Life – Page 74 – Nourish-n-Cherish

Buddha in a Lotus

International Yoga Day is approaching and consequently there was an intense discussion amongst our diverse group, that involved yours truly foraging in the murky forests of my Indian-not-at-all-devout-Hindu upbringing and serving up dubious explanations. As we leaped and scoured the real and mythical worlds alike, the venerated Vanars would have been proud to see us. We started with lofty enough topics, but ended up – well, see for yourself where we ended up.

The discussion started with Yoga-in-the-park for International Yoga Day. Why must it be so early? said a colleague and I sympathized. Regular readers of this blog know that I am not at my brightest in the mornings. I am best left alone to peek out from behind my coffee and quickly pull myself back into the cup, peek from the c., pull back in, and then slowly, like a snail, venture out into the world.

I deplored the state of affairs in India and how we deify the early-riser and leave the poor late-risers feeling somewhat inferior and catching up with the early-risers for the rest of the day. We traipsed around early morning rituals and temples and why meditation in the first place.

Just as I was patting my back on the spiritual plane the discussion could reach from the lofty stepping stone of Yoga, it slid straight down the slide to idlis, dosas & sambhar. It was like playing Snakes & Ladders in the thick Madhuban forests, I tell you. From the spices of the foods, it was but a natural stop at yogurt.

After moving to the USA, I like flavored yogurts such as strawberry or apricot yogurt, but I also told them about the slurpilicious plain-yogurt and rice. There was a sticky moment when folks could not see the appeal of plain yogurt against the Apricot yogurt, but I scored a goal by bringing up mango pickles.

When you bring yogurt and rice up to a South Indian at lunch-time, she can’t but help talking of mango pickles. Other colleagues of Asian origin chimed in with durian and jackfruits, and we all sighed collectively at the exotic fruits and tropical vegetables of the East. Some bright person then said something about lotus roots and another said that Buddha sits in a lotus.

Spiritual-plane-wise, we were getting back up from the hard fall into dosa, sambhar and curd rice territory, so I felt I had to wade in.

“For some reason, the lotus holds a special place in Indian Mythology”, I said.

I turned and looked at the awed expressions on my co-conversationalists, and this gave me the confidence to plunge on. It is a knack. When people expect something profound from me, as if they are making up their mind to see whether or not I am intelligent, I say something like this and dash all hopes.

“Most goddesses I know like to sit in one. Although the lotuses I have seen are pretty small – I don’t know how goddesses sit comfortably in them. “

“Really? Goddesses sit in lotus too? I don’t know much – I have seen some pictures of Indian Goddesses, but never saw that – maybe hard to make out from the saree and all, but Buddha I know.” said a colleague who has taken the Myth of the Mystical East to heart.

I summoned up the picture of Saraswathi and Lakshmi in my visual eye. I don’t remember seeing their saree flowing over their lotus seat. I mean, they were caparisoned in beautiful garments and jewelry, but the lotus was apparent too. I have never seen the saree flowing all over the lotus hiding it from view. Have you?

Somewhat befuddled, I prodded on. “No, I am pretty sure the Goddesses sit in lotuses. I do remember seeing some stylistics paintings of Buddha in a lotus, but mostly he is under a Bodhi tree, looking happy, right?”

This must have been interesting to watch, if it wasn’t me, sinking deeper and deeper into the mire. Anyway, neither of us backed down, and both of us were equally sure of our lotus occupants. The birds stopped twittering to watch the great philosophical debate. Apricot yogurt or plain yogurt with rice: Which one would emerge the victor?

“Really? I don’t know. I have always seen Buddha in Lotus Asana – except for some statues in Pier 1 Imports, of him lying down.” said she.

Wait a minute. I knew what was going on. I observed, deduced and felt that faint feeling of relief and comprehension dawn on me and the birds twittered again. I asked, “You mean the yoga posture Buddha sits in? Lotus Asana?”

“Yes! Isn’t that what you have been talking about? “

“Oh when you said you couldn’t make out the lotus in the Goddesses, you meant, you couldn’t make out whether their legs were truly crossed in Lotus Asana with the saree and all that?”

“Yeah.”

And then, I laughed as I told her that I was talking about the seat in which the goddesses sat, although, I conceded they may have been sitting in lotus asana too.

So, both of us were right. You can have apricot yogurt or plain-old-curd-rice-with-mango-pickle. Yes, in the Lotus Asana, if you like.

Maybe that will remind us to be truly humble while talking of Lotuses or anything else. We are, after all, a fraction of the small blue dot in the Cosmos, like Carl Sagan said.

http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/10/pale-blue-dot-motion-graphics/

Now, if you will excuse me,I need to practice my half-lotus position for International Yoga Day.

The Tree’s Spiritual Path

Monday’s heat wave sent a shocking yearning for the milder, cloudier days that we have been enjoying in May. It is wonderful when one gets to enjoy the burst of Spring without the stifling heat that the Californian Springs and Summers crack up the Earth with. It was, therefore, with a whole-hearted mind to enjoy the mild drizzle that I set out on Wed morning.

I was thinking of the week of the storm about six months ago when it truly rained and brought back memories that I had, in my typical butterfly-wing-ed fashion, jotted down as ‘potential blog material’ and forgotten in the ensuing months of rigor and tedium. So here goes.

The rains had been lashing down with some vigor and I sat next to a man on the train, who behaved like he was a Grade-C Hollywood actor. For one, he pulled out his goggles when there wasn’t a spot of sun. Then, he turned this way and that, with a sort of expectant look on his face. It looked to me like he was hoping to be recognized, but was relieved to not have a line awaiting his autograph all the same and in that state of mind, went to sleep. A sleeping co-passenger is infinitely better than a co-passenger who is catching up with relatives and friends on the phone(A subject for another set of blogs altogether). I sent a silent thanks and sat back to enjoy my book, sending admiring glances out the window every now and then. I am a pluviophile through and through even if the pouring rain can sometimes be an inconvenience like I am about to explain below. A few minutes later, I was jolted out of this euphoria by what sounded like a slurpy trumpet. It turns out that the G.C.H.Actor was also a Grade-A snorer. His snores were audible over the hum of the train and din of the storm, to folks three seats away and they sent me quick smiles of sympathy before turning away. I had not the heart to wake him for he seemed to be flying over the clouds happily and smiled in his sleep. A dream probably.

I, however, was on Earth’s solid surface and was left listening to a static crackle that precedes a service announcement. These trains have many advisories: station service advisories, service advisories to name a few. The announcements are meant to help commuters with service announcements that impact all riders for more than 10 minutes. All other announcements are left to the discretion of the train operator. (I will have to write about that one day). I was especially attentive at the time, for rains can mean delays. So, every time it crackled, I sat up and listened attentively.

But I need not have worried for I heard notifications such as:

This is a service advisory from the Bart Operations Control Center. All elevators in the Bart system are now functioning. Thank you.

This simple message is delivered with static in a sort of dead metallic voice. But really now – is it an announcement when all elevators in the Bart system are functional? As though reading my thoughts, there was another one about non-functioning ones:

This is a Bart Station Advisory. The elevator in the 19th Street station is out of service. Thank you.

To me, this announcement was as useless as the one that said every one of them was functioning. What were people to do on the 19th Street station?

Incidentally, there is never an announcement about escalators being off, which is quite another thing that folks are interested in. There are about 200 steps to climb from deep down in the bowels of the city to the surface. The escalators are hypochondriacs and put their hands to their heads dramatically every alternate day and sulk. It is never a pretty sight. I cannot tell you the number of times I see people groaning as they make their way up 200 steps. It feels like 2000 and the gratification is minimal. It is not like there is a temple up there or that you will have gained an inch towards your spiritual journey as these hilltop temples proclaim.

Will escalator malfunction help attain Moksha?

Where was I? Temples, stairs, elevators..oh yes, service announcements, storm. Right. During this time, the service advisories were busy static senders. Elevators are working. Elevators are not working. Mind you, through it all, my co-passenger snored, and I dutifully re-directed my attention from my reading to listen for any potential delays.

Then, with little warning, the train stopped at a station about mid-way to my destination and it fell to the train operator to announce something and get us all out of the train: Something-something, then something about a tree, and the storm, and some other thing and then apologize for delay and then some mumble-tumble. The whole thing caused a bunch of folk to look at each other and say, “What-didde-say?”

“What? No – you didn’t hear either?”

Oh well. Then the train sent a collective shrug and set about doing whatever-it-is people do on the train.

A few incoherent announcements later, we pieced things together and realized that we were going to have to leg it home, for a tree had fallen strategically across the tracks.

The shock is deep I tell you. I mean, for a person, who sets aside everything she is doing every time to see whether anything useful comes out of the announcements, there was nothing preparing me for this. Nothing.

I decided that the time had come to wake my neighbor from his slumber and I climbed the octave ladder with my ‘Excuse Me’s’. Somewhere before I reached Opera-ic frequency, he woke. His eyes opened with a thud and he looked like a tree had just crashed across his path in his dream. I gave him a moment to compose himself and then gently told him that a tree had indeed crashed our path. “Eh?” he said. I told him about the tree that decided to attain the spiritual end to its time on Goddess Earth across the train tracks and the trains were cancelled.

“Whaddowenow?” he said

I practiced my shrug again.

All elevators are now functioning in the Bart system said a service advisory. I smiled. Glad to have that problem sorted out.

P.S: Incidentally, I am just adding to the rich culture of symbolizing trees and spirituality. See here on 800 Years of Visualizing Science, Religion, and Knowledge in Symbolic Diagrams:

The Book of Trees: 800 Years of Visualizing Science, Religion, and Knowledge in Symbolic Diagrams

Truth or Perception of Truth?

I have written about my train rides before. (the first one dated about a decade ago: https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2005/10/27/commuter-blues-or-benefits/) They are entertaining, freeing, frustrating and are not entirely the best friends to the olfactory senses, but then, when else do you get to appreciate the fact that you have allergies and a blocked nose that essentially mean that you don’t have to screw up your nose when others do?

The trains are hugely helpful for people like me who don’t enjoy having their noses stuck to a steering wheel: I would much rather stick my long-ish nose into a book. The trains are functional and not at all fancy. They take me to and from work everyday and for the most part are reliable. I don’t know what it is with casting an evil eye on the most simple things. I typed this line out about 2 weeks ago for another blog, and in the intervening time, there were huge delays on the system causing much inconvenience and noise on social networks multiple times a week. There was one time when the website said, “We have been overwhelmed with the requests on the website, please check Twitter for updates.” Like any other person, I feverishly dug up all mentions of the trains and was greeted with dire warnings. News sites and social media told me that due to delays people have been queuing up on platforms and that the platform was so full that Police were standing near the ticket gates and turning people away.

All most disturbing. I summoned up that crowd instinct nestled in all of us and made for the station. That instinct is one of many things. One, it subtly points our body in the direction we wish to go and the rest is handled by the crowd. Two, it scans the crowd to see possible options and three, it senses danger. Number Three shows the vulnerability of mankind. For all our talk about finding one’s true self and being what you are and all that, one flaming emotion in a large crowd is all it takes for a person to lose their identity to the crowd. It is enough to sway people. To push them from their standard norms of behavior, and thus behave in ways that most of them would not pride themselves in.

I have been in situations where the crowd turns nasty really quickly and they are not memories I set aside for bedtime tales. For instance, there was this boy who worked at the corner grocery store in Bangalore in those days. He had a shy smile that he flashed every time we bought something. One time, I caught him running after chicks and not making a single victory. (Not eve-teasing, this guy had bought some chicks that looked like miniature powder puffs in various colors and had, in an unguarded moment, let them all loose all at once. ).

Of course, he had imagined himself being seen to better advantage in front of his customers, but there you are. Both of us laughed at that, I bought my packet of milk and was off. A few weeks later, I remember, some riots broke out (somebody had died or somebody said something about somebody’s death – it doesn’t matter), but this hitherto mildly affable boy was transformed. I was alarmed when I saw the slightly mad look in his eyes, when I was hoping to find friendly ones.

I was strangely aware of all this as I made my way through the streets expecting to be pushed out through the escalators back to the street again, only to find that the station was completely empty. My senses jerked. One lone policeman was leaning against the wall and dreaming of his next coffee, so he could have something to do. Some homeless folk were there using the warmth of the underground pathway, a musician whose musical talent seems somewhat misplaced in a subway station, and two dogs. Nothing else.

Say what you will about news channels and social networks – they can make the happiest person court tears in minutes with nothing but a shred of news. Maybe all this real-time-update frenzy has us expecting to be alive and aware in a place, without really being there. That day, I was enormously grateful that the trains had got back on track and got me home, that I had worried for nothing. There were delays, during the day to be fair, it was the milking on that was quite unnecessary.

But it made me think. In this day and age of sharing and over-sharing, are we aggrandizing the mundane? Or worse still paltering with the truth. What is truth when one is flooded by so many perceptions of it, fanned vigorously by viral social networks?

If this had happened, would it have made a difference to what the grocer boy did in a crowd?

The Solar System, Some Dinosaurs and a Birthday

Conversation was flourishing yet again at the breakfast table. The clock ticked on unmindful of the parodies and paradoxes being played out at the very moment. There was time – 6 minutes and 23 seconds before the big horn was blown and all children boarded the car and raced towards their scholarly duties. This time in the morning is the most fraught with tension, melodrama and hilarity. For instance, one time the daughter sighed an identifiably 10-year-old tenet that Monday mornings were tough with P.E, gym and all classes packed into the day. It must be particularly hard for her, for she knows how to take relaxing-over-the-weekend to ridiculous extremes.

“Don’t worry .. you can sleep soon in the afternoon.” said the wise toddler opening his mouth way bigger than it needs to be opened for 3 pieces of cereal to be spooned in. The cereal made it in, but the milk did not. The wisdom-dripping sister sighed and passed the milk dripper a napkin.

“I don’t have nap time in my school unlike yours. Amma – he thinks I have time to sleep in school!” said the affronted sister.

“Well..how is he to know that? His school has nap-time. You go to school, therefore it must have nap-time.” I said.

“Yeah – Pre-school. They don’t even agree to call it school yet. Pre-school! He has 3 breaks, 1 nap, 2 play sessions and 4 go-to-the-loo’s in his time-table.”

Say what you will about the toddler, he rallies. His brief confusion about how there can be schools and universities without nap-time occupied his mind for a few seconds and he said, “Oh! That’s okay – when you become small like me again, then you can sleep in school.”

3 minutes and 40 seconds.

Another howl from the older sister. “I don’t grow small again, I become bigger.”

“Yes, but I will also become 5 years old.” says the brother.

“That doesn’t even make any sense!” she says to me again. I nod.

Say what you will about ambition and planning, the toddler has it right. When asked what he would like to become when he grows up, he says, “I want to be 5.” At 10, his sister must seem like a wise-rishi to him. When she tells him about flip bars (https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/guess-what-flip/) and running 9 rounds during P.E, his mind boggles. The magic of her age, size and tenacity seem formidable. He cannot even aspire to such greatness, and he settles for being 5 and becoming a fire-fighter like his favorite cartoon character.

These age-related discussions always have her puzzled. She has tried explaining the concept of time, solar system, evolution of dinosaurs and mankind to him (subject to another blog, for it was fraught with theories bound to make philosophers and scientists squirm in their seats and graves).

One time he told her that when he was small, she was in my tummy. “How is that even possible? I am older than you, lil broke-head.” she says tussling his hair and he replies. “Yes I know. But when you were small and then smaller, you were in amma’s tummy.”

“Yes, but you weren’t even there.”

“Yes I was.”

“NO! You weren’t. “

“Yes I was. You was in Amma’s tummy rember?”

“I remember.” (Maybe she is a rishi after all, could Rishis remember the time in their mother’s womb? I must check)

“Yes…then I was a small boy.”

“You are a small boy now. You weren’t even there when I was in amma’s tummy.”

“Then where was I?” he asks in confusion. He looks at me for answers. I am flummoxed. I suppose I look like a dinosaur to him and have lived eons in comparison, but how was I to answer the #1 existential question that has wracked mankind for centuries?

Earth goes around the Sun Dinosaurs roam the Earth The Clock is Ticking — Earth goes around the Sun
Dinosaurs roam the Earth
The Clock is Ticking

Luckily, it is time to herd everybody into the car and I welcome the confusion.

To make matters worse, his birthday rolls around in May, while the rest of us have it in the fall. School (Fine – pre-school) starts in the Fall, and so he patiently waited while all his friends had birthdays. “When will my birthday come?” became a common question mixed with the notion that birthdays mean he will get older, his sister younger and my tummy flatter. (Well, alright alright.)

Unable to bear it any longer, I told him that it takes a full year for the Earth to go around the Sun, and when that happens, his birthday will come. Patiently, for months, he waited and spoke about his birthday every time he saw a picture of the Solar System.

Well, the Earth made it around the Sun and the son’s birthday is finally here. Happy Birthday little Tucky! (https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/welcoming-tucky/)

Divine Intervention of the Gardening Gods

If there is a Gardening God, I am curious to see where he would grade me on various aspects of his or her domain. I think he would view me like a benevolent, brilliant professor regards his loyal, funny but idiot pupil. ‘See thee down there’, he shall boom to his godlings, ‘there goeth the very example of exemplary gardening intent. If ever you want to know how to admire a fallen leaf, thou can gaze down at her. She and her progeny are always bending or squatting and looking at something marvelous. Sometimes, when I am bored, I send out the snails to see the enthusiasm thee here summoneth up. But send her lobelia, geraniums, petunia, primroses and violets together, and she will still, after all those years, not be able to tell you the difference.’

“If you pusheth me, I may give her a pass with the planning, but will send to Earthly Exile the next godling who suggests she gardens well. “ This is where he shakes his head and the clouds above spatter a few drops of rain on the Earth below, and the parched trees in my backyard gulp and send thanks to the Gods above, for I forgot to water them for a few days.

Why, you ask, do you assume that a Gardening God talks like someone escaped out of a badly written 17th century book? I don’t know – in my mind, this gardening god looks like a gnome with a long flowing beard, a brown hat that looks like an upturned nest, a booming voice and language like he was happy to not be written into one of Shakespeare’s books.

Anyway, back to the point of our garden. Very near our backyard is a marvelous tree. Home to thousands of leaves, hundreds of twigs and branches, and scores of birds and squirrels, this tree offers shade and respite to a person who wishes for a few quiet moments. But every time the tree so much as shivers or flutters in the breeze, it sends ten thousand leaves straight to the narrow strip of garden in my backyard.

This is where the ex. intent plays its trump card: I declare, rather grandly for one who has failed at this task for almost a decade, that I shall gather up the leaves and have a clean backyard. I say this vehemently for a week or so, as though the sheer force behind the voice will collect, bag and compost the leaves. When that plan fails, I wait to see if anyone in the house will be gallant enough to say, “No, no. You rest. I shall shovel and clean the backyard.” But of course, everybody in the house is too wise for that. This is when I start shamelessly sighing and dropping “hints”.

Ahh! I wish I can do those leaves, but these allergies of mine, they just don’t let up you know. AAAACCHOOO!

Nothing. A brief silence and then I hear the jarring song to which the husband and children are dancing rise in volume by a few decibels. This goes on for another few weeks, by which time the sycamore tree’s leaves have figured out that the best place to fall is our backyard because they don’t have to flutter on to hard earth anymore and can simply cushion their fall on their already fallen brethren.

Next up: I try the guilt-tripping with the make-it-a-jolly-family-activity technique.

Rake, rake rake your way merrily through the leaves. I sing as I rake. (The Lyrical God joins the Gardening one above and they observe the specimen below to see where they went wrong with this model)

I manage to pile up the leaves with my enthusiastic, but equally unskilled helpers, the children, when the sneezing starts. But of course, I don’t stop and soldier on. The husband is tactfully finding himself outside tasks to do – service the car, go to the bank, grocery shopping, clean the rooftop. Anything at all but gardening.

At the end of it all, the day is ripe and getting on. There is a huge pile of leaves, weeds tumbling over one another all over the backyard waiting to be removed, no lunch, three cups of tea and sneezing enough to rattle a herd of elephants. Meanwhile, the wind hears about the gardening action in our backyard and comes a-howling. The leaves spatter yet again and I curse using some very imaginative phrases, making the toddler look up in alarm and say, “Stupid is a bad word!”

By this time of course, everybody is fed up with me and will gladly let me dangle like a wind-chime on the apricot tree. Enough, I say to myself and make a call to the kind soul who helps out every once in a while. This narrow strip of garden is home to some trees, a jasmine creeper and some flower bushes. The gardener makes it generally known that he is doing it solely because he views it as acquiring some good karma: Help thy helpless, share thy green thumb or some such.

He comes with his pal in his pickup truck, and I kid you not: the pair of them clean up, de-weed, plant new flowers, prune the roses and hose down the garden leaving the patch looking beautiful and well-nourished in about an hour.

I think it is divine intervention: for how long can even the most tolerant Gardening God behold our garden’s plight?

Guess What? Flip!

So it was a normal, every day kind of day,when my daughter strutted proudly into the kitchen. She had a confident look. The look someone might have when they are bursting to say something. She exclaimed, “I want to go to my school today.” I choked on a biscuit and said,” Excuse me, if you haven’t noticed it’s a weekend and you said you would help me clean the garden!” The daughter whined in response,”Forget about that, I want to show you the flips I learned!” I tried not to appear as frightened as I was about seeing those flips. I was sure I would have to keep the hospital on speed dial, for me, not my daughter! But, the job description of a mom is to not to discourage the child. My son bounced up and down saying he wanted to do a “tummy flip” and “dead man “(these are names of some flips the daughter does). Finally, I tried to bring the son to reality, that he could not do a single flip. So, he started singing a song about flipping. At that point, the hospital was going to have two emergencies. We got down at the school. My daughter rushed to the 5th and 6th grade area. I had no idea where it was, but the son had run off with my daughter. I was lost for what seemed like an hour when a voice yelled, “Amma watch what I can do.”

I followed the voice to the playground and ran quickly when I saw my son trying to climb on the bar. My daughter yelled at me from the highest bar,” Amma, look at me!” I saw her just in time to see the “easiest” flip. One foot was in front of the other and she fell forward. I ran under her to catch her like a brave mom fighting off snakes. But, it turned out that she was back up on the bar. She topped this off with Back Cherries, Tummy Flips, Dead Mans, Front Cherries, Roly Polies , and more – all of which gave me heart attacks, but nothing compared to the scariest of all( or at least in my opinion), the Fall Back. The daughter took her hands of the bar put them high in the air and without warning fell back!

The Back Cherry or Cherry Flip or Roly Poly or Fall Back

I almost called the hospital when I found her hanging from the bar, her arms dangling near the floor!

Readers, for the final surprise, it was not the normal author of the blog, but me, the daughter, writing from the mothers point of view! I hope this was a surprising blog! Bye!

P.S: When the daughter said she will write a blog for me, I did not realize that she will write this in my voice. I can’t deny that I am proud I write like an elementary school kid.

Happy Mother’s Day

It has been ten beautiful years since my first Mother’s Day as a mother. I remember playing with my first born and finding newer and newer methods to get her to kiss me. My peek-a-boos were becoming more grandiose. Once I twisted myself into a knot trying to get my head in between the sofa and the chair for a new angle at the peek-a-boo. Maybe, the knot never straightened itself, but it got me a bigger kiss than before. Flush with the kiss from my baby, I resolved to do what I liked to do best. Jot down all the nice things as our lives progress. I used to write things to myself in a diary that is long eaten by moths. Then I resorted to sending emails to myself. You know? So, I would not forget when the time comes. But everybody knows how that goes. First of all, the emails became shorter and shorter, terse even. Second, they started resembling notes taken in short hand. I mean what does “Kunjulie smiled 2 door.” mean? If it had not been typed, I am not sure I would know what I had scribbled. No. Things needed to change. Most important of all, I knew heart of hearts that I was not going to sit and plod through thousands of emails to find the note I had raced through.

Like the time that she first looked like a mountaineer. I can still see it fresh in my mind. She saw the peak rising before her . She knew she needed more than grit and willpower. She surveyed the mountain from multiple angles, making mental notes as to the best path available. She looked not only at the peak, but the best path to get herself up there. She also needed ropes hanging from cliffs to pull herself up on when she encountered tough and steep slopes. It was easy to see her mind gears squeezing together as she saw the rope, now all that was left was to scramble up. The rope was a thin one, but it would have to do. When one scales mountains and overcomes obstacles, they don’t stop to see whether the ropes are replaceable. They should but they don’t.

Mountain Goat: Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_goat

In many ways, she had to function like a mountain goat, but with the advantage of opposable thumbs, and the disadvantage of no horns.

There probably is a photograph of her somewhere looking proud and happy with herself at the first summit. (I can’t find it. ) She had scaled the heights of her grandfather’s tummy to plant a wet kiss on his cheek. The rope did not bear the assault very well. That was also why we were seen scrambling to find the spare hearing-aid cords. Just before the hearing-aid cord gave way, she managed to hold on to his spectacle frame and hoisted herself atop the peak.

In the ten years since, I have to say, my family and friends have been remarkable subjects of my blogs. They have shared many moments of hilarity and borne the references to themselves on the blog with grace and charm. I have grown to love writing about varied topics though family and friends play a good part of my writing, and the daughter has not become a real mountaineer.

May 2015 marks ten years since I started writing the blog. I blogged at various different places:

http://tangential-thoughts.blogspot.com/

http://am-kicking.blogspot.com

Slowly, the blogs where I co-blogged at trickled out. So, I went on at about a blog post a week on this blog. I love how writing has shaped my thought processes. When I am stranded, when in difficult times, I cling onto the high and funny spots in the experience. I must say it makes the experience the better for it, and the blogs are funnier for the mindset.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you incredible Mothers out there!

The Mushrooming of Fashionistas

T’was the evening before our return to the connected world. We were to leave beautiful, bucolic, Bala with its bubbling brooks and baying buddies, to catch a ferry to Ireland the next morning and the brother’s family was to return to London. The refreshing walks and hikes had resulted in much sharing of life’s wisdom. As the niece said, the toddlers now know they must not stamp on the black balls on the trails for that is sheep poop.

There was great excitement in the house. We were getting ready to go to a fancy dinner. What I had seen of Bala was wonderful, but did not look like the whipping hot scene of the fashionista and the twitterati. The old farmer we passed on the road seemed nice enough and waved at us from his tractor, but I was having a hard time imagining him as the charging center of Bala’s social scene in his earthly tweeds and hat. Which suited us perfectly.

Allow me to digress here for a bit. The husband cannot for the life of him squash his neck into a tie. I would not put it past him to crinkle a freshly pressed shirt. He is the sort of fellow who feels compelled to fold up his full-hand shirts lest they look formal. (I have touched upon this aspect here: https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/what-ties-a-unicorn-a-book-together/) So you can imagine how sterling the sister-in-law is for convincing us all to dress up nicely for a dinner out.

I felt like we had gone back to Jane Austen times when they dressed for the ball and no other reason, but shook the feeling away firmly. The slightest doubt about dressing well would mean we all slip back to yoga pants or worse, pajamas for dinner. That does seem to be fashion trend these days: http://nextdraft.com/archives/n20150423/follow-the-yoga-pants/ )

“Are there any restaurants in Bala, or are we just going to eat out like what we did in the afternoon? We could do that, you know? Under the stars.” piped the girls. You can rely on them to surface any nagging doubts sniggling in your brain.

Though we were miles from any restaurant or super-market, I don’t want you to run away with the notion that we were hungry. The Balas and those who marry into the Bala family like their nourishment. Consequently, the brother and sister-in-law had a box of considerable size with ‘provisions for a few days’. What that meant is that if the sheep were not happy grazing, we could have fed them all Channa Masala, Dum Aloo, Creamy Pastas or Steaming Basmati rice any time of the day. This is what the girls were referring to: we had eaten food fit for feasts in the backyard in pajamas, why not have more of that after a shower?

Anyway, despite hemming and hawing about dressing well, we collectively put up a brave show of it. The toddlers looked like strapping fine gentlemen, and the strapping fine gentlemen looked like harassed toddlers forced into wearing pants; the girls looked like young ladies, the ladies wished they looked more like the younger ladies teetering next to them and all was well. The toys, boys, girls, men and women got into the cars. After brief stops to open the gates by the ponds, we sped off towards the adventures of the night.

I must say, for a small town, the eateries were very good. The Bala-name’s reputation with respect to food was intact in our minds. I was asking the brother about cuisines and pastimes when he said, the Welsh love their mutton chops and lamb stews.

There was an ominous silence from the back seat where the daughter was yapping seconds before. “Uh oh!”, was all the brother could say before a quivering voice asked him, “You mean people kill these lambs – even Patchy?”(Patchy was the sheep who she managed to get close to that morning, https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/patchys-lessons-in-patience-perseverance/). We assured her that we will not be killing Patchy and bleated out a white lie to set her animal activist’s heart at rest.

The brother heaved a sigh of relief and told her he was going to ask the waitress for a vegetarian menu. It is at times like this, that I wonder how lovely it must be to live in a small place. The service we got for this simple request was exceptional. The head chef left his busy haven. He probably switched off the oven, turned off the gas, untied his apron, removed his mittens and headed upstairs to ease our hearts and tell us all about his offerings.

“We have mushrooms and cheese that I can make into a lovely omelet. “ he boomed heartily. “And some of the best creamy mushroom soup. If you are looking for something a little more spicy, I could make you a Mushroom Stroganoff with some mushroom and tomatoes. Or you could have a vegetarian lasagna with mushroom.” Clearly, he couldn’t help noticing that he was going a bit strong on the mushroom motif, for he hastily added that “Carrot and coriander soup is also available.”

We ordered them all and the chef sang his way to the kitchen. The daughter was happy and Patchy would have been happy.

patchy-mushroom — Patchy happy with menu: Mushroom stragonoff, mushroom lasagna, mushroom omelet and carrot soup!

As we headed out, the brother pointed out a picture taken about a century ago on Bala High street. Even though the picture was a black and white one, you could discern the flushes on the cheeks of about 30 young ladies dressed for the Ball at Bala, and it looked marvelous. Suddenly, it seemed okay to dress up and come to dinner. Like the husband said, “Anyway, no one knows us here, so why not dress up?”

Patchy’s Lessons in Patience & Perseverance

Walking has always been a favorite with the Balas. From a mile away, one can identify the fathers or my walk. In moments of thought, we tie our hands behind our back, take long, energetic strides and march on. Walks are also the time when we come up with our epiphanies and learnings. Ripe with the lessons gleaned from a reading of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, I took a walk near the cottage at Bala.

The mists were lifting and the sheep and their kids were starting to get on with their day. I looked at them and saw a number of tendencies that were downright endearing. The ewes and rams that were mothers and fathers cast a protective eye upon the surroundings and while they watched their kids frolic around, were quick to show they meant business if you approached too close to the kids.

After jumping over a gate and skipping over a gushing stream, I sat down to gaze at the surroundings.

The English Countryside – pic taken from wikicommons but where we stayed looked similar

As I sat there admiring the sheep near me, I mused on how wonderfully the whole society looked after one another. How they let the young ones thrive, while ensuring their safety. How they grazed, and what useful animals they were. Human beings have no means of knowing what animal thought processes are, but as I sat there gazing out at these gentle creatures, one of the kids came closer to me. I saw it approach, saw the mother cast a warning look and bleat at it to be careful (probably, for I don’t speak Sheep, but you can always get tone). I just continued to sit there and the kid approached me even closer and finally came really close to me, before bounding off to boast to its friends. There was much bay-ing among the kids when this one bounded back and I could not help thinking the kid had approached me on a dare. It brought a little smile to my face and I headed back.

But again, I maybe inserting anthropomorphic tendencies into that lamb’s demeanor.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/can-fiction-show-us-how-animals-think?mbid=social_twitter

Over breakfast I told the daughter about the lamb and inserted a ‘lesson’ about the virtues of patience. A lesson I can learn myself as I know too well. “Sitting and patiently waiting for things beyond our control is a skill and one that can be developed, “ I said to the children like I was Buddha. To give the daughter her due, she did not call my bluff and she did not laugh, but absorbed the statement with as much mellow-ness as her character would allow. Which was to say that she continued attaching herself to the chocolate syrup and the pancakes and ignored the banana pieces.

In a place like Bala, it is phenomenally hard to do something filled with purpose. After a few hours, we decided to walk. After walking for a bit, the children wanted to touch the lambs, but they would not let them approach. They frisked and ran when we approached. After some time, the daughter decided to try what I told her and I was truly amazed.

She approached a lamb and sat at a respectable distance for a few minutes. Then she moved an inch or so and then waited again. Patiently. Quietly. Every time she moved, the ewes and rams gave her a warning look as if to say ‘Don’t mess with our kids!’. The minutes ticked on and though, at other times, she would have been anxious to move on to more gregarious activities, she sat and waited.

Apparently, she had taken my words to heart in the morning. It made me realize that though it looks like children are not sitting like disciples around the Buddha and listening, they are absorbing and it drove an even harder lesson to me.

It happened after what seemed like a long time. The kid approached her. He let her talk to him and look into his eyes. She named him ‘Patchy’. When she tore herself away after a few minutes, it followed her around like Mary-and-the-little-lamb. She was ecstatic in her joy as were the rest of us.

It was hard work winning the confidence of a lamb, but it was worth it.

To Look up or Not to Look up: That is the question

I was yawning the other day as I walked into the office. It is not like I had not slept well. I had, in fact, put logs to shame with the night’s repose. Optimism was brimming as I went to bed early after setting an alarm for the break of dawn the next day. The alarm, helpfully titled, ‘Fresh Air Beckons!’ , was to nudge me towards getting in a wisp of fresh air before the rigorous day got under-way. But I had snoozed the alarm and had slept on till my usual time. So far so good.

I opened my browser and I kid you not, the first article to attract my attention was this one:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31928434 (The article told me, quite morbidly, that folks who sleep longer die sooner.) Well, it doesn’t quite say it like that, but you know – sleepy heads, still muddling about before coffee and all that. In my befuddled state, this was like an alarm. It certainly worked better than my ‘Fresh Air Beckons’ alarm and I bustled about after a cup of coffee, desperate to make amends.

I mean, with the internet, there are studies on studies and studies on no-studies, studies on sleep and studies on no-sleep, studies on exercise and studies on no-exercise. It can all be a bit much. As long as you feel energetic and feel like you are living a healthy lifestyle, equip yourself with knowledge but don’t dwell on them is my philosophy towards it all. I am not sure it is a great philosophy, but the fact of the matter is that what we know today ‘for sure’ can change tomorrow with another research article that argues the exact opposite with statistics. So, how am I to find out what is best?

Of course, there are advantages too, for you can backup anything with research. Shirking at home without exercising? Just find a study like this to assuage your guilt: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31095384: Too much jogging the same as no jogging at all. Having done your part, you may now kick back and relax nibbling snacks of your choice. You just stamp pretty hard on that nagging squeak at the back of your brain telling you that you mis-interpreted the study.

You can do it with anything. Watch:

1) Prefer to turn your eye when cleaning beckons? Do you see socks lying everywhere, shoes waiting to be stacked, books waiting to be cleared away? No problem. Science shows people with messy desks are creative.

http://mic.com/articles/103954/the-science-of-why-the-most-creative-people-have-the-messiest-desks

2) Feel like sleeping in late, and battling against what people have been telling you for ages about the benefits of being a early-riser? Find another research article.

3) Got up early one day and feeling complacent and righteous? Casually toss out another study.

I wonder if there is a study on seeing why we need to feel validated by studies. Can somebody research the topic and let me know?

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