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wonderworldtravels · 2 years ago

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List Of Things To Do In Mysore For A Wonderful Time

Mysore is a perfect blend of the old and the new. Its heritage is obvious in its palaces and other attractions, but it has also successfully integrated modern amenities. And though it may seem slow-paced to some, there's plenty to do if you can explore beyond the obvious. We've put together a list of things to do in Mysore.

Experience Royalty at Mysore Palace:

Mysore is known for its palaces and the Ambavilas Palace is one of the most famous. It's a royal residence of the Wadiyar Dynasty, built in the Indo-Saracenic style of architecture, and it's a popular tourist attraction in Mysore. On Sunday nights and holidays, the palace is illuminated and it's an amazing sight to behold.

Appreciate Art at Jaganmohan Palace:

The Jaganmohan Palace, though less well-known than the Mysore Palace, is just as magnificent. It was converted into an art gallery in 1915, and ever since then it has enchanted art lovers and tourists alike. Artworks by renowned artists from India and across the globe, such as Raja Ravi Varma, Rabindranath Tagore, S.L. Haldankar, Nikolai Roerich, Aless Caddy, P.P. Ruben, and Jiladin Ville hang on its walls.

Stroll around in Brindavan Gardens:

If you're looking for romantic things to do in Mysore, start at the Brindavan Gardens. Pristine gardens, cool breezes and a sense of calm––all make the setting perfect for a stroll with your partner. These 150 acres of lush greenery are one of the city's biggest attractions and even if you're just enjoying a ride on the lake, these gardens are a must-see. The highlight is definitely the dancing fountain, best appreciated at night when live music accompanies its graceful movements.

Ride the Tonga:

The open-air tonga is a horse-drawn carriage that has become a tourist attraction in Mysore, India. You can take one for a tour of the city, including its famous palace, clock tower and other attractions.

Visit the Mysore Zoo for a Wild Streak:

Mylapore Zoo, or Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens, is the oldest and best-maintained zoo in all of India. It's also a great place for children and wildlife enthusiasts alike: you can spot a variety of animals in their natural habitat here, including white tigers and nilgai as well as ostriches and emus.

Looking for one of the best mysore tour packages? Wonderworldtravels can help you find the best one! We provide end-to-end travel planning & a wide range of Mysore tour packages to suite your budget.

#mysore tour packages #Karnataka tour Packages #wonderworldtravels

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ulfwolf · 3 years ago

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Nirvana -- Musing 250

The one thing we share: the stillness inside you the stillness inside me

The innermost stillness—some call it emptiness, some call it the inner void—is shared among us all.

This stillness has but two properties, and they are eternal: awareness and will.

This stillness, or these stillnesses, from one being to the next, are not only look-alikes, they are the same. Sankara pointed this out, the Vedas brought it up, and the Upanishads sang it.

Even while the Buddha on occasion ridiculed the Upanishads—he wanted to ensure we did not surmise an individual, unchanging atman essence—he never said that Nirvana (another word for this stillness) was not alive. Empty of all phenomena, yes, but empty of life—awareness and will—no.

The westernized Nirvana, by the way, comes with a lovely Sanskrit heritage: from nirvāṇa, from nirvā “be extinguished”, from nis “out” + vā- “to blow”.

While words like extinguish and blow out might imply a grim, lasting darkness, they do not tell the whole tale, and I believe Rabindranath Tagore put a few minds at ease when he said, with a smile: “Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the [individual] flame because day is come.”

The Upanishads said that the stillness inside you is called Atman.

They said that the stillness inside me is called Atman.

They said that the ultimate stillness is called Brahman.

They said that Atman is Brahman.

They said that Brahman is Atman.

Hence: I am you.

Hence: You are Me

QED.

P.S. If you like what you’ve read here and would like to contribute to the creative motion, as it were, you can do so via PayPal: here.

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coolmohnishahluwalia · 5 years ago

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Gandhi in the 21st century: His main lesson for contemporary societies: morality matters, not just bargaining power

Albert Einstein’s ode to Mahatma Gandhi – “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth” – was technically incorrect. Only a few years ago, an international survey by PWC ranked Gandhi as the third most admired leader of all time, after Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs. Gandhi, born 150 years ago, continued to capture the imagination of leaders attempting to change the world. He influenced Martin Luther King Jr’s 1955 Montgomery Boycott, the seminal event in the US civil rights movement. Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh considered himself Gandhi’s disciple. He is a hero to Jack Ma and Al Gore. Gandhi also inspired John Lennon’s music. Imagine!

Gandhi’s work continues to light many lamps. The foremost quality he brought forward was courage. He refused to succumb to the status quo of unearned authority. When thrown off a train in South Africa for refusing to leave his first class compartment, legend has it, he sat all night in the freezing cold at the train station wondering whether he should fight for his rights or return to India.

Narrow rationality would have steered some towards the latter. However, his idealistic bent dominated his stand. He protested the next day and was allowed to board the train. Modern day entrepreneurs – in politics and business – repeatedly find that the world rewards courage more than intellect.

In a world driven by bargaining power, he introduced morality. He rejected the barriers created by accidents of history and amplified by human narcissism. He went after India’s social fault lines. Over time, one has seen such morally idealistic stands being repeated by many, whether challenging the sins of such hallowed institutions as the church in many parts of the world, or the left movements in many countries, or the current protests against Chinese high handedness in Hong Kong.

Leveraging truth allowed Gandhi to scale his movement. Many movements do not reach their promised potential because they are often fuelled by ambition or opportunism. Gandhi did not allow this to contaminate his movement beyond a point. The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 amongst 273 nominated contenders, is a recent example of devotion to the greater good.

It took on the challenge of building a pluralistic democracy after the Jasmine Revolution of 2011. Consciously sidestepping personality driven agendas, it coopted the labour union, the national industry confederation, the human rights body and the legal association. Victories of an unadulterated cause are quite alike.

Gandhi separated problems from people. Churchill disliked him. Gandhi did not reciprocate. In 1915, the man who would years later deliver the powerful Quit India speech at the Gowalia Tank Maidan in Bombay, raised a toast to the British while addressing the Madras Bar Association, emphasising the good aspects of British society. He would often call himself anti-injustice, not anti-British.

Gandhi used the purpose-over-personalities mantra to lead the freedom movement’s Dream Team. He had differences with his protege Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi looked for solutions to social challenges within people, Nehru wanted to bring them from outside. He had fundamental issues with Bhimrao Ambedkar on whether contemporary Hinduism was a bane or a boon for Indian society. Still, he let Ambedkar shape the Constitution.

Gandhi practised distributed leadership well before it was brilliantly articulated in the recent book ‘New Power’ by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms. Business schools need a case study on Gandhi’s leadership style, so multinationals can better manage their star-studded teams and avoid management feuds that occasionally rock the corporate world.

Gandhi was a liberal, who built on the traditions set by John Locke in the late 17th century. To me, Gandhi’s most profound words are: “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” This simple, yet powerful statement would well serve today’s world of ideological myopia and self-imposed autarky. Mr Trump, hope you are listening.

Gandhi’s is a story of a young man of strong convictions and privileged upbringing, who came out of his comfort zone and transformed himself into what Churchill called a “half naked fakir”. He was not preordained for this great role. His extraordinary success came from following his calling. After his unspectacular legal career in Gujarat led him in his mid-20’s to move to South Africa, chance events enabled him to develop and refine his political ideas and emerge as an independent-minded community leader.

He left an impact on Gopal Krishna Gokhale, president of the Congress party. At Gokhale’s prodding, Gandhi moved back to India at the age of 46 and was influenced by his mentor’s moderate politics. By 1920 – within five years of returning – he had become the icon of India’s quest for freedom. His utopian worldview had earned him the title of Mahatma, conferred on him by none other than Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Over the next quarter century, he became the father of independent India. Such is the history of greatness! #MohnishRANotes

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sanjithsanji · 6 years ago

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INTERESTING PLACES TO VISIT IN KOLKATA

Meet a 4000 year old mummy

The Indian Museum is the largest and oldest museum in India. You can spend hours walking in and out of the many galleries displaying antiques, armours, fossils, and Mughal paintings. The star attraction is a 4000-year-old Egyptian mummy.

Head to Kolkata’s Art Galleries

If you are a connoisseur of art, a tour of the art galleries of Kolkata is a must. Do visit Genesis Art Gallery, Galerie 88, Chitrakoot Art Gallery, Aakriti Art Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts, Gallery Gold, Emami Chisel Art and Birla Academy Of Art And Culture amongst the many galleries that showcase contemporary and emerging Indian artists.

Take your Camera Along to a Historic Potters’ Quarter

A top destination for photographers, Kumartuli in North Kolkata offers a tryst with the rich artistic heritage of Kolkata. Get a pair of sturdy walking shoes and wander around the many labyrinthine (albeit squalid) lanes. The district houses more than 400 potters, you will come across rows and rows of clay busts, headless torsos and effigies. Kumartuli is at its frenzied best for about a month during the run-up to Durga Puja, when the artisans start preparing idols for the festivities. If you have time, do walk up to the banks of Hooghly past the once-opulent Gothic mansions from the British era, now reduced to a crumbling slice of history.

On a Boat Ride from Prinsep Ghat

Prinsep Ghat was built in 1841 on the banks of Hooghly river. Today, it is an atmospheric locale, with breezy weather and stunning views of the Vidyasagar Setu. If feeling adventurous (or romantic!), do go for a sunset river cruise on traditional small wooden boats steered by local fishermen. Have more time at hand? Then, visit the Millennium Park – a beautified riverfront from where you can take longer cruises to catch a glimpse of daily life and rituals at the many ghats of Kolkata. Vivada Cruises offers three-hour long cruises with meals/ snacks.

A Breakfast for Kings at Tiretti Bazaar (Old Chinatown)

Pop-up stalls crop up daily from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. in this area. Delicacies sold include dumplings, meat broths, hot chilly soup, pork sausages with buns, momos and baos, spring rolls and many more. The Hap Hing Co. Chinese Provision & Medicine Stores, the Sing Cheung Sauce Factory and Pou Chong Bros Pvt Ltd stores are a must on your itinerary for stocking up Chinese ingredients — homemade sauces, teas, spices, et al. For lunch, drive down to 6 Ballygunge Place restaurant (in Ballygunge or Salt Lake) for a delicious six-course Bengali food buffet.

Check-in at the ancestral home of a famous Nobel laureate

This is high up on the list of places to visit in Kolkata. Rabindranath Tagore’s beautiful ancestral house known as ‘Jorasanko Thakurbari’ was built in 1785. It has been now converted into a museum, with an impressive collection of portraits, paintings and family photographs.

Leaf through the book stalls of College Street

A haven for bookworms, you are headed to the largest secondhand book market in the world! The mile-long College Street is lined with stores and stalls selling possibly every title to ever have been sold in the city. Haggling over the prices is mandatory! After you have picked up your books, head to the India Coffee House for chai and singara (fried savoury dumpling), it is a favourite haunt of intellectuals and students alike.

Visit the Seven Wonders at Eco Park

Eco Park located in New Town (Rajarhat) is a sprawling urban park with ecological zones, theme gardens and a lake. Seven sites are being recreated inside the park, including India’s Taj Mahal, Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer, Moai statues of Easter Island, the Great Wall of China, Colosseum of Rome, Petra in Jordan and the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt.

Enjoy the nightlife at Park Street

The lively Park Street is the heart of Kolkata. As the evening lights come on, the street dons a cheery, vibrant look. Many restaurants, clubs and lounges line the three-kilometre-long stretch. The Park hotel houses two famous nightclubs, Tantra and Roxy. For dinner, you can choose among Kwality, Arsalan, One Step Up and Tung Fong restaurants. For sumptuous Kathi rolls, head to Kusum Rolls. If you dig legendary institutions, Peter Cat is the place to be. Order Iranian-style kebabs and chicken sizzlers. Beer is served in pewter tankards. The place is very popular and does not take reservations, so plan to queue in by 6:45 p.m. to get a table.

Pick up souvenirs at a Biswa Bangla Showroom

A trip to Kolkata is incomplete if you do not bring back a piece of Bengal. Biswa Bangla promotes social enterprise and works with local craftsmen & weavers to create quality handicrafts. The collection includes stoneware, pottery, dolls, masks, perfumes, sarees, embroidery, sauces, teas, honey et al. Do pick up a tube (100 ml) of Nalen Gur (liquid date palm jaggery), an essential ingredient in the preparation of Bengali sweets. There are five showrooms in Kolkata – Park Street (Beside Oxford Bookstore), Dakshinapan shopping centre, New Town –

Rajarhat (at Central Mall),

Domestic Airport and International Airport.

You really do not need more reasons to visit the ‘City of Joy’. With your list of things to do in Kolkata all ready, start planning your trip now!

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marcusssanderson · 6 years ago

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101 Quotes for Instagram to Inspire Love

Looking for the best quotes for Instagram?

Instagram is one of the world’s biggest social media platforms today. According to recent statistics, the social networking app boasts of over 1 billion monthly active users.

Such popularity makes it a powerful platform to connect, engage, and influence others. It also makes it a great place for sharing inspirational narratives and spreading love and positivity.

While a picture is worth a thousand words, words can improve a picture by telling a story, providing context, or triggering curiosity. Instagram captions are a great opportunity to tell a powerful story and give information that the audience can’t see for themselves.

To help you channel the positive power of Instagram and help brighten you audience’s day, we’ve gathered these quotes that you can use for your Instagram captions. Use them to spread love to yourself and others.

101 quotes for Instagram to inspire love

1.) “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.” – George Sand

2.) “Don’t brood. Get on with living and loving. You don’t have forever.”— Leo Buscaglia

3.) “Love in its essence is spiritual fire.”— Seneca

4.) “We love the things we love for what they are.”— Robert Frost

5.) “Love is like a good cake; you never know when it’s coming, but you’d better eat it when it does!”― C. JoyBell C.

6.) “You don’t love someone because they’re perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.” – Jodi Picoult

7.) “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”— James Baldwin

8.) “Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

9.) “Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.” ― Dr. Sinclair Ferguson

10.) “Love For All; Hatred for None” ― Mirza Nasir Ahmad

Inspirational quotes for Instagram

11.) “The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.”— Henry Miller

12.) “A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.” – Max Muller

13.) “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”—Robert A. Heinlein

14.) “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”— Plato

15.) “Where there is great love, there are always miracles.” – Willa Cather

16.) “Better to have lost and loved than never to have loved at all.”– Hemingway

17.) “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.” – Bertrand Russell

18.) “Love is a divine being.”― Lailah Gifty Akita

19.) “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.” – Charles Dickens

20.) “To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return.” – Madonna

Uplifting and beautiful quotes for Instagram

21.) “Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.” – Sir Arthur Pinero

22.) “Self-love is the source of all our other loves.” – Pierre Corneille

23.) “The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain.”– Jennifer Aniston

24.) “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”—Lao Tzu

25.) “The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”— Albert Ellis

26.) “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much a heart can hold.” – Zelda Fitzgerald

27.) “Love, it never dies. It never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it. Love can make you immortal” – Gayle Forman

28.) “Hate generalizes, love specifies”― Robin Morgan

29.) “One day spent with someone you love can change everything.” – Mitch Albom

30.) “Everything that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.” – Franz Kafka

Inspiring quotes for Instagram that’ll warm hearts

31.) “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”– Ali MacGraw

32.) “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” – Victor Hugo

33.) “The more the soul knows, the more she loves, and loving much, she tastes much.” – W. H. Murray

34.) “Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.” – James Thurber

35.) “If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.”— Benjamin Franklin

36.) “A bird cannot fly with broken wings. Your heart cannot love without learning to heal.”― Kemi Sogunle

37.) “Our first and last love is self-love.”—Christian Nestell Bovee

38.) “Love is a great master. It teaches us to be what we never were.” – Moliere

39.) ”My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.” – André Breton

40.) “And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.” ― Kahlil Gibran

Quotes for Instagram to inspire love and friendship

41.) “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” – Iris Murdoch

42.) ”The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.” – Tom Robbins

43.) “The only language you need is the language of the heart – love.”― Simran Silva

44.) “Love is just a word, but you bring it definition.”– Eminem

45.) “We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allan Poe

46.) “The first duty of love is to listen.”—Paul Tillich

47.) “Love does not dominate; it cultivates.”— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

48.) “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.” – Sophocles

49.) ”There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” – Jane Austen

50.) “Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Quotes for Instagram that’ll make your day

51.) ”To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

52.) “Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.” – John Lennon

53.) “Let the love not escape from within.”― Suchet Chaturvedi

54.) “True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.” – Erich Segal

55.) “We are most alive when we’re in love.”— John Updike

56.) “Love cures people—both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”—Karl A. Menninger

57.) “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust

58.) “Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” – Washington Irving

59.) “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.” – William Butler Yeats

60.) “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” –Elisabeth Foley

Beautiful love quotes for Instagram

61.) “A simple ‘I love you’ means more than money.”– Frank Sinatra

62.) “Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.” – Rabindranath Tagore

63.) “Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

64.) “The love we give away is the only love we keep.”— Elbert Hubbard

65.) “If I know what love is, it is because of you.” – Hermann Hesse

66.) “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.” – Pablo Picasso

67.) “A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.” – Thomas Carlyle

68.) “Man’s best support is a very dear friend.” – Cicero

69.) “Love is ease.” ― Noorilhuda

70.) “Spread love everywhere you go.” – Mother Teresa

Quotes for Instagram that will make you appreciate love

71.) “Love is a promise; love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”– John Lennon

72.) “I’m gonna fight for you until your heart stops beating.” – Stephenie Meyer

73.) “Life is a game and true love is a trophy.” – Rufus Wainwright

74.) “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.”— Sophocles

75.) “A life lived in love will never be dull.” – Leo Buscaglia

76.) “You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.” – Barbara de Angelis

77.) “It’s not what we have, but who we have.” – Winnie The Pooh

78.) “Love is an endless act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is me giving up the right to hurt you for hurting me.”- Beyonce

79.) “The only thing that really matters in life is to love and be loved.” ― Andrew Critchley

80.) “Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.”—Jack Kerouac

Quotes for Instagram about love and friendship

81.) “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”– Aristotle

82.) “Share your smile with the world. It’s a symbol of friendship and peace.” – Christie Brinkley

83.) “True love is selfless. It is prepared to sacrifice.” – Sadhu Vaswani

84.) “We need not think alike to love alike.” – John Wesley

85.) “The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.”— Hubert H. Humphrey

86.) “To love someone means to see them as God intended them.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

87.) “Trust your intuition and be guided by love.” – Charles Eisenstein

88.) “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” – Carl Sagan

89.) “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” – Thomas Aquinas

90.) “The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” – Audrey Hepburn

Other inspirational quotes for Instagram

91.) “I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.” – Walt Whitman

92.) “One must not trifle with love.” – Alfred de Musset

93.) “Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.”- Dorothy Parker

94.) “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”— Paul McCartney

95.) “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” – Vincent van Gogh

96.) “We love because it’s the only true adventure.” – Nikki Giovanni

97.) “If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.” – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

98.) “I get by with a little help from my friends.” – The Beatles

99.) “Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us, and see the beauty in ordinary things.”—Thomas Merton

100.) “Don’t ever think you are nothing. Somewhere along the line, there is going to be someone who thinks you are everything.” ― MHS Pourri

101.) “Those who listen with their hearts will begin to see patterns everywhere.” ― Grace-Naomi

Did you enjoy these quotes for Instagram?

Although social media can sometimes lead to bullying and negativity, it can also be a place for positivity, diversity, and support.

As one of the most successful social networks today, Instagram provides a great opportunity to inspire and uplift others. Hopefully, these quotes will help you inspire love using your Instagram channel.

Did you enjoy these quotes for Instagram? Which of the quotes was your favorite? We would love to hear all about it in the comment section below.

The post 101 Quotes for Instagram to Inspire Love appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.

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trendingnewsb · 8 years ago

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Nina Simone and me: An artist and activist revisited

(CNN)I was surfing online when I stumbled upon a mural in Baltimore painted by artist Ernest Shaw. It’s a three-headed portrait of civil rights icons: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and, of course, Nina Simone.

Even within the boundaries of my computer screen, the painting on the side of a building at 401 Lafayette Street was powerful.

Curious that the artist had chosen Simone as part of the trifecta, I dialed Shaw, a 41-year-old teacher at the Maryland Academy of Technology & Health Sciences. He’s taught kids at Baltimore city schools for 14 years and is keen to mentor inner-city youth in some artistic way.

“I understand why you chose Malcolm and Baldwin. But why Nina?” I asked Shaw.

The answer was immediate.

“I have the utmost respect for her because she stood up for her beliefs. She sacrificed her career for her activism,” Shaw said.

And that kind of activism could not be more relevant today, he said, given all that has transpired since the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014.

Shaw and I spoke about Simone as artist and activist.

He told me he’d been raised by parents who were adamant about exposing him to the history and culture of black America. Simone was part of the learning process.

“Malcolm X touched me in my 20s; Baldwin in my 30s. Now in my 40s, as I am watching my daughter grow into womanhood, it’s Nina Simone,” he told me. Her biography, he said, “could be a case study for what a lot of black women deal with. And she chose to deal it with it head on.”

New recognition for singer-activist

Yet few in America know Simone’s story. In my own circle of friends and colleagues, mention of the singer’s name often gets this reaction: “Nina who?”

I’m hopeful that will change. Simone, it seems, may finally be getting her due.

A new documentary by filmmaker Liz Garbus, “What Happened, Miss Simone?” opened in theaters in 2015 and is streaming on Netflix. And though the film has its flaws, it serves as a good introduction to Simone. Sony Music has released “Nina Revisited,” an accompanying all-star tribute album featuring 16 songs. And a Hollywood biopic, albeit troubled, hit theaters in April 2016.

There is no better time perhaps to enter the stark, stalwart and sensual world of Simone. In the aftermath of nationwide police brutality protests and tragedies like the 2015 slaughter of black lives in a Charleston church, Simone’s music is as relevant as it was when she first turned her music into a vehicle for activism.

She became known as the voice of the civil rights movement with songs like “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” and “Mississippi Goddam,” a visceral response to the 1963 killings of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, and four girls in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.

For that, Simone paid a price. Garbus’ documentary shows how Simone never gained the kind of celebrity that she deserved. Radio stations refused to play her music; venues were hesitant to book her. They feared she would speak her mind on stage and mince no words in lashing out against injustice and discrimination.

Had it not been for her outspokenness, her principles, she might have gained the fame of an Aretha Franklin or Diana Ross.

But as it were, Nina Simone never relished a string of Number 1 hits. But, she changed lives. Like mine. She made me think about race in America in a way I never had before.

Simone brought me awareness

I watched the documentary for a fourth time the week it debuted and thought back to a solitary and anguished drive home I made many decades ago from Florida’s death row. The condemned man told me that he found solace in Marvin Gaye’s 1971 anthem “Inner City Blues.”

But several years before, Simone had recorded a piece that was equally powerful. It was that song that made me, still a teenager, ponder the structure of the lives of people around me in small-town Florida.

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash/ Just who do you think I am? /You raise my taxes, freeze my wages /And send my son to Vietnam

I listened to the song again as Florida prepared for that man’s execution. He had just recounted to me a life of growing up poor and black in the American South.

You give me second class houses /And second class schools /Do you think that all colored folks /Are just second class fools?

Live oaks shimmied by unnoticed as I lost myself in Simone’s voice. I was a young reporter wrestling with the execution of a man — whether guilty or not — who I believed had not received a fair trial.

Mr. Backlash /I’m gonna leave you /With the backlash blues

Simone wrote “Backlash Blues” with the writer Langston Hughes and it stopped me cold the first time I heard it in the late 1970s. Until then, I had been an immigrant girl from India, influenced heavily by the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.

Tagore, India’s only Nobel Prize-winning writer, was brilliant in his artistry. His poetry made me think, too. About freedom and speaking out against wrongs.

My mother sang his songs and schooled me in their meaning. I admired the way Tagore shunned Western clothes and spoke of how the British betrayed their own Western ideals with colonialism.

Tagore taught me to stand tall in my short Indian frame.

But it was Simone who awakened me to my brownness in white America.

When I try to find a job / To earn a little cash

All you got to offer / Is your mean old white backlash

I arrived in north Florida with my family in the mid-1970s. It was a world of black and white, and back then the two rarely met in harmony. In college, a classmate who was a music major introduced me to Nina Simone.

“She wanted to be the first black classical pianist,” my friend told me.

She just wanted to glide her fingers over the keys and play Bach. Instead, she gained fame as a singer of jazz standards, blues and fiery protest songs.

He made me a cassette and that was it. I listened in the car. I listened late at night on my bed.

But the world is big / Big and bright and round / And it’s full of folks like me / Who are black, yellow, beige and brown

Mr. Backlash/ I’m gonna leave you /With the backlash blues

An incredible influence

I became addicted to Simone’s deep, baritone, almost androgynous sound. I became fascinated with her history, her music, the tough choices she made in her life to stand up against Jim Crow. I even fell in love with the way she looked — the African dresses and jewelry she carried off with more grace than any haute couture model. After Nina, I shed my Levis for long Indian skirts and dangling brass earrings.

Simone’s music defined me as a journalist — some of the very first people I interviewed were Angela Davis and Maya Angelou.

If Simone was able to touch an Indian teenager like myself, I can only imagine her influence on African-Americans. The enormous sphere of that influence has resurfaced as academics, artists and cultural critics have weighed in after the release of Liz Garbus’ film.

Syreeta McFadden, managing editor of the online literary magazine Union Station, wrote:

“Civil Rights-era music is often associated with a particular soundscape, which is popularly understood as gospel mixed with the pop sensibilities of Motown. This understanding erases Simone’s vital contribution, the full depth of her contribution to secular music consciousness, her role in orienting black and white audiences alike to the liberation struggles of the civil-rights movement.”

And Salamishah Tillet, an assistant professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, who is writing a book on Simone, said in a NPR story:

“Like so many of my generation, I found (Simone) through hip-hop loops and samples. … Simone’s mix of headiness and haunt, lyrical boldness and political bombast makes her the hero of our hip-hop generation. We look to her as our muse; we listen to her because we want to know what freedom sounds like.”

I thought about Simone’s reach as I spoke with Shaw in Baltimore. As an artist, he drew inspiration from Simone’s convictions, expressed succinctly in one of several interviews included in the documentary.

“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times,” Simone said.

It’s a line that John Legend and Common quoted in their 2015 Oscar acceptance speech when they won for their song from “Selma.”

“How can you be an artist and not document the times?” Shaw asked.

‘The struggle is ongoing’

Simone died in 2003. I wonder what she would have to say about the “movement” today. She’d like the idea that a tribute album came out on the day the Confederate flag went down in South Carolina. She’d probably like the idea that so many young black people are again taking to the streets to protest injustice. (In 1978, she sang: “Oh, Baltimore. Ain’t it hard just to live.”)

Filmmaker Garbus told Salon that Simone’s voice is one that is very needed today.

“We were in our edit room when the events of Ferguson were unfolding,” Garbus said. “It reminds you that the struggle is ongoing and that her music and her words are as necessary and as relevant as they were then. It doesn’t shape the film, but it is certainly a ripe moment for the film to be coming out.”

To me, Nina Simone remains an embodiment of freedom.

“I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear,” Simone said in an interview.

That line is a guiding light.

As troubled as Simone’s life may have been, she has been a source of strength. It’s why I listen to her songs when I am up and when I am down. When I need a dose of inspiration and when I just need to smile.

For that, I am ever grateful, Miss Simone.