Ye Re Ye Re Paavsaa! (Welcoming the Rains)

Strong gusts of wind are blowing outside. It is a grey, cloudy, cool day outside. Just the kind of day I love. Not too hot, perfect to go out for a walk. The heavy clouds herald a heavy shower of rain - may be sometime later on in the afternoon. I am lying huddled in bed, lap-top perched against my knee wearing a warm sweater and a pair of socks. My mind travels to another time, another place in the past.

Ah the monsoons. What a lovely time of they year! The scorching heat of the summer is a thing of the past and so are the dried up branches of the shrubs and trees. The rains have brought with them a relief to the parched souls, the earth has turned a verdant green.

It is time to go back to school wearing a little red duck-back raincoat. Oh how I love my little raincoat. I feel so loathe to take it off. Monsoons mean the re-opening of school, levelling up in school (gosh, the farmville2 lingo seems to have become an inherent part of me ), new books, new teachers, sitting inside the classroom and looking out at the skies crashing down in walls of water.

Weekends spent curling up in bed under a blanket with a book in hand, and waking up in the evening to a cup of tea and some warm snacks - ah what luxury! Monsoons mean sitting in the kitchen with mom cooking something yum and the sound of the rains going pitter-patter on the tin chajja outside. The rain stops and it is time to run out with other kids and float paper boats down the rivulets of water flowing along the road sides. (We are not allowed to go and get wet in the rain. :-(We are told it is alright to get wet in the first rain of the season; getting wet in the rain after that can make one ill).

Monsoons herald the festive season with Nagpanchami heading the list. "Nagobala doodh, nagabola doodh" one hears the snake charmers calling out early in the morning, asking folks to come out and feed snakes with milk. The real joy of the day is adorning one's hands with mehendi (henna). The fresh green colour of henna and the aromatic smell are so pleasing to the senses, one can only know it through direct experience.

College days.....Monsoons also mean riding to and fro to college on a bicycle through small muddy lanes, coming back home with clothes covered with mud from being splashed by passing vehicles or coming back soaked to the skin, with mom and dad ordering me to first go dry my hair and change my clothes and mom handing me a hot cup of coffee. The years pass by. Monsoons still mean my getting soaked in the rain on my two-wheeler, but now the cold slowly starts getting to me through my clothes.

Sigh. This year, there have been strong winds each time it rains. The winds that I once loved, is now shut out by windows which are kept shut. The rain lashes against the window panes. My bones protest violently against the wind and the cold. No more question of going voluntarily and getting wet in the rain. I huddle under the blanket with a sweater and socks and a cup of hot coffee in hand and a lappie in my lap, telling the world what monsoons mean to me.

The Lighthouse and I and Other Ramblings

From Google images

 

Life sometimes sucks.   Yes, it does for all of us. Even when we try to kid each other, trying to convince ourselves about how "privileged" we are to have been born human on this planet. Maybe true - sometimes - but not when one is feeling down in the dumps. When life sucks, some of us do wish we were never born. We look for some source of inspiration or even some means of escape, depending on how we are mentally tuned at that moment. We wonder why we are here at all. We try to comfort ourselves - try to convince ourselves that there is a reason why we have been put on earth. I certainly wonder, then, what I am doing with my life. Still trying to figure out my raison d'être (reason for existence). There must be some reason which we don't know I am told. I agree, maybe I shall find my life made a difference to someone, sometime. But the catch is, it is equally possible that my life did make a difference to someone, somewhere but I shall never know. I was not meant to know, which means I shall still be left with the question with which I started out. 

I saw a lovely card this morning on a networking site which said 

Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

    -Anne Lamott

Well, I guess, since everything happens for good, there is a good reason why I should be kept within the four walls of the house. Whatever purpose I was meant to serve will probably be served very well within those four walls or probably is already being served. 

 It is good, to practice distancing oneself from the ego and just viewing oneself as a third person on the stage. Stop thinking of oneself as the "doer". Thinking one is the "doer" leads to a lot of pain. The moment one switches to thinking of oneself as the instrument in the hands of the DOER, one realizes that one is that lighthouse which shines not of its own doing, but only because the caretaker came and switched on the light. So has my CARETAKER switched me on, so that I am here to do whatever it was I was supposed to do. My job is to stand at the edge of the island shining come rain or sunshine and hope that some boat sees me shining there and comes in safely to anchor.

So yes, I shall stand and shine for all time to come, till the CARETAKER thinks it is morning and switches off my light. 

Thanks dear friend for waking me up to reality this morning with your status.  It will certainly carry me a little longer till the next time I wonder what I am doing on earth. That is part of being human.

I don't think it is wrong or bad to ask oneself this question once in a while. It spurs one on to think beyond the everyday, material boundaries of what we refer to as "life". It is good to think of this as being a school, where we come to learn some lessons. Life is an excellent if sometimes a bit ruthlessly harsh teacher. In that case, I wonder what lessons I have come here to learn from her. One of the lessons that Life nudges us endlessly into learning is to give up the EGO. This is true for EACH ONE of us. Till we do so, she just keeps hurting us so much, that we are forced to sit up and take notice.    (Life is allowed to do that, unlike the kind of school teachers we know). There are other lessons which are specific for each individual. I believe in rebirth and karma. So I believe, there were some lessons from the past that need to be relearned, reevaluated and some tests to be taken. A couple of important lessons I seem to need to learn seem to be how to control my anger and how to be patient. I love Life's teaching methods (yes, even if it means having my head flattened out every morning)  .   (As a teacher myself, I can't help examine her methods ). What she says is: I shall put you in various situations. Firstly try to figure out what I am trying to teach you. If you can figure that out, question it. Don't accept anything blindly. However, at the end, I shall see to it that you jolly well agree with me.  I seem to be a student who sleeps through her lessons. Only on the day of the exam will it really be revealed what I have learned and what I have not. 

With due respects to Tennyson: "Our's not to question why, our's not to reason why, our's but to do and die.

Chasing Dreams

I am an unabashed lover of books by Enid Blyton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and P.G. Wodehouse. All my notions and dreams about Britain and the British was moulded by these three authors. For me Britain was embodied by crumpets for tea, professional and amateur detectives (either accompanied by a dog or by a loyal friend), boarding schools where there is at least one midnight party every term, a french teacher (Mademoiselle), faithful gentlemen's gentlemen, interfering, pompous bobbies ….. and the list goes on.

So imagine my shock when I eventually got to the U.K. Reality hit me like a stinging slap on my face. It was as if all the romantic images of the country painted in all these books had vanished into thin air – poof! - just like that. A friend who had lived in the country for atleast a quarter of a century when I eventually landed there had a good laugh at me, when I expressed my shock and disappointment. She wondered in which romantic world I existed. But I tell you, it broke my little heart to smithereens. I could not bear to think of, leave alone face a country so far removed from my illusions. I really loved the Britain painted in those books. I felt badly cheated, let down. But there you are. One has to come down to reality with a bang some time or the other. (I am sure at least 90% of married people – and this is a conservative estimate of mine – have had the same feeling when they wake up to the harsh realities of married life after harbouring notions straight out of M&B novels and Indian films. Suddenly there are no beautiful locales, no platoon of 50 faceless individuals to dance to a song along with you and your spouse). I mean, reality is really heartless, merciless, oh, my vocabulary fails me miserably at this point. It just has this nasty habit of delivering a really hard one in the solar plexus.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I felt totally idiotic. How could I have been such a complete fool? How could I have let a couple of authors to lead me on a completely misguided flight to the little island?

Not long. I mean I only felt this way for a brief 20-21 years of my life. I had in the intervening years graduated to “grown-up” books and authors. Jeffrey Archer was one of my newer discoveries and I had cottoned onto him like flying strands of cotton to my clothes. He came to my rescue in more ways than one. Not only can I proudly claim to be a reader of grown-up books, but I discovered that my latest favourite author suffers from the same syndrome as me. Or so I thought when I read the headline of an article in the newspaper which said “Archer yearns for Malgudi's flavour”. Yippee, I thought. Here is a famous British author who is very fond of R.K. Narayan and considers him in the league of authors such as Guy de Maupassant or F Scott Fitzgerald. I thought “so he too is looking for the imaginary Malgudi in India. Great – The Empire Strikes Back. Our very own R.K. Narayan has done to him what P.G. Wodehouse and Enid Blyton did to me”. But alas – this was one more of my illusions. When I read the entire article (an interview with the author), he did not at any point mention that he was looking for Malgudi as described by our R.K. Narayan. That was a dirty trick played on me by the author of the article in the newspaper. Looks like all writers suffer from this horrible disease called “cooking up tales syndrome” 

Hey do I hear you say I do the same? Well, I might have caught a milder version of it. May be it is catching. But at least the virus is attenuated. My stories are all based on the truth. You just have to look at my name to know that.

Sunset time from the balcony

I had switched off my laptop, having read and answered all posts. That was barely half an hour earlier. .

Thought i would take a nap, having been glued to it all day yesterday and today. Just then I got a call from a friend. When i finished talking, I went to the window, I saw this beautiful orange ball in the sky. We get to see some incredible sunsets from all our bedroom windows. They are all west facing. I just could not resist the temptation of recording a typical sunset and of an evening spent in the balcony.  So here I am in my balcony to give you a running commentary. 

  

"I am now sitting in the balcony. so, as I told you there is this orange globe in the sky - what perfect geometry and colour. There are light clouds around the sun and the rays pouring through them - such a soul touching experience. It's picture perfect. Looks just like those greeting cards. There is a streak of pink around the clouds, Just like the outlines that children draw around pictures to define their drawing. the one nearest the sun, which is making a grey streak across it, is shaped somewhat like a chubby, curly long-haired child lying on its right side with its back side facing me. I just love watching clouds and trying to see figures in them. Fun past time. There, the sun has just vanished out of sight - it is amazing how fast it goes down. Right from the time I used to watch sunsets at Juhu beach as a 5 year old, whenever we visited my mom's parents, the setting sun has always reminded me of a Kwality orange ice candy. I know, I cannot get more unromantic than that, but what to do, everything in life has somehow got to have some gastronomic connection. Well, that is the way i am - a foodie to the core". 

Anyway - my flat is on the third floor facing the park in our complex. Earlier the trees were much smaller, and one could observe all the children coming out with their moms to play. It is such a comic sight to watch the slightly older ones playing with their balls and the little ones toddling along on unsteady feet, trying to be a part of the scene . There are times, that the older ones humour the little ones. At other times, they just ignore them, and it is so heart wrenching to watch the little ones stand there, look puzzled and then amble back to their moms or find some other distraction to toddle off to . 

There was one day when mom and I were sitting here in the evening and watching a burkha clad lady and her husband sitting on a bench in the park. the lady was holding a discourse  The man was apparently listening . After some time he repositioned himself, so that he was facing backwards . The woman kept up her discourse, unconcerned. Then there were 2 minutes of silence. The man took the opportunity, ambled off, smoked a cigarette and ambled back . He came back revitalized, so that he could lend the lady his ear. He went and sat next to her once again. After a minute or two of silence, the lady recommenced where she had left off. After about 10 minutes, they just got up abruptly, piled onto his scooter parked outside the park and sped off . Left me thinking  - may be a daughter in law venting herself to her dear husband. They probably do not get enough alone time at home. What a considerate husband, who just sits quietly and allows his wife to let go steam! But if all men were like that, what would have happened to Ekta Kapoor and all her "saas-bahu" serials?

Now the trees have all grown really tall. Sadly, this obscures the view of the inside of the park and we are deprived of all these life affirming sights. But then when you lose out on something, you always find something else. Now we have this palette of lush green in various hues and shades. It is such a refreshing sight for the eyes! An evening in the balcony, and I am sure it is enough to turn the most confirmed atheist into a believer.

Four Seasons

I was recently talking to my cousin's wife. Her son moved to the U.S. this year for his further studies. As we got talking about how he was settling down and tolerating the cold, she told me that he has got used to the cold and is enjoying the snow-fall. She said he showed them how it looked on webcam.

My mind went to the time I was in the U.K. and how I loved the 4 seasons there. The winters were a new experience with such cold weather - breathing in the freezing air, going slipping over the first snow just to get pictures , having a huge appetite, the comfort of the warm feeling when one went indoors, the delight of consuming piping hot soup, with the rich, cheesy veggie options , getting into a cold bed and enjoying the delightful feeling of growing warm under a nice thick quilt, crawling out of bed reluctantly in the mornings; on the flip side, the first year of depression at such short days, and cooping oneself in at 3 p.m., not feeling safe enough to go out in the dark on one's own in a strange place (till I found out a bus which used to come from Oxford street to my hostel gate- thereafter life changed considerably). The longing to see some leaves on the trees.

The arrival of spring used to be so sensational, when the first crocus used to peep out of the ground, the joy that wells in the heart at the sight (since I had never seen a crocus before, I remember going creeping on the ground to have a better look, and the joy at the lengthening days, the feeling of hope at seeing flowers and blossoms around - that is a joy not possible to describe in words.

Then came the looooong days of summer, with trees covered with a mantle of green, the comfortably warm days (some so breathlessly hot - naah, not nice. Hey, I had had enough of hot weather at home and would have more when I get back), outdoor activities, travelling, barbecues, ......

And finally the autumn. Was lucky enough to see one really beautiful autumn with changing colours (tho' nothing close to what I have heard happens in the U.S. - I'd love to see that some day).

The sudden and marked changes in the weather was something so dramatic. How I miss that now. while I was there I used to miss the monsoons and the vegetation of India. I used to miss seeing the coconut trees, the various tropical plants, trees and flowers.

Each side has its own beauty and grandeur. how nice it would be if we had the option of travelling at will and enjoying the best of both worlds!