I recently made two short trips to Malaysia in the space of about six weeks. The first, in March, to spend a few days with my grandmother, who had not been well.

The flight out was delayed due to a thunderstorm in Sydney. So the four-day trip would be cut short to three. Waiting at the airport for information, frustrated at the thought of one less day with my grandmother, I contemplated cancelling the trip and rebooking for another weekend.

I’m glad I didn’t. Because the second trip I made to Malaysia, in April, was for the religious ceremony that would mark her passing. Those three days in March ended up being my last moments with someone whose impact and influence on my life cannot be measured.

To help with the healing, I wrote an article about my grandmother. As I typed, in Microsoft Word, the spell-check decided to call out the word Muthashi, as it did not recognise the Malayalam word for grandmother. One of the options it suggested was Mothership.

Mothership, noun.
– A spacecraft or ship from which smaller craft are launched or maintained.
– A place regarded as a base, source, or headquarters.

I usually get annoyed at the ridiculous suggestions offered by spell-check.

But this time, I had to agree.

©2019 Seetha Nambiar Dodd

I meant to write this post for Valentine’s Day. But life, like love, is unpredictable. So on the last day of February, I tell myself it is still Valentine’s Month and therefore this post is still highly topical, suitably timely and massively interesting. My blog, my rules, my denial. Especially as it’s now the 1st of March.

Psychologist Robert Johnson thinks we don’t have enough words to describe our feelings of love. He wrote about the lack of ‘awareness and emphasis that we give to the realm of feeling’, and says the English language is partly to blame. His analysis is intriguing – “Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty, Greek three and English only one.”

Johnson draws a clever comparison between our “poverty-stricken vocabulary” and the fact that Eskimos have 30 words for snow because it is so important to them. Each ‘snow’ word has a different nuance, a precision of description. I researched (Googled) this fact and it seems there are actually over 50 words for snow in the various Eskimo languages (including Inuit and Yupik dialects). They have different words for the snow that is safe to walk across, the snow that is like powder, wet snow, softly falling snow, the snow that is good for driving a sled over.

This is important because snow is all around them, is intrinsically linked to everything they do, and is fundamental to their existence. And we have only one word for love.

We use the same word (love) in all situations: for family, a lover, a hobby, a coffee. I love you. I love that idea! I love dancing. I’d love a coffee. Yet, we have so many different words for coffee: cappuccino, latte, flat white, piccolo, espresso. So many words for getting drunk: wasted, bladdered, sozzled, plastered, sloshed, legless. So many words for being angry: pissed off, livid, mad, raging, fuming. But just one word for love.

So. What is love? I suppose it depends on who you ask. Since the internet was somewhat disappointing, I asked a few young and innocent (and non-jaded) children what they thought about love. Here’s what they told me:

How can you tell that two people are married?
♥ “You could see their ring if you were close-up. They would probably be talking about their kids.” (C, aged 7)
♥ “If you’ve been to their wedding.” (N, aged 10)

How would you choose a boyfriend or girlfriend?
♥ “I would write down some cateristiks that I want and then see if they have those cateristiks. If they don’t then I would move on to the next person.” (C, aged 7)
♥ “Someone who is smart and doesn’t eat that much candy.” (R, aged 6)
♥ “I’d want him to be honest and not act differently to me than he normally would. I’d want him to be like daddy.” (M, aged 10)
♥ “I already have one. She tells me funny jokes.” (D, aged 5, I repeat, aged 5)

How would you show love?
♥ “By going to a movie with them even if you’ve already seen it.” (M, aged 10)
♥ “Don’t take anything out of her lunchbox. And definitely don’t wrestle her.” (D, aged 5)
♥ “When my brother is scared at night, I tell him there are no monsters, even if I’m a bit scared too.” (J, aged 8)
♥ “Not go to a football match on their birthday.” (J, aged 8)
♥ “Make sacrifices to show the other person they are more important than what you really, really want.” (N, aged 10)

And just when I thought I would finish on that deep and profound note, I received a message from my sister that couldn’t not be included in a post about Love:

©2019 Seetha Nambiar Dodd

…is a terrible pun. But I couldn’t come up with anything better for a blog post about Venn diagrams. It’s not my usual subject matter.

After a few comments from readers of this blog that my last poem was a bit sombre (read: depressing, and why can’t that pigeon find that morsel of bread/love), I thought it best to take a break from the deep feels and turn to LOGIC and REASON and what could be more fitting than…MATHS! But don’t worry, poetry fans, it is only a temporary hiatus. 

Venn diagrams are beautiful illustrations of logic. They show relationships between different elements: where they overlap, where they have no connection whatsoever, and where they can be grouped together with other elements that share the same characteristics.

If I created a basic Venn diagram of picking out something to wear from my wardrobe, for example, it would look like this:

The Wardrobe Dilemma

Set A = Clean and not overly crumpled. Note I did not use the word ‘ironed’ because I try to avoid that at all costs. (Both using the word and doing the activity.) Maybe one day I will be the type of person who always looks freshly pressed, but it is highly unlikely.
Set B = Appropriate for work. Sadly excludes yoga pants, slogan t-shirts and onesies.
Digression: Here is a great story on the two-word dress code implemented by General Motors chief executive, Mary Barra. But please come back to finish this post. 🙂
Set C = Things that fit. No need to elaborate. 

So you can see where the sets intersect and where they don’t. And the number of items in each set could help me make life decisions. So useful! For example, too many items in the B/C intersection (B∩C) = it’s time to do laundry. Too many in A∩C = one should stop buying yoga pants and consider more work-appropriate purchases. And last but certainly not least, too many items in A∩B = one should wear one’s yoga pants whilst actually performing yoga.

It also explains why my black trousers are a staple, go-to, twice-a-week wardrobe choice.

The internet is full of funny Venn diagrams. This is a clever one from Stephen Wildish:

And here is one on the beautiful Japanese concept of Ikigai, or finding a reason for being. Hector Garcia, co-author of Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, says: “Your ikigai is at the intersection of what you are good at and what you love doing.” If it is also what the world needs, and what you can be paid for, then you’re on to a winner.

And for the finale, here’s one I made earlier, which I call The Triumph of the Trivector:
Maybe there is some poetry in Mathematics after all.

©2018 Seetha Nambiar Dodd

#yo-goals

Whilst having lunch in a Sydney pub, a friend and fellow observer notices an old encyclopaedia sitting on a shelf. It is a whole volume dedicated to the letter ‘F’.

As we eat our (fabulous) burgers, we start thinking about the words of today that we wouldn’t find inside those yellowed pages. Modern-day proper nouns and slang that have jostled their way into our everyday language but didn’t exist in the days of unplugged knowledge.

So what F-words do we come up with? Facebook. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Flexitarian (That’s a flexible vegetarian, fyi). Definitely not for Volume F. It is a fun exercise, and one I recommend to all of us who remember leafing through actual encyclopaedias as kids, looking for precious information.

Later, I start thinking about other ‘new’ words. Or words that are a combination of other words, like Flexitarian. There is a name for this, I’m sure, so I look it up. (But not in an encyclopaedia.) It’s Portmanteau. A ‘linguistic blend of words.’ Examples: smog (smoke + fog), chillax (chill + relax), Singlish (Singapore + English) and of course, Brexit (Britain + exit).

But here’s a word I came across in the UK that confused me. I first saw it at a gym in Birmingham. Whilst looking through the class timetable, this word jumped out at me:

Broga.

Yes, my friends. A linguistic blend of Brothers + Yoga. Also known as: Yoga for Men. (No correlation to ‘Yin with Balls’, which, by the way is an amazing self-massage yoga class that releases tension through rolling on small, man-made balls.)

I hadn’t realised Broga was a thing. Mainly because the yoga classes I go to include men as a given, most of whom are side-crowing, flipping and reversing with ease. Yoga classes don’t usually specifically cater for women, unless we’re talking Pregnancy Yoga. Which, I might add, is called Pregnancy Yoga, not Proga.

So what exactly is Broga? I do a bit of research and find a number of articles on this phenomenon with headlines such as Real Men Do Yoga. Downward Facing Dudes. More Macho, Less Mantra. Broga is said to be ‘a yoga-based fitness program taught from a man’s point of view’ and includes high intensity interval training, or HIIT.

Wait, what??? So it’s a strength class with a few yoga poses thrown in? Apparently Broga is designed to encourage men to do yoga because regular yoga classes filled with flexible women are too intimidating. But then, Broga is so popular, one article proudly proclaims, that ‘even women are doing it.’ Another article says Broga is designed ‘specifically for your limitations, wants and needs,’ and focuses on ‘the physical over the spiritual, strength over flexibility.’ Doesn’t really sound like yoga. Sounds more like a marketing ploy. I’m dubious.

Purely in the interest of being an authentic writer, and also because the marketing ploy works on me, I sign up for a class, sceptical but intrigued.

The class is taught by a…..bro, but looking around at my fellow brogis, 7 out of 10 are women. So to those of you (you know who you are) who might sign up for Broga hoping to ogle lots of bros with limitations, wants and needs, you’ll be sadly disappointed. However, if you want a workout that combines strength and stretch, dynamic moves with deep breathing, and don’t mind doing press-ups in between downward dogs, then Broga is worth a go.

It’s a tough class. My core is switched on, my arms ache, and I quite enjoy warrior poses to Top 100 hits. It’s different, and fun. In the end, I concede that any class that encourages strength and flexibility, whether you are a bro or a sista, can only be a good thing. I’m still not sure about the name, although I realise ‘Strength & Stretch’ isn’t as catchy. But yoga is about balance. So maybe not strength over flexibility, but with. And there’s nothing wrong with mantras. Even the word is bro-friendly. Man-tras. 🙂

All this Bro-business. It started with Bromance, male friends who love each other’s company, because plain old ‘friendship’ doesn’t quite cut it. There is already Brosé (Rosé for bros) because ‘Real Men Drink Pink’. So in light of this current brobsession, here are some ideas for new portmanteaus:

Brodka – because Real Men Drink Vodka
Brolates – because Real Men Do Pilates (Or perhaps this is men who meet for coffee)
Broliday – formerly known as Guys’ Weekend.

I think we’re on to something.

©2018 Seetha Nambiar Dodd