Hug

Just when the heat becomes unbearable, the rain trees and hongais fill up with leaves, sheltering us in their thick green cool shade.... we are granted mercy too at times, whether or not we deserve it.

*

Where have we reached in our evolution if we are embarrassed by someone breaking down in public, and turn away instead of reaching out and holding them?

We empathize with hunger, poverty, disease, disability – but we do not want to acknowledge anyone “losing it”, cracking up mentally, emotionally. Why?

Why is it the greatest shame, to cry in public? Why does it destroy the entire edifice of our respectability in a second?

What is so shameful about suffering?

*

 “When I tried to hug her, she’d tell me it was too hot for hugs. So I learned to stop trying. We never had conversations. I thought it was normal. It was all I knew. I always thought the relationship between a mother and a child was about giving and receiving orders.

But when I was ten years old, I went to a friend’s house to do a school project. At first I remember feeling sorry for him. His family was so poor. There was almost nothing in the house. But when we walked inside, his mom gave him such a big hug. And she was so happy to see him.

And that was the saddest moment of my life. Because I never knew that was something you could have."

(Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Humans of New York

*

Every morning for a month, I was woken up by the incessant chatter of the rosy starlings, who must now be on their way back to Europe, flying across thousands of miles, passing over so many landscapes, always together ....

To have been placed in the path of such beauty……… 

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

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

You give, you take

For you, Patrick

However loud the sounds around, you can always tune into your own station. Try it. Like I am always tuned into barbet station. :) :) Wherever I am in Bangalore, above the loud traffic sounds, I can still identify a barbet. You can always hear what you want to hear. I hear birds. I hear barbets. The city is still a magical place for me.

Listen/see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IpU_dLropY

The white-cheeked barbets live only in the green area in the map above, in the entire world. Imagine! They are frugivorous, and can be found all over Bangalore. Proof that we still have so many fruit-bearing trees.

*
 

Patrick used to talk to me non-stop, in French, during my monthly haircut. Stories about the South of France, his high-spirited mother and her many sayings, his grandfather who could predict the Mistral by the colour of the sky, his own wanderings alone, life lessons. And he used to teach me Tai Chi in the mornings in the park, the ancient martial art. Explaining 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.

The day before he died after a brief vertiginous fight with cancer, I gave him water. A small offering for all the warmth and generosity he never failed to show.

His daughter 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.

Au revoir, Patrick. I still practise Tai Chi every morning, without shoes, feeling the earth, like you taught me to. The barbets, the koels, the squirrels, and my Brahminy kite, they keep me company.

*

The Hongai trees are turning yellow and brown, rapidly losing their leaves. In preparation for that most stunning event of the year, the budding and blooming of their tender green oily-shiny leaves that let the light through, each vein standing out in its perfect glory. That time when I go berserk, run late for appointments because I am standing by the roadside, looking up, smiling, risking death by suddenly stopping my bike whenever I come upon a new tree. :)

I can barely breathe. This in-between time between seasons, the expectation in the air everywhere.

The old sweeper at the park says that he comes in at 5 am every day and sweeps once, but in a few hours it already looks like he’s not done any work. :)

*

I am doing my favourite thing again. Sitting alone in coffee shops, occasionally catching random bits of  stories going on around me. “That was SO not me!!!”, she says, her eyebrows and hands raised in total surprise. 

 "At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.

...The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless."

from 'Four Quartets', T.S.Eliot

Listen, the Wind!

If you have wind chimes in all your balconies, you will always notice the slightest change in wind direction. You will catch the first signs of the season changing - you will hear the season changing before you see it. Especially if you have heavy chimes that require a real wind. In this part of the country, the South West winds come first, and then the North East one. And who knows what else, I will keep you posted. :)

When we moved into the new apartment mid-September I was disappointed that my favourite huge Buddhist-temple-gong-like chimes were not ringing at all. The ones facing North did, this faces East.

And then I return from travelling for a week in November and walk into my room early in the morning - and the chimes are ringing!! And they have been ringing all these days, on and off, even in the night. Gentle, deep, resonant, calming.

The wind, now, is blowing from the East, dear friends.

"Listen, the Wind!" - borrowed from https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Wind-Anne-Morrow-Lindbergh/dp/0151526494

14. What we need is here

It's been a while since you've come to the park alone. Everything rushes in to greet you. The rain trees with their canopy shyness, the drying grass, the tabebuia leaves turning yellow, the scraggly park stray dogs who respond to your smiles, the sweeper ladies who stop to chat. Your cloak of solitude still fits you so well, allowing space for the world to pass in and out. You smile as you walk into a grove resonating with barbet calls, content.

The first tabebuia impetiginosa has bloomed already! You wait for this all year. This brief blossoming that bursts into your life every Oct-Nov. You watch the flowers at your feet, flabbergasted that you are allowed yet another chance to see this miracle. What a privilege. You can never quite get over this.

Every time you are shown something new, in this space you have been visiting for years. Today is the day of the parakeets. All over the park you come across the rose-ringed parakeets. Lying down under the silk cotton tree, you look up and see one sitting on a broken branch, peaceful, watching the world below. As you walk  back, you see crowds of them on trees, sunning themselves, linking tree to tree with their constant flights up and down, their sweet shrill cries cutting through the stillness. A family sees you looking up and stops to stare too, "Hey, parrots!" :) 

And you wonder at how  you have taken these beautiful birds for granted, just because they are so common in this city. There are so many all around your house too, you wake up to their calls every morning. Any way you look at it, they are exotic, stunning. You wonder at how much you take for granted, just because you have it so easily, just because it is part of your every day, just because it has been given without being asked for.

You pray that you will always remember that you are rich beyond imagining....

Twice during your walk, park sweepers stop to chat with you, telling you of their woes, the struggles of their hard lives. You stop and listen to them, give them all very liberal Diwali tips, knowing how little difference you make to their suffering, sadly. You are always singled out for such encounters - in a group, you are always the one beggars will come to expecting kindness. Maybe you have "fool" written all over your face? :)

May you always be just as foolish, just as generous. May you go away empty-handed and happy.  May you never forget the unknown dervish.

The platform under the silk cotton tree is now covered with dry leaves. Soon, the bare branches - and then the blossoming in December. The wheel has turned a full circle. Here we are again, ready for renewal, yet another time.

Of late you have been noticing how everything you have read and experienced all your life is now a part of who you are, how so much has seeped into the very fabric of who you have become. You owe a debt you can never repay, to so many all over the world, alive and dead.

You have lit your candles at so many altars, each time the darkness descended. You have been pulled out of whirlpools by the most random glimpses of beauty, by the most ordinary of mornings, resplendent with squirrels and flowers sellers. 

You have been broken, nay re-arranged, until you have seen.

... And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry, 'The Wild Geese'

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

Parakeet picture from here. 

September

"Oh, the Rudrapalaash is back! Which means September is here!!"

"So if the Rudrapalaash doesn't come, will there be no September?"

"Oh ya.....we may go directly to October!"

:) :) :)

13. Sarvam Annam

At the end of December, you arrive one morning to find that the silk cotton tree has started blooming. Far up above in the canopy, small orange flowers against the blue sky. Which means it's been a year since you first started visiting this tree. What a year it has been. And what a ritual this has been. The only constant that has grounded you through upheavals, shocks, surges of delight, joy, lightness, heaviness... and as always an endless return to humility.

A thread of visits running through the calendar, linking month to month, preserving what remained constant within you through it all. Or did it? Are you the same person?

The next time you visit the tree, the cement platform is full of dry flowers, beautiful even in their death. The leaves are also drying up and the tree more and more bare. It's January, and time for the annual ritual of the rain trees revealing the water-like flow of their bare branches into the blue blue sky. You wait for it all year and never fail to be moved every single time. You stand looking up and weep for the sheer beauty of it all.    

Having spent countless hours at the eye doctor's and hospitals since November, you are more grateful than ever for vision. For being allowed to see all this. You were destroyed, beaten down to your knees. And born again, from the sudden overwhelming submerging fear of blindness to everyday gratitude for the light.

Your visits to the silk cotton tree have an urgency that you have never known before. Every moment of beauty is to be taken with devotion, as holy sacrament, on your knees. As for the rest, you just have to get on with it. You work with the clay you are given. You play with the cards you are dealt. You get a grip and move on. You must go with the flow, like the silent trees with their fluid changes, adapting quietly to the unexpected. You repeat this to yourself, again and again. You know you will forget, your fallibility your only certainty.

February and the pink tabebuias burst into bloom, one month early.The kite nests are clearly visible across the bare branches of the silk cotton tree. You can now see them circling above against the sky, minus the thick canopy of leaves. A barbet couple once allows you to lie down and watch them, while they feed their young in a small hole on a branch very close to you. The trust of living creatures.

You have started drawing in a small notebook during your visits. As an act of meditation. Attention is meditation, and also an opening of the eyes. You are amazed at how much more you notice when you try to draw. Every single curve of a leaf, every serrated edge, every turn of colour, every spot, every vein. And for the first time you notice the wrinkles at every single place where the branches join the trunk on the silk cotton tree. Why hadn't you noticed it before, after looking at it for one year?

One more person you know succumbs to cancer. A young life. You remember sitting by the remains of a young cousin brother, the first time unnatural death came to your family.

"...And in Sanskrit there is a phrase,
a phrase to carry with you
wherever you go:

sarvam annam:
everything is food.

Every last thing." *

You do not believe that everything happens for the best. Losing a child cannot be for the best. But yes, everything is food for our transformation. We are never the same again.

All around you nature is changing on a daily basis, this season just takes your breath away. The yellow tabebuias bursting into bloom. The mahogany losing its leaves, its pods bursting open to allow its winged seeds to twirl to the ground. The copper pod laying out its yellow carpets, melting your frowns into smiles. All night the trees are working hard, and are changed by the next morning. Every morning you meet a new tree. Spring, at every corner.

And then the ordinary commonplace Hongai starts its annual transformation into the most breathtaking thing in the city, with its translucent red and pale green leaves, letting the light through, every vein revealed with an aching clarity that wounds you while it fills you with joy.  The sheer vulnerability of it, so like our own. You watch the short-lived magic while it lasts, and while you last.

That you are allowed such beauty. That so much has been taken away from you. And so much given.

Sarvam Annam. Everything is food. Every last thing.

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

* Teddy Macker, poem here.

Seeing

For Abhi

​On the ​usual path I have walked a hundred times before, to my Silk Cotton tree in Cubbon park, I come across a very strange-looking seed. With a huge wing for dispersion. I am fascinated. I send the picture to my friend Abhi. She makes the most beautiful sketches of nature, birds, and animals. She notices so much and she cares enough to know the names of things. She searches and tells me it has to "pterocarpus" something. A great tip to get me started on my research.

The Google search takes a while as there are so many kinds of seeds under this family. None of the pics look like this. But the curiosity will not let me stop, I need to know who this is. :)

And then I manage to find a beautiful drawing from this 1924 German book, where I finally identify it! Centrolobium Robustum. A Brazilian tree, also known a Zebrawood. I am thrilled to bits!!

A friend asks me how I see these things, this is not my first discovery. :)  I just look down and walk. The park floor is a treasure house. You find seeds you never noticed before and then you go around looking for the tree. And oh, the excitement of finally locating the tree! Trees from all over the world, now home to our squirrels and barbets and parakeets.

If you look, there are always new things to see in the same place you have seen a hundred times before. Nature doesn't sit still. Forever changing, forever new, forever the same at every return of the season. How is boredom even possible?

Seeing, the reward for looking. The most simple of things to do.

  

Papilionaceae seed pods—Handbuch der Systematischen Botanik (1924)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Papilionaceae_seed_pods%E2%80%94Handbuch_der_Systematischen_Botanik_%281924%29.jpg

​Centrolobium (a pic of how the seed looks when green): ​https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrolobium

Sudama

For some reason the tabebuia roseas make me cry more than the others, I don't know why. Maybe it is their sheer abundance, the lush thickness of their  inflorescence, their reckless overflowing generosity. The photo is from last year, but they are getting ready for a repeat. Stood at the bus stop and cried again this morning.

Or maybe it is because they make me feel like Sudama returning home after visiting his old childhood friend Krishna, and standing dumbfounded at the sight that greets him. His poor hut has been transformed into a palace, and his happy wife and children come running to greet him, filled with wonder, their rags replaced by beautiful robes.

He had asked for nothing, and was given everything.

12. Receiving

Blue skies
And dragonflies,
October.

A haiku you wrote many years ago. This October did not disappoint either. Many mornings lying down in the park, looking up at the sky, watching kites, swallows, dragonflies, all who know lightness. You return from a week in a cold dark gray country and spend a whole day riding around in the light, walking around, soaking in the sun like you'd nearly lost it forever, delirious with gratitude.

You come across this band of musicians who meet to jam under a beautiful gnarled Gulmohar tree every weekend, and you listen to their beautiful singing. They call themselves Folk Tree. Strangers come to listen to them at times. They invite requests. People suggest songs. This is what parks should be for. For the making of music and joy.

You have been noticing how the park floor has been drying up little by little, post the south-west monsoon. The grass has been cut and left to dry, spongy beneath your feet. One morning you follow a squirrel carrying a big piece of dried grass, you know it must be going to its nest. You watch it jump from tree to tree, up there, to finally reach the hollow in which it is building a nest. You realize with a smile that you know the names of the entire squirrel path - the Aakaasha Mallige, the Gulmohar, the Rudrapalaash, the Cassia Javanica. :)  You know everyone's names, you must belong here.

The silk cotton tree has started yellowing in patches - you are surprised, you didn't know it has an autumn, this tropical tree. The leaves are more sparse, the ground below drying up. One day you come across a rat snake along the edge of the cement platform. You notice that you haven't heard the barbets in a month now. You wonder where they have gone.

You come in early one morning, before daybreak, to see how the park feels in the dark. The moon, seen between the rain tree canopies, beautiful. A few people already walking, jogging. You catch the first rays of light on the upper branches of the silk cotton tree. You stand still and watch a squirrel move slowly, sucking on Aakaasha Mallige flowers. It has just come down from the trees, and is feeding, not yet sprightly, not yet doing the crazy squirrel stuff they always seem to do, chasing each other up and down trees. You have been standing still and it comes close to you, not minding.

You wonder at its simple life, coming down from the tree every morning, taking what nature offers that day.

You have been also waiting for the blooming of the tabebuia impetignosas every week, the pink fist-bunches of lightness. They are blooming, in small patches, but the leaves are yet to fall fully, it is slow this year. Last year was so stunning, so breathtaking, you cannot possibly ask for more. You will wait, and take what is offered too. You will not complain.

More dry leaves under the silk cotton tree. More browns everywhere. The leaves fall down on you in the wind occasionally as you lie down and watch the kites. You notice how smoothly the dark rainy wet months have transitioned into this light dryness. How so much has changed. You notice that you have been learning to live in the present, in the Now, more than ever before. More than ever you know that your imagination is limited, you have no way to predict what will come your way, good or bad.

Maybe this ritual has played a part in preparing you for that? This regular seeing, this receiving, this documenting of the Now. Your moments of happiness are less clouded by the future, the whatifs, your usual paranoia of loss, your perennial preparation for the worst, the conditioning of the past. Perhaps this ritual has synced you with the rhythm of the universe, the many comings and goings of things, all beyond your control. The only surety, what you have now, in this moment.

You receive each drop of Joy like holy water, your head bent.

As the sun moves towards Uttaraayan, as yet another year catapults towards its end, you walk under falling leaves, grateful.  

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