Navarathri is behind us and I breathe easier. Navarathri – nice days of carb-loading, pujas, Golu hopping, shying away from singing (From Wikipedia: In Tamil Nadu, people set up steps and place idols on them. This is known as golu. Photos of typical golu displayed in Tamil Nadu style can be found here.In the evening women in neighborhood invite each other to visit their homes to view Kolu displays, they exchange gifts and sweets.)
You see, I have never been one of those artsy creative type of folks. I have seen folks carve a beautiful statue of Buddha out of a potato and I watch in awe. When I see a potato, I see a potato. In my creative moments, I see a potato-curry or a mashed potato. But there it stops.
The Creative Potato
Navarathri, it seems, comes along to show me what all avenues are there for the creatively inclined, and how very demented I am along those lines. It would be one thing if I could just withstand 9 days of this and then go back to my lack-a-daisical ways. But it refuses to let up. Navarathri is quickly followed by Halloween decorations and then Diwali lights followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Some of my friends during Navarathri not only put up 9 steps full of dolls, they create themes around them, they have a side show of modern themes, and themes around their past themes. Maybe somebody should try the vegetable carving motif the next time around.
The Navarathri Golu at my Friend’s place: Main ThemeModern Themes on the Side
My theme is more practically suited to my ability: why bother? It seems better to go and enjoy the displays so painstakingly put up by the brave-hearted and creative-minded. My theme has been confused for lazy, but I say I am being gallant. If not for folks like us, who would appreciate all the work that goes into a Golu?
Facebook showed me Golu attempts in Chennai, New Delhi, San Jose, Seattle, Norway and Ghuangzhou Province in China. WhatsApp gave me blow by blow accounts of others doing it and mildly urged me to try my hand at it sometime. But I am made of sterner stuff. I admired everybody’s attempts, but am steadfast in not adding my own feeble attempts to the grander themes.
My daughter, who had a fantastic time with her friends eating the different varieties of rices and sundals (chickpea salads) laid out in hordes at the Golus asked me why I did not join in the fun. I pointed her to my past attempts at decorative splendor (being put up as Part 2 of this blog ) and she gave me a gentle look filled with pity, and a pat and said, “Oh Amma! I know you are quite useless at decorating, it’s okay!”
In our household, we skip, dance and thump our chests, looking proud when we arrange cereal boxes in a line like this, and if you visit, we can pluck one box and feed you with it:
There was a lunar eclipse and a red moon a few weeks ago. The world watched the rare phenomenon and so did we. I remember seeing the Halley’s Comet about three decades ago, using the School telescope. The telescope was set up in our neighbor’s garden. There is a secret excitement and a strange lesson in mortality when looking at a comet that comes once in 75-76 years.That, by itself, was sensational enough for us to brave the cold nights to see the comet. The newspapers had been our source of knowledge and I think the news on state television made a statement too, but that was all.The rest of the buzz we created. I remember a lot of intent gazing and saying “Watdidocee?Isthatit?WOW!”
Now, I am tripping all over the internet over viewing pieces of it remnants : The Orionid Meteor Shower: Leftovers of Halley’s Comet
I can’t but help compare and contrast how we would have viewed it today’s times. Just as spottily is my guess, though we would have the pleasure of seeing the recording taken by somebody immensely more skilled at these things than myself.
We set about viewing the eclipse in our customary fashion. That is to say, we made a complete muck of things: hashed a pig or two in the duck pen and squashed a rat.
The husband stood at the kitchen island, with a seriousand urgent expression on his face. The daughter strolled in and said, “Oh – he must be playing chess!”
The affronted husband puffed out his chest and told her not to say trivial things like that. “I am, in fact, checking out a very important scientific phenomena that we can see in the skies today. “
The daughter, suitably chastened, went near him and cried, “He is on Facebook!”
I laughed.
“Yes, but checking to see whether the lunar eclipse started, not, you know, just face-booking.” he finished somewhat lamely.
The toddler son, flying his toy plane, and attempting a lunar landing, then explained the lunar eclipse to us: Moons can be red, blue or white (Is it American? No Everyone can see the moon when it is blue, red or white) and hide in the sun (Won’t it burn? No. Because Shadows are not hot.)
“So, why can’t you go out and check if the lunar eclipse started?” I asked. “After all, if people were saying so on Facebook, they must have done the same thing.”
This struck the children as sound logic, and they ran outside to see what was going on. They caught glimpses of a red moon and they charged in with the sensational news. The son ran into the house, taking his bass decibel levels to an excited high and the daughter came, tripping over her shoes as she took them off. I was, as is usual, in the evening, flopping about the kitchen looking efficient and determined. The urgent appeals from the whole family made me set dinner aside for the moment:
Just switch off the dinner. We can come back and eat.
Come fast. Now.
It takes a long time to cook. You are always cooking dinner.
I likes dinner.
They hustled me out of the house and we stood outside in a sort of anti-climax. The clouds, usually welcomed in the Bay area skies, were having a tough time figuring out why people were standing outside and grimacing at them like that. Hadn’t these very people been pandering for rain, and putting up mugshots of what clouds look like to make sure the populace did not forget? Now when the clouds did come and flit across the evening sky, there was animosity. Did they think moons brought rains? No. Clouds did. Very confusing for the cloud-body.
By now, of course, the husband had to take matters in his hand. He sprinted out to the street and then said we’d get a better view from the end of our street, so off we went leaving the door ajar. The husband, looking like an Admiral General in shorts,was directing his troops to better viewing positions. The children dutifully ran after him. He turned to bellow out further instructions, only to find his faithful wife running in the opposite direction. It is enough to rattle any Admiral. One cannot determine strategic spots with the errant soldier retreating. He stopped and the children skidded into him and they all bellowed at the recalcitrant soldier.
lunar_eclipse_viewing
The problem was, there had been a spate of robberies of late, and I was loathe to leaving the door open. So, I doubled back to lock up, while the rest of the family ran. Questions, explanations, eye-rolls and lectures on how-to-live-in-the-moment and not miss lunar eclipses were happening when the daughter yelled – ‘There! There is the moon.” The mutinous Admiral and the penitent trooper, both abandoned earthly worries for the moment and gazed sky-ward to see the moon disappear once again.
The husband tried to take a picture with the phone, “There are far better photographs that are going to be shared at the end of the eclipse, why bother now?”, I said, like it was going to make a difference.
Picture taken by us
We gazed again only to find a twig obstructing our view of the clouds. The husband charged homeward saying he’d bring us the car, so we could all pile in and get a clearer view. I tried telling him that a better view can only be had above the clouds, but he had gone. He ran and I ran after him with the house keys,and we met each other mid-street (In case you thought the children missed this piece of action, they did not.The toddler thought we were playing, and ran after me. The daughter, tasked with looking after her little brother, ran after him.)Within minutes of this rhino-charge, the car came, with the husband panting in the driver seat and we jumped in and headed out to a open parking lot.
I don’t know whether you have observed children playing in the park. They run up and then they run down, they run left and they right. All with no apparent purpose. So do the child-like. After about 15 minutes of running this way and that, there was some heavy breathing, more useless photographs, and a state of dejection.
If aliens used this time to observe life on earth, I am afraid to say the news they carry back to their homing civilization cannot be a promising one. A lot of pointless running, needless pointing later, we decided to just head back home.
We entered our community when the clouds cleared again. Swearing loudly, off we leaped from the car, and charged out to see the eclipse. We saw a knot of our neighbors standing to view the eclipse too. They had, in their usual wise manner, skipped the drama and simply came out of their homes and raised their eyes.
This was the picture the internet showed us the next day:
We are enjoying Wind in the Willows sort of days of late. Every so often, I crave for some comfort reading and fall back on Children’s story books. The Wind in the Willows is one such. I still remember my best friend walking up to the front of the assembly and saying nervously, “The Wind in the Willows By Kenneth Grahame. The Mole had been working hard all morning spring cleaning his home …” She had me sit in the first row so she could look at me for moral support, and I gladly obliged. She had brushed her wavy hair neatly parted at the side, and her nervousness was evident in the small shake in her voice. She looked at me and smiled nervously and I gave her a large blooming-flower-kind of smile that encouraged her to go on and she carried on heartened. She finished her recitation to much applause, and collapsed on the chair next to me, and I assured her that she had been marvelous.
When I read snippets of the book on the train, I thought of her again and all the sunny balmy days of childhood play in the warm sun and pouring rain came back to me. Folks looked at me like I need to have my head examined, I grinned disarmingly at them. After all, Grahame described The Wind in the Reeds (the working title till it became Wind in the Willows) as:
“A book of youth, and so perhaps chiefly for youth and those who still keep the spirit of youth alive in them; of life, sunshine, running water, woodlands, dusty roads, winter firesides, free of problems, clear of the clash of the sex, of life as it might fairly be supposed to be regarded by some of the wise, small things that ‘glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck’.”
The Wind in the Willows
There is something deeply alluring about animal stories. I love to imagine them talking to each other, helping one another in times of trouble and having their little adventures. I was similarly happy when I read another passage on Dolphins and Humans in the Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan. These helpful animals probably crave a little intellectual stimulation and have often been friends to humans, and yet we have shown them time and again how heartless we are by going after them.
Carl Sagan writes of Elvar the Dolphin, who he had the pleasure of meeting during one of his visits to his friend, John Lilly. John Lilly was an admirable scientist who was involved in several researches, Dolphins being one of them. Lilly introduced Elvar-the-Dolphin to Sagan-the-Human, and seeing that they were getting along, let them to it. Sagan and Elvar came into playing a sort of game, and after being splashed thoroughly by Elvar thrice, Sagan refused to play a fourth time.
Elvar surveyed the standoff for several minutes and swam up to Sagan up and said in a squeaky tone of voice, “More!”.
Carl Sagan, justifiably flustered, came running to his friend and said he might have heard a dolphin say the word, “More”.
To which his friend asked him, “Was it in context?”
“Yes! “, spluttered the poor physicist, to which the neuro-scientist smiled and said that it was one of the 50 odd words he knew.
In all these years, we have yet to pick up one word of Dolphinese and yet, we boast about being knowledgable and go to no end to display our arrogance to Mother Nature.
Why are we so quick so assume that a place like this will not be rife with little joys and strifes? Doodling by the Daughter
If we are so intent about looking for extra terrestrial life, maybe we should stop and let our own ecosystems thrive.
I am reminded of what William James said, about letting Nature teach us as she ought:
“It is to be hoped that we have some friend, perhaps more young than old, whose soul is of this sky-blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies, than with dark human passions, who can think of no ill of man.“
The toddler son has always been a little preoccupied with Time. He buzzes around asking me the time every so often. Initially, of course, I did the square thing and checked the watch and told him. Soon, I realized that I could check the refrigerator, count my tomatoes, and just blurt out an approximate time. Then, I realized that he did not need the approximate time either – he just needed a number. (I tried time-to-sleep, and time-to-eat, but he did not accept that answer. He did, however, accept 14 o’clock, 14:52 – but not 14.)
The little fellow, like most children, is a question-machine. He asks why there is no half sun, why the dinosaurs died, how he came back to life to spend the day with Danny, why the flowers dried, why his sister came to the World earlier than him. What is dish – (You can eat a dish and put mammum (food) in a dish?), how to see if water reached a particular spot in the water-hose, what is before zero, how do tree roots drink water (Thank goodness, my biology teacher was not there to hear my answer.)
Dinosaurs can come back?
Sometimes, I give him an answer that is in essence correct, but otherwise useless. Like the time he asked me how to make water. (You take two hydrogen atoms, combine it with an oxygen atom and you will get water.) He looked at me puzzled and drank his water. So, I am drinking three water, but there is only one water? I never learn I tell you. After that rash answer, I spent a few trying minutes laying bare my ignorance in Chemistry for all to see.
One time, at the end of a 16-hour long day, we lay there savoring a children’s book together. I told him that it was his sister’s favorite book when she was a baby and he lapped it up. At the end of it, we both sighed contentedly and I told him it was time to sleep. That was when he crinkled his brow, and asked me what is Time. I must have looked perplexed for he went on: “You rember when I was eating applejacks cereal in the morning, you said Time is going? I want to go yesterday.”
If I wasn’t lying down, I would have gone. I am guilty of hustling the fellow when he is relishing his ‘applejacks cereals’ over breakfast, but mornings are a bit rushed in the household and my train won’t wait.
He looked serious and a bit frustrated to see that I had not grasped his simple question. “I want to go yesterday!” he repeated slowly and a bit louder than before. I know that on his timeline things that happened a decade ago qualify as yesterday, so I asked him why he wanted to go to Yesterday.
His answer to that was simple enough. He wanted to see his sister as a baby. I had to dash the fellow’s hopes. There were photographs I could show him, stories I could tell him of her babyhood, but no, he could not go back in time.
Then, he asked me why time only goes forwards and not backwards.
This is when you see me mop my brow. I tell you, I am no physicist. His questions are steadily chipping at whatever Science I have managed to grasp over the years, despite my teachers’ best intentions.
What? How? Why?
I barely understand time now. It is ethereal, and deceptive. I feel like I am spending enough time during the day enjoying the present, yet, here we are already confusing the Fall season with the sunshine that is Summer’s trademark. I seem to remember helping the fellow take his first steps and now here he is asking me for explanations that are dubious at best. If every day does not seem to fleet past, why do the years flit by?
How come I forget the name of the person I met yesterday, but remember the names of my friends from when I was 5 years old?
If you stop for coffee in the mornings, there are souls standing there looking like they know they should be there. They obviously did something right to get there, but what to do after that is displayed like a puzzling Exclamation mark preceded by a Question mark on their face. Take a beaker full of coffee and send the brew through a funnel and they will stir and show some spirit. It takes a few minutes, but they eventually get buzzed up as I like to call it and crack open their day.
coffee
Curious that I should have written this without knowing that is was National Coffee Day.
One morning I decided to take the high road on nutrition and scorned coffee & tea with the air of a medieval lord. Yogurt, I decided, is the thing, and headed out towards a solid breakfast. Live cultures, probiotics with a spot of fresh fruit. I felt like just the thought of it was chasing all those terrible toxins away. I shivered at the thought of caffeinated beverages. It was as I was surveying some grape yogurt that my nose twitched in an alarming manner.
I turned my neck to aid the nose and saw that there was an egg-making section in the place. The husband is a great show-wizard in the art of egg making. He beams at his audience, he instructs, he builds suspense as to how he is going to toss the omelets and catch them. The audience watches bewitched as the omelets fly in the air and then they push the heart down, for it pops up to the mouth with all the suspense.In a fitting finale, the omelet spatters but mostly lands in the pan. He good-humoredly says,“Well, almost!”. The admiring audience then cleans away the soggy remains on the floor, the egg-shells are swept from view, and the chef presents his masterpiece.
Why I say all this is because, I don’t know whether you have stood around watching eggs being made. It is fascinating. Also crowded. The populace likes seeing the egg-toss. But that day, the egg making station was empty. So, I made for it and ordered a sunny side up just because I could, with out waiting in line.
The lady misheard me and made me two eggs sunny side up, left them a bit longer than she would have liked and I found myself staring at two fried eggs instead.
You know how we tell our children not to waste the food on their plate because poor children are starving in other parts of the World? In fact, the thing has been drummed into my psyche for so long for so many years that I leave a very clean plate. Maybe it is time for all good men and women to analyze this statement. I did not want any eggs, but landed up having two beaming up at me simply because the line was empty. Now, I could well not waste it because of those starving children.
Never one to raise hands for a breakfast, I felt a bit squeezy. A friend I know told me that mint tea always soothes the squeezy stomach, and so there I was with the kettle and teabag at the end of it all. So much for turning my nose up at caffeine.
Now, since I did not waste any of the food, all that is required is find a way to transport these calories to the starving poor.
“Do you hereby consent to transfer your breakfast to this starving, poor, poor child ?”
“Yes I solemnly do.”
Good Food Link-inator
Off the calories go zipping through the Good-Food-Calorie-Linkinator to nourish the child. The recipient has a holographic effect of eating the eggs, that trigger good memories depending on howwell the patron enjoyed his calories,thus physically and psychologically satisfying the receiver. If one has truly enjoyed it, so will the receiver of the calories, and if one has just forked them down like a robotic arm lifting garbage, the receiver does not enjoy it all, and his giver-rating goes down. That way, one can indulge occasionally, and feel good all around.
Sigh! I never see folks skip over to the treadmill because it is empty and exercise. Why do we not exhibit the same iron control with food?
I deposited myself fluidly through the doors in the last second before closure. The trains in the USA insist on closing the doors, thereby denying folks like us to use the hang-on-by-a-strand-and-heave self onto train later technique. I can’t say I was in a frightfully enthusiastic mood as I plopped myself onto the only remaining seat. I turned and looked at the person sitting next to me and saw I had drawn the stiff corporate pant.
I had to drop some documents off at a government office and then face a regular day. I sat contemplating the task ahead while opening my book to read. Nothing that a good book can’t fix I told myself sternly and set to reading.
Minutes into the journey, he (the s-c-p, the stiff corporate pant I mean) whipped out his phone. A purposeful gleam emanated from his glassy eyes. I moaned. I think I can figure out when my quiet commute gets thrown out the window. He called his team in India, and far from having a how-are-things conversation, took a piece of mud and flung it with whim across the seven oceans. Ocean beds shuddered as they transmitted the bits from him to the unfortunate team on the other side. He shouted at them,and then looked about impressively.Nobody cared. I scowled. It made not the slightest difference to him. He talked on. He promised to call them all separately and ‘give them nicely’ for not running a report or some such thing.
He sounded like one of those folk who make mental lists of jumping on people, telling them in precise language how they failed as individuals, and how they would improve in life if only they were to listen to him and follow his instructions alone. I heard a goodish deal of his side, which meant that the stuffed mushroom thought nothing of hogging conversations.
“Hello Kavya?”
She probably said Hello, and that was about all she was allowed to say. If I knew her, I could have messaged her directly and told her to put down the phone and continue doing whatever else she was doing, with no loss. He started with the I’ll-show-you-who-is-in-control early enough. “What did you tell Gopal?” he bellowed.
I rummaged around for some cotton, fake-coughed a bit and stuffed my ears, but it did not help. What was required was one of those vacuum shower stoppers, not cotton. I could still hear every word:
“He said that you said that,” and on and on he went how about she was wasting her time. The passengers near me felt a bit sorry for Kavya, whoever she was. Luckily for her, she had no idea she was being publicly shelled like this. I mean, if you are whipping the air out of someone’s lungs, at least have the civility to do so in private, what? I threw him a dirty look. It simply evaporated like a droplet of water in the Saharan desert.
Soon, the bore lost the fun out of ripping Kavya and I tried to read again. He played on his phone for a few minutes. War horses need rest and restoration between battles. A minute later, he called Gopal and started by telling him what Divya told him and how he ‘gave her nicely’. The train was too full now for me to move away from this spot of misery, even if it meant standing on a one foot.
Say what you will about the steel glinted glass, he kept his promise. He made seven different calls and in between every call, he logged back into his game and riled himself up a bit more and got on with his ticking-off. He told every one of them again that he planned on calling every other member who had not delivered something, to ‘give them nicely’.After throwing his weight about like a dancing hippo in the local discotheque frequented by rhinos, he disconnected the call, looked pleased with himself and treated himself to a long round of playing a game on his smart phone.
I almost cheered when his stop came and he went out with a triumphant stride. Clearly, the hippoceres thought his day started on a productive note.
I ruminated for a bit about the phrase ‘give one nicely’. A very Indian expression is it not, to give one nicely while doing the exact opposite? What a super-fatted-bore!
Maybe like Russell said:
Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.
If the s-f-bore had to fight off a few dogs and then run a mile before he leaped onto the train, and then was barely able to hang on, he might not have had the need to ‘give everyone nicely’.
It turned out that the document drop off at the Government office was an egg drop too. I was sitting there an hour after my appointment time, and fiddling my thumbs watching the videos of ‘Incredible India’ play over and over again. The guy at the counter before me was waving his hand impressively and making a lot of noisy gestures. I could not hear him of course(I preferred the music).There is something hypnotizing about those videos like ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’.
My stomach gave a threatening rumble before I finally washed up in front of the clerk (Are they still called that?). She looked peeved. Maybe the guy before me gave her nicely, I thought. She rummaged through my stack of documents for a minute and then said she could not help me because we required another form with notarized signatures of all players in the game. I gurgled and tried asking if my signature alone would do. She shook her head firmly – It was a no-go.
My stomach squeezed itself with hunger, and I thought to myself savagely that now is the time for all loud men and women to come to the party and ‘give everyone nicely’: Iwondered if Mr. Hippoceres would lend his services.
“Hello! May I speak to the Hippoceres Giving-It-Nicely Service please?”
“Yes Ma’am. Who would you like to give it nicely to today?”
We had been to attend The Physics Show a few weeks ago. Living in an area housing the world’s most frightful technologists does that to you. One scientist tells his neighbor, who tells his friend, an engineer, who tells his friend, a Biochemist, and from there it passes on from one to another, all bound together by the loose brackets of a parent. Before long, there is a list of folks beating it up the hill to The Physics Show. If you peered closely at that hill, you would have seen me there with the daughter and some friends. I can’t fool the public into believing that the Opera and Broadway are competitors, but the general populace was surging to the show.
The Auditorium was atop a steep hill, and the populace was huffing and puffing like Po the Panda stopping for water breaks every now and then. I felt like I was on a strange padayatra (Journey by Foot) to see a Gingko Tree, growing amidst a grove of Japanese Cherry Blossoms, atop the Great Wall of China. The holy path only required one to sprinkle a few drops of the holy Ganga-jal along the way, to make the ritual complete.
Pada Yatra to see Gingko Tree amidst Grove of Japanese Cherry blossoms on the Great Wall of China
The populace making their way up the hill were mostly enthusiastic folks of Asian descent: Parents of Chinese, Japanese & Indian descent with their reluctant progeny.
The show by itself was reasonably good. The scientists did their best to enthuse the children. “If you can’t have fun doing Physics, you can’t be having much fun doing anything!” they boomed on stage. All the parents laughed heartily and clapped at this, while the 5 year old boy sitting in front of me turned and stared at me as if asking, “Really?! You can laugh at this, but not at the Tom & Jerry show I was uprooted from for this lark?”. It looked to me like he was having a lot more fun ogling at these specimens who laughed for that joke, than anything else. I detected a judgmental gleam in his eye, and did my best to cope with it by ignoring him and enjoying the atmosphere instead.
I scanned the crowd to see the number of children in the 5-7 age group. There were even a few 4 year olds and I hoped they were taking one for the sibling and not because parents hoped that training started early.
The scientists talked about Electricity, Temperature and Atmospheric Pressure. But the best attempts to educate drew the biggest engagement when the team on the stage fried themselves deliberately or made their hair stand up. It was hilarious to see the hopeful expressions on the faces of the well-intentioned parents, while the children enjoyed the parts of the show that looked like circus performers out at tea-time.
A few days later, the daughter and I were out and about sauntering around the neighborhood. The waning summer had few butterflies and we made them proud by flitting from one topic to the next. We were talking about progress, science, the European refugee crisis, the recent fires, dodo bird extinctions and so on. The gentle Dodos helped me steer our conversation onto humans and humanity’s path and how our Scientific progress always has a good and a bad fallout. I told her about what Albert Einstein said, “The Fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones!”.
I went on to tie the plight of the Syrian refugees to explain how civil unrest, war etc always lead to horrifying effects on people.
“So, Albert Einstein said that the Third World War will wipe out everything as we know it right? So, then we are okay isn’t it?” she asked, her face crinkled with worry.
“Alas! Even if it is a big bang annihilating life in the end, the hurtle towards that instant itself is a long and difficult journey involving much heartbreak and agony. It will be a long drawn out affair with millions of people losing their loved ones, suffering with injuries and wretched atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and anxiety.” I said. .
The daughter was quiet and somber. A rare occurrence.I did not relish this Doomsday Scenario either. We walked in silence for a minute.
“Well then the only way out is for people to go to Oregon then.” said she after a few moments in a final sort of voice..
“Eh?! You mean the state of Oregon?”
“Yes” she said. “Oregon – above California.”
God knows I have braved enough conversations, but this still had me stumped. “Why Oregon?”
“Well. Only there you can kill yourself legally, and put an end to misery right?” said the daughter.
A visit to the grand old trees of the West is always a humbling experience. Last week, it was the turn of the Sequoias. Most folks check climatic conditions, pull up traffic conditions and ensure that the travel route is free of terrors, man-made or otherwise. I like efficient folks like them. We are just not one of them.
So, obviously, there we were, entering the beautiful forest park only to have the ranger look us strangely in the eye and ask whether we knew we would not be allowed into most of the park.
“Why is that?” I asked
His eyebrow twitched a bit showing us that his base, unchecked instinct was to utter an irritated tut, but his excellent training made him stamp down firmly on that instinct and instead answered with a civil nod.
“Well, Ma’am. There is a forest fire on the Kings Canyon side, so you may not go.” he said
“Will we be allowed tomorrow?” I said swiftly updating plans for the next day to see if we could do a shabby run of Sequoia and Kings Canyon the next day. The ranger sized me mentally to be one of those tick-it-all-from-the-list types and gave me a pleading look. He said that the park had been closed for the past month and the only grove we could visit was Grant Grove, for the fire was burning relentlessly on the King’s Canyon side.
All the way up to the parks, I had been in a feeling of sinking unease. The river beds along the 3 hour drive had all but dried up. The lands lay caked and what respite greenery could have provided was all but missing in the urban factory areas spewing out dense smoke. I remembered our last drive up to the same national park and I remember exclaiming at nature’s bounty every few miles. I also distinctly remember leaving the car windows open so I could hear the river crashing down below in the canyon. There was nothing of the sort this time. Just an eerie quiet. I had never seen California this dry. I found myself worrying whether the Sequoia trees would survive the massive drought that lay upon us when the husband reminded me that these trees have been through it all, and are far better equipped to handle nature’s adversities than we are. It was true. Our entire generation is but a blip in the forest’s existence.
Sequoia Trees
I looked around to see folks clicking photographs relentlessly on their phone and cameras. Hundreds of photos every minute. Some of these photographs will be liked, some of them may not even have the privilege of being edited/uploaded, but they existed all the same. I thought to myself, not for the first time that to the grand old trees of the West, we are like those pictures. Mere blips on the timeline. Some of us may achieve more notice from those around them than others, but that does not mean we weren’t there.
As we walked around the tall, squat Sequoia trees in the grove, I succumbed to that beautiful feeling of peace. We watched the chipmunks chattering away and our attempts to imitate them got us a chipmunk-shelling in time. We listened to bird calls and wondered why there were so few. We squealed at sighting an occasional mule deer. Most mule deer might have been startled out of their own grove, but this hardy fellow turned and gave us a pose.
It was all so serene, it was hard to believe the fire was raging just a few miles away. It was a sage thought. The wildfire has now spread to the Grove where we loitered around a week ago and my heart skips a beat thinking of the teeming life we had seen there and how it all suffers.
How many of you have barked in your lives? If you haven’t ever. Try it now. Bow Wow. Good.
Now imagine one time you came off sounding (to a dog) like you need to get your act together, for you sounded like a sheep trying to talk pig. Not just that, the word spread in the dog community that bark they heard from you on that day was a menace to dogs in general, and decided to hunt you down. Relentlessly. They get all the stray dogs in town, get the domesticated ones to break their leash and come after you. All because that day when you barked, it sounded like a sheep-ish pig snorting.
You could try to leave, but world over, canines are incensed that a person who barked like a pig is allowed to live at all. There are dogs in every part of the world, and no matter where you turn, you are besieged by angry dogs.
They do not know whether you are a person who loves dogs in general or not so much. They have no idea whether you are for or against animal cruelty, or if you care about the environment, whether you are friendly, loyal, caring or warm. From that moment on, there is a canine war against you – for you have been singled out.
You try telling them that you really do things well in life. You run, mew, walk, sing, read, say “Down boy!” with aplomb, walk-like-a-penguin, spend time with your friends, family and other animals, are loyal, forgiving, funny, easy, curious; but that bark that insulted dogs removed every other aspect of your personality.
This to me, is what the mutating self-righteous internet-user base has become. We all watched with horror about how the world went after the dentist who killed Cecil the Lion, we know what happened to Foy.
Was this how the world always was, or have your tolerance levels waned, I asked myself as I sat quietly with a notepad in my hand admiring the view of the lake before me and idly jotting down bits and pieces of conversation I heard as people ran, jogged or walked around the lake. There were so many seemingly innocuous statements I overheard that could cause a storm when taken out of context. Like this one for instance: It all comes down to what your mother has fed you over the years.
This simple sentence could go viral within minutes in a hundred different dimensions.
Feminist groups going: Why should moms be held responsible for the feeding?
Indignant moms going: The mother always knows best!
Disgruntled fathers going: Hey! We know a thing or two about nutrition too!
Young folks going: Please! Stop. We know how to feed ourselves.
can a bark spark the media river?
But what this misses is context, tone of voice, reaction of those involved, an explanation. This is what I overheard from a family of three walking together briskly. That sentence could have been advice doled to the teenaged-son on good nutrition and exercise, or an offhand compliment to the mother in that family, or the father’s own story about how he associated certain memories with what he ate at his mother’s kitchen, or the line from the latest Hindi movie they watched.
It was not always like this. Somehow, with shorter message contents competing for our attention, our attention spans seem to be becoming directly proportional to our tolerance and our ability to assume the best in people.
Maybe next time we stop and make an effort to think that maybe not all is as bad as it sounds. (Well….except in Donald Trump’s case in which case, you may quack before you bark.)
It is always a pleasure to chew the fat with the old father. We were talking of this and that – me trying desperately to get a word in edgeways. Grandfather and grandson talk like they are releasing cannon balls from the top of the fort, and that they must somehow made it heard to the populace 1000’s of metres below about the cannon balls before releasing them. People with voices, even like mine, sound like bleaters on the side. Finally, Dusty Crophopper, that wonderful firefighter who is also a racing world champion and works as a crop-duster (if a plane can be that useful, why can’t we?), needed to tend to a fire rescue operation and flew off with his owner and I was allowed to carry on talking to my father.
Dusty Crophopper – That Useful Plane! Firefighter, world-class-racer, crop-duster, best friend & model citizen
We spoke of this and that and the father took to criticizing the evening leeches who sucked blood and happiness from his being, namely evening Tamil soap operas.
“Well…nobody is asking you to watch them.” I said fairly. “You have so many channels, you can always watch National Geographic.” I said.
To which the mother quipped, “Given a choice he has the news going on in endless loops, and all day long there is apa-sagunam(bad omens). Somebody murdering somebody – all on Friday evening. Who wants that? ”
I wonder if it is okay on other days for bad omens, but know better than to ask her that. The mother has a special place in her heart for Fridays. She has complex algorithmic suggestions that would do well with some refactoring. The lot of us are constantly flouting these rules, with or without knowledge, and getting in trouble. I try to classify them simply.
The Friday Algorithm
“Well..you could watch the financial news then.” I said. I never learn I tell you, I must be as dim-witted as a drunk banana slug. There is no point in providing suggestions, for people are going to do exactly as they please, but I blunder on happily every time.
Anyway, there was a small scuffle at the other end of the phone about financial news and stock markets during which time I was called on an emergency rescue operation of Dusty Crophopper who flew so fast, he crash landed behind the sofa with the owner in close pursuit.
By the time I was back to the conversation, the father was in a melancholy mood. “Wasting time is so easy these days”, he said. I agreed. He continued on, “It is increasingly sad to expect the younger generation to overcome monumental demands on their time to waste it and use it towards something constructive. When you were young, there was only a television to grapple with.”
I disagreed.
The television was nothing to grapple with when I was young. There was no grappling there. Anyone who has spent even an hour watching “Vayalum Vazhvum” at 6 p.m. will provide ready testimony to the fact that it was phenomenally more rewarding to pretend to study. The benefits were multi-fold. You could drool and day dream all you wanted, you had your room to your own devices and authority figures off your back, for weren’t you studying? Also, when you came out refreshed, you sat yourself down to a wonderful dinner where nobody told anybody about the benefits of hard work, because the poor child has just been working really hard. It was marvelous.
The laughs from comedy sitcoms are far more numerous than ones your own friends and family can come up with around the dinner table.
When Television gets boring, there is a wide variety of apps and games to amuse oneself for we live in a psychological bubble.
Link here: for tech bubble vs psychological bubble. http://nextdraft.com/archives/n20150901/we-are-in-a-bubble/
I quote:
This time it’s not a financial bubble. It’s a psychological one. The psychological bubble makes you think that because you can code a photo app or design an algorithm to get me to the airport a little quicker, that also qualifies you as an expert on every other topic.
As if all this was not temptation enough, there is also the phenomenal lure of facebook, twitter, youtube, pinterest and instagram.
chasing chicks social media
It is enough to make anyone feel helpless. I sometimes feel like a mute spectator to a torrential river devised to distract you from everything including distractions.
Which brings me neatly to the most entertaining hour of my social media simulation experiment. Coming up next – stay tuned.
Nourish-n-Cherish 