Maura Moynihan

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Maura Moynihan, an American renaissance woman

February 14th, 2008

Maura Moynihan, an American renaissance woman

By

Antonio Pineda & Richard Rubacher

          I cruise through the untrendy McDonald’s, situated in the Robinson Shopping Complex near Asok Skytrain. The gourmet coffee is cheap and good, making the McCafe a hangout for the bohemian crowd in Bangkok. I am joined at the table by Roc. We discuss his novel-in-progress Confessions Of A Bangkok Gigolo.

A lanky northern California cowboy joins us. Erich Fleischman teaches film at Chulalangkorn University in Bangkok. Erich is also a film actor and is shooting a documentary.

       Erich’s mobile phone rings. He speaks animatedly and hangs up. A smug smile crosses his face as he says, “Hey Tony, that was Maura Moynihan. You guys want to do coffee with her?”

          Maura Moynihan is the daughter of Patrick Moynihan, the late Democratic Senator and former right honorable Ambassador to India, as well as the American Ambassador to the United Nations. Maura is an important author and social activist in her own right. She deplores fast-food franchises so Erich arranges to meet downstairs in the food court of Robinson’s.

          Maura makes a grand entrance. She is slim and pretty, with sky blue eyes and red Celtic hair. She possesses a charismatic personality and the facility to converse nonstop.

          “Maura, you created a storm of controversy with your first novel,” I asked. “Can you tell us about it?”

          My novel Covergirl; Confessions of a Flawed Hedonist.” The title was my idea; the publishers and literary critics were confused at first, but then they got the joke. The book is a roman a clef about my Warhol years and my life in Kathmandu.”

          Erich chimed with, “Maura, why don’t you tell Tony about your Warhol connection?”

          She replied, “I was on the front cover of Andy Wahrol’s celebrated magazine, Interview. I will email the picture—if I can find it.”

          Roc, a saucy grin on his face, inquires: “I heard you were a rock singer and did an album called Yoga Hotel.”

          “Yoga Hotel is the name of a song I wrote about Kathmandu that was a big hit on the subcontinent,” she said. “I know because it was pirated all over the place. I saw it for sale in Delhi and Nepal and beyond. Piracy gives you fabulous distribution.  My publisher thought it would be a good name for the book.”

          I asked, “So your second novel inspired by rock music?”

          She nodded and said, “I’ll send you the CD and the novel.” She glances at her watch. “Guys, I have to get to my next rendezvous. Why don’t we hook up at the Foreign Correspondents Club Wednesday next?”

          The author Richard Rubacher and I sit at the bar of the Foreign Correspondents Club conversing with Richard Ehrlich, the correspondent for the Washington Times and co-author of Hello My Big Big Honey with my dear friend David Walker.

          Maura enters the club. She air kisses me and I introduced her to the two Richards. She is much in demand and makes the rounds of the many journalists and friends in the club. Richard Ehrlich declares, “Maura is a goddess.”

          Maura and her entourage decide to continue the party at some salacious night spot. She invites us to join her but we are busy so she comes up with a counter-offer. “I’m off to Burma soon. Why don’t you join us at the Zanzibar on Soi 11for the Last Supper.” Her eyes twinkle. “Many of my dear friends will be there.”

          Richard Rubacher and I cross the threshold of Zanzibar on a moonlit night. The house band is cooking, tossing up a fine rendition of The Girl From Ipanema.  Maura presides over the Last Supper like a medieval empress holding court.  Richard snaps photos of me and Maura. I liaise with the author Nicholas Palevsky. Richard Franken arrives with his beautiful girlfriend Missy and his son Tao who has just made his dad a grandfather.

          Michael Krantzler sits opposite Maura, accompanied by his South African lady friend Rinette. A brace of striking women make the scene—Laura, a Mexican Embassy attaché, is petite and charming. She has soulful brown eyes and short hair in the style of the French film actress Leslie Caron. Her friend is Nativone, a French-Laotian whose blood line can be traced to the Laotian royal family.

          Laura and I converse in Spanish. She is hospitable and vivacious and invites me to a social function sponsored by the Mexican Embassy. “Tony, come to the Foreign Correspondents Club next week. My Embassy will sponsor a screening of Luis Estrada’s film Herod’s Law

          She sips at her tequila sunrise and continues, “It is brilliant cinema and there will be free tequila, tacos and nachos.”

          Richard Rubacher posed some questions to Maura. “How many languages to you speak?”

The renaissance woman answered, “I speak Hindu, Urdu, Tibetan, Nepali, French and Italian. When I return to New York after my Burma trip I plan to study Thai with a tutor in Manhattan.”   

“Maura,” Richard asks, “what are your other accomplishments?”

She laughed:  “In addition to being a novelist, composer, rock and social activist, I am a  short story writer, poet, comedian and night club performer.”

“Tell us about your role as a social activist.”

“Briefly, I worked in refugee camps in Nepal where displaced Tibetans streamed across the border from Chinese oppression.”  

I walk to the bar and order a drink with the marvelous sobriquet Death In The Afternoon. It is a concoction of vodka, tequila, rum, triple sec with fruit juice. It is was good enough for Ernest Hemingway it was good enough for me. The band swings into the dreamy Italian classic Volare.

Roc and Erich come to the bar. They were held up at a comedy gig. Roc has a irreverent glint in his eyes. He sums up this marvelous evening to perfection: “Roc steals Robin Williams best line from the hit comedy Man Of The Year. He raises his wine glass in Maura’s direction and cracks, “I did not have sex with that woman—but I wanted to.”

The diners at the Last Supper table erupt into hilarity.

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It’s appropriate that around the Tibetan New Year, that a blog for Maura Moynihan launch. Here’s a little about Maura.

At age fifteen, Maura Moynihan moved to New Delhi, India, where her father, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was appointed the US Ambassador. She graduated in 1975 from the American International School, New Delhi, known as “Hindi High.”

By age 19 she learned to speak Hindi and Urdu and had traveled to Kashmir, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China and Japan. At twenty-three, a Harvard graduate and rock musician, Moynihan appeared on the cover of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine with her first band, “Maura and the Mystics.” For five years Moynihan and Warhol worked together at Interview and co-hosted “Andy Warhol’s TV.”

In her thirties, Moynihan returned to India and Nepal as a well-known Tibetan refugee and human rights advocate. She testified before the Senate Foreign Relations committee and was widely published, in the Washington Post and elsewhere. She launched a multi-lingual radio show in Kathmandu, Nepal, and became the Radio Free Asia Kathmandu Bureau Chief.

Now in her forties, with a clothing line in Saks, a short story collection and CD being released this summer (both named YOGA HOTEL), Moynihan is the ultimate renaissance woman, whose creativity and experience integrates East and West, politics and pop music, Bollywood and Manhattan.

In her new collection of stories, YOGA HOTEL (ReganBooks; on-sale August 12th, 2003), Moynihan explores the relationship between Eastern and Western cultures in India.

“Everyone knows about the India of the Raj, maharajas, tiger-hunting, and it’s inspired fantastic reading, but I wanted to write about the India I know, ex-pats, seekers, gurus, discos, third class trains, Delhi cocktail parties with diplomats and World Bankers, a place where worlds and people collide, with unpredictable and complex results.”

When she was living in India, Moynihan became an ardent practitioner of Yoga and studied Kundalini, Iyengar and Shivananda techniques. The title of the book and the CD refers to the nickname her friends gave her home in Kathmandu, a spontaneous Yoga ashram and popular international guest house, always open to guests from around the world.

Now listen to a song by Maura called Bangkok High. Click to play below.

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 Bangkok High [5:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Setting up http://imoynihan.com website and blog

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