[Music]
[Applause]
my name is Aruna hot and I’m fashionably
recognized and popularly known by a name
almost a term of endearment now funky
been the Queen strange as it may seem it
didn’t really start that way my sister
and I are byproducts of a marriage
between two people both of whom belong
to highly conservative Brahmin families
and considering they were working
professionals it was amazing that they
upheld all their conservative values
chief among them was the importance of
that little black dot in the center of
the forehead and black was the color
because we were still really tiny and
therefore unmarried our all the girl
cousins had actually graduated to the
color red as and when they got married
so as little kids this is how we looked
that’s my sister and me with the dot on
the forehead wherever we went for our
little holidays we had to go with that
bindi stuck there on the forehead and
that was me as a kid don’t miss the dot
and my mother clearly seemed to have a
strong intuition of what was going to
happen to that for his space in the
years to come so you can see the size of
the dot in that picture as well as we
grew older and we felt that we were a
little more in control of our lives and
a few decisions we could make for
ourselves my sister and I decided to not
wear that little black dot little did we
know that our very existence would be
belittled for that act of defiance
I remember the taunts my sister and I
had to listen to were still our mother
had to endure and she was told you don’t
know how to bring up your daughters with
the right values
she was taunted she was said very unfair
things and she was said how can you
allow your girls to walk around with a
look befitting a widow as a bare
forehead look was ungraciously referred
to widows unfortunately to this day have
to walk around you know sporting bare
minimums in monochromes and that you
know is in existence in many parts of
our country so to save our mother all
the unsavory comments and the taunts and
the ordeal my sister and I decided to
walk around everywhere with that little
black dot on the forehead my sister
being the good older child would you
know listen to whatever our elders had
told her and would wear that little dot
dutifully but me being the second
discipling and therefore slightly
defiant I decided to make it very very
known that I didn’t approve of it in the
least and that I found it absolutely and
utterly uncool so what I started doing
is moments before we had to meet with
relatives I would quickly slap on a
stick up in the on my forehead and as
soon as we were done meeting with them
I’d peel it off as well till I got
caught by the family elder on more
occasions than one and I was told hello
use that little black Kajal so the stick
up in these are very easy to deal with
but that sticky black Kajal was a messy
smudgy affair that is exactly what gave
rise to all the experimentation that I
started with so the black Kajal had what
I called country cousins the colour red
and the color white so I started using
them in tandem so I would normally draw
a black dot in the middle and draw a
couple of lines over it above it under
eight all kinds of experimentation like
in this picture and where it’s just the
black color that I have used or
sometimes I would use just the country
cousins and I would make a tiny little
bindi and mind you they were all tiny
because the minute it got a little large
the last thing we wanted was our mother
to go through some more grief than she
already was going through in 1997 I
moved to Bombay and the girl with the
dot on the forehead seemed to be given a
new lease of life that for headspace
seemed to transform itself my forehead
became my canvas
when Lee started to climb towards the
sky and cover the expense of my forehead
and they got very colorful because I
discovered you know a box of color I
started experimenting with other things
as well like holy ash vibhuti which was
freely available in all temples in
Bombay particularly the Sai Baba temples
and I would use lipstick I’ve used
eyeliner I’ve used anything I could
think of there was one time when I used
the sticky part of a band-aid and stuck
that on my forehead and drew lines
around it so in Bombay nobody really
seemed to mind the kind of designs I had
on my forehead or what I did with it
so I walked around sometimes with the
wineglass that I chose to draw on my
forehead I would lift a pretty little
bit of a pattern on the sari and make
that into a bindi and Here I am where my
pendant became my own muse and I had
drawn a bit of the pendant on the
forehead and experimenting and letting
people know that an eye liner can make a
fantastic bindi as well so while I was a
happy little shining star in Bombay when
I came back home here to Mangalore
things were exactly where I left them
last so I still remember the unsavory
comments the rude things that people
would say etc etc and I remember one
particular incident very very clearly so
I had drawn a horizontal eye on my
forehead and I had put tiny little red
flowers on the inside made it look quite
pretty and a friend’s uncle actually
walked up to me and said have you drawn
your vagina on your forehead I was
deeply humiliated Lee extremely shocked
by that reaction and it’s only because
my sister and my cousin were with me
that day they were the ones who actually
got me out of there without saying a
word when I went back home and I thought
about it I realized I was brave enough
to be me and there was something clearly
different about me and think about it
it’s a point for all of us to think
about we
don’t really know what to do with people
who are different the the best reaction
that comes out of us is to laugh that’s
what we do to people who are different
the horizontal eye is still one of my
favorite basic designs
I still do it quite often and of course
do some intricate stuff around it and
believe you me I’m most tempted every
time I draw a horizontal I to take a
picture and send it to that uncle and
say I’m still drawing vaginas on my
forehead so what happened after that a
chance encounter with the editor of the
Limca Book of Records open doors I never
ever imagined would happen to me so she
walked up to me and said what’s that on
your forehead I said it’s my expression
of a bindi she said how long do you take
to do it I said within a minute she
double checked she said you draw it
yourself I said yes I do
she said you realize you can qualify in
the record books I said oh wow and I
actually got into the Lemcke Book of
Records the day I got into the limb car
Book of Records I actually laughed till
I cried my big funky bindis the very
thing that was utter taboo within my own
family within our relatives with people
we knew back home in Mangalore was the
very thing that was going to become my
identity and I was very soon going to
also find my extraordinary in that
process with the advent of the easily
accessible internet I started doing a
lot of research on the bindi on its
connection with the agnya chakra with
the third eye the seat of consciousness
where the bindi rests the audio chakra
and it’s command over the other glands
of the body like the pituitary gland the
pineal gland the endocrine gland and I
was amazed that the bindi could actually
charge the agnya chakra into functioning
even better you will be amazed to note
that we in India are the only ones who
actually believe that the ajna chakra
can be manually triggered by the
application of the bending
this leads me to a very interesting
conversation that I had with a psychic
and a healer Ashe with a girl ashwin de
wanted to test the effectiveness or
wearing the bindi using different forms
like vibhuti or holy ash sandalwood
paste liquid bindi and a sticker bending
so through the method using a pendulum
and the method of dowsing they wanted to
infer the effectiveness of this on the
Arjuna chakra you will not believe me
when I tell you what she told me
she says after application of the
vibhuti first and the sandalwood paste
after that the pendulum swung like there
was no tomorrow with a liquid bindi the
kind that I use the effectiveness was
slightly less and with the sticker bindi
it had come down to about 20% what it
goes to show is that the Aria chakra
gets charged a material of what you use
whatever the form you may use that
thinking that came out of this whole
thing and this leads me to another point
you might ask what exactly is it that
the arjuna chakra and the bindi have to
do with one another the act of applying
the bindi on the ajna chakra charges the
chakra and seals the energy inside the
ajna chakra and because the arjuna
chakra commands all the other chakras of
the body that is exactly what helps us
perform throughout the day and voila I
seem to have found the reason for my
extraordinary confidence the information
that I am sharing with you is just the
tip of the iceberg there’s so much more
that’s available on the internet and I
truly truly don’t want to bother or bore
any of you with stuff that’s available
on the Internet coming back to me I
never step out of the house without
drawing a bindi on the forehead and when
I think back about all the information
that we have learnt and I had learned
through the process of the internet
etcetera
I realized that had this information
been shared to us as kids we would have
passed this information on to the future
generation and unfortunately that has
not happened because we during our time
were forced to wear it and it appeared
almost like it was some kind of a
superstition than any kind of a
scientific reason to wear it so this is
something that bites me even now that I
wish people had told us instead of
saying it just keeps evil away
therefore please wear that little dot so
I make sure that I wear a bindi a
material of where I am going and what
the occasion is I remember going for the
funeral of very dear friends
mother-in-law the lady in her living
years never called me by my name
Aruna and always would call me bindiya
and she was absolutely in love with all
my abilities hence of course the bindiya
so I because of the somber occasion that
it was I went to round with her tiny
little bindi on my forehead
the daughter-in-law actually called me
aside and she said you know my
mother-in-law’s soul which is clearly
hovering around here will not recognize
you today so don’t do this again when
you come for the remaining three days
please make sure you draw your big
bindis that for me was a huge lesson
wherever the cross I go in the country
people seem to quite have have a big
smile on they forehead at least when
they see my bindi but in one place and
don’t I really really don’t know why but
people in Gujarat have a strange
reaction when they see me so they
huddled together like I’m some kind of
an apparition that’s come out of another
planet entirely or they’ll suddenly
nudge each other and you know in groups
and suddenly there’s a group of about
four or five that’ll form and they’ll
walk in front of me looking like that
and trying to figure out what to do with
me I’ve even had a man who walked into a
pillar staring at me with his jaw that
had reached the knee yes I’ve had these
kind of reactions but what I normally do
is I’ve reached that state a Zen state
and I happily wave like a diva the
minute I see somebody you know huh
becoming together in groups and I
because I know what’s going to follow
right after
but wherever I travel the world over
beat New York or London or anywhere else
in between my forehead has been admired
for the work that is on it and therefore
I get all the credit for it
I remember in New York in the subway I
was once asked if I was the one who had
designed the binky the funky bindis on
Madonna Katy Perry Ashley Judd and while
the smile on my face kept getting bigger
and they believed it was indeed me I had
to burst their bubble and say not yet
but hopefully soon I that in fact is one
of my dreams I do hope that a million
women across the world sport my designs
not just for the aesthetic reasons but
for the scientific ones as well I never
ever truly thought that one small little
dot would make such a huge difference in
my life one of the worst periods that we
went through was after we made our first
film and it bombed and we lost
everything that we had and I remember
locking myself up in our room
I didn’t even in fact it chokes me even
now when I think about it I didn’t step
out of our room for days I would more
pround
nobody could even talk to me because I
didn’t want to talk to anybody and one
fine day a couple of days later after
this entire moping period was going on I
didn’t have a choice but we had to get
ready to meet with the lawyers and I
pushed myself out of bed forced myself
out went and had that shower rather
reluctantly stood in front of a mirror
and drew that design on my forehead and
I cannot even begin to tell you how at
that moment I felt transformed not just
physically but mentally as well I felt
absolutely charged from head to toe as I
was applying the bindi on my forehead be
it my tryst with cancer or the extreme
amounts of Edina meiotic pain that I go
through
after month after month to this day I do
believe it is my bindi
therefore my archness Accra that gives
me the courage and the strength to carry
on despite all the pain and despite all
the odds thank you
I never really step out of home now that
one incident taught me so much I never
ever ever ever step out of home without
a design on my forehead sometimes it’s
an expression of what’s going on inside
my head like in this picture where I’ve
drawn the circle of life or I’ve drawn
the mother earth because I felt the urge
to do it I’ve been the material of what
I’m wearing bata sorry or beat a funky
bin no spin so I want to compete with
the size of that one out on a date with
the chief happiness officer of
McDonald’s Ronald McDonald’s there I am
with him on the beach amidst flowers
wearing white chatting up a little puppy
out in the sea and I’ve lifted designs
straight out of my Kutta onto my
forehead matching my turquoise neck
piece and I had a turquoise bindi I
think which is quite clear on that one
and whether I’m posing with birds I have
a little bit of this little puppy on my
forehead I’m sure I think y’all will see
the resemblance here and I do believe
that there was a Yantra there on the
forehead so whether it is on the beach
that I am on whether it’s me in the rain
or whether it’s me with a crutch which
one which is what happened last year
I am always seen with a bindi never ever
without one it gives me a lot of joy
when people walk up to me and say please
will you draw a bindi on my forehead as
well so I’ve happily done that to
anybody who walks up to me and this was
a lady I didn’t even know who walked up
and said please can you draw something
on my forehead and she wanted one on the
side and not in the center and with
other people with the group of women I
had met for the first time this was in
Washington again with a group of women
had met for the first time and guess
what I drop in these four men too it
isn’t just women that it’s restricted to
so of course we call men’s Bendis
slightly differently we call them
pillock who don’t want to give them the
girly to hang over bindi this was on
call each other – about two years ago
when a group of men all my husband’s
friends decided they wanted a bindi on
the forehead and that someone from my
office and somebody a doctor that I met
at wedding and some joining rather
reluctantly as you can see the look here
I clearly seemed to have you know
charged his Arjuna into shock mode
couldn’t get a reaction out of him
so when I set up my web portal the bindi
web portal take his Indian techies
online on Twitter in fact made a lot of
fun of me they said the meanest of
things
they said who’s going to fund this app
and they said what next a bi app and all
these techies and their little stints at
Silicon Valley has totally totally
forgotten the essence of being Indian
kids on the other hand are absolutely
open and they loved the idea of having
Bendis on their forehead they walk up to
me ask me with interest what is it and
if they can support one – as in the case
of these little kids and little boys as
well so those have been these four
little boys gives me great pleasure in
fact to drop in these for them and he
has a little kid who’s clearly been
inspired what I have with what I spot on
my own forehead so she stuck a whole lot
of her mother’s ten packets of stickers
on her own forehead very sweet and this
is one of my favorite drawings of myself
done by two tiny little kids camlock she
and Kathy ie who wanted to draw my face
and don’t miss the fact that they have
drawn me with my bindi on each one of us
has it in us to find the extraordinary
unfortunately it is family it is society
and the policing that they do that stop
us from thinking big and thinking out of
ordinary and therefore being
extraordinary in the process of me
finding my extraordinary I even
discovered the power of my bindi and
therefore towards my arch now I’d like
to end with this beautiful court that
small dot on her forehead just like the
third eye of sathi seeing it all yet
kept closed and calm elegant and
graceful as she already was the bindi
made her a heavenly goddess who imagined
what a change a dot could make I am
waiting to draw a bindi on a lady
that looked easy didn’t it I’m waiting
for all of you to send me pictures soon
with designs on your foreheads so thank
you so much ladies and gentlemen [Applause]
[Applause]
my name is Aruna hot and I’m fashionably
recognized and popularly known by a name
almost a term of endearment now funky
been the Queen strange as it may seem it
didn’t really start that way my sister
and I are byproducts of a marriage
between two people both of whom belong
to highly conservative Brahmin families
and considering they were working
professionals it was amazing that they
upheld all their conservative values
chief among them was the importance of
that little black dot in the center of
the forehead and black was the color
because we were still really tiny and
therefore unmarried our all the girl
cousins had actually graduated to the
color red as and when they got married
so as little kids this is how we looked
that’s my sister and me with the dot on
the forehead wherever we went for our
little holidays we had to go with that
bindi stuck there on the forehead and
that was me as a kid don’t miss the dot
and my mother clearly seemed to have a
strong intuition of what was going to
happen to that for his space in the
years to come so you can see the size of
the dot in that picture as well as we
grew older and we felt that we were a
little more in control of our lives and
a few decisions we could make for
ourselves my sister and I decided to not
wear that little black dot little did we
know that our very existence would be
belittled for that act of defiance
I remember the taunts my sister and I
had to listen to were still our mother
had to endure and she was told you don’t
know how to bring up your daughters with
the right values
she was taunted she was said very unfair
things and she was said how can you
allow your girls to walk around with a
look befitting a widow as a bare
forehead look was ungraciously referred
to widows unfortunately to this day have
to walk around you know sporting bare
minimums in monochromes and that you
know is in existence in many parts of
our country so to save our mother all
the unsavory comments and the taunts and
the ordeal my sister and I decided to
walk around everywhere with that little
black dot on the forehead my sister
being the good older child would you
know listen to whatever our elders had
told her and would wear that little dot
dutifully but me being the second
discipling and therefore slightly
defiant I decided to make it very very
known that I didn’t approve of it in the
least and that I found it absolutely and
utterly uncool so what I started doing
is moments before we had to meet with
relatives I would quickly slap on a
stick up in the on my forehead and as
soon as we were done meeting with them
I’d peel it off as well till I got
caught by the family elder on more
occasions than one and I was told hello
use that little black Kajal so the stick
up in these are very easy to deal with
but that sticky black Kajal was a messy
smudgy affair that is exactly what gave
rise to all the experimentation that I
started with so the black Kajal had what
I called country cousins the colour red
and the color white so I started using
them in tandem so I would normally draw
a black dot in the middle and draw a
couple of lines over it above it under
eight all kinds of experimentation like
in this picture and where it’s just the
black color that I have used or
sometimes I would use just the country
cousins and I would make a tiny little
bindi and mind you they were all tiny
because the minute it got a little large
the last thing we wanted was our mother
to go through some more grief than she
already was going through in 1997 I
moved to Bombay and the girl with the
dot on the forehead seemed to be given a
new lease of life that for headspace
seemed to transform itself my forehead
became my canvas
when Lee started to climb towards the
sky and cover the expense of my forehead
and they got very colorful because I
discovered you know a box of color I
started experimenting with other things
as well like holy ash vibhuti which was
freely available in all temples in
Bombay particularly the Sai Baba temples
and I would use lipstick I’ve used
eyeliner I’ve used anything I could
think of there was one time when I used
the sticky part of a band-aid and stuck
that on my forehead and drew lines
around it so in Bombay nobody really
seemed to mind the kind of designs I had
on my forehead or what I did with it
so I walked around sometimes with the
wineglass that I chose to draw on my
forehead I would lift a pretty little
bit of a pattern on the sari and make
that into a bindi and Here I am where my
pendant became my own muse and I had
drawn a bit of the pendant on the
forehead and experimenting and letting
people know that an eye liner can make a
fantastic bindi as well so while I was a
happy little shining star in Bombay when
I came back home here to Mangalore
things were exactly where I left them
last so I still remember the unsavory
comments the rude things that people
would say etc etc and I remember one
particular incident very very clearly so
I had drawn a horizontal eye on my
forehead and I had put tiny little red
flowers on the inside made it look quite
pretty and a friend’s uncle actually
walked up to me and said have you drawn
your vagina on your forehead I was
deeply humiliated Lee extremely shocked
by that reaction and it’s only because
my sister and my cousin were with me
that day they were the ones who actually
got me out of there without saying a
word when I went back home and I thought
about it I realized I was brave enough
to be me and there was something clearly
different about me and think about it
it’s a point for all of us to think
about we
don’t really know what to do with people
who are different the the best reaction
that comes out of us is to laugh that’s
what we do to people who are different
the horizontal eye is still one of my
favorite basic designs
I still do it quite often and of course
do some intricate stuff around it and
believe you me I’m most tempted every
time I draw a horizontal I to take a
picture and send it to that uncle and
say I’m still drawing vaginas on my
forehead so what happened after that a
chance encounter with the editor of the
Limca Book of Records open doors I never
ever imagined would happen to me so she
walked up to me and said what’s that on
your forehead I said it’s my expression
of a bindi she said how long do you take
to do it I said within a minute she
double checked she said you draw it
yourself I said yes I do
she said you realize you can qualify in
the record books I said oh wow and I
actually got into the Lemcke Book of
Records the day I got into the limb car
Book of Records I actually laughed till
I cried my big funky bindis the very
thing that was utter taboo within my own
family within our relatives with people
we knew back home in Mangalore was the
very thing that was going to become my
identity and I was very soon going to
also find my extraordinary in that
process with the advent of the easily
accessible internet I started doing a
lot of research on the bindi on its
connection with the agnya chakra with
the third eye the seat of consciousness
where the bindi rests the audio chakra
and it’s command over the other glands
of the body like the pituitary gland the
pineal gland the endocrine gland and I
was amazed that the bindi could actually
charge the agnya chakra into functioning
even better you will be amazed to note
that we in India are the only ones who
actually believe that the ajna chakra
can be manually triggered by the
application of the bending
this leads me to a very interesting
conversation that I had with a psychic
and a healer Ashe with a girl ashwin de
wanted to test the effectiveness or
wearing the bindi using different forms
like vibhuti or holy ash sandalwood
paste liquid bindi and a sticker bending
so through the method using a pendulum
and the method of dowsing they wanted to
infer the effectiveness of this on the
Arjuna chakra you will not believe me
when I tell you what she told me
she says after application of the
vibhuti first and the sandalwood paste
after that the pendulum swung like there
was no tomorrow with a liquid bindi the
kind that I use the effectiveness was
slightly less and with the sticker bindi
it had come down to about 20% what it
goes to show is that the Aria chakra
gets charged a material of what you use
whatever the form you may use that
thinking that came out of this whole
thing and this leads me to another point
you might ask what exactly is it that
the arjuna chakra and the bindi have to
do with one another the act of applying
the bindi on the ajna chakra charges the
chakra and seals the energy inside the
ajna chakra and because the arjuna
chakra commands all the other chakras of
the body that is exactly what helps us
perform throughout the day and voila I
seem to have found the reason for my
extraordinary confidence the information
that I am sharing with you is just the
tip of the iceberg there’s so much more
that’s available on the internet and I
truly truly don’t want to bother or bore
any of you with stuff that’s available
on the Internet coming back to me I
never step out of the house without
drawing a bindi on the forehead and when
I think back about all the information
that we have learnt and I had learned
through the process of the internet
etcetera
I realized that had this information
been shared to us as kids we would have
passed this information on to the future
generation and unfortunately that has
not happened because we during our time
were forced to wear it and it appeared
almost like it was some kind of a
superstition than any kind of a
scientific reason to wear it so this is
something that bites me even now that I
wish people had told us instead of
saying it just keeps evil away
therefore please wear that little dot so
I make sure that I wear a bindi a
material of where I am going and what
the occasion is I remember going for the
funeral of very dear friends
mother-in-law the lady in her living
years never called me by my name
Aruna and always would call me bindiya
and she was absolutely in love with all
my abilities hence of course the bindiya
so I because of the somber occasion that
it was I went to round with her tiny
little bindi on my forehead
the daughter-in-law actually called me
aside and she said you know my
mother-in-law’s soul which is clearly
hovering around here will not recognize
you today so don’t do this again when
you come for the remaining three days
please make sure you draw your big
bindis that for me was a huge lesson
wherever the cross I go in the country
people seem to quite have have a big
smile on they forehead at least when
they see my bindi but in one place and
don’t I really really don’t know why but
people in Gujarat have a strange
reaction when they see me so they
huddled together like I’m some kind of
an apparition that’s come out of another
planet entirely or they’ll suddenly
nudge each other and you know in groups
and suddenly there’s a group of about
four or five that’ll form and they’ll
walk in front of me looking like that
and trying to figure out what to do with
me I’ve even had a man who walked into a
pillar staring at me with his jaw that
had reached the knee yes I’ve had these
kind of reactions but what I normally do
is I’ve reached that state a Zen state
and I happily wave like a diva the
minute I see somebody you know huh
becoming together in groups and I
because I know what’s going to follow
right after
but wherever I travel the world over
beat New York or London or anywhere else
in between my forehead has been admired
for the work that is on it and therefore
I get all the credit for it
I remember in New York in the subway I
was once asked if I was the one who had
designed the binky the funky bindis on
Madonna Katy Perry Ashley Judd and while
the smile on my face kept getting bigger
and they believed it was indeed me I had
to burst their bubble and say not yet
but hopefully soon I that in fact is one
of my dreams I do hope that a million
women across the world sport my designs
not just for the aesthetic reasons but
for the scientific ones as well I never
ever truly thought that one small little
dot would make such a huge difference in
my life one of the worst periods that we
went through was after we made our first
film and it bombed and we lost
everything that we had and I remember
locking myself up in our room
I didn’t even in fact it chokes me even
now when I think about it I didn’t step
out of our room for days I would more
pround
nobody could even talk to me because I
didn’t want to talk to anybody and one
fine day a couple of days later after
this entire moping period was going on I
didn’t have a choice but we had to get
ready to meet with the lawyers and I
pushed myself out of bed forced myself
out went and had that shower rather
reluctantly stood in front of a mirror
and drew that design on my forehead and
I cannot even begin to tell you how at
that moment I felt transformed not just
physically but mentally as well I felt
absolutely charged from head to toe as I
was applying the bindi on my forehead be
it my tryst with cancer or the extreme
amounts of Edina meiotic pain that I go
through
after month after month to this day I do
believe it is my bindi
therefore my archness Accra that gives
me the courage and the strength to carry
on despite all the pain and despite all
the odds thank you
I never really step out of home now that
one incident taught me so much I never
ever ever ever step out of home without
a design on my forehead sometimes it’s
an expression of what’s going on inside
my head like in this picture where I’ve
drawn the circle of life or I’ve drawn
the mother earth because I felt the urge
to do it I’ve been the material of what
I’m wearing bata sorry or beat a funky
bin no spin so I want to compete with
the size of that one out on a date with
the chief happiness officer of
McDonald’s Ronald McDonald’s there I am
with him on the beach amidst flowers
wearing white chatting up a little puppy
out in the sea and I’ve lifted designs
straight out of my Kutta onto my
forehead matching my turquoise neck
piece and I had a turquoise bindi I
think which is quite clear on that one
and whether I’m posing with birds I have
a little bit of this little puppy on my
forehead I’m sure I think y’all will see
the resemblance here and I do believe
that there was a Yantra there on the
forehead so whether it is on the beach
that I am on whether it’s me in the rain
or whether it’s me with a crutch which
one which is what happened last year
I am always seen with a bindi never ever
without one it gives me a lot of joy
when people walk up to me and say please
will you draw a bindi on my forehead as
well so I’ve happily done that to
anybody who walks up to me and this was
a lady I didn’t even know who walked up
and said please can you draw something
on my forehead and she wanted one on the
side and not in the center and with
other people with the group of women I
had met for the first time this was in
Washington again with a group of women
had met for the first time and guess
what I drop in these four men too it
isn’t just women that it’s restricted to
so of course we call men’s Bendis
slightly differently we call them
pillock who don’t want to give them the
girly to hang over bindi this was on
call each other – about two years ago
when a group of men all my husband’s
friends decided they wanted a bindi on
the forehead and that someone from my
office and somebody a doctor that I met
at wedding and some joining rather
reluctantly as you can see the look here
I clearly seemed to have you know
charged his Arjuna into shock mode
couldn’t get a reaction out of him
so when I set up my web portal the bindi
web portal take his Indian techies
online on Twitter in fact made a lot of
fun of me they said the meanest of
things
they said who’s going to fund this app
and they said what next a bi app and all
these techies and their little stints at
Silicon Valley has totally totally
forgotten the essence of being Indian
kids on the other hand are absolutely
open and they loved the idea of having
Bendis on their forehead they walk up to
me ask me with interest what is it and
if they can support one – as in the case
of these little kids and little boys as
well so those have been these four
little boys gives me great pleasure in
fact to drop in these for them and he
has a little kid who’s clearly been
inspired what I have with what I spot on
my own forehead so she stuck a whole lot
of her mother’s ten packets of stickers
on her own forehead very sweet and this
is one of my favorite drawings of myself
done by two tiny little kids camlock she
and Kathy ie who wanted to draw my face
and don’t miss the fact that they have
drawn me with my bindi on each one of us
has it in us to find the extraordinary
unfortunately it is family it is society
and the policing that they do that stop
us from thinking big and thinking out of
ordinary and therefore being
extraordinary in the process of me
finding my extraordinary I even
discovered the power of my bindi and
therefore towards my arch now I’d like
to end with this beautiful court that
small dot on her forehead just like the
third eye of sathi seeing it all yet
kept closed and calm elegant and
graceful as she already was the bindi
made her a heavenly goddess who imagined
what a change a dot could make I am
waiting to draw a bindi on a lady
that looked easy didn’t it I’m waiting
for all of you to send me pictures soon
with designs on your foreheads so thank
you so much ladies and gentlemen [Applause]
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