Month: August 2025

Halcyon Days: Myths and Realities of Cloudy Moods

☁️The Colors of Cloudy Days 🌫️

Sometimes, I see how much of a spoiled brat I am. What I am about to say falls squarely in that category, and I shall say it anyway. The Californian summers seem to drag on. It feels especially so at the end of August. They are warm, bright, sunny, but not too hot.

📚The school’s summer vacations are over. But the summers aren’t. 

🩴The summer clothing is supposed to be winding down, but I can never bear to look at anything other than some flowy cotton with any fondness. 

🌷The summer flowers are still blooming on every shrub, plant, tree and pathway. 

While I mostly enjoy this halcyon time of the year, I also wouldn’t mind a few days of summer rain. Or even some cloudy skies. 

That was probably why I had not the heart to come in this particularly overcast morning. The clouds made an excellent background. The flowers that we see on our walks everyday were still there – but they looked more fresh, more vibrant. The angel’s trumpet flowers that we admire everyday looked more angelic than usual. The chamomiles looked more soothing – their purples against the sombre greys. As your eyes zoomed to the skies, the jacaranda tree’s flowers attracted your eyes to their purples too. Really these color combinations look marvelous against the grey. 

Shouldn’t cloudy days be called halcyon days? I mused. 

Are Halcyon Days Myths?

I came and idled with ‘halcyon days’ floating in and out of my consciousness. What I stumbled upon made it so. 

Halcyon itself referred to a species of bird that nested in the oceans during the winter solstice and were supposed to charm the wind and the waves into a calm. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon_(genus) the halcyon bird owes its naming to a Greek myth involving the wrath of the Greek Gods, Alcyone & Ceyx. 

Somehow Alycone and Ceyx managed to anger the mighty Zeus (apparently, they lovingly called each other Zeus & Hera. Really! It must be exhausting to have such fragile egos and live on forever. An endless cycle of being offended, and recouping from it). So, Zeus , in his rage,  cursed them separately turning them into birds – there are many versions of the myths of course. Some say Alcyone became a kingfisher with a mournful cry trying to find peace in the seas. The gods (the other ones) took pity on her and granted her a period of calm as she prepared her nest and gave birth to the young. So, these days during the winter solstice were called the Halycon Days. Alycone’s father, the god of the winds, gave her mild breezes, calm oceans and tried to bring her peace. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone_and_Ceyx

What became of Ceyx? He either became a kingfisher too or a sea tern.

By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE – Woodland Kingfisher (Halcyon senegalensis), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45557095

Of course, kingfishers do not live by the sea – so they could be referring to other birds, and over time came to be associated with these beautiful birds. 

After a start to the day in which I was feeling less than inspired – the cloudy days, and the halcyon myths managed to transform it. I have always liked the phrase, ‘halcyon days’. But now? I love it. 

The Role of Humanity in Modern Science Fiction

I read recently that most sci-fi writers these days are keeping away from the business of predicting technology – those tropes are too well-done, too quickly realized and therefore, the ability to think dizzyingly is being severely eroded. 

I don’t blame them.

Next Draft

Read this one edition of NextDraft from last week – it is news curated by Dave Pell and helps me enormously as I try to protect the mind from being inundated with ‘breaking news’ every few minutes.: 

  • There is news on how a father-son doctor duo proctored and flooded the research bases with their own “studies” on the link between autism and vaccines. Then, they wrote further articles linking back to their own garbage as reference. 

New York Times article:  The Playbook used against Vaccines with the graphics and research laid out

We were discussing this over the week-end: the way to teach AI something wrong is also figuring out how much you are able to throw at it to learn from. If you throw enough articles that the United States flag is blue and green. In time, it will question and start to say that there are two factions of flags: one blue-and-green and another red-and-blue.  Then, based on the sentiment analysis of the blue-and-green vs red-and-blue, it can start leaning towards green-and-blue, and in time, proclaim green-and-blue. 

  • Questioning vaccinations, Covid vaccinations, MMR – slowly allows you to question antibiotics in time. With RFK at the helm, I am at a loss to understand motivations here. They don’t seem to be economically motivated. I am not sure religion said anything against vaccines (against science maybe), so there may be a slight leaning there. Can you think of any other motivations?
  • When the bureau of labor statistics was fired, he wasn’t just ‘fired’ for attention grabs. He was fired because ‘the powers’ did not like the data. I have worked with ‘data-driven’ leaders who only took the data if it worked with their warped aims. It does not bode well, nor does it end well. Data driven means you must be willing to change your mind based on the data, not only use it when it is convenient for you.
  • Washington D C became unsafe and safe within days of getting what he wanted.
  • The Zelensky-Putin-Trump situation is still muddled and volatile. Nobody knows who is on whose side. Like a bizarre Hunger Games. 
  • AI interviews a dead person making it what The Atlantic calls a ‘Mass Delusion Event’. What do we trust anymore?
  • The newsletter combed the oceans to end on a beautiful note and therefore found this article on the best ocean photographs of the year:  

https://open.substack.com/pub/managingeditor/p/garbage-in-garbage-out-336?r=1vxbtt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Ursula Le Guin’s Essay on Science Fiction & Fantasy

This feels like a dystopian space-time to be in. Is this a fantasy story gone awry? A looming war in which we need to work hard to find where our moralities will lead us? I don’t know. All I know is that I have given up trying to understand what trends will prevail. Individuals being good doesn’t mean the collective of humanity is good and vice-versa. If there was one beautiful good-vs-evil arc, I am sure it will be easier. Don’t be a death eater. Voldemort isn’t going to be accepting or loving. See?

But fantasy doesn’t only write about good-vs-evil. It also writes about normal people making mistakes, normal people making choices, the difference and growth required to bounce back from them both.

I have been looking for several years for this essay by Ursula Le Guin on Science Fiction and Fantasy as a genre. It is not available online. I borrowed a copy of The Left Hand Side of Darkness in the Hainish Chronicles from the library, and there, as an introduction by the author, was this gem of the essay. There are times I wish I had an eidetic memory, and this was one of those times. In the meanwhile, here is an essay penned by Ursula Le Guin on the importance of Fantasy in our reading fare.

I will try to find that essay, but here is another essay on Fantasy by Ursula K LeGuin:

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/some-assumptions-about-fantasy

I don’t write about battles or wars at all. It seems to me that what I write about — like most novelists — is people making mistakes and people — other people or the same people — trying to prevent or correct those mistakes, while inevitably making more mistakes.

Sci-Fi Writers:What Should They Do?

The realities around us have made bizarre scenarios almost commonplace. Given this, how can any one writer hope to come up with technology that is supposed to wow this? The real world already has many of our horrors playing out real-time.

Biological warfare – ✅

Technological warfare – ✅

Sociological warfare – ✅

Chemical warfare – ✅

Nuclear warfare – ☑️ 

What are the frontiers left to sci-fi writers? 

Therefore, they are going back to no-technology or minimum tech tropes in hopes of getting humans to think again. Without toys. Without tools. Just their brains, their sensory organs and themselves. I think I admire that.

Teaching us how to be human is one of the greatest skills we need to embrace, isn’t it?

Embracing Effort Over Outcome

The older I get, the more I…. (That should be a web series right there!) 

The older I get, the more I seem to appreciate concerted effort rather than the outcome. For I have seen more people fail to succeed in the ways they wanted to, and yet grew in ways that success may not have taught them. But in time they became successful people.

That makes me sound like one of those management gurus who profess to fix your problems. But not quite. Where I am coming from is from an aging perspective.

The difference is, looking back at life, I have always liked the concept of human beings undertaking difficult things to achieve great things. Overcoming obstacles and all that. When younger, call it the arrogance of youth, or the fresh optimism of youth, there was a sense of setting your sights and then going about doing your best to achieve it. If you didn’t, you simply tried harder, or realized your limits and got your ego pegged down a bit. It all seemed straightforward enough.

Now, it doesn’t seem so easy. Anything requiring concerted effort seems harder.

So, what gives?

Maybe it is because there are more demands on our time and energy, and we have less t & e as we age. Before I try to create a formula for that messy statement, what I am trying to say is: Everything seems harder because of the tug and pull of prioritizing what one wants to do versus what one must. 

The demands of society, earning a living, generational demands –  many of us are caretakers for not just our generation, but the younger and older ones as well – they all take up time. Suddenly, the ability to carve time out for one’s pursuits takes on an almost selfish angle. (It isn’t). In fact, I’d argue that this time is necessary so that we may bring our better, happier selves to the harder tasks of life. 

In areas related to unconventional thinking or muscle patterns such as swimming, learning a new instrument or dancing, age seems to be a definite barrier. 

To those hard friends: Courage & Discipline

Therefore, it is with admiration that I cheer those of my friends and family who do set their sights and go for it with the promise and optimism of youth. Whether it is arangetrams or long cross-country bike rides or backpacking across mountains, or an educational degree. The achievement seems loftier because the discipline required seems higher, the distractions more, the tug and pull of daily life far more restive.

I saw this post on social media once (Paraphrasing as the original wording was more concise):  Anyone who has been a dancer will never make fun of someone trying to be one, a professional athlete will never make fun of someone joining the junior league. The judging only comes from someone who has never tried anything. 

And isn’t that true? I found myself nodding vigorously at that – how some folks manage to discern these truths, and then set them forth so lucidly is amazing.

Here’s to more of us having the courage and discipline to try new things, remain forward focused, and embracing the joys of discipline as we move towards our goals.

I did the easy thing here and asked Gemini for funny quotes on courage and discipline. Hope you get a laugh out of them too.

  • “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” – Will Rogers

  • “Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that’s why life is hard.”

Royal Life: A Light-hearted Perspective

Being Royal

“I take it all back, my dear. I think I want to be Royal. You know? Just have all the means, and have everyone do as I say!” I said to the children, who were milling around in the kitchen for lunch.

 “Everybody already does whatever you say! I don’t know what you mean!” said the daughter.

“No they don’t! But that’s going on the blog.”  I said, to which the son pips in his share.

“Oh my god Amma, you’re literally a content farmer, you know that? Full of dictums on using social media, instagram, etc, and here you are totally content farming.”

“True! True!” agrees the husband, who is also enjoying this far too much. “She is the Queen! Content Farming. Royals do it too, don’t they?!”

I laughed loudly at that, and said, “Seeing as none of you bowed to me while meekly accepting that you did not get the yogurt out of the fridge, I contest your claim.” 

Wealth, Fame, Fashion

The daughter and I have been watching a few episodes of The Crown on Netflix, and our commentary changes depending on the episode in question. 

Generally, having to not worry about wealth, ways and means, is a thumbs-up seeing as career discussions are a constant hum for those from middle class families. “I wouldn’t mind attending charity balls, and deciding where my money goes. “

“Exactly! Mental Health – yes! Global warming – yes! Improving chocolate wrappers – no! See?!”

One night, we were watching an episode where Lady Diana was being hounded by the press.  

The press scrutiny, and the unrelenting demands of living in the public eye earns a commiserating, “Must be awful living like that. Watching how often somebody talks to you, or who has their left toe turned away from you! Sheesh! People need jobs!”

“And – there we are back to jobs again! We must not be a very good royal family then, huh?!” we cackled to one another slurping the icecream sticks in our hands in a plebian manner. 

One day, we swooned over the fashions – the elaborate hats, and the colors that we wouldn’t wear to work everyday. The queen’s words to Prime Minister Blair then made sense. In that episode, the Queen is agonizing over the future of the monarchy, and has several polls taken to consider what they need to be doing, what they could do better: etc. Finally, predictably, she embraces the has-been, but shows growth by seeing the point of the can-be. She says something to the effect of the monarchy  existing to show us another world, transport us to another world. That, she is determined to do well. So if there are swan keepers of royal swans, royal buglers and bagpipers, and each of them providing a bit of a dip into that world, so be it. (Season 6 Episode 6, Ruritania.)

Sea Sense

One day, the daughter floated downstairs wearing something that looked like it had been discarded by Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man after a trying day at sea. I gave her one of my scathing looks that affected her like water on a whale. Then, I tried adopting a pleading tone. “Do you honestly want to wear this to a party in which other people will be present?”

“It’s summer! Relax. Besides, I like the fraying edges – it’s supposed to be like that.”

“So, it wasn’t ripped by an angry shark?!”

She gave me a look. Frozen. Piscene – in keeping with the theme of the evening.

“But think of the fashions!” 

“I am thinking of fashion. Clearly you’re not! What is this Mother? Fashions from last century?!” 

“Long skirts were rather popular in the 1990s, but they continue to be fashionable in 2025, don’t they?!” 

It reminded me of a good old book by Miss Read: Changes in Fairacre. Miss Read is musing on what to wear for dinner to her friend Amy’s house. Her Aunt Clara’s seed pearls would have to do with almost everything. And she says:

“Did other women fuss so much about their clothes, What did women do who had twenty outfits to choose from? Went quite mad, I supposed, worrying about shoes and jewels and so on to go with the right clothes. How did Royal ladies cope?”

I looked down at my well-worn skirt, a jewellery set my friend had gifted me a few years earlier, thanked the stars that aside from our modest circle of friends who were also our friends on social media, nobody really bothered about us.

“Royal life must be such a hassle, huh?! “ we chuckled as we settled into the back seat in our comfortable clothes. 

That evening, I sighed happily to myself, glancing up at the full moon glowing in the skies. We may not know what it is like to have a dip into another life, like the Queen says, but I am grateful there isn’t a dull moment in the house with these characters.

Celebrate World Elephant Day: Protecting Our Gentle Giants

World Elephant Day

August 12th, is World Elephant Day. Seeing elephants (even the cute AI generated pictures) makes me smile. The huge, gentle, loving, empathetic, loyal, family and community oriented animals have always captured the human spirit. It is the reason one of the most popular gods of Hinduism features an elephant-headed god. His birthday is celebrated with so much pomp and splendor, I am sure the elephants wonder what the fuss is all about on those days. 

I am not sure if they’ve heard how much their stories resonate with human-beings – Water for Elephants or Rosy is my Relative for instance. Even my own modest attempt, Mother’s Day in the Jungle, was such a joy to write. Oby Elephant and his pals are all that we want our children to be. 

https://books.apple.com/us/book/mothers-day-in-the-jungle/id874603773
Mother’s Day in the Jungle

It is no wonder that elephant related documentaries are always a hit. We want to see them succeed, we want to know that peaceful living can take us far. 

The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

– – David Attenborough

Temporal Range of Elephants 

In the essay, Temporal Range, in the collection of essays by John Green, The Anthropocene, he talks about how long these majestic creatures have been a recognized species – 2.5 million years as opposed to humans who were only classified as such for the last 250,000 years. Yet in that short time, we have endangered almost every other notable species on the planet in small and big ways. 

Dolphins have been here for 10-11 million years – with their songs of wisdom, playful natures, and community based raising of their pods. Dolphin grandmas are delightful, and critical in the raising of their young. The same way the matriarch of the elephant herd is instrumental in passing on skills to the younger generation of pachyderms. Humans have somehow managed to emulate and disregard this ancient piece of wisdom by denying women freedom and basic rights, but also making them critical to the caring of the family unit. Sigh.

When we talk about accumulated wisdom,  most of the philosophy we have at our disposal caps out at 5000 years. But, elephants and dolphins? Please. They have figured out how to live out their lives cancer-free. 

Unpacking 🐘🐘🐘, 🐬🐬🐬 & 🐦🦚🐧🕊️

A friend of mine shared this article, Face it! You’re a crazy person, on unpacking the life of someone’s job. As I read what it meant (trying to visualize every Tuesday afternoon for the next few years, the day-in-the-life-of series), I found myself thinking that I would love to unpack being an elephant in the wild, a dolphin in the oceans, or a bird in the gardens before deciding whether to remain a human-being.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

What are some things related to elephants you’d like to share? Anything.

Happy World Elephant Day!

Ephemeral Fashion: The Humor in Childhood Wardrobes

We were sitting around waiting for an event to start, huddled under a shamiyana-like structure. The rain was pouring – the way it pours in the Nilgiris. All the metaphors and mythos of Great Rains seem very likely, and just like that the skies clear up, and one wonders what happened. Where the rains went and how life goes on as though nothing happened. Dramatic skies are truly nature’s mystics. 

Anyway, there we were, sitting around under a canopy waiting for the event to begin, when a young fellow walked past us in his too-big uniform. The seams of his pants were getting wet from the puddles from the recent rains, his shoes a size bigger, his blazer two sizes bigger, and I couldn’t help smiling. 

I caught the smile on my friends faces too, and we exchanged a quiet moment of reflection. How as children, we were really never properly dressed. All our new clothes were slightly big. Prudence, economic necessity, environmental concerns – whatever the name given, ‘too big’ was the style. 

Goldilocks Style

There was a phase in life when we were dressed in either too-big-new-clothes or too-small-old-clothes. Goldilocks could’ve had a philosophical lesson or two if she’d stopped by and seen us. Life truly taught us the beauty of ephemeral pleasures with clothes – that brief, all-too-quick time when your clothes fit perfectly is never long enough to feel well-dressed. Sigh. 

“Those dreaded hand-me-downs!” I said and shuddered, exchanging a look with the sister, and she gave me one of her joyous cackles. You see? The sister and I have very different bone structures. Hers was what my mother approved of and called Healthy. Mine, on the other hand, made my mother scrunch up her nose, and wonder about what she could be doing better to help things along. But such is fate. The sister’s hand-me-downs, therefore, swamped my scrawny frame (Oh! How I miss those days of being nonchalantly petite and being able to tuck into stacks of buttered toasts without a second thought?!). I perennially looked like I was dressed in pillow covers. Very house-elfish fashions for Yours Truly. 

Nostalgia

That’s how we found ourselves going down the path of “Oh gosh – do you remember?”

And “It should’ve been outlawed. Remember when …” 

The mother was a self taught seamstress and she spent her evenings after school (she was also a high school Physics and Maths teacher) sitting and stitching all manner of clothes for her children and herself. The father escaped. Men’s fashions were where she drew the line. The lucky man! 

https://nourishncherish.org/2012/06/12/what-the-well-dressed-man-is-wearing/

It was a matter of great pride for my mother who learnt tailoring so she could stitch our clothes, alter them when necessary etc.

Frilly Fashions

The mother had no access to fashion magazines, and in those days of Doordarshan, one could not get many inspirations from television either. So there we were. There was a phase when she learned how to stitch Frills. Victorian tailors couldn’t compete when she was in this phase. All our clothes had frills all over.  Years later, I pointed to one monstrous pink dress in a photograph, and asked her what she was thinking of, and she looked confused. 

“Frills made you look bigger and better. “ she said.

Obviously. No irony, no sarcasm. I didn’t have the heart to tease her then. She was still so proud of her frills. Never mind that it made me look like a strawberry in pineapple clothing.

When finally I put my foot down and refused any more of her creations, she conceded to have the school tailor, Paada, stitch our clothes. A distinct improvement but still not exactly fashionable. Where would he get ideas in a village nestled in the Nilgiris with a population of less than a 1000 people?

I can’t tell you how grateful I was for uniforms. As we sat there looking at growing children dressed in slightly loose and big clothes, I felt like the universe really does have a sense of humor.

I truly understand now Bertie Wooster’s pride in his article he submitted to Aunt Dahlia’s newspapers on ‘What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing’. Trying to capture the ephemeral is what Art is all about, isn’t it?

The Fragility of Trust & Vulnerability

Potential

I was regaling our little school reunion to one of my friends, and found myself thinking back fondly. My classmates who had arranged the whole affair did a fantastic job. They had booked the whole hotel for our reunion class, and we found ourselves in a position where we meandered in and out of the different hotel rooms, the banquet areas downstairs, and chatting in the hallways and lifts. 

 I was quite surprised how easily we fell into familiar patterns and opened up to each other after all these years. Life had not been kind to many of us at many points in time. The strength of character that builds over time was inspiring to see in many. 

When I asked my father, who was a teacher in the same school, what he thought of folks and where they landed up later in life, he said it was the potential of humankind that drew him to the profession. All the ways in which the children grew in their capabilities, took on responsibilities, navigated changing landscapes and relationships – all with what is given to us. 

In some sad cases, that potential remained unrealized. All the different ways in which we were tested was shared and received with compassion by the kind ones, and some (polite) scorn by the meaner ones. It truly was illuminating to watch the different ways in which we had grown older. 

Vulnerability builds Trust

“Did people really talk about their trials and tribulations and not just thump their chests about their triumphs? “, asked a friend of mine when I was telling her about it, and I laughed. 

I was surprised too, but then I realized that there is a shared space of trust built up during childhood that makes us both open and fragile with each other. Also if you have seen someone drool over their notebook in maths class, or get pulled up for not doing their homework, there is a good chance you tend to take their bragging and suffering with a forgiving air. If you’ve soothed each other through your fears and worries, wouldn’t you be more willing to share your life story with them?

Vulnerability seems to be an important component of trust, and as children, both were easily available, before society conditioned us out of it.

“Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement.” – Brené Brown

That is probably why we were able to laugh at ourselves and embarrass ourselves with equanimity. Life felt suddenly very short and too quick when we looked back on it. There we were,  not children trying to daydream through a boring lesson anymore, but adults who had navigated life to the best of our abilities.

Where did all the time go?

I came back with a renewed sense of shoshin, and regaled the children with tales of our childhood. They rolled their eyes but also indulged me. It is good for them to realize that their parents were not born this way – adults taking care of medical appointments, paying bills, dealing with insurance matters etc. But that we were children who dawdled on their way to class, who were punished for not completing their homework on time, or being silly and laughing for no apparent reason and getting into trouble for it.

That life is over too soon is a rather better complaint to have than the opposite wouldn’t you agree ? That is what I wish for everyone. A chance to look back, smile, feel light , and still be able to smile thinking of tomorrow.