I see you rolling your eyes, nodding your head and saying, “Well, do Januaries roll into April?” Probably making a side note as to how the unhinging need not have happened so soon and so on. But as I stepped out on a walk, that is exactly how I felt. Cherry blossoms that usually start peeking out in March and filling out with beautiful scented flowers in April already seem to be scenting the beautiful air. After a brief spell of rain in December, the clouds have moved on, leaving behind green hills and cherry blossoms in January. The days have a magical quality about them that makes staying indoors seem like a shame.
Cherry Blossoms already?
You can, therefore, understand my wanting to utilize the gorgeous day over the week-end to step outside and go to the park with the family. I huffed and I puffed, but the family, behaved like reluctant groundhogs and burrowed themselves deeper into the earth and refused. Imagine my surprise the next day to see that in a fit of gallant enthusiasm, the husband and daughter had prepared a picnic lunch and had it packed and ready. I could have swooned if a passing sofa had not lent me its sturdy support.
After the picnic, we took a short walk by a pine and eucalyptus tree lined path. We stopped to peer down at the marvelous surroundings when a biker told us all about some prehistoric rocks that we could find if we kept going.
Can I see dinosaurs?
“I can see dinosaur?” asked the breathless toddler all-a-twitter, whose curriculum now includes dinosaurs. Ihated to break it to the fellow that he was a few million years late at chancing upon dinosaurs, but we settled down to see a groundhog instead.
Anything that requires stopping and peering down at something is always a huge hit with the son, who will willingly stop at every daisy or squirrel. So, the groundhog really was a bonus, though a bit of a step down from a dinosaur. To see a groundhog on Groundhog day was exciting.( Shh! It might have been a mole. I am not the best at distinguishing species.)
I also read this article that said that in earlier times, Groundhog Day was not simply a day to welcome Spring, but also to eat groundhogs.
T’was the end of the Christmas holiday, or if you prefer the politically correct version: T’was the end of the Holiday Season holiday , and the family was quietly going about the business of getting back to business. That is, we yelled across staircases for missing tiffin boxes, wondered aloud why things that were to be done during the luxurious break were still undone, books landed with a thump on the stairs, socks pushed under the sofa were retrieved and shoes frantically scoured the home for their partners. Folks wandering past the home may have been pardoned for thinking there was a nursery inside, but there! It was a typical end-of-vacation-day.
I opened the daughter’s backpack, put my hand in and let out a strangled yelp. I may have heard snapping inside, but I also felt like I was holding a fur ball. Judging by the smell, it could have been a marmalade-smeared rat or an orange-scented skunk. I felt around a bit more and there was another such monster.There was nothing to be done. I bit down the nausea brought on by eating too many cookies, remembered the brave deeds of my father while tackling rats in our childhood home, squared my shoulders for the onslaught and plunged my hand in with a grim determination to retrieve whatever monster the bag held.
There was no cat or rat to let out of the bag. It was just a couple of sad looking oranges that had long ago passed its ‘Best by’ date. Judging by the fungi on it, it may be long past the ‘Fling without spattering’ date as well. I moaned a sound that started out as ‘Ugh’, pitched up to a holler of her complete name, and squeaked down at ‘please’.
The School Bag
“Let’s clean it up.” I said becoming the stern taskmaster.We trooped up the stairs with the foul smelling bag and its 100 pound contents. I kid you not, that bag weighs about 100 pounds – I don’t know what is in there, for every child I see pulls this mini-suitcase-like bag along bursting at its seams with books it seems, and yet when it is time to buckle down to a piece of homework or an assignment, I see a fair bit of telephoning and neighbor hopping to ‘see if my friend has the book to finish the assignment’ happening. Sigh.
It was a good few minutes later, and the techniques of deep breathing successfully applied gave me the glowing answer. I let her deal with the bag with the able assistance of her father. There was still some bag-related noise upstairs, but it had mellowed to a gurgle with occasional spurts of “But Appa! I need that. It is for Moon-city.” (their play patch is christened something-city)This dash-city is home to some willow trees and a large grass patch. Lodged in blah-city is a variety of treasures ranging from pine cones to balls made of pencil shavings. (I have a series of blogs on pencil shavings that will make entertaining reading when I sit down to writing about it).It looked like a large layer of the general debris in the schoolbag was for Sun-city.
I like these glimpses into her childhood that I get. I hope this is the kind of thing that she will throw her mind back to when she thinks of her childhood. As a child I was best amused when left to my own devices and swinging on a tree trunk still tickles the endorphins in me. I agree with Bertrand Russell when he says that “The pleasures of childhood should in the main be such as the child extracts from his environment by means of some effort and inventiveness.”
Anyway, back to the bag. Judging by the level of debris in her bag, she may be one of the most creative persons I know. For there is this study that says folks with the messiest desks are the most creative.
The day was cloudy and cold as I stepped out for a walk. As I neared a spot where there are wide grasslands, I paused here and there to see two warblers, an American robin, a goldfinch, sparrows, and blue-colored scrub jays. It was as I was panting near what I thought was a red-breasted robin that it struck me, as to how much biophony has reduced in the areas of our habitat. I am no ornithologist. In fact, I am a bird who is seldom right about birds – for all you know I may have been watching two sparrows, a bunch of bullfinches, some doves and a bluejays. You see, birdwatching is a hobby that requires patience, and I start to hum before I am properly stationed with the binocs. That would hardly do to the elusive birds waiting for peace and quiet before emerging from the bushes and so on. No sir. You would not find me waiting with a pair of binoculars behind any tree for the life of me. That kind of joy requires patience and I know best of all, that I am as restless as a hummingbird. Despite this, I love watching birds when they are not shy enough to stray across my path. I love their peckings and their cooings and their general sense of industry.
Birds
I listened to the bird calls for a few minutes and thought about how much I miss the sounds of birds. The only sounds we hear often is the Angry Birds background music that is both irritating and jarring from some multi-media entertainment channel. We have truly substituted cacophony for biophony. What is biophony? A word I was interested to learn about as I listened to this recording of noises in a California forest over the past 10 years.
It has happened so gradually that many are oblivious to the change, and now happily go on with their lives. Save for a pang now and again, we don’t set aside another thought to the missing birds in our life.
In other news, I read recently that children exposed to inordinate amounts of screen time are less tuned to reading people’s emotions and acting accordingly. Apparently, they miss subtle body language and facial clues, and blunder on to make things worse.
If we ever need to get a peek into what society will be like when that transformation happens completely, all one needs to do is seat themselves in front of any appalling soap opera on Indian Television. The maudlin entertainment pulled my attention when the parents or parents-in-law were here several times. There the heroine is:impeccably groomed, dressed like she is going for a party, to receive her abusive husband or to confront angry relatives or something-that-will-ensure-she-cries-buckets-in-minutes. But there is something else here for us to observe. She babbles on completely ignoring the cues that are emanating from the person she is conversing with. There is nothing but brooding silence, or desperately angry vibes that are coming from the other person. Of course, no good can come from this, and pretty soon, everything thuds to a stop with an explosion of sorts. (The same thing could have happened with a man, but Indian TV prefers crying women.) The glycerine acts immediately and there are tears and dubious sentiments on culture and I gag (once again) in the confines of my home.
This saddens me. Is this not what society is headed for if we lose the ability to study the subtle hints that body language gives us? I truly can’t think of a bleaker future than one where we regress to live like folks in Tamil TV serials. If you had told me that we would have to adopt the babboon-way-of-life again, I would have been less sad, for we might have evolved into humans once again.
The problem is that, it will be a slow process, one in which one generation of parents finds a subtle change in their offspring and another change in the generation after that. We may, in the meanwhile, categorize these mystifying changes to a generation gap and only realize three generations later when a great grandparent talks about a time when he used a subtle cue to decipher a situation.
Just like we cannot bring the biophony back, what if we cannot bring one of our most useful social skills back?
The house sat there in the cold with its heater shivering and sputtering. A house on the banks of a large lake in the Winter is bound to be cold and forbearing. The backyard had an iron wicket gate that opened onto a wooden pier jutting into the lake. There, on the pier, were some wooden chairs, and a rickety swing. Out on the waters, a hundred mallards quaked and quacked, finding their voices. It was in this setting that the woman sat sipping tea contemplating life. Her thoughts were flitting, meditatively, she thought. One minute she sat thinking of mallards, the next, the temperature of the water. Even the sun’s rays were cold, but bright. The Dal Lake is supposed to be as beautiful. Could Jahannara and Shah Jahan and all those Moghul emperors have enjoyed the beauty of the lake, with a thousand servants to do their bidding and an army waiting at close quarters? Could they have felt inconspicuous when presented with nature’s beauty?
Maybe the true test of one’s ego is how we react to Nature.
The woman looked around her once more, and noticed a furious scurrying in the house. The house had an attache. One had to step outside and scurry a few steps to make it to the attache. The woman saw a young boy running across with a large pile of bed linen. One of the sheets were scraping along on the floor behind him. The woman’s instinct was to let the boy know, but that would mean screaming and shattering the pervading peace of the surroundings. What if the sheets are a bit filthy, she thought uncharitably. If she had stepped out for a few minutes to contemplate life, why not use the opportunity to do just that?
A few seconds later, a young girl emerged dragging a larger pile of bed linen behind her and ran across the same patch. The woman had seen enough of human scurryings and went back to observing the docked boats and the many forms of life the lake housed. While this beautiful Earth struggles with a myriad different things, what do different lifeforms struggle with?
It was a few minutes before she glanced back at the house.What greeted her was the boy scurrying from the attache to the main house with a huger pile of linen dragging behind him. A few minutes later, a young girl came dragging bedspreads, comforters and pillow cases behind her. Why was all the bedding being shifted from A to B and then again from B to A? Behind the young girl, trooped a large pretty dog vigorously wagging his tail. Had she seen the dog close-up, she could have detected the sense of purpose that he too was helping in the linen shifting. She had often seen this to be the case with dogs close to children. Their work seems important and by association so are they.
Was that how we viewed ourselves? And just like that, her mind started thinking of mankind and its search for meaningful work. How would one feel if their work was not impactful in any direct way? What if the continuous evolving nature of the world leaves people behind, or merely slows them down? A recent book she’d read, The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, took up this very question and analyzed it from the viewpoint of a butler. A butler, whose career had been in the service industry, serving his Lord that he trusted implicitly. When during the course of his lifetime, butlers were no longer needed, what happens to him? A moving question that everyone needs to think about.
In what ways do we define our work and how do we derive importance from our work? Is being completely attached a good thing, any more than being partially detached is?The ability to question ourselves and reflect, coupled with strong doses of work is what keeps mankind evolving. It is also what makes us stand up for who we are, in small ways and big. Every little moral stream presents us with the choice of steering clear, dipping our toes, swimming in, jumping across or flying across.
Such were the questions buzzing in her butterfly brain as she went back towards the house. Maybe there was work to do with moving the beds out.
Sometimes a short step away from the daily humdrum is all it takes to rejuvenate one. That is what we did as we nestled into Mother Nature’s arms with hot tea, scrambled eggs and a view of a scenic lake with some of our friends. As we saw sign-posts for Lucerne and Nice, I told the children about how beautiful Lucerne in Switzerland was and there, I saw a sign-post saying, “Welcome to Lucerne – The Switzerland of America” I am not sure what the sign meant, but it was enough to get us laughing. The Switzerland of America is not a happening place.
On the way back, we decided to go in for a horse riding adventure. Well, as far as adventures go, I am not sure Throttle, Stud, Mary, Peanut and Hummer could provide much, for they were the sweetest, gentlest horses I ever met. Not that I hobnob with horses much, my equine knowledge ranks somewhere along with acupuncture pressure points – which is to say negligible. But the daughter is a great fan of all things equine and so, there we were, 4 children, a friend and I, taking a saunter on a ranch with horses. The husband was staying behind with the son.
It is true that I am not one of those effervescent animal lovers. I love reading about them, I like being around them if they are tame enough and keep their distance from me and I would hate to see any kind of cruelty directed toward them, but there you are. I don’t cuddle and nuzzle up with dogs, I don’t frisk about with cats. I patted my horse with the same reserve. I was told his name is Stud. He was a tall, chestnut colored horse with gentle eyes. I asked the trainer if he is mischievous, for I have not the faintest idea as to what I will do if the horse decides to ‘take off.’ I was assured thattall and hulky as he is, he is as gentle as a lamb and wouldn’t run if I wanted him to. (I had no idea then how prescient those words were.) I patted him with a sigh of relief, for though I am not friendly with very many lambs to know the extent of their gentility, I do like them. I can now say truthfully that I made eye-contact with a Stud and he reciprocated with a gentle nod of the noggin. I was moved, and when moved I resort to saying things like ‘Come on dear! That is lovely dear.’ The husband thought I was referring to him and looked up quizzically, but I shoo-ed him off. I had another Stud to attend to. An equally gentle, calm stud albeit silent. Silent but communicative hloke.
Studley & I
We learnt the basics of steering a horse and getting it to turn left and right and so on and set off. Me, on my dear Stud, and the others on theirs. As long we were on the dirt track, there was no problem at all. Stud kept a steady pace and walked happily enough. The lady who was guiding our little procession (let’s call her Equena shall we?) then decided to take us on a bit of a wilderness saunter and off she went from the dusty path. Stud was all enthusiasm and snorted and neighed affectionately as he made after her. I was glad too – I like flowing rivers and green meadows spotted with wildflowers. I was just getting into the steady rhythm of bumping along and taking in the scenes, when the bumping-along stalled. I looked down to see what the matter was. Stud had made for a succulent grass patch and refused to budge. His nostrils were flared, his eyes drooling and he was tugging at the grass. “Come on dear. Now now. “ I said. But for all the attention Stud paid me, I could have been talking to the grass. I nudged him subtly. By now, our little troop of troopers had gone ahead on their horses, while mine was eating heartily.
Equena turned around after a few minutes and saw what I was grappling with. “Well – give him a strong one on the sides and make him move.” she said. I gave him a feeble one, and Stud showed me who is horse and grazed on.
“Umm..maybe he is hungry, should I let him eat first?” I asked her.
Now, I shall divulge a small nugget of equestrian wisdom: Never let on that you are not in control of your horse to others. Only your horse should know that.
Equena snorted disbelievingly. Stud snorted sincerely. I was sitting there thinking that I could really do with some snort-training, when Equena came up to me and said. “Honey! Look at me. “ I did.
“Not you! The horse.” she said and continued. “Let’s get on shall we?”
“Now honey!” I was working hard at keeping my gaze away. It is the polite thing when your Stud is getting a dressing down in public, what?
“I am now talking to you honey.” she said pointing at me. I looked at her obediently. “You are in charge of the horse. Don’t slacken for him. He has just been eating his fill in the barn. He doesn’t need any more grass. Show him who is in control!” she said.
Her words inspired me. Stud was in for it. I was going to show him who was in control. “Come come my dear! “ I said kicking it gently. Then, I kicked a little harder. Stud gazed up at this newfound discipline and shrugged – I know what you are thinking. I can see your skeptical eyes boring into me telling me that horses don’t shrug. But I tell you they do. Especially a horse who is deciding whether to act like a mule or a respectable horse. He thinks – shall we have some fun with this novice rider, or shall we go on and lure her into a false sense of control? I know this part of the thinking process so well. Being a mother makes you sense these sort of things in a jiffy. Luckily for me, the gentle soul that Stud is, decided to lure me into a f.sense of c.
The rest of the trail was spent in variations of the following:
Come on dear
That is quite enough you’ve had to eat
Please please! No need to eat now. Let us go.
Go on. Go on dear. I will let you eat plenty in a few minutes.
Don’t graze now. You just ate a tuft of grass.
When we finally tumbled back to the barn, I had had quite enough with the food talk. The husband was standing there and smiling in exactly the same way that Stud smiled when tugged away from the grass.
Tumbling in with the horses
“You guys hungry? There is a Mexican restaurant that doesn’t look like much – but the food is pretty good.” said the husband by way of greeting us.
“How did you know that?” I asked.
Stud shrugged. I mean: the husband shrugged. I truly am getting the stud and husband confused, aren’t I?
“So what do you say? Shall we go now, or after dismounting the horses?” he said with another Stud-like grin.
I like gentle souls. Especially, those who lure me into having an illusion of control. “As soon as we dismount the horses.” I said firmly, the light of decision-making gleaming upon my shoulders.
As the year 2014 comes to a close, it is as if everybody suddenly became a Chartered Accountant and tapped the year-end nooks of their brains to peer through their books and publish them with a profitable turn. WordPress sent me statistics, in which they are trying their best to make my poor blog look popular. I know my blog’s standing – it is not one of those sites that gets a 10,000 hits every time a post is out there, but it is wonderful to see the things WordPress’s algorithm says to make me feel good. Did you know that the total number of people who came to your blog could have filled Sidney’s Opera House upper balcony? Imagine that. Or did you know that if an octopus read your blog, and used a Squid’s ink to write, there would be fifty jellyfish on your blog right now? (Of course, I made those up, but you get the gist.)
When I look back, I am happy that we got 4 books out in the past year along with enjoying the pace of life and navigating its many turns, slides and ladders. It is like playing a game of Chutes and Ladders that the son is into playing these days.
This is also my 500th post and I managed to post 52 posts this past year – that is about a post a week!
Halloween, Mother’s Day, Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day In The Jungle
Then, of course, Google Plus and Facebook came up with their own versions of the year-in-review with the best pictures of the year. Facebook got in trouble for picking the pictures with the most number of likes and it ticked off some folks whose pictures of sad events had gotten the most likes.
All this is fine when it comes to relive the best memories of your year. But when it comes to reviewing a year in my mind, I find I like to look at the ups and downs together, for that is how life is. We don’t always publicly share our troubles, and we don’t want to look back and relive those times. We find that we relish developing and nurturing our many relationships, friendships, put our mind and efforts into doing a good job at what we undertake. But it all goes into making us who we are and strengthening us from within.
Here is wishing all of you a wonderful year in 2015. May it be filled with the essence of life, joy, good health, happiness and lots of laughter.
I rarely save the works of art that my children produce. For one, there are so many, and for another, while some of them are hilarious, they are no masterpieces (yet! – I read somewhere that good parents don’t say things like this and always leave the doors open for whatever the future might bring. If the future springs the brilliant artist, I don’t want to be the lousy mother thwarting the Sotheby’s auction, do I?) So, I have no way of comparing the drawings of the six year old daughter to see what hidden psychological messages were in there. According to this news article, deciphering a six year old’s drawings can give us remarkable insight into their minds.
I tried analyzing the work of the 3 year old son, and I could make out nothing. He asked me to guess what the picture he was holding up was, and I told him it looked like a very shiny pig or a jellyfish. He cackled loudly and said that he tried to make a pink christmas tree. I don’t mind tapping Freud from his grave and asking him to interpret that, but I am pretty sure, he’d choose to remain dead.
This is my drawing of course, because I did not save the original one – but you get the gist.
Anyway, this brought an interesting question to mind. What if I interpreted my own drawings? I had in a recent drawing placed a house on a dog’s tail (which was kindly brought to my attention by a reader later on)
See house on dog’s tail?
What would that mean in the light of the latest letter to Santa? The daughter had asked for a dog. She very well knows there is no Santa for the past few years at least, but just plays along to see what she can get.
Regular readers of the blog know that the request for a dog in the household rears its head every now and then. It is usually silenced by me (a trifle vehemently at times) or in a more wishy-washy sort of manner by the husband, who then looks sorry when confronted by me on what he meant by saying, “Maybe we will think about one in a few month’s time.”
“How many months?” asks the daughter expectantly
“What do you mean by months?” I say pushing a couple of daggers out of my eye sockets, and the husband scurries for safety.
Hitherto while asking for a dog, she had relied on techniques such as “You don’t have to do anything. We will look after the dog.”(By saying ‘we’, she includes the toddler brother who stands around nodding enthusiastically without having the least idea as to what it takes to have a dog in the household. The few occasions he has been in the presence of one has been spent like a monkey on a tree with a lion prowling down below) The matter gained traction again a few months ago and I wondered where the renewed vigor was coming from. Now, I was getting the old oil, “Oh! Don’t you miss not having someone to cuddle up with, now that we are all grown-up? Hey! You know what might help? A dog!”
It was only when I went to talk to her teacher a few weeks ago that the mystery was unraveled. Her teacher had told them how to form a convincing case, say, on how to get a dog, and she assures us that she had never held a class in such rapturous attention. Apparently, she had told them to come up with points that will help their cause, for example: come up with what the other party will gain out of the proposition. The daughter, having racked her brains, could easily see how I would poke holes in the We-will-look-after-dog theory, and went in for the psychological wringing.
Well, I was not buying it (yet). Let me explain why. There are some images that cannot be easily wiped from one’s brain. Two vicious specimens come to mind. Both of them were not more than 5 inches in height, long and had tempers like vipers about to be curdled in whatever-vipers-are-curdled-in and bites like adders. To their considerable repertoire of talents was the fact that they could smell like hounds ( which they were), and ornamental nose though I had, it was completely useless in detecting dogs hidden behind bushes. The results had been extremely disturbing. A physical education teacher of mine, once saw me leg it up 67 stairs at one go in the pouring rain and opined that the best way to train me for the forthcoming Athletics Championships was to set a couple of dogs after me. Not pleasant I tell you. Not pleasant.
Now, I know that dogs in the United States are extremely docile beings and rarely bite. But I am not sure I can move past the canine horrors of my past and embrace a dog in the household.
More than any of that,I am not sure I need another living being to look after, I have 4 large fir trees, 3 fishes, 2 children, 1 husband, 1 apricot tree , 1 cherry tree, many plants to nurture and often have visiting parents. Maybe the Myth of Santa has to be officially busted this year, I thought to myself and peered at the letter below the tree and saw amendments.
There, in brackets it said: (I know my mom will not like a dog, so can I have some king doh if not a dog?)
I like this pragmatism even though she is lost in the clouds of her imagination, an imagination liberally spotted with unicorns and dogs sometimes. (I found an interesting word that means just that by the way – Nefelibata)
To think that we would leave Puerto Vallerta, Mexico, without the pleasure of para-sailing was gnawing at the old heart. I mulled the thing over and decided that the best thing to do was to ask the valet who was greatly impressed with us, to holler and let us know when the parasailing man comes around. Apparently, he was not one early to rise and early to bed. He took his time and came around noon. I like folks like that in general, for I am not exactly a lark. It isn’t too much to say that had I been born a bird, I would have lived life thinking shriveled worms were food and that too becomes hard to come by as summer progressed. I may have tweeted from the trees to all who could hear about the sad state of affairs, but gone on to peck at wild grains and enjoyed myself anyway. But the problem was that we were to leave for the airport home-bound at 1 p.m. and if the Parasail-er came at 12 noon and then, had to go through his waiver forms and insurance checklists where would that leave us?
The husband looked at me amused. “Forgotten we are not in the US have you?I don’t think this guy is going to bother with forms, documents and waivers. “ said the husband in query to my quizzical expression. The sun shone down and hope raised its beautiful head and sailed along side the distant parachutes in the sea once more. At noon, two men came dragging a parachute behind them. That was my cue. I ran on the beach towards them. It looked like another lady was going toward them too and I knew that if they took her on, both of us had an even slimmer chance of parasailing that day. The morning’s practice run had done me a wave of good and I pumped through the sands as fast as I could waving my hands in the air and trying to attract their attention. I have been seen to better advantage certainly, but that did not deter me. Shy birds don’t catch worms or get their fills of wild grains for that matter.
Now, let me give you a bargaining tip : Don’t let on that you are eager to have something when you negotiate price.
You are welcome.
When I reached the men, and asked them to state a price, they grinned. The sun caught the gold glinting in their tooth filling, and their eyes sparkled. They knew this customer was in the bag. None of the little tricks around not wanting it really, but doing a good turn to benefit the tortilla-winner of the family. No Sir. I still tried, so half-heartedly that they smiled even more, and said, “Come. Come Señorita. Just give big teepps okay? Big teepps.” (Tips)
I smiled, consented and dutifully pulled on my look of intense concentration to listen to the training they were to give me before the adventure. The husband turned his head by 3 millimeters and I knocked his knuckles and asked him to concentrate too. By the looks of it, there was a life jacket, but it was not one of those life jackets that instilled confidence in the wearer. The straps were broken for one thing, and for another they did not look buoyant enough. Not that I weighed the thing in air and studied the difference of displacement in water or any such thing, but I just knew. For another, if I fell into the ocean froma height of 150 feet, life-vest or no, buoyancy force calculated or no, the shock of it would have me convalescing for a goodish amount of time. Obviously, I wanted to understand what to do in case of change in wind directions, changes in pressure or if the sea below grew choppy. There was a tiny boat that had a slimm-ish looking rope attached to the parachute. Somehow, everything the men said to make me feel as ease were doing the exact opposite. (Señorita! Very safe – new rope. Just 5 months old. Just give big teepps and I bring you down safely okay!) The mind boggled to think that depending on the tips, the rope could let you plunge into the ocean or be sturdy enough to get you back to land. But the Apparently-Brave do not dwell on the ratio between the tensile strength of ropes and tips.They fly.
The sparkle in their teeth and eyes were a little distracting, but a butterfly could have grasped the directions, for that was all the time it took.
“When I whistle you pull right shoulder rope okay Señorita? If it is becoming dangers, then I whistle again and you pull left side rope. Simple. Okay start now.“
“What? No No. Wait. That’s it?”
“That’s it – very easy. Very safe. Just remember teeppz.”
“What if I hear a third whistle?”
“I whistle only two times. How you will hear three whistles?” he said with a kindly expression that one adopts while talking to the idiot child.
“Okay okay. Fine! What if I don’t hear your whistle? I am going to be 100 feet above the ground. “
“Don’t worry Señorita. We are there. We will get you down here.”
I saw there was no point arguing, so I nodded and the next moment the boat took off into the ocean and the parachute lifted. Higher and higher it went taking my spirits with it. I looked around whole-heartedly enjoying the views from up there. The heart beat a little faster at first, but then settled into a steady, euphoric state that I could get used to. Maybe this is what people say when they say that they dip into their inner selves and experience pure joy. I gulped the salty air, drank in the fantastic views and lifted my hands in a smooth glider-like motion and at once a great feeling of gratitude filled my heart. To have experienced something like this is pure joy.I have since had the pleasure of talking to a wonderful person who attempted parasailing at the age of 74, and she whole-heartedly agreed too. This feeling is there to dip into whenever you choose.
That is some other person parasailing – a picture I had taken the previous day while lolling around with a book
I can’t say that I looked forward to the pull-right-strap-on-first-whistle (or was it the left strap?) part of the landing, but when I saw that I was nearing land again, I tucked in my nose and stuck out my ears as hard as I could to hear the whistle. Right enough I heard it and then, I heard the second one too. So, I used all my strength and tugged on the left and right or the other way around.
Wonder of wonders. The husband had apparently set their mind at ease on the tips they could expect while I was flying, for had I not seen such a smooth landing, I would not have believed it possible. I landed on the exact spot from which I had taken off and that too like a butterfly descends to sit on a flower. I gave them a delighted and effusive ‘Thanks’ and asked them to give the husband the same experience. The older of the men, touched his hands to his heart ( What is Mexico without a touch of melodrama?), and said, “I will do for him also Señorita.”
The men beamed with the teeeeppppzzz and we floated back to the hotel to pick up our belongings.
Puerto Vallerta, Mexico found itself entertaining some folks who were determined to make the most of the couple of days in the place.We gorged on fruit smoothies, had our fair share of entertainment by looking up the local art galleries like we were aficionados, and enjoyed a kind of a salsa-belly-dance program put up by the staff at the resort that made us look down at our own flourishing mid-sections a bit wanly (but we quickly washed this uncharitable thought straight down to the belly with another smoothie). The room had a dashing view of the ocean and the mountainous coasts nearby, and I enjoyed lolling around with a book in hand. The husband liked the idea of room service and we found ourselves eating at midnight just because we could (Could those poor belly dancers do that?). All fine so far, but for one snag. The day after we landed, we were to run a halfmarathon and say what you will about a run like that, it demands that you put in the time and effort before hand. Last minute efforts can only take you so far. We thought of it every now and then and then waved a hand away at it, and the thought went away – lifted and replaced by a beautiful tropical thought of taking a walk in the beach, or worse, lying down on the beach with that book.
On the day of our departure, however, I felt like I had to do a great many things in Puerto Vallerta. We had not done parasailing yet, we had not run in preparation for our half-marathon, we had not been to the cool, swirling waters. Say what you will about the Nourish-n-cherish household, but we do not hold back on whims like that. We take spurs-of-moments for a spin, we act impulsively, enthusiastically and then, wait and lick our wounds and let the experience ferment itself till it can turn into a good tale for the blog.
I set the alarm for 6:30 a.m. and got up promptly at 8 a.m. The husband is never pleased with the alarms I set, but that makes for another blog entirely. The mists of sleep shroud me and refuse to disperse when the blasted alarm rings every time. This is one of the times, I am lost for words and the poor h feels like a complaint lodged in the wee hours can have an effect on me and improve my alarm setting capabilities. I like his optimism.
Anyway, so there we were, at the hotel entrance at 8:15, ready for a run through the streets of Mexico. The hotel valet looked us up and down politely and said that people do run sometimes and we were welcome to try, but it is not a hot pursuit in Puerto Vallerta. I disagreed. It was the hottest thing to do. The temperature was a raw mid-90 F, the humidity a trifle high, but that apart, ideal conditions.We ran on the streets of Puerto Vallerta for a good 4-5 miles taking in the sights of a stirring business community. Small shop owners were up and about splashing water on the pavement outside their shops. They came out with their little hooks and started hanging their wares for folks to see. The humidity, splashing of water before the shops, hanging-the-wares, everything reminded us of India and the more we looked the more similar people were. Some people smiled at us, some could not mask their curiosity as they looked at us, children peeked at us shyly, some looked warily to see why mankind does things like running when there are hot Huevos Rancheros to be devoured.We gave them all a pleasant time by thumping up and down their pavement on the way to the beautiful Pier.
We beat it back to the hotel looking like dogs thrown into a stinky pool and panting like the best of them. The high temperature and humidity in the place had drenched us with sweat through and through. A dog on the sidewalk gauged our conduct with professional interest. I felt that we must humor him and tried a dog shake to shake off the clinging moisture, but apparently I don’t make a very good dog, for the fellow was not impressed and turned away. The mild sea breeze we encountered at the pier was long gone. We may have made poor dogs, but red-faced monkeys? We could have taught them a lesson or two. We crawled up the stairs to the hotel lobby and the valet asked us where we had been with concern in his eyes. I told him we had run to the pier and back.
“To the end of the pier?” he asked, his eyes widening with surprise.
“Yes. “ said I
“Very good Señorita. Great Señor” said he.
I don’t know about you, but when we impress hotel valets (who came to know of our existence about an hour ago) like this, we beam widely. We are not the kind of folks who regularly impress those around us with displays of our physical prowess and this kind of enthusiasm strokes the dormant hero in us. We feel like we have the potential to achieve great heights and that is why you could have seen me charging down a beach and chasing a man with a parachute an hour before we were to leave for the airport.
In a moment of weakness the husband and I signed up for a half marathon together. The fact that it was on my birthday was the clincher. Every time I participate in a running event, I love to see the placards that the folks use to encourage the runners. This time did not disappoint either. In fact, given that the course hugged the coastline for the most part, we had a fun run on the whole. There was music throughout the course. African drums, a senior citizen band, piano, bagpipes – you name it. Every mile there was something to look forward to. The Big Sur half marathon was truly a gift for the ears, eyes, heart and mind.
The incident I am about to relate happened after the Mt. Whitney hike but before the half marathon. It is important to get the chronological order right for what I am about to relate stalled the half-marathon practice for a good three weeks. It was about the time that Indian families around the globe were navigating chaos in their kitchens while celebrating Diwali. But there was a chaos of another kind in our household. The little fellow had fallen ill and was kept home from school. As the fever subsided, he started complaining of stomach pains. He was ill and his pain induced sympathy in the onlooker (there was probably about 86% pain and 14% drama, but all the same).
One day after a stern morning at the Doctors and a particularly lethargic pharmacy visit, I walked into the house dazed and stopped in my tracks. I must also mention that I had not really slept well in days. At first, I thought it was a hallucination I was having. There, in front of me were two grown men (father and grandfather) and a lady (grandma) baring their stomachs and massaging castor oil into it. Not only that, they were smacking their lips like it was tasty business and rolling their heads like they were in a spa and getting a first rate massage from a fantastic masseuse. “Err..” I managed to say after a moment of stunned silence, when the tummy-rubbing adults turned to me, nodded and went about their belly business again. A moment later, I think the husband realized that the scene before me was not normal, and told me that they had decided to try the placebo effect with the toddler in pain. They told him that if he rubbed a little bit of castor oil on his stomach, he would feel much better, and the fellow was resisting – great big tears rolling down his cheeks, looking miserable. So, they decided to go in for a demonstration of sorts.
The daughter sometimes shows wisdom beyond her years and had refused flat. She was peeking at the scene from a safe distance, lest she be pulled in. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Our laughing was so infectious that the son forgot his misery for a shining few minutes and reluctantly smiled too. It was beautiful to see.
Let me yank you back to the half-marathon now. It was around the eighth mile that I began having misgivings about the race. Till then, it was music, running, and coastal views. But around 8th or maybe the 9th mile, the mind started playing its little tricks on me. What was I thinking?Music? I could have listened to some of that at home. Running: wouldn’t a 3 mile run have done the trick? Coastal views? I could have driven here with a picnic basket and so on. The husband, who was running with me, was his usual effervescent self and I urged him to go ahead because I was developing a knee grind. I ran on a little slower than usual when I saw a person with a board that said,
What seemed like a good idea 4 months ago, doesn’t seem so brilliant now, does it?
That placard did for me what castor oil did to the tummy ache. I burst out laughing, and suddenly, there was a certain energy in my stride, a determination in my gaze. The husband slowed down to join me and we ran on together determined to make the best of it.
Happy Thanksgiving Folks and Laugh. Laugh as heartily as you can.
Nourish-n-Cherish 