Travel – Page 6 – Nourish-n-Cherish

Sarees for Mothers

A Sari for Ammi

It is Asian Heritage Month, and the library is vibrant. I saw this book, A Sari for Ammi – Story by Mamta Nainy illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat.

I thought I’d write about this for Mother’s Day, for it is a heartwarming tale.

The young children of sari weavers watch in awe as their parents work on their arts of creation every day. Dyeing the threads, working the looms, selling their brilliant creations at the local market. Their beautiful mother, who creates magical saris can seldom wear a sari -she usually wears the practical and old salwar kameezes she owns – for she can neither afford the sairs she weaves, nor can anyone buy these for her. They are Kota Doria fabric weavers, and many generations ago moved to the Rajasthan area from Mysuru in South India at Rao Kishore Singh – the then ruler in Rajasthan.

Sari_ammi

The children decide to buy a sari for their mother: One she particularly liked, and one of her own creations. Of course, they realize that they do not have enough to buy a sari, and the heartwarming tale pushes on.

Buying a sari for a mother is a special joy – one that Indians know and appreciate. For many years, I felt sorry that I could not indulge in this simple pleasure when my mother or mother-in-law came to stay with us in the USA. Luckily, now we have a few stores, and online options, but that was not always the case.

A simple book that taps into the simple joys of buying your mother figures a saree.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all the wonderful mothers and mother-figures in your life.

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.

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?

Vibrance of Variety

Flight journeys to exotic lands across the planet are tedious. Grateful as I am for flights, and the miracle of hot food, good air, and the view from above. It can get to be a trifle monotonous after the first 10 hours, By 12 hours, it is painful, by 14 excruciating. You get the picture.

This time, we got to chase the sun rising over the Arctic Tundra. I peeked out into the orange horizon, and gasped. The sun rising over the clouds and us watching from above can give us quite the divine feeling. A feeling that only travelers in the past hundred years have had the blessing to experience. Sailors may have experienced this divinity while out in the oceans, hikers and mountaineers have been trying to experience this phenomenon from up above.

I did not get good pictures from up above this time, but some older pictures are always worth seeing again.

I was trying my best to stretch, glide and keep the body supple as I walked up and down the flight, waving my little hellos to the babies who had all decided that sleeping was not something to do when surrounded by this many people. What an adventure this was! Why would anyone waste it sleeping?

I looked at the poor parents, and they stood bleary eyed, teary eyed, weary all rolled into one. I remembered with a shudder the travels and travails of traveling with babies.

Never awaken a sleeping tiger cub…

One baby was friendly and smiled. He grinned and was the highlight of my flight. He reminded me of the daughter all those years ago when I haunted the flight corridors with her.

“You have a bassinet, my dear! Why would you not sleep? Lie down – stretch those little arms and legs and just sleep!” I coo-ed and he giggled.

“I wish we had bassinets!” I said to the frazzled mother, and she agreed heartily.

Walking up and down the flight and out in the airports, I couldn’t help noticing the number of different personalities in the world. Were there really infinite possibilities of personalities in this world? The combinatorial explosion is hard enough to contend with. Then, over and above, nature, is nurture. Each one, whose circumstances helped shaped them in drastic or subtle ways.

I had been reading a rather large family saga over the past few days, and realized that no matter how many personalities we encounter in this world, we will still be surprised by humankind.

The baby cooed and asked to be shown the panel wall behind me, and I obliged. We smiled yet again and took a peek at the sun rise, then a few hours later, we left the blazing day behind and kept flying into the night. The babies cooed and cried, laughed, and danced. Each personality budding and developing into their own personalities to add to the vibrant variety we already have on this planet.

“So, how old are your children now?” the mother asked with a yearning look as I tried to shake sleep. I assured her that time would fly past and she can soon dream of sleep on long flights!

Wind💨, Rain 🌧️ & Boats ⛵️

In what was a beautiful wind-whipped whirl one morning, the on-a-spring-break son and I went on a walk. Power & Internet were down, which meant we could both twirl off on our adventures while these things were being restored.

A few minutes in, we were confronted with a huge water pipe that gushed out in great spades. The county’s water department was already there looking into the problem, while we stood watching in awe as the water spooled off into the drain. Clean water.

“Hmm…everything decided to go nuts huh?!” the son said, as we stopped to marvel at the swift waters.

“Do you think we’ll have time to head back and bring back papers to make boats?” he asked, after a few seconds of awed water watching. I saw the determined faces of the county workers’ faces gleam with triumph – they had fixed the problem no doubt, which meant our time was short. Luckily, it was also garbage day, and the windy day had scattered a couple of pamphlets in the wind as the garbage truck tipped the contents over. So, off we went chasing after these pamphlets to make into paper boats.

If the maestros of productivity were to observe us that morning, there would be a lot of tutting, and note-taking on ways-to-improve, but we felt amazing.

Our boats, Mitillandimus Tittilandumas, and Mixter Baxter Junior fared the best. The remaining capsized before starting. For those interested, our boat christening was inspired by Gerald Durrell’s boat, Bootle Bumtrinket, in the book, My Family and Other Animals.

There does not seem to be a word to capture the sense of adventure, contentment and joy watching your paper boats take off on adventures, but we both highly recommend the experience.

What kind of life is it always to plan

and do, to promise and finish, to wish

for the near and the safe? Yes, by the

heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want

a boat I couldn’t steer.

~ Mary Oliver, Book: Blue Horses

Just as the last of our boats disappeared with the rivulets, the wind picked up, and we tried keeping ourselves upright as we continued on. It was no use. Within minutes, the winds were accompanied by plump raindrops, and we scuttled back home.

It had been a useful outing, and we came back refreshed and grateful that the rains started lashing down a few minutes after we reached. Back home, the power gods had restored electricity but not the internet. So, we settled ourselves down to a cup of tea and cocoa. We sipped in silence while the rain pattered all around us.

“Wonder what happened to our boats!” the son said finishing his hot cocoa, and we smiled together. They were not in safe harbor, and it was an exhilarating thought.

🌸🌸🌸 Oubaitori in Spring Time 🌸🌸🌸

Spring is here, and with it, the delightful uncertainties of the weather.

Would it be a cold, bright, cloudless day, or a cold, cloudy day, or a warm sunny day? The possibilities are endless. Sometimes, I feel like a lamb in spring-time ready for a spot of prancing and rollicking in the hills, other times, like a caterpillar not yet ready to shed the cocoon.

Springtime is a fantastic excuse to wear a silly hat and chase after unicorns, wouldn’t you agree?

– Uncle Fred in the Spring Time – By P G Wodehouse

With the increasing length of our days, it is a beautiful feeling to step out into the sunset at the end of the day, The golden hour seems more radiant, and seems to even linger more, though that just may be due to the fact that the body has had the time to sip a cup of tea at the end of the day before sunset.

One evening, I stopped to savor a fat plop of a raindrop on my face, and saw that the cherry trees had leaves on them. The flowers had all but gone. They were there two days ago. I peered at another tree not far away, still resplendent in its floral beauty, and another one that had a good smattering of brown leaves along with their pinkish blossoms. Once again, that longing to capture the blooming and blossoming in slow-motion came over me. How lovely it would be to sit and watch for the leaves to come in?

Ah! What little things give us pause?!

I read about a beautiful Japanese concept, Oubaitori

The ancient Japanese idiom, Oubaitori, comes from the kanji for the four trees that bloom in spring: cherry blossoms, plum, peach, and apricot. Each flower blooms in its own time, and the meaning behind the idiom is that we all grow and bloom at our own pace.

A few days later, I went on another walk, this time peering up at a clear blue sky, and no jacket, only to notice the young gingko trees in the neighborhood beginning to sprout their light green leaves of beauty. I remembered the large gingko tree we’d long admired. That large tree, over a century old, fell in the winter storms this year, and I felt a pang. The patch on which it stood was overgrown with fresh grass, and a meadow full of yellow flowers. Nature’s lessons and epiphanies are rarely novel, but always welcome.

Making a mental note to go for a short hike in the beautiful green hills nearby, I reluctantly headed home.

Spring time is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s Party’!

– Uncle Fred in the Spring Time – By P G Wodehouse

Maybe it is time for a spot of springtime laughter with the maestro, P G Wodehouse himself.

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.

Screenshot 2024-02-28 at 8.40.47 PM

🦕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?

A disruption of ducks

There is a curious rhythm to the days after our India trip. The usual things still occupy our time – school, work, projects, commutes, the changing landscapes of nature, and all the rest of it. Maybe it is the throes of a winter season, or the fact that after the intense ceremonies of the beginning of the month, the quiet is disconcerting, but we felt on edge.

Like the hedgehog, we found ourselves peeking out of our hidey holes to see if life is normal, and finding that it is, were somewhat taken aback. Do you mean to say that we must plan to prune the roses?

Oh well, all right. If you insist, I suppose.

One morning, the son and I finding ourselves at a loose end decided to take a bike ride to dissipate some of this energy.

“Amma! Look – I just saw a hedgehog peep out.”

“Oh nice! It is close to February, so it must be checking.”

“I didn’t see if it saw its shadow though – we were going too fast!” said the son.

It was a lovely day – the feel of wind against our cheeks, the gentle cumulus clouds overhead, and the bay hosting a large variety of birds. We stood there taking in the beautiful sights when hundreds of birds took flight all at once, and then, as though nothing had happened, flocked back to their original place a few moments later. The son and I had a number of ideas as to what caused the disturbance, each more juvenile and silly than the next, but left us cackling all the same.

No one could deny the beautiful shared experience of the disruption – the birds heaving in one smooth cacophony and the humans ashore fumbling quickly to capture the sudden movements and failing miserably.

It reminded me of the book I was reading the previous day, On Duck Pond – By Jane Yolen Pictures by Bob Marstall.

on_duck_pond

As I walked by the old Duck Pond

Its stillness as the morning dawned

Was shattered by a raucous call:

A quack of ducks both large and small …


An understanding quickly dawned:

We’d shared a shock, and now a bond

And I was feeling very fond,

Of everyone on old Duck Pond.

As always the day out in nature surrounded by the fabulous clouds, the sun’s rays, the beautiful lights of the ocean, the stories the son and I swapped on our ride, the birds, first signs of spring in the wildflowers by the bay, had weaved its magic, and we returned home refreshed in mind and spirits.

img_9442-effects

P.S: A group of ducks, as Jane Yolen mentions in her book, are known by a number of names:

A raft of ducks

A paddling of ducks

A badelynge of ducks

Also, bunch, grace, gang or team.

Stimulus🧘🏼‍♀️ 🪷 Pause 🧘🏼‍♀️ 🪷Response

“Life in India is so fast and hectic, isn’t it? “ . We were discussing the fast and furious pace of India with friends. We were each reminiscing our respective trips to India – both made under difficult circumstances, and we were both glad to be back home in the United States.

I nodded fervently, and said wistfully, “Yes – at least during the time I was there, the concept of solitude was rarely acknowledged.”

“Solitude?” And we all laughed. It was true – the populace, and the ways of life make slowing down much harder than usual. It isn’t made any easier with the speed of communications and transportation in cities. The very essence of vibrance that is a huge advantage and a beauty to the civilization was also a disadvantage.

There are times when I have marveled at how the Indian way of life came up with practices such as meditation and yoga, but then I also realize that it was there that it could have developed, for it was required to build still pockets of serene moments into one’s life. in fact, the concepts are nothing short of brilliant. The pause between breaths is essential to be mindful of, when it may be all you can get in terms of mindfulness. The breath becomes the prana in very significant ways. The pause, when rarely taken, becomes harder to practice, and yet the pause becomes that tiny moment of choice in our agency of life.

There are so many aspects to the Philosophy of Being (I am amused it has such a strictly medical sounding name: Ontology)

Keeping ontological explanations aside, if The Nature of Being comes down to simple techniques of breath, fluidity and movement, it makes the simplicity behind it all brilliant.

For many years I had thought of this quote, attributed to Victor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”

-Quote widely attributed to Viktor Frankl, Author of Man’s Search for Meaning, but not sure: Between Stimulus & Response

Back home, I savored the morning air, as I stepped out for a brisk walk embracing the nippy air. I felt like I could finally hear myself think, and I had a beautiful walk weighing and thinking of such topics as courage, resilience, choices, decision-making etc in the context of our work and personal lives. How one helps us evolve in another sphere, and how we are as human-beings are nothing more than the function of life’s ebbs and flows.

Sun Rise Sun Rise!

We stood there waiting for the sunrise over the Grand Canyon.

We had driven up there the previous evening in what felt like 20 degree weather. The moon lit scapes around us were beautiful from inside the car, but outside, it looked unforgiving. It was cold, and the desert around us was different enough. Even so, the same landscapes at night take on a different feel and dimension altogether. The shelves of stone around us in the early morning light of dawn was breathtaking. As if a different hue was revealed with every tilt in angle of the sun’s rays.

How drawn to light we are as a species? Somewhere, the sharp smells of pine wafted through, and I wondered briefly whether we stopped to let our other senses weigh in as much when we have sight and light.

I suppose we do let sounds and smells in, and do allow our sense of touch to help us along. But do we really develop our other senses? A preliminary search says we gather about 80% of our sensory perceptions using sight.

Dogs, on the other hand, seem to distribute their perceptions between sight, smell and sound.

The early morning calm of the sun-rise and my meandering thoughts were interrupted by the loud calls of a mother looking for her children. I turned around irritated, and was somewhat surprised that I was surrounded by this many people on a cold Christmas Day morning, standing on a cliff overlooking the Grand Canyon and waiting for the sun to rise.

But I suppose, it was my fault for not expecting this. It promised to be a beautiful day, after all, and like me, many had decided to brave the cold, and take in the marvelous sunrise over the horizon at a point helpfully named Sunrise Point.

I let out an amused grin, and exchanged a look with the children – they seem to have caught on to my look of surprise at finding other people there. It was a beautiful moment: the mother pulled her child towards her, and the sun burst forth in glory over the horizon.

All was well with the world at this moment.

Let’s go for some breakfast and then take a long, quiet walk along time, I said shuffling away from Sunrise Point, and the children chuckled at the thought. We are not an early rising family, and we scurried inside towards warmth, food and coffee before attempting to take on people and canyons.

The Tides of the Year

It is already that time of the year when people are making lists, and reminiscing the past year. I don’t feel like it has been 12 months since we last did this exercise, if we are being honest. I just wrote out all the books I read in 2022, is it already time for me to do the 2023 list? I feel strangely like a student in the headlights before the final examinations. Wait a minute – I was supposed to have read this and that. My bedside table is sagging, with half-read books, to-be-read books.

I planned to write about this topic and that book, and well, that possibility too, if it comes to that. My document with burgeoning ideas and drafts looks worse than ever with half completed phrases and paragraphs. In short, it feels like a construction site : a promise of feverish hectic activity, but a dull ache between the eyes while thinking of shaping it all up.

Looking back over the past few years, it seems to be the same song sung : pace of life, the months whizzing by, and all that.

However, this year seems to be tinged with the dawning realization of the opposite and inevitable too. Maybe it is our phase in life. What I mean by that is, in increased conversations with elderly people, it is obvious that the elderly amidst us face the opposite problem : one of filling their time while holding onto their anxieties of their health, and the inevitable frailty it involves. Acceptance of our mortality has always been one philosophers have addressed. But will we remember all these concepts when it is our time? I wonder.

rain

In the exuberance of youth, and the arrogance of our health, we often parry the times when we do have to set ourselves down to a slower pace, and imagine a life when we are not in control of our circumstances. The pace of technology, while helpful in general, seems to be a source of anxiety for many, and I don’t blame them. I feel the same way – on my recent visit to India, I was confronted with both sides of the coin. On the one hand it was fun to watch everyone from the roadside vendor selling chaats to the large department store going with options such as PayTM and Google Pay. But on the other hand, it was unnerving for older people or NRIs like us who needed to have all that set up within the country in order for smooth functioning.

I remember reading somewhere that it is not just us and our bodies that are changing, but the situations and the world around us changing too. At times, it feels like the combination can feel like we are being pushed and pulled by the tides back and forth relentlessly. We need to weather the tides, ride through the storms, and look out for the light on gloomy days.

weather_storm

2023 had its share of hikes, bikes, runs, and walks. It had a fair share of travel managing multiple responsibilities across work and our personal lives. Not to mention the frenzied feel of to-do lists and the sinking feeling that nothing was never quite enough. But in spite of all this, it felt rewarding: it gave us the feeling of spotting the rainbow in the storm.

I liked this quote and wanted to share this here:

“Half of me is filled with bursting words and half of me is painfully shy. I crave solitude yet also crave people. I want to pour life and love into everything yet also nurture my self-care and go gently. I want to live within the rush of primal, intuitive decision, yet also wish to sit and contemplate. This is the messiness of life – that we all carry multitudes, so must sit with the shifts. We are complicated creatures, and ultimately, the balance comes from this understanding. Be water. Flowing, flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough.”

― Victoria Erickson

A Sari for Ammi

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