I’ve written about the Joys of Jam Making. I do love the fruitful camaraderie from plum season.
I waved at the Fed Ex truck driver as he turned into our street. The son said, urgency dripping in his voice, “Quick ma! Now you’ve established contact – you can give him some plums!”
I stared at him.
A beat.
Then. I started laughing.
The wag!
I have been accosting all those who come home with delicious plums, but this felt a bit much. Plum season in our neighborhood arrives with a splash. Suddenly, there are dozens of plums plopping all over the backyard. Ripe, tasty, beautiful plums.
🫐 Plums in a Splash 🫐
I cannot help missing the mater. If she were here, she would be making plum jams, plum chutneys, plum pickles, plum juice, plum rasam till we all heartily felt sick of plums. I myself have been going in and picking up plums by the dozen and bringing them in to share with friends. I can barely understand how quickly the bare tree, bloomed into the prettiest blossoms, and gave in to the light green beautiful leaves before sagging with fruits at every point.
It is a miracle, and yet, every year, I am mesmerized.
One day, I felt three plums hit me from the topmost branch. I was picking those that had fallen, and then realized that these three could have been the handiwork of squirrels. I looked up at them beseechingly. What was the point of all that exciting running around and chasing each other on fences if they weren’t helping out with the plums? As if responding to me, one cheekily stopped and held my stare, as if to say, “I have had my fill. A fella has got to jump and run!”
🫐 Did You Know? 🫐
Fruits arriving in bounty are a blessing. The children, despite my best retreats, continue to resist the lure of fruits. Every year I start it up – each time with a different taste-bud related tip. “Did you know? Your taste buds change over time?”
“Did you know having a fiber-rich helping of fruits helps your gut bacteria?”
“Did you know fruits help make you happier because the gut bacteria love digesting them?”
“Did you know this?”
Or
“Did you know that?”
To which, I also receive a plummy reply, “Did you know we don’t like plums?”
What I did not know until recently, is that not all plums dried become prunes. Of course I had a gooey rotting mess before I learnt that particular fact, but apparently, only a certain variety of European plums can be dried to be preserved as prunes. Oh well.
If I could send some plummy goodness via the internet, I would. But as it is, somethings still require physical proximity. But if you are in the vicinity, please stop by. We’ll have a plum time!
I sat with a set of children’s books in my arms. I looked down fondly at the one in my hands. The first one was about a giraffologist – the title pulling my attention almost immediately. What a delightful sounding profession?
The book is based on Dr Annie Innis Dagg who was the world’s first giraffologist. The world’s first primatologist, Dr Jane Goodall, is of course well-known. But Dr Annie, who went to Africa to study her favorite animals, giraffes, just 4 years later is practically unheard of. That is the weird nature of public attention.
Dr Annie’s life and work was made into a documentary in Canada honoring her work towards preserving these tall creatures.
The daughter’s drawing of a giraffe:
Bill Bryson’s book, The Body – A Guide for Occupants
I was thinking of giraffes and their beautiful necks one day after reading Bill Bryson’s book, The Body – A Guide for Occupants. One section of the book dealt with how prone we are to choke. One particularly sad anecdote about a person who had a gold coin lodged in his throat was especially excruciating. If nothing else, I am glad we now live in a time and age when surgical techniques have come so far from the ones outlined in the book. (The coin only fell out when he was hoisted by his foot and swung like a pendulum. )
Beautiful Necks Everywhere!
Our evolution into bipedalism means that necks took on a truly unique structure to support the head, and provide a forward looking face for navigation. I stopped and chuckled at that. I was on a walk, and just like that, I started noticing necks everywhere. The crane, the gray heron, the hummingbird, the dog, squirrel and the cat.
I got home to look up the giraffe’s neck again.
Did you know that both giraffes and humans have the exact same number of bones in our necks : 7
Yet, the giraffe’s neck supports its long neck, and its heart supports pumping blood all the way up there. All those jokes about tall folks( How’s-the-weather-up-there?) suddenly feels biologically profound.
In any case, the understanding of our biology, our evolution, and our unique places in the planet is shaped by so many factors –How many giraffes with weird ears and longer tails evolved before the long necked ones that we know and love?
I craned my neck to look at a white egret crook its neck and plunge into the waters with precision and force for its breakfast, and gently massaged my own neck. ‘Up to my neck with worries’ took on a new meaning too, and I hoped giraffes and herons never had to use that phrase, when worried.
Just like that, my blog has become a proper functioning adult.
21 years of selectively writing about what matters to an ordinary person. Somehow, reflecting on the writing makes it seem like our lives were more adventurous, humorous, and fun-filled.
Now, isn’t that a lovely gift?
I was reading Bill Bryson’s book, The Body, and in it, he says something incredible about memories – that we can predominantly choose what we want to remember. That often our most colorful memories aren’t the original ones at all – but rather deepened by the feeling and retelling of it. We’ve seen it in the stories we love to tell each other all the time. Every time we laugh about our own foibles, it makes the memory a more endearing one, doesn’t it?
Where am I going with all this?
Curating the blog’s theme
I realize that I am probably tending to what gets on my blog. I tend to actively gravitate towards what I want to cherish in life – beautiful moments, humorous moments, peaceful moments, intellectual moments: in short, moments of awe, curiosity, love, levity, and transformation. The negative rooted out like weeds (which is not to say that I don’t have them. I do, of course. Just in measured quantities on the blog.)
Anyway.
There are no awards given for 21 years of writing 1-2 blog posts a week, every week for 1092 weeks. 5-9 posts a month for 252 months. The award is the writing, and the wholly generous readers who stop by to wave, hopefully feel a moment of peace, get a laugh or two, and encourage me endlessly.
So, go ahead – this is a party!
Get drunk – I mean on the posts in the blog. I don’t actually offer alcohol. Please head on over and randomly click on any month, read a few, and let me know what you think, or you know, just have fun.
“I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.”
Is there more to life? Our lives? Most lives? I don’t know. But I know that ‘this one precious life’, as Mary Oliver puts it demands our attention. What you value, and what you remember over the moments of your life, becomes you, doesn’t it?
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. – Mary Oliver
P.S: WordPress tells me I have a significant achievement: World Domination – for receiving visitors from over 150 countries – with the sweet caption: The United Nations has nothing on you.
There is an energy to India that is indescribable. The heat, the rains, the people, the colors, the population, and the conversations. Over time, the nature of these conversations has shifted gently towards aging. All of us are aging, but that means, our parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents are aging too.
Even as we realize aging is coming for us all, it is a humbling experience to see previously bustling energetic authority figures succumb to the frailties of age. The anxiety among the aging is very high. Whether this is a reflection of rapid technological changes, or simply a function of age, I do not know. I don’t have the data to determine whether our grandmothers’ anxieties increased with age as well. It wasn’t something that was acknowledged, much less named and labeled.
“What are you doing, amma?” I said walking into the kitchen one night.
“Soaking some rice for appam tomorrow – I know you like it.”, she said.
“Hmm..” I said noncommittally. “Don’t worry too much. I am not particular about ..”
“I know you!” She cut me off. “You Americans get by without breakfast, without evening tiffin! We’ll make appam and stew, and I know you will love it!”
Who was I to argue with that? I do love a good appam and stew.
Women who managed careers, homes and children with competence and skill suddenly find themselves paralyzed by whether there is enough milk in the fridge for morning coffee. The certainty of Gopala, the morning milkman, is no longer there. The rhythm of waiting till morning for the milkman is gone. Instead, they find themselves checking obsessively with their children whether the breadbasket order is in.
Swift technology, quick commerce, while making it easier for us, also seems to have contributed to an increase in instant gratification among the elderly.
The Procurement Parrot
Watching the evenings unfold in families where the breadwinners work in multinational companies in India is fascinating. I watch the mother figures peep into the room where the man of the house is taking an international call – possibly the US, given the time-zone difference.
“We need curry leaves.”
The son’s performance is a class in the performing arts. Keeping his eyes trained on the screen, and acting like there is no interruption, there is an intense hand-wave not visible on the screen- signaling, “Shh!”
If you thought that would have her beaten – I show you The Great Indian Mother.
She tries again – this time with the woman of the house, who is in a different room taking a call of her own. She waves her away – with more grace. “Ssh…”
But here, the Indian system knows how to work women. The mother figure is prepared. She passes a note – a list of items that need to be ordered. A quick glance at the list results in:
(1) Either the woman of the house giving in. A pacifying nod to indicate acknowledgment
(2) Or she is sent back to the son’s laptop, with further instructions.
After a few minutes, she emerges victorious with her order of milk, curry leaves, and coriander leaves done.
I smiled at the familiar scene. Professionals in India often have to take calls with their US teams, and this means, that the post-dinner refrigerator audit resulting in last minute calls for curry leaves is often handled by the older / retired grandparents in the house.
“I sound like a parrot with these people – I want curry leaves. Order curry leaves. Did you order curry leaves?” She said, and I felt for her.
Or better yet, they managed it themselves treating the walk to the market as a little social saunter. They also, somehow, magically managed to make perfectly good dishes without curry leaves if required. Now, however, with the increase in quick commerce, nobody is willing to wait for anything anymore. Compromise seems to be on the decline.
Yes, some dishes taste better when prepared a certain way, but the beauty of home-cooked meals is in the art of adjusting, and creating anyway.
All day long, delivery folks zip by on bikes, delivering this and that to the urban household who is anticipating anything from a watermelon to a stitched blouse from a tailor down the road. Need some fermented batter delivered across the city? There is a fella on a bike willing to come home, collect it, and deliver it across the city for you. The heat doesn’t deter them, the rains barely, the snarling jams part-and-parcel of their days. Mega marts feeding quick commerce – enabling thousands to eke out a living, yes, but it also a reminder that we have forgotten to wait and be patient with our wants and desires.
“While you are having dinner itself, I’ll tell you today.”, she said the next day. ”I can’t have you hissing like cobras in the house when I come around with the list of things to order! We need 4 packets of milk – for payasam (kheer) tomorrow.”
I laughed at the cobra reference and rose to protest that payasam was quite unnecessary, but was silenced with a stare. So, I slurped the stew, and gulped the appam with relish.
“ Is the appam stew good?”, she asked me.
I smiled at the matriarch. “Yes! Fantastic as always, amma.” I said, removing the curry leaves from the stew, and setting it at the corner of my plate, while the breadbasket order for the next day was being filed under her watchful gaze.
For years, this was the standard response I got from the children after school. Never one to be deterred though, I’d redirect, prod, ask specific questions: What did Shriya say about your new drawing pencils? Did Shrinik do somersaults after lunch today also?
You see? The thing is, I could not imagine their school to be a place where nothing happened, and the best adjective for the day was ‘Good!’. I knew for a fact that they listened to their teacher read out stories, they hopped along the number line, slid up and down through graphs, chased butterflies, had turf wars with sticks and stones, played sharks and minnows in the playground, were enthralled as they enacted civil wars, made the artwork that papered the walls of their colorful classroom, and so much more.
Yet. Nothing and Good. Good for Nothing answers both.
Then, something wonderful happened.
Dancers Move!
I started volunteering in elementary school classrooms, as a volunteer – sometimes reading out books, other times, teaching experimental science.
One day, we were experimenting with air pressure and force with the kindergarten children. One of the experiments was to blow bubbles to see how the bubbles stayed airborne. It was a lovely windy day, and the bubbles were a joy to teacher, volunteers, and students alike. There were delighted gasps as large bubbles drifted off into the air, and much chasing after the smaller bubbles.
When finally, the class was done, and we headed back into the classroom, the teacher said, “Oh! They have too much energy. They’ll never settle down to sit and do anything now. Let me get them to release some energy first!” I wondered what she would do, as recess was behind us, and lunch time was a while away.
I started laughing when I saw her switching on some music. “Dancers Move!”, she said, and the children seemed to know what to do. I watched mesmerized as the little ones danced to the music. What a wonderful way to blow off some extra energy?
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” —Albert Einstein
I thought everyone danced!
I narrated the whole thing to the teenaged son later that day as went on a windy day walk, and he laughed, “Yes! I remember doing that all the time!”
I tell you.
“All those times I asked you how was your day, and you said ‘Good!’, you danced in school?” I said, flustered more by this than the whipping winds.
“Yes…but don’t you see? It was good. Yes. But we did it all the time. It was nothing new.”
“Why do you think I yearned to hear about your days? We didn’t dance in the office!”
“Yes, but we didn’t know that! I thought every one danced!”
I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. It is true isn’t it? He didn’t know what our days were like. If anything, our days were good too. Just not listening-to-stories, playing-with-air-bubbles on windy days, and dancing to let-off-steam good.
So, what do your good days look like? You know? The days you do nothing.
Spring time walks are meant for dancers. But human beings, especially as adults, develop this appalling habit that we associate with dignity. We curtail our movements. Getting stiffer and stiffer as we age, and then complain about the loss of agility. We have International Dance Day on April 29th. Why don’t we make dancing in public – just like that – in April a social convention?
Look at all the world in April.
Is this Dignified?
The hares don’t just move – they hop, they hip, they hip-hop The birds don’t just fly – they flit, they swoop, they skim The dogs don’t just run – they wander, they romp, they swagger The snakes don’t just slither – they rattle, they pulse, they coil The plants don’t just grow – they blossom, they reach, they sprout The trees don’t just become green – they flower, they photosynthesize, they crown
I, too, feel the urge to prance and skip But adults don’t just dance in meadows – they think, they weigh, they worry When the mind leaps, and the body stays still Where does the energy go? It sings, it muses, it writes. All the while asking: Is this dignified?
The other day, I walked with difficulty – you see what I wanted to do was skip, prance and twirl a jig or two. That’s spring time – like a coiled spring waiting to release its energy. I was on a trail with people. Adults who all seemed to be in a similar state of imbalance between the internal energy and what the world expects from us. I could see it in the size of their smiles.
How do you do Mrs Potts, and you, Mr Binns?
How marvelous it would be if we could do just as we please? Skip and sing. So what if Mrs Potts scowls or Mr Binns purses his lips. Alas! We do not do that. Not when one’s hair is graying. That’s when you are supposed to know better isn’t it? I could not help thinking of the young child who skipped to school as she was dropped off by an adult one morning. Most adults had the ‘office look’, but even they could not help smiling at the spring time exuberance of this child.
Mating in Springtime
As I walked on musing thus, I stopped to watch the spring time mating rituals with amusement. There were two wood ducks chasing after a female. Their bluish green heads glinting in the morning sunlight.
Elsewhere, a couple of blackbirds, and a pair of hummingbirds swooped in circles. Teasing each other, attracting their mate. That’s when the western grebes grabbed my attention. They ran, nay skipped and danced, across the waters – is there a touch of the basilisk in them?
I am not sure I recognize giggles in birds, but if I could anthropomorphize, that is what I would say – they giggled and reveled in each other’s company. They danced together on the waters, and then skimmed below the surface for, what I can only assume is, frolicking underwater.
When finally, they surfaced one after another, as though daring each other to see who could hold out the most, I laughed. They were far from where they swooped under, they managed to continue their play and resurfaced together before running on the water again.
Apparently, that is their mating ritual. Really – birds have the most beautiful mating rituals. Take the peacock for instance- this bird isn’t leaving anything to chance.
Talk about dancing your way into hearts.
Dance-wherever-and-whenever-you-wish month
“I wish we would dance!” I said to the son later that day when I told him about International Dance Day.
“I think you already do that, amma. You just think you don’t. I saw you wiggling your hands just now!”
I laughed. “But I want to properly dance you know? Tap dance, ballet dance, classical dance, jazz dance. ”
He rolled his eyes.
Who would like to join me in petitioning for a dance-wherever-and-whenever-you-wish month?
The past few days have been days of unimaginable beauty in the Bay Area. They have been rainy days. Rainy days in the Bay Area are a different kind of beautiful. For it rains, it pours, it drizzles, it teases, it dances, and it drums and sometimes just goes away. Occasionally, if you are really lucky, you can see a rainbow or two.
One evening, the son & I wrapped up and went on a walk. It was a windy day, and temperatures tend to dip a bit more than usual on windy days around the time of a sunset. The clouds were so thick and ready for some rains, that we knew we would not be gazing at the sunset exactly. Still, that time of the day seems to beckon one, doesn’t it? Something about it makes it feel sacrosanct.
Feeling Bubbly?
We chatted about this and that. Mostly of the experiment I had done with the children at the school I had volunteered in. Our experiment with air and whether they have force, culminating in blowing bubbles were a thumping success if the joy, laughter and smiles were anything to go by. We blew small, medium, big and humongous bubbles into the air. It is an amazing feeling when volunteers, teachers & the children have a great time. I told the son as much, and he grinned with what I knew was not just indulgence but genuine happiness for us.
Shining With Divinity?
On the way back, a beautiful trick of the light meant that the world behind us glowed golden through the clouds, while ahead of us, it glowed silver through the clouds. The pair of us stopped our chattering, and smiled together. Both of us stuck trying to find the right word for the light. Maybe even wondering how to catch this moment in a literal bubble. For it was so beautiful.
“Divine light, huh?”
“Yeah! I don’t think I know exactly what that light is, but this comes closest no?” the son agreed.
Light is such a beautiful phenomenon. We spend our lives trying to hold it, we have endless literary devices around it (Light at the end of the tunnel, lightness of being, making light of a situation) – But always, it is in a positive light (huh!)
Rainy days bring out the beautiful potentialities for experiencing light. It can evoke melancholy, gratitude, divinity, surrender, and most importantly awe.
Rainbows
When the raindrops manage to create total internal refraction, there is nothing but joy, wonder and an overwhelming sense of loving this beautiful Earth with its thin blanket of an atmosphere that allows us to experience rainbows.
It was a somewhat tumultuous setting to wake up to. I had just crossed the Amazon river on a bike. Did you know pedaling through water looks easier than it feels? Especially, when the waters are flowing west-east, and you’re biking north-south.
But still, it was beautiful to bike across a wide, deep river. Water is so soothing, isn’t it? Feels like floating – only every now and then, your ankles get wet. I think I rather enjoyed the ride after a full 3 days of council meetings with the Queen. Have you been to any of these? Turns out, they aren’t as fun and impressive as they seem. But that is corporate err… royal life for you I suppose. The nitty-gritty – the treaties, the documents and the hundred disagreements that arise between 35 council members is truly draining. While I was happy to say my good-byes and head across the river, I wasn’t quite ready for what lay for me on the other side.
Scene cut.
Retake River-biking scene.
The aerial view of my biking across the Amazon river is cool. Was Wonder Woman an Amazonian woman?
Cut. Cut. Cut.
“You’ll be late – time to get up!”
I moaned into my pillow displaying the kind of weakness for sleep that Amazonian strong women most certainly did not according to the myths. I got out of the bed though as a good citizen must.
Still, I felt a little unsettled – aerial surveys, biking across rivers, social council meetings and strange amazonian men pointing me to a different boat (That was the last part of the dream – not important) – can do that. I decided a short walk around the neighborhood was all the time I had before my day started.
The Heron on the Roof
So I legged it. Trying to listen to the grounding sound of chirping birds, and taking in huge gulps of the fresh morning air. Did I tell you how bright it was for a February morning? Well, it was.
Watching the grey heron on a grey house’s rooftop after a tumultuous morning, I felt a new respect for the bird that lives this reality with ease and calm. Aerial surveys – wasn’t that what it was doing just then? Wading through the river waters? They love it and they excel at it. Watching the waters sanguinely from near the shore – again, their specialty.
Literary Inspirations
As I watched the heron, an unrelated nugget of information rose – it has been a while since I had read Kelly Barnhill’s book, The Crane Husband. In an interview, she went on to say that the story had come to her one day after seeing a crane sit still on a rooftop.
We see plenty of birds perched anywhere and everywhere all the time. But there is something incongruous about a heron or a crane perched on a rooftop (not in the middle of some fields) , but in a suburban locality, that stirs the imagination. At that moment, I could understand the author’s inspiration for the book.
I stopped to take in the beautiful ringing sounds of a winter robin on a bare tree, and headed back feeling far more settled than when I set out. The heron had done it again. Patience, stillness, sun-bathing, rivers – all in a day’s game after all.
A few months ago, I was discussing the concept of a column with an editor. She suggested ‘It’s Not Breaking News’ – seeing as that was the theme of the writing on my blog. I felt inordinately proud at that. I loved that my blog was perceived as such.
It got me thinking of all the things I looked forward to reading in newspapers as a child. My brother went for the Sports and Automobiles column, I went for the Humor and Science sections in The Hindu. It is why I still love the Open Page section of The Hindu and was so proud to have been published in it as an adult. Who said dreams did not come true?
I remember smiling at the Slice of Life column written by V Gangadhar every week. After all these decades, I may have forgotten the content of his columns, but I remember how it made me feel. Combined with the illustrations by R K Laxman, this was week-end magic – reminding us of the joys of human living.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou
Jane Austen
I read in a book of essays on Jane Austen’s works, a few years ago, that one of the reasons for her enduring popularity is not because love and affairs of the heart were a novelty, or because there was no other material to choose from, but because of the gentle reassurance of the warmth of humanity.
Which makes sense. Since it wasn’t as though the world was peaceful or even that her own world was idyllic. I think her choice of theme was powerful – she chose the best themes of humanity to write about. After all, she lived in a time of slavery, spice wars, economic upheaval, and before antibiotics came on the scene – which meant there must have been plenty of personal tragedy in her circles as well.
Incidentally , it is her 250th birthday today, and I find myself thinking fondly of her humorous characters and wondering whether a snippet of Emma or Sense & Sensibility is on the cards for viewing – even if only for 20 minutes. Let me try my luck with the family.
Any of these writers could have taken any of the less savory topics – poverty, slavery, war, crime, misery, hunger, disease, imperialism – name your pick. But they chose to focus on the light, on the rewarding, on the beautiful nature of the human spirit that looks for happiness and peace.
He taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.
– Stephen Fry on P G Wodehouse
Please! No Breaking News!
In some ways, I think I try to do the same on my own modest scale with my writing. When the news is relentless. When I receive Breaking News multiple times a day, I think I yearn to give myself a small dose of what is important, and what is worth working towards – finer qualities of humanity and their spirit, nature, humor, friendship, camaraderie, family, books.
I wish we could embrace more of these, so that we can find a way to get properly outraged when something horrific happens. As such, it is a brutalizing cycle of normalizing outrage. When the shooting at Brown University became news, how can the leader of a free country come out and say, “Things happen.” ?
A voice in my brain answers logically: Because the desensitization is deep. Because you cannot be angry and upset all the time. Because action means nothing. Because this. Because that. Because.
What is the best medicine?
Then I stop to pause and reflect. The warm qualities of humanity is the best antidote. It is the only thing that matters in the end isn’t it?
It is why 250 years later, we still relish a Jane Austen movie’s nth remake. It is why we still laugh at the absurdities of life as outlined by P G Wodehouse, Jerome K Jerome, Miss Read, R K Narayan, Gerald Durrell and stalwart authors who do the difficult job of finding light and keeping us hopeful through it all.
Breaking News is bleh. The lack of Breaking News is what we have to strive for.
“Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
So, my questions for you:
What is the source of reading that serves as the light in your life?
What is it that you look forward to rather than dread?
I loved the Inside Out 2 movie – the one in which the newly minted teenager has a new range of emotions available to her, and the old ones either have a tough time acknowledging them or making space for them. In the movie, Nostalgia comes knocking the door too, and the other emotions all tell her that she’s got time. Nostalgia is for when you get older.
Well, guess I have gotten older. December has become the time for nostalgia.
I would love to see what they do with a generation of adults who all were enthralled with the stories, and are now trying to convince their children to try it out. But those of us who grew up loving the stories of Moonface, Silky, Saucepan Man and the many lands above the tree can relate to the term ‘life-changing’ being used for this series. I confess that when I gaze up redwood trees and tall giants, I wonder about the lands above the clouds.
A time for resolutions:
We live in an era of social media. I don’t think there is any escaping that. I don’t know where we go from here. But what we thought of as spheres of influence etc are fluid, and not at all easy to understand.
So, I thought about grand resolutions like ‘No social media’ etc, but I wanted to do something that wasn’t the equivalent of sticking my head in the sand and hoping the storm would blow away.
It occurred to me while watching the trailer for The Magic Faraway Tree movie. It is a bold move to try to capture the magic of what a generation of adults felt as children in movie-form. After all, it was our generation that was enthralled with Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree. I know I have had to convince my children to read the books, because they had Harry Potter growing up.
How easy is it to judge or critique someone? So instead this year, I am going to try and appreciate all that goes into making bold moves. The adults who grew up loving The Magic Faraway Tree will be the bulk of the movie-goers. Many of these adults would have navigated life for a few decades now – some world weary waiting to see if the world still can bring that touch of magic to them, some cynical to the point of wondering whether there is anything good left in this world, some still hopeful and loving – nurturing the soft wondrous parts of life in them. The movie has to kindle magic in all of them. That is a bold move.
What are you nostalgic about and what are your resolutions for the New Year?
That seemed like a marvelous way to say goodbye to the rainy week-end. How was your week-end?
