4. The Cycle of Life

26th April 2015

And then you meet a dear friend, Saleem, with whom you volunteered at the Animal Rehabilitation Centre, some of the happiest days of your life. He tells you that you should start documenting bird sightings/hearings, the life you observe in and around the tree. That it is called Phenology, the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events. And that you can contribute to Seasonwatch. You are fascinated. You pick up a small notebook with wildlife illustrations by Sal, and you take it with you to the park.

Today is a perfect day. You walk into the park just when heaven is unfolding. You can barely breathe.

And all along the way to your tree, you notice that the parakeets are louder than usual, and so are the mynahs and the other birds. A regular orchestra. Such energy, such joy! It has rained heavily again the previous night, a hail storm. Birds sing after a storm, they say. Because they are happy for the warmth of the sun again?

The first thing you notice when you approach the tree is the kites flying around more than usual. One of them is collecting twigs. One of them is practising glides under the tree, and then sits in the sun, enjoying the warmth after a cold wet night. Probably a young one? This is also the first day that you hear the kites call out so much. Normally they are very quiet.

The second time you notice the big kite with a twig in its beak, you are intrigued. You follow where it goes. It flies out and then returns in a graceful curved arc, and settles on a branch high up there. And then you see it - it's building a nest! So that's the second kite nest! You are so excited. You cannot wait to return next week, watch this drama of new life unfold.

Afterwards, you go to your regular breakfast place, the second part of your ritual. And you notice that the people there are noisier than usual. Much conversation, much laughter. Are people also affected by storms, do they unleash something in us, release pent-up feelings, cause us to overflow? :) 

Photos
After the Storm: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106491954401233999557/albums/6141999679899880561 

The full series here: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/search/label/Notes_from_a_Ritual

3. Seeing

17 April 2015

And then the unseasonal heavy summer rains begin. You reach earlier in the morning, on a Friday. You were to be out that weekend, and you didn’t want to miss your weekly ritual, so you wake up early and come to the park before the mad rush to work. If you really want to do something, you will find ways.

It had rained furiously in the night, a regular summer thunderstorm, and there were water-marks all over the tree.

You are mesmerized by the chorus of bird song, as always. Parakeets, mynahs, barbets, sunbirds, kites, other birds you don't know the names of.

You had reached early, and it was still fairly dark. But suddenly, between 7 and 7.15, the park is flooded with light, fingers of gold cutting through the mist between the trees. It is sheer magic.

And you notice things about the tree you hadn't seen before. That it has an elephant eye. That it has "rings of Saturn". That it has skirts frozen in mid-twirl. You, obviously, are in love. :) You have even begun to press your face to the tree and talk to it. You are content.

You are amazed that every time you return, you notice something you hadn't seen before. The tree is always the same, and eternally new.

The full series here: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/search/label/Notes_from_a_Ritual

2. Home

March 2015

Once the tree is covered with leaves, you are amazed at the life on it. The bird nests, the insect nests, bee hives, the squirrels. When you come lie down on the cement platform under it, there is always so much happening up there. Which you never noticed earlier whenever you walked past, in a hurry to get your exercise. The tree is home to so many.

This morning, it is very still. And suddenly a breeze. But strangely it passes only on one side of the tree. On the other side the leaves are still. A wind corridor. Wow.

There is a kite nest way up there. And there are always a couple of kites sitting around, preening, at that time of the morning. They are getting used to you now.

A squirrel comes down from the neighbouring tree and battles with a piece of bark. From the place you are lying down you cannot quite figure out what squirrel thing she is doing. And then she runs off with something in her mouth and disappears up the neighbouring tree. You are curious, you get up and go check. She’s torn the bark off a twig and pulled out strands of bark from the inside. For her nest probably. Which means there will be babies soon! You are so excited. Nest-making season. New life on its way.

With every passing week, the dry leaves under the tree are becoming more and more sparse. The summer dryness has begun. You look forward to the changes yet to come.

The full series here: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/search/label/Notes_from_a_Ritual

1. The Teacher

"When the student is ready, the teacher arrives."

All aimless wanderings kept leading here. Again, and again. The first week, the leaves falling, the second, the bare branches, the third, the first green buds. And then the flowers, all around the slender wrists. Way up there in the sunlight, visible only through your zoom lens.

Every single week, the tree is different. The ritual the same, but the god at the altar, revealing new faces every time.

We step and not step into the same river. We never meet the same tree again. And we are never exactly the same people we were. "At every meeting we are meeting a stranger."*

And you know that in June the dry pods will break, and the ground below will be covered with silk cotton. Which you would like to think squirrels and birds take to line their nests with. That unbelievable softness.

So much change, and so much calmness. Strong, sturdy, sheltering. Beautiful in every single phase. You unravel, and then return to this healing, this lesson, again and again, every week. The silk cotton tree saves you every single time.


My soul counselled me and charged me
Lest I be exhalted because of overpraise
and lest I be distressed for fear of blame.

Until that day I doubted the worth
of my own handiwork;
But now I have learned this:

That the trees blossom in spring,
and bear fruit in summer
and drop their leaves in autumn
to become utterly naked in winter
Without exhaltation and without fear or shame.

Kahlil Gibran, Prose Poems

"He gazed at it for several minutes. A tree had never before been so soothing to him. As he admired it, he could feel the anger and distress draining from him."

"A stroll in a London park and an encounter with a beautiful tree at least taught him that useful lesson: if you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left."

Yann Martel, in 'Beatrice and Virgil'

* T.S.Eliot

Later posts here: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/search/label/Notes_from_a_Ritual

So what's your thing?

"Come. We must go deeper, with no justice and no jokes."  Michael Ondaatje

Someone said this to me in a mail recently:"It's kinda strange when I think that I have only met you once - and yet I know you, in ways that matter, more than I know some of my closest friends.:) "

In the park the other day, in the lazy meandering funny-serious crazy-deep conversations that seem to happen only when lying down under trees, where the silences are punctuated by birdsong, someone said that he didn't like stories about unicorns, in the context of a Murakami novel. And I asked why and he said "Unicorns are not my thing."

And then we all laughed and did a round of "So what's your thing?". What are the things that most define you. What you most value. What you stand for. What has been a constant in your life. Single word answers. It made us think though it started out as as joke. It wasn't that easy. We don't usually stand apart from ourselves and think about this.

And then we wondered - do the people who are "close to us" know that these are our "things"? Would they get the answers right if someone asked them? Is that why some relationships disappoint us? And others feel like "home" though we know so little about what those people do for a living?

The standard "getting-to-know" questions give society a framework within which to place us, I guess.

Where do you work?
Where do you come from?
Are you married? Do you have children?
What does your spouse do?

After that the conversations tend to be about things you do, places you went to, the travails of city life, your opinions about everything under the sun etc etc. Rarely about who you are, and who you are evolving to be, and your struggles between them.The bigger the group, the more shallow the conversation. The one-to-ones, the small groups, sometimes go deep.

Some of the best conversations I have had have been where the questions above did not figure, or did not matter. Not having been led into that box, people felt free to talk about what they are beyond all this, the core of who they are, which is not defined by spouses, children, parents, jobs.

Does a general dissatisfaction with life have to do with an unfulfilled need to be understood? Do we feel more real, more at peace, when we are able to communicate who we are? Listen me into being.

Each individual, a deep well we rarely look into. So full of stories. All waiting to be told.

Who are you? What's your thing?

The Extra Chair

My French hairdresser tells me that back in the olden days when he was growing up in Marseilles, they always placed an extra chair at the Christmas table for a stranger, or someone who had no one to celebrate Christmas with. And the chair was never empty.

One of my American Support colleagues once told me how at Christmas time Tech Support gets a lot of calls from lonely people who don't really have any technical issues, but just want to have someone to talk to. Because it's Christmas, everyone's spending time with their families, and they have nobody.

An extra chair at the table. What a difference that would make to the world now.

Ghetto: http://vimeo.com/4816231

These streets remind me of quicksand
When you're on it you'll keep goin' down
And there's no one to hold on too
And there's no one to pull you out...

Humus

Of late I have been fascinated by the rotting flowers and leaves in the park. The thick layer of various shades of brown and black, with fallen flowers on it, waiting to be transformed. The moisture from the rains heightens the sense of intense life among the stillness. A life whose movement is imperceptible to me.

Imagine what's happening in there, so quietly. The sheer magnitude of the constant transformation! The brightly coloured flowers and leaves losing their colours day by day, breaking down into thinner and thinner strands that merge with the soil, to go back to the earth which once fed their birth. And in the process forming a rich layer that will nourish all new life waiting to burst out from underneath. I am blown away by the sheer drama that is unfolding all around us, unnoticed.

All around us, death preparing carpets to nourish new life. So quietly, without fanfare - and without fail. The green blades of grass bursting out of what once used to be bright orange Rudrapalaash flowers. The sheer magic of this endless alchemy. 

"...Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years."

Wendell Berry

Each time I kneel down in the park to look closely at this layer under the plants, I am moved by the thought that someday I too will form part of this humus. That someday I will be of the earth on which trees will grow. I cannot imagine a better way to serve. The very thought fills me with joy.

And there will no longer be any duality. No me and the world. No me and others and the huge chasm between.

To merge with the earth must be the end of all separateness.

I cannot wait.