Two Sticks and the Exception

I remember a time when I thought chopsticks fiddly and a distinctly oddly conceived tool. Two sticks, I ask you! But so it always is - one culture's way of doing things will seem very difficult to another. I remember Sadhguru chuckling once about how South Indians manage runny rasam saadam with their hands and THAT while eating on banana leaves. It is a feat, no question.

Lack of skill notwithstanding we found chopsticks intriguing and I remember laughing a lot at our clumsy attempts at picking up mango pieces on a sleepover at Alina's. And being soooo impressed with Karishma Kapoor's nonchalant skill in Dil Toh Pagal Hai. Such mastery seemed a far cry away.

Now however, one way or the other, I've become handy with these utensils that have been in use since 1200 BC. East Asian shows, for one - the Koreans eat rather a lot in their dramas, and by just observation almost, I've picked up the knack. As for how hungry Korean dramas make you, that's another story. (I wish Indian TV and OTT producers would get their act TOGETHER! Contact me on email for consultation on how to re-orient the industry.)

But to chopsticks again, my cousin brought me some nicely tapered ones from her travels, my sister gifted me a stainless steel pair in the Korean style, and I have a few blunt Chinese-style ones in wood and plastic, so now I've a nice collection for every kind of application. I find myself reaching for them when cooking anything chunky that needs dexterous turning on the pan. Can't reach for a piece of pickle at the bottom of the bottle? No problem. Need some alma murabba or prunes halfway down the jar? Piece o' cake. 

Obviously I now eat noodles with chopsticks but there is one exception. Maggi - done the desi street-side way, with tamatar, pyaaz, capsicum, chillies and masala - simply cries out for the fork. Not the elegant sort with long tines and embellished handles, but the thin cheap variety where the tines could possibly impale your tongue, where the handle could cut your finger if you held it too tightly. That kind of fork, scraping against the steel plate as you try to salvage as much masala as you possibly can.

Touch and Go

Balancing out the pleasure you get from online games is the hoops the makers put you through in order to get you to buy from them – coins, energy, gemstones… all the in-game currencies that apply in that universe. Understandable, I suppose. But I’m miserly and would much prefer to watch their advertisements to support them than fork out cash just because I’m impatient.

Most games would like you playing them – a lot. Anything to keep you hooked and coming back for more. Running out of currency? A sudden gift or windfall will keep you in the game for while longer.

Then I came across Murder in the Alps. It’s a hidden objects game with a lovely 1930s theme. Anna, our protagonist, is the journalist-detective and you must help her find the clues to piece together this very intriguing locked room mystery in which corpses keep turning up with delicious regularity. The set of suspects includes a cuckoo Indophile professor who is chasing after the elusive Vedic recipe for the elixir Soma. The artwork is spectacular, the voice acting is fantastic, the interface smooth and exciting – the atmosphere of the game is top-notch.

 

Except, they don’t want you to play.

You get 200 energy to start off with. And as Anna examines a scene looking for these hidden objects that will help her understand what the hell is going on in this forsaken, snow-boarded inn in the Swiss mountains, every item you touch on her behalf will drain you of 5 to 30 units. Depending on how frenzied you are, you could play for 10 or 20 minutes at the most.

And then, unless you are willing to pay quite handsomely for more energy, you wait. The energy replenishes itself at the rate of one unit in eight minutes. Which means a wait of upwards of 26 hours to max your quota – which, I repeat, lasts you gameplay of 20 minutes. If you are desperate, there are ads to watch that’ll give you 10 energy at a time.

It's perfect sadhana actually. You touch the screen with the utmost awareness and only when you must. And you learn to wait. This view is solipsistic and you must grant me the indulgence: considering I have a tendency to be addicted to games, that’s the sound of my Guru having the last laugh.

A pickle-ish quandary

We’re seeing perilous depletion levels in our chundo stock. In the past couple of years, I have so grown to appreciate this sweet mango pickle from Gujarat that I’ve managed to always have a jar of it in the shelf. It is supposed to go with theplas and khakras but I love it with my mosranna… to my palate the tart-sweetness of the preserve pairs perfectly with curd rice, rounding off the meal with not an obligatory cool-down but on a triumph. 

There is one neighbourhood store that keeps a sort I like and with lockdown hours, I haven’t gone out to pick up some more. But no matter, there are other relishes that honour curd rice very well. A smidge of lime pickle elevates it, for instance.

This consolation brought me to a pleasing exercise. What is my favourite pickle? So difficult to decide. To make matters more complicated, there are rice mix pastes and even rice powders that by dint of their sheer brilliance expand the category.

Being Hyderabad-bred, I have an obligation to reserve my top slot for the Queen of all Pickles – avakaaya. Sour raw mangoes cut into largeish chunks, treated with chilli powder, mustard, salt and sesame oil… a divine concoction that drives thought from your mind. Some argue for mudda pappu with avakaaya, some go straight for avakaaya annam. I say do both!! First pappannam to appease my delicate stomach and then a small portion of fiery pickle rice to slake my soul-thirst. 

For second slot, various pickles jostle at the door, trying to make their way in. I apply an extra criteria: what would I like to eat with rice? Gongura wins this round – hot rice, a dash of sesame oil, a dollop of ghee and gongura pachadi… its glorious sourness deepened by that punch of red chilli. Hmm! This is chased closely by karuveplai (curry leaf) rice mix, and this has to be from Grand Sweets. Honourable mention also for Harika’s Drumstick Leaf powder. It needs a generous addition of sesame oil over hot rice… ah, *chef’s kiss* 

My sister eats all pickles with everything from dosas, adais and pesarattus to upma and khichdi. I’m pickier with my combinations. Kerala parotta and lukhmi are magnificent with tomato pickle, pesarattu rocks with a slightly sweetened ginger relish, adai is rather good with tomato and lime. I prefer avalakki and upma with the spicier preserves – green chillies with lime and pandu mirpakaya pacchadi – another Andhra concoction involving Guntur red chillies and tamarind. And of course, thayir sadam with nartharangai (citron) is a classic combination for a very good, time-tested reason.

For a change of palate, I also like the northern pickles featuring various vegetables and heavy-handed sprinkles of saunf – milder, of course, and not quite so imposing as southern fare but very acceptable.

What’s your favourite pickle? 

Home Patch - 1

I had a tree cut down today.

Years in the making, an hour to take down. It was saddening but it had to be done. It was stealing sunlight, apart from being a highly aggressive being, sold into self propagation. It had previously strangled a pomegranate tree out of existence. While I was remorseful, at least I did not hesitate in ordering its removal. 

+++

The Tickell's Blue Flycatcher came by this morning and investigated the bird bath. It was almost dry. I had been remiss about adding water and it went away disappointed. 

In recent weeks, I have fallen out of the habit of doing this myself. My maid Lakshmamma sweeps out the yard every day. She is an erratic personality, this one. She has trouble understanding or sticking to the simplest protocols (such as putting away the detergent dabba after use) but will voluntarily take on a few things just for the love of it. She is something of an animal lover - one of the manifestations of this love being letting in the dogs on the street. She loves them, they adore her and wait for her in the mornings with eager faces and wagging tails. Yes, very sweet, but I do object to her opening the gates wide for them and saying 'da!' and watching indulgently as they race to the terrace for a morning siesta. In any case they jump over the wall, poop here and there, bring in salvaged food packets and make a horrid mess - I can turn a blind eye to what I cannot help but I draw the line at encouragement, see?

But tempting though the prospect is, this must not turn into a diatribe about Lakshmamma. The bird bath, yes! She had first assumed the shallow pot of water was for her beloved mongrels, but I told her it was in fact meant as an invitation to our local birds. Since she apparently finds room in her heart for other wildlife as well, she was very approving of this arrangement. So she has been assiduous in refilling the shallow earthen pot every day. But I discovered that the bath was not as popular as it should be, because Lakshmamma not only fills it to the brim (which the smaller birds find a bit scary) but also cleans it out of all leafy and wormy debris (which my visitors love). So I told the lady I'd fill the bath myself, hoping to lure the wintering warblers to this spot.

I added half a mug after the Tickell's had zoomed off this morning. Happily, he came back soon after, and cautiously waded in for a rapturous bath.

 

 

This is a picture from another time.

The Namesakes

 I have come to realise:

a) That mine is by no means a very unusual name. There are very many women cavorting on this planet with this same moniker.

b) That a fair number of them are ditzy airheads who don't know how to supply their own email addresses when asked for it, and instead supply mine.

c) That these Sheetal Vyases are inveterate shoppers. Apart from important communications such as PAN Card communications and income tax messages, I receive a large number of invoices and delivery notifications to areas ranging from Los Angeles to Jodhpur, Florida to Thane.

At first, I felt honor bound to inform them of these blunders but am helpless against the deluge. It is fun, however to snoop on them a bit - their private information has plonked into my inbox quite unsolicited, after all. One namesake has been fool enough to splurge on an expensive Apple gadget with the help of a loan - lenders have written to her a cheery sort of message assuring her of their support through thick and thin. This sort of unwise financial behaviour has me judging her with disdain that is tinged with a spot of concern. We all know how quickly they will show their teeth when indeed the thick becomes thin. The Jodhpur lady is more modest in her purchases: a Japan crepe sari in Baby Pink. I hope it becomes her.  I am not so sure about the jeans purchased by Ms Jaipur - she could've done better. 

We are not the only ones, of course. The brightest of us all, the one who has made our 'naam-roshan', the one google throws up first when you type the magic words, is a Hollywood producer, if you please. She counts a movie named When Harry tries to Marry in her filmography. But she has not bothered us, and we, in our turn, will not bother about her.

Kaagaz, qalam, dawaat

 A handwritten blogpost for Fountain Pen Day.

Imprint

I hailed one of our street vendors this morning to buy flowers for Krishna Janmashtami today. They were fresh and lovely and I splurged on a bit of everything - chamanti, sanna jaaji, malli, lilies, roses... 

It's been almost ten years since my mother passed away and still he said wistfully, "Amma achche se, chchaav se lete the!" I remember Leelamma specially on festival days too - she would sit in the tiny pooja room, and sing as she weaved garlands. Our neighbours across the back wall still remember pausing in their work to hear her sing. 

Wonderful, isn't it, to be remembered like that, a decade after you've left?

But then what of Krishna? That Glorious One who walked this earth more than 5,000 years ago? And still we talk of his beauty, his feats, his cuteness, his charm, his colour, his clothes, his lovers, his enemies, his wiles, his compassion. Even today, people dress up their young children in his image, tying up peacock feathers in their hair. Even today, songs are sung in longing for him.

Still to remain an intimate experience for millions of people, still tangible... you could close your eyes today, reach out for him, and manage to touch him. 

How truly wonderful to have lived like that! 

 

***

Edited to add:

#HappyJanmashtami pic.twitter.com/yvcxky4Kpg

— Sadhguru (@SadhguruJV) August 11, 2020

Tu ka Tu

A change in header was long overdue. The winter chill has given way to a rainy, moody summer.

But, of course, there are big things on our minds. The pandemic is going viral and we’ll be remembering this year for a very long time. What will change, how, which industries will stay, which will fall, who will win, who will lose, will humankind recover its conscience, or will this be a blip that only momentarily eclipsed our collective daily grind?


Time will tell, but in the meantime, a haiku by Paul Pfleuger, Jr.

Smiling
behind the death mask,
this is God, too

My Guru, ever compassionate, held our hands for 43 days, giving us darshans – a glimpse of him and room at his feet every single day. That makes a full mandala – a length of time approximately 40 days in which the human system completes one physiological cycle. When we take up something for one mandala, it gets written into our system like software and functions on a completely different level. Across these days, he spoke about a range of matters including this crisis facing us. How his constant presence has transformed us, I cannot even begin to guess.

During one session, someone asked him what Shiva thought of the virus.



His response reminded me of these verses by Kabir:

Inka bhed bata mere avadhu, acchi karni kar le tu
Dali phool jagat ke mahi, jahan dekhun va tu ka tu
 

Tell me the secret, Avadhoo, shower your compassion
In all of nature in this whole world, wherever I look, I see you

Hathi mein hathi ban baitho, chinti mein hai chhoto tu
Hoye mahavat upar baithe, hankan vala tu ka tu


Massive you are as an elephant, tiny when as an ant
Also as the mahout you sit, the one riding the elephant is also you

Choro ke sang chori karta, badmashon mein bhedo tu
Chori kar ke tu bhag jaave, pakdan vala tu ka tu
 
Among thieves you are a thief, you sit among scoundrels too
You are the robber who robs and runs, the one who catches him, also you

Jal thal jeev mein tu hi biraje, jahan dekhoon va tu ka tu
Kahe Kabir suno bhai sadho, guru milaye jyun ka tyun

In water, earth and all life you are present, wherever I look, only you!
Says Kabir, listen Seeker, the Guru shows you the unsullied You!


A version of the song by the awesome Prahlad Singh Tipaniya:

Yin-nish

I have been home for a while.
My last travel was in October and that was quite a road trip – a trail from Gwalior to Satna through Chanderi, Orchha, Khajuraho, Panna and Rewa. An immersive, intensive experience of northern Madhya Pradesh. Simply fabulous.

Since then, I've just been home, writing up the stories and... simply being home. Domesticity is a never ending job and I find that the concerns of the domestic life are what you might call choranaptyxic in nature – able to grow or shrink in order to fit available (mind)space. They diminish when I have 'bigger' things on my mind, but grow fairly demanding otherwise. I have taken care of a pile of leaves in the corner of the garden, hosed down a termite mound that was predating on the jasmine climber and I have made plans for the beetroot that are a week old and sitting heavily on my conscience. I am ahead of the curve.

Just the time for this quotidian observation from the Lucknow poet Sushma A. Singh.

winter chill
  I press harder
on the rolling pin

A feminine slice of life. 

About the little things. 

A small detail, a small blip in the pattern with an activity that is repeated perhaps every single day.

It is colder. Even if you have mixed the atta with a little tepid water, the dough is hard. Rolling out the rotis calls for a little extra.

Wind Up and Wind Down

Is talking about one’s maid too démodé? But, Goddess help me, I must.

L___ amma has a rather loose idea of her employment with us, and tends to take off rather frequently. Her reasons are varied – some warranted, some extremely frivolous. She has a difficult life, and I never know how serious a matter it might have been that kept her from turning up the previous day. Once it was a violent husband, once a sick grandchild, once a bereavement in the family. But also, she considers her frequent poojas and family gatherings sufficient reason, and enjoys a startling assortment of ‘noppis’... pains and aches in the head, back, legs, feet... all of which add up to several casual leaves. She lays the ground the previous day and I am required to pick up on her complaints of an oncoming fever or somesuch and anticipate a dumma the next. Once I demanded the reason for her absence and she said – most disarmingly – that she had overslept.

I like to be harmonious, and have a preference for subtle messaging while L___amma banks on her considerable charm and cajoling to keep me sweet. Her voluble chatter about the minutiae of her life holds me captive for some length of time daily, and her favoured weapon is an extra chirpy ‘Good Morning, Madam’ which she has picked up from one of the offices she works at.

Our arrangement as she understood it did not work quite as well for me – and it wasn’t getting across. Plus, I particularly abhor being let down during the Navratri festival. So I worked myself up into a froth and yelled at her this morning. Sadly, method acting has its downside, and I am still attempting to bring my breath back into its normal easy cadence. In the throes of manufactured emotion, I oversalted the bhaath.

I know my anger was feigned, but my body doesn’t. How right is my Guru when he says, “Resentment, anger, hatred are poisons that you drink and you expect somebody else to die. Life does not work like that.”

Poise

Waiting,
utterly still—
for the mosquito to land

Retreating Mango

I was a bit unhappy that my father brought home bananas this morning but no mangoes! A week or two is all we have before the bounty retreats from our markets. A gorge of two, maybe three a day should keep us till next summer.

+++

What we get plenty of in Hyderabad is the luscious Banganpalle aka Benishan. A golden fruit, creamy pulp, almost without fibre and generous with size and flavour. S___, my neighbour and childhood friend is something of a mango connoisseur and has an arrangement with Ali, the fruitseller. Ali knows where to lay his hands on some of the rarer varieties, and when he gets a crate, he comes by. Does he holler his wares on the street, urging the populace to sample these exotic types? No sir, he does not. But discreetly he rings S__’s bell to sell him the story, and a few kilos.
And I benefit. When I see Ali’s skull-cap lurking in the garden next door, I make haste and pick up some too. Once it was the elegant, subtle Himayat and this time, it was Langra. A lime-green to leaf-green mango. It turns a reluctant shade of yellow when it ripens but that’s all. But the ripe flesh is a gorgeous orange and the pulp a touch astringent near the skin. It’s wonderful! I have a tub of those in various states of development but I still want a few Banganpalles while I can get them.

++++++

I learnt later that the Langra comes from regions around my beloved Banaras. As if I needed more incentive to love it.
But isn’t it strange that I should have loved Varanasi so? I have been there only once, and that was last year. Some old karmic connection, do you think? Have I lived in those gallis, bathed in the river, sat by the ghats as the sun went down? Or maybe the being is so mature, it could see at once (what I cannot see)... that it could perceive the magic of Kashi, the fount of spiritual input and infrastructure there? Or perhaps just a travel writer, whose imagination was caught by the spirit of an ancient, ancient city?

++++++++++

The Langra has inspired a colouring theme for my book. The page I’ve chosen is full of swirling leaves and fronds and I’ve decided to do the whole thing in greens and yellows. I have two sets of pencils to work with and one of them is a set of 48 water colour pencils. Mostly, I use them like colour pencils, but I’m going to use them here as water colours. Smudge the edges and corners darkly and brush the pigment inwards into paleness.
My other set is a fantastic array of straight colour pencils with beautiful names for each shade. Amethyst, Jade, Periwinkle, Plum, Pumpkin, Honey... how would it be if we had Kesar, Totapuri, Langra?

Meta Moment

This evening, as I undertook the somewhat womanly chore of fumigating the house,
I moved from room to room
with an outstretched cup of lit incense,
smoking out the demons from the corners where they are wont to sit when no one is looking

I caught myself in the slanting golden light from another room:
The shadow on the wall stood out starkly.
Hair framed around my face,
my silhouette both particular and generic
But the intention conveyed itself.
Tendrils of dark smoke rose steadily from the shadowy hand

I looked at this woman.
Encapsulated in a slice of cinema. A sharp moment of awareness.
A moment infused by the now.

Tutored by my influences to find that romantic, I did.
But every moment, they say, is that way.
Every moment, if you can look at her.
From a little distance away.

A little distance.                            Away.

Colour me green

Have I confessed my deep desire to be artistic on these pages? I must have.

Anyway here’s the thing: I long to draw, paint and colour. Sadly, I am held back, seriously held back by a lack of talent. I stare at a blank page, tighten my grip on the medium at hand and invariably there will emerge – a tree. That is the culmination, the pinnacle of my creations. A gnarled tree, with a few branches, a knot in the middle and tapering roots. And, sadder still, it’s always more or less the same tree. I branched out slightly into coconut trees, but it yielded unsatisfactory results.

In some past life, I must have been surrounded by artists who, with a few magical strokes, could suggest and evoke whole worlds. I must’ve watched and admired, despaired of my own skill. Because I don’t have the imagination and I certainly don’t have the technique. Over my adult life, I’ve bought paints, brushes, charcoal pencils, shading pencils, illustration books... spent rather a lot of money on, as a friend once punned, ‘a paint hope.’

These two pencil shading landscapes from my learning book had convenient outlines that were dead useful as a structure. Perspective is everything!

And then adult colouring books happened. It was godsent. Now, with someone else drawing out the lines, all I had to do was colour within the lines. Now, this was well within my powers. And for a few years now I have enjoyed this – listening to music and poring over printed sheets of sketches. My blending skills have improved, I love using a mixture of water colours and pencils. Then I also bought Johanna Basford’s amazing book, Enchanted Forest. 

There are many such books now, but I absolutely love Basford’s whimsical, intimate rendering of imagined scenes. I bought myself a rather nice set of colouring pencils and I enjoy the whole process. That is to say, I did. Till yesterday.

I went to pinterest and instagram desultorily looking for finished coloured pages. Awe and angst in equal measure! What imagination, what skill! I hate these showoffs. They should be out there creating their own masterpieces. What are they doing in amateur circuits? Not only is their colouring spectacular, they fill up the white spaces around the illustrations with their own creations, and now alas, in her latest book Johanna has taken to leaving huge portions of blank space to leave scope for these. And WAIL, I don’t know WHAT TO DO WITH THEM!!!

Let me show you what I mean:

3D by night

Riot

He or She colours outside the lines! Fancy that.

All that inside stuff is the colorist's own tweak on this wreath

Let's add a story to that flower wagon

Brown fox in the deep wood.

Have you seen anything so beautiful?

Now I have to plod on with my own pitiful efforts. I don't know how I'm going to find the heart to carry on.

List of Annoyances

Irritated by everything.

This curtain that tickles the top of my scalp as I type.
The lounge-at-home pajamas that I gave to the tailor to shorten, which he did alter but not enough, and the bottoms of which now annoyingly curl under my heel every damn step.
The fact that I got late with everything.
That I had no creative, exciting plans for brunch and ended up making (and eating!) white rice.
The fact that I ATE without doing a single of my practices and then didn't enjoy it because I was too busy carping and feeling terrible.
The NEWS!!! The MeToo campaign. The horrible disgusting men, the unsavoury stories, the gloating women, the airing of old grievances, the jumping on the bandwagoners, the ugliness of it all.
The fact that I am working against deadlines and feeling anxious about it, instead of enjoying the pressure.
My stuffy head and this persistent headache.
My stomach that gets hungry but doesn't really want anything, but which I feed anyway, in a stupid, compulsive way.
Oh, and inflamed gums that hurt the whole left side of my face.
Plus, I forgot to soak the curtains.
AND my shoulder hurts.

On hold

It seemed certain a couple of weeks ago that we were not going to have a glut of mangoes this summer. And now, into the second week of April, it appears we are not going to have a summer either.

In February the mango trees were bare of flowers. Ours told us quite frankly that it was taking the year off, the usually bountiful tree across the northeastern wall was sparsely dotted with the pale green blooms. Word trickled in that Sita Mami's tree was sulking. When Ugadi came around, Bhudevi was shocked and indignant: We may have to BUY a raw mango for the Ugadi pachchadi, akka! For a residential area well supplied with mango trees, it was a bit of a stunner. So yes, it came to that in the end. I paid Rs 10 for a smallish bit of sour green.

There are hardly any green mangoes and certainly no yellow ones. The desperation will obviously mean that fraudsters will hurry to chemically ripen the available crop, which renders even those inedible. 

But what was happening to the season itself? February was pleasant and we gloated somewhat, with a wary eye out for the punches that March would hurl at us. March marched past, with the higher temperatures hovering around 37 C, sometimes 38. It's hot, we said to each other in a compulsive fashion; it was what we should be saying at this time, but our tones lacked conviction. Now, in April, we are getting the most dramatic storms. Gusts, thunder, lightening and all-night rain. I'm pulling on two sheets and the fan's regulator points at 3, occasionally 2. I'm actually wearing my denims. What on earth is happening?

We may yet get the usual treatment in May, but it is already safe to say that it's going to a highly truncated version.

Pausing
for dramatic effect
Hyderabadi summer

Travelling light

Part of the frenetic time we've been having is because we got our house painted, while, of course, living in it. That sounds like a pain, and it was. We shifted everything out from one room into the next, and then back again, trying to fit everything back into barely dry cupboards, and trying at the same time to cull and limit what went back into those dark caverns.

Some decisions were easy. Some stuff from the attics that we had only seen the last time we painted the house - clearly they had to go. So we threw away, gave away, sold away masses of things - old tables, vessels, a cooker, steel cylinders, dubious ceiling fans, a couple of metal trunks... paring down to strictly what is needed.

People who need to shift homes occasionally have it easier - there is only so much you can carry and you tend to focus on the essentials. But when you live in the same house as we've done for close to four decades, you don't even realise how much stuff you gather, even if it's only bags that will someday be "useful".

We're still cleaning up but there's light at the end of the tunnel -- and a lighter house at the end of it.

Full throttle

एक लम्हे में सिमट आया है सदियों का सफर
ज़िन्दगी तेज़ बोहत तेज़ चली हो जैसे

That is how it feels. Life is whizzing past - a new thing every day, every week, every fortnight... a month seems like an age for all the stuff that has happened through it. The themes change. Colours, drapes, scenery... entire concepts. The complexion of each phase is different, the focus varies... and I am trying through it all to stay on an even keel... not rising and dipping with the ebb and flow of events.

It becomes somewhat easy to discern in such a state that things happen, that they come and go as I stay constant.

बाज़ीचा-ए-अत्फाल है दुनिया मेरे आगे
होता है शब-ओ-रोज़ तमाशा मेरे आगे

I never appreciated that sher so well before.

Velliangiri diary

I’ve said before how much I like to spend a little time here, at the foothills of the scenic Velliangiri in the windy season. I’m lucky to be summoned here again and what a glorious time it is!

We’ve not had too much rain in these parts the past couple of years. The green hills had been showing brown and farmers were worried. But we’ve made a promising start this time. A couple of days of howling winds, gray days with intermittent drizzle and perpetually misted hilltops... the slopes are slowly turning emerald. Straight from my balcony, at about four or maybe five kilometres as the crow flies, is a hill stream and waterfall. It had slowed to a trickle but now it has turned frothy white again. Occasionally, when the wind dies down, you can hear the water thunder down onto the rocks below. The stream that flows through the ashram is swelling.

+++

The gales howled so much the other day, I became a little fraught. Door hinges strained to hold their own and the walls felt constantly under siege. How long could mere brick and mortar hold out against such purpose? If not today, or this week, but sometime, something would give! 
I leaned out of the window to feel the wind on my face and found that the peacocks in the valley were having a wind bath too. They each had taken fence to perch on, and they sat all braced and hunched up, enjoying the drama of the gusts.

+++

Wildlife sightings are very possible here, and ever since my sister saw a leopard in the valley before us, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled. Even so, it was a casual scan last week that yielded a gray presence push through the scrub. A lone tusker wound his way through the jungle, revealing only the trunk here, the body there as he walked towards the water. Barely two minutes and he was gone.

I spied three wild boar babies scurrying in the bush a few days ago, and today, a black-naped hare came out into a clearing to give himself a thorough wash in the pale morning sunlight. He would start every now and then, turning his long ears to the sound that had alarmed him, but it turned out to be nothing. He stayed so long, I even dropped my binoculars to go and get myself something to drink.

+++

I remember once wringing my hands over my urban life, wishing for a forest full of trees to love. The trees here are not old, but the tree jasmines (the fast growing Akasha Malli - Millingtonia hortensis) that line our perimeter are very friendly indeed. My Sadhguru loves them and although they obscure the view of the hills from the windows sometimes, I cannot resent them.

Heave ho!

keep this
toss that
    spring
~Carolyn Hall


Clearly, it’s time for spring cleaning. I didn’t know but sometimes, I get a nudge. Or like now, a prod.

I have been wanting to declutter my room. The bed takes up too much room, and significance. Under the bed, I have... why, yes, stuff. So yesterday, the cots went. And I have been wringing my hands all morning over the stuff that used to lie under them. Music Cassettes.

A particularly clingy form of the past, these tapes. Old selves sticking to us like small bits of sticky tape that won’t let go unless they cling somewhere else. These boxes – some six of them – were the refined lot. We threw out a much bigger haul a few years ago but these were the precious ones.

Children today will never understand the trouble we went to to acquire our music. We couldn’t buy everything we liked. When friends and relatives had tapes we wanted, they were borrowed and copied. I remember standing two tape recorders face to face, switching off fans and other whirring machines, closing doors and imposing strict silence, while one machine played and the other recorded. Then technology improved, and we got our double-deckers that recorded internally. I made collections for Shweta, for myself... some filmi, some ghazals, a lot of classical music and qawwalis.

This morning, I hunkered down to paw through them and shook my head again over the whimsical coot I used to be. Never truly artistic but I liked pretty things. And I went to work at it with quite a lot of enthusiasm, even if no great talent. The album covers for my favourite music were never good enough for the ambience they created within me, so I would go about trying to creating the right ones. I had a bag full of greeting cards, which I would cut to size and fit into the covers. They had to match. Afternoon ragas got afternoon light and lazy pastoral scenes. Ghazals got flowers, bowers, peacocks; Talat Mehmood got a mountain and a river... and Lata Sings Ghalib got a royal, gold Mughal motif.

A few years ago, we bought a music player that was also a music ripper. I could play my tapes on it and it would store a digitised version on a USB drive. This was a god-send, and I managed to prioritise my ‘save-first’ music and convert something like a 100 cassettes of music before the player started to misbehave. I’d exhausted my drive and that’s how that stayed. Unless I got that fixed, these half a dozen boxes were just lying there, waiting for me to do something about them.

I considered it deeply. And then came to the conclusion that I would have to let them go. I might have changed my mind, but the raddiwala came right away to take the newspapers and I knew it was time. In compassionate silence, he paid me Rs 3/kg: Rs 54 for 18kg of music cassettes.
And oh, they were priceless.