Life – Page 74 – Nourish-n-Cherish

The Lure of (Fernweh & Vegetable Quizzes)

In my last post, I set up the mood and setting for what it feels like prior to starting off on a vacation. We are smitten by Fernweh every now and then. https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/the-eye-of-the-storm-televisions-other-things/

I participate in the enjoyable task of selecting a vacationing spot, and then graciously withdraw from the actual booking. The days leading up to the vacation, I spend drooling on the side trying to determine spots of interest, planning our days there and so on. As the vacation nears, I am all in, plunging my oars into the waters, packing, repacking and running around till the last minute. In short, like this: Tea please!

The husband, in the meanwhile, after my gracious bowing out, makes a pleasurable study of options available for our vacation. I am grateful that all the research is now online. I cannot imagine how a paper trail of booking a vacation would grate at my nerves. Starting with the ticket booking, he will find everything that is in the databases of all travel sites and airlines. He will have, at the tip of his hands, enough irrelevant information to fill a miniature book.

He knows better than to regale his process with me, for I have picked up a tip or two from my mother’s technique of shrieking with agony. When he started the last trip, the filtered down version of 62 pages worth of travel information was:

Flight Departures:
Oakland to Seattle at 6:55 p.m.
Available Airlines: Alaskan, South West

San Jose to Seattle at 6:55 p.m.
Available Airlines: Alaskan, South West

San Francisco to Seattle at 6:25 p.m.
Available Airlines: Alaskan, South West

Home to San Jose: 25 minutes
Home to Oakland: 30 minutes in the opposite direction
Home to San Francisco: 50 minutes
San Jose to Oakland : 45 minutes (You need some apparently useless information given too!)
Oakland to San Francisco (this is where you use S-with-A)

Return tickets:
Seattle to San Jose at 5:05 p.m.
Available Airlines: Alaskan, South West
Seattle to Oakland at 3:05 p.m.
Available Airlines: Alaskan, South West

He did try to add another destination & airline to the mix, but I employed S-with-A and vetoed the idea.

With me so far? The day of the trip dawned, and all day long, flight notifications buzzed reminding us of our upcoming trip with Alaskan Airlines from Oakland to Seattle at 6:55 p.m. (I set up notifications so we will be absolutely sure we will get there on time, said the husband looking very proud of himself.)

Flight notification: Flight is on time.

In between all this, there was Facebook to check during the day and any intervening minutes we may have had at our disposal, we dithered at this spot on the web. One friend of ours, having done his share of vegetable cutting for the day’s meal, took it upon himself to post pictures of his labors on Facebook.

Flight notification: You may now check in.

On the carnival grounds of Facebook, however, the picture of the vegetables was garnering interest. People poured in with their compliments on a job well done, and wondered what his wife must have done to deserve as able a helper as him. With vegetables like that, it was expressed, that any dish could be a success. His innocuous picture had turned into a sort of an online quiz as to what the dish was. I did wonder how a person so intent on cutting to specifications, did so without finding out so much as the dish name, towards which his labors were contributing. Maybe, that is the bane of all of us who contribute to projects without fully comprehending the greatness it can help unleash, I thought to myself philosophically. (There were no doubts, this was heading towards a great dish)

Flight notification: It maybe a good idea to leave.

We piled into the taxi and left in what was termed a comfortable span of time. The taxi ride inched us closer to the airport and the online quiz inched closer too. The latest hint was that paneer was involved. The answers made the stomach rumble when people, somewhat insensitively, bunged in Chinese Noodles and Vegetable Biriyani. Our own fare that afternoon had been slim pickings for I had gone in for the left-over technique, so as to leave an empty fridge while we were away.

We reached with the bags, ruts and tots at Oakland airport. After bidding our taxi good-bye we entered an almost empty airport and washed up in front of the grumpiest crew on duty. Maybe, they too were hungry, I thought to myself charitably. It was after all, inching towards the evening coffee time.

Flight Notification: You should now pack up and leave, or things could get sticky.

Ha! We are already at the airport – take that Flight Notification! I thought grimly. It is rare that we are in positions of ample time to kill, and I was thinking of hitting a good eatery once past the security check gates. All that face booking and quizzing and vegetable-guessing had me jotted down firmly in the ‘hungry’ category.

Imagine our shock then, when the crew that did not know how to smile, said our flight left, not from Oakland, but from San Jose at 6:55 p.m.

I never knew what people meant when they said they were struck dumb. I now know.

To be continued….

The Eye of the Storm, Televisions & Other Things

Update: This article was published in The Hindu Open Page dated 20th May 2018.

Watch me while I tilt my head to a 45 degree angle, glaze my eyes and yank you through a storm. We will have to rekindle some childhood memories. Let’s give it a good two or three decades shall we? Good.

Event: To buy a television.

Life has always had its share of amusement and drama, primarily because of the characters in it. When I look around in my life, there are very few placid characters. I have the boisterous ones, the catch-life-by-horns-and-dance-till-dizzy ones, the energetic ones, the sort of people who make observations that make you laugh or admire the speed of the repartee, but seldom dull.

Most households, for example, after deciding to buy a television would take the money available, go to a store and buy one. Mine, on the other hand, well read on.

After making the easy decision of wanting to buy a television, the drama would begin to unfold like a small storm whose eye is coming slowly and surely towards your home. Gaining in strength and fury.

It would all start disarmingly simply. The father would aimlessly drop into an Electronics store to see the different models available. Then, slowly, he would inundate the house with pamphlets from different stores, price comparisons, model evaluations, and cut-outs of advertisements from newspapers and magazines. Anything that had anything about a television: Philips and Samsung would jostle with Dyanora and Whatever-else.

The glossy pamphlets would pile themselves on the tables, couches and side-tables for weeks. All visitors to the home could not miss the mess, and within days the whole community knew that a television purchase was imminent in the home. We lived in a small hillside community where everyone knew everybody else. So, of course, every body weighed in with their advice. There is a certain joy in knowing that people are concerned about you and your doings, and we enjoyed it for the most part.

Storm Status: Brewing and gaining in force. Now visible over horizon.

Of course, every time somebody walked in, we would be embarrassed and apologize for the mess, but it did not bother the father. He was rather pleased with his research and freely boasted about the pains he took in stewing the house with this garbage. “Everybody’s house is like that!” he would say airily when accosted and things would go on.

Storm Status: Momentum building up. Eye of the Storm approaching.

People (read my mother) wanting to sit on the couch at the end of a long day would first have to bite down the sharp words that rise at having no seat available, and then shove all the pamphlets onto the floor before sitting. This was the physical aspect of it. The emotional aspect of it was worse: you see the father was so carried away by his own researches that he would regale all features with gusto at the dinner table or over coffee. CRT tubes, antennae size, screen size and voltage stabilizers, was served with cake and coffee to visitors and family alike.

After a few weeks of this agony, the roof would lift off with the mother’s shrieking, because she can’t bear the mess and the talk surrounding televisions any more.

Storm Status: In the Eye.

To this hair-shrieking response, the father would calmly ask his beloved why she was getting tense, and that she must learn to relax and enjoy the process. Asking somebody to relax while not making any change to the circumstances can be a tricky thing to do. It is an interesting social experiment well worth observing from a distance. I would strongly advocate it.

Storm Status: Spent.

Then, as if nothing had happened, he would head out one day to buy onions and come back with a color television. To quizzical looks from family and friends, he would unveil with a flourish, a brand he has never researched or heard reviews about before. He would have just fallen for the salesperson’s glibbity. Even though, the television matched none of his carefully researched specifications over the past weeks, we were all glad to have the thing done with, and settled in to have a good time with it.

Storm status: Passed.

Take a deep breath and come back to the present.

That’s approximately how the husband books a vacation.

Life is a Tricky Canvas

There are a few trees by our walking path. Great firs, pines, eucalytpus with their mild scents and some bottlebrush trees (Apparently their biological name is Callistemon Melaleuca Myrtaceae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callistemon. I mean if you can call Anantha Padmanabha Venkateswaran as Nandu, would you rather call him Anantha Padmanabha Venkateswaran? I think I will continue calling them bottlebrush trees.)

Often when I walk past these trees, I think that to be a tree must be a great thing. To foster life by just living, to be the cornerstone of life as it unfolds around you must be wonderful if you have the right mindset of course. I mean, I don’t know whether trees are contented beings or go through the same tumultuousness that humankind does. But they are the steadiers for scores of nature lovers, so we assume they are content.

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was not the trees, but the drama these trees witness every now and again. There is a spot of pavement near these trees that is uneven. One large slab of concrete is about 2 inches above the adjacent one. This makes for bumpy rides, trippy walks, parents telling children to be careful, husbands telling their wives to be careful and being met with retorts as to how they too can see the pavement is uneven, walkers yelling to cyclists to be careful, kids yelling to one another to watch the bump and a few scrapes and bruises as people busy squabbling about having eyes of their own neglect to watch for the step and go hurtling down.

Yes if that does not constitute Drama, I don’t know what does. Many attempts have been made to smooth the mini step over: logs were placed, stones were provided. One try was pretty smart, for they tried to make it a slope instead, but somehow, all attempts been half hearted. One time, there were a great many cones and much hullaballoo. A tar laying machine managed to get one half of itself on the pavement like a dog raising a foot to pee against the fire hydrant, and was making a great noise filling up the hole. It was definitely a wonderful scene to stand and watch. It proved to be a fascinating evening as we watched the gravel held together by some tar. The loose gravel was there, tar was poured half-heartedly as if wondering whether the sidewalk really needs tar, and anyway the huge thing that rolls on it to pack the gravel together couldn’t make it to the narrow pavement, so the repair-folks just left it there. The next day, the gravel started disintegrating and within a week, there was nothing left except the trees waiting to see what the next endeavor to tackle this spot would be.

Things went on and every now and then there would be an attempt to level the flagstones and nothing would happen thereafter. All that changed last week when the city decided to pour cement and make it all even instead. This looked like the thing.

Once the cement dried, I was appalled to see that some couple had used the drying concrete as a canvas on which to declare their undying love and had carved their initials in while it was still drying. Looking at that graffiti annoys me much more than the inconvenience of tripping up every now and then. I have the same feeling of bubbling annoyance when I visit any of the heritage sites in India. Beautiful structures all telling us how much DV loves BB. If you are DV, and truly love BB, please use that marvelous force to forge a meaningful life not just for DV and BB, but DV&BB’s friends, colleagues and community too.

When I saw this news article, it looked to me like nature slapped us all in the face with her sarcasm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/face-in-cliff-canada-island-hank-gus_n_7651798.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news

I quote from the article:

“Mother Nature is capable of creating all sorts of amazing things, though the face is very striking.”

Of course, this tied in with another alarming news article with a typical doomsday line to the mass of grey cloud:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/earth-extinction-phase_n_7629330.html

The article states that the rate of extinction brought about by mankind is 114 times the normal rate for species to die out and regenerate themselves.

At this rate, the human rock face maybe the one to tell future lifeforms about our race, and if they look elsewhere, they may also know that DV loved BB, if those lifeforms also have hearts and use that to symbolize love.

Life is a tricky canvas.

The Corn Field

I wonder whether you have asked folks for directions in the rural areas – you know, the kind of places where you wait to take the mid afternoon bus to get to the village market for groceries. Nestled deep in nature as they are, the directions will almost always contain some landmark of man-made proportions. There is a large statue by the village square: opposite that is a post office and from there, you can wait for an hour for the local bus to take to you to the nearest town. Like that. Most times, of course, the man-made landmark is also hideous to see, but that is not said out aloud, for folks are usually proud of their landmarks for one; and for another, they are probably the work of some artist who is the relative of the local postman’s nephew.

Urban folk that we are, in our local little suburb, our landmarks tend to embrace nature I find. We refer to the single patch of nature in our midst as our crowning glory. That is our landmark. The field where ravens caw, chats chitter and frolic among the resplendent sunflowers and the corn. It is simply known as The Corn Field, though the resourceful farmer there also grows squashes, pumpkins, tomatoes and bright, neat rows of flowers.

Many a time, we tell one another, ‘I am going to walk down to The Corn Field.’ Yes, we are proud of it, and I have expressed gratitude for having this son of the soil tend it so marvelously for us. How else would our children know about the beauty of growing and consuming healthy food? Many have been the evenings when the son and I have stood mesmerized by the work on the field. The farmer there has offered the little fellow a ride on his tractor as he bumps along sowing seeds and getting it ready for the next harvest. This field, is one of the most fascinating things in our semi-city/suburban life. We get to relive the magic of life through the kind farmer’s efforts, and he knows it.

As I set off one evening to The Corn Field, my heart was filled with longing. I’d had a rather long day and I was waiting to see the bright sunflowers in bloom.

I wanted to just watch the sun go down over the field and sigh at the beauty in that small patch of land. As I approached, there was something off and I was filled with a deep sense of foreboding. For one, the farmer had left the patch without re-cultivating corn for a bit longer than is usual. For another, I saw a signboard there. I knew that little thing. It means another spot of nature has been sacrificed on our relentless march to civilize and inhabit the world. “No no please not this one too!”, I cried as I half ran to the signboard. Right enough, there was a sign board indicating that the land was going to be used for building another 800 flats and I gasped.

So many times, I had enjoyed explaining to our children about the farm, sharing with them my half baked knowledge about crop rotation, tilling and watering. What would happen to the ravens, sparrows and numerous birds who visited the place? Would we lose the sweet sound of birds twittering too? There would be no need for the hideous scarecrow that does a pretty poor job of scaring away the birds anyway.

Everything would be gone for another set of buildings closely clustered together. Could we not leave this one patch as an Ode to Nature?

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.

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