Tag: My Family and Other Animals

🍁🍁🍁 Summer collapsed into Fall 🍁🍁🍁

🍁🍁🍁 Crunch Party!  🍁🍁🍁

I love Novembers. The weather finally starts to cool down. Crisp days with a nip in the air, mean the leaves are crunchy beneath our feet, and I find myself smiling as my feet go towards the dried falling leaves of fall.

“Crunch party!”, I say to myself in that sing-song tone of voice I used to use with the children when they were younger. The other day, the son came on a short stroll with me, and he said, “You know, I say – ‘Crunch Party!’ when I am running with my friends and land up crunching the leaves as I run.”

It isn’t something most parents would be proud of, but somehow that made me proud.

I used to ask them whether they missed me at school when they were younger, and after the first few days in school, the answer changed from a commiserating hug as they knew I was missing them to a shrug to an eyeroll to a look that clearly meant ‘Are-you-for-real?’ So knowing that he thought of our sing-song silly rituals of ‘Crunch Party!’ as he ran with his friends made me feel happy.

🍁🍁🍁 Neighborhood Reds 🍁🍁🍁

The other day, the daughter told me to send her pictures of the colorful trees in our neighborhood, and I was thrilled. The day was cloudy and the leaves against the dull greys made for excellent pictures. That every evening it started to rain, and off I went with an umbrella. Rain and eucalyptus scented earth with red, yellow and maroon leaves fluttering down is sublime.

When I stepped into the house only slightly wet and wind-blown, I was greeted by a wet son who had run in the rain. I sent the daughter pictures of the leaves and she sent back a smiley.

“Just like that summer collapsed into fall!” I said, as I collapsed on the sofa with a cup of tea in my hands, and thinking of Oscar Wilde’s quote.

What About Your School?

The joys of aging in a digital age

The son flopped on the bed, and gave me a commiserating look. I had a harried look on my face. I had just come back from university after a full day of teaching, and was surrounded by my course materials, some student books for grading, and looked like a demented owl looking for her sunglasses.

“Looking for your glasses or phone?” He said astutely, and I felt a little laugh gurgled up at that. He was right – I was always looking for one or the other. Talk about the joys of aging in a digital age.

Read Something?

“Well – Amma. How about I read you something while you look for whatever it is this time?”

I mumbled and groaned at the same time. “I would love that, but don’t you have work to do?” I asked him. It was 10 p.m. on a week-day night and most nights, he is busier than I am. High schoolers.

“I do….but let’s do this.”, he said, and picked up the book, My School Stinks.

I rolled at my eyes at his choice of book. I had picked it up from the library earlier that week, but still.

My School Stinks – Words by Becky Scharnhorst Illustrated by Julia Patton

It is truly a remarkable book. I love how children always astonish us. They have the ability to take something that unreal, know it is preposterous and go ahead to enjoy the nonsensical whimsical tales anyway. 

It starts off with

My desk mate STINKS, my locker buddy bites, and my teacher is UNBEARABLE.

I told Mom my classmates are WIL ANIMALS, but she said ALL little kids are wild animals. I think I’m going to be sick tomorrow.

The book carries on this vein, slowly turning our expectations and sentiments towards friendship on its axis, rotating it, reflecting it, and giving us a hilarious experience anyway. It turns out the boy was right – the school was full of wild animals – real animals and the family just drops him off and picks him up everyday without realizing that their son’s best friend could be a crocodile.

Well ?

The son & I cackled at the book, and I asked him. “Well – any wild animals in your school, my man?” And he responded with dead pan humor, “Of course!”

Then he went on to relate a totally hilarious and grossly exaggerated tale of the red hawk that made its home in the rafters of the school one time, and all the drama that ensued.

I told him about the time some child tried to flush a tree branch down the toilet and we each went back to our respective tasks with a smile on our faces.

 

A Whiff of Pine, A Hint of Grass

How we are influenced by the world around us is never more apparent to me than when I am trying to immerse myself in another world – one not rife with human presence. Our effects, unfortunately, is omni-present as the flash floods in Nepal proved.

Lines Written in Early Spring – By William Wordsworth

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
…
…

And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

  • William Wordsworth

But out on a nature trail surrounded by bird-song, peering above into the skies through the leaves in the branches above, is when the world feels alive. Alive in a calm, peaceful sort of way. That particular evening, there were no frenzied crows cawing or geese squawking. The goats in the riverbed near our trail seemed sanguine, munching away leisurely at the tall grasses. A great blue heron took flight and the son & I stopped to catch its magnificence, our breath catching for a minute as it flapped its wings directly overhead.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The son was running, I was biking. I was already in high spirits.

When Carnations Give You Hope

The carnations given to me by a neighbor had revived in spite of the hot few days, and as the first bloom smiled at me, I felt hope stir. This plant had been given to me with the assurance that I cannot kill them. “Carnations are hardy. You can’t kill them if you tried!”, she said confidently, and I shushed her.

“Challenge accepted!” I said, laughing. I placed it in a place where I knew there would be plenty of direct sunlight and water. Just as she said. She came over to inspect it and nodded approvingly.

Just a few days later, the carnation died. It took on a pale brown color, and then withered away. My face matched the poor c plant. Never one to give up that easily, I persevered. I watered it with extra care – I hosed down the flower beds, the front yard and the back yard with extra whim on hot evenings but lost hope about the carnations.

Then, the evening I took out my bike for a ride, I peered into the flowerbed and saw the little flower. My heart soared. I have always loved carnations – their bright colors and how long they stay vibrant for being such petite flowers.

If only they knew the vibrations in the heart strings they caused!

A Whiff of Pine & A Hint of Grass

My mind flitted from topic to the next. Carnations to the hawks who sat on low twigs in the riverbed, and the inevitable sufferings that human-beings are faced with. The sun’s rays glistened across the waters I rode by. Calm, soothing.

I got off my bike and took stock of the year gone by. It was already September. How could the leaves be turning color already? Yet, here we are. I rode back, and inhaled the scent of the freshly mowed grass doused with water, and felt grounded once more. The pine trees dripped with water droplets from a rogue sprinkler, and I gazed lovingly at them clinging to the pine needles. A yearning for rain, but a lovely reminder of one of my favorite children’s books, A Whiff of Pine, A Hint of Skunk.

Lines Written in Early Spring – By William Wordsworth

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

Feelings, hopes, life, all bound together in a single whiff of wet pine and grass.

Dragons in the Dusk

Glad for the Gibbous Moon

It was a beautiful waxing moon – the sky was alight with happiness. The beautiful cirrus clouds had done a marvelous job painting the skies in pastel shades. The moon hung low and golden in its gibbous glory. (I know how that sounds – but I am glad – Get it? Get it?) 

Time felt precious, maybe because it is. The school year started for the son, and for me too. I am suddenly more strapped for time than I thought possible. I am up early, on my feet all day, doing my teaching and assignments, and barely get to see the teenage son, who has also managed to fill up his days with high school friends and activities.

It was a beautiful evening. The mind was perhaps not as sharp as it should be. I knew dinner was a half-done affair, but we decided to step out together. All of us meandering on our walk admiring the clouds and the setting sun and the waxing moon. Trying as the day may have been, there is something immensely soothing about the light of dusk.

Magical. 

Pareidolia

Of course, humans have a word, albeit a really obscure one, for our indulgence with finding shapes in clouds. Many beautiful walks have we spent looking for dragons, whales and sheep amidst our companions in the skies. It is a marvelous activity, and that day, the clouds looked like kites trailing their wishes behind them. How marvelous that there should be a kite in the skies as well?  

Spotting dragons in the dusk can be very satisfying. The clouds, kites, comets are all there to indulge us, aren’t they?

“I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.”

― Bill Bryson, Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America

Is there more to life? Our lives? Most lives? I don’t know. But I know that ‘this one precious life’, as Mary Oliver puts it demands our attention. What you value, and what you remember over the moments of your life, becomes you, doesn’t it?

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=time+of+youth

If you’re looking for more obscure words with some soothing music to accompany it, please check out this youtube channel. I have never seen this many fantastical words, and I certainly don’t remember them. But I feel happy knowing they are there, all the same.

Note: I am aware that we are well into the waning moon season now – but life was a trifle hectic over the past week, and I really could not find a quiet moment in which to post my thoughts of the clouds and the moon.

The Unlikely Friendships of Larks & Koalas

Sunrise! Sunrise! Please don’t sing!

It was one of those swift week-end trips to the Pacific Northwest. An early morning flight to catch meant that we were out before the sun rose. Watching the sunrise is something I do not do often, but when I do, I like it to be just the way I am. A little sleepy, groggy, the rays of the sun slowly brightening the skies. Taking its time. 

I have written about this appalling tendency of some people to get up and switch themselves on like fluorescent flashlights illuminating an international football stadium. The daughter and yours truly are not like that. We like to take our time. Rise and shine in slow motion after a cup of coffee preferably. We have just switched out from another realm of our dreams to earth, and we like to adjust.

The daughter looked like a rock. Literally. She had a brown hoodie pulled over her head, and looked slightly delirious if addressed. Clearly wishing to be left alone. Her eyelids drooping behind the eyelids. Yours Truly did not have the hoodie, but I was yawning so relentlessly even after a shower and a cup of coffee, that no one but visiting fruit flies should have come near me.

The husband, on the other hand, had this beaming smile on his face, and was … get this … hold your breath … dancing to the appalling music he had on. The daughter and I moaned, but it didn’t seem to deter him. Feigning sleep only seemed to make this enthusiasm worse. “Come on!”, he said with an exaggerated dance move that made the car swerve a bit with the early morning winds of the bay.

Sunrises soothe souls

I was lost for a solution when I peeked outside and the caught the pinkening of the skies. Like soothing an overactive child, I directed his attention to the skies. He wow-ed and look-ed – but at least the dancing had stopped. The daughter’s feeble , “Good job ma!” Was all the appreciation I needed. The sunrise had given us all what we were looking for.

What was it that made some of us diurnal creatures and others nocturnal? How is it some of us are koalas and groggy after 18 hours of sleep and a dose of eucalyptus oils, while others chirp and think nothing of belting out that early morning birdsong and hopping about – what are these birds? Yes, larks.

We were like larks and koalas in the mornings, and somehow, we manage to shake down together on this earth. Talk about unlikely friendships and all that.

Are you good at this-and-that OR that-and-this?

Indians in India have this habit of rising at ungodly hours to drink coffee. Even when there is nothing much to be done for the rest of the day. Why potter about at 5:30 in the morning, rouse the household, and drink coffee if you are only to get into bed for a nap at 11 a.m?

There have been plenty of studies showing that an early riser is good and this-and-that, while late-night folks are good at that-and-this. 

This turtle that I saw in the Pacific Northwest after a good few hours of sunshine, was rising and clearly taking its time. I saw it shrinking from the energetic joggers and speed walkers, and felt a sense of kinship with it. Even though I got a baleful look at the fact that I crouched down to take its picture that early in the morning, I thought I’d share it with my readers. 

So tell me. How are you in the mornings?

Sunsets, Asanas & Aces: A Magical June 21st

Yesterday was a beautiful summer day – it was a culmination of 3 days that are all uniquely loved in the nourish-n-cherish household. Any guesses?

Father’s Day:

This year, father’s day coincided with the summer solstice, which means the loved father in the house got to play his tennis, lounge around with the kids in the pool, and enjoy a quiet evening while the sun was still out.  

Other Father’s Day posts: Fathers

International Yoga Day:

June 21st is also International Yoga Day. So I was genuinely thrilled to start the day with an early yoga class. My muscles were just waking up- sure. The limbs not yet nimble enough – yes. The breaths not yet the even meditative quality – of course. But in spite of that, or may be because of that, the yoga class felt amazing. For all these elements had somehow been made even better by the end of the class.

Buddha in Lotus?

 

Summer Solstice:

June 21st is the summer solstice. We love the summer solstice. The son, even as a young boy, would have his friends out all day playing dawn to dusk on the longest day of the year. It was something that strangely excited him. Osmosis of energy – is that a thing? But in time, we all look forward to seeing the sunrise and sunset on summer solstice too.

When it turns out to be a pleasant day temperature-wise, breeze-wise, clouds-wise, moons-and-planets-shimmering-wise, it turns into a magical day. We went swimming, lazed around watching the sunset, moonrise, and the beautiful cosmic planets shining near the moon. Jupiter, Venus and the moon truly look beautiful in the evening skies.

Summer Solstice related posts

How did you spend the summer solstice, father’s day & yoga day?

🥬🌿 Cabbage extravaganza 🥬🌿 & 🥬🌿 Coriander dhamaka 🥬🌿

The Buy-more-save-more theory in economics

Which one do you buy?

  • The $0.50 for 1 coriander bunch OR
  • The $1 for 3 coriander bunches?

There is a theory in game theory that Mark Whatzisname wrote about. The Paradox of Choice. Give people a choice of buying 3 cokes for a dollar, or 1 coke for 50 cents, and most people would buy 3 cokes.

The pater would have bought 15 cokes for $5.

He calls it Economics (Buy-more-save-more) . The rest of us call it a variety of names – well, this is a family-friendly blog, so let’s keep away from that shall we?

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I could have bought 3 coriander bunches. I bought 1 coriander bunch for 50 cents. 

The economic upheavals of choice

In that one second interaction, in which I told the billing clerk – ‘It’s okay. I’ll just take this.”, it is astounding the number of things that went through my head.

🥬🌿 The father’s disappointed face. As mentioned, he is a big connoisseur of the buy-more-save-more theory. He is proud of it. He says that is the path to economic prosperity- so in that small act, was I rebelling against the pater? Delayed as far as rebellions go – who rebels after leaving teenage behind so long ago? The pimples a distant memory of turbulence on the face.

🥬🌿 The potential chutneys and thogayals the extra 2 bunches could have gotten me.

🥬🌿 I was already long in line. I had to leave the store in minutes – did I really need to hold up the line for 2 bunches of coriander that cost less than a dollar? Not to mention the half-rotting bunch already in the fridge. There is only so much coriander a nuclear family can consume.

Now, there are people who will come and tell you not to let things like occupy your mind for longer than its worth. I ask you. Who is to tell my brain this?

Paternal disappointment is a hard thing to swallow. I saw the pater’s face across all the decades, across the churning oceans, and across the continents on Earth crumple in disappointment. And I felt a stab of guilt. I almost gave in and went back to running across the aisles of the grocery store. Luckily I had places to be.

🥬🌿 Cabbage-o-phobia from Cabbage Extravaganzas 🥬🌿

I called the parents that evening, and was greeted with the mother’s characteristic shriek. “Your father has bought a large cabbage again! What am I do with 3 large cabbages for a family of 4?”

I shelved the coriander problem to attend to the more urgent cabbage problem, and asked the pater what he was thinking. Did he not know there were two large cabbages at home already – given that he had bought them himself the previous day?

“Yes kondhai (child) – but they were on sale. Yesterday, it was a buy-one-get-one cabbage sale. Today was a cabbage extravaganza.” He said looking befuddled as to how his sound economics was landing him in trouble again.

“There are so many cabbage dishes – you can make cabbage curry, cabbage kootu.” Then, he looked lost again – his cabbage repertoire seems to have given out at this point, and he looked to me for help. I laughed, and gave the mother ways to hide a cabbage in cooking – “You can boil it, and mash it for pav bhaji, sneak some into soup, without everyone developing a cabbage-o-phobia.”

Note to reader: There  is a phobia of cabbages that falls under the Lachanophobia bucket, also known as  Brassicaphobia.

“Do you know what I sent him to buy? Ladies finger (okra). The child has been asking for vendakkai (okra in Tamil)  curry – so I sent him to buy just that since he already went grocery shopping yesterday. He came back without vendakkai and a large cabbage the size of his head instead!” She said.

Cabbage extravaganza & Coriander dhamaka indeed!

I laughed, and felt this was a good point in the story to lord my superior decision making skills with the coriander bunches.

Really, after all these decades on this planet as a daughter to these two, I have learnt nothing I tell you.

The moment I said it, the father moaned. “You left free coriander on the table? Have I taught you nothing?”

The mother who was shrieking about cabbages not even half a minute ago, turned on me with equal disappointment, “You could have made coriander pickle and stored them for over a month! “

“Yes – why don’t you call me after you are done pickling the cabbages?!” I said smartly, and put the phone down. Grocery stores really don’t realize their social responsibilities, the time and effort their deals cost us. Indo-US relations

Cabbage extravaganza & Coriander dhamaka indeed!

🫐 It’s a 🫐 Plum 🫐 Life! 🫐

🫐 It’s Plum Season 🫐

I’ve written about the Joys of Jam Making.  I do love the fruitful camaraderie from plum season.

I waved at the Fed Ex truck driver as he turned into our street. The son said, urgency dripping in his voice, “Quick ma! Now you’ve established contact – you can give him some plums!”

I stared at him.

A beat.

Then. I started laughing.

The wag!

I have been accosting all those who come home with delicious plums, but this felt a bit much. Plum season in our neighborhood arrives with a splash. Suddenly, there are dozens of plums plopping all over the backyard. Ripe, tasty, beautiful plums.

🫐 Plums in a Splash 🫐

I cannot help missing the mater. If she were here, she would be making plum jams, plum chutneys, plum pickles, plum juice, plum rasam till we all heartily felt sick of plums. I myself have been going in and picking up plums by the dozen and bringing them in to share with friends. I can barely understand how quickly the bare tree, bloomed into the prettiest blossoms, and gave in to the light green beautiful leaves before sagging with fruits at every point.

It is a miracle, and yet, every year, I am mesmerized.

One day, I felt three plums hit me from the topmost branch. I was picking those that had fallen, and then realized that these three could have been the handiwork of squirrels. I looked up at them beseechingly. What was the point of all that exciting running around and chasing each other on fences if they weren’t helping out with the plums? As if responding to me, one cheekily stopped and held my stare, as if to say, “I have had my fill. A fella has got to jump and run!”

🫐 Did You Know? 🫐

Fruits arriving in bounty are a blessing. The children, despite my best retreats, continue to resist the lure of fruits. Every year I start it up – each time with a different taste-bud related tip. “Did you know? Your taste buds change over time?”

“Did you know having a fiber-rich helping of fruits helps your gut bacteria?”

“Did you know fruits help make you happier because the gut bacteria love digesting them?”

“Did you know this?”

Or

“Did you know that?”

To which, I also receive a plummy reply, “Did you know we don’t like plums?”

What I did not know until recently, is that not all plums dried become prunes. Of course I had a gooey rotting mess before I learnt that particular fact, but apparently, only a certain variety of European plums can be dried to be preserved as prunes. Oh well.

If I could send some plummy goodness via the internet, I would. But as it is, somethings still require physical proximity. But if you are in the vicinity, please stop by. We’ll have a plum time!

Moon, plum blossoms, this, that, and the day goes

Kobayashi Issa

Up to my neck!

The Giraffologist 

I sat with a set of children’s books in my arms. I looked down fondly at the one in my hands. The first one was about a giraffologist – the title pulling my attention almost immediately. What a delightful sounding profession?

The Giraffologist – Anne and her Tower of Giraffes – by Karlin Gray and Aparna Varma

The book is based on Dr Annie Innis Dagg who was the world’s first giraffologist. The world’s first primatologist, Dr Jane Goodall, is of course well-known. But Dr Annie, who went to Africa to study her favorite animals, giraffes, just 4 years later is practically unheard of. That is the weird nature of public attention.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/new-heritage-minute-anne-innis-dagg-giraffes-1.7648146

Dr Annie’s life and work was made into a documentary in Canada honoring her work towards preserving these tall creatures.

The daughter’s drawing of a giraffe:

Bill Bryson’s book, The Body – A Guide for Occupants

I was thinking of giraffes and their beautiful necks one day after reading Bill Bryson’s book, The Body – A Guide for Occupants. One section of the book dealt with how prone we are to choke. One particularly sad anecdote about a person who had a gold coin lodged in his throat was especially excruciating. If nothing else, I am glad we now live in a time and age when surgical techniques have come so far from the ones outlined in the book. (The coin only fell out when he was hoisted by his foot and swung like a pendulum. )

Beautiful Necks Everywhere!

Our evolution into bipedalism means that necks took on a truly unique structure to support the head, and provide a forward looking face for navigation. I stopped and chuckled at that. I was on a walk, and just like that, I started noticing necks everywhere. The crane, the gray heron, the hummingbird, the dog, squirrel and the cat.

I got home to look up the giraffe’s neck again.

Did you know that both giraffes and humans have the exact same number of bones in our necks : 7

Yet, the giraffe’s neck supports its long neck, and its heart supports pumping blood all the way up there. All those jokes about tall folks( How’s-the-weather-up-there?) suddenly feels biologically profound.

In any case, the understanding of our biology, our evolution, and our unique places in the planet is shaped by so many factors –  How many giraffes with weird ears and longer tails evolved before the long necked ones that we know and love?

I craned my neck to look at a white egret crook its neck and plunge into the waters with precision and force for its breakfast, and gently massaged my own neck. ‘Up to my neck with worries’ took on a new meaning too, and I hoped giraffes and herons never had to use that phrase, when worried.

21 Years of Blogging – My Blog is now an Adult!

21 years of blogging

Just like that, my blog has become a proper functioning adult. 

21 years of selectively writing about what matters to an ordinary person. Somehow, reflecting on the writing makes it seem like our lives were more adventurous, humorous, and fun-filled. 

Now, isn’t that a lovely gift? 

I was reading Bill Bryson’s book, The Body, and in it, he says something incredible about memories – that we can predominantly choose what we want to remember. That often our most colorful memories aren’t the original ones at all – but rather deepened by the feeling and retelling of it. We’ve seen it in the stories we love to tell each other all the time. Every time we laugh about our own foibles, it makes the memory a more endearing one, doesn’t it? 

Where am I going with all this?

Curating the blog’s theme

I realize that I am probably tending to what gets on my blog. I tend to actively gravitate towards what I want to cherish in life – beautiful moments, humorous moments, peaceful moments, intellectual moments: in short, moments of awe, curiosity, love, levity, and transformation. The negative rooted out like weeds (which is not to say that I don’t have them. I do, of course. Just in measured quantities on the blog.) 

Anyway.

There are no awards given for 21 years of writing 1-2 blog posts a week, every week for 1092 weeks. 5-9 posts a month for 252 months. The award is the writing, and the wholly generous readers who stop by to wave, hopefully feel a moment of peace, get a laugh or two, and encourage me endlessly. 

So, go ahead – this is a party! 

Get drunk – I mean on the posts in the blog. I don’t actually offer alcohol. Please head on over and randomly click on any month, read a few, and let me know what you think, or you know, just have fun. 

“I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.”

― Bill Bryson, Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America

Is there more to life?

Is there more to life? Our lives? Most lives? I don’t know. But I know that ‘this one precious life’, as Mary Oliver puts it demands our attention. What you value, and what you remember over the moments of your life, becomes you, doesn’t it?

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. – Mary Oliver

P.S: WordPress tells me I have a significant achievement: World Domination – for receiving visitors from over 150 countries – with the sweet caption: The United Nations has nothing on you.