Yes! Magazine is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of ... . Learn more at Yes! Magazine

recycling

Tina's handicraft Tina's handicraft : Rainbow Bracelet - free patttern: Final result - Supplies -Yarn - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Dark Blue, Violet - Crochet Hook -Ribbon - Scissors Gather your supp...

The Truth of Two Decades: Slums, the System, and My Research

Pictures speak... if only one has the eye to listen. Today, while browsing through old files on my computer, this photograph suddenly appeared, and a caravan of memories began to unfold. This photo is from 2016, during a trip to Jaipur with 16 of my NGO colleagues. We had stopped at a farmhouse, where I met this woman. To me, it wasn't just a picture; it was a glimpse into the self-respect of rural life—knowing how to smile even amidst scarcity. However, as a researcher, my true destination was the slums of Jaipur. My connection with Valmiki Nagar began in 2001 when I first applied for my PhD at Rajasthan University under Dr. M. Kapur. The journey was far from easy. I faced a long administrative battle over the 'equivalence' of my B.Sc. degree. After three years of persistent effort, my admission was finally confirmed in 2004, and I officially immersed myself in fieldwork in 2005. During that 2005-06 fieldwork, I was deeply impressed by a woman in Valmiki Nagar who had completed 12th grade. Despite a lack of resources, her education had led her to live a very organized life. Seeing her discipline, I truly believed that education would transform the fate of these slums.

"A single photograph can hold a lifetime of stories. For me, this image is more than a memory—it is a window into a 25-year-old quest that began with a struggle for a PhD admission in 2001 and evolved into a deep study of Jaipur’s slums. From Nehru's vision of 'Eradication' in 1952 to the stagnant reality of 2026, here is a glimpse into the two decades of my research journey." But when I returned in 2016-17 for a 'Decadal Change' study, the reality disappointed me. That same woman had become an 'Anganwadi worker' in the same slum. While the administration might view this as progress, I saw it as a stagnant shift. This brings to mind Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's visit to the slums of Kanpur in 1952. Distressed by the subhuman conditions, he remarked: "These slums should be burnt to the ground and replaced with decent houses for human beings." His vision was 'Eradication'—to lift people out of squalor and settle them in planned townships. Unfortunately, we shifted from 'eradication' to making these slums 'permanent.' By 2016, the system focused on providing minor facilities like Anganwadis, effectively institutionalizing their stay there. Now, in April-May 2026, I am preparing for my third visit. I want to observe this full cycle from 2005 to 2026 to see if we have truly progressed, or if we have simply given 'disorder' a new, permanent name.This journey from 2005 to 2026 is now taking the shape of a book and research papers XOXO

Tit bits of today

my inspiration today

Blog da Fá - De tudo um pouco: Algumas fotos da festa de 1 ano da minha filhota Blog da Fá - De tudo um pouco: Algumas fotos da festa de 1 ano da minha filhota: Oi meninas como vão? Na foto acima, fiz as lembrancinhas com caixas de leite, acho que fiz em torno de 30 lembrancinhas, peguei a caixa ... xxx

Through the Lens of Memories: An Engagement, Boundless Love, and That Precious Blessing

Date: March 2, 2026 This morning, while cleaning for Holi, I happened to pick up an old photo album. Time and dampness had left their mark on it, and a few loose photographs slipped out. Among them was this picture from my son’s engagement, dated April 2, 2012. In the photo, my son, daughter-in-law, daughter,my niece and me all are seated together, sharing a smile. While it looks like a simple family portrait, it holds within it a profound story of service and respect that touches my heart even today.

A Memorable Afternoon and the Warmth of Relationships My mother was a part of our joy that day. Since she could not walk without support, my son and his friend manually assisted her to the hotel room in Delhi, which had been booked by my son’s in-laws. The room was arranged with tea and refreshments for us. Soon, it was time for lunch in the hotel hall. Since my mother had a very light appetite and the struggle of moving with support remained, we decided to let her rest in the room, thinking we would return quickly for the engagement rituals after our meal. However, when we returned, what we heard from her—and the sheer joy and satisfaction we saw on her face—won our hearts completely. An Exemplary Display of Values and Service My mother was exceptionally happy. She told us that in our absence, my daughter-in-law’s brother took immense care of her. He visited the room repeatedly, serving her juice, snacks, and lunch. Beyond that, he had even stationed a lady attendant there specifically to assist her with the washroom or any other needs. It was a beautiful beginning to a new relationship, where the focus was not just on the rituals, but on the comfort and dignity of the elders. A Priceless Legacy and Farewell On January 9, 2013, my mother left us forever. I remember those days vividly; I used to work on my computer with her sitting right next to me in another chair. I would feed her small bites with a spoon every few minutes. That day, while sitting there, she couldn't quite swallow a morsel, and she simply closed her eyes. My son, who had come home from his showroom for lunch, immediately moved her to the floor and tried to give her artificial respiration, but she looked as if she had drifted into a peaceful, blissful sleep. Her breath did not return. The doctor arrived within ten minutes, but she had already passed away. During those final nine months of her life, I stayed by her side like a 24-hour nurse. At night, my niece, who was then studying Computer Engineering, performed her duties beautifully by assisting her with the washroom and other needs. My daughter was living in Delhi at the time of her passing. Today, this picture is not just a reminder of an event; it is a testament to the love, service, and respect that binds our family together.

"That priceless blessing, which stays with us through every joy and sorrow." Closing Note: As I look back today, I realize that relationships are built not just on rituals, but on the profound respect and care we show for one another—especially in times of need. My mother is no longer with us, but her values and that satisfied smile remain the greatest legacy of our family. Do you also have a cherished memory of your elders that has touched your heart? I would love to hear your stories in the comments below.

The Sky of Memories: A Brother’s Anniversary and the Debt to a Forgotten Heroine

February 28, 2026 Today, my heart inevitably wanders back to that tragic moment in 1995 when my younger brother bid farewell to this world. He was a promising Mechanical Engineer in the Indian Air Force (IAF). After completing his engineering from Tambaram, Madras, he served brave machines like the MiG-21. Today, on his anniversary, as I turn the pages of an old album, three photographs bring an entire era to life before my eyes. These photos are not just my family history; they are witnesses to a time in the IAF when bravery and human compassion walked hand in handं

The MiG-21 and My Younger Brother In this photo, my late younger brother stands proudly in front of his MiG-21 fighter jet. This aircraft is a symbol of his technical mastery and unwavering commitment to the Air Force. The pride he felt as an engineer, keeping his planes ready for flight, is clearly visible on his faceं

My Father and Dr. Chanda (Agra Runway, 1966-67) In this photo, my late father (who was an IAF Police Officer) stands on the runway, to the right side of the aircraft. And, in that same photo, to the extreme right, stands Wing Commander Dr. Gita Chanda (Ghosh) in her dignified IAF uniform of a light blue blouse and navy blue sari. This photo is very special to me because it depicts the woman who not only created history but also rescued my family from a deep crisisं

source(internet) Dr. Gita Chanda: An Unheard and Forgotten History It was July 17, 1959. A Dakota aircraft was flying over North India. Standing behind three instructors was a young, fearless trainee—Dr. Gita Chanda. As soon as the signal came, she jumped fearlessly into the air. That historic 40-second journey gave India its first female paratrooper. Today, it is a matter of great pain and regret that the dust of time has blurred her courage. People often do not even know her nameं Before the Historic Flight This is a solo photo of Dr. Gita Chanda, taken just before that historic flight on July 17, 1959. She appears fully prepared in her parachute gear and helmet. To witness this historic moment, Air Marshal Arjan Singh (who later became Marshal of the Indian Air Force) was personally present in Agraं The Debt to a Savior and Guide In 1966-67, when my brother was only three years old and very ill, Dr. Gita Chanda was nothing less than an angel to us. My father was transferred from Agra to Jorhat (Assam). During that difficult time, it was Dr. Gita who used her medical authority and influence to cancel that transfer. I was 13 then and used to sit by my brother's bedside. I still remember how sweetly she talked to us about my brother's health during her rounds. Because of her compassion, our family could stay together in Agra and my brother's treatment was possible at the Military Hospital (MH)ं Today, when I remember my brother, my head bows in respect to that great paratrooper, sensitive doctor, and warrior. It is an irony that the woman who made history by jumping from the sky and helped countless families on the ground has no one to remember her today. This is my small effort to revive her kindness and her historic courageं