As The Day Dawns

The sun rises every morning oblivious of billion worries of the people awaiting it. No matter how much people request him to come early or late, he remains unperturbed. He has a job to do and that is all that matters to him! I personally requested a late start during school exams or college submissions and am quite sure that many others have wished for the night to be a bit longer for a variety of reasons.

Every night we sleep hoping that tomorrow’s Sun rays at the dawn will usher in a new day filled with opportunities and possibilities. This hope or faith keeps us going. But the dilemma here is do I sleep late or wake up early. A more important decision for to make is when to sleep late and when to get up early. A thought I had shared earlier.

The place where I live and work is amidst a high density residential tower block punctuated with roads and parking lots. The windows are thickly draped to keep the dust and heat off and therefore we are detached from the nature and dependent on the beep of the alarms.

But when we are in Kolkata, it’s a completely different world. The banyan tree by the bedroom window is a habitat for a variety of avian species. With the first ray of the dawn they start chirping and one wonders what they might be discussing before starting their day.  Although crows dominates, we get a lot of other visitors throughout the morning.

I keep my camera handy with the hope to capture a decent image but I have learnt the hard way that it’s not easy to frame one of those extremely fidgety individuals. Perhaps the equipment that I own is not up to the mark. Undeterred by the failures, I keep attempting for the best shot, motivated by their beauty. Amazed by how bright and shiny are their feathers, I wonder if I would ever be able to paint one of them. It will probably take more than a lifetime to mix such colors in a palate.

Unfortunately as the Sun gets brighter, the roaring and rumbling of the vehicular traffic with frequent honking gets louder.…..and the human beings takes over the world.

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’ 

WOW

Happy Friendship Day

Someone might ask what's special about today! Isn't it just a date in the calendar and another ploy by the capitalistic world to sell products or services?  I find this as an opportunity to reach out to all my friends. The ones always in my thoughts, the ones I meet regularly, the ones I would like to meet in the future and the ones I know I will never meet in this world.Today as the line between virtual and real is getting increasingly blurred, I also reach out to my friends in the cyber world ... my blogger friends, my social media friends and corporate friends...

Happy Friendship Day 2018!

If you had a choice, what would you dream about tonight?

Google image search

The other night I woke up in my dreams to find out that I was not actually asleep but wide awake. Although quite baffling, it is not very uncommon and probably many among us have encountered similar moments at some point in our sleep. Dreams are yet another aspect of our life, over which we have little control. We can accomplish many feats in our dreams which would otherwise appear unthinkable. “Dreams come true” is therefore synonymous to accomplishing something truly marvelous.

All ancient culture tried to make sense of their dreams and their interpretation have been carried forward by their descendants. Depending upon happy or sad events that followed a particular dream, cultures created their own almanac of superstitions. We too have grown up drawing various inferences out of elements such as water, food, snakes, elephants etc. and associated action that appeared in our dreams.

Our ancestors connected dreams to our previous birth, forewarning or as a communication medium with the dead. When someone had a bad dream they interpreted it was the handiwork of demons.

A nice happy accomplishing dream makes the day and a fabulous one could keep us dreamy for few days at a time. Who would not like to have a good dream? This craving for soothing dreams created the “dreamcatchers”.

Native American tribes traditionally used “dreamcatchers” as talismans to protect sleeping people, usually children, from bad dreams. The night air, they thought were filled with both good as well as bad dreams. Hanging a “dream catcher” above the bed, they believed would ensure only good dreams came along. 

These are handmade crafts made with a round hoop woven with a loose web of yarn and decorated with beads and feathers hanging below the hoop.

A tribute on Father's Day

When we were small we believed that our father will protect us whenever we though we will fall. For us he was not only our superman but a super human. Its only after one becomes a father himself, that he understand a father's true vulnerability, weakness and his limitations. You realize the sacrifices he had to make while walking a tight rope as he struggled to maintain the balance between relationship, finances, priorities of life, time management et al.

I remember the look my then infant daughter gave me when she was vaccinated for the first time. As if her eyes were questioning me, how could you ever let them hurt me!

When I look back at those wonder years, I understand my dad a bit more each time. But its too late as he left us for the heavenly abode as soon as I graduated and started with my job denying me the opportunity to give back anything. I wish he was still there and I could treat him, take care of him and hug him!

Happy Father's Day wishes to one and all.

Quick Facts: Father's day is celebrated on the 3rd Sunday of June every year while Mother's day is celebrated on the 3rd Sunday of May.

Baobab - A fascinating Species

The name was not very common to my ears neither was its look to my eyes. Ever since I saw them at the Aspire Park in Doha, I might has asked my Landscape Architect friend umpteen number of times to remind me of the name of this tree. He used to give me the name with the questions, “why, what happened?” I always wanted to know more about them.

I am told that we have a few of the species in some botanical gardens in India but incidentally never got to see one. “There are nine species of baobab in the world, and Madagascar, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, is home to six. The African mainland and the Arabian peninsula have two, and Australia has one. Africa’s most notable species is the Adansonia digitata, named after the French botanist Michel Adanson, who undertook an 18th-century exploration of Senegal. He stayed there for five years and contributed to the publication of 1757’s Natural History of Senegal.” theguardian.com)

The shape of the trees are fascinating but the most fascinating fact is that there are individual Baobab trees alive on the planet earth for the last 3000 years. Yes you have counted the zeros alright, its three thousands!

Isn’t it amazing for somebody to stand the sand of time and witness the continued changes happening over the millenniums? But they are not able to withstand our atrocities any longer. 

A recent article made the shocking disclosure that as many as 9 of these individuals aged between 1100 and 2500 years are dying off. Unfortunately our way of polluting environment and encroaching forest lands is killing them. Victims of Climate Change! The Guardian reported “The oldest tree by far, of which all the stems collapsed in 2010/11, was the Panke tree in Zimbabwe, estimated to have existed for 2,500 years. The biggest, dubbed Holboom, was from Namibia. It stood 30.2 metres (99 feet) tall and had a girth of 35.1 m.” (theguardian.com)

Do you not feel that it's about time that we change our way of life and give others a chance? 

Live and Let Live!

 

World Environment Day: Wish you a sustainable lifestyle

The most explicit definition of Sustainable living that I ever came across is the following:

“Meeting our present needs in a way such that the coming generation would be able to meet their own.”

Our generation is selfishly rushing to achieve their self-defined illusive “Progress”. In the process we are mercilessly converting our farmlands, wetlands, forests and water bodies destroying the natural habitat of our co-dwellers in this earth.

On the 5^th of June 2018, this World Environment Day, I request all to take a moment out to decide where we want to go from here. We need to be wary of finding our environmental report card in the hands of our grandchildren and decide between growth and development.

Growth is all about getting bigger and bigger whereas development is about getting better.

I have no qualms in accepting the fact that it will take a messiah to change the world totally and revert the damages already done. But no one can stop us from participating in whatever small way to be part of the change that we want to see in our environment.

I can assure you that any step, however small that might be would not be insignificant. There are a few things that we all can undertake, no matter where we are or our circumstances.

Firstly we need to plant trees…wherever and whenever possible. Any opportunity should not be missed and it could be in our courtyards, porches, patios, terraces, balconies or even window sills. Create your own flowering nook or a kitchen garden and in doing so please remember to use terracotta pots instead of the plastic one.

Secondly say goodbye to plastics. They are doing immense harm and their outreach is now thousands of feet under the sea. The idea is to start with the disposable, single use products and slowly move to the others.

Finally let “Recycle, Reuse & Reduce” be the mantra of life.

In the end I will leave with a quote from Senegalese Baba Dioum (1968). "In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”

The news clipping below may help to understand the gravity of the situation and motivate you. First one is a good news about Tamil Nadu banning plastics and the ones that follows are scary to say the least. 

WhatsApp and What a Wonderful World……

The school that my daughter attends for music decided to participate in the annual day celebrations of a school for children with special needs. When it was their turn, they got to the stage and stood shoulder to shoulder with the choir group of the celebrating school. Together they presented the popular song, “What a wonderful world” by Louis Armstrong. I felt it was quite an intense and emotional experience for all the participants as well as their parents. As they sang together

“I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world……”

it was a defining experience for those kids who had little idea about the challenges associated with the term “special needs”.

But this is not the subject of this post. In preparation of the program, the teacher in charge had formed a group in the “WhatsApp”. She coordinated with the parent of this small group of voluntary participants letting us know about the time to drop-offs, pick-ups for rehearsals, dress codes and other critical details about the venue, meeting points etc. related to the final day. The kids these days are fully occupied and finding a common free time to rehearse by itself is no mean task.

“WhatsApp” was a great tool for those 5 weeks and it can be extremely efficient as long as it is strictly used for purpose. No customary “good mornings”, no forwarded messages, no spam… pure business. After the program, the group became defunct.

I wish we could use technology with such prudence….always! Not letting it infringe our personal space to dump others views, opinions or frustrations and create havoc!