Topic Brainstorm

This assignment was a bit difficult for me, as brainstorming for a project was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. It's hard to come up with story ideas for things you have not read or know nothing about. However, as I looked through the list of topics, there were a few that caught my eyes.

1. Food - The first one that caught my eye was food. While I was browsing the storybooks for the first week of assignments, I saw another student that had done their project on food. This was really intriguing to me. I love trying new foods and knowing how those foods related to culture and tradition. This would be a topic that would interest me throughout the semester and something I feel might be easy to write about. I'm not sure how I would tie everything in just yet, but this is definitely the front runner for my project. I would most likely include recipes and pictures of the cuisine, but would want to relate it back to the stories we are reading for the class. This article, History of Indian Food, was a really interesting read. I didn't know there was so much to it when I first started looking into it, but it will be fun researching all the different regions and the history behind their food.

Butter Chicken

Source: Wikimedia

Butter chicken is one of my favorite Indian dishes!

2. Beauty - Although this was not one of the topics listed, I find Indian beauty routines to be quite fascinating. Not just hair and makeup, but how they chose their clothing and how they perform their daily routines, like face washing and teeth brushing. Indian woman believe that beauty comes from within and radiates out. They take a more holistic approach to even the most basic practices. Everything from diet and exercise, to what you put on your face, how you sleep and how much stress you're under, determines how your body will react. Makeup is more natural and highlights the best features of the individual wearing it. There is a lot of history tied to beauty practices that I'm interested in learning more about. One article I read, How Indian Women Achieve Beauty from the Inside Out, was a good summary of this concept. 

3. Yoga - I went back and forth on this topic for a while. I didn't know a lot about it, but after researching it for 10 minutes for this assignment, I think there is a lot more to it than I first thought. I had no idea that it is over 5000 years old! I also did not know there were different phases or types of yoga. Or that it was made popular is Western cultures in the 1800s/early 1900s. Each pose in yoga is representative of something. I think it would be neat to tie those poses to what they stand for. Maybe do some research as to how they came about and tell a story. After reading this article : History of Yoga, it gave me some ideas as to how I might tie all the stories together. I'm not an avid fan of yoga, but I probably should be!

15th-16th century Achyutaraya temple yoga

Source: Wikimedia

I thought it was interesting they have carvings of people doing yoga on some of their oldest temples.

4. Temples - Speaking of temples.....I thought this one might be a great topic as well. A few semesters ago, I took an art class about Middle Eastern culture. The thing I enjoy most about that class was the section about architecture. There are so many temples and structures in Indian that are FILLED with history and stories. I could spend an entire lifetime researching them and still never be finished. It would be pretty easy to tell some of the epics in my own words, but set them in the temples and put emphasis on the structure itself. I don't have any knowledge of temples, but it's definitely something I'd be interested in learning more about. 12 Best Ancient Temples in India You Should Visit had a small blurb about each of the temples in the article. It wasn't super informational, but it did give a great list, with some exceptional pictures, of temples that I could research more and write about. 

Adi Kumbeswarar Temple

Source: Flickr

This temple is absolutely breathtaking!!!! The amount of detail is insane.