Morning Walk.....

After a long break I've started my morning walk and the enchanting times are back! My home is barely a kilometer away from Pune University and so that’s where I am at each dawn. As I step into the campus, the street lights go off and then it is all dark, silent and so very beautiful!  The moon glows overhead, birds are not all up yet and there is cool breeze! Sigh! How I have missed all this.

There is a nice patch of garden through which I pass that has a riot of colours as myriad flowers are now in full bloom.  

I walk – happy and free – swinging my arms, a spring in my step. Earlier I used to rush to and fro since my morning chores before getting to work in time were innumerable back then. Of late my duties have lessened and so I enjoy more freedom to do as fancy takes me. 

Once just at the start of my walk I saw two tiny dots glowing away in the dark underfoot. I drew closer to peer at it and Whoa! It was a worm with its rear all lit up, crawling across the path. The worm had “tail lights”! Two dots shimmering in a gentle white glow! Wow! Had never ever seen anything like that before. Kept marveling at it for a long time! Also prayed for its safety since it was bang in the middle of the path.

Another thing that never fails to bewitch me is the way Antigonon (Coral Vine) and other creepers with so many hued flowers spread themselves over the huge, dark clump of trees at one turn. I especially love Antigonon's vernacular name from my childhood: "Ice cream Vel". 

The very air around this "flowery carpet over trees" is fragrant. The whole thing looks mysterious and yet quite scenic! Little things like these make me so glad that I chose this city to live all those years ago! 

Before heading back I go and sit on a bench under the trees in the same garden. To listen to silence, empty my mind and look forward to the coming day to give me all that it has to offer. For a city dweller like me, sitting – and doing nothing - under a tree has always been both a rare treat and a great delight.

I have always been fascinated by the sheer massiveness of the Baobab tree there. But this time around I see the enormous trunk of the Baobab tree rotting away – I suppose termites have been at it. It came as a shock to see the majestic giant lurched forward so, most of back of its trunk hollow now. A terrible, heart-breaking sight! But the foliage is green as ever and so I trust it to survive. 

Pune was where I spent all my school vacations and it is still an enchanting city to me with strange and charming childhood memories that are sparked off by a flower here and a whiff of an herb there while walking so happily. The hues of the morning sky, the luminescence of the moon in the wide expanse of the sky with that distinct “green” smell of the leaves and of the vegetation underfoot – all grips me like some magical experience. 

The other day on a whim I chose a little off beat path to circumvent the garden and an owl shot out from the bush pell-mell – rudely awakened from its nocturnal perch. Wow! I had never ever seen an owl up so close and I don’t know who was more startled – the owl or I.

It was a small bird and while it tried hard to make some sense out of this giant figure intruding by tramping along so close; the realization hit me that there was no fluttering sound of wings whatsoever! The bird went helter-skelter but there was no sound! I didn’t know an owl could do that! I guess it is the hunter’s requisite. Crows, pigeons – the whole noisy lot – is what I have known. Not this swift little object so supple on the wing! Took my breath away! 

I love going back to my magical land of early dawn!

Legacy of Mannlicher

My father left me a legacy of his old rifle –a prized possession of his – a beautiful "Mannlicher" - 303. The twelve bore shotgun went to my brother – his first born.  Daddy was a Jim Corbett fan and I grew up with many a story of “shikars”. I also was taught how to fire arms. A school time stint at Bhosla Military School, Nasik too helped.

 

The legacy meant having a fire arms license. To that end I soon found myself in the local day-long fire arms training programme to claim my eligibility. Of course all other participants were men. That was expected. I was the "odd man out"! But then I am quite often that. 

The experience was not only exhilarating but an eye opener as well. I almost startled myself to be so thrilled to be at the shooting range. The deafening shots rang out in quick succession as all of us stood in a file, guns held, blazing away at the distant targets. Some of us had pistols, some long range arms like my rifle. Wow! What a scene!

The sport gripped me in a manner I never imagined and I never knew that I had such rawness in me. I mean come on, who would imagine a fifty (plus) year old mother of two to be so tickled pink at all that shooting! I had never thought that it would turn out to be so delicious an experience. 

Can’t wait to get back to the range to fire away! To say that I am surprised at this glee with firing a gun is surely an understatement now!

Have your best shot today, all! 

Winner's Way

Each of us has been dealt a hand, each of us a destiny. Nothing can change that. What can be changed however; is the perception of life. That comes with the perspective. 

That makes immense difference to how I live my life.

Every breath I make a choice. And making a choice itself decides the winner’s way or the loser’s way. 

Let's be a winner, all! 

Post Script:

My title here reminds me of one of my favourite poems: "Sea Fever" by John Masefield. What a magnificent verse it is! 

Funnily enough, my Google Image search threw up a sea scape with the correct lines from the poem inscribed across but the poet's name is given as Robert Masefield. It is 'John' not 'Robert'. Matters to me a lot. Someone mixed up Browning with Masefield I guess.

Here, some lines pasted for you, dear reader:

............ I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Let go, For give....

Quite often forgiveness is mistaken to be having everything to do with the other. It isn’t. It has only and only to do with your own self. 

The word is of two components: "For - Give".

It is giving away - or letting go of - that which hurts/angers you. 

Forgiving is you reconciling to the new reality. Till you forgive, this new reality is detested. 

You keep clinging to the wrong done, and it is stuck to you - like your limitations. Keep clinging to them by justifying them and they are yours - for ever.

Once you forgive and reconcile with 'what is' instead of fighting against what "should've been", it turns palatable. 

There is no other way of dealing with this.

Here is a lovely pic from a site named therein. Lovely site. 

Must check it out. 

Please do, all!

Net & Text...

I remember the times when one had to use the dial up for internet. Yeah, does sound like ancient history! And that makes me feel very, very old! But that’s okay; I alone know the perks of being this old. Oh yes, there are perks, believe you me!

But now it is all so furiously fast! And the joy of this ocean of information right there at my beck and call, that too so speedily;  is beyond words for me. I LOVE the net!

I will give you an example: The other day I came across this word “Laconic” and of course I generally knew that it describes someone who speaks rarely/less etc. Since searching the net is a passion for me I often go looking for stuff and mostly words, their etymology and their various usages. English of course.

And I discovered this extremely amusing bit on Wikipedia - my favourite place to go browsing: 

“It was the time of the invasion Philip the 2nd of Macedon. 

With key Greek city-states in submission, he turned his attention to Sparta and sent a message: "If I win this war, you will be slaves forever." 

The Spartans sent back a one word reply: "If".”

Wow! Almost blew me away!   What powerful usage of words…rather ‘a word.’ So often I use a whole lot of words – quite needlessly I realize now - to get my point across. 

Well! Well! Never too late to learn huh!

Have a grand day, all!

Oh My God G!

There is an advertisement running on television for the last few weeks. It is where Mr. Bachhan's son explains why India's population is high and how the 3G is the answer to this challenge.


Though I am all for technology I cannot but help wonder how today's parents are going to answer the questions that their young ones are going to ask them when they miss the meaning of all that is being said in it - rather I hope they miss it. 
Yeah, you never know!

Well, I am sure they will want to know at least one of these: 

a) what is 3G - at least some of them will, 
b) they will want to know what does that have to do with anyone's 'biwi', 
c) here comes the most scary bit - what does that have to do with babies? and finally 
d) Why Abhishek says his baby was before 3G.


Wow! I'd love to see Jr. Mr. Bachhan answer his 'on its way off spring' some of those things.
Good Night all!

The Feathered Visitors

It is monsoon here in Maharashtra and the city is as green as it can possibly be. Nights are pleasant and cool and I have my morning visitors in larger than usual numbers – the feathered kind.

A pair of bulbuls comes religiously to my living room window for food. They like the berries on the Asparagus creeping up on the grill and if I do not rustle the newspaper they do not see me behind the sheer curtains and begin pecking at the red berries. I feel so honoured!

Not both of them of course, one always holds back a bit and they take turns at the berries.

Occasionally the hornbills come, craning their long necks and staring out with the large ringed eyes. Yup. They do stare. I guess the rings round their eyes are responsible for that even if they don’t mean to. Not that they stare at me, they have better and more survival linked stuff to watch out for - like the alert and menacing kite birds that frequent the skies above them. Hence the neck craning and staring - always peering at something distant.

Kites are regular in that area and so make their disapproval for these visitors quite clear –often.

Hornbills make weird sounds when are talking amongst themselves. It is so like snakes gurgling – that is if ever snakes were to gurgle they would sound just like them. I am thinking snakes because that’s how their necks look – snake- like. Not when they are just sitting quiet on the branches of Jacaranda. It is when they want to call, they go lifting their head and whoa! There is quite a length of the neck under it all that and it all slowly uncoils! Very amusing to see that!  

Then there are Sunbirds and Weavers and of course the ever present Crow Pheasant or 'Bharadwaj'.

Crows, pigeons and sparrows were part of my childhood back in Mumbai but here in Pune I rarely see a sparrow and only occasionally crows. Population of pigeons is high just as in Mumbai. 

At home we have an African love bird - supposed to be hailing from Madagascar. Not a pet but a rescued pet. Someone lost it, my kids found it and since we hail from a family that takes pride in animal rescue we had to keep it to help it stay alive.

There is a whole story about that bird named “Melo Melo” but that is for some other time.

For now some pix for my readers to know what birds I am talking about. Bulbul, Hornbill and the Sunbird - in that order.