The plethora of plunder

I opened my eyes today to a sky on the verge of tears. Sheathed in grey armour, heavy and hideous, I felt distraught in the early hours of a weekday knowing pretty well that a load of work was in the offing. The sense of fillip was somehow missing for the day ahead.

Life in Far East is typically tropical - hot and humid. With super typhoon "Haiyan" crushing Philippines's soul and spirit few days back, my mind raced back to the nature's annihilation sending a slight shudder down my spine. I bounced back to reality engaging myself in the daily routine.

Later in the evening, while I was sipping green tea and looking out of my French windows to the city's traffic slowly crawling in and the distant emerald hills and the tropical bloom, I reflected on the early morning's image. Now the sun was playing peek-a-boo with earth hiding its gleam behind the dun clouds. We do not experience winter here barring the periodical and regular heavy showers.

I remember my growing up years on a distant shore that spilled four distinct seasons - spring, summer, autumn followed by winter. The summers and winters were long and intense. I used to fall in with every seasonal variation. Our family physician scripted the same prescription every time my parents dragged me to pay a call to him. Replete in feeding and fully clothed to brave the weather proved ineffectual for me. I was feeble and frail.

Little did I know back then that I would live some years of my life on a shore apathetic to seasonal shifts. But I was living in a fool's paradise. The weather today and all over the globe is exhibiting draconian aberration - a manifestation of nature's marvel.

Mother Earth filled our laps with abundance. Be it plants for food and medicines, raw material for clothing, fossil fuels and natural reserves like coal, oil and gas, mineral and mineral ores and water bodies for running our daily lives, oxygen for breathing or wood for our habitats - she did not give us a chance for repining. The mountains and the oceans, the pebbles and the sand, the dense foliage and the wild animals, the showers and the breeze, the glaciers and the deserts - the laxity of greener choices left to mankind stands today few and far between. How sincere was our obeisance to her?

“What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?” voiced Henry David Thoreau. For ages, we, the human race, have been responsible for raping her lap of luxury. We have never been able to live sustainably on our planet ever since its evolution although a robust natural ecosystem was always out there.

Even today when I pass by a garbage dump teeming with plastics in all moulds and colours, I make a sincere effort in averting my gaze towards all that is refulgent. How often do I attempt to carry my eco-friendly reusable shopping bag while I pick up my weekly grocery? When was the last time I touched and felt Mother Earth? How many times in a day do I switch on my air conditioner for cool purified air in my room? Every day I need to put the geyser on in my bathroom as I love to have hot refreshing showers. How often in a month do I use public transport for my errands? The list will dash hopes - my mind can hardly open up to the unerring responses my conscience triggers off.

I take a delight in lighting candles every day in my house when the sun sets in. I have been carrying on this ritual almost a year. Usually to savour in the ebony moment when the electric lights in the entire house are turned off. A playful act metamorphosed into energy saving feat albeit few hours of the day. I had long finished my tea and the sun had already set in. Time for the candle wicks to flicker. In retrospect the easy plunder of the nature, to which I had been a serious part of, is a blotch on our very existence. An arduous and protracted responsibility we all have to bear and do our bit to save Mother Earth from extinction. Long it's past the high time!

Turned on by the cavalcade

Life is a vintage ride. More so when the journey's quest is for the unknown. That spells theistic.

This autumn my soul's indefatigability drew me to the shores of "dhak" to drink in the soft small billows of white clouds hanging like a canopy over swaying "kans grass" lazing in the lap of exuberant mother earth. To the port of Calcutta, India ushering in Sharadotsav.
 

Bagbazar Sarbojanin, 2013

"Sharadotsav" or "Durgaotsav" is a Hindu festival celebrated by people of Bengal across the world over a period of five days - "Shasthi, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami and Dashami". Religion has never been a charm for me. The quintessence of being a fleck but holding onto the universe allures me to an odyssey. I worship the solitude and serenity that life springs up for us. Having said that the festival of autumn in Bengal is loud and lively, vivid and vociferous braiding the familial thread solid and secure.

With a surge of human wave thrashing the roads of Calcutta and the priests' Sanskrit hymns blaring loud over the microphone from the Durga Puja pandals lulled my senses. The mesmerizing beats of the dhak accompanied by inebriating "dhunuchi naach" spreading the sweet smelling thick smoke of powdered incense braced my inner self de-cluttering all that is not worth living for, all that flanks our spirit, body and mind everyday of our lives.

Chatubabu Latubabu bari Durga Puja, 2013

 

The aura of the autumn in Bengal acted as a cleanser strengthening my mind, heart and soul over the body which is nothing but a veneer of hatred, selfishness, jealousy, pride and arrogance. The festive clamour, the glitzy fashion and fiesta, the ravishing splendour, the gastronomic delights, the home-coming of family and friends, the versatile culture of Bengal filliped its people and tourists like me to come out and celebrate defying Calcutta's stifling weather.

Calcutta is distinctly divided into north and south. The north displays the city's soul wrapped in sheaths of archaic buildings of erstwhile rich landlords of Bengal raped of its glory by passing eons, narrow alleys, the colonial dignity marked by austerity, tradition and unvarnished hospitality.

Raja Nabakrishna Deb bari Durga Puja, 2013 Shobhabazar Rajbari

The contemporary swanky Calcutta defines the south of the city embellished in thoughts and actions fit for the e-age. Though I did some pandal hopping, resplendent in decor but painful for the limbs after hours-long queuing for a glimpse of the goddess Durga yet my inner-self turned me on to "bonedi barir pujo" (pujas celebrated in the house of age-old landlords adhering to the strictest term of tradition).

A Durga Puja 2013 pandal

Keeping with the unyielding times especially after the roll-out of "Zamindari Abolition Act" post Indian independence, the once extended families of these opulent landlords went asunder. Their riches dwindled away. Many of these families could not afford to celebrate Sharadotsav except for a handful who still celebrates the festival with the same age-old fealty and reverence minus the splendour. The candor, the modesty displayed in the "bonedi barir pujo" has a homespun ambience. The aesthetic principle of these celebrations does not get enmeshed in ornamental facets.

Shobhabazar Rajbari entrance

A number of tour guides map out a plan for "bonedi barir pujo" stopovers guiding you through and through. The travel agencies accomodate tourists with a guide, packed food and bottled water and the conveyance selected depends on the tourist's budget. The impeccable hospitality of the people of Bengal acts as an edge to tourists rounding up in its capital regardless of its shoddy state of infrastructure.

Amidst the ululating sounds of the women of Bengal offering "aarti" to goddess Durga and "sindhur khela" before she makes way to the Ganges for immersion on Dashami, the chime of oneness reverberated within myself. What I felt is extreme buoyancy and solace devoid of human fatigue. The litheness of these moments made me to avow to myself of the rugged roads that life has to tread on for all who walk over the earth's arena.

The biggest annual carnival of Bengal may end in kaleidoscopic five days, however the quest for our inner godliness and theology and the constant drive to win over our bodily utilitarianism continues. The land and its people yearns for the true essence the spirit of the festival leaves behind - goddess Durga's footprints that are meant never to be blotted from one's mind, the good fighting over the evil.   

The collateral existence

Growing up in a society where the literary world and the world of realism played a centrifugal role is certainly to spawn a generation of miscegenetic ideas and 21st century is no less. Here is man, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, caste, strata or nationality, ruling since aeons with ace time attesting to his existence. With every passing age, necessity has been the mother of invention, mankind evolved but a man's heart and mind have hemmed and hawed when it came down to the existence of his counterpart, woman.  

 

Not that I am a feminist, however, I do proclaim shooting up on the edifice of Bengal Renaissance.  This afternoon, while viewing Ray's Mahanagar, for the nth time, I was wondering women still are herded to a survival by the herdsman where they deem the place safer and seamless from the perplexities of life. Let alone working on a square platform, she is "raped" by man for her very entity since the day she enters this world, she is "raped" by man for accessing basic health care and education, she is "raped" by man given to a marriage where dowry, in the veneer of a tradition abiding wife zapped up in the partisan societal fabric, is a harbinger of wealth and domestic servitude.

 

So when you hear the news of rape in media now, happening all over the world, the angst is obvious for women of all stratum, educated or ignorant, religious or asthetic, black or white. The very morale of such activity lies in the fact that man seem to completely enjoy crushing a spirit born free whose bodyily essentiality is defined and articulated only under his thumb rule. So when you hear about religious laws sheathing women from contributing to a nation's governance and collective policies, "I have a dream" speech commemorating 50 years of Martin Luther King Jr's March on Washington signify a waning fervour in 2013. So what if a commoner giving birth to a baby boy in 2013, he is baptized as a prince to be. The blood that flows in his body is royal, his lineage truncated to paternal only. So what if a blast ripped through a bus carrying female university students makes the news headlines in 2013, let us count the hits on our social media platform we have by spreading the word to the world lapping it up with the indiscriminate fire attack by the militia on the hospital building where the injured were taken into. So what if the Indian currency plummeting, the showbiz world is feasting on the box office collections of 'Chennai Express' both in India and abroad. The emotional quotient at the cinematic climax, set at a remote village in the southern part of India, toyed with a woman's sensitivity of not being heeded to in the 21st century laves the hearts of millions and mints money pivotal to the field of commerce.  

 

Just so while writing this piece, I receive the news of an expat's wife, our families live in the same building, praying not for a girl child, time is not deathly quiet. Crossing the longtitudes and latitudes of the world does not necessarily imply that you start ignoring your ancestry and their age-old institution of belief who had bequeathed us patronage in furthering the ancestral tree that takes root in a man. I feel the vibes soft-pedalled by the expat's wife - the societal stigma associated with delivering a girl child. Stoking up the fire is her quiet plea for help. She called up to consult me in putting up a plan to set her domestic chaos straight when she leaves for home on a mother-to-be break. Men love to be cosseted so much that they simply tend to forget that with marriage comes responsibility - both financial and moral - and need more than two shoulders to lift the millstone. We women are proud to be hanger-on. And yes this of course exudes peace in domesticated lives.

This is quite apparent when the world is fixated at Syrian crisis; the first lady of Syria, toned in grandiose lifestyle, is far from the media glare. Well her husband is there fighting at the front knowing all too well that she and her children can retreat to a safe haven anywhere in the world courtesy money, power and influence.  

Watching 'Mahanagar' this weekend I mustered all that is to take beyond the film is to preserve the treasure trove left behind by Ray for our children and theirs for the collateral existence of women is likely to perish only with the extinction of human race and not anytime soon.

Harvesting happiness: The parable of concrete jungles

Harvesting happiness: The parable of concrete jungles: Every morning when my eyes reach out for the first rays of the sun, the pair has to go beyond a humongous building, to seek the light of t...

The parable of concrete jungles

Every morning when my eyes reach out for the first rays of the sun, the pair has to go beyond a humongous building, to seek the light of the day - the vast expanse of the sky, peeling itself out of a cantaloupe, spreading its dewiness aura over the universe. I sincerely imagine everyday that the gigantic edifice vanishes by some witchcraft. My heart gladdens at this very thought of drawing in the iciness and the sparkle of the day's break minus the median.

 

A childish thought indeed. Nontheless I am not playing foul here as the façade is on the verge of completion, so uninhabited. There is no cause of panic to set in the mind of the readers thinking that the building blocks might come tumbling down causing a severe damage to lives, property and neighbourhood courtesy an earthquake or a twister. I just pray for a fresh start, the morning ideal, before the city and its strait-laced life joggles in twitching my inner peace.

 

The life beyond imagination slips into reality. The tea making machine robs me of the second opportunity of my senses from settling on the tea-leaves brewing in the kitchen spilling around the aroma of the raw flavour. Setting the stop-watch the rush hour is followed by morning ablutions and breakfast. The school buses honk in rigour for the children who gradually open up from their foggy senses. The transportation league of the city's vista darts on the fitted well-planned roads and highways at the first siren of the day's crack. Moving on to expressways leaving behind the maze of sustainable skyscrapers to find its destination to aviation and port terminals in a bid to unfold its vision to new frontiers. 

 

The uniformed educated dyed-in-the-wool human race, managing to read newspapers and sipping cuppa on the way, barges in through the doors of their productive corridors trying to hit a sixer before an empty audience. The not-so-educated ones, entwined to a city's zing, too prods on to their mercantile hubs, digging into iPhones, tablets and a number of high-end gadgets and applications on their way.  The city folks' tight-lipped demeanor falls off as the day languors to weariness, feigned excitements and incitements to push harder. 

 

Do not be guided for once by the bird of good omen that the nutty city do not cross the doors of domesticity. Those who stay at the houses for a range of reasons smartly connect to the world through social media, the mélange of ideas, knowledge and thoughts, stories, images, art and culture teaching you the act of sharing, liking and disapproving. In a nutshell I do not have to know who my neighbour is, whether thy neighbour is alone and in pain and that is not important. The strategem of a city infested class is to run the extra mile. For example, when the world is hounded by what happens in Syria, albeit you might not be able to spot the country on the globe nor for a single day in your life have left the city haven, yet I should be abreast of the loss, sufferings and the misfortune befallen on the city of Damascus and participate with staunch comments on the social media. I am sure no-one heeds to my voice but my hits on the social networking circle takes me to the pinnacle of pomposity.

 

Pouring at the fashion, wellness and lifestyle magazines, gaming at playstations, music and tennis lessons, swimming sessions, cooking and dancing classes, tutorials (for additional income of the teacher and exclusive knowledge of the student), a beeline to grocery store at the fag end of a hard-laboured day, dinner and homework, after-dinner egghead work, minimal sleep hours - the city labyrinth devours the whole day and night (weekdays) sapping the physical energy and mental strength of humanity. A crafty stoical system working silently. Weekends are reserved for frantic city tours, shopping malls, cinematic multiplexes, attendance at parties punctuated by manicured expressions and discussions or a visit to the doctor or a vet if you are a proud owner of a pet.

 

I grew up in a world blanketed by Thakurmar Jhuli, Abol Tabol, Aesop's Fables, Wuthering Heights and popular classic English literature (books, of course) and not animated flicks or games uploaded on YouTube, and learned or listened to adda, the rachis of collective wisdom and intellect of one's fraternity. A herculean task for a heart whose soul lies in the  choruibhati lunch (the Bengali cookout) playing Rabindrasangeet or adhunik bangla gaan (courtesy Hemanta Mukherjee, Shymal Mitra, Dwijen Mukhopadhyay, Manna Dey) or Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner  to name a few on gramophone or radio sets but mind makes a mental note to turn out for a colleague's kid's birthday party at Papa John's nearby outlet later this month to be feasted on processed and canned food and aerated drinks. Greeting people at swanky places and confabbing over coffee at froufrou cafe hubs, exhibiting trendy outfits and splurging on gifts is deemed to be dapper in a 21st century dolorous city.

 

It is already the end of the first week of September, the autumn is in the air. I need to ring in my jogging partner who takes her dog for a walk not to leave him astray on the pruned grassy tracts of the park. She has been notified by the municipal authorities twice erring the city landscape by virtue of a inoculated pet dog. A civilised city and community has no place for undesirable elements. Two peas in a pod - deleting my account of quondam days for fear of defiling the city's young, dynamic, innovative and tech-savvy minds and the welfare organisations expunging the stray dogs from the city map for fear of rabies. 

 

The cabalistic city is a perfect hideout of human civility. Welcome to the jungle! 

What does Sierra signify

Marcus Tullius Cicero etched "Dum Spiro, spero - as long as I breathe, I hope".  

 

I chanced upon Cicero's above quote while reading a book. I have often observed, as a kid, annual family holidays concentered either transversing to hills or beaches. Usually after a Saturday vegetarian lunch or a Sunday brunch of luchhi and kosha mangsho the family holiday meeting sessions kicked off with a fervour that lasted till late evenings over a long forgotten snack of tea and samosas gone dun and soggy. The sessions were multiple, often family friends included, budgets chalked out, the trains and lodges booked in advance, the cursory bedding and home-made snacks bundles' to be toted and tour attractions and local conveyance mapped out in an effort to save time and avoid being tricked off by touts in a distant land away from home. It was customary to ignore the whims of the children, as elders played the pivotal part in all parleys - monetary resource being the premier, and so we were herded to the holiday destinations often as a bale to be photoengraved for life.

 

For my family and our family friends, places surrounded by hills or mountains had always been presaged. As a child I followed my elders' footsteps yearning for the lush palisade, the lithic landscapes - the bulwark standing tall. We were not so fortunate to be born in times when camera phones, camcorders or digital cameras stood might and main before our eyes and brain. Every family owned a film reel camera though which did not rotate hands and often the family breadwinner was the sole custodian. We children had to rely on the magnetic sensor of our eyes.

 

I have been fortunate enough to lay eyes on Himalayas not once or twice but for times unaccounted for. Lost are the times too, when the anticipated annual holiday trips to distant lands chimed in our tiny hearts gladdening our souls. These are the e-days when places and pictures can be visited and shared with kith and kin via tablets, laptops and iPhones.

 

Even this day the impregnable Himalayas read my inner soul loud  -

 

When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first splendour, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang

"Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!"

 

Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore 

 

Eminence, robustness, placidity, extirpation, ruggedness, pastoral beauty - I usually run out of words eulogising those moments captured as a child. The beauty of experiencing the awe-inspiring majestic mountains lies not in text or images but by living it.

Imposing as it is it draws out human relationships, individualities of characters to the core in Satyajit Ray's 1962 film Kanchenjungha where Ray uses excellently the billowing mists and the circuitous paths of the range, that people walk on as they meet and part, to show confusion and finally when things begin to resolve the mists slowly lift and the setting sun sets the mountain peaks glowing.

I believe the Himalayas enunciate the truth and wisdom and the monastic life of  Swami Vivekananda is well reflected in his collection of works - Lectures from Colombo to Almora -

"...As peak after peak of this Father of Mountains began to appear before my sight, all the propensities to work, that ferment that had been going on in my brain for years, seemed to quiet down, and instead of talking about what had been done and what was going to be done, the mind reverted to that one eternal theme which the Himalayas always teach us, that one theme which is reverberating in the very atmosphere of the place, the one theme the murmur of which I hear even now in the rushing whirlpools of its rivers — renunciation!".

 

The melting pot of human race defying religion, colour, creed or nationality - the omnipotent Himalayas weds spirituality and philosophy is born out of this wedlock. The exalted landscape and the charming panorama, the inhabitants of the Goliath rocky range, the foot hills, the flora and fauna, the platonic enigma, the esoteric sages and depth of their cave hide-outs, the serene purified air and the gushing torrents, the austerity of the omneity pressing on us is what we need to glorify.

 

The sharp druthers inked on my soul for the vast expanse of this mountain range puts me on the reposing route to Cicero's dear hope -

 

"All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days

and summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings

of my busy life will I place before him

at the close of my days

when death will knock at my door."

 

Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore

The innocence of the infantine years

On my trip to Bali in March earlier this year, I was mobbed by local artisans trying to sell their wares in the Kintamani region overlooking the active volcano of Mount Batur and the beautiful serene lake partially blanketed by fog sweeping the area in cold temperatures. I was devouring the nature - silent, balmy, unflappable, aquamarine and kaleidoscopic when someone suddenly tugged at my dress and I gave in to the enamored web of the landscape surrounding me and turned around. The tiny fingers of the small hand laced with my dress, a pair of dove eyes and others flagging her entreating my attention - euphoric as I was with the nature and turned on more so to see the gleeful timid faces of nature's bounty - children of varying ages.  

 

 

Holding the little one on my lap and surrounded by the rest - Kintamani, Bali, Indonesia March 2013

The mother of the little angel, who happyily strode into my arms was nearby, along with her elder sister - seen at the backdrop of the image and all of us were captured in this frame for life. The little one was the toggle of her mom winning the hearts over of the tourists so that she could have her bread and butter in oodles by selling her stuff. In Balinese, which I did not follow but could make out with the help of our driver, the mother admonished the elder one for her wretched ways in marketing herself and the transactions that followed. Poor crummy girl, hardly six or seven years old, showed up a doughty attitude and with dogged alacrity pushed hard on the tourists nearby.  

 

In our times, at the age of six or seven, we had been coy lambs backed by ancestral and circumstantial opulence, our dopiness would not have rung a bell of a parent's pet child. Today's generation, a smarter lot than we were, soaks up the parental gestures and that's one big fib than all others - parents' fiery denial that they have a favourite child.   

 

"Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged" - Louisa May Alcott.

 

However, does a father or mother take pains in fraternising with their other kids, if they have reproduced more than one, or simply get by their cherished one who grows into an over-indulgent, foolhardy and prized person later on in life. The other children (or child) left behind clamor for assiduity. The barefaced truth under veil although is enjoyed by relatives, family friends and acquaintances. No one dare proclaim this for fear of kindling bitter enmity with the family.

 

If the oldest child is a son, favouritism is quite natural in most socities bound by old inheritance laws and the social taboo holding onto the son(s) taking care of parents in their ripe age. The youngest child of a family can be a pet, the tootsie and sugar candy protected by parents usually bushing up their acts of trouble making and tantrums thrown to have their own ways. In another case a child becomes a pet of the family on grounds of sully experiences faced by the parents with their siblings as kids. Talented, intelligent, clubby and expressive kid, again, is the most favoured in the family circles. Yet another example of favouritism points to biological versus the adopted kid. An ailing child often grabs attention of parents by virtue of necessity. This is misleading to the other kvetching child who ploys better lapping up parents' soft spots. 

 

Whatever the case may be every child is different and parents' varying degrees of attention is sure to backfire. Lugubriosity, low morale, ambiguity, paranoia and number of phobias grow latent in the heart of the neglected one to which parents turn a blind eye. Researches have pointed out that the less favoured one cultivates few friends, is cold and solitary, and pops up attention-seeking demeanor.

 

Growing up has enormous effects on the less favoured one, often sardonic and cynical about family life and relationships. Hapless are those who try to establish new relationships with the grown up less favoured one as they cannot dig in times burned up.

 

I absorb some well crafted views of experts running confidence building workshops for children. Emphasising on spending quality and equal time with all children in the family, and depending on the child's nature try pulling the twitchy one to kite-flying with a friend instead of enjoying a cinema and push the bookish one to visit a museum instead of enrolling him/her into dancing or roller-skating classes.

American science writer Jeffrey Kluger published a book about siblings that claimed parental favouritism is hardwired in the human psyche. In The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us, he wrote: ‘It is my belief that 95% of the parents in the world have a favourite child, and the other five% are lying.'

Putting the spotlight on each child's positives helps the buds to blossom into self-reliant, selfless, self-sufficient, dynamic and vivacious sweet smelling flowers. There is no other way for parents but to be complaisant and tactful.

Turnpikes I knew not

The inkling for this leitmotif is mainly the pensive framer who sits on a reed mat on the tiled floors of the house every morning facing the French windows that stretches out to views of structured roads rimming the hollow woods and a row of hillocks. The beeline of peak hour transport makes the traffic labyrinth a piece of cake.

 

Most of us pay very little attention to roads - the fabric of commerce and connection, whose construction was a pre-requisite to sustain the growing population in faraway lands when journeys were dusty, wearisome and bromidic. 

 

History echoes that a road built in Egypt by the Pharaoh Cheops around 2500 BC is believed to be the earliest paved road on record - a construction road 1,000 yards long and 60 feet wide that led to the site of the Great Pyramid in Giza. Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his Roman euology states "The extraordinary greatness of the Roman Empire manifests itself above all in three things: the aqueducts, the paved roads, and the construction of the drains." Indisputably the ancient Romans pioneered, who, until modern times, the world's straightest, best engineered, and most complex network of roads in the world.

 

Looking back to an aeon, should I not be in seventh heaven? Reflecting that in the age we are in today with a phenomenal progress in trade, technology, vehicular transportation and social welfare crossing frontiers, roads are an undeniable chrysalis to the entire human civilisation. However the atrabilious attitude while I compose this fall back to my growing up years in a land which was crucially lagging behind in developing its road network and wherever the roads existed they were either in deplorable state or totally impassable depending on seasonal changes. So it is apparent that I do not nurture a peppy air either way - learning about the archaic Empire's nonpareil mercantile contribution to the world or looking at the improved six lane segments of the existing infrastructure through the French windows of my house in the sojourn nation.

There had been a city I frequented during my foster years where almost all the roads were incapacious and truncating that I was aghast to believe that this abode was precisely named which in Sanskrit connotes a prosperous growth centre. Even today, writing on the basis of the facts provided by my kinsfolk, it is far worse although my erstwhile visits to the city had been shunned for multifaceted reasons. I muse over the fact that had the Maharajah brocard still in its imperium as it was in the 17th century, the city would have been named antithetically. Icky roads, not conducive to a biking environment, jammed with rickshaws, private vehicles, buses, trucks and in light of the ballooning populace is chafing the city of its unique historic and cultural identity. Faulty infrastructure and languorous administration markedly approve that we care less for future generations and low carbon development.   

 

I pine for the livable transportation network integrated to urban planning in the land where I grew up. The chapter of scraping up "people first" road infrastructure, though started, has a long way to go. Redtapism, profiteering, political abhorrence and paucity of funds will and have always been the chronic challenges, exerting significant impacts, to architects of possible dreams.

 

Malcolm X once stated “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”  I harbor when new perspectives to these most ignored spaces of our urban landscape will parlay for our next generations who would cry out on visiting the city (es), I dropped by, "turnpikes I knew not ever existed"? To them our footprints should speak of profundity.

The seraphic seasoning of 'life'

I quote Robert Frost "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”

There are many different versions of "life" painted by life's very own essence since the concept of Universe dawned. Centuries have gone by, philosophical ethics unfolded, political theories garnered and science made remarkable progress spanning aeons, crossing boundaries and yet this whole Universe, its patterns and the big blue bubble where "life" germinated is still a wonder - the veil of its infancy is yet to be laid bare.

I love to bask in nature but do not recollect the genesis of my connecting to the life's handiwork. I have been very fortunate enough to echo Tagore since my budding years humming his icon"Listen, my heart, to the whispers of the world with which it makes love to you".That which is emerald in colour, fresh and in abundance and sapid to my senses had always appealed to me.

My childhood reared up in the nature's mystic fragrance and hues - thick coppice, lush paddy fields, the shaggy headed banyan tree standing tall and imposing at the mouth of the street which bended to an arterial road, the sunlight filtering through the dense śāl forests - the route we usually avoided taking after twilight hours but was whoopee to our tiny feet treading in the daytime kicking sand and mud along or stomping weeds or the dry fallen leaves and twigs, the tweedling colourful little birds mostly whose names I was unaware of nestling in the foliage near our home - stirred vibrations in my soul weaving a tapestry of radiance in the man-made epoxy world even after I husked out of my infantine years.

We had a neat manicured flower and vegetable front garden precisely supervised by my mom and Madanda, our weekly gardener. Between the scorching summer sun and school vacations both of them used to spend gruesome and tiring hours over gravel mulch for a trimmed landscape. Hibiscus was her all time favourite but she planted dear to her heart roses, gerberas, dahlias and marigolds in the winters so we all could enjoy the blooms up close on the patio.

There was a chhatim flower tree by my bedside window of the house where I grew up, whose enlivening whiff in the arid summer nights captured me alone and speechless - silence abounding. My old habit of reading books at bedtime with the windows wide and open during the summers often took my mind off to "all is quite in the garden now" - fireflies flashing its light, the warm breeze blowing, leaves rustling on the trees and the choruses of cicadas and tree frogs abuzz with silence gradually seeping in through the dark fabric of the starlit sky.

As children during school vacations we were paraded to the nearby woody and swampy riverbed with our picnic hampers. I was inept playing outdoors with other neighbourhood children. My favourite pastime then would be listening to the soft ripples of the river water gazing at its turquoise fathomless shape. Sitting on the grass underneath a tree my eyes would often wander at the blazing sky of the summer looking out for a hint of the overcast shadows and a splendour pour. Nay it never allayed my fancies.

But I enjoyed the traditional fishing boat rides with the others - the fishermen used to ferry us out towards the horizon with clumsy looking large wooden oars hacked from a single piece of wood. The hone of silence surrounded us sans our innocent peals of laughter amidst the water flowing in its fullness gladening my heart beyond measure.

My heart brews for silence and my eyes longs for ethereal portraits of nature at all times and in all places I visit even today. Growing up in a real world has been painful but years later hopping to different cities and countries, Tagore reminds me of the innate "Stream of Life" -

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

For me, nature's been an inspiration to stay afloat, to see beyond the malevolent and bilk human mind, to dye my spirit with its colours, and that it is quintessentially the name of the game called "life".

The coiffure chat

I made an appointment with a coiffeuse last Saturday after a period of four months - thanks to the impending spring holidays in Bali I'm longing for later this month -  bidding adieu to the pesky frizzy every day wave affair. 

Ever since I was a toddler I was following my mum's footsteps - she had long tresses, charcoal black, straight but a little wavy, shone like fine strands of silk, thick and gorgeous that came tumbling down beneath her knees - I too genetically inherited her long thick straight but a little wavy black mane but not as beautiful and ravishing as my mum's. Her tress tales, even today although age has started to clip its sheen, invite many a lady's envy and leave them itching for the established attribute of a woman's beauty. She, of course, went an extra mile to take care of her free flowing extra mane. Regular oiling, having fish in her diet and applying homemade hair pack (mixing amla, reetha, sheekakai) once in a week, plaiting her hair before hitting the bed in the night, helped her wear those black long locks with pride. I remember, her telling me when I was a kid, that when she was in her school and college days and ran on a tightier budget she could not even think of buying a bottle of shampoo.

Prior to fleeing the nest my mum took care of my locks as best as she could juggling between her work, home, kids, and kitchen garden. Despite my screaming and countless tears, she used to brush my hair everyday with a desparation trying to emphasise my feminity and making a spectacle of versatility of her natural black mane. Poor me - little did I make sense of it then that a mother daughter tress tales would actually benefit me rebuilding my already inherited healthy hair years later!

I started treading the hirsute journey with a great ardor in my late twenties - when I was packed off as a marriage material. The thought of bridal finery only complete with a comely hairdo on the D-day helped me fan my pruriency on tangible sides of life - I kicked off with my hair! Thus began the odessey with my mane.

Invariably I wanted to get the celebrity glow on my mane and drifted from one cosmetic indulgence to another. Hopping to a regular salon and hair dresser did not end my tress woes either. Open to experimenting with different hair products and hair colours from taming frizz to volumnizing flat hair for hogging the celebrity style limelight I forgot to indulge in my wellbeing to relax and rejuvenate.

With a demanding profession and marriage came stress bearing enormous negative impacts on my health. I was inept to life's real face - struggling to keep up to it's daily doses even now. However, I was hell bent on weaving a magic and set my heart and mind to it for a postive and optimistic frame of mind and body. And this realisation made me fall in love with my long black mane once again! The bygone mum-taking-care compassionate times blanketed my emotional keel.

I now pamper myself to a regular deep conditioning hot oil massage for strong and nourished strands, whole egg and yolk-only treatments once in a month for lustrous and soft hair and religiously swear by L'oreal's INOA hair colour products and treatments to beautiful hair. There are lots of hair care posts on the internet available (hair care varies from person to person due to different hair textures) educating and inspiring people to improve their health and happiness. Topping it all is eating healthy and drinking water adequately ultimately helps you with the image turnover.

Talking about the latest trends, I admit being a poor resource on this and leave that in the hands of the adroit professionals at A Cut Above - my present salon de beauté, with confidence.

I love long layers which is very feminine. Maybe this is what I inherited best from my mum - never did I realise before that her gestures with my black locks in my growing up years was a candid coiffure chat she wanted to convey.

The twig gradually branching out...

A rare gem in a troglodytic life

I was three years old when my father gifted me a book on 'alphabets' as convent schools started early those days. Little did I know at that time, or do the wee ones ever ponder considering the age I was, that the opuscule of knowledge in the form of published documents would grow on me, explore and expand profoundly enriching and forming the largest archive of my budding life.

Both my parents went out to work and although I was not their only child, the embryonic stages of my life passed by as a lone wolf - coy and demure. The books made me quarantined from a normal childhood. Books reinvented me - I felt unalone intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. However I had no hands on experience with the practical life. The invaluable social resource was never there in me and the building blocks of relationships came tumbling down for me. This has never left me feeling blue though.

I was more than ecstatic, soaking in the solace of volumes of 'lettered' knowledge that appealed to me more, was readily accessible (both my parents maintain a library that is to be gaped at - maybe I had it in my genes!), and the most patient of teachers I knew not. Many would gag at the knowledge that, even now, I draw the musty smell of the old ones and the inky smell of the new ones that wafts to me everytime I open a book to read - making my head swim with delight. Embracing the regular reading habit in the initial years of my growing up helped me find a confidante while soul searching serious answers in life and calmed my frayed nerves.

Still and going on - I nurture and polish this gem of a friendship in my austere life for the unpredictable days ahead - impregnating my life's slips with wisdom. I can never recollect a single day till date when I woke up to the chaos of the world without my fingers laced on this "rare gem".

 

 

I'm presently reading the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (Palace Walk; Palace of Desire; Sugar Street).

 

More on the leaves and twigs of my life in my next blog.