fun – Page 5 – Nourish-n-Cherish

The Leap Wish

If you see me just for a day, with my nose transformed into a beautiful horn, and roaming the skies or plumbing the depths of the ocean, I can explain:

A Leap Wish?

“So, what do you wish can exist for one day only on Feb 29th? “ the son asks one evening.

“Hmm?” I am taken aback from the question, though I really shouldn’t be. The skies know I have had my fair share of them. But it still surprises me.

“It can’t be a person, but it can be a magical power, a creature that is long extinct etc. Like a leap year wish – a leap wish!” he says.

That was an intriguing thought. Something to wish for that only exists on Feb 29th. I thought, and thought about it shamefully for so long. Why was this so hard?

What would each of us like?

🐋“Hmm..maybe a chance to see our world from different perspectives? Like being a unicorn filled with magic and a narwhal who can dive deep and long?” I said. “Let me think about this a bit more. What would you want?” I asked him.

Screenshot 2024-02-28 at 8.40.47 PM

🦕Unsurprisingly, he came up with so many different things and versions, but finally settled on, “ I’d want dinosaurs to roam the Earth as they used to just for that one day, so we can see, how it all was for them.”

The husband said he would play the world to his advantage and ask to be able to teleport himself everywhere so he could experience a sampling of the world and make the most of 24 hours to make it 36 with the time differences.

“You and your can-do attitude. Can’t just take the 24 hours given to you – you have to optimize it to 36!” I chided him gently, though I admired him all the more for it, especially hearing what he had in mind.

🪸The coral reefs of the coast of Australia to the beaches in Brazil, a cold desert stop in the Gobi desert on the way to a hot one in the Thar desert or the Arabian one.

birthday

By the end of my conversation with him, I found myself thinking of longing and gratitude to live out our lives on this wondrous planet.

What would you like?

What about you? What would you like to experience that one day? Remember, it only lasts a day. For all you financial magnates, if you want a billion dollars to experience life as a billionaire, remember you get to be yourself with your old bank account the next day. That may make the remaining days that much more normal – be warned!

I spent the walk back pondering on how our life would be if we each got our wishes. Would the leap day every four years be wondrous, exciting, nerve-wracking, frightful, beautiful, scary?

We’ve all heard of the gypsy’s curse: May you get what you wish for! In this case, would it be too much for us to handle?

🌈Irisophiles?🌈

February is really the month of Love. Not just because of Valentine’s Day, but the rainbows!

February has been the month of rainbows – at least here in the Bay Area. Even if we know the Science behind rainbows, they are special. We’d glance outside, and see the sun peeking out after the rains, and I’d run to see if the magic is there. That in itself is surely magical.

While there are many words to describe the love of sunsets, clouds, starry skies, the sun, the moon, eclipses, forests, rain, thunder and lightning, there isn’t really a word to describe the love of rainbows. No one word to capture the soaring of the heart when it spots the multi colored ring of the Earth’s horizons. The squealing of the young and the old as they charge outside to catch the magical light of this beautiful universe. Imagining how marvelous it must look to hummingbirds and those who can see a larger spectrum of light.

Rainbow Tales

Of course rainbows have enamored humankind for centuries.

🌈I can’t help thinking of the silly fable about the fox marrying the crow and throwing the garland up in the sky, and that is how a rainbow is formed, every time we spot one.

👰Greek myths have a goddess, Iris, who is both a messenger of the gods and a personification of the rainbow. In Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, the demigods are able to use drachmas to communicate with the gods through a rainbow.

🍀The Irish, of course, have a quirky tale about finding gold at the end of the rainbow.

That is why I was this surprised at not being able to easily find a word for a lover of rainbows in a world filled with them.

Should we call ourselves Irisophiles?

🌇Opacarophile: lover of sunset

🎨Chromatophile – a lover of colors

⚡Ceraunophile – a lover of thunder and lightning

🌩️Nephophile – a lover of clouds

☀️Heliophile – a lover of the sun

🌜Selenophile – a lover of the moon

🤽Limnophile – a lover of lakes

🕯️Photophile – a lover of natural light

🌧️Pluviophile – a lover of rain

🌊Thalassophile -a lover of the sea and oceans

🌳Nemophile – a lover of forests

💛Xanthophile – a lover of the color yellow

Here are a list of words to engage any nature-o-philes:

Words for lover of Nature and Weather

What do you think? Should the lover of rainbows be called an Irisophile. Or what other words would you suggest?

⚡️💨⛈Cloud Kitchens ⚡️💨⛈

We were walking at a time when everything around us was glowing in a golden hue. The sun was setting, highlighting the clouds in the horizon from within or behind, giving them a glorious gloriole. The recent storm had news channels talking of our favorite term in recent times – atmospheric rivers.

The actual river was flowing with muddy waters from the recent rains, the trail was still strewn with branches and twigs after the recent battering of the storms, the deer that usually had more space to graze were standing glumly off to the side for their favorite haunts were water-logged. Or at least I thought they stood glumly: they looked contented and happy with the fresh grass, and each other for company.

“Look at those clouds and the lighting from behind them!” I squealed.

“Oh please amma! You talk of nothing but countertops and cabinets these days!” said the son.

“I do not!” I said, mock-offended and a trifle sheepish. Well – the fellow was not entirely wrong. It was true, I was becoming one of those bores who go on and on about cabinets. I am trying to switch out the cabinets in our kitchen, and it has proved to be a task that had hidden depths to its complexity. Regardless – just then, I was talking about clouds and the sunset, and said so with a haughty sniff.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of how the hidden lighting would look under the cabinets.!” he said, and I laughed. I had not actually thought of it, but if the poor fellow thought his usually cloud-and-sunset-loving mother saw cabinets in clouds, I had scarred him indeed. Feeling suitably chastened, I promised to shelve all talk of cabinets for the walk. “Get it? Get it? Shelve talk of cabinets! Huh?”

He rolled his eyes, and though the clouds reminded me of the subtle grays and whites in certain countertops I had seen, I kept the opinion to myself, and we walked on chatting amiably of this-and-that.

Kitchens could wait, sunsets could not.

Sun Rise Sun Rise!

We stood there waiting for the sunrise over the Grand Canyon.

We had driven up there the previous evening in what felt like 20 degree weather. The moon lit scapes around us were beautiful from inside the car, but outside, it looked unforgiving. It was cold, and the desert around us was different enough. Even so, the same landscapes at night take on a different feel and dimension altogether. The shelves of stone around us in the early morning light of dawn was breathtaking. As if a different hue was revealed with every tilt in angle of the sun’s rays.

How drawn to light we are as a species? Somewhere, the sharp smells of pine wafted through, and I wondered briefly whether we stopped to let our other senses weigh in as much when we have sight and light.

I suppose we do let sounds and smells in, and do allow our sense of touch to help us along. But do we really develop our other senses? A preliminary search says we gather about 80% of our sensory perceptions using sight.

Dogs, on the other hand, seem to distribute their perceptions between sight, smell and sound.

The early morning calm of the sun-rise and my meandering thoughts were interrupted by the loud calls of a mother looking for her children. I turned around irritated, and was somewhat surprised that I was surrounded by this many people on a cold Christmas Day morning, standing on a cliff overlooking the Grand Canyon and waiting for the sun to rise.

But I suppose, it was my fault for not expecting this. It promised to be a beautiful day, after all, and like me, many had decided to brave the cold, and take in the marvelous sunrise over the horizon at a point helpfully named Sunrise Point.

I let out an amused grin, and exchanged a look with the children – they seem to have caught on to my look of surprise at finding other people there. It was a beautiful moment: the mother pulled her child towards her, and the sun burst forth in glory over the horizon.

All was well with the world at this moment.

Let’s go for some breakfast and then take a long, quiet walk along time, I said shuffling away from Sunrise Point, and the children chuckled at the thought. We are not an early rising family, and we scurried inside towards warmth, food and coffee before attempting to take on people and canyons.

🍁I Found A 🍁🍁Million🍁🍁 Bucks 🍁

“It rained last night, did you hear?” the son said the first thing in the morning as he crept groggily downstairs.

I confessed I hadn’t. It had been a late night – one fraught with beeping alarms, low-battery carbon monoxide filters, very cold temperatures, and a spate of international phone calls. I remember peeking out at the full-ish moon before finally collapsing into a warm bed, but not much else. In fact when the alarm went off in the morning, I was in the midst of a strange and confusing dream in which somebody was giving me a recipe. I can’t remember the details, but I also remember my first thought being – what a strange recipe!

Luckily I shook all memories of frog chutneys and slime pickles aside and made for the open air. The air was fresh – the Earth beautiful after the rains, and I was not going to miss it.

I was rewarded with brilliant cloudy skies, rain-drop topped leaves, and quiet birds shaking their wings and beaks throughout.

I stopped to marvel at the casual beauty that lay there in front of me – the lake not realizing the perfect reflection it provided to the mountains in the distance, the fall trees closer by, and the still groggy white heron on the opposite shore. All just there for anyone wanting to see it. Sleepy, dewy, cloudy, misty.

fall-COLLAGE

I stood there trying to remember the chemical names that were responsible for the brilliance of the colours reflected before me: carotenids, anthocyanins and tannins. I wondered at the wisdom of these trees: realizing that it was time to stop photosynthesis and let the tannins and cyanins or whatever take over without any fanfare, and producing the most breath-taking show for the world to revel in.

🍁Carotenids : the pigments for the orange and yellow colors

🍁Anthocyanins: the pigments that are responsible for the purples and reds.

🍁Tannins: responsible for the brown color.

Almost instinctively, I looked around and found myself alone. Alone in a bustling suburban area – the only one who took a quick detour and stopped to admire the lake on my way from somewhere to somewhere. It felt nice. Special. Like I had won a million bucks.

November is already on its way out – 2023 is already on its way out. The trees have put their show on, on time. I gave myself a little scolding: My Christmas tree was not up yet. “But I did have some beautiful poinsetta plants beaming their reds at me in the morning, that was something! “ I said to myself heading to a small park bench, and there: I found a million bucks.

I left it there for the next lucky person to find, and went on my way, a smile playing on my lips.

Who said the universe did not have a sense of humor?

The moon in the willows

With the full moon approaching, the beautiful waxing gibbous moon was often visible – a pale disc, even as the sun is setting, and sending hues of oranges and pinks sky-over. It is a beautiful time of year. November fall colors are in full glory, the occasional rains make for good cloud cover, and the nip in the air makes for an energetic walk whether we start that way or not.

On one such evening, as I frisked about, I looked up at the sky. In one breath taking moment, there was the moon shining through the spilling branches of the willow trees. I took a picture, but of course, it captured nothing of that moment.

A few steps on, I smiled as a small wren pipped in and out of the gingko trees. The gingkos are all cloaked in a golden yellow. All of them are waiting: waiting for an older gingko who has still not changed colors completely. In Oliver Sacks essays, he writes of the communication patterns between these beautiful trees who have lived to tell us tales from the time dinosaurs roamed the earth to now.

It must be marvelous dipping in and out of the fall colored foliage like that. Imagine living in a nest surrounded by the golden glow of a gingko tree, or the multicolored heaven of a maple tree. Oh! To be a shape sifter would be marvelous.

Back home, I nursed a cup of hot coffee as I peered into the sunshine outside. I shushed the daughter as she came over to see what had me quiet. There it was: a big fat brown rat, sunning itself. “Ugh! Go away! Go away!” the daughter said, but the rat did not think it necessary to budge. I tried opening the door loudly, and it moved towards the shadows of the trees hesitantly. The daughter gave me a stern look, “What would you do if it ran inside Mother?”

I admit I had not thought of that possibility. “In my experience with rats, they scamper away, not towards you. Unless, of course, you were a cat, and the rat was infected by toxoplasma gondii.”

I looked at her with what I call a winning smile. She ignored this, and went her way. I let the rat be, and went about composing a little poem in my head. What I mean to say was it was a marvelous day to be outside. Thanksgiving can come in various forms. It can come in the form of

The moon in the willows

The bird in the gingkos, and

The rat in the shadows.

👻🎃 I Am Hopeful Because 👻🎃

I sat on All Hallows Eve bathed in an orange glow, marking and judging entries for a literature contest. If ever there was a content pumpkin contest, there I was, readymade. It was quite an enjoyable task, and I sat quietly reading stories, poems and essays on the topic, “I Am Hopeful Because”.

Throughout the evening, I waddled out of my desk to open the door and bellowed, “Who dared to ring the bell? Ho ho ho!”. I thought I was doing pretty well till the son asked me why Santa was ho-ho-ho-ing on Halloween. Oh well!

Halloween is one of my favorite American festivals. The house was reasonably well decorated. Pretty soon, penguins, vampires, mermaids, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all come knocking on the door despite the ominous sign by the door that read, “Knock if you dare!”.

The son and his friends had a roaring Candy Exchange Business going on the side I understood later. He came into the house looking flushed from the cold, and bursting with news. Apparently, he’d been able to auction a Kit-Kat for 2 Twix, a Ghirardelli white chocolate piece, and an M&M packet. He also had instituted a monopoly on all the Sour Patch Candy, and found himself bartering and trading like the fellows on the stock exchange. I smiled.

“How was your evening?” he asked. It had been one of those rare Halloween evenings when I had stayed put inside the home instead of gallivanting with the revelers. I love the atmosphere of Halloween as regular readers know, but this time a minor biking accident had me sitting inside, while the Halloween revelers roamed the candy laden streets. They mapped best routes, best homes to hit for the best candies resulting in rounds of discussion. It was all marvelous.

I did miss the magic of the halloween streets with moonlight filtering through the clouds, black cats slinking through the streets, raccoons wondering what all the fuss was about, and chattering children racing towards lit up porches for some Halloween candy. But it was also a surreal, beautiful evening. A reminder of the joys of winter evenings, of warmth drawing in as the evenings became colder. That first feeling of Hygge.

I told him that I was hopeful because the evening was full of well-behaved children. The children all seemed to be so happy to receive a piece of candy, even though they all live in an economy and a community where far too much sugar is available for consumption. One or two of them even returned a couple of pieces of candy when they’d had a few more than they thought they wanted.

The sweet honesty of these children in times when we are constantly reminded of our flaws and failures was refreshing, and the gentle interactions through the evening with adults and children alike, was very pleasant indeed.

halloween_ij

“We’re all mad here.”

– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The Boiler of Milk

I was on a visit to the old homeland. After the fond welcomes, and affectionate enquiries about all our friends, I was tasked with boiling the milk packets. I took to the task with enthusiasm and surprised myself.

How many of you have boiled milk? I realize that this bit of cooking is something that I do not miss living in the United States. The vessels are always a nightmare to scrub afterwards, and the milk itself has a cruel sense of humor. It would sizzle, and nuggle and miggle without actually boiling over, for ages. The entire time you are there alone pondering on the n-different things you could be spending your time on, nothing happens. Images from the poignant movie, The Great Indian Kitchen juggle with the forced quiet and calm of the post-dinner boiling milk time. The house is finally quiet. The milk is quiet too. Like a volcano. Dormant and slumbering. Rumbles from time-to-time, but slumbers all the same.

Then, the moment you decided to flick an eyelash out of your eye, the whole thing would come pouring out, making a mess. It is also curious that it seems every adult in the vicinity is peculiarly attuned to the sound of the hissing milk gushing out of the vessel. No sooner than this happens that the hitherto empty kitchen gathers distinguished guests.

The old grandmother, who minutes ago complained of knee aches and the inability to stand for a few minutes, comes prancing into the kitchen to offer advice.
The older grandfather hears this sound when one has to otherwise yell into his hearing aid to eat his tablets. He hobbles out of bed to see what the fuss is about.
The children – oh the children. You can spend entire evenings calling their names to come and finish their tasks, but this. They jaunt in to get in on the action with no invitations!
The man of the house looks amused at all the fuss, and wonders why the woman of the house looks petulant. It is just a packet of milk!

The boiler of milk, in the meanwhile, has nowhere to go – the results of her ineptitude spooling out helpfully for all to see and revel in.

Just a packet of milk.

Really, adulthood is very trying!

Still, it just goes to prove that time is a great healer and all that. All milk-related trauma seemed laughable just then, and I headed into the kitchen to boil a packet, looking like an angel in a night-suit. Patience oozing from my every pore, I smiled back as if to tell everyone present that I have it handled. My guardian angel or gatekeeper os whoever else keeps score, had better be jotting this down, I thought to myself as I stepped into the kitchen.

milk

I had no idea it was a task of such a technical nature.

India launched Chandrayaan-3 and managed to safely land the space vehicle on the less explored side of the moon with less instructions.

Don’t use the aluminum vessel. No, no, not that one. We need that to boil milk in the morning.
Take the packets to the left of the tomatoes in the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Not the tomatoes in the middle shelf.
Keep the flame between sim and high. Not that low. No no…not that high. It could have been instructions for my blood pressure.
Don’t use that ladle – use the milk ladle
Why do you need a ladle?
No need to stir – are you making theratti-paal (milk peda)
Better to stir it every now and then, so you know what to expect.

I took a deep breath, and shot back that I knew how to boil milk – thank you very much, and would everybody turn away from the kitchen please?

I felt my guardian angel scowl.

I stood there, meditatively stirring every now and then, watching the bubbles form and gather as the milk began to boil. Just as I stood watching, and switched off the gas, the milk hissed over anyway.

“Forgot to tell you that this is a thick copper bottomed vessel that conducts heat. You need to switch off a few seconds prior to it actually boiling over.” said a gleeful voice. “I was going to tell you but you seemed to be so impatient for no reason.”

Do Active Menaces Travel or Vacation?

She shook her head, as though explaining things to a dim-witted troll.

“We are on vacation – yes. In the sense, that you’ve taken time off and we are traveling. But we are not vacationing, we are traveling.”, said the daughter. It was during our trip to Alberta, Canada. We had been enjoying the joy and grandeur of the Rocky mountains, and trying to see as many lakes and blues in the waters and hikes as possible. The long summer days combined with the splendor of the Rocky Mountains make for pleasurable days – even if physically tiring ones after 3 days of non-stop activity, and that was the reason for the conv.

IMG_6497-COLLAGE

“My friends are wondering why I can’t pick up any calls from 6 in the morning till 10 at night, and I am telling them it is because we aren’t in any place with connectivity, and they wonder what I am talking about!” she said wringing her hands as teenagers tend to do when trying to explain things to parents.

“But, don’t they go on vacations?” , I’d asked in response to which I got the spiel on traveling vs vacationing.

“Most people, when they go on vacations, stick to the place they booked – a resort maybe, and stay there. With excellent pools, televisions and the like. Not that I am complaining – I like the way we travel. I like seeing the places, hiking and having a wonderful time. Just saying that what we do is traveling, and what they do is vacationing!”

“Hmm!” I said thoughtfully, “But these days, we do add a day of rest, or a day we have a late start here and there don’t we?”

“Yes and those days are appreciated Mother, believe me! But it is not vacationing. When you vacation, you spend all the days everyday doing nothing.”

I nodded. It did sound nice. I’d like to try something like that. Though I am not sure the husband would be able to take it. He is a do-er, and would by the end of day two have me climbing palm trees in the nearby oasis. I said so, and the man laughed – guffawed actually, chuffed at this, though it clearly wasn’t meant as a compliment. Sigh.

The daughter, meanwhile, gave me a diagnostic glance up and down, and said, “Yes! Yes! We all know pops is like that, but you are an active menace too. ”

I drew myself up haughtily. An active menace?

“I mean did we really have to do all the hikes near Lake Louise on one day? 30,000 steps Mother. Some of my friends don’t do that much in a week!”

“Aren’t you proud though, my dear? Aren’t your spirits refreshed and rejuvenated?” I asked.

She took a moment to answer. A faraway look in her eyes as if contemplating the joys of traveling, and said, “I like it. I like traveling and I like our trips filled with places to see, hikes to do, and all that. Just making you realize that vacationers have different expectations. “

I conceded: “Fair point. “

Oh Canada!

Any time we see a license plate for an out-of-state car in California, the son gets excited. I assumed it is part of his being this boy who spent his early years watching the Disney movie Cars. I must say though, if I had tried to envision life a decade on, and saw ourselves still being excited by license plates, I might have been a little worried. Yet, here we are, and still excited by license plates. Oh well!

This time, we weren’t even going to see out of state license plates. We were going to see Canadian license plates.

All we knew about Canada is that it is a beautiful country – vast, and the people a gentle populace. Well, that, and they have a sense of humor, probably good at winter sports – ice hockey, curling, skiing, that sort of thing. May not even count as trivia. In fact, most of this ‘knowledge’ seems to have come from talk shows, sitcoms, particularly one that is very popular in the nourish-n-cherish household: Corner Gas which is set in Saskatchewan, Canada. Or Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery set in Prince Edward Islands.

Every country is like a particular type of person: Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman.

Douglas Adams

Anyway, there we were hopping on our left and right feet excited to go to Calgary – the airport closest to arguably the most beautiful national parks in Banff. We expected to be wowed by the natural beauty of the mountains, the lakes, and the rivers fed by glacial melt.

IMG_6497-COLLAGE

But we had not planned on being this excited by license plates.

The first time we saw the license plates of a car from Saskatchewan, the son and I pointed excitedly to each other. Hey! Look! Land of the Living Skies, Saskatchewan. We stopped admiring the license plates. Sub consciously, we glanced up at the blue skies and the large white-and-black magpies that flew past looked amused. We could imagine the beautiful skies of Saskatchewan, could we not?

“Ha! Maybe he stopped by the Corner Gas station to fuel up!” We found this hilarious after a long flight, and filed it under sleep deprived delirium.

There really was no excuse though when we were just as excited by the license plates of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario. License plates of states in the United States do not have a catchy slogan for each state.

canadian_license_plates

🥀 Wild Rose Country Alberta

🚸Friendly Manitoba

🌌 Land of Living Skies Saskatchewan

🏔Yours to discover Ontario

🪷 Beautiful British Columbia

I wonder what each state in the United States would have as license plate slogans. That’d be an interesting exercise wouldn’t it?

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