Tag: Poetry

Nyctinasty Flowers’ Lessons

I could barely stay indoors. You see? The day had started off with a mild drizzle. After what felt like months of sunshine, a little bit of moisture felt amazing. I stood outside peering up at the clouds – in itself a rarity now given how parched things get during Californian summers in the Bay Area. Even with summer flowers blooming and vegetable gardens flourishing, I yearn for the simple pleasures of marvelous sunsets, clouds, a pattering of rain, some breeze.

That is perhaps one of the things I miss most about the Nilgiris – the western ghats in South India where the rain drops and eucalytpus provided the backdrop for magic and mysticism. The rains, the clouds, the winds – how in one day you can experience so many different climes and you have to be prepared for it all, and still go about your day.

Nature is Transformative

That evening I said, “Well – come on then! “  hustling everyone out to see the glorious sunset. The clouds had scattered during the course of the day, but there were enough of them still there –  enough to provide crepuscular glory with the rays of the setting sun. Some clouds looked like an artists reluctant brush stroke jostling right alongside the weightier ones. How every evening a different painting is rolled out to us continues to be a source of wonder.

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Art is transformative – so is nature.

It transforms ordinary days into extraordinary ones.

It assures you that normal is numinous.

Nyctinasty flowers

That evening, I took in the deer grazing near the river banks, the rising full-moon swollen, resplendent and beautiful against the setting sun orangish-red and bright. I don’t have to be a naturalist to know that the birds felt it, the deer felt it, the frisky fox felt it, the fish in the river felt it, the  flowers felt it. I stopped to admire everything – especially those that are classified as nyctinasty flowers :nyctinasty flowers like the evening primroses or gardenias  close up for the night. They show you the importance of closing and resting in order to bloom and spready one’s beauty for the next day.

If ever there is an appointment to keep, it is with nature in those moments in the golden hour when all the world is settling in for a quieter pace.

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Embracing the Tranquility of a Summer Evening

The day could have been better. My to-do list gave me reproachful looks all day long as I took care of many different things and accomplished nothing. It was time for this and time for that, not yet time for this-and-that, and oh-so-past-the-time for this-or-that. Finally, I wrapped up for the moment and headed out. It was a beautiful summer evening after all, and moping about not doing the work was not going to get it done. 

That’s how I found myself that beautiful summer evening, doing yoga in a friend’s garden that she had kindly invited us to. The sun’s rays danced through the maple leaves in the west, the mild breeze provided much required respite and made the italian cypress trees in the east look like they were dancing and swaying to the breeze too. 

The pink bougainvillea in the south leapt from fence to tree with such freedom of spirit, that I couldn’t help feeling a bit wistful at not being able to boldly leap and catch hold the way those plants did. How did creepers know whether they’d make it to the next branch? There must be a bold vision and a willingness to let go of safe harnesses that we never really stop to think about. I wonder how that feels – it certainly seems to be something we struggle with as adults more than as children. 

To complete the bucolic yogic scene, was the neighborhood black cat. Well-fed, preening its coat, gleaming in the evening sun and stretching every now and then to show us what a good stretch looks like, she lay there looking perfectly happy with the way her evening was going (or her days were going) by the looks of it. 

I told my friends about the state of to-do-ness that had ailed me that evening, and how the evening completely transformed it. My friends seem to have been in similar states of mind – and it all came spilling out the moment I said so. 

We smiled and drank in the scene: The cat did not care, the trees continued to sway, the leaves shone and the parched earth settled down to a cooler evening, the birds above made their way home. The purpose of life was right there, for those willing to take it.

The best part of the evening was the various angles from which we took in the garden – upside down, sideways. While breathing hard, while taking deep breaths. I tried taking the picture of the garden upside down, but of course all our tools seem to want to correct all our ‘mistakes’ and would not allow me to. So, I rotated the pic manually to retain the beauty of the world seen upside down.

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Dancing in the wind, with the sun on my face.

Playing hide-and-seek and eating a treat.

It reminded me of Dr Seuss’s quote on looking at life

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

Dr. Seuss

The Fascinating Behavior of Songbirds: A Morning’s Musings

It was one of those mornings in May – clear skies, the sun’s rays dancing through windows, and replacing moans quickly with sharpness and dedication.

I stood there wondering how it was so thoroughly that we transition from a supine, sleepy form to an alert, going-about-the-day form. The demands of the clock are relentless indeed. 

For an instant, I stopped to hear the beautiful voice of the songbird on our garden fence. It was trilling and beautiful, and I could have sworn just a little inspired – that last note a little higher than a human would have envisioned for that piece. 

It was as I was musing thus, that I noticed the son charging down the driveway to get to school on time – a sock hanging in one hand, a school project in another, and off we went. The songbird flew from my mind as we navigated the traffic, spoke of this-and-that, and chose music for the ride there. 

When I came back, the songbird was still flitting about here and there. I stood mesmerized by the little flashes of movements that my phone camera would not be able to capture anyway, and listened as it chirped, and went about gathering its breakfast.

I remembered a book that I had from the library – patiently waiting its turn.

A Songbird Dreams of Singing – By Kate Hosford, Illustrated by Jennifer M Pottersongbird

I flicked open the book. The poem about the songbird was there:

Other birds may dream of worms 

Or flower beds or thunderstorms 

But every night this bird performs 

A concert in his mind.

How marvelous to imagine a songbird rehearsing and getting better at its craft subconsciously – every night.

The book goes on to talk about research made about sngbirds:

In the case of songbirds, scientists at the University of Chicago have done studies on zebra finches demonstrating that the males practice and refine their songs while dreaming, adding little flourishes to make their version of the song unique. Zebra finches are diurnal birds who rest in the afternoon and sleep for about ten hours a night. Like many other songbirds, when they awake in the morning, they sing with particular enthusiasm in what is known as the dawn chorus.

Children’s book illustrators are so wonderful at their craft. This book too has beautiful illustrations, color schemes, and an overall look and feel of a book that is all set to send us to our worlds of dreams too.

So, what should we dream about, and subconsciously try to get better at?

We Belong: A Heartwarming Experience at the San Jose Public Library

As we stepped into the San Jose Public Library with the brood, I could feel a sense of contentment. It was pouring rain outside, and typically one of those days that the world, including Yours Truly, would have preferred to stay indoors, reading a book, drinking cups of tea and maybe dancing in the rain for a bit. However, we decided to hit the library and then the Art Fair afterwards instead. 

It was a good decision. It was also supposed to be a surprise – my portrait had been put up in the library as part of a We Belong series run by The India Currents magazine, and I felt doubly blessed. To have a picture of my dancing in a library – what more could the Universe give – both my loves of reading and dancing together! 

The husband, children and parents were all suitably impressed, and we took turns looking at all the portraits put up by the talented artist and photographer, Sree Sripathy from the India Currents Magazine. 

Seeing that the pouring rains would not be conducive to an outdoor Art Fair, we lounged around in the library instead. It was perfect Gluggavedur weather. (Gluggavedur is a delightful Icelandic word that signifies, ‘Window weather’ – beautiful from the inside, but too cold to go outside.)

Book: What a Wonderful Word – By Nicola Edwards & Luisa Uribe

All young, old and those in between were in their respective sections, while Yours Truly flitted about everywhere, dancing my way into everything from Seaweeds to Chinese Poetry and blurbs off novels. I didn’t link the fact that there was maybe an extra splattering of Star Wars content about till I realized it was May 4th – May the Force Be With You day. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent in a glorious haze of the sun peeking through the clouds, and raucous laughter with friends. It was after all World Laughter Day the next day.

World Laughter Day

May the Force Be With You!

The Problem of Perspective

It was one of those clear, cloudless days. The temperature was just right, when we stepped out of the house. A lazy dragonfly and a helicopter flying overhead got young minds and old talking about the similarities between them, and of course biomimicry-based inspiration between them.

Even as ubiquitous as air travel has become, that sense of aerial adventure still kindles something special and adventurous in us. I remember telling my friends the other while reading When Women Were Dragons book by Kelly Barnhill that I hoped to become a dragon – if not for anything, but for the soaring power of flight, and the perspective such an act affords us.

Seeing the world around us in different perspectives is an endless fascination is it not? It is why the artist painstakingly sketches that wart on the nose, or that dimpled chin, or that shadow of the leaf with so much love and attention. Perspective.

Perspectives in Art

So what is it about our day-to-day lives that we can apply the same principle to? We have been trained or naturally possess the ability to view a problem from another person’s perspective, in order to see their perspective. It all helps of course -it is what makes us human.

That morning as we watched the dragonfly flit and the helicopter fly lazily overhead – probably on a routine patrol, I felt the urge to see things from both their perspectives. What would they see? A young boy and a lady out on a walk, certainly, but what else? The helicopter certainly would not have seen the dragonfly, but could the dragonfly have seen or sensed the helicopter? I think so.

Watching the skies is endless fascinating especially if you live near fairly busy airport zones. A few hours later, I sat on the porch with a toddler, and peered up again – the child had spotted an aircraft and wanted to know whether it was a plane. “It is a 747!” piped a voice – older and wiser than the toddler, and he looked with awe at the plane overhead.

With my neck craned at the sky above, I felt a rush of gratitude for being able to relish these everyday joys with young minds. How often we don’t notice the planes, helicopters, and dragonflies overhead? How often we miss the perspective from above when solving the problems of our lives? If only, we could take our minds for a whirl of perspective, how marvelous that would be?

What is April to you?

April is many things to the poetic brain, to the romantic at heart. It even somehow manages to give a tinge of optimism to the incorrigible pessimists amongst us.

It is the month of gorgeous signs of spring in the bay area. Hillsides filled with green grasses and wildflowers in hues of yellows, pinks, purples & oranges everywhere. It is difficult to not be buoyed up in spirits when spring gets going like this around us. The butterflies flit, bees buzz, woodpeckers peck (drill?), tulips push up through the soil, flowers burst forth from buds, barren trees cloak themselves in new leaves. 

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Life, it seems, wants to be up and about.

April is not just when Spring is in its glory:

📜 It is the month of poetry – I picked up a bunch of poetry books from the library the other day, and have yet to get to them. It is the thought that counts.

🌎It is the month for our dear planet Earth – well Earth Day, but I really think we should dedicate a month in which we consume more conscientiously, make choices that help our only home and all that.

📚It is the month that has a day dedicated to Books – World Book Day. I found my pace of reading especially slow this month given everything, but I still clutched them inhaling the scent of my dearly beloveds that night – too tired to read, but too stubborn to put it away and fall asleep. Someone must’ve rescued them, for I saw them in a tottering pile on my bedside table in the morning, and smiled.

🧬April 25 is also World DNA day.

This month, I found myself wandering the planet, wondering where the time went, and watching in awe as the goslings hatched, and the bird parents showed us good parenting. I found myself being inspired by humans achieving remarkable things, finding time to do the things they love, pondering on what is inherent via DNA and what can be changed via nurture, being taken aback by what we are capable of doing to one and another, and so much more. 

I did not even feel my usual sense of helplessness as my to-do list remained stubbornly long. It is a list and has a right to exist, I told myself. Spring cleaning can wait, to-do lists can wait (maybe it is why we have World Workers Day on May 1st – to remind us to get back to that list) 

What is April to you?

😇 Even AI Knows 😈

A Guild of Authors

A friend and I were returning from a meeting in which authors from different genres were presenting their works. We fell to discussing the books that appealed to us, and what worked in the format, and what didn’t. I, for one, felt that giving folks a platform to present their books, while noteworthy, could just as well have been done via a YouTube short, but what would have been harder to achieve would have been moderating a discussion about the overlapping topics between the authors. That was something I would have loved to see.

A Company of Authors – Stanford Guild

The sections were grouped together by genre, and topic, so it would have been a good panel to have discussions around. 

Even AI Knows!

As conversations usually go, we meandered, and I said something to the effect of the housework and the truth of an Indian woman having its effect on writerly ambitions etc, to which he mentioned a joke he’d chanced upon, and I guffawed at the truth of it.

“With AI, I thought, it would take over monotonous tasks such as dishwashing and house cleaning, so I could take up Poetry & Art. Instead AI has taken up what little I had of Poetry and Art and left me to do the dishwashing and cleaning!”

Even AI knows to steer clear of household tasks, while humans (women still bear the brunt of the housework) are in charge of these mundane tasks. Who says the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor?

“Really! Of all the things I wanted help with – it was Art that was the least. Give us one tough thing to spend our lives mastering and perfecting!” I said. “Help me with robots – one for the chores, one for help to care for the aged, another with companionship for the lonely etc. Why art, literature and poetry?”

“I do think there are startups for every one of these in the off-ing somewhere.” said he – sanguine as ever and optimistic in the ways of the world’s future.

He was right of course.

Intuition & Instinct?

It did help us loop back to a book that was discussed in which the author spoke about intuition/instinct being a precursor to our conscious thinking, and whether AI would be able to simulate that level of prescience. Which made me wonder, whether that was what made us human, but plenty of us have learnt to ignore these things over time (after all, we don’t need to know when a tiger is lying in the bushes). But would it help us identify dangers in our life?

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More importantly, if that too can be modeled, what does that leave us with to claim our humanity? Messy emotions and imperfect decisions maybe?

Which brings me to the most important question: What would you like AI to help with, and what would you prefer AI kept is nose out of?

Analyzing Love

The niece & I were discussing the what-ifs, what-abouts, and why-nots of life. A vibrant character, she is also blossoming into a lovely young lady, and I told her so. She laughed.

“So do you believe in soul-mates?” she asked reminding me intensely of the sort of things the daughter would throw my way in terms of conversation.

“Yes!” I said without hesitation. I hope all of us have had that tug of friendship or love where we do not know why exactly we love a person, but we do. People name it different things: wavelength match, soul mates etc.

She tried narrowing it down though, to whether there is a soul-mate, whether destiny plays a role in determining our love lives and so on.

After a chatty session in which I got to enjoy the perspectives of the younger generation , I finally threw up my hands and said, “I don’t think we should analyze love too much. Just be glad that we can give and receive love.” 

She was kind enough to not roll her eyes at that, but I knew what it must’ve cost her to do so. “That is love!”, I said, and this time she did roll her eyes. 

All the talk about love and destinies and soul-mates and what not got me thinking on what a messy business life and love is. 

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Love in Literature

In the book, Forest of Enchantments, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni talks about all the different things love makes us do. This is a retelling of the epic saga, Ramayana, from Lord Rama’s wife and consort, Sita’s point of view.  

“My first lesson on nature of love was that in a moment it could fulfill the cravings of a lifetime, like a light that someone might shine into a cavern that has been dark for a million years.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

It is true:

Love anchors us, and unhinges us at the same time

It refines, and sometimes defines us

Love is predictable 

It also makes us do unimaginable things

Love keeps us rational

It also makes us behave irrationally

As quixotic and frustrating as it all is

Love is our only hope

I thought of all the heartbreak and hurt feelings that Love leaves in its wake,  of all the great stories of love that play out in our lives. Every single person around us has been affected by love or the lack thereof. We only need ask, and they only need tell.

It is my fervent hope that we all feel the positive and nourishing powers of love – whether from a friend, parent, uncle, aunt, teacher, guide, maid –  at some point or the other. Every loving interaction has contributed to who we are, and why we are the way we are. 

As Jane Austen says,

“There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.”

-Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Even the love we feel for each person is defined by moments in time.  So how can we rationalize, predict, counteract, and otherwise analyze this marvelous force? There is only one thing for it – be grateful.

It is why most of our literature, songs, ballads, and poems all need either love or war to make it enduring, as the daughter so eloquently put it, a few weeks ago.

War & Peace, Love & Power

Time as a Map of Reality?

Time in our Universe

I was reading about time, its paradoxes, black holes and white holes while awaiting our turn at the salon. It was a busy day, and luckily, the son and I had the foresight to take our books along to pass the time. 

Every time I looked up, I saw hairdressers concentrating on their craft, while making small talk and easing their customers to relax into their chairs. It is a gift, I realized, to get their customers to trust a stranger with scissors nipping at their heads. It is hair, and it does grow back. But it also does change your immediate appearance and the perception of yourself and those around you, even if only momentarily. For a species that is vain, visually conscious, it is a fine balance to get the right look. 

Time as a Map of Reality?

Back in my book on White Holes by Carlo Rovelli, the paradox of time was being explained:

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I can’t say I understood it all, but it was lovely to try:

“The reason we remember the past and not the future is entirely due to the fact that the universe was further from equilibrium at one point in the past than it is now.”

Whatever did that mean?

I read on about equilibrium, till I found something that I liked.

“The flow of reality is always more fluid than any of our frantic attempts to capture it might lead us to believe. Time is not a map of reality: it is a kind of memory storage device …”

I liked that. Time as a map of reality, or not?

No Trace Will Remain

I looked up trying to fix the concepts and the reality of my physical space at the same time. I noticed the many small ways in which we trust ourselves to those around us. It should all be organic, safe, slow, and yet in our quest for productivity everything has sped up. Watching barbers and hairdressers doing it all with confidence and aplomb in such a short span of time, was fascinating. 

Watching the people in the salon getting their hair cut with those cutting the n-th customers’ hair, while trying to understand the concepts of equilibrium and time is a strangely meditative experience. The son and I watched and read in turns. The annoyance of the long wait mitigated by the philosophies of being. 

“Sooner or later, every memory vanishes, canceled through the wear and tear of time. Sooner or later, of our proud civilizations, of everything that we have understood, of the words in books such as this one, of our controversies and of our desperate passions and loves…no trace will remain.”

“Would you come please?” It was our turn.

“Soon of our long locks of hair, no trace would remain!” I smirked to the son, and chin up, we made our way in.

At that moment where we are not in a black hole, or not reversing into white a hole, there is only the experience of time, and the trimming of hair.

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The Leap Wish

If you see me just for a day, with my nose transformed into a beautiful horn, and roaming the skies or plumbing the depths of the ocean, I can explain:

A Leap Wish?

“So, what do you wish can exist for one day only on Feb 29th? “ the son asks one evening.

“Hmm?” I am taken aback from the question, though I really shouldn’t be. The skies know I have had my fair share of them. But it still surprises me. 

“It can’t be a person, but it can be a magical power, a creature that is long extinct etc. Like a leap year wish – a leap wish!” he says. 

That was an intriguing thought. Something to wish for that only exists on Feb 29th. I thought, and thought about it shamefully for so long. Why was this so hard?

What would each of us like?

🐋“Hmm..maybe a chance to see our world from different perspectives? Like being a unicorn filled with magic and a narwhal who can dive deep and long?” I said. “Let me think about this a bit more. What would you want?” I asked him. 

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🦕Unsurprisingly, he came up with so many different things and versions, but finally settled on, “ I’d want dinosaurs to roam the Earth as they used to just for that one day, so we can see, how it all was for them.”

The husband said he would play the world to his advantage and ask to be able to teleport himself everywhere so he could experience a sampling of the world and make the most of 24 hours to make it 36 with the time differences.

“You and your can-do attitude. Can’t just take the 24 hours given to you – you have to optimize it to 36!” I chided him gently, though I admired him all the more for it, especially hearing what he had in mind.

🪸The coral reefs of the coast of Australia to the beaches in Brazil, a cold desert stop in the Gobi desert on the way to a hot one in the Thar desert or the Arabian one.

birthday

By the end of my conversation with him, I found myself thinking of longing and gratitude to live out our lives on this wondrous planet. 

What would you like?

What about you? What would you like to experience that one day? Remember, it only lasts a day. For all you financial magnates, if you want a billion dollars to experience life as a billionaire, remember you get to be yourself with your old bank account the next day. That may make the remaining days that much more normal – be warned!

I spent the walk back pondering on how our life would be if we each got our wishes. Would the leap day every four years be wondrous, exciting, nerve-wracking, frightful, beautiful, scary?

We’ve all heard of the gypsy’s curse: May you get what you wish for! In this case, would it be too much for us to handle?