Observations

Yesterday, I was dancing by a pretty young girl. A haunting beauty and I tried to etch her features and her fluid body in my mind. Dressed in a dark long cotton skirt hiding her feet. She wore a black simple top that hugged her budding breasts. A huge silver sun-like roundel hung from a slim chain, looking lovely above the v-neck of her T. Her brown hair cascaded to her slim hips. There was something haunting about her green eyes.

In the engagement ceremovy, since this cousin of my husband is getting married to a Kashmir boy, she was adorned with ornaments made of flowers- jasmine and rose buds. She looked pretty and radiant in her maroon dress and flowers, her hands painted orange henna into delicate patterns. These days when I am out, there is an involuntary detachment from the surroundings. In a way it is fun to stand away uninvolved, though you look involved as you do interact, and just observe what is going on.

Are we not in deep disillusion wen we stand at the core of the 'events' taking place. Actually,
we just observe no matter how aggressively we are involved as all the core processes are spontaneous. Detached participation is what I mean to put across, that brings absolute peace to the inner self, try this sometime. Stand near and yet far from surroundings and move inwards as a spectator. Sometimes this leads to introspection and sudden thoughts that seem to come from another source at a deeper or higher level.

Image: Again by Isha, I love these pictures by her!

Seeking...

Each moment with seeds of heaven and hell
Like grains of sand thrown on a shell

Traveling the blue and brown of cosmos
To get lost in eternal inky depths

Where, in which star shall I look for your soul
In this void... I seek the whole



Image: Clicked by my cousin sister Isha!

A Visit to the Fair with Parents

Yesterday, I visited the trade fair with my parents. It is such a soothing feeling to be with your parents. My mother had made a simple vegetable dish with cauliflower, carrot, peas and potatoes and to have this with the 'puris' was wonderful. Thoughtfully she had raw onions, fresh green chillies and a juicy lime too add to the favour. It is as if one returns to the roots, like a small sprout returning to its parent plants. You can complain, yell, be a child without any fear. My parents are very simple people, father, an engineer by profession is an educator par excellence, mother, a teacher and how many new little things I discovered about her. Her admiration of crafts, her comments and gentle persuasion. The joy on their face when they gifted me money to spend on what ever I liked! I did spend some to make them feel good.

There is something very satisfying and peaceful about comforting the parents. I do not get the chance often as with kids and family it gets difficult to visit them, but it is a pleasure and an intense learning time when ever I visit. Actually, there I feel I have turned into a little girl again, with kids sticking to my brother as he is the pied piper of kids! There is time to let go and relax and listen to parents talking about the relatives, meditation and how I am wrong in their current observation about bring the kids (that is always a hot favorite).

There are things that I can reflect on as a parent and fill the gaps when I see how they interact with the kids. Today, when I was feeding my reluctant daughter as she was getting ready to leave for the school, I realised the massive responsibility I shoulder. Someday, she will bring another human into this world and I will hold in my arms the genes passed on to her. Just beginning to realise how important is this bond. Loved the time with parents and tucking my father in and stroking his hair, things they did everyday for us! Asking God for more opportunities to be able to mother the parents...

My Thoughts for the Bride!

A couple of days back I was talking to my friend who is getting married on 29th. She is like a tornado, moving from one place to another, getting her clothes for various functions to looking for a high heel shoe to go with her wedding dress. I heard her talk about all the things that were needed to work out before the wedding. She has always been very close to me and I know she is a soft person, I was listening to her and yet my heart ached to ask her just one thing, do you love him? Do you sense that stirring, that sweet ache when he is about you? She suddenly became very quiet when I asked her what she felt about him. " I feel numb right now with all these preparations," she confided. I felt like placing my hand on her heart and asking her to go inwards leaving the chaos outside and see if she felt that longing. At my age this would sound funny and very melodramatic but love I still believe surpasses all other 'necessities'. Talking to her, it felt that while traveling the destination was forgotten. This poem came to my mind. These lines I recited to her to break the monotony of tasks that freeze the affection:

She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven:---Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees

She warmed up a bit and then I asked her how he feels about her, to this she replied that he was not too expressive. Don't know if I was right in advising her but I encouraged her to write to him about all the things she felt in her heart. Next the things that came to me were asking her to give without expecting, to most it might appear ancient but observe closely and what do you actually get out of calculations? Escalations and misery till the whole purpose of living together is lost. Another thing was learning to forgive, it has been a very difficult approach for me too but my experience tells me this is one medicine that cures all the bitterness in life.

Another jewel I want to share with her. These lines stir me every time I read these beautiful words from Khalil Gibran.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Last but not least are the words by my favorite poet Robert Frost that captures the essence of life...

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I love this girl and pray for all the bliss that rains through the magical bond of love to drench her soul!

Mikora's Dream!

There was a little lady bird, his name was Mikora. He loved playing with other insects but today he found none of his playmates. he looked for them everywhere, over the branches, under the leaves but he could not find any of his friends. He was very tired so he made a soft nest in mud and soon he was asleep. In his dream he saw a green field surrounded by sunflowers and he ran and ran till he reached the tallest sunflower. He climbed the flower and saw many little insects running about playing hide and seek. Mikora joined them and they whooped with delight when they spied on a hiding friend. Suddenly there was a storm and the sunflowers swayed wildly. " Mikora, get up! I have been looking for you every where. Come climb n my back and have your lunch, we have to leave son for our new home." Mikora's mother was shaking him and he woke up rubbing his big eyes. " But Mamma, where are all the friends I was playing with?" His mother lifted him and laughed," friends Mikora, there were no frinds you were asleep alone, maybe you saw them in your dream. Mikora ate his honey and grains and collected his toys. He tied them in a small tender leaf and sat on his mother's back. She was flying very high in the blue sky, she crossed the green fields, deep blue lakes and Mikora saw black sheep grazing down below. At last they reached a field of sunflowers, as yellow as the sun and she landed on a huge brown centre of a sunflower. Mikora looked about, there were little lady birds and spiders and ants all playing and jumping from flower to flower. He laughed and danced" this is the place I saw in my dreams momma! I love you." He ran to join his new friends and played and played till it ws time to have dinner!

NEWS

Was thinking of bringing the Yahoo 360 blog here but now it seems difficult with the format of Yahoo profiles going haywire. Am starting to blog here and linking this to the Facebook.

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Observations
Walking by the sea front in the morning, I observed the crows were over excited. There was a crow with a badminton shuttle cock in its beak and the other crows were crowding around this crow excitedly. The proud crow held the shuttle cock like a trophy and began to pluck the feathers. There was more excitement and cawing. He would look side ways with an arrogant turn of neck and again start plucking out the cork. The whole display of bravado attracted some eagles too. They hovered low and two crows flew after these circling eagles. Now the crow with the shuttle cock grew more possessive and took flight to an isolated rock a bit farther into the sea. He was still convinced that he had found a dead bird and the joy of pulling out the feathers was evident in the way he thrust his breast out and pinned down the ravaged shuttle cock. After good ten minutes of plucking the feathers and cork, the crow realized that the thing was of no use, he flew back to his friends and continues to display his prized possession. By now other crows had started prancing with some odd stuff, one held a wet brown bag in its beak, other had dug out a shell and jumped from rock to rock following the crow with the shuttle cock. After a while another friendly crow joined the shuttle cock crow and they got busy with scraping some sort of edible algae from the rock surface. The shuttle cock was forgotten, seeing this, another crow gingerly came close to the abandoned shuttle cock and as soon as he picked it up the crow who had found it pounced upon him. This made me laugh and I could not help thinking how human was this behaviour. Even when we realize how useless some of our precious possessions are we guard them with our life and the moment some one encroaches on this possession, well, the crow reaction happens, lay off your claws!
Another interesting thing I want to share is: we were visiting husband’s friend after so many years came to know of a very unique thing about him. He was aware of his previous birth as a child. He used to tell his parents that he had died in a car accident in Calcutta and remembered the number plate of the car. He dreads visiting Calcutta but is confident that he can easily navigate the streets, though he has never visited the city before. When I asked him what all he remembered on a lot of prodding he spoke of being driven in this car and that both the driver and he were killed in the accident. He remembers that he used to wear a white dhoti and was a businessman. We joked about finding out his widow and check if he had left a will. This is the first time I have met a person who remembers his past birth and since he was quiet reluctant to share his experience with anyone, and knowing him so well, there is no doubt that he telling the truth. I really wish that he would go back to Calcutta and find out who he was, though it is easy as his father had found out that the car with the number plate he remembered had actually met with an accident and the occupants had died, a strange co-incident is that ion the same date a few years later he took birth again.
There is something I have also experienced about the date, when I had delivered my daughter I had a disembodied voice tell me that this child had my brother’s soul who had expired when he was three. Then it told me to ask me about the significance of seventeenth September in relation to the brother. This was the date of birth of my new born daughter. I was scared initially as this was a strange dream and I had just delivered, I called my mother and asked her if the date had some significance for my brother. She told me that he had died on that date. I was stunned. It is quiet possible than that the date of birth has some relation to the date when we die in previous life?
Still in Mumbai, and absorbing this restless city. Will keep you all posted, take care and enjoy awareness of self as I am realizing our existence is more like a dream, with us like masses of concentrated energy, living the dream that is sniffed off so easily. While I walk, sometimes it feels like every thing, the people, sand, sea, trees are extension of this energy or that I am an extension of that whole!
Pic: Since I don't have the USB cable for my phone, I couldn't post the crow pictures. Here is Jayu on the beach! Crow pictures will be here soon via blue tooth!
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Mumbai
While in Delhi watched a mother sunbird feed a baby sunbird with Professor Vijayaraghavan Chariar. The bird had its woven nest in a thorny tree, the little one and the mother were fearless surrounded by small children playing and eating in serene silence. There was a jet back father-sunbird too flitting like lightening from one branch to another. To observe the little one try and climb out from a shallow canal was a beautiful moment in time.Here in Mumbai, I felt utterly lost as I watched people mill around like ants. I never get this city, there is too much focus on things. The city has had its revenge, there are distorted people. There is just concrete and very less space to connect with nature and that leaves just the material things to focus on, the result is here. Just yesterday I read a report in the paper that Mumbai matches with the western country in the stroke related deaths. I stroll near the sea face and that is calming. A few days back I was just observing how much plastic was stuck in women's hair. It feels as if the hollowness inside is patched up with flashy things stuck to the exterior. In the mall the noise levels were very high in a bowling alley, there were men and women and children. I felt a nausea rise up and felt all that mental chaos unhinge me as if all their thoughts, desires and anxiety were crowding upon me. Something about the way life is perceived is not right. Before that there was a monsoon ball where a crowd danced to music as artificial showers lashed them, drenching bodies. There was smell of liquor and perfumes, of hormones and raw desires. Again there was no purity here, women flaunted and men were like panting wolves. A woman next to us let her bodice slip down, the man dancing with her was drunk and aroused. It was ugly. Ther is a harshness that puts you off the material world when you encounter such a deeply engrossed mass of humans. The focus is on the basal things, sex, food, clothes and money. I do not say that to look for a comfortable life is a sin, but what I see is a completely absorbed attention into just these. That puzzles me and disorients me. Am here in Mumbai and being amused by this strange city where most of the wealth is concentrated and with the wealth is the mad rush everywhere as if the time is about to end! Will keep you all updated on my observations of this city. I held a soft six-month-old baby to calm my nerves today. It was beautiful, I will avoid going into the crowded places here.Pic: Low tide in Mumbai, there is beauty too but very few get to admire this here in this city.
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Mind and Body
Lately I have come to believe that mind and body are entwined very beautifully. Mind and its influence on the body is so powerful that it can reverse aging. Through observation I have come to realise that for me somethings work and these have an affect on the way body ages.
Meditation- This is an absolute connect between mind and body and when you become thoughtless, just as you some times become while looking at a beautiful flower, there is rejuvenation. The mind that never stops thinking, erasing, sorting out thoughts, rests for these moments and the effect percolates to the body too. If you observe, even while we are asleep, the mind works and we see dreams. These dreams also call for decision making and discerning. Probably due to this nature of our brain, we consciously need to disengage it sometimes and that happens when we meditate.
Connecting with nature-I have observed whenever I am ill, there is a psychological reason also that lowers my immunity. The house we live in also saturates with a certain kind of energy. Just observe what happens when you move out into open. Sometimes it feels that our energy field is getting expanded. I go out consciously twice a day to connect with nature, look at the sky and the Earth and somehow that brings the balance back.
Food-That is the basic raw energy that we transfer to our body. If it is not exotic or out of season, it seems to agree better with the body. Secondly,I have observed that when the food is cooked, the emotional state of the person cooking affects the vibrations of the food. A person in a balanced state of mind cooks food that adds to the vitality of others. Perhaps the ancestors had a belief rooted in this fact, when they prohibited the menstruating women from cooking. Now we know, women' bodied are virtual cocktails of hormones during the periods and so, there are many tales about cakes flopping and pickles molding when a menstruating woman touches it.Yesterday, as my daughter and I were outside, we saw two plump jasmine flowers. I asked her to rest her lips on satin soft petals and inhale deeply as she closed her eyes. When you do this, a feeling comes to you, that this is a beautiful moment brimming with fragrance and beauty of the flower. It is hot but I have delayed the servicing of the AC so we have just the water cooler to battle the summer heat. There was some cable fault and in the noon there was no electricity. Jayani and I slept on the floor, she made two paper fans and we waved these, it was an amazing feeling to lie on Earth, the spine becomes so straight. We have forgotten that Mother Earth is so comforting, just lying on Earth is so healing, one can lie with body turned to left side, it's a comfortable position. I will be traveling to Mumbai soon and I will try and keep all of you posted about the experiences there.
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A Beautiful Life
Reading Irving Stone's ' Lust for Life' I almost wept. Such a passionate artist and what a love less life he led. A soul ahead of his time, perhaps even in today's fake world he would have suffered. A beautifully crafted biography, I will not reveal more, a must read for people who find their calling in Mother nature. For past few weeks I have been having fever, today things seem a bit better. What a blessing it is to get back to normal health, even cold makes one so helpless!It rained...Last night... it rainedEarth steamed And yellow leaves dancedHeat and dust got tamedIn my heart...It rained peaceAnd your thoughtsFear and anxiety slowly settledLast night...it rainedPic: Jayani, my daughter took this picture in our lawn a while ago.
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Just Wandering About
Yesterday, as I was walking towards home I saw a kitten that looked like the one kids loved. I picked the kitten in my arms and tried to carry it home. She was patient till I reached the gate and then she scratched my fore arm and ran away. Our cat is missing and this behavior by the kitten makes one thing sure, if he was alive he would have come back. Right now a black cat is sitting in the porch with its litter of four kittens I am keeping a constant supply of milk to her as she is feeding the young kittens. This time they are tiny compared to the healthy litter of two kittens last time. The cat showed gratitude by rubbing against my leg. Things are so simple in nature. In human relationships, the very people for whom you have cared the most would leave you in a lurch, just an observation. It has started to get scorching hot here. Little green mangoes dangle on the branches like pendulums. Air is warm and leaves stand still at noon time. Sky becomes cloudless, hard as steel, shimmering.
Her Daydreaming!
There was a calm pool of quiet in her heart as she played with a green twig. There were bright magenta 'office time' flowers dotting the thick succulent leaves. She inhaled deeply, last night's jasmine was still on the bush, drooping slightly as the sun blazed. Looking up she saw a pregnant woman, and she thought how a little human was attached to the fluid-filled amniotic sack, so primitive, she thought. A sweat drop trickled down her temple; she extended her pink tongue, tasting the sharp salt of the droplet.
A woman was buying vegetables, a woman from a respectable house hold, her back was a little bent. Her voice barely a whisper. Feeding her children and being presentable by her husband's side were unwritten duties, so she feeds them day-after-day, thinking of new things to put in their lunch boxes. She buys a few matching trinkets for herself to go to the stiff formal parties, this woman with a slouch, to look presentable by her husband's side. The woman buying the vegetables also pleases her in-laws, it is one of her duties.There are sparrows in a nest, she observes, the mother sparrow is pushing the baby sparrow out of the nest. Sparrow is skin and bones rearing up her three chicks, but she will never be a mother -in-law to lord over the little male chick's life. In nature things are simpler.
She is thirsty, she dunks a steel glass in an earthen pot she had bought in a small town, the smell of wet earth fills her nostrils, she inhales deep as she drinks the cool water. She touches her feet, they become dry no matter how much cream she massages into them, every day as she bathes surrounded by white washed walls, she brushes the feet, first the toes, the nails and then the ball of the heel. Sometimes she scrubs them with terracotta stone. When she was younger, she would mix turmeric, curd and gram flour and when it would dry on her skin creating wrinkles, she would scrub it, rolling cylindrical dark paste, moving her palms slowly against her face, shedding all the grime.
In the steaming heat she sits thinking on the doorstep of the first showers of monsoon, when the dark gray clouds creep silently into the horizon and suddenly the life stands still in anticipation. Air gets saturated with humidity, thick and almost solid, and then suddenly with slithering cool breeze, the heavens open, showering pure bliss on parched Earth.
She stands up, her hair catching the pale dust riding the warm wind. There are birds chirping in the neem trees and the bitter smell of ripe little neem fruits permeates the air. It is time to peel the vegetables and soak the lentils and rice for the lunch, as the squirrels run up and down the tree, she smiles and shuts out the heat across the door. The mustard oil fills the bottom of a pan and her hands get busy transferring the cut vegetables to this spluttering heat of the vessel.
Pic: Sunset in Mumbai, Jayu sits near a petunia plant.
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