माता भूमिः पुत्रो अहं पृथिव्याः

Idly, the other day, I asked Grok for a poem on nature. Whether dear Mary Oliver is the go-to on such subjects or if the omniscient Internet trackers know of my love for her, I don’t know. However, it offered to me this painfully beautiful poem:

Sleeping In The Forest

I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

***

So vivid, I could feel around me also dark, rich soil. Slightly moist under my fingers and more than a little alive. My ear pressed against quiet rustles in the earth.

I asked Grok immediately to give me an image depicting this beautiful scene. The results were nice but a bit limited.
 

 

I hopped across to Dall-e, my old favourite, with the same request and the response was a bit more fantastical and pleasing to me. 

The first image had exquisite balance but issues with rendering the human face. 

A tweak of the prompt yielded this.

What do you think?

Picking up the thread

It has been a month since I updated last - the gaps between posts that are supposed to be part of a travel series is much too wide. I had really hoped to write up the Tamil Nadu travelogue at a fast clip.

Work intervened, however, and I went on assignment to Bodoland, the beautiful Autonomous Territorial Region within Assam. 

The Wild Side of Bodoland
(Created by me with Dall-E)

Those stories had to be written and this blog series got pushed down the queue. Then Sadhguru consecrated a wonderful Naga shrine in our new, upcoming center at Bengaluru, which was an unbelievable experience. It rained through out the consecration and there were about 16,000 of us, sitting in the wet, beyond midnight, witnessing the descent of a celestial serpent being. 

 

After we attended that, I seized the chance to spend a fortnight at the ashram in Coimbatore. 

Long story short, we had left the story at Kanchipuram and will pick it up there again. If nothing, it gives me an excuse to pore over pictures and dwell on the trip.

TN Tour 3: The Auspicious One

The very first temple we halted at was significant to the purpose of our journey. Sadhguru was just setting off on a huge environmental movement, a push to make the whole planet more conscious, more sensitive to all life, all lives. On the Mahashivratri preceding this mammoth journey, Sadhguru had said, “Shiva is Pashupati, the lord of all creatures. Most earthly of all Divine entities and the master of Biodiversity.”

So, in this most auspicious of starts, we halted at the Pashupatiswarar koil in Karur. This is a shrine of great antiquity, one of the famed 275 Paadal Petra Sthalams*. So potent, the poet saints Sundarar and Sambandar are said to have composed thevaram pathigam here. 

 

Here, we bowed to the lord of all creatures. Our human-centric way of dominating the planet is too crude a way to live, the damage we are wreaking on the seas, on the forests, on the grasslands, on the soil is too horrendous. It is very clear we cannot go on this way. 

This temple is also the spot where the great siddha Karuvurar chose to leave. One of the 18 lofty siddhars of Tamil Nadu, this man’s achievements and accomplishments are so many, it is breathtaking. He was the yogi who prompted and guided the building of the stunning ‘periya kovil’ at Thanjavur by Raja Raja Chola I. (But more of that anon.)

Karuvurar’s shrine lies to a side behind the main temple and we sat for a while absorbing what we could. The universe is immense and the vessel we hold is paltry. But dissolution is possible. Peeling off a thin strip at a time will do the trick.

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*The Paadal Petra Sthalams, also known as Thevara Sthalam, are 275 temples that are revered in the verses of Saiva Nayanars in the 6th-9th century CE and are amongst the greatest Shiva temples of the continent.

Part 3: Save Soil

Sadhguru is taking the Save Soil Movement to 4 billion people in the world. Tomorrow he will address the COP 15 at Cote d’Ivoire, urging 197 nations to enshrine policies for soil health. Already, since he set off on his lone motorcycle journey from London, Sadhguru has meandered through Europe and parts of the Middle East in a 100-day journey across 30,000 km. He has been talking to people, governments, UN bodies, media and organisations to make this come about. 

 

The response has been tremendous. It is amazing to see people so open, so willing to do what it takes to achieve this goal. 

 

Please join in too 🙏! Push aside your inertia, put away your cynicism, overcome that feeling of resistance of being roped into some random do-gooding… this is REALLY important. For the sake of our children, we must do this.

In about two decades or so, we will have 40% less food and a population of 9.3 billion people. It is not a pleasant prospect. UN Agencies are foreseeing civil wars, riots for food… oh, not in faraway Africa where anything can happen… they’re forecasting this for Chicago, for the USA, for the First World. Already 27 of 30 wars in Africa in recent decades have been over fertile lands. When they run out, about 1.2 billion people are projected to migrate. Where will they go? They will be at your doorstep, eyeing hungrily your morsel of food.

What we need to do right now is this: speak up and be heard by your government.
Here is a link: https://www.consciousplanet.org/letters

The interface is simple. Put in your region, your name… it generates a letter that you can copy. Send it to the right people in your country with the emails provided. That is all. 

Also, do speak on your social media about Soil and the crisis it is facing. The facts are all there on various UN and other informative websites. If that's all too much to trawl through, savesoil.org has plenty of shareable resources. I was shocked to learn that the situation was this bad, and you will likely be dismayed as well. However it is very much possible to tackle this if we make a loud enough din, because it just means bringing soil degradation into the narrative, which it simply has not been so far. The solution itself is simple, it's just a matter of awareness and will.

When we turn around this soil crisis, you will have done something very critical for future generations: demanded a future worth living.

Part 2: Holding All the Answers

How is the ecological crisis to be approached? Do we go on obsessing over coal and carbon, over who is to be blamed, who must bear the brunt and so on? Do we look for ways to harness solar energy and minimise our footprint? Do we research new and clean energy for our airplanes? Do we stop ravaging the seas? Do we change the way we eat? There are many discussions on many platforms but you will not have heard too many people talk of averting Soil Extinction. (Yes, there is such a thing and it is happening already in many parts of the world. About 52% of the world’s agricultural soil is degraded, severely impacting the quantity as well as the quality of our produce.)

What does soil degradation mean? It means the lack or depletion of organic content in soil. Far from being inert, soil is a complex symbiotic system of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids and living organisms. It is alive. Take all this out, and soil is reduced to sand. A handful of rich soil contains 8-10 billion microorganisms – more than all the humans on earth. The soil is in fact an underground extension and counterpart of our own bodies, with its teeming microbial presence. After all, about 60% of our own bodies are microbes, aren’t they?

Oddly enough, soil seems to be underpinning factor for a number of ecological issues that we’re facing. Our problems with excess carbon in the atmosphere, our water scarcity, our problems with cycles of floods and drought, our dying rivers and streams, our suicidal farmers (who are finding growing food a heart-breaking business), the looming migration disaster across continents and also the upcoming food crisis. All these – I repeat ALL THESE – can be addressed by simply taking care of the soil.

Rich soil, with plenty of green cover, massively sequesters carbon. Rich soil can hold eight times more water than all the rivers of the world. Rich soil feeds our rivers, releasing water slowly, sustainably. Rich organic soil doesn’t permit water run-off. Rich soil produces rich food and in turn strong, healthy human beings.

This is what Sadhguru has taken up – a global movement to save soil. It is an awareness campaign to alert the citizens of the world to this problem and at once, to introduce it to the solution. (It is characteristic of Sadhguru that he never points to a problem without bringing in the solution as well.) In this case, it is absurdly simple: bring about policy to ensure that agricultural soil has a minimum of 3-6% organic content. This is amazingly easy to do and there are hundreds of ways to do it. There are two sources of organic content: animal waste and plant matter. This needs to go back into the soil.

Governments across the world need to enshrine this into their policy – and farmers need incentives to do this. In India, a simple device like mandating a cover crop during the harsh summer months is a matter of merely Rs 450 per acre. Just throw some seed, any seed, make sure the land stays under shade, take whatever low yields there are and put the stalks and haulms back into the earth. That’s all. In 5-8 years, the organic content creeps up, enriching the topsoil and we will have successfully averted soil extinction.

Part 1: Sickening for Something

The first time I was made sharply aware that we humans weren’t doing a grand job of living in harmony with nature was when I was in high school. One of our textbooks had an extract by the fabulous Gerald Durrell, British naturalist, conservationist, and writer, from a book called Catch me a Colobus. The book is full of adventures in Sierra Leone, where Durrell sought rare endangered animals to bring home to his zoo, which was intended to help conserve various species from dying out entirely.

In the final chapter, ‘Animals for Ever’ he makes a desperate plea for some sense in our dealing with the world around us. He speaks of how humans drove to near extinction two abundant species that no one before could’ve imagined dying out. One of them was the Passenger Pigeon, one of the most numerous avian species ever and the other was the North American Bison. The latter was hunted as a matter of policy, and its slaughter was carried out as a way to starve Native Americans into submission. ‘Every Buffalo Dead Is an Indian Gone’ – that was the cry that led to this horrendous pile of buffalo skulls in this picture taken in Michigan, USA, in 1892.

A passage from his book so stirred my emotions, it awoke a gnawing worry for this planet that has never since left me. Durrell writes:

“…even today the majority of people do not realise the extent to which we are destroying the world we live in. We are like a set of idiot children, let loose with poison, saw, sickle, shotgun and rifle, in a complex and beautiful garden that we are slowly but surely turning into a barren and infertile desert. It is quite possible that in the last few weeks or so, one mammal, one bird, one reptile, and one plant or tree, have become extinct. I hope not but I know for certain that in the same time one mammal, bird, reptile, and plant or tree, have been driven just that much nearer to oblivion.

The world is as delicate and as complicated as a spider’s web, and like a spider’s web, if you touch one thread, you send shudders running through all the other threads that make up the web. But we’re not just touching the web, we’re tearing great holes in it; we’re waging a sort of biological war on the world around us. We are felling forests quite unnecessarily and creating dust bowls, and thereby even altering the climate. We are clogging our rivers with industrial filth, and we are now polluting the sea and the air.

…Conservation means preserving the life of the whole world, be it trees or plants, be it even man himself. It is to be remembered that some tribes have been exterminated very successfully in the last few hundred years and that others are being harried to extinction today – the Patagonian Indians, the Eskimoes, and so on. By our thoughtlessness, our greed and our stupidity we will have created, within the next fifty years or perhaps even less, a biological situation whereby we will find it difficult to live in the world at all. We are breeding like rats and this population explosion must be halted in some way. All religious factions, all political factions, the governments of the world, must face facts, for if we persist in ignoring them then, breeding like rats, we will have to die like them also.”

Grim words, but so prescient! Fifty years, he’d said. He wrote this in 1972. Exactly half a century ago. Climate change is now a fact of life, we are further devastating the planet in myriad ways, driving our fellow creatures into desperate pockets for basic survival, and in many cases towards outright extinction. Right now, of the assessed biodiversity, there are more than 142,500 species on The IUCN Red List, and more than 40,000 species are marked as being threatened with extinction, including 41% of amphibians, 37% of sharks and rays, 34% of conifers, 33% of reef building corals, 26% of mammals and 13% of birds.

Our agricultural practices are so unthinking, we are losing about 27,000 species (yes, 27,000 species!) of soil microbial life every year. Sawing off the very branch that we sit on… do we really imagine we can live well without having a healthy planet as well?

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.

Class: Insecta

Thanks to the lockdown, this is the longest I've been at the Isha Yoga Center and I've never been here during the summer. I tend to come for Guru Purnima and stay for "the annual fest of the wind", a time when gales from the Velliangiris lash at us at the foothills. On the other side of the year, I come during the winter solstice if my Sadhguru has something special planned (many of the consecrations are conducted around that time), but definitely around Mahashivratri, padding my visit with a few weeks on either side.

I was dreading the summer a bit, but we've had a simply gorgeous one this year. It has been hot, but the really muggy days have been broken by refreshing thunderstorms. Bountiful heat and residual moisture - what more does life on this planet need? The hills are lush green, and life in the ashram is thriving.

For a few weeks, we've been privileged to cicada concerts. All of a sudden, the occupants of one entire tree will set up a loud din, and soon tree after tree takes up the song till it stretches across the expanse.

In other delights, there are the butterflies. There are a variety of species but the most spectacular sighting is the Common Emigrant (Catopsilia pomona). The ashram must have some millions of them, I should think - and what a sight it is. Along any path or road, we see streams and streams of these pretty yellow gossamers flitting along some mysterious but cohesive route.

One akka signaled furiously to us the other day as we strolled along to brunch. We peered through the foliage to see where she pointed. By the stream were hundreds of butterflies puddling in the mudflat, moving their wings restlessly in the golden sunlight. A pied wagtail hung about, making darts into the kaleidoscope for an easy meal. Soon a few of us had gathered, including Viji akka, with her handy camera.

(Photos by Viji Ranganath)

Of course, the baddie is around in large numbers, and a host of other crawlies. Well, they're more useful to the planet, so we'll shut up and not complain.

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:

Living on the Wild Side

One of the exciting things about living on the edge of forests, is the wealth of insects that we share the space with. A variety of ants (in large numbers) are a constant presence and the occasional ant-colony raid can be a massive event, bringing the lizards out in a feeding frenzy. The other day, a mud dauber tried to make a nest on our window shelf outside the mesh door. It was not to be. We ourselves disturbed it a bit halfheartedly in trying to regain territory, and then a treepie decided to peck at the nest and help itself to the larvae. The mother wasp tried to fix the problem but it was an uphill task. She then attempted another effort in the corner behind the balcony door. But that very night alas, it rained in torrents and the mud was swept away.

In another curious affair, Shweta would end up with mysterious bites and scars – painful red blotches or trails that would, over a few days, well up in virulent suppurations. These took more than a week to subside but the scars take months to fade. At first she suspected the spiders. She then examined the problem, applying her Holmesian skills of detection and deduction and having eliminated the spiders, zoomed in on one particular specimen – a black and red bug about a centimetre in length whom she has named (with charming simplicity) ‘Baddie’.

She thought my response to her various injuries a bit lukewarm, and so was very much delighted when I woke up one day to a similar abrasion on my face. Since the wounds are often mirror-image lesions, we concluded that we weren’t being bitten or stung, but in fact, squashing or squeezing these Baddies in our sleep, except of course, when one had clearly walked over us, leaving a trail of burning, corroded skin.

The mystery is now solved – and our attacker is no mean personage. It enjoys many names and has a Wikipedia entry and several scientific papers dedicated to it. Say hello to the Rove Beetles of the genus Paederus aka Nairobi Fly, Acid Fly or Kenya Fly. There have been huge outbreaks of this creature and one paper suggests that at least two of the ten plagues of Egypt mentioned in the Bible were in fact massive breeding of Paederus.

Anyway, these creatures secrete a toxin called pederin, more potent than Latrodectus spider or black widow venom. So... err.. basically YIKES!!!!!!

You don’t discover the contact immediately but as soon the redness appears, washing the area with cold water and soap is a good thing to do. From my own experience, I have found that rubbing a pinch of common salt over the moistened abrasion is helpful. Then I tend to the wound with a thin layer of turmeric mixed with a drop of coconut oil, or aloe vera gel, crushed tulsi juice, sandalwood paste or rose powder paste.

For now, I have a new gash over my shoulder from last night. Here we go again.

Isha Yoga Center Diary

Isha Yoga Center has many moods. You’ll hear people describe in many ways. Many will rave about how blissful it is to be here, others find it stunningly beautiful. It is paradoxically the most exciting and yet the most calming of places.

When there is an event or a program, it is bustling – with long queues at the temples, the restaurants and everywhere else. But if you outlast the crowd, like I manage to do sometimes, it is thinly populated with only the residents and a few visiting guests.

But these periods of quiet are nowadays becoming rarer. I went into the Dhyanalinga yesterday hoping for some post-Mahashivratri calm but it was a Sunday and there was such a throng that people were allowed to walk through, only sitting down for a while if they wished. I should explain that there are usually slots at this wonderful Yogic Temple. People can walk in or out only at 15-minute intervals, which are indicated by a bell. You are required to be silent and quiet in all movements, and there is always a hush in the air – only part of which is due to the regulations in place. The real hush emanates from the subtle energy body in the centre – a magnificent linga with all seven chakras at their peak.

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People have a lot of questions when they come to the yoga center. They are struck, of course, by the architecture, the unique aesthetic of the place. Then they stare a bit at meditators who have spread out their yoga mats here and there – some slumped over their shoonya meditations, some engaged in pranayama, some finishing off their hatha yoga practices... and they want to know more about the Devi, the Dhyanalinga, the Naga at the Suryakund, the Teerthakunds themselves...

However, there is one other element that very few can pass by without exclaiming or pointing out to their companions. There is a citrus tree within the Dhyanalinga compound that fruits somewhat bountifully – this is the pomelo, a variety of Citrus maxima or Citrus grandis; it is called Bablimaas in Tamil. So profuse and so startlingly large are these greeny-yellow fruit that the security guard who is stationed there is asked a few hundred times a day, “Idu yennadu!?”
They say that yoga helps you become calm, and just being in this energy space is transformative. If it has worked for any of us, there can be no better evidence than our team of security personnel. Diligent, unflagging but with an unvarying sweetness of temperament. “Adu bablimaas anga”, “Bablimaas akka”, “Bablimaas anu solluvanga”: they explain over and over.

Photography is not allowed in that area, so I can’t show you that particular tree and have to settle for a picture found online.

+++++++++

It is getting hot here. As my grandfather used to say, the chill seems to cry “Shiva, Shiva!” and leave after the Shivratri. The water tank and pipes in the stay area are exposed to the afternoon sun, and hot water is being dispensed already from the cold water taps. In the open area nearby, a large ostentation of peahens is pecking about, squawking occasionally. Summer is coming.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Fursat ke raat din*

It has been a fairly hectic fortnight, one way and the other. Sadhana has been somewhat time and energy-consuming – at least compared to the pace I tend to keep.

So today, quite consciously, has been relaxed. A nothing-day. I ate a lunch of masala oats and salad, washed up conscientiously, which left me feeling virtuous. This winter afternoon, the surroundings are quietish but for a land-mower in the distance. I have been sitting at the balcony door, sprawled out in the accommodative bean bag, doing nothing more strenuous than reaching for the binoculars when a bird happens into my ambit. My rules don’t permit me to haul myself out and totter up to the railing even... even if the passerine in question happens to dart below the view span.

My window of opportunity

In this desultory manner, I have spied white-headed babblers, house sparrows, bee-eaters, sunbirds, sundry LBJs, a white bellied drongo and bounding squirrels. The sparrow in particular flitted within view for several minutes, and therefore, I watched him for as long as he stayed. Shweta’s excellent binoculars allows for a 16x zoom, which is handy indeed if you can find a stable prop for the elbows.

Every now and then, I swing the lens towards a small clearing in the thicket. This is a bit like dropping your keys on a moonlit night and then looking for them only in patches where the light falls. But silly or not, this brown patch draws my attention because this was where Shweta fortuitously saw a leopard once, sauntering majestically into her binoculared field of vision.

There is a Brown Wood Owl that comes to this spot but I haven’t seen it yet. And no elephants either, this visit. But the thing that is most exciting about this perch, as, I daresay, with life, is that it teems with possibilities.

______
* The title of this post is from Ghalib's sher:
jee dhoondta hai fir wahi fursat ke raat din
baiTHe  rahain  tasavvur-e-jaanaan  kiye  hue

जी ढूंढता है फिर वही फुर्सत के रात दिन
बैठे रहें तसव्वुर ए जानां किये हुए

The heart seeks again those days and nights of restfulness,
Once more, simply sitting, contemplating the beloved

Watching the wind

Did I say this place was windy? Yes, I did. Let me say it again. W.I.N.D.Y.
Doors are opened with great circumspection. Some wind corridors are so gusty, I sometimes can't advance till the currents let up. I tried to hang a few clothes today on the clothesline and had to stand IN the bucket to keep it from flying away; and what a struggle it was to keep the sleeves from lashing at my face!

I was sitting on a stone bench a couple of days ago, at dusk. The gales dropped for a bit and then, as I watched, I could see the breeze approach. It reminded me of this pretty, very appropriate haiku by Brad Bennett.

watching
the wind arrive
tree by tree

That's more or less what I've been doing this month.

Winds of Change

So, I blog from a new home. After four years with Isha Foundation (at least three quarters of which my sister spent at the Isha Yoga Center at the foothills of the magnificent Velliangiris), we knew this was going to last. We applied for more permanent lodgings at the ashram and we moved in this month. I will now be able to come oftener, stay longer and not wait for an occasion to visit this blessed place. I have indulged myself by coming to stay without a return ticket booked and I can’t tell you how chuffed that makes me feel.

The Velliangiri hills are a wild place. Wild holy men, wild elephants, wild winds. And our building is quite at the edge of habitation. Our bedroom window opens eastwards, looking upon a brook, fields, wilderness, coconut groves and hills. Last fortnight, Shweta had a wild boar sniffing under the balcony, and spied a black-naped hare twice; yesterday I caught sight of a mongoose trundling along the wet mud. Lots of birds – bold white headed babblers, swifts, bee-eaters, robins, bulbuls, lapwings... and an abundance of butterflies.
And of the Grace that cascades down these mountains, I cannot speak, because it is beyond speech.

Today is the summer solstice. This season – I’m so lucky to be here at this time! – Sadhguru calls “the annual fest of the wind”. He says, “Sometimes, the winds are coming down from the mountain at 120 kms per hour. These are winds of change; we are shifting from Uttarayana to Dakshinayana. A significant change in the way the planet’s energy spheres operate. The winds are significant as a symbol of blowing away the past and beginning a fresh cycle of sadhana. Very significant for all spiritual seekers.”

And believe me, the gales are very purposeful. This is the first time I’ve actually heard wind howl, the doors and windows are being rattled constantly, we’ve lost our doormat, we've had to retrieve our dustbin from the floor below, and I’ve had to reassemble our coconut-stick broom after the winds had hacked it quite furiously. Anything that isn’t nailed down goes with the wind. It's exhilirating.


A few views:

View from the balcony

From the bedroom

Dawn breaks over our patch of the earth

Rain so dense you can't see a thing

In Twos and Threes

As always, stuff comes in twos and threes.

Earlier this week, I was reminded of Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s heart-wrenching Maaye ni maaye main shikra yaar banaya. I had read an excerpt from the much-praised H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald’s account of a goshawk she raised. It sounds fascinating and I can’t wait to read it.

Batalvi, experienced perhaps in loving wild things and having them leave him, is enamoured of the hawk in this poem. He says:

Choori kuTaaN
Te o khaaNda naaheeN
Uhnu dil da maas khavaaiya
Ik uDaari aesi maari
O muR vatani na aaiya

I crushed choori, but he would not eat it.
So I fed him the flesh of my heart...
He took flight, and such a flight it was
That he never turned this way again...
Oh, I befriended a hawk, mother!

Jagjit Singh sings a melancholy version of this poem here:



And while on this, I found something else. Jagjit Singh singing Batalvi again and this one, the utterly pathetic Maaye ni maaye mere geetan ne nainan vich...
I clung to this song for a while, when I was grieving my mother’s death so intensely a few years ago.

Aakh su ni kha laye Tuk
HijaraaN da pahkiya,
LekhaaN de ni puTHaRe tave!
Chat laye tarel looni
GhamaaN de gulaab toN ni,
Kaalaje nu hausala rave!

Tell him, mother, to swallow the bread
Of separation.
He is fated to mourn.
Tell him to lick the salty dew
On the roses of sorrow,
And stay strong.

Although I still love Nusrat’s version best, here is (a very young) Jagjit Singh giving it a shot:



___
Translations are from Suman Kashyap, or based on her translations.

Our endless and proper work

I take down Tom Rault’s fantastical haiku

everywhere
in the river
the footprints of a fish

In its place, not a haiku this time, but a snatch from a poem. Mary Oliver’s urgent, knock-on-the-head reminder:

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

It came like a bolt from the blue, that one. If I had the skills, I would make those letters dance in neon, emblazoned across my vision no matter where I looked, a persistent pop-up on the pages of my life.

I had not come across this wonderful nature poet before but it happened in that curious way it does. A friend on facebook had a poem by her on their page with a meme of some kind going on. I was tempted to read but had only a few minutes to spare then and put it away for later. Later that day, a friend sent me a link to a poem. I clicked, took a few minutes to read, absorb and then as I almost shut the tab, an invisible arrow hovered by the side column. Mary Oliver, it said again. Resigned and, needless to say, excited about this treasure hunt, I went looking for the message that had been sent me.

The poem I’m quoting from – “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?”
– is here.

She asks:
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
 
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!
 
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
 
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
    
Well, there is time left -
fields everywhere invite you into them. 
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass,
which is the mystery, which is death as well as life,
and not be afraid!
To set one’s foot in the door of death,
and be overcome with amazement!
 
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened in the night,
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
    
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
 
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

===
The title is from Oliver as well; in her poem Yes! No! she says: "To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

Monsoon raga

This...

scent of
night-blooming jasmine
words get
in the way

...makes way for this:

slow rain —
losing myself in
birdbath circles

It has been an uncommonly persistent rainy season – many long days of incessant, slow rain, many days when the washing hasn’t dried at all, many occasions when we haven’t seen the sun in two or three days altogether... I’ve found kambli poochis (Red hairy caterpillars) on my curtains, virulent-green crawlies in the wash basin, and all the world seems to be thriving on this nourishment.

So Ann K Schwader’s haiku that so hauntingly captures the monsoon mood.

Tiger Warrior - a review

Tiger Warrior: Fateh Singh Rathore of Ranthambhore
By Soonoo Taraporewala
(Viking, Rs 499)

A Reverent Gaze

The title of this book is an evocative one. With the Rajput references and the many elements of machismo, it carries echoes of clanging metal, hints of tales of valour, images of a brave fighter wiping blood and sweat over hard fought battles. You will find all those elements in this book—only, the landscape isn’t the ramparts of some historical fort but the open grasses of a national park, and the battleground is tiger conservation in India.

The story of Fateh Singh Rathore—the man who carved out Ranthambhore National Park and worked tirelessly to create a safe haven for tigers—is tremendously inspiring. An exceptional naturalist, Fateh Singh was almost empathetic in his knowledge of tiger behaviour, “to such an extent,” the author tells us, “that he himself was like a tiger as it is possible for any human to be.” As a long standing friend, Taraporewala manages to bring to life many facets of this brave man, and the events of his long undulating career as a forest official and conservationist—his family background, his almost random-seeming appointment in the Forest Department, and his subsequent dedication to the tiger cause. Also, there is great insight into the larger operations of the Indian Forest Service and the Government.

The book holds, however, more due to the drama in the life of its subject—which the writer reports earnestly—than to the style of prose. The technique is more ‘tell’ than ‘show’. Barring a fervent foreword by Valmik Thapar, who grew to be a close friend of Fateh Singh’s, we get no voices but Taraporewala’s, not many quotes, no very interesting interviews or opinions, no commentary from the subject’s family or friends. The assortment of pictures is disappointing as well—a mere eight pages and not one image of Jogi Mahal, the beautiful forest resthouse in Ranthambhore that Fateh Singh restored and rebuilt.

For all that though, this is a book that both rouses and disheartens. We see the efforts that a single man is capable of, the fruit that can be brought to bear if the will exists but, equally, the heartbreak that comes from a world too mediocre to receive such dedication with gratitude or grace.

======
This was published in Outlook Traveller, January 2013. The link is here.