Live In the Moment

Election fervor has overtaken most of India, in fact all of it. I hear random strangers discuss the ultimate outcome. I hear housewives discuss the pros of electing Modi and the cons of having a third term of the Congress. In the midst of this are radio ads that say Carpe Diem since it’s IPL season too. So that’s another frenzy that’s fast catching on.

For this is India, where we are quick to embrace the new, cast out the old, encompass the good and discard the bad. I love my country, or can’t you tell.

So Carpe Diem it was…

Bambubhai and I decided to do a quickie road trip seeing it was a long Easter weekend. He had forgotten the hunter’s blood (his camera has been gathering fungii now for over six months) while I had to answer nature’s call (my last trip to coastal Karnataka was refreshing and I was still spinning images in Hi-Def color in my head).

We set off at 7 in the morning in spite of firm resolves & alarm clocks to get out of the house by 5. You see the city is blistering hot right now. A few kilometers on any of the highways or expressways and you will start seeing mirages (which I thought till last year was only a phenomenon in the desert).

Thankfully the crores of rupees spent by central and state governments have made the intertwining National & State Highways a joy to drive on for most part. Nearly 45 kms out of the city and we started to see drongos, sparrows nestling in tiled roofs, kids playing with gay abandon, men gathered in the chowk reading papers, women working in the fields or washing clothes (yes, even here it is the woman who bears the brunt), cows grazing, goats and hens cutting across roads, riot of colors every few kilometers as women spread fresh tomatoes, onions, potatoes, ladyfingers (okra), brinjal, doodhi (louki/bottle gourd), coriander, mint, curry leaves, cucumbers and fields of grapes, bottle gourds, marigolds, mangoes….Ahhhhh, mangoes.

If only Bambubhai wasn’t such a stickler for rules!! Green trees with their branches invitingly bent towards the road laden with mangoes, big green mangoes…Wild mangoes, Baiganpalli and Totapuri. The delicious fragrance of mangoes, the sight of those beautiful green fruits was just too much to resist but the only problem Bambubhai insisted on revving up the car the minute he saw the King of Fruits for he knew he had a kleptomaniac as company.

The last time I stole mangoes it turned out as yummy, enticing chutneys on my dining table loaded with the goodness of asafoetida, turmeric, chillis and salts. Hot rice and the mango chutney mom cooked..I was in heaven.

Onwards we went past the mango fields to travel slow on roads that were half completed. Huge boards proclaimed a 27 lakh/32 lakh/43 lakh/etc…. project that the government in its senses saw fit to leave incomplete. So a tar road beckons you invitingly to explore it farther and when you do you are betrayed on to mud roads.

This is what we the electorate vote for every 5 years. Betrayal.

At least nature kept/keeps its promise.

Summer brings the bloom to indigeneous trees on Indian roads. While the eucalyptus looked unadventurous and boring we saw Flames of The forest all red and home to zillions of parakeets, koels and crows (alright the number is a mirage in my highly-imaginative mind, and well numbers have never been my strong point).

We lost our way and kept to the meandering roads to be greeted by a temple in the middle of nowhere. That is the beauty of India, you are never alone. God is around to (mis)guide you but then this is probably when man takes on God’s role. Every village has its own deity that adds a mystical beauty to the place. We came across old wrecks of what must have been beautiful temples once ravaged by time and neglect. We came across brightly festooned temples with color papers and strings of flowers draping the courtyard, where sweet vendors plied their over-colored sugar candies and puffed rice and farsaan.

We saw even saw a grey francolin dancing across the road and nearly ran over it. We braked the car to see the rum bird doing a rummy dance across the fields and then all we heard was the rustle of dry leaves. A hilarious sight worth capturing, only problem neither of us had taken our camera.

The meandering road led us to a marsh. A MARSH where trees where half buried in water and looked lost, like it was meant to be in a Harry Potter movie but was transplanted to this spot on the highway where vehicles (trucks, canters, bikes and cars) sped at high speed and never-a-one stopped to admire this lil spot of tranquility. What we saw shocked us more. There were egrets, cormorants, herons, grey herons, coots, wild ducks and more happy nestling. (No, this wasn’t the famous Ranganthittu bird sanctuary and it made this sight so much more amazing). We stayed here rivetted till the hot sun started pelting us with sweat down our brows and making our clothes unbearably sticky. We reluctantly moved onward.

We came across stores that sold farm fresh mushrooms. We came across rabbit farms. We saw poultry farms and hatcheries.

To think forgoing sleep meant so much more than a bad headache.

To think Living in the Moment had such untold joys.

Get out there you and see the world in all its glory. Carpe Diem!

 

Note: All Bird IDs courtesy Bambubhai. I’m but a disciple of the great one..

The Job’s Garden of Eden by Rachel Chitra

I stumbled across this refreshingly delightful work of writing on a friend’s wall. Turns out the author is a mad hatter with dog(s) and kid in tow living a charmed life while she moonlights as a journalist.

The post evoked great childhood memories for my mum as I read this out loud. Of indulgent parents and living in the lap of nature unspoilt and uncompromised by the baggage of modern living.

While I’m still trying to entice the author to be a guest blogger on The Glass Ceiling for now here’s her post. I can’t think of a better way to wish you all A HAPPY FRIDAY and a Fantastic Weekend Ahead.

Hope you enjoy Rachel Chitra’s The Job’s Garden of Eden with incredible photographs by Nathan.J.Novak as much as I did.

 

THE JOB’S GARDEN OF EDEN

In our family’s private circle of church friends and relatives, my grandfather Dr E.J.C.Job’s sprawling plot of land in Mandaveli was always referred to as the “Garden of Eden.” And indeed it was an overwhelmingly lush and green spot. My grandfather was such an enthusiastic, scientific gardener that if one were to call him a horticulturist it wouldn’t be far of the mark.

Another irony is that despite my grandfather’s deep love for the soil and all kinds of flora and fauna, he spent the majority of his life on the high seas as an Indian Naval doctor. It was only after his retirement as Surgeon Commander I.N.S that he was able to revel in his life-long passion by converting his house into a veritable paradise.

If I remember right, we had 5 coconut trees, 2 jackfruit trees, 1 really top-of-the world alphonsa hybrid mango tree, a neem tree, two drumstick trees, stalks of banana in the backyard, papaya, Ram Sita (sugar apple), pumpkins and custard apple. We also had our own lime tree and I still love the fragrance of crushed lime leaves; even today while rambling through Russell’s market I can buy a whole cartload of lemons if I spot them with their leaves intact. We also had a sapota tree and one lovely amla tree, which was nearly 2 stories high. My grandfather unfortunately cut it down later when he felt he couldn’t deal with the hordes of school boys descending on us and almost breaking their limbs in their quest for amlas.

My grandfather used to garden everyday – meticulously pruning, shaping, fertilizing and generally coaxing his wards into good health. He would also casually mention the scientific names of animals and plants as I followed him around the garden like Mary’s little lamb. For me if I can remember off-hand names like clitoria ternatea, Annona squamosa, Phyllanthus emblica (mixed up in my child’s mind as umbilical cord), Panthera leo, panthera tigris, Canis lupus, Felis catus – it can only be because like Enid Blyton I had in my grandfather a deep connoisseur of nature.

My grandfather was also a strong believer in letting children learn for themselves. So when my 8 year old father got stuck climbing a mangosteen tree, my grandfather just casually told him to come down the same way he went up and walked off; even as my worried-sick grandmother hovered around shouting frantic instructions. My father finally plucked up enough courage to make the attempt and descended in safety. It was the same with me – when my grandfather told me not to climb the drumstick tree I didn’t heed his advice. Later when I had huge welts on my skin from coming into contact with the stem-boring caterpillars, which had made the drumstick tree their domain, he never told me “I told you so.” But there was a twinkle in his eye as he ministered to the swelling, which sealed our own private pact of discovery and growing up.

We also had a lot of flowering shrubs – white, magenta & violet december flowers, gundu malli, jaddi malli (jasmine), kangambaram (red & orange firecracker flower), fiery red roses, balsam, spreading vines of pink button roses, Idli poo (jungle geranium) and abundant bushes of Vadamalli. The Vadamalli was a plant that my grandfather had never fancied much, but then nature finds its own way; and this abundant crop had grown from the discarded garland of one of our dear departed relatives.

Come March and we had the Easter lilies! The Easter lilies adorned the edge of the lawn facing our house and my grandmother used to faithfully cut them every Easter to occupy pride of place in our drawing room. And these Easter lilies were huge ones that were almost a hand span in diameter. Now I wonder if they were that huge as a result of my grandfather’s experiments as I’ve never come across any to rival them in terms of sheer size. 

 Another lovely thing about the garden was that it was the pleasantest place to be in if my grandmother set me down to finish my embroidery or knitting exercise for the day. It used to be so pleasant to sit under the cool shade of the neem tree, with the wind tousling my hair and listening to the low hum of local gossip as our street watchmen gathered under it like me on the other side of the fence to take their afternoon siesta. Many of them used to also pluck the neem stems to use as toothbrush & toothpaste – such a healthy habit, which I never picked up because of the intense bitterness of neem.

Despite being a gardener, my grandfather never once resented the predatory and destructive activities of my cats and dogs. He always tolerated their mischief in the manner of Issac Newton and his dog; “O Diamond, Diamond, thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done.”

During the jasmine flowering season, the garden smelled heavenly with the smell of ripening mangoes, the jasmine and the sweet pink button roses (traditionally used to prepare attar).We used to string together the abundance of our garden flowers to adorn the heads of our care-cell members and my own unruly, tight oily plaits. I used to love this job and one of the few things I’m good  at it – is stringing flowers together with the speed and professional ease of the road-side flower girls!

My grandfather also loved his ferns, edible tubers (maravelli kizhangu, sakkaravalli kizhangu) & kitchen herbs (coriander, pudina). We also had plenty of medicinal plants too – like aloe vera, Kuppaimeni, Kathalai, Ceylon Spinach (that I really wished my grandmother didn’t include in her menu) and Manathakalli – it must be more than 10 years since I last had those wonderful berries, but I can still distinctly remember their taste.

One of our maids Dhanam hailed from Vaniyambadi and was a farmer herself. She used to be thatha’s assistant in harvesting our sundakka shrubs (turkey berry), grafting the rose bushes, taking a burning torch to the caterpillars on the drumstick tree, etc. But she really came to life only with our coconut tree, she would painstakingly split the leaf stalkes down with her pocket knife and hem and haw at them till they produced nice, thick broom sticks, she would fashion kitchen scrubbers from the coconut matting and little monkey faces for me from the coconut husks.   

I think for my grandparents it was a marriage made in heaven. They perfectly complimented each other in every way. Apart from their deep, abiding love for each other they were also very supportive of each other’s hobbies and interests. I can still remember how my grandfather even at the age of 70 would go clambering up a ladder with a long stick & wired net to pluck mangoes for my grandmother’s jams and pickles. My grandmother was an amazing cook, who used to produce the most dazzling array of pickles, chutneys, squashes, jams, relishes and alwa from the flood of fruits that used to descend on us with each passing season. There used to be rows and rows of salted limes or mangoes laid out on clean white sheets on the terrace, on the balcony, on the window ledges, on the garage roof to be dried in the sun and later turned into bottled goodness.  

Before the family’s finances permitted my grandfather to pursue his medicine, for nearly a year he studied at the local agricultural college. He was passionate about horticulture and was open-handed and generous with the efforts of his labour. Every visitor to our house – would leave with gunny bags brimming with coconuts, mangoes, jackfruit or whichever fruit was in season. For some of our friends – who were not country-born – there would be this big jackfruit-cutting session with oiled knives, newspapers and cordoning off of kids and dogs with grubby paws.

I think my grandfather’s garden was a testimony of his overflowing love for plants, animals, his family and his friends and it is with the fondest memories that I view these pictures of the halcyon days.

 

 

Bhutan Post

Haunted by this vision of a monastery on the edge of a cliff. Truly divine from all angles. A must visit on every avid traveler and trekker’s bucket list. I must have googled this must-see destination a thousand times and lapped up information as much as I could.

Never imagined I would finally see it and in the most unexpected way possible – work-related travel!!

And from the other side of the fence too.. escorting a journalist to attend & cover a conference that I was a part of .

Truly, couldn’t have wished for a better place to visit on my first-ever overseas trip.

Happiness is oxygen swelling up your chest till it hurt you with its purity; greenery as far as your spectacle-clad eyes can see; no sound but for the gusts of wind that whipped up a steady strummm to your honk-attuned ears and just you.

Divinity

 

I was told only the fortunate few ever get to see Taktsang Palphug Monastery, and I understand why…the climb is gruelling, the path just gets steeper with every step you take, the mountain air is cold that you start sniffling in the first half hour, the purity of the oxygen you breathe leaves you choking in the first 20 minutes and seeing the hardy mountain folk

walk up the path in their traditional Gho and Kira with babies strapped on their back is demotivating to say the least, especially when city-bred me was huffing and puffing imitating the Big Bad Wolf…..

 

 

 

Half-way up I had enough of the exhausting walk and looking up wondering if I would ever reach my Buddha had me mounting a horse. Yes, poor horse.

He managed the trek better than I did even though I’m sure he was a centimetre away from leaning to the edge!!

I’m glad I had the sense to mount my stallion coz’ it saved my already-running-on-low fuel for the ascent and descent up the stony steps once we reached the summit.

Whoever said Moksha was easy, hmmmm??

We still had more than a kilometre and a half of climbing left before we were up close and personal with The Buddha.

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Unfortunately, photographs weren’t allowed beyond this point……

 

Magic Flower

The Divine Brahma Kamal….

Feel truly blessed to witness the blossom, only wish I could capture the essence of that remarkably sensual fragrance…

and I wouldn’t even have realised this was a once-in-a-year phenomenon hadn’t my uncle shouted out from below, “heh look there’s something hanging out.”  i craned my neck out the balcony as much as i could without having gravity do the trick to find this snake-like pink-covered bud hanging out precariously.

ah, if i had known that this was the magical flower.

you see the flower pot is in a corner of the balcony, and the garden is strictly off-limits to me. my grandpa being the greenthumb and i the black-one if you can call it that. so you understand i’m allowed to view but never touch so all i see is greenery around and nothing else. we have money plants, jasmine (mum’s prized territory  & again off-limits to me), petunias, dahlias and bulbs that never bloom and cactuses and aloe veras and god-knows-wat-else so suffice to say all i get to see and admire are green plants so this was another pot in the nursery.

now this particular pot has a story behind it.

this was a prized possession in my fav aunt’s house much before she became newly single after being happily married for well over 4 decades. you see, my uncle lost his fight to cancer and my aunt her will to stay alone in the house, which till then housed this pot among other pots of tulsi, hibiscus, roses, carnations, brinjals, jasmine, drumsticks and what not. so aunt packed her belongings having deposited that particular pot at our house for safe keeping and off she went to Hyderabad.

and that brings us to today…..sapped of energy i was ready to call it a night when out i go in the balcony and there is a fragrance unlike any other. now my balcony houses my lil’ mutt as well so the only fragrance, uh..pardon, smell i get is that of his pee. …but this was quite a different essence. no bulgari, coco chanel or burberry can concoct such divine fragrance…ah wat was it….and there in the corner was this white lotus-like bloom.

and the rest has been captured as well i could though the real magic is to be seen to be believed.

BRAHMA KAMAL, o divine Himalayan flower…… thank you for coming home

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Monsoons

We haven’t been fortunate to feel the full blast of the monsoons but dark clouds and rumbling thunder with moody showers are all here.

A friend who stays in green Trissur posted some amazing pics of the monsoon pouring in God’s own country. It made me stifled seeing the greenery and comparing it with the environs I stay and commute to every day.

Trees get lopped off because the cables need to be laid or the branches touch the electrical cables or the roads need to be broadened, yet again. Any reason will do to lop off trees that have probably been here before the first SEZ was constructed.

Pooh to you , and your development.

At times when the service road is closed for ever more work I’m fortunate to take an alternate route that passes by villages still untouched by development. Yes, I do not see the tough times the villagers endure farming, living on marginal economic progress with their kids having to attend government school or where they do not have access to education. While I travel in an AC cab back and forth and wax poetic about the environment and the erosion of it that development has caused. So sue me.

I long for the simple life when the mobile or the Internet did not rule my existence or became the reason for living.

I long for the simple life when I looked out of the balcony and saw the red blossoms from the gulmohar gently swaying in the breeze as rains lashed on making the squirrels scamper for cover and all the neighbourhood kids hopped on the puddles dotting the road.

I long for the simple life when I did not have to explain whimsicalities and spontaneous hugs and saying i love you without having to explain, when I could call friends to talk without apologizing for intruding into their ever busy life, when a walk on tree-lined roads was all that was required to get rid of the stress and not a 3-day all day course on the art of living and life.

I long for the simple life……

 

My first experimental video on YouTube…. on something close to my heart, WILD LIFE

This clip is very dear as this was my first wild life sighting after oh-so-may trips to wild life reserves. On this memorable trip we spotted wild dogs, spotted deer, barking deer, elephants and of course, herds of bison. The Indian Gaur or the Bison, majestic in its grace made me proud and privileged to live in a country that has such amazing wild life.