Tag: Humour

Scoff at Coffee Or Chess With a Super-Hero?

This winter has been a time of amazing road trips:

Dodo, Dragon, Dinosaur Dis-apparitions
In Boysenberry Jelly & Mistletoe Jam
The Wind, The Snow & The Rain – Part 1
Weaving The Sequins Of Time
The Curious Curvy Trees
The Salons of Bodie

With all the excitement of the trips and the experiences therein, there is also the time in the car. Audio books and songs compete for time with games in the car. Playing games with children is an experience unto itself. Peacekeeping forces are deployed every now and then, council meetings to determine rules and regulations, are required. Who said the family isn’t a mini-government unto itself? In spite of all this, hiccups arise in the most unexpected quarters.

I remember the time we were playing hangman. I was wondering what the words were and how I was getting them all wrong before I realized that for playing hangman properly one needs to know the spelling of the words, and foneticaly speaking, that is a very different game for kindergarteners.

‘Let me give you a hint’, the toddler son said one day as I was waiting for a cup of coffee en-route to somewhere. He was trying his best to mask his frustration, since my A, E, S and I, had all gone to nearly hang the man. He then coughed and sputtered and then beamed up at me expectantly. Could that be C-O-U-G-H?

‘O?’

‘Yes! Very good amma,’ he said and added O at the second place. I was frazzled. He had 4 dashes laid out. What could mean ‘Cough’, but be spelt with 4 letters?

C? I got another very-good, and after that nothing. The G finally got the man’s throat and he gasped and croaked. After another few trying minutes, in which the brain felt fairly rattled, the fellow wrote C-O-F-F.  Cough, see? He beamed rather freely at this, and the doting tween sister of his scoffed and ruffled his hair.

‘Scoff all you want, but cough up the dough for my coffee. ‘, I said to my unappreciative audience as I went to get my fortifying cup of coffee.

‘Would You Rather Coff Or Have Coffee? Get it?’,  said the daughter and I rolled my eyes.

I was reminded yet again of a charming book written by Miss Read. The book, Farewell to Fairacre,  written by Dora Saint,  is based in the imaginary village of Fairacre in the English countryside. The protagonist and narrator, Miss Read, taught at the village school, and said of her children.

‘More worldly children require computers and video games to occupy themselves, but the children of Fairacre are quite happily engaged with paper and pencils’

playing_games

I am glad we are able to derive our pleasures in simple ways still.

Then of course, if ever anyone wants to see how Rajinikanth plays Chess, you can come by and watch the toddler play chess with his imaginary friend when bored. If one has watched the old Tamil movies, one knows how villains attack Cinema heroes. The villains would stand around the hero. Cornered. See? Then, they’d go on to scowl, growl, grimace and crack their knuckles on the sidelines, touching their bald heads, caressing their unshaven beards and glaring like tigers given melons for lunch.

The hero stands there sizing them up and then one fellow comes and aah! He gets beaten up in a giffy. You’d think that would knock some sense into the remaining goonda pakodas, but it doesn’t. They all roar and then send another huge guy into the rink. Thulped. Another grimace and still no learning here. All fourteen idiots would go one at a time and get beaten up.

All known laws of Physics are also massacred in the process. Thermodynamics, laws of motion are all left begging for reprieve along with the band the villains.

Apply the same principle to the Chess board and you have the game: Every pawn comes one at a time and gets beaten up by the toddler’s side of the chess set. His shining knight battles on destroying his opponent’s pawns and his brave army thinks nothing of thumping Queens and locking bishops in with his own pawns.

Would You Rather be a Villain in a Tamil movie set or a pawn in Rajinikanth’s Chess? Get it?

Which brings us to the stimulating Would-You-Rather game (Part 2)

In Boysenberry Jelly & Mistletoe Jam

On the drive back from the Inyo Canyons, in one day, we found ourselves dealing with gusty winds, a snow storm and a rain storm before the day was out. The Wind, The Snow & The Rain – Part 2.

We were now stuck in a snow storm. The highway men had come and swapped the rustic freeway sign to ‘Snow Chains Required’ and left. We had snow chains and I supposed they worked.

By the time we had pulled out the snow chains, we were covered with snow. Our brains were exhorting the toes to wiggle but there was no inclination from the toes to w. Miss-tle-toe for you. The nose was thirty degrees below freezing point. Rudolph the red nosed reindeer anyone? Ours had turned a lovely boysenberry color and had a reindeer been about would gladly have chomped off our noses. We peered into the snow chain package. The husband beamed like a snowman with a crooked twig for a smile and said he had opened the case prior to leaving in a rare state of prescience. I gave him the my-hero look and fumbled for the instruction manual. There it was: in 8 easy steps, it laid out how to install snow chains.

Take clip, Clasp to the tire,  Move to opposite side of tire,  Do something on the side of the tire facing the inside of the car, Take clip and clasp to the tire,  Rotate the chain under the tire and, Clasp,  Click

It looked easy enough to do on a sunny day with our garage door open, some music in the background and no car on top. But the instructions seemed to have completely missed the car on top of the tires in the pictures. One look at the tires, the snow, our freezing hands, and the car on top of it was enough. There are times when we look competent, and times when we don’t. This was one of those times when we were not. Looking c I mean.

reindeer_snowchains

It is at moments like this that the husband really comes into his own. While I was fumbling with the instructions, he was gone. One second, I was oh-see-this-ing to him and the next moment, I was oh-see-this-ing to a sympathetic looking fir tree. He bolted like a hare into the tavern conveniently located on the opposite side of the road, and came back with an eminently more competent looking chap from the pub. The cherubic fellow rubbed his hands together and said he could help. ‘I have done snow tires before, but you really should try it out once you know. ‘ he said plainly putting a decent face to his thoughts.

In less than ten minutes, the chap had installed the snow chains. I clasped his hands with gratitude looking like a dying duck who had just been given a new lease of life. I quacked on to thank him effusively and went so far as to call him a brother in need. The daughter, keen as always, asked me why I said that since she was not sure her Anand Maama would be any help with installing snow chains even if he had been in the car. A fair point.

There is something grandiose about snow chains. I suppose emperors frequently feel this way once they wear their crowns. They get a swagger, a dangerous over-confidence. The snow chains were the crowns to the tires, and off we went all smiles, confidence and swagger.

Post snow chains, in about 43 seconds, we found the car doing the reindeer-magic-mushroom sequence again with renewed vigor and whim. The car was not just mobile but intent on being perpendicular to the road and spinning a good 180 degrees.

Nature had not even shown her fury, and there we were spinning on highways, making boysenberry jelly with our noses, playing mistletoe with our toes,  and wondering whether we would be able to get out – snow tires or not, before nightfall. In what is a miracle,after about an hour in which a child tumbling could have overtaken us, we emerged into the rain and not an ounce of snow. It was as if they were different worlds.

As we were fumbling on the roadside in the rain to take the snow chains off, a brilliant red fire truck pulled up behind us, and the firemen helped us out smiling and chatting amiably all the while. We did the dying-duck-thank-sequence, and off we went on our way driving in the pouring rain.

In one day, we had whipped past gusty, gale-like winds, glided helplessly in a snow storm and thundered through a heavy rain storm.  The bright blue skies had turned grey and murky to ink blue and thunderous all in the span of a few hours.

We tottered into the house for a hastily made rasam and rice, and sighed like octogenarians with our feet in front of the heater that there was no place like home.

The Wind, The Snow & The Rain – Part 1

Saying goodbye to Inyo canyon area is hard. One, it is a long drive back and heading back early is a must. Two, it is very hard to pluck oneself away and just leave. After innumerable selfies that could have been taken in our backyard, we started off towards home.  (The bulbous noses obstruct the grand mountain at the back. )

As we started driving, it was a clear day with blue skies, a few cumulus clouds specked the skies lazily.  The winds were gusty as flashed to us by the rustic freeway signs. The slight shudder of the car as it navigated the bends in the mountainous roads was indicative of the conditions outside. (As shown in the ripples in the lake below)

inyo_wind

All in all, it seemed like a marvelous end to wonderful trip with ghost towns, ancient forests and star gazing. We were pleased with ourselves too for another reason. There was a storm warning for 4 p.m. that evening in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and we were slated to cross by 2 p.m. – ha! Looking at the bright blue skies, one wondered whether the geological department had gotten things wrong. Could a snow storm really be on its way? Maybe in a day or two, not today.

inyo_lake.JPG

You needn’t doubt the geol. fellows ever again. It was as we were driving through one of the mountain passes that it started to snow mildly. Now, I am sure people who live in the snowy reaches of the earth will pooh and bah at us, but the mood in the car turned to euphoria. Watching the snow flakes drift past is a heady experience, and nothing really prepares you for the magic of it. They say every snowflake is shaped differently, but how they managed to detect and study that, I would never know. Our instinct was to stick our hands out the window and whoop with every brush of snow.

Here is the rummy thing though: If you were to take the quarter of an hour sliver in which the situation changed, you would find the first 5 minutes completely different from the second five and the third five minutes radically different from the first five.

The 1st 5 minutes
The 2nd 5 minutes
Snow

One minute we were ooh-la-la-ing through the mountain pass wondering about the shapes of snowflakes and singing songs, the husband slightly nodding off and taking a well deserved doze in the sunny passenger seat, while I drove like a heroine in the old Indian movies singing and whooping with an inherent happiness that made the singing bearable.

The next 5-minute slot found the blue skies being masked behind fast moving clouds and the winds whipped up a flurry of snowflakes, visibility was definitely waning, and I was telling the children about the Fury of Nature, while clutching the steering wheel and leaning ahead as if clutching the steering w. in a firmer grip would somehow ground the vehicle on the slippery roads.   

The last 5 minutes slot found me unstrung: the visibility had dropped significantly, and I was prodding the husband awake. Just keep driving he said in his taking-command-of-the-situ voice. Maybe my worked up face indicated that I was planning to get out the tea kettle and find some bricks to get a fire going in the snowy lands, I don’t know. So, I nodded, ever the obedient wife, and kept going. I was a bit unnerved too that no matter how hard I clutched the steering wheel, the vehicle was behaving like reindeer after a couple of magic mushrooms: slipping, sliding, and even trying to jump every once in a while.

jumping_reindeer
reindeer jumping and sliding

Image source: http://stylingstitches.com/jolly_christmas.htm

When the car tried to jump over a piece of ice, I jammed the brakes and found that the car went sliding beautifully onward, but refused to stop. Gulp. Hit brake. Stop. All my years of driving I had been doing that, but it did not work. Positively alarmed now, I was at a loss. What were we to do? I spotted a car ahead of me pull up in the slight ascent, and I gingerly did the same. I managed to let the thing in easily and let out a loud whistle – I now understand the pressure cooker psyche. PHHHHHEEEWWWEEE helps.

I stopped my hands from shaking and looked up to find a large vehicle stop on the opposite side of the road. A bunch of folks dressed in yellow tights and matching snow boots, jumped off. Half expecting to see Curious George, I saw them manually flip a sign on the side of highway to ‘Snow Chains Required’. I had not realized up until that point that that was how the rustic highway signs worked. Illuminating, but also, how do we get the snow chains on now? We had them, and I supposed they worked.

We headed out into the harsh world with the snowflakes doing a pretty dance around us and within seconds, our coats were full of snow, our toes seemed to be missing in action, the nose turned blue, and our hands were doing something when the brain was telling it to do something else. If this was not a pickle or a jam, I don’t know what is.

Continued in Part 2

Weaving The Sequins Of Time

This article was published in The India Currents magazine dated 17th Feb 2018: The Magic We Miss Every Night

Taking a drive up the mountains is always a nostalgic experience for me. Regular readers know I grew up in a small village nestled in the mountainside and every time I spot a pine cone or take in a whiff of Eucalyptus scented air, I get a gleamy look in my eyes that prompts the daughter to ask me for a story about my childhood. I comply almost gleefully and she sits back and imagines her mother as a little girl, a person who is vastly more interesting than the adult version. One loopy enough to jump across streams, build mud tree houses and make a wish against a shooting star.

I was thoroughly pleased to do that again during our recent visit to the Inyo Canyons. Not build a mud tree house, but to make a wish against a shooting star. One of the best things about going out to the vast expanses of nature that we urban dwellers completely forget is how the dark the sky is at night (duh!) and how many stars we can see against this backdrop.

We were blessed with remarkably clear skies during our time there, and we headed out bundled up like Eskimoes in Winter to see the night skies. We made our way up a winding mountain road that overlooked a vast plain thereby giving us a wonderful vantage point for seeing the skies. Maybe it was the enormity of what was in front of us, but it subdued our normally stentorian voices temporarily. We stood there in companionable silence for a while just gazing at the outer arms of the Milky Way (at this time of year, apparently, we do not get to see the whole Milky Way).

My, it is so dark – it can be lonely here, we whispered to each other after some time.

The stars tousled our hair gently teasing us : of course it is dark, what did you expect, and look up at us. You are not lonely unless you wish to be. You have a universe unto yourself. ( I have an idea brewing here: it may be laughably inadequate, but that has not stopped me from publishing before)

The sun groaned from the other side : Duh, everyday I give you the gift of night, you know?

For the first time, I saw Ursa Major or Big Dipper drawn large against the night sky, with nothing to impede its view. It is amazing how many different civilizations managed to study the skies in varying yet similar ways.

There is the North Star, that was known as the Dhruva Nakshatram  in the early days when the Indian civilization named it (Story here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhruva).

Can you see Arundathi? Did you know the story about Arundathi being a twin star to Vashishta and rotating around each other? That is why it is a wedding ritual.  Alcor & Mizar known as Vashishta and Arundhati. Really?

So it went.

The daughter rattled stories from Greek Mythology that we tried to find Indian equivalents for. The magic of story-telling under the stars came alive for us that night. Sirius barked and Taurus ran. The hunters belt was bright and gleaming, the Plaeidis cluster was there, the Seven sisters were being relentlessly chased by the Big Hunter, while the same Krittikai sisters raised Karthikeya in the plains of Indus Valley millenia ago.

sequins_of_time

Lest you run off thinking that the daughter has sat down with the classics and pondered the deep recesses of ancient cosmology, let me assure you that Rick Riordan and his Percy Jackson books formed the basis for the bulk of her knowledge.

The white cloud that we never really see in urban areas was visible – consisting of millions of stars, the cosmos probably is home to millions of Earths fostering life and intelligent lifeforms. I was reminded yet again of Carl Sagan’s words  about the pale blue dot.

pale_blue_dot.png

It is true, every tyrant, every usurper of power, every chaser of money, every person with cares in this world, should stand beneath the blanket of stars everyday, and look at our souls in a detached manner. See ourselves as specks in a dark world where the only place for us to find light is by looking inwards and capture the feeling of light in our hearts like Earth captures sunlight and warmth in its atmosphere.

As we stood there with the children bundled up in the cold on a mountainside overlooking a vast plain with the stars shining down, we saw in the distant horizon seven or eight shooting stars.

Magical moments come in various ways, sometimes it comes in the form of shooting stars, sometimes it comes in the form of a fluttering leaf falling upon you and other times it comes in the warmth of a lazy winter morning when all the world outside seems bleak, but you feel warm inside. Even these cold winters can be translated to a warm feeling that the Danish have a wonderful word for: Hygge. ( pronounced – Hoo-ghey)

Embracing Hygge – The Danish Secret to staying happy in the winter

It is the feeling of warmth and coziness even when the world outside is harsh and cold.

As Louisa Thomsen Brits, author of The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well says, “It leads to a sense of a rich inner life that radiates out through bleak days.”

What better way to weave the little sequins of magical moments into the fabric of life?

The Curious Curvy Trees

Regular readers know that I enjoy reading children’s books. Recently, I read one called, A Curvy Tree, that examines the problems of being different and lonely. In the book, a curvy tree soothes the feeling of a lonely child being teased for being different by taking its own example, and how being different saved its life, for loggers could not find a use for twisted wood, and therefore left it alone. When the girl asked whether the tree felt lonely, the curvy tree lifted her up high on its branches to show her other curvy trees in the distance all left alone by loggers, and on top of these trees were other children probably equally lonely who only need to find each other for company.

Screen Shot 2016-12-06 at 1.49.20 PM.png

Looking at the bristlecone forest, it seems that the Bristlecone trees, followed a similar path for survival. Hardy beings that only thrive in harsh climatic conditions, there is yet another lesson from nature in these forests: It is okay to be different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristlecone_pine

As the car nosed its way up to the Bristlecone National Forest, I was peeking into a copy of ‘Into Thin Air’. It was snug inside the car, though the temperatures outside were steadily climbing down as the car climbed up. Reading about the Himalayan expedition to climb the Mount Everest that went awry was humbling and an apt read at high altitude.

inyo_bristlecone.JPG

No amount of pictures or descriptive writing can do justice to the feeling of being among the oldest known living beings in the World.  Looking at the shapes of each of these trees, it was easy to let our imaginations run in wild directions. Each tree was shaped like a fantastic creature and one could well imagine them lending support to each other and sustaining their lives through the fury of nature and the upheavals of time. Each one probably gets themselves up every now and then and transforms their shapes, and each has a spirit of their own that lends a character to their surroundings. Maybe these are the hieroglyphics of the universe that hold answers to the questions deeper than mankind can ever think off, and we don’t yet know. Even in our wildest imaginations, we are constrained by our limited intelligence and the expanses of our problems, including those we manage to create for ourselves.

curvy_bristlecone.JPG

The walk amidst the ancient bristlecone forest was our first high altitude hike as a family – The toddler son was wearing his new snow boots, and was behaving like John Muir in them. He thumped up and down exploring the hauntingly beautiful bristlecone trees, looking curious and wondering how they could be older than his grandfather. “Not just your grandfather little Dobucles, “, said his older sister in a tone of voice she uses to enlighten her lil brother of the ways of the world, “but your grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s….”

I let him wander on looking amused, till some gusts of wind buffeted us.  On a high mountainside, a gush of wind is enough to topple toddlers as I well know from experience. I was not even a toddler when I was blown off by the wind, I was in a respectable third grade when that happened. I injected a note of caution into the proceedings by reigning the toddler in only to have the daughter scoff that adults are paranoid. This is where ‘Into Thin Air’ helped me. I told her about how many people have gone within 300 m of the great Himalayan peak only to return because the elements would not allow them to proceed. I tried my best to describe how nature can be awe-inspiring but how in one moment we can be reduced from arrogant, competent, self sufficient humans to ones thrown about at the behest of nature. I don’t think I succeeded very much, and so nature decided on showing us herself the very next day.

Somehow, with the sun throwing brilliant purple, orange and pink patterns into the sky, the wind gently rustling the hair peeking out from under our caps, and the bristlecone trees lending an almost immutable background, the scenario of a snow storm seemed far-fetched, almost ludicrous. If this is high altitude, how bad can Everest be? seemed to be the general consensus.  That night, we bravely attempted hikes at 21,000 feet, safe in the comforts of modern housing while eating hot biriyani.

The Salons of Bodie

During our trip to the Inyo Canyon area, we got truly lucky.  Not just because of the weather (which I need to write about in a later post), but because we got to see many places that are usually closed this time of the year due to heavy snow conditions. Bodie State Park is one such. I have only visited the Inyo canyons twice so far and both times, they woke the spiritual in me. Maybe it was the sheer magnificence of nature in the area, I don’t know. Spiritual Mysticism or Spiritual Naturalism

Bodie State Park is a ghost town. A bustling, mining town a century ago, there are no more than a few hundred shacks left in a dilapidated condition in the town now. If ever one needs a humbling lesson in the ephemeral nature of our existence, the bristlecone pine forest and Bodie ghost town have it covered between themselves.

As I peered into the dust covered windows of the various buildings, a dozen observations flitted through my mind.

The apothecary seems to have catered to similar problems judging by the bottles still on display there. There was a house with dusty furnishings – a rattled bath-tub, an old kitchen. A picture on the wall said, ‘Nothing endures but change’. The school house with a steeple on its roof looked remarkably like schools do today: with wooden chairs and desks all facing the teacher up in the front. Some things don’t change even in a century, I mused.

As we meandered up and down the ghost town, we stopped to listen to the park ranger. He was giving details of life in the town at the height of its glory, and we stood there enthralled, each of us contorting a story and an image of life in those times in our head.

Bodie was a town of maybe 8,000 or 10,000 people, and they seemed to have had quite a good life. Traveling caravans had theatrical performances here, fresh octopus and seafood supplies arrived regularly from San Francisco on iced wagons. People from nearby hills trudged up to this town for a day out or for market supplies. It certainly sounded like a bustling, happening place and looking at the town in the present age was a disconcerting sensation. Hundred or two hundred years from now, would people be taking a cruise out to where we live, and saying that this used to be a bustling place too? Given the current rate of global warming, it is a very plausible scenario.

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-impacts-interactive/

Standing there in the town with the vastness of the Sierra Nevadas engulfing us on all sides, it seemed surreal to imagine that this very place was witness to human drama, tragedy, hope, love affairs and scandals. There was family life, culture, entertainment, education, sickness and health here. One could imagine the barber’s son eloping with the mine owners daughter or some such thing. As if the ranger had read my thoughts he said pointing down the hill to the right – this part of town had 50-60 salons too.

My mind buzzed and I asked him – “Really for a town of 10,000 people, they needed 50-60 salons? They must have been a pretty well groomed lot. And everyone had to trudge down to one part of town too.“

The ranger gave me a quizzical look, and thought of saying something but decided to let it go. “Beyond that, were the jails – you know so that area was not very respectable back in the day.”

My! I thought, not only did people have to cut across town to get a haircut, but also scout near the jails? Assuming 50% of the population were males, that is approximately 1 salon for every 100 males, and considering they probably needed a haircut once a month …. I could imagine the mothers giving out the money to the little fellows with dire warnings as to what happens if they strayed near the jails, and how they were to get a hair cut and head straight back home.

I don’t know whether pedicures and manicures were popular during the day for the women or whether their hair styles were demanding ones or simple ones.

inyo_salon

What about pet grooming salons? Did folks a century ago groom their pets as dearly as they do today?

It struck me how keenly these authors of historical fiction have to think. For instance, were there razors and portable blades 100 years ago, or did people have to go to the salon for everything?

I mentioned these profound revelations to the husband and he gave me a look similar to the one the ranger had given and said with a smile playing at the tip of lips, “You realize that by salon, he did not mean hair cutting salons like today, right?”

“What do you mean? Oh! “ I said my eyes widening and the husband laughed.

“Oh! You are naive!”, he said laughing, “Why else would they be clustered together like that?”

Looking around at the ghost town around me, suddenly made me realize that half the world’s cares, worries and problems were just as man-made a century ago as they are today. Some things at least don’t change.

Dodo, Dragon, Dinosaur Dis-apparitions

We just got back from the Inyo Forests nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains. This time, the mountains were explored by the children with a friend who was just the right companion for both of them. He is aged smack in between the daughter’s age and the toddler’s age, and is an amiable, interesting fellow, thereby providing ample company to both of them. The toddler son thought him a hero and the daughter found in him another quirky little brother. He was obviously pleased with this state of things, and settled down to the hero-slash-honorary-little-brother role with aplomb.

It was quiet, and the darkness in the mountains was unreal. We could see Venus glowing brightly like a torch up in the sky. Inside the car,  it was toasty and warm, and the game of Twenty Questions was thriving: it is a sophisticated game in which you think of an animal and everyone can ask questions to guess the animal you thought of.  Animals were chosen and guessed at with hilarity.

“Amma! This little bobbicles knows nothing about his animal and expects us to guess it. How can you not know whether it is a carnivore or not?” The toddler said something like, maybe it likes to eat meat, but maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know. He then laughed raucously at his sister’s disbelief. He seemed to think that these trivial things should not stop a zoo-linguist-to-be from guessing the animal. (That reminds me that I have to get down to writing a blog on how the toddler plays games.)

Inyo_20Q.jpg

His friend-slash-hero agreed and took the car for a spin with mythical creatures from shows we had never seen. As the going got tough, the rules got tougher – “Hey! Mythical creatures only restricted to Greek mythology or Harry Potter or till level 10 of Pokemon Go!”. The hero-slash-lil-bro was something of a Pokemon expert and went on about zilletoes and monekchoes or things that sounded like them, with glee.

“How about Hanuman?” asked the toddler in a matter-of-fact tone.

Before Spiderman and Batman were added to the mix, the husband and I swooped in with some impressive peacekeeping efforts that folks in the United Nations could learn from.

After several minutes of quiet, the conversation started up again with the daughter asking a question: If you could bring one animal back from extinction, which one would it be and why?

As the conversation gathered fervor, the surrounding Inyo Forests resounded with the spirits of animals long gone. Sabre tooth tigers romped along side mammoths, T-rexes chased Brontosauruses. A short pause later, dragons and phoenixes joined them too. If the conversation were being animated real-time, I’d have liked to see the reactions of the various spirits as they made their mystical apparitions from the dead.

“You do know that phoenixes and dragons are mythical creatures right? They aren’t exactly extinct because we don’t know whether they really existed, “, said the daughter laughing to split.

“Okay – then Pidgeot”

“No! pidgies and pidgeottos! Before you ask, chargats don’t count either. Pokemon Go is not the real world you know?”

I could hear the gears spinning in the boys’ brains. This was one tough game, they thought.

After an intense argument that examined the merit of mythical creatures in the extinct category, and the virtual creatures in the ethereal category, the conversation slowed down again and landed softly near the dawdling dodo birds. We waddled by them, and the daughter explained that she felt the dodo birds deserved to be back because those poor creatures were extinct purely because of man’s greed.  The children smiled as though her goodwill towards the dodo could truly summon it back from the extinct category.

inyo_canyon

“Anyway, which animal would you bring back?”, asked the daughter.

“I want to bring back the Titanis bird.”  said the hero-slash-hon-b.

We exchanged glances. It was difficult to figure out whether there really was a bird  called Titanis which was extinct, or one that appeared in the fellow’s video games.

“Really, there is a bird called Titanis. They are so beautiful. I want to bring them back. “ He sounded so sincere that the daughter’s heart melted. It often happens this way. The daughter is a softie underneath the bossy exterior and coo-ed.

“Oh! That is so sweet. Why do you want them back?”

“So, I can take a gun and shoot them! “, said the h-s-h-b.

I wonder whether you have played ping-pong. Just when you think the ball went, back it comes to you again. Right at your face. It was a bit like that. Just when you got the sweet daughter version, an outraged cry left her lips. The sweet dodo apparitions were gone. The dragons poof-ed themselves out, and titanis was gone too.

“Oh! How could you? “ she cried, the animal activist in her flaring up.

“Why? They have beautiful feathers. “

“Exactly! So admire the birds with their feathers!”

“But if we shoot them, we can collect their feathers.”

“Why bring them back if you want to shoot them?”

“How else will we get those beautiful feathers?”

The three of them played in our car till the toddler son fell asleep in the gathering darkness as we drove up to our destination.

I am not sure whether the dodo or the titanis will want to come back if it means holding a conversation with the specimens in our car.  Maybe we should give them a choice, what do you think?

The Yin & Yang of Diwali & Halloween

This post was also published in India Currents magazine dated 3rd Nov 2016

Wrinkled brows, scorching cuts and decisive strokes greeted me as I went upstairs a few days before Diwali. We have to get started on our Halloween decorations, said the daughter cutting out a spider. The toddler son was lying on his stomach on the floor, helping his sister by coloring the ghost she had cut out from white paper, white. A cozy, merry scene with the sunlight streaming in from the windows.

When bees create their colonies, I am sure they don’t care about a little mess. Neither did my bee-lings. I navigated the crayons strewn on the floor and walked past the strands of paper littering my path to peek at the objects of art.

A morose sort of skeleton was being drawn and I shuddered at the image. I hated to take a pail of cold water and swamp their enthusiasm with it, but then I did. Sorry guys. That weekend is Diwali and I won’t have skeletons and cobwebs hanging off the front door on Diwali. (This year, Diwali fell on a week-end and Halloween the day after, on a Monday.)

A mutinous roar went up. Amma – Diwali is the opposite of Halloween. It is the festival of lights. You’ll put up those little diyas everywhere and light everything up and then you’ll make everyone dress up beautifully – it is the complete opposite of Halloween.

I disagreed. They may be celebrated differently, but they are both meant to fight evil. Ward off evil – whatever. The concept is to banish your demons. Even the inner demons. So, Diwali and Halloween are like that Yin-Yang thing. Black and white together. Both are there in us and in the world around us.

yin-yang

I felt like a teapot spouting philosophy from my long snout to a couple of trouts in the stream. I sometimes think children must feel we played tag with Confucius and hide-and-seek with Buddha. I tried desperately to gain ground again.

You can always find light in the darkest of places if only you remember to turn on the lights. Remember who said that?

Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban

Albus Dumbledore! sighed the daughter. Dementors – yes! Maybe we will do dementors also this time.

Also Voldemort – we can draw Voldemort and hang him outside, piped the toddler son. He has no fear of He-who-must-not-be-named, and his sister beamed with pride at her little Gryffindor brother.

Guys! Guys! I won’t have Voldemort hanging on my front porch on Diwali either. Does Halloween have to be gory? Think of some themes and see if you can come up with decor that does not drip blood. Something positive, a call to action and also save our souls. How about that? I said.

When the daughter said, Fine!, I left them to their own devices and pottered around the house.

I must say that I was mighty impressed with the resulting effort.

keena_halloween_nature

We picked your favorite theme, Nature, amma. So, you can put up some of this stuff for Diwali too. Then after Diwali, the next day, we can quickly put up bats and pumpkins all around and we are set, she said.

I agreed.

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On the Diwali rangoli, we placed a large pumpkin surrounded by little lamps. The rain helpfully washed away the rangoli that very night leaving a damp, morose spot for the Pumpkin the next day. All very satisfying.

Happy Diwali and Happy Halloween. May we learn to take care of our World, the living beings we share it with, and balance our yin and yang for a beautiful whole.

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More (मोर) on Sherbat Gula

This post was also published on May 30th 2017 in India Currents Magazine.

Let’s take it easy and go eat at some place nice for a change, I said one lazy Saturday morning. You know, just spend a relaxed, agenda-less morning. Some place I can wear this to. I was fondly looking at my new dupatta, carefully embroidered with dancing peacocks.

The kerfuffle just to spending a relaxed morning doing nothing I tell you! There was hectic activity everywhere: feverishly looking for things, toddler shoes worn on wrong feet, missing cell phones, cell phones without charge all needing urgent handling in a 10 minute interval.

I ignored the daughter as she took charge while throwing me a disdainful look . The little fellow was bossed around, the big fellow was bossed around, the bosser and bossees felt the charges of love and tension squirt back and forth.

Appa! What are you doing? That’s it!

Time for me to take charge around here, she said. Amma, stop dancing! Why are you wearing this fancy dupatta-thing-y now anyway?

Because I can! Dance! Dance! More! I said in a smart repartee and chuckled. Completely lost on them of course. (For the Hindi challenged ones: ‘More’ (मोर )means Peacock in Hindi)

peacock_dupatta

The husband meekly looked up from his game of chess and sighed yet again.  I heard him murmur something about Men’s Freedom as we headed out.

Pretty soon, we found ourselves in an Afghani restaurant sitting quietly. I turned the menu card over and the back of the menu had a picture of the girl taken by National Geographic magazine and became famously one of the pictures that defined the turmoil of war world over. It was the cover picture of National Geographic magazine in 1985

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2002/04/afghan-girl-revealed/

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Sharbat Gula (meaning sweetwater flower girl in Pashtun)

That was enough. The husband and I got a professorial gleam in our eyes and we tripped over ourselves trying to open the daughter’s eyes to the plight of women the world over.

Not everywhere can women boss men around like it happens in our home, said the husband. The daughter and I chuckled.

We had not even started on the political turmoil with the Russian occupation of Afghanistan when the pesky waiter came and took the menu cards away. I tchaa-ed with feeling at this tendency of waiters to hoard the menus. The restaurant is empty – what do they want to do with the menus? I am sure they don’t have to read it!

’You finished ordering and what are you doing reading the mutton and chicken section anyway? You are a vegetarian!’, the daughter said in what she thought was a scorching debate point. She thought I would fumble and drop my eyes in repentance, like a puppy told to snuff it while trying to oil the moth eaten rag doll through the door. But she under-estimated my power of repartee: She was talking to the author of the (why-are-you-dancing-now? Because I can! ) response (scroll up).

I caught her eye and took her on a wild ride through the streets of Kabul selling spices and the perils of grocery shopping in times of turmoil, past the beautiful poppy fields and the orchards of apricot, gasping through the crevices of  the Tora Bora mountains and finished with a comparison of Indian, Pakistani and Afghani cuisines.

I got to admit, I like to traipse through the menu even after I’ve ordered. Especially after I’ve ordered. I enjoy reading all the entrees and getting a feel of the cuisine, the culture, the spices and a dip into life in the normal households in the area. I like to imagine their grocery lists, their dinner tables, their lunch boxes and so much more.

The daughter rolled her eyes. I rolled mine.

By the time the food had arrived, we had sent a prayer for World Peace and a goodwill message to Sherbat Gula and hoped her daughters would have a chance at peace and happiness in a strife ridden world.

I read yesterday that Sherbat Gula is now married with three living daughters and is facing deportation from Pakistan back to Afghanistan:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/10/26/national-geographics-afghan-girl-faces-deportation-pakistan

That evening, I casually left a copy of the book : Because I Am a Girl: I can change the world, in her room. A book that tells the story of girls from different parts of the world, and how we as women can and should play a part in changing lives for the better.

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Subtle as a peacock.

Who Am I Revisited

I have been featured in The Times of Amma.
The editor , Shweta Ganesh Kumar, an author and a former CNN correspondent, sent me a questionnaire in interview format to fill out – all very official and intimidating it was, till I applied my usual tactics.
Parts of this ‘Who Am I’ answer is also there in my Who Am I ? post which was easily accessible before I changed the blog format in a stroke of brilliance.
https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/about/
The Times of Amma says: Today we feature Saumya Balasubramanian who blogs on Life, Humour, Books, Nature, Children, Adventures and Travel.
She also sent me one of the most interesting bios, I have read when I asked her for one. I usually edit bios when they come in the first person, but this was written so engagingly that I am publishing it here, as is.

“Isn’t life a quest in finding who you really are?
Sometimes, I am a nefelibata and a pluviophile and a bibliophile and a logophile. There are dreams, passions and words floating up there in my mushroom shaped head. I love my family and friends, so when someone asks me who I am, I can barely stop myself from having this conversation:So what do you do?

Self: I think, I write, I play, I dance in the kitchen/fields/lawns/woods, I enjoy nature, I exercise, I plan, I am not scared of using my imagination, I analyze data, I code and design in the ever-changing software world, I teach, I experiment, I cook, I enjoy the company of family and friends, I sometimes talk to myself, I laugh and smile a lot.

I mean what do you do for living?

Self: I breathe. Try it. It is very good. One deep breath, fill your lungs and exhale and empty your stomach. Now try again.

I mean what do you do for A living? One thing please.
Me beaten: Fine. I am a Software Engineer and a Writer and a * Person loses interest and walks away *

I smile again.

There is always a state of flux and a number of articles, novellas, novels, children’s books in progress. It is what keeps me going, and if you are interested in reading anything of more length, please get in touch with me.I hope my readers enjoy my writing as much as I enjoy the process of writing them.‘

Please visit http://www.timesofamma.com/single-post/2016/10/14/Moms-Who-Blog-Featuring-Saumya-Balasubramanian for the complete interview.

Interview with Times of Amma posted here: 

1. What was it that prompted you to become a blogger?
Ans: I have always liked writing. I loved writing letters, essays, and when blogging came along, it gave me a platform and I joyfully went along. 
 
2. Which has been your most memorable post to date and why?
Ans: That is a very difficult question as I genuinely enjoy writing my posts. Some I could think of:
 
3. What has the most memorable comment on your blog been so far?
Ans: It was one of the emails one of the readers sent me after reading The Little Blue Train. The post was about the Nilgiri Mountain Railways and how we sometimes yearn for a tranquil life. In it, I mention that the train driver used to wave to my mother as she rushed down the slope to catch her train. This reader actually helped me track down the kind train driver who might have been the person who waved to my mother all those years ago. That truly touched my heart. 
 
4. Have you ever been trolled? How did you handle it?
Ans: I have been lucky enough to have a very supportive set of people and e-people around me. I will want to follow Michelle Obama’s advice though if I happen to be trolled “When they go low, you go high!”
 
5. Have you ever started to write a post and then abandoned it? Why?
Ans: More than half the time. I have a bulky document with half written posts, posts with potential and sometimes just links that I think can be used in a post.
 
6. Do you stick to a regular posting schedule or do you post whenever inspiration strikes? Do you have a writing routine?
Ans: I try to post approximately once a week, though there are some productive weeks in which the posts tumble out more often. 
 
7. Do you find it hard to get your voice heard in the crowded blogosphere? 
Ans: Yes I do. But to be honest, I have not really tried very much to have my blog publicized. I write for the joy of writing and writing has become the mode of Art I turn to to make sense of the world around me. 
 
8. Many say that blogging is dead thanks to other micro-blogging avenues like Twitter, Snapchat and others. As the owner of a traditional blog, how would you respond to that?
Ans: I would like to say that though there are more demands on people’s attention, long form reading is still relished and will continue to have its place. The human brain is remarkable and can adapt to multiple ways in which to keep it challenged and occupied. As long as the world has voracious readers, and diligent writers, the blogosphere will thrive is my hope.
 
9. Do you see your blog as a stepping stone to something else? Do you see yourself wearing the tag of ‘blogger’ five years down the line?
Ans: There are moments when I wish that the gems from my keyboard will find a magical outlet – who doesn’t? But I also know that it is a small, crazy thought. 
 
The true magical moments happen when I am swirling an idea in my head, reading about different things, connecting the dots and drawing up my little illustrations to go with the narrative. Those are the special moments that make me come back to this art form over and over again. Since I write a lot of humor based blogs, I find myself developing a muscle for it – when things are less than ideal, I think: I am going to get a funny story out of it. I find myself laughing wholeheartedly at my own foibles and troubles and if that isn’t a gift, I don’t know what is. 
 
So, to answer your question, I sincerely hope to continue writing for as long as I can.
 
10. What tips do you have for other Indian Mom bloggers? 
Ans: I hardly feel the sort of person to be doling out advice to others, let alone competent mothers. Well, if I absolutely must, then: Enjoy the journey, stay interested in life, and things will fall in place.
 
I also need a 200 word bio about you. An individual picture of you, a picture of you with your kid(s) and a screenshot of the blog. 
 
Isn’t life a quest in finding who you really are?
 
Sometimes, I am a nefelibata and a pluviophile and a bibliophile and a logophile. There are dreams, passions and words floating up there in my mushroom shaped head. I love my family and friends, so when someone asks me who I am, I can barely stop myself from having this conversation:
 
So what do you do?
 
Self: I think, I write, I play, I dance in the kitchen/fields/lawns/woods, I enjoy nature, I exercise, I plan, I am not scared of using my imagination, I analyze data, I code and design in the ever-changing software world, I teach, I experiment, I cook, I enjoy the company of family and friends, I sometimes talk to myself, I laugh and smile a lot.
 
I mean what do you do for living?
 
Self: I breathe. Try it. It is very good. One deep breath, fill your lungs and exhale and empty your stomach. Now try again.
 
I mean what do you do for A living? One thing please.
 
Me beaten: Fine. I am a Software Engineer and a Writer and a * Person loses interest and walks away *
 
I smile again🙂
 
Some of my writings have become children’s books:
 
 
Some have made their way to leading publications as articles:
 
 
There is always a state of flux and a number of articles, novellas, novels, children’s books in progress. It is what keeps me going, and if you are interested in reading anything of more length, please get in touch with me.
 
I hope my readers enjoy my writing as much as I enjoy the process of writing them.