|
Bring Feng Shui Into
Your Kitchen
Afternoon Despatch & Courier,
July 2002
By Farzana Contractor
FARZANA CONTRACTOR interviews world renowned Feng Shui expert
LILLIAN TOO and gets her to do the Feng Shui of her home kitchen.
LILLIAN TOO, the leading Feng Shui expert of the world, is an
Oriental Oprah Winfrey of a woman. Large, jolly, extremely colourful
in thought, speech and attire, warm-hearted, sympathetic, and
a great lover of food. Let me explain the last bit first. I
met her over lunch at the Taj Mahal Hotel's Golden Dragon restaurant
in Bombay. And Lillian can eat! "But I am not a gourmet," she
clarified over a cup of jasmine tea, "I'm not so bold as to
claim to be one. Of course, I love food. I appreciate fine wining
and dining. I like tastes that are subtle and not loud. Or those
that are stunning, exquisite, a nicely married fusion cuisine.
Like an Italian spaghetti in Chinese sauce. Yum, yum, excellent!"
Our table which was being cleared, had a short while earlier
been groaning under the weight of food. She had tucked into
a good bit of this with flashing chopsticks, relishing every
morsel I thought. I suggested to her, "May be the feng shui
here in the restaurant is good for your appetite." And Lillian,
who is Malaysian, not Chinese, had paused in between eating.
"Yes," she replied thoughtfully. Then she drew out a small but
expensive-looking Tiffany compass and got it working for her.
When it stopped spinning, Lillian frowned. "Actually, I am facing
the south-east, which is not a good direction. I should have
been sitting in that chair (she pointed west), then the lunch
would have been much better!"
That's when I had an idea. "Do you do the feng shui of home
kitchens," I asked eagerly. And a short while later, we were
driving to my home, Lillian Too, her husband Too Wan Jin, and
their adopted son Lim Han Jin. She has a daughter, Jeniffer
Too, who is an electrical engineer. The whole family is into
feng shui, but not all professionally. "We're not obsessed by
it," Lillian said. "We have a lot of fun with feng shui and
that's the way it should be. But we don't go around doing people's
feng shui. I don't describe myself as a feng shui consultant.
First and foremost, I am a writer. Read my books, I've written
50 on feng shui, and none of them overlap. Through them, I'm
slowly, progressively giving out the secrets of feng shui to
the world."
Now she steamed into my home and kitchen majestically, a jazzy
and flamboyant personality with her peaches and cream complexion,
red coat and black trousers. "Kitchens," Lillian had told me
on the way up, "decide the health and harmony of homes. They
should be located in that part of the house that represents
the bad luck direction of the residents. Kitchens have the ability
to press down the bad luck and keep it under control." I was
mystified, and now most anxious to see what she would say about
my kitchen. "There's health, wealth and happiness here," she
pronounced first step in. I was amazed. Then Lillian pointed
out to the large, bone china statuettes of the three Chinese
gods - Fuk, Luk and Sua - that somebody had brought for me from
Bangkok and which I had installed on the kitchen window ledge.
"They're facing the dining table, they bring wealth, affluence
and longevity, but put them higher up at some place prominent.
Fuk symbolises happiness and wealth, he stands a head taller,
place him in the centre. Luk, the god of high rank and affluence,
holds the sceptre of power and authority, place him on the right.
And Sau, with his domed head and carrying a peach in one hand
and a walking stick in the other, stands on the left. Let them
look down on you eating. And put something solid behind them.
They will protect you from premature death through accidents
and the like." Fuk, Luk and Sau grinned at me happily.
She was at the dining table next, rapping her knuckles on the
wooden top. "The dining table's fine. It's nice and cosy. Oval
tables are good. And you got eight dining chairs, that's a good
number. Even ten is fine. But not 12. Also, your kitchen faces
the south. That too is fine. South is fire. Fire is energy."
She talked about her own kitchen.
"Mine is a feng shui kitchen. The refrigerator is far from the
stove and oven. Also from the sink. To have fire and water confront
each other is bad feng shui. A kitchen can create disharmony
in a family. It manifests in different ways. The maid will act
up. Your health will be affected. A kitchen is not so much about
the cooking itself as the health and harmony of the house! The
kitchen also depends on the layout and direction of the rest
of the house, it depends on the date of birth of the owner,
that's your chi. And in the kitchen, the stove is all important.
Don't place it in the north-west corner, that can effect the
patriarch of the house, there could be serious illness or even
death!" And we talked about food. Lillian Too is of the opinion
that foods are not intrinsically good or bad. "It depends on
you," she said. "You must find out what kind of person you are.
A yin person who ought to be eating cooling foods.
Or a yang person with whom warm foods go well. And she might
have told me more about food, but Lillian Too's attention was
suddenly distracted by the soft pealing of bells coming from
my kitchen window. They were wind chimes, actually, swinging
gently in the afternoon breeze and jingling-jangling as they
bumped into one another. Her face lit up. "Wind chimes! It's
fabulous, all over the world people are using wind chimes because
I popularised them.
They are a very powerful feng shui tool and act as an energiser
and cure. Hang them in the south-west corner of your house.
This year, the south-west corner is afflicted by the Flying
Star feng shui affliction. It is a formula that determines good
and bad time dimensions for homes and buildings. It applies
to everybody. So hang your wind chimes in the south west corner
for good luck. Tell everybody, tell your friends."
Courtesy, the UpperCrust. |
|
