Yet, the gingko trees went on as before. They grew leaves, they displayed them in their glorious green, and their resplendent golden yellows, till they went back to being stark stumps again.
Another year.
Another year of the unexpected?
Another year of surprises?
Another <Please-fill-in-the-blanks> year.
As I pulled the husband along on a cold, rainy walk, I told him that the same time last year when we stopped to consider the bare branches of the gingko tree, we had no idea what the year would bring. The same way that we don’t know what the year ahead would bring. I shuddered a little (I’d like to think it was the freezing winds of the storm). The young gingko nearby withstood the winds without a tremor.
“Well…”, I said, donning my philosophical face. “Whatever the new year brings, there is comfort in the fact that there is a constancy in nature. The gingko tree’s seasons.”
“Pesu (talk!)!” Said the husband and laughed looking at my sincere face. I joined him. It is so easy to say these things. Why is it then so hard to practice?
Maybe we need the tree’s lessons to be more than philosophical. A little more neurological: Belonging with Trees.
It was a day on which the North West monsoons were in zest. The riversides and little lakes the brother drove us through were swollen with the recent rains. He nosed the car towards lesser known off-roading trails. They seemed to beckon him through slippery slush and muddy muck. His staunch car wheeled and plunged into the side roads with gusto.
The old pater, not usually invited along to adventures in off-roading, had consented to come, and he ticked the brother off for needless adrenaline.
“It is all your fault!”, said the brother chuckling at the far away memory of 3 decades ago when the pater would pile the three of us on his scooter and take to the steep roads of the Nilgiri Hills.
The little brother,( then knee-high) would stand in front between his father’s arms peering out at the road ahead over the handlebars, myself (waist-high) between the sister and the father in the back seat looking sideways, and off we’d go on our school holidays. (The pater was a school teacher and enjoyed the same vacation schedule as we did.) As we reminisced about the good old days, the nephew pointed to a little girl clutching on to her father on a scooter nearby and asked if I was that girl. We all laughed. Yes I was. She even had her hair tightly plaited the same way, and had a maroon sweater on. More than that, she had joy writ large on her face as she felt the wind on her face. I felt like a little girl on an adventurous ride with her father again. (With the tens of pictures I clicked during that off-roading trip, the image that I retain the most vividly is this one and I did not click a picture. So much for visual diaries!)
The number of waterfalls, steep hillsides and hamlets we’ve passed are too many to count. We’d stop in small villages for a cup of tea amidst hospitable villagers in the tiny tea shops and learn of the local life. Grandmothers and mothers were present during the days, the men worked locally, and somehow every seemingly tiny village bustled with life.
“So much has changed, hasn’t it?”, I said. We were out on a weekday too, but the work spots nearer the city were bustling. “I wonder whether the villages would look deserted. That would be so sad!” I said ever the nostalgic.
The brother gave me an amused grin and said we’d soon find out as he had not gone out driving through these villages on a weekday either. The trail he was taking us on, apparently weaved through an extremely small village street – right through the main artery of the village – “almost like you’re driving through someone’s house” – as he put it.
I took pictures of bright little temples nestled under large banyan trees, cows, goats, and birds as they flitted in and out of the fields and wet trees. A little way off, we arrived at the village he was speaking of.
As we inched our way past the narrow village street, we stopped. His car was not made for these streets. There was a bike parked on one side and it proved to be too narrow for the car to pass through. While the issue was being sorted out, I waved out of the car at the ladies sitting on their verandahs nearby. They smiled back even though they seemed to be sharing an internal joke as to why people needed such fat cars. My heart warmed to the gentle laughter and kind smiles flashed back at us. This village was not deserted at all. The mothers, grandmothers were all in attendance. The men too seemed to be at work in the local fields and the scene heart-warming. I asked them in my broken Kannada if I could take pictures, and they smiled and said ‘yes’.
It was then a girl asked us in Kannada whether we’d like to stop and have some coffee. We thanked her and said we should be getting on our way, but such hospitality is the charm of rural India.
We fell to discussing similar stories of hospitality extended in various parts of India. The brother spoke of a time when he landed up haggard and dust-beaten at a restaurant on a bike trip of hundreds of miles in Northern India hoping for some food, but found out that the venue was closed off for external visitors as it was hosting a wedding that day. As he sheepishly apologized and tried to leave, the hosts would hear nothing of it. How could a guest leave hungry? Not only did they take in their dusty wedding guest heartily, but also gave him the full wedding meal planned for the family and friends in the village.
The sister told us similar stories in Africa when she’d traveled on business years ago.
I am not sure how this charm can be held as we swell in population and crowd together more closely. For I found myself wondering that the cities do seem to have lost this particular sense on more than one occasion. But if we do, then I am sure we shall bumble along with that undefinable quality of humaneness and humanity in spite of all our avarice and problems.
“For though we may come from different places, our hearts beat as one.”
Albus Dumbledore – in the movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Novembers in Bay Area are magical. There is a promise of rain in the air, the fall colors are out and the dry sordid months of summer finally seem to be behind us. The trees burst forth in a sudden splash of color. Octobers are to Prince Edward Island in Canada as Novembers are to California. So, I have absolutely no problem in gushing like Anne of Green Gables : “I love a world with Novembers in them.”
The son and I had were taking a short break after a bike ride. We stood there admiring the way the leaves seemed to be flipping as the wind went through them when an ornithologist found us. We politely made space for him on the park bench. After a few minutes, we went on to having conversation on nature based hobbies and such.
He had with him one of those cameras and lenses that can zoom upto 714 times. The son & I exchanged glances. Could that pelican sitting on that small island in the lake be seen well with that lens then? Jack (the ornithologist cum photographer), told us indeed he could and he went on to take a few photographs to show us. We were more than suitably impressed, and he was gracious and generous in showing us how his lens worked.
I have always been in awe of those who were able to get fantastic photographs of the birds. I have several friends whose photographs have me yearning for their gift of composition. With landscapes, while I still admire the artistic compositions, with moving targets such as birds, I find the whole process fascinating. My attempts at hummingbird photography have proved to me that (a) hummingbirds are very fast – research says they can flap upto 50 times a minute and (b) my phone is usually unable to capture them flying.
But my new phone and Jack’s attempts at the photographs were inspiration enough for me to go back to mooning about the lakesides and riverfronts looking for birds. I suppose these birding photographers do this all the time, but when I did, I felt like I had developed wings myself and fluttered away – whether as an angel or a devil did not matter.
I got my first picture of an Anna hummingbird (albeit one resting on a tree), but I got a picture nevertheless. I also captured on my phone, a mockingbird, a siege of herons, a pod of pelicans and an assortment of wood ducks, grebes and coots.
The skies, in the meanwhile, look like nothing I’ve seen before( although my phone best to differ based on the number of pictures it classifies as ‘Similar pictures’). I would love to be a crepuscular artist knowing fully well that I could never aspire to the true artistry that is on display every day for us – especially during the rainy season.
I suggest everyone take some time to enjoy the rains and the clean skies and earth afterward.
I sat in the car watching the rain pouring down and feeling the sense of life’s stresses washing away. Californian rains are whimsical: one minute they beat down, maybe even give in to a thumping hailstorm, but in the next few minutes, the clouds scud away as quickly as they gathered leaving a jaw-dropping sort of blue and white clouds behind them. It is magical.
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
The world of news was being rocked once again. The company I worked for had already endured hard times in the news and the general feeling was one of anxiety and exhaustion.
Over the week-end, I had come for a walk by a water body that the son & I lovingly christened Reflection Pond – for you could see the skies reflected in the waters, the world from a different perspective.
There were 2 deer peeping out from within the mist and a rustling nearby indicated the hares were getting ready for some morning exercise as well.
There were a pair of pelicans who took insouciance to a different level. Yet, as they gracefully paddled on that lake, I thought of that little piece in the Fox, Mole, Horse and Boy.
“How do they look so perfect together?” Asked the boy.
‘There is a lot of frantic paddling going on beneath’ said the horse.
The Fox, Mole, Horse and Boy
As I walked back, my attention went again to the digital town square that is the sign of the times we live in. I had one of those moments that Henry David Thoreau chastised us against, for it was obvious that I brought the village (or in this case, the town square) with me.
When I realized what I was doing though, I shook myself out of this and firmly pushed these thoughts aside telling myself that shall attend to them when the time was right. I looked up from the previous posture of a head bent with woe, and that is when I saw the pelicans take flight.
There is something majestic about large birds taking flight. The little ones flit and twit with ease, while the larger ones seem to be much like our cargo aircraft. Huge, but still not half as unwieldy as our man-made designs during takeoff or landing.
By the time I fumbled for the phone for the pictures, the pelicans had flown leaving me with a sense of awe.
The clouds that paint a different picture for us every day had painted a lovely dragon or an enormous swan taking flight that day. The crescent moon in its waxing phase was shining amidst all this glory.
The pink hues against the light blue skies were enough to make the heart rejoice. As the pinks turned to orange and then grey, my spirits lifted slowly.
I had an idea for a lovely children’s book that has since morphed and evaporated like the clouds that day.
A few deep breaths made me realize that fresh air, beautiful clouds, a time of transformation are all things we take for granted, but when we do stop to think about them, they fill us with a sense of contentment.
Nature had worked its magic yet again: There is no better place to learn the lesson of Just Being.
I realize that I cannot quite capture the serenity of a walk such as this one. But I can jot down the gratitude for this magnificence so I may be able to dip into it at will.
It was one of those mornings that Oscar Wilde described as “And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.”
Oscar Wilde
All around us were the signs of a long summer. The hills were brown, the flowers drooping, the earth parched and the rivers dry. Mornings came on bright, blue, and sunny; swiftly following dawn.
An egret in the dry summer climes
But one beautiful October morning last week, the clouds rolled in: the colors of sunrise streaked the skies, and we were gleeful for we got up early enough to catch it. There was a nippiness to the air, and we practically danced our way to the coat closet in the morning.
You see? I have mentioned Californian summers before. They linger on just a month or so after their time. You’d think October would bring the temperatures down nicely – they probably do in the rest of the continent. (Remember Anne of Green Gables saying she is grateful for a world with Octobers in it.) , but here in California, we just braced for another all-time high heat wave. Anyway, where was I?
I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers
Anne of Green Gables – L M Montgomery
Yes. The beautiful cloudy day bearing a hint of much-needed moisture in the air. I decided to take a little stroll around the son’s school after dropping the fella off. The children bobbed along noisily in the playground despite the chill, and the Brownian motion of their movements were a joy to watch from afar. As they made their way into their classrooms, a quiet descended – previously even their chitter and chatter seemed to penetrate the fog, but now the silence enveloped one. I pulled my jacket a little tighter, and relished the cold air, the first hint of fall in temperatures.
It was then I saw the birds. Right above me, flying between the pine and eucalyptus trees in the park was a beautiful woodpecker. A streak of red against its black and white spotted body. It attracted my attention with its swift movements and obstinate call of duty against the tree.
A little further on, a raven flew swooping triumphantly with food ( some sort of nut) in its beak. Just as I watched it swoop past me, it dropped the nut in its beak, and the pesky thing rolled underneath a parked car. I stood there feeling a little sorry for it, but within a minute, the raven had craned its neck, hopped around and retrieved the nut from under the car. Looking proud of itself, it took off again.
A short while later, it was the seagulls and cattle egrets flying overhead. I wonder: all of this birding activity is always there, I was just glad that the cold morning allowed me to catch it.
My spirits soaring just a but higher than usual, I made my way back to the old work spot, and like the woodpecker taught me that morning, hammered my way through the day.
The son and I had embarked on a lovely bike ride. The autumnal equinox means that the sun sets earlier and earlier in the day. It was still early enough in the evening and we biked along amicably talking of this and that.
When we finally decided to take a short break by a lake, the son climbed a nearby tree, while I sat myself on a park bench. All was tranquil. The pelicans went about their ballet dance of coordinated fishing in the distance, the hawks and turkey vultures circled high above in the skies. Out in the distance, a dog ran on the shore chasing the birds and squirrels. Overhead, hundreds of ravens were flying and making their way home.
It was in this world that I called out to the son and pointed out a visionary at work. We sat side-by-side in awe. For it was obvious, from conception to creation this would’ve daunted most competent engineers to undertake a project of this size alone, and here was this lone spider doing so : competently, peacefully and apparently with engagement.
In spider terms, it was the equivalent of building a bridge across a bay. From one tree to the next on the other side of the looming lagoon, a large suspension thread held the intricate web forming in the middle. How strong must the thread have been to sustain and hold the weight of the structure in the middle? Not to mention its prey.
When finally the spell was broken, the sun had set further and the spiders web was now bathed in a golden light. In those few moments of magic where nothing but weaving and creating was happening overhead, the earth around had changed its hue. From a bright blue sky, the pinks and oranges were thrown with abandon. Pretty soon, it would be getting ready to cloak itself in the inky blues of the night.
The son and I got up – a sense of reverence and humility restored in our proud human spirits of achievement. Here was a lone spider, envisioning a humongous structure, creating a web of art and material integrity to withstand prey probably three times its own weight and going about it in a symmetric and beautiful light of the setting sun. What’s more? It was a design that was biodegradable and all the earth could be covered in this soft, silky web with nothing the worse.
Whether as materials for clothing, or structural integrity such as design of bridges, or the bio degradation of our products, a spider’s web is an inspiration for biomimicry based designs.
Biologically inspired materials could revolutionize materials science. People looking at spider silk and abalone shells are looking for new ways to make materials better, cheaper, and with less toxic byproducts.
Janine Benyus, Biomimicry
Sometimes, a bike ride is all that is required for perspective to take its throne.
A day or two after the Navarathri season, the husband & I headed out on a walk by the riverside. All was quiet. The husband and I were not.
The most common ailment of our times: busy times were ailing us both. Our days were packed, and our minds full. Corporate fortunes and misfortunes played out on the global scene. The husband, more stoic than Yours Truly in matters of life was nodding as I rattled on.
Should I do this?
Should I do that?
Which course of action seems to be the most prudent?
Most effective?
Finally, I slowed down enough to make a comment about the trees and leaves. The earth was parched – California’s drought this year has left a dry riverbed, and I felt sorry for the numerous creatures that lived here.
The blue herons, great white egrets, cattle egrets, and hundreds of blackbirds, wrens etc are a welcome sight on walks. My eyes involuntarily scoured the riverside for the marvelous creatures, even though the sunset skies were gift enough.
The deer, fox, sheep, cats are all admired too.
As we were talking of this and that, I spotted a blue heron standing on the river bank. It was probably a baby (an ornithologist on the trail told me that the grey coloration of their feathers, and the thickness of their necks are indicators). I tugged the husband’s hands and said, “Look!”
“You know? Herons teach us to remain calm and observe life without taking too much tensions of the comings and goings around them. But when swift action is merited, you can’t beat them. We must be like herons!” I said.
The husband gave me an amused look and I laughed “I know! I know! Nice talk – but where’s the application you ask?”
We both laughed, but the image of herons never fails to calm me down. Maybe that’s what we must have in our calendars – heron time, hummingbird time, tree time, star time.
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night . . . I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. . . For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Summers in California are true and long, lingering summers. The grass becomes hay, the green hills become brown, lawns boast of signs that say ‘Brown is the new Green’, and birds and animals alike droop from the sun. The flora though thrives – vegetable gardens burst forth and produce in the bountiful rays of the sun, flowers bloom everywhere, and in the midst of all the heat, there is beauty at every corner. The weather sometimes heeds the arrival of the autumnal equinox but has no qualms about ignoring it either.
This year, even the cloud cover seemed scant. Sunsets were less than spectacular, the skies were a brilliant blue and slowly turned pinkish before becoming a deep ink-ish blue.
My sunset photographs from yester-years seemed magnificent in comparison. For clouds – scattered, wispy, thick, grey, white, fluffy, dense all make for brilliant sunsets.
You can imagine then, the joys of seeing the clouds rolling in. We were traveling and to see the clouds from the flight was magical. The son & I sat mesmerized by them. As the aircraft dipped in altitude and made toward the Earth, it was pure magic to see the clouds around us – the aircraft was literally flying through the clouds.
In the book, A Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan writes about how he could probably identify which planet on the solar system he was in merely by looking at the color of the sky. Our home, Earth, is a characteristic blue sky with white clouds. The absence of these day-to-day marvelous wonders, that Carl Sagan calls as the signature of Earth for the past few months, made us truly appreciate the beauty and grandeur of cloudy days.
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
Rabindranath Tagore
It is why you saw me with my face upturned and beaming at our heavenly companions as if they had feelings and needed to be welcomed.
The past week has been an interesting one in many ways. Emotions aside, what this meant in practical terms was that the nourish-n-cherish household ran on a clock.
The map says it takes 45 minutes at peak traffic, but surprise of surprises, it took 62 minutes, neatly shaving off the buffer we had baked in for grabbing a snack.
At 10:45, we would have to be there at Y parking garage so that we could get to X buildingat 11:00.
At 4:45, the flight leaves from Airport Here. That means, the time at Airport There would be x-12.5, but there is x+7.5 stop-over in between.
It made for an interesting read on how we managed to get time down to a science. Dava Sobel creates an excellent narrative around the problem of Time and Maritime navigation.
“Time is to clock as mind is to brain. The clock or watch somehow contains the time. And yet time refuses to be bottled up like a genie stuffed in a lamp. Whether it flows as sand or turns on wheels within wheels, time escapes irretrievably, while we watch. Even when the bulbs of the hourglass shatter, when darkness withholds the shadow from the sundial, when the mainspring winds down so far that the clock hands hold still as death, time itself keeps on.”
Longitude by Dave Sobel
While many astronomers tried to solve the mystery of keeping time using the astronomical events in the sky such as mapping Jupiter’s moons and their eclipses etc, one man, John Harrison set about solving the problem mechanically with a superior clock design. Clocks of the fifteenth and sixteenth century lost time because their pendulums lost their swing with the swaying of the ships, the internal mechanics rusted with the moisture at sea, and numerous other problems.
Reading about Time and how difficult it must have been to measure, has always fascinated the son & myself.
I was reading Mrs Pringle of Fairacre by Miss Read – every time when life demands a slowing down and it is physically hard to do so, a dip into the lovely village green of Thrush Green or Fairacre does the trick. In the Fairacre books, Mrs Pringle is the competent school cleaner who is also a bit of a virago. Her scatter-brained niece Minnie Pringle is often featured – incompetent and maddening as she is, she helps(or hinders) Miss Read out now and then. In this snippet, Miss Read learns that Minnie Pringle, a mother of 3 and stepmother to 5 young children, never really learnt to look at the clock and read the time.
Mrs Pringle of Fairacre: About Minnie Pringle
I had not really taken in the fact that she could not tell the time
‘Well, I never sort of mastered the clock”, she said vaguely, implying that were a great many other things which she had mastered in her time.
‘But how do you manage?’ I enquired, genuinely interested.
“I looks out for the Caxley’, she replied. ‘It gets to the church about the hour.’ (The Caxley is the local bus)
‘But not every hour.” I pointed out.
‘Yes…but there is also the church bell.’
‘It still seems rather hit and miss,’ I said.
Mrs Pringle – By Miss Read
When I read the above snippet, I threw my head back and laughed. Almost subconsciously, I glanced at the various apps on my smartphone to remind me about the day : there were calendars synced with my meeting schedules, alarms to remind me of certain events and classes for the children, timers to help the rice cooker turn itself off, the world clock app to let me know when it is okay to call my friends in the different corners of the globe.
Maybe John Harrison (The man who came up with the design of a clock that could hold time during maritime vagaries such as storms and tidal waves without rusting or losing momentum in the sixteenth century) did not quite anticipate the extent to which the world would adhere to Time, but it is refreshing to think of a few people who are not ruled by the ticking of the clock.
Maybe we should have Do-Nothing Days in which neither the phones, nor the passing of time intrude. It will be a refreshing change for sure.
Note: The obsession with Time is called Chronomania and those who live in perpetual fear of time ticking, time passing have Chronophobia.
Out on a walk today – I thought it would be a good way to start the cooling down from what turned out to be a heat wave of the likes that set new records in temperatures.
While on the walk, I stood befuddled below some trees from which the leaves were falling. There was no cool breeze, and the sun-baked earth looked heavily in need of rains. But the leaves were gently starting to drift earthwards. The dissonance was loud, and the stillness louder. Falling leaves, changing colors, should all signify cooler temperatures, a move towards cozy indoor expectations et al.
When that thought flitted into my mind, I smiled. For the clarity with which the thought came, belied the fact that for half my life, I had never known the beauty of Fall. Yet, once the brain knows, it does, and how unexpectedly this expectation of seasons took root in me was baffling.
I do not remember when I started observing the seasons – for they are not as stark in California as in the East Coast.
The next day on a bike ride, the son & I took a moment to recover. For the lakes we had seen brimming with water and teeming with fish and birds just a month ago, was now barren and dry. It has been one of the driest summers California has experienced, but even so, the shock of the dry lakes are hard to bear. What would the seasons be like on other planets?
While the rhythm of the seasons is hopefully predictable, I could not help looking for old pictures of the same ponds and lakes from a few weeks ago,
I stood there thinking of the deep comforting voice of Frank Sinatra
“Fly me to the Moon
I’d like to see Spring in Jupiter and Mars!”
Frank Sinatra
How marvelous it would be to get a glimpse into the different kinds of beauty in the universe? Are there other seasons in other planets? What is the music of each season?
Nourish-n-Cherish 