Reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in

 

Hibiscus photos sent by my father, from their garden

Many years ago, someone invited me to join sessions organized by what sounded like a cult. They said " having spirituality in one's life is so important". Which I completely agreed with. I replied, without even thinking, that I am spiritual, but my connection to the universe is through nature. It wasn't a prepared answer, it came out of me, just like that. It only struck me much later where that originated from. 

We are all gardeners in the family. I am so grateful to my parents for instilling a love of gardening in us. Not that they EVER spoke to us about it. 😁 My brother and I just grew up watching them dig, plant, weed, fight against poor soil, harsh summers, in the garden, every single day, despite the busy lives they had. We learnt the immense pleasure of receiving something after putting in effort and love. And the humility to accept graciously, when sometimes we did not. 

Gardening is one shared interest we have between the 4 of us, otherwise very different people. 😀 And so we also started having our own garden patches, as children. My brother grew cactii, a whole amazing collection of them. I grew trees (because trees were my refuge, I used to climb up and hide, my parents couldn't reach me there 😂), carrying one of my kittens with me every morning to go check if there was some sign of a tiny head unfurling, from the seed I had planted. We are lucky that my sister-in-law shares our love of growing things, the planting and the waiting, and the amazing reward of each new leaf or flower.  

With age, I grew to see how gardening is a metaphor for life. It is now more philosophy, a reminder of the flow of life itself, than just the planting, the fertilizing, the joy of new flowers, and the attempts to kill mealy bugs. 😁The earth, and nature, reflect to us so many truths that govern our lives, cycles that mimic our journey. 

We dig to make space for yet another plant - and learn how to live better, and become more humble. As T.S Eliot said, "the only wisdom, the wisdom of humility".

"Dheere Dheere Re Mana, Dheere Sub Kutch Hoye
Mali Seenche So Ghara, Ritu Aaye Phal Hoye."

Slowly slowly O mind, everything happens in its own pace
The gardener may pour a hundred buckets,
the fruit arrives only in its season.

Kabir 1398-1518

And therefore I can completely relate to this beautiful beautiful poem 😍: 

While there is still time: Reach out, keep reaching out 

Grahanam

 

The opposite of daanam (giving) is grahanam. Receiving. A dear friend told me about this recently, when I visited her. It jolted me. 

Receiving, and gracefully, is as important as its opposite. It completes the circle. For someone for whom giving is just a way of life, a reflex action, not even requiring thought or reflection, receiving has always been hard. It had to be learnt. 

Because for that one must truly believe one is worthy of love, despite all evidence to the contrary. Hold the hand offered to lift you up, with gratitude, even if you can climb up yourself. Accept the gift of shelter, without apology. Pick up the phone and say, this time, yes, I would like someone to come with me to the hospital. 

And know that the circle is completing. Everything you gave away is coming back. And you must not stem that flow. You must allow the universe to restore balance. You must bow down and open your hands.

“… because who can look in the mirror for three minutes
and say I love you, I love you, I love you

without bursting into tears over all the ways
we have not loved ourselves.”

Jennifer Saunders

********************************************************************************

Because for that one must tear down the walls, brick by brick. 

Lie down, let go, and notice how the earth is supporting you always, as my dear yoga teacher tells me, again and again. Break, so the light will come in through the cracks. Look at the beautifully adorned stone gods in the temple and say, “Here it is, my life, let your will prevail”. Add “Insha Allah” to everything you claim to do, every plan you make, so meticulously, nothing left to chance.

“Be Ground.
Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. 

You have been stony for too many years
Try something different. 

Surrender.”

Jelaluddin Rumi

********************************************************************************

Because for that one must encounter the opposite, the other side, have the things you believed in turned on their heads. To see that the reverse is just the other half of the story you could never see, the knowledge that you had to grow humble enough to receive. To know that age comes to you with gifts like nothing you ever imagined, if you are not busy trying to hold on to youth.

"…And most importantly let them believe in themselves

Let them be helpless like children.
Because weakness is a great thing
And strength is nothing.
When a man is just born,
He is weak and flexible
When he dies, he is hard and insensitive.
When a tree is growing,
It is tender and pliant
But when it is dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions.
Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being
Because what has hardened will never win…"

The Stalker's prayer at the well, before he takes the two men into the Zone.

from the film 'The Stalker'
Andrei Tarkovsky

That Commonplace

More conversations around mortality these days, as everyone I know nears or crosses over the mid-way mark. Or just hit by an increased awareness of the randomness of death. So what do you want in the time you have left? More and more I am tempted to say "ordinary days". When so much is actually happening that is sustaining me, quietly. When nothing is distracting me from the minute detail. Like how the orange flames of the Rudrapalaash flowers have quietly started reaching upto the sky, while I wasn't looking. Just in time, announcing September, and the festivals to come. 

What is the measure of a life? Would really living every day count? Whether or not you remember the details. :) 

Re-reading, Gilbert, who asked of the gods, "Teach me mortality, frighten me into the present". 

Highlights and Interstices

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2016/11/that-commonplace.html

I felt in need of a great pilgrimage

 

There must be better ways of spending your mornings than sitting under your favourite Hongai tree and listening to the small flowers falling, like the first drops of approaching rain. But thankfully you don't know of any of them. :) 

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

In the evenings, if you sit and wait patiently in your city balcony, you get to see the changing of the guard at sunset. The kites circle lower and lower and then come down to roost on the huge trees in the West. And once the kites have cleared the golden-gray evening sky, the bats come flying in from the darkening East, wave after wave, hundreds of them. Without fail. Day in, day out.

A change of guard that is so easy to miss, because it happens in total silence. When you sit quietly, the world is a different place.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

I felt in need of a great pilgrimage.

So I sat still for three days

and God came to me.

Kabir, in 'Love Poems from God, Twelve Sacred Voices form the East and West'

What kind of car would you like?

"What kind of car would you like?"

"A small one covered in Hongai leaves would be perfect. 😍😍

All year I'll park it under different trees shedding leaves or flowers. 

I'll mostly be walking. So a cheap car will do."

😀

An Update from the Keeper of Seasons

Every January the Rain trees lose their leaves completely. To reveal the exquisite shape of their branches, flowing like water into the sky. They have saved my life, many times. The Mahogany leaves fall and their winged seeds twirl down to form beautiful patterns on the ground. The fragrant Mango blossoms arrive, with promises of luscious fruit in March and April, the pride of our summers.

Every February the Hongai trees lose their leaves. And are quickly covered in the most beautiful fresh translucent oily leaves I have ever seen. Each small tree, a temple of shining light you must stop at because you cannot take your eyes away. I wait for this all year. In the meanwhile, the yellow Tabebuia Argentea starts bursting into bloom in our streets, slowly, little by little, until all the leaves fall and there is only a bright yellow tree left. And the Rain trees now cover themselves in lush thick canopies, getting ready for the summer. The delicate pink needle-like flowers start falling down and browning on their massive trunks and branches like soft down. 

Every March, as the temperature rises, the Hongai flowers form carpets of white and pink and purple on our streets. Early in the morning, when all is still, you can hear the Honge flowers falling, like the first drops of approaching rain. And the pink Tabebuia Rosea lines our streets, the flowers falling like snow and covering entire avenues, until the most hardened of hearts will catch their breath. Every year I stand at this particular line of tall trees on the main road, and cry. Like Sudama, returning from visiting Krishna and seeing his hut turned into a palace. 

Sometimes we ask nothing, and are given everything.

With every passing year there are more flowers in our city. Because more trees have now grown into maturity, and have started flowering. We sometimes fail to notice things that get better, because we are only tuned into Doom station. 

This year the rain tree leaf-falling was delayed, maybe because the rains lasted well into December. And the Tabebuia Rosea is early, and the Argentea slightly late. 

You take what you are given. With gratitude. In really dark times, the quiet abundance of trees can convince some to not leave. They save lives. By just being, doing their thing, resurrecting every year, coming back to life amidst so many odds. Sometimes they are all you have. But that in itself is so much. 

Albums

Rain Tree Raagaas

February, Seeds
Hongai
Hongai Flowers
February 
March

Light, Light

Sudama: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.com/2016/02/sudama.html

Who will you call today?

"When the lockdown started, all of us from the old college batch made a promise that we will dig up the phone numbers of our teachers from 20 years ago, make a list, and sign up to call and check on each one of them. They were incredibly moved. And so happy to hear from us. Some of them were in tears.

After that we now call up at least two people every week to check on them. People whom we haven't spoken to in years, old friends, distant relatives. Just call. Ask how they are. Connect. Spend at least 20 minutes on a conversation where you are really listening.

And every Saturday we have a quick catch-up with the college batch to share how moved we have been by these calls. How we received more than we gave. It has been life-changing. And it totally raises our spirits amidst all the gloom and disaster all around, the best distraction ever."

We heard this incredibly beautiful story because an old friend and I set up this Zoom call in our apartment complex, on Mental Well-being. She works for the Live Love Laugh Foundation, which is doing incredible service at a time when we are having a Mental Health crisis the world over. 

Of course it was uncomfortable. We don't speak about Mental Well-being in public in India, do we? 😊 But what do we have to lose? Covid has brought mental health to the forefront, ironically. The few people who dialed in completely agreed that we need to talk about this subject now. 

And what a hugely inspiring story we got as a reward! I have been trying to practice this myself. 

What does it entail?

1. Make a list of people you haven't spoken to in ages. Old friends, classmates, teachers, neighbours, acquaintances, distant family members, ex-colleagues. People whom you like or respect, but haven't connected to in ages because you have just been too busy with your own life.
2. Get their numbers if you don't have them.
3. Call at least 2 people from this list every week, when you and they are not in a hurry. Or just 1 if you can't make the time. 
4. Spend a good 20 minutes at least catching up. Listen. Ask the real questions. Get to know what they are going through. How they have also smiled and wept and walked through the fire while you were busy with your own journey. Share how you have done the same. Look beyond and really see the human being behind the words.

I won't spoil it for you by telling you how you will feel at the end. 

Discover it for yourself. 😃 And tell me about it. 

Background to this Post: Walking the Thin Line

For life ought to be rich and abundant and full of love

Sonali and me and her folding chair at my Silk Cotton Tree

Twenty years ago, I used to be part of this group of strangers who used to meet up at an old house on Lavelle road in Bangalore on Sunday evenings, for "Culture Cafe" readings. The lovely Jyoti Makhija of the British Library set up this Yahoo group for people who loved to read. We met up on Sunday evenings and sat in a circle on the cool red oxide floor of this old empty house and read excerpts from books we loved. I met some very beautiful people there. Like Sonali. 

From whom I got a letter on Friday - ON PAPER - with big pictures of owls, in crayon. She lives a few kilometres away, but is reviving this old "art form", the written word on paper. It so happens that I get it the day before my birthday. What a lovely gift! 

And in the letter she mentions a particular passage I read in the group - 20 years ago! She said she could never forget the bread and the cheese, the thick chunks of it. 😃

Sonali, of the incredible strength, and the knowledge that Joy is something you got to create, like a home-cooked meal, not something you wait for to be delivered on a platter. 

It was easy to find that excerpt. This is where I got the name for my recipe blog - Abundance. It is the very first post on that blog. I had forgotten the details. But in a way this line was seared into my brain, and defined everything I believed life should be. 

I read this 1963 Norwegian novel just before I turned 20, those years of suffering when you are coming out of your cocoon and you are Neither Here nor There. 

I am not a foodie. If you ask me what I want to eat when we meet, I will probably say, "whatever". I don't really care. I care way more for Conversation and Connection. I will most probably not remember a single thing we ever ate together, unless of course you cooked it for me. But I will remember every single story you told me. And I believe in Generosity. And the Giving of Oneself without holding back. 

“…..For life ought to be rich and abundant and full of love."

Through all the years when life was neither rich nor abundant nor full of love, I still believed in this ideal vision. Just because I can't see the stars does not mean they don't exist. 

Nothing is ever promised. But "only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one" as Mary Oliver said? 

"A piece of bread and butter must overflow with joy and enthusiasm, with generosity and love."  

Ash Burlefoot, somewhere along the way, I have become you. 

Abundance: http://noodlesandmangopickle.blogspot.com/2009/08/abundance.html

For what else might happiness be?

Squirrels live on trees doing Squirrel Things, scampering on agile butterfly feet, scratching their ears with baby fingers, cleaning their bushy tails, playing endless games of catch-me-if-you-can, going crazy at the return of the light ("OH MY GOD, it's back!") and standing on their hind feet and stretching their arms  and yawning and warming their fluffy tummies in the first rays of the morning sun when all is well and ummmmmmmm happy in their small squirrel world.

Every morning they come down from the trees, and take what the day offers them. Sometimes there is food, sometimes there isn't. But every morning they come down and notice - "OH MY GOD, it's morning again!" And run around like crazy the rest of the day, chasing each other up and down and around tree trunks, round and round, like they are on wheels. Squirrels never get dizzy. They have a Dizzy Stabilizer in their heads. Am sure they won't faint on a roller coaster like I do.

Understandably I am on a high when I return from my morning walks full of squirrel encounters. Some part of my soul must be with them.

I figured out a long time ago that humans were put on this earth primarily to create electric lines and TV cables so that squirrels can get from tree to tree without having to come down and cross the road. We are just Squirrel Bridge Makers, and we are blessed to be given such purpose. (Come on, can you come up with a better reason? :) )

I watch squirrels all the time, wherever I go. I can hear a squirrel above the sound of the traffic. In the park I sometimes follow Squirrels Going Somewhere jumping from tree to tree and sometimes I discover squirrel nests.

If a squirrel comes near me, you no longer have my attention, sorry. I like you, but the trust of an animal is Another Thing Altogether. That is the kind of thing you have to kneel down to accept, in reverence and wonder. For a tiny little piece of time, the wall between you and a wild creature has come down. And you look into each other's eyes. And wonder - do I know you?

Of all the saints, I relate the most to St Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Animals. And therefore this poem speaks to me.

Happiness
Jane Hirshfield

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2014/05/for-what-else-might-happiness-be.html  

The world you most want to live in is right here

The fundamental principle of Tai Chi is balance. To never lose your balance when you are attacked. As long as you are standing you have a chance. You fall down and your opponent has the upper hand. At the root of all the slow movements of this incredibly beautiful martial art, the mother of all other forms, is a return to equilibrium.

Patrick used to be my hairdresser for a few years. One of the many Westerners who came to India and never went back. We both used to wait for my monthly haircuts - he, because he could talk in French non-stop, and me because I got to practice my French, AND hear a million stories! About his native Marseilles, his mother who would keep an extra place at the table every Christmas for someone who had no place to go to, and his fisherman grandfather who could predict the heavy winds of the mistral by the colour of the sky. His colleagues at the saloon would smile when I walk in. They knew Patrick would be in a great mood the rest of the day. :) 

He had told me once that he had learned Tai Chi from a Chinese teacher in Marseilles 30+ years ago, and how he still practices it. How it has helped him through so much. And how people ask him to teach it, but he doesn't want to. He was a man of strong opinions. So I didn't ask, though I wanted to continue the Tai Chi I had learned many many years ago.

But suddenly one day in 2016 he asks me - do you want me to teach you Tai Chi? I couldn't believe it. And so started our weekly early morning sessions in Jayamahal park. He would explain so beautifully, in French, how everything about Tai Chi was about balance.  You open, you close. You rise, you descend. You give, you take. And you repeat, again and again and again. You stand with your feet firm on the ground, and move slowly, gracefully, barely displacing the air. 

It was just other-worldly, I could barely breathe. I had goose-bumps every single time. 

Later on, you realize why he did that. He knew he was going to die. He wanted to pass on whatever he could, while there was still time. He was waiting for his biopsy report. He had lung cancer. I was with him and his wife the last few months. The hospital. The treatment at home. And I helped to call his daughter and speak to her in French and ask her to advance her ticket, there would be no time. She made it, 2 days before he passed on. She brought him the smells of his hometown, from the Southern coast of France.  Lavender oil, Marseilles soap made of olives, traditional sweets. 

He left with the smells of his childhood, half-conscious. Maybe that was closure in one way. You go out into the world, you return.

And so I move on, the sum of all the innumerable gifts so many have given me, so generously, so whole-heartedly. I try to give it all away, this embarrassment of riches,  but the universe keeps refilling my bowl, again and again, in the most unexpected of ways. 

On a Day when Hostility rules the News

Rosemerry Trommer

http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2017/08/on-day-when-hostility-rules-news.html

Patrick, featured here: https://www.magzter.com/article/Celebrity/HiBLITZ/Je-taime-Bangalore

Eating Sun

And then there is the realization that perhaps all your life has just been a polishing of the lens, a passage through large patches of darkness so that you learn that the light of the most mundane of days is the biggest gift of all, and that anything bigger than that is to be received kneeling down, like bread and wine, His body and blood ......

“This light was not like the flow of water, but something more fleeting and numberless, for its source was everywhere. I liked seeing that the light came from nowhere in particular, but was an element just like air...Radiance multiplied, reflected itself from one window to the next, from a fragment of wall to cloud above. It entered into me, became part of me.

I was eating sun.”

'And There was Light' , Jacques Lusseyran, a French writer who went blind at the age of eight and later survived the Buchenwald concentration camp

http://transactionswithbeauty.com/home/lightisalive

Johatsu: The Evaporated People of Japan

Nothing has moved me as much as this book in a long long time.

So why do I read "sad books"? Of course I flinch. I am not any tougher than any of you - on the contrary. :)

"But aren't we all in this together?" asks Joseph Grand, the dim-wit clerk in Camus' 'Plague'. The book that still defines who I am, the choices I make on a daily basis, even after 25 years.

The least we can do is to acknowledge another's pain?

I believe this helps me become more human - to willingly stand in the stream of another's suffering, and say: "Yes, I may never live this - but I feel you." Does not have to be everyone's way, but this is mine.

.........................................................................................................................

"In Japan, thousands of people each year became johatsu — “evaporated people” — driven underground by the stigma of debt, job loss, divorce, even just failing an exam."

"A hundred thousand Japanese will disappear every year, not counting the eighty-five thousand evaporations reported by the police. The families who dare consult private eyes increase, says Sakae, "their dishonor".

...Sakae sees his country as a pressure cooker. Its inhabitants slowly boil, constantly being tested. Once the pressure becomes unbearable, they escape. This taboo subject points to the very foundations of Japanese society, just like the 33,000 suicides documented annually, or 90 every day.

"A man worthy of the name never runs. Running is for faucets." Boris Vian once joked.

In Japan, the philosophy is reversed: a man worthy of the name leaves."

'The Vanished: The 'Evaporated People' of Japan in Stories and Photographs' (2016)
Léna Mauger (Author), Stéphane Remael (Photographer), Brian Phalen (Translator)

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-04-25/japans-evaporated-people-have-become-obsession-franch-couple
 

Hongai

For Patrick, who passed away before I could show him this, the most ordinary and predictable of miracles.

Photos: https://goo.gl/photos/W8GZKbfCitivDe1x6

Stop. And listen: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/2017/03/stop-and-listen.html

Stop. And listen.

Early in the morning, when all is still, you can hear the honge flowers falling, like the first drops of approaching rain.

Stop. And listen. Isn't it amazing that you can hear flowers too?

Photos: https://goo.gl/photos/W8GZKbfCitivDe1x6

Samsara

“If you walk down a street full of hongai trees every day you’ll never fall ill – the air is so good, you know? They protect you, like a mother’s womb.” Says the old park sweeper, the friend of my mornings.

*

All those years of reading various philosophies, so much poetry, wandering alone, observing. Maybe they prepared me to be this person walking down the entire length of a street looking up and smiling, following a squirrel as it moves from one hongai treetop to the next, not worried about anyone watching.

Yes, I am an idiot. But I am prone to ecstasy.  :)

I am slowly beginning to understand the swirling dervishes....

*

Coming across a small tree full of red small clustered blooms in the park, literally quivering with hundreds of birds chirping and jumping from branch to branch, I stop in surprise. Who are they? What is this tree? Then I see an old man also watching this miracle along with me, and ask him if he knows. [I have decided I will not hesitate to talk to strangers anymore. We share the same planet – isn’t that introduction enough?]

And he tells me this amazing thing, lapsing into the local language – these birds come every year only when this tree blooms. He doesn’t know the name of the tree or the birds – but he knows that there are three of these trees in this park, and a couple in Lal Bagh. And he picks up a flower and shows me how it is filled with water, literally.

We watch this amazing sight for a while, standing together under a canopy of bird chirping, and then go our separate ways, hoping to be around next year to see this again.[With the help of friends, I find out that the tree is Schotia brachypetala and the birds the migratory gray-headed starling, or chestnut-tailed starling. They pass through Bangalore every year in this season.]

Twenty-six years of familiarity, and yet a city can still hold so much magic, revealing new sides, new wonders. Just like all the people I think I know since years ......

*

The season is changing, so visibly. The dry leaves of the mahogany and the hongai fill up the streets. And the new leaves are budding, opening, resplendent in the perfect light. The rain trees are already filled with fresh green oily leaves shining in the sun, their delicate pink filament-like flowers nearly lost among the green. The yellow tabebuias are going crazy lining our streets with gold, and the pink ones have just begun.

To think I am still here, yet another year, to see all this. How did I get so lucky? So many did not make it.

"How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living." 

Jostein Gaarde

 *

All around I see people dreaming of leaving the city and living peacefully in a quiet place far away, away from all this madness. But I seem to revel in it. I don't want to go away. I am peaceful right here.

I walk among crowds, listening to barbets and random bits of conversations, rubbing shoulders with strangers, aching for their loneliness, their myriad hopes for a better life, their thirst for connection and belonging, doing what I can to help make the journey a little bit easier. I feel like a drop of water returned to its ocean*.

I find my Zen in the middle of the market place.

*

"How can one prevent a drop of water from ever drying up?*
By throwing it back into the sea."

from the film Samsara by Pan Nalin