Padmini, whose name derives from the Hindi version of Aphrodite, is the reason Lipstick Lunch still exists. When I would get lazy, she would ask me about the next lunch and push me to set a day, send the emails.
Padmini is the lover of life, the free-spirit. She is not afraid to put herself out there, get involved, try new dances, eat a plate of french fries, travel to a convention in Michigan about Medieval Romance, which she is earning her Ph.D in right now. She will carry a 50 lb. box of books from downtown to uptown and then all the way to her home in New Jersey to learn, to study.
One thing she won’t ever do is have oral sex, and therefore she refers to herself as the, “Charlotte,” of the group.
She loves taking pictures, and would like two toy poodles, “to complete her every picture.”
I recently visit her home and stayed with her family. Her parents grow okra, tomatoes, curry, figs, and 15-foot sunflowers in their backyard. They are young at heart and truly kind, happy, good people. They taught me how to cook a coconut soup from their region in India, Kerala, and we watched the Bollywood movie, Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge, that would be the equivalent to the American film, Grease.
Each Lipstick Lunch, Padmini brings up three topics. She brings in her favorite quote or clip from a TV show to discuss.
For Lipstick Lunch, she is the woman who plays story teller.
She would like to tell you three things you would not know from meeting her right away...
3. I have become quite street-smart about saving money. Let us just say that I know some little known ways of saving money and getting things for free without breaking the law. For example, in five years, I have saved over $1,000 on subway fares and an additional $1,000 on train fares in different ways. I have also found a way to order books from the publisher for free and recently ordered a $500 book from the publisher for free by extending some of my special privileges.
This is a great portrait of Padmini! Padmini is a unique lady, she is an ideal of constant movement toward goodness, light, beauty, wisdom; she's like one of the sunflowers her parents grow, reaching toward the sun at all times, reflecting the sun in her brilliant haloed (petaled!) face. But she is life, fun, the unexpected, the impressive (carrying 50 pounds of reading material across the city- indefatigable; then assimilating said material!). She's a whirling flower, a flower come to life, encountering and bringing her blessed constitution (full of wonderment, capable of earnest shock, a loving touch, petal-soft) to bear on everything that collides with her; like a mermaid given legs and put on ground, a lady both fantastical and supremely human(e) lent to the world.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Carly, for inspiring my Birthday Resolution to evoke the "Padmini" with-in! Haha! ;)
ReplyDeletePsst! I really want to master this Art of Love-Making! ;) After all, it is my Meta-fictional Self-Fulfilling Prophecy! ;)