Category: Health

🐶🐾🐕 Spot Goes Splash! 🐶🐾🐕

“Don’t even think about it!” I said almost casually. I had the son in my peripheral vision as I took in the gorgeous sunset, played (s)word volley with the daughter, and screwed up my face at the husbands unnecessarily loud enjoyment at the latest the daughter had said. 

“Oh my gosh! Did you see that? She totally knew what he was going to do!” The daughter laughed half-admiring, half-worried.

“Like it’s a big surprise. Sprinklers going off and spraying cold water on the lawns, and your brother loping towards it as if without a conscious thought?! Right.” I drawled.

“I mean – look at him, I bet he’s still going to try.”, she said and I laughed. 

The subject in question, meanwhile, was wracked between playing the rebel and getting himself wet or making a joke and having a comfortable walk the rest of the way. It was a lovely summer evening – this close to the summer solstice, everything is a joy and the daughter agreeing on coming for a walk clinched the evening. So there we were.

“How’d you know he was going to try and run into the sprinklers?”, she pressed.

“Well – I raised you, remember? “ Then, looking at the husband, I shuddered a bit and said “Remember that New York trip? What was that book we’d read to her? Spotty loves the rain? Or Spot like to go Splashing? Spot Goes Splash! That’s the one.

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“A book about a little pup that loves to splash about in rain puddles. It rained for the entire duration we were in New York that visit and you were two years old! You thought you were too big to sit in a stroller, and we knew you were too heavy to carry around. Still – I had only 1 pair of shoes for you. Appa carried you on his shoulders almost the whole time to save us all the trouble. His shoulders have never been the same!” I said giving him a squeeze and a look that said, “My Hero!” 

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“Gosh! Now there are some parenting gaffes I’ll keep away from!” Said the daughter. She prides herself on being – well whatever teenagers who think they are better than their parents pride themselves on. 

The husband rolled his eyes and guffawed at this so loudly, that a pair of doves took flight squawking alarmingly. That got us all laughing, and he said, “Ha! Just for this – we’ll accompany you when you have your little ones and just stand around and laugh pointedly instead of helping.”

“I’ll write it all down so we remember to do that!” I said laughing helplessly as well.

Her brother, in the meanwhile, had opted for a compromise between running full-pelt into the water sprinklers and had splashed in the water puddles nearby instead and was trying to hide how uncomfortable wet sandals were. 

The summer solstice made for an elongated sunset and we took the time trying to see how a thread from the past could stretch into the present and be used in beautiful circle of life years later.

Spot Goes Splash!

Qi 🧘🏼‍♀️Yin 🧚🏼‍♂️ & Yang 🪷

I remember one rainy monsoon afternoon when I walked into my friend’s house dripping water all over the floor. Their mother (one of my favorite aunts) looked amazing in a saree and I complimented her – ‘makes you look dashing’ I said. She was reading a Sidney Sheldon novel which I found cool in and of itself since I knew very few adults who read the same novels we did. She looked at me and said, “Oh my! Isn’t that nice? I am 43 years old – so I will accept the compliment.” 

I thought 43 was ancient then- I mean I knew people are old, but to have a prime number that big as an age must’ve been quite the thing. The sentiment must’ve showed on my face for she laughed and said, “You think that is very old don’t you?” And she patted my cheeks lightly and laughed her way out. 

I am in my forties now and feel that way when the daughter and her friends look at me like I am ancient but holding up pretty well. When I tell them about taking reading choices from the daughter and son, I see their look of incredulity for one trying to be the cool reader even when that old, and I can hardly stop a full-throated laugh from escaping my heart and gurgling up through my nostrils and mouth. I hope these children will remember these little scraps when they are in their 40s and chuckle to themselves. The circle of life and all that. 

So, it was that I was sitting on the verandah one evening noodling the daughter on the phone and telling her about a book that she’d suggested a few months ago. The House in the Cerulean Sea – By T J Klune. 

“You were right! I really liked it. I really like visiting the magical world my dear. Ever since All the Young Dudes from earlier this year, there’ve been so many nice little trips to magical realms, and I feel younger up there thanks to all that. Even as the neurons doddle and wither, I see them perk up with some magic and decide to stay zippy for a bit.”

She laughed, and I was happy with that. 

“Did you know they are remaking the Little Mermaid movie again? Better graphics and live action?” I said and moaned. 

Why do we keep going back to the same movies over and over again? It isn’t like there is any dearth of stories in the magical realm. Here are a few that I would love to see made as movies.

  • 🐉The House in the Cerulean Sea – by T J Klune has excellent characters, beautiful storylines, and the redeeming quality of beings : love and sense of belonging in a world that constantly is shaping and drawing graphs of absurd belonging all the time. Who doesn’t like a story of children fighting to belong? So what if the children are garden gnomes, sprites, wyverns, or even the child of satan? If all one wants is some heart-warming action, this story has it all.
  • 💊The Apothecary – By Maile Meloy. This booklegger award winning book has a good dose of intrigue, history, potion making, and old magic. Do you want to know about how to create a potion that makes you a bird? Or a nursery that has such rare and unheard of plants that every civilization is aching to get their hands on them? Or a book that has the learnings of generation between its respectable covers? This one has your covered.
  • 🦆Twelve Topsy-Turvy Very Messy Days of Christmas – By James Patterson. This story has whimsy, humor, and magic woven from the lyrics of the Christmas song. The hilarity of the increasing chaos of receiving these gifts in a suburban home makes for pleasant drama and I am sure will make for a fairly gripping movie.
On the 12th day of Christmas

My true love sent to me

12 drummers drumming

Eleven pipers piping

Ten lords a-leaping

Nine ladies dancing

Eight maids a-milking

Seven swans a-swimming

Six geese a-laying

Five golden rings (five golden rings)

Four calling birds

Three French hens

Two turtle-doves

And a partridge in a pear tree

These books are charming, witty, intriguing and so, so open-hearted that you can’t help developing alongside them. To accept our fellow beings with all their quirks, flaws and weaknesses. 

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“Like in school y’all have literature, math, science, and history, we should have literature, art, engineering and science in our jobs! Help us stay young and all that. What do you think?“ 

“You are itching for a compliment aren’t you? Fine ma! You are young and remain kooky even at your grand age!”,said the daughter and I chuckled as I headed towards another meeting in which we may not have magic, but the magic from the books and the forced compliment was enough. The qi to the yin and yang of life and all that.

⚡️💨⛈Where did the clouds go?⚡️💨⛈

Dawn’s early light was visible through the windows. Not usually an early riser, I stood at the window scouring the skies for a waning moon. But I could detect nothing. Not even the faint illumination behind the clouds. It was such thick cloud cover. It may have sprinkled a few droplets of rain over the course of the night, but there was nothing now. We were thoroughly engulfed by clouds. For a brief moment, my mind wanted to glimpse our little patch of Earth from up above: from the international space station or the moon maybe. 

What would we see?  

Not the stirring of millions of people and their emotions, their flurry consciousness gasping for clarity as thoughts scudded through the clouds of sleep.  Definitely not the demands of civilization for the human-beings, and the demands of life for the birds and animals we share the planet with. It was a nice thought – even if only for a few moments, that sense of perspective before the days’ events obscured it.

How many would wake up anxious: their worries and banes flooding in with their consciousness? How many would wonder and plan about the day ahead and make lists on what needs to be accomplished in the next 16-20 hours, how many were nervous or weary about facing another day? How many were happy to get started on the day’s adventures? 

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As we made our way to the son’s school, it was still cold and nippy. The weather forecast had said it was a hot day with an expected high in the mid-80s. I thought how marvelous it was that it was wrong and gave us the beauty of a ponderous cloudy day instead. 

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As I made my way through the day, however, I was left stretching yearningly for that dreamy cloudy day morning, the peaceful thoughts before the day began, and the lovely sweet thoughts of a blue and white planet floating peacefully around its star. By the time two meetings were done with, the clouds had all vanished without a trace. Which was astounding as there seemed to be no breeze in that time either. What had happened to the clouds? Had they simply evaporated? I found there was hardly time for musing thus, as another set of ti-ding ti-ding’s – messages scurrying for attention interrupted, and all thoughts of fates of clouds had to be shelved for a better time. There was business that needed looking into. 

Perhaps 16 hours later, after another couple of night-time meetings, I felt the need to step out. It was as I stepped out into the dark cool of the night after the days’s tasks were almost done with, that I could calm down enough for a thought other than what-needed-to-be-done could nudge its way in. It was the stars that enabled this – and I thought that it must be brilliant for a star to know how helpful they are. Foolish thoughts after a tiresome day, but the realization of their absurdity brought a smile to my face.

I sat down on the park bench, my face turned upwards. Looking up at the blinking fairy lights of the universe, reminding us of the magic of the heavens. I noticed a few clouds here and there, and suddenly it all seemed so long ago that I had looked up at a sky full of clouds:  all these stars were shining brightly behind them then too. 

I sighed contentedly as I rose to go to bed, looking forward to a few more hours of magic: reading before drifting off to sleep. 

Maybe the next morning would be a blissfully cloudy morning too.

🪷Happy 18th Birthday 🍀

May is the beautiful month of beauty, warmth , work, and birthdays (including the blog’s birthday) 

The nourish-n-cherish saga is now officially an adult in the muggle world (18 years of age) 

Over 1080 posts in, the blog seems to have had its own growth.

In the beginning , it was a place for short anecdotes on family and children. 

Over time, as it neared school going age, I suppose the blog grew too

It started showing interests in varied subjects: gravitating towards science and nature based subjects for sure, but also retaining that shy curiosity about life and a sense of humor as we navigated the vicissitudes of life. 

It isn’t as personal as a diary, so I doubt it will serve as a pensieve, but it serves as a cup of joy from which to sip when in a reminiscing mood.

🧘🏼‍♀️There were times when I could philosophize, contemplate, marvel in safety.

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Whatever it’s purpose was while starting out, I think I can safely say that it has helped along several dimensions (like a snowflake) 

When first I started moving out of only personal anecdotes to writing a thing or two on a book I read etc, it seemed to have opened a door to innate curiosity. 

Suddenly, I was more interested in varied topics, trying to understand different perspectives, open my mind to areas that I otherwise might not have had the opportunity to, etc. Inevitably, with all this fodder came the benefits of cross pollination, the joys of thinking through things, or the rewards of quiet contemplation. 

In short, what started as a hobby soon became a source of such gratification, learning and joy that I could not help sharing with my friends (who, for their part have been nothing short of spectacular with reading, inspiring and encouraging me) 

There have been times I’ve wondered what it all amounts to.But then I realize that it already has amounted to magnitudes more than I thought possible (sometimes human imaginations are limited.) 

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⚡️Those moments when I am spinning ideas in my head, and have to stop mid-stride when a thought strikes.

⛈The magic of writing, re-writing and re-rewriting to get a piece right.

👻The frustration of unfinished pieces from a decade ago because of lack of time.

∫ The joy of tucking a good memory away so it can replenish us in written form later.

🪷The thrill of creativity as new ideas come in – the long list of children’s books ideas waiting to be written (also novellas & short stories) I have wisely given up on the idea of a novel given the constraints of time – but one never knows!

To all of you who have joined me on this journey, whether gamely taking it in your stride when featured, or given me things to think about as part of our stimulating conversations, or inspired me to try new things, or just being there in my life: Thank You! 

A Redwood Run

It has been a few years since we attempted a destination run. The type where we run for the scenery, the physical gravitas of one’s surroundings, and the joy of camaraderie among one’s fellow runners. As we ran through the redwood forests, I thought to myself how marvelous it was to run and run like a true child of the Earth without urban buildings, construction noise, and piles of concrete. Even the gray road through the forest felt poetic and somehow attuned to its surroundings. (Well, maybe the double yellow lines were a bit jarring, but the gray road didn’t feel quite so intrusive) 

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After a chaotic start to the half-marathon, it took some time for us to settle into the run. The traffic jams were horrendous – the husband’s implacable optimism about making it to the start line on time was a bit misplaced, especially when we could see other runners leap out of their cars and run to the start line (adding a good mile to their already long runs). Our group  of runners were split between two cars and by the time the bibs were collected and we started the race, it was a good 20 minutes past the race start. To make matters worse, the officials were adding to the confusion yelling to all in the vicinity that they would be removing the starter mats that record time. We were thoroughly frazzled as we ran across – not at all sure it had recorded our run, but we ran anyway. 

The son ran a 10K, while the husband and I ran the half-marathon. The son having age and weight on his side flew on, while we huffed and puffed behind him trying to keep up. This resulted in a shin injury for the husband (which, he told me later, almost had him wondering whether he should do a 10K instead. Coming from the sun-is-shining husband, this must’ve been a serious enough injury) However, some stretches and slow miles later, he seemed to be in a better shape. 

As we ran on and on, deeper into the forest, there was tranquillity there. A meditative pulse to running through trees that started life when humanity was still contemplating  the merits of civilized living. Physical gravitas takes on a new meaning in the redwood forests. Young shoots and ferns, the young greens against the textured markers hues of the older trees, the sunlight poring through the branches high above. I thought of the books on redwood trees – Richard Power’s Overstory – the best one I could think off: powerful in its imagery and cathartic to think about just then.

“This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.” 

– Richard Powers, The Overstory

Between the 7th and 8th mile, I thought I’d missed the mile marker somehow. It seemed interminably long. My leg seemed to have just given up, and I found myself looking up into the tall redwoods begging for strength. To drink from the infinity that seemed to stretch among those majestic trunks. It helped. The depths of the forest tends to speak to the depths of the soul, and I prodded on, careful not to tell the husband about the injury like saying it out loud would somehow make the injury worse. I stretched, grimaced, and plodded on. Each mile excruciatingly long. 

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I thought of the gray road cutting the mycelium web underground that sustained these trees for millennia and felt a strange stab of remorse : would the web have found a way to continue underneath the gravel to sustain the trees on either side? I’d have to check. 

Cosmos episode for: The Search for Intelligent Life on Earth : narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, written by Ann Druyan & Carl Sagan

But yet again, the forest helped. 

Whenever the body felt drained and the pain in the right leg flared up, it felt grounding to remind myself that running this course was one of the best things to happen. For the redwoods were calm, the mists rolling in mystical, and the pattering of fellow runner’s feet grounding. There was a strange other worldliness to running through the redwood forests. Pain (possibly ITB) the only reminder that this was not a dream.

I cannot tell you how marvelous it felt to run the last mile and arrive at the finish line – famished yes, but we had managed to finish! Between our injuries, and a clatter of a start, a horse-wallop of a run, we had finally finished. The son was there cheering us on and all was well.

Having a wonderful set of friends on the journey is always helpful, and though we were scattered throughout the race, and didn’t see much of each other – the glimpses and cheers we did get was hugely inspiring.

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🪷🍁🍀🍇🌴The Power of Plants🪷🍁🍀🍇🌴

Around the World in 80 Plants – Jonathan Drori Illustrated by Lucille Clere

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Reading about plants and how they shaped our lives is a fascinating endeavor. How little we stop to think when we sprinkle turmeric, or asafoetida in our foods? Turmeric and Asafoetida by themselves are used so ubiquitously in Indian cooking that we quite forget the journeys from farm to consumption.

Starting off with plants that I have heard of in the magical context such as Myrtle, Wormwood, Clovers, Mandrakes, the book makes its way through plants that influenced our  civilizations in different parts of the world. 

The amount of information packed into a 200-page book is amazing and warrants a place in the reference section. 

We are mostly aware of the fact that we have not even scratched the surface when it comes to the potential of plants and their medicinal uses. There are around 380,000 plant species in the world, and we do not know how many are not catalogued yet. Even the ones in popular use, we do not yet know their potential. Take the Mexican Yam for the instance. It grows like a vine and produces its tubers.  

Yet, when I read about the Mexican Yams (Dioscorea Mexicana), I was blown away. The humble vegetable has a substance called diosgenin. Diosgenin, it turns out, is a vital starting ingredient for the manufacturing of steroids. Steroids are used to treat asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune diseases. 

“The use of steroids expanded in the 1940s, but the drugs, derived from animals and even humans, were hideously expensive. At one time, it took forty oxen to provide the cortisone to treat one arthritic patient for a day. “

– Around the World in 80 Plants – Jonathan Drori

How many times have I applied the cortisone ointments to relieve eczema for the children, without considering how we came by it?

As if this weren’t enough, they are also used in the production of sex hormones progesterone and testosterone. 

“The biggest boom of all came from the use of yam-derived progesterone and other hormones to trick a woman’s body into acting as if it was pregnant thereby inhibiting ovulation. The contraceptive pill was born.”

– Around the World in 80 Plants – Jonathan Drori

Our lives as we know it today, have been forever changed thanks to this humble vegetable. 

“It is fitting that a plant with splendidly heart-shaped leaves should have had such a profound effect on the well-being and love lives of millions of people.”

– Around the World in 80 Plants – Jonathan Drori

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Hummingbirds’ Magic

I was rushing to the car – needed to be somewhere. But the little hummingbirds stopped me for just a moment yet again. We have a few of them hovering over our lovely little lavender patch in the garden. The little bright flurries of beauty never fail to enthrall me. There is at least 1 red ruby throated hummingbird and several Anna’s hummingbirds gleaming in the sunshine with their green plumage catching the light of the day in brilliant angles. 

I am eternally grateful – both for the fact that I have these little visitors and for the ability to stop and appreciate them. 

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I have now stopped trying to photograph them while they flit for I find I am barely ever able to capture them with my iPhone, and my friends are far better photographers. This way, I get to enjoy the brilliant pictures and the momentary flashes of joy unencumbered by the effort of trying to capture it. 

Able to flap their wings upto 200 times a second, they are incredible long-distance flyers too. The ruby throated hummingbirds can fly 500 miles non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico during their fall and spring migration seasons.

The hummingbirds weigh only about 3 grams and therefore the term ‘more than their weight in gold’ doesn’t mean much. What they are able to accomplish with that body weight is phenomenal. Apparently, they can consume half their body weight in pure sugars and eat upto 5-8 times an hour. 

More fascinating hummingbirds facts here:

https://nourishncherish.org/?s=hummingbird

That metabolism doesn’t come easy for the little ones are hardly ever sedentary, They take a maximum of 90 seconds per break and flit almost all day long. Gathering nectar, feeding their littles ones, building their nests, and generally making the world a more happening place. 

If hummingbirds fascinate you as much, try reading this book:

My Tiny Life by Ruby T Hummingbird – written by Paul Meisel. It is a beautiful book that captures the life of hummingbirds. The book is a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor winner and is a lovely informative little book.

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🪺On May 15th a tiny hummingbird hatches from its egg, and thus starts our marvelous journey with the little bird as it learns to fly, mature, meet and greet its fellow humminbirds and eventually enhance the circle of life by having its own little family to nurture and nourish.

🕊By June first week, the little ones in the nest are ready to fly with their mother, in a flurry of wings, and a soaring of tips. 

“Up, down, backward, forward!” 

🪷 By the first week of July, the bird is getting territorial and fending off its fellow hummingbirds. (Pic from the book, My Tiny Life – by Paul Meisel)

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🚁 By the last week of September the birds are getting ready to migrate before they return in March, sometimes flying upto 18 hours non-stop to get back home where its journey started a year ago.

The illustrations and content is marvelous and once again, I am enamored by artists able to capture the magic of light and movement in art. (Sample pic inserted above to get a feel of the beautiful imagery in the book)

The Madness and Serenity Within

The feeling of being unmoored, like being whisked around in a merry-go-round was still lingering in the air. The madness within seemed to be reflected in the madness outside too.

I hung off the railing and stood like that for a  few minutes. It can’t have been more than a few minutes. For the skies were turning from purple to inky blue and in those precious moments, I stood there watching the world spin around. The river flowed on ahead of me – brimming, swirling, continuous. Out in the distance, a train rattled as it sped away into the bustling city, torn tree branches lay scattered all over the ground near me (the gales of the past week had been more than any of us had ever experienced in the past few years.)

Come to think of it, this winter had been nothing we experienced in a long long time. 

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The feeling of the world in movement was more and more keenly penetrating. As I stood there, gaining my bearings, a runner came bobbing and panting, his head fixed with a headlamp. I grimaced not at the poor fellow, but at the speed with which he was running. He smiled in the weak light and I smiled back. If, running at that speed, the fellow could smile, I could do so too. However, I felt restive. 

The planets peeked out at strategic points amidst the clouds above and the setting sun was a reminder of the 1000 miles per hour rotation that the Earth managed. 

The past few days were blurs of meetings, deadlines, gales, gushing rivers, flood warnings, school meetings, preparations for this and that, travel plans. 

A week in short where the world felt like a merry-go-round. 

I dug my feet in a little deeper – I needed to ground myself. Relativity is a marvelous thing. For I closed my eyes, just taking in deep breaths of the flowing river, and the colors of the Earth around me. Not moving, not running, not planning, not driving, not doing. Just Being. The clock-like ticking inside the chest seemed to sense what I was doing and calmed down too. 

Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat  at any time and be yourself.

– Herman Hesse

I opened my eyes, and after a few more moments felt a serenity – the world around me still moved at that frenetic pace, but I seemed happy and more content to be a silent spectator.

The Peace of Pursuit

It was a rare day in which there were no pressing demands and I found myself wondering what to write. Now in wondering what to write, there was a strange sense of duty and an obligation to not waste the afternoon thus gifted for literary pursuits with anything else.

But I was also in a state of limbo – not wanting to write about any books I was currently reading, wanting to write that children’s book that has been gnawing in the back of my mind, and also itching to get that short story taken out of the attic for a proper airing and rewriting. 

I did none of these.

My mind harked back to Intimations – a slim volume of essays. I have been wanting to read Zadie Smith for sometime now and thought essays a good place to begin. I do not understand what the fuss is about – some essays are good, others merely perfunctory. But the book was written and published as a sort of meditation during the early months of Covid-19. They are no works of philosophy, but one essay in which she touches upon the nature of time resonated.

It is a common refrain – if I spent half the time thinking about writing, actually writing, I could’ve had an impressive repertoire. But the thoughts of writing are far more entertaining. Sometimes, by the time the words make it to the physical form, some of that magic has evaporated. Other times, the art of writing brings forth something far different from what I anticipated and that is rewarding in itself. Nevertheless – less thinking more doing would be nice in the realm of writing at least.

Time To do : Essay by Zadie Smith in the book Intimations

I do feel comforted to discover I’m not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it.

Zadie Smith in the Essay, Time To Do, Book: Intimations

On a walk a few weeks ago, a close friend & I were talking about what is the making and breaking of us. As youth, young adults and as adults. The crux of it boiled down to what we wish to do with our time when there are no demands on it. That kind of time only increases as we age. I see many retired and older people at somewhat of a loose end. After the seemingly long years of bustling careers, raising children, paying mortgages: When all the business of living is done with, and the busyness of living is no longer there to fill our times, then what?

Those of us who are not there yet, have time now, to think of what brings us wholesome happiness, so that we may be better prepared.

Read: What is your friend?

What is your Friend?

I was musing thus on a walk with the husband one morning in which I begged for some quiet. My throat was not okay, and the river by our home was full and flowing. The husband, is not the quiet contemplative kind. Quite the opposite actually. So, I should’ve known that the quiet would last all of 100 meters. He glanced at me, and started laughing loudly. 

“What?” I said.

“I was thinking – okay, I have seen the river, looked for birds, the clouds look good. What else? And I turn and look at you, and see you have a small smile playing on your lips! So, now I am thinking – did she see deer somewhere? Is that what the smile is about? I see no deer, and you still look lost and dreamy!”

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“Well!” I croaked, joining him in his laughter this time. “I was thinking of this post actually. Tying an essay by Zadie Smith and Time.” 

Oh the poor man! I started and we landed up chatting all the way back much to our pleasure. 

I suppose mankind, over the centuries, has arranged life such that there is structure, work and livelihoods all to be taken care of, so that unstructured time is relatively hard to come by. Yet, I remember reading somewhere that one of the best things we can gift ourselves with is the ability to be comfortable with ourselves as there are periods (inevitably) where one is alone. The Covid years suddenly bought this crashing on the world population at once, but it is something philosophers have been musing about for eons. 

So, I suppose finding something interesting to do, and finding ourselves rejuvenated in the thoughts of it, or the pursuit of it, are gifts in and of itself.

Who Am I?

Here 🥂 is to interests, hobbies and finding the Peace of Pursuit.  

Hovering 🚁 & Pondering 💭

The world as I see it, can be wondrous at times, and full of traffic jams at others. One such glorious day when the clouds were scudding and meandering in turns with the weight of moisture, I sat gloomily in the car, wanting more than ever to join the clouds above. The signals had all been acting up and I waited as cars patiently stopped and proceeded at a pace that is entirely unsuited for modern life. There were at least ‘n’ slack messages, ‘m’ voicemails and the gods-knew how many emails that had come up in that time for all the inhabitants in their little cars during this time. I mused, and let out a satisfied laugh that this is life. It is meant to have ponderous moments of quiet. 

I have often wondered about the ways in which we choose to traverse physical spaces and ensure our presence. In the magical world of Harry Potter, people apparate and disapparate, materialize with floo powder out of chimneys, fly on broom sticks, charm motorcycles and cars to fly, send messages via owls, patronus charms and so much more. The world of science fiction loves wormholes and time tesseracts. Any solutions that don’t come up with the limitations of the speed of light, against the physical ache of distances to traverse. 

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While we we may be faster that we ever were before, the human imagination is still active and thriving to do more. The stars and galaxies await, do they not? The next thrilling step in our glorious adventures forward?  

In our world, I looked around, what problems would arise if we were all to lift off into the air. The same as it would be on the roads for sure, if thousands of cars took to the air at the same time. Not to mention the hovering charms required to keep them hovering in mid-air traffic signals. A little dragonfly is capable of such magnificence! Feats as hovering that we find ourselves thinking about obsessively. 

The idle mind harked back to the section on how birds evolved for hovering in the Flights of Fancy book by Richard Dawkins. Size being against them, they still managed a variety of ways in which to achieve it – whether it was in the way their wings spread out to absorb the thrust from the winds, or reverse flapping to counter the surge of propulsion, it was obviously one of the evolutionary hacks that spurred life on earth (birds as nectar seekers and life spreaders).

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“Forward propulsion by wings is achieved by a kind of rowing through the air. Hummingbirds go to the extreme of a rapidly buzzing (humming), sculling movement, in which the wing is turned almost upside down during the upstroke. The wing works almost as efficiently on the upstroke as the downstroke, and it enables hummingbirds to hover like a helicopter and fly backwards, sideways and even occasionally upside down. Hovering was an important evolutionary discovery for birds. Previously, insects had a monopoly in nectar because they could perch on flowers. Birds were too heavy until they finally invented hovering.”

A couple of days later, as we went walking around the green hills with the waxing moon on one side, the setting sun on the other, lupines, golden poppies and cranes glowing in this unique combination of light and moisture in the air, I found a hawk hovering. I stood mesmerized by all things light and wonderful. The shadows cast by the hovering bird, the winds changing speed, and the birds’s intuitive adjustment to its environmental influxes. 

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‘Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.’ – Carl Sagan 

A low rumbling in the distance indicated a flight coming into land at a nearby airport, and the spell was broken. I did not want to apparate out- I wanted to amble back towards reality.