Now with the waste quantity having come down - i started composting again. The very process of chopping the green stems in small pieces and mixing the vegetable and fruit waste with the peremix - touching them with my fingers rejuvenated my senses & lifted my mood.
Now, I look forward to it every day.
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| August 23 |
Around 7.15 am, as I step out of my door with a steaming cup of tea in my hand the sun peeps from top of the buildings to land on my door. Bright but not bright enough to hurt your eyes. Warm and gentle like a friend who is helping you wake up and set the tone of the days.
We have a small patch with pots of ‘sadabahar’ (always flowering) plants and the light falls on the pink and delicate flower, green leaves making a place of wonderment and hope.
I feel the small piece of soil around the pot to feel the earth as best as I can and smell it before I head back to chase the day filled with hope and sunshine.
Last week I ran 8k - I was thinking I will do 15 K on 15th August, but with my sleep issue it seems NO GO. So did another 8K to at least finish 15k before 15th August. I was feeling very tired and exhausted but the sweating out was good.
Also the mind space when you run is very different from Yoga - It’s like the difference between surfing and floating. More importantly it is good that I could fix and reach a goal. A personal one and hence a personal victory. An affirmation to my subconscious that ‘I can’.
These days I run to stand still.
As I was walking down the stairs for my walk, I saw a young parent carrying a 2 month child very carefully in a car seat and probably going for a drive. She was really small wearing pink but her eyes were open and she was probably seeing some coats of color in her vision. She was not smiling or angry, just peaceful and staring. On asking I was told, he was 2 months old. The parents had happiness and bliss written all over their face like one would feel when in first love.
As I came out of the stairways I saw another child, again wearing ping, must be 3 or four years old walking with her father. I saw them from behind but I could feel the spring in the girls' walk and I could hear her asking questions in an animated way. Even though I was 500 mts away I could feel the excitement, thrill and happiness in the girl.
As I began my Sunday Run, many thoughts criss crossed my mind,
At some point in life we live life cradled in the necessities and responsibilities which are thrown at us because of raising a family and meeting our responsibilities at work. Our hopes get linked to work and family. While work is more like meeting requirements, family helps to rekindle hope and keeps it alive in us. Marriage is a new beginning and so is a child or two. It’s a green shoot, a new branch where like the tree we live our life once again with our partner or child.
In our sunset years it becomes difficult to keep our Hope alive. With your body reacting in a different way, plants start growing on their own creating their own ecosystem, challenges from your aging parent throws challenges at you on a daily basis.
Seeing these girls took me back to the green shoots which came our way 23 n 20 years back. Now, the joy is in seeing your tree grow, branch, flower and bear fruits.
Like my little magic.😍
All 3 movies are satire:
Force Majeure shows the reality of relationships, our insecurity which is not easily expressed but gets exhibited in situations but you refuse to accept or it tips off the relationship scale. In this case it’s a trip which the family takes and an incident of avalanche which tips the scale. Some might find it boring as the whole movie is slow and quite nuanced.
The Square also brings out the hypocrisy of the society through a new museum which exhibits installations - some of them quite ridiculous like sands organised in some form. Rich people come to see it and in the end there is a twist where the installation is a live performance which turns awry in the end. This also is a Palm D’Or winner.
Triangle of Sadness focuses more on the class divide and the uber rich in this world who think they own the world and expect to be served by the rest of the world. They became rich by selling hand grenades or shit (fertilizers) - the route does not matter the money does. But it has a nice twist which changes the odds when a toilet cleaner becomes the captain. You can see it in Sonyliv.
Relationships can be tough if the people involved have a different way of looking at things or operating style & there is a refusal to understand the other’s point of view. Unknowingly of course because the intention is always to give your best to the family and think the best outcomes of the family.
But our reactions are so hard wired that it takes years of practice to change & this creates the Triangle of sadness which is a real-world term for the area between the eyebrows and the very top of the nose bridge.
The area tends to develop wrinkles with age and emphasizes negative facial expressions such as sadness or anger, even when the person's face rests in a neutral position.
I have quite a few wrinkles.
The chemo cycle happens every 3 weeks. And for those 3 weeks everyone is trying to do many things and still things are incomplete or have a sense of disapproval. Too many factors and conditions to be kept in mind by many people which ends up in a resultant chaos.
But today there were none and suddenly I was experiencing silence of a different kind. A silence where I could hear my breath, a silent drone of insects which I never picked up, even the breeze I could experience on my hand as I sat on my doorstep. The parrots as always were the loudest and shrill and the squirrels had their sound synchronised with their tail and on seeing a lazy cat come out and sit near the tree its chatter went up a notch.
After sometime I realised that I had not heard the constant sound of traffic or the consistent beeping of horn, not even the washing machine which was running in my next flat. As if it did not permeate the bubble built by nature.
I felt, this is not silence, this is life.
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| 22nd June 23 - Sunset |
It rained heavily yesterday night when I got up it was still drizzling and everything was wet. After some time the rain stopped and the clouds were clearing. From my balcony I could see the slow walk of clouds in front of me like a marching of giants of different sizes. It just continued endlessly, I gazed at it for a long time thinking from where do they come to where they are going. Is there a starting point - Is there an end point ?
Nowadays, his memory is like these clouds, they come like a cloudburst and after moving around his mind and tiring him it disintegrates somewhere in his mind. In my morning walk with a doctor she explained this is a natural process - first you lose sense of time, then you lose sense of place and then you get attached to something and want to do it badly. Like her father who wanted to visit his village and visit his uncle who was not well.
I reflect on this and try to make sense of my life, what is the purpose. We live for unforgettable experiences, create loving relationships and spend the whole lifetime in this process. And one fine day the memories get overloaded and start switching off or worse gets all jumbled up. What will the experiences be worth if it’s all gone when you need it the most.
The day ends, I come out onto the same balcony to see a beautiful array of faint light streaming through the clouds & trees. A listless balcony looked beautiful in the faint reflections. My immediate response was to capture the moment, I resisted for a long time just taking in the beauty of the moment. There was a cacophony of noises - traffic, men shouting and talking in a nearby office, kids playing. But, that did not diminish the beauty of the setting sun and what it created.
I don’t know if there is a lesson, but I felt refreshed and the dark clouds which were chasing in my mind cleared and motivated me to write.
Memories will fade but nature will always inspire even in a concrete jungle where we mostly live.
Like a zen koan says “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”
Like any other suspense or investigative book there was logical thinking and deduction. It goes into overdrive after sometime and I had to control not finishing in a long sitting. Will I read one more - I am not sure. It’s good but in the end you come out with this nauseating feeling of what devious things can be there in the human mind. How people can be so cruel to other humans. Of course there is always a deep seated psychological reason for which the person acts the way he / she is acting.
The action and the thrill is nice but somehow the macabre murders puts me off. Maybe it’s just my age and the kind of books which I have been reading which are more on relationships or pure play science fiction or on a person’s quest for something or war & displacement. I think all my books in the last few years have been more on human drama.
So this was a good change.
I have not read many Agatha Christie but her books or even Sherlock Holmes were more of deductive & solving cases and in that sense innocent.
I mean how threatening can Poirot be but his brain is no different or not less sharp than Harry Hole.
I guess that also my personality - I identify more with Poirot than Harry Hole 🙂
It was not a happy movie to see on Father's Day but I think the need to complete my list of OSCAR winners was important. The movie is about Charlie reconnecting with his daughter Elle after 12 years. He had left the family when she was 8 years old because he fell in love with a guy who was his student. So, obviously his daughter hated him.
He had put on enormous weight after his boyfriend died and cut himself off from the world. Staying in an apartment, ordering food teaching students online - he used to take classes on creative writing. Whatever he earned was kept in an account for Elle, which was his way of redeeming his sins. He could have used the money to treat himself but he refused to do so and preferred to die than use the money.
Typical father behavior - saving for their kids and then walking into the sunset. In my case I am more similar to Charlie as I also seem to have also isolated myself from the world after I quit last year. Not a very social person I would rather be with my book and movie than go to a birthday party. Good thing is, unlike Elle both my daughters love me and are kind enough to accept me as I am, in fact they encourage me to complete my bucket list and do what I want to.
Somewhere between school and college, I took the backseat and their MOM took charge of college, expenses, buying list, wish list, budget - everything. I guess I was struggling with my depression and high level of stress at work. Or maybe I was not just attentive enough, but from being head of family I became a person non grata - except for entertainment. It took some time to get used to this new status - I struggled but slowly the acceptance dawned that this is the new reality. I guess I am happy that they got what they wanted when they wanted.
More Power to my Dolphins on Father’s Day from the Whale. Will surface when needed.
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| June 23 |
Every year when the kids used to go back to their boarding (Rishi Valley School), they had to select 10 photos for their term. Their term was for 6 months and we went to visit them once in the term. They will select these photos carefully or in a jiffy depending on when they remembered. In the first year when we visited then they were lined up in the inside of the almirah. Some other time it will be in between various books or on a shelf. At times we also found it in the form of a garland which had the photos clipped on it.
We did not pay much attention to it. They were another tick box to a ‘going back to boarding’ list. After they went to college I started using their table (the picture of the softboard is on top). There are quotes - pictures & beautiful birthday cards with poetry as an ode to me or Reema. As I look at them I realise how important these were to them when they were at the boarding. There was no social media or sharing over mail so these photos were their lifeline to their family and moments of fun and laughter we all shared together in not a very distant past.
Everytime, I sit there it’s a kind of nostalgic trip back when I see a pic taken during a trip or a very old photo when they were very small and posing for their best shot. As they came out of college, printouts became rare, photos remained digital and shared in the social media - where they are liked by many friends and commented on.
A new world enveloped them but I am happy with the old world of printouts.
Maybe, when we are gone they will come back to these printouts.
Monsoon has officially arrived in Bangalore and with it we have started hearing stories of roads filled with water, jams, lakes overflowing, flight delays. But wait, there is an illusive rainbow somewhere out there. Is it ?
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| 13th June 22 |
The first showers brought me down with fever, cold and sore throat - with my regular doses of medicines followed the delirium phase where you are in and out of sleep, senseless but trying to make sense of things around, numb but trying to feel, half asleep but trying to listen, eating but not tasting anything, mind is a continuous mirage of things which happened, can happen or may happen.
But I cannot give up the will to get up and move because life is cyclical, bad will follow good will follow bad. No one can escape because that is the nature of life. The Illusive rainbow can be seen - one has to look for it.
More than seeing I think one has to believe in it and you would have seen it in your mind. Our subconscious mind triggers all kinds of thoughts in our brain - we have to guide it towards the rainbow. Sometimes it’s very difficult like my current stretch of illness and adjustment with so many people at home that most of the time you feel claustrophobic, watchful of what you're saying and the reaction it would evoke.
But, then you see the rainbow on the days when the entire family gathers together to celebrate an occasion. The ripple of happiness and abundance can be seen on such rare occasions. We remember rainbows because of the rain.
Without rain there will be no rainbow & after pain joy will follow.
It’s not an illusion.
Unlike the complexity of the movies or other science fiction books like The 3 body problem for example, this book has a simple premise - If you could go back, who would you want to meet ?
Here time travel is more of an emotional travel to connect or forgive or understand a relationship. It’s set up in a cafe where there is a unique chair where you have to sit and there are rules for you to travel in time. I will not go into specifics as it will spoil the fun of someone who is reading it, but the set up is really interesting as there are rules which one has to follow if they are travelling.
The characters, like all of us, are flawed and have done something which they feel can correct or find out by travelling back in time, knowing very well that whatever they do ‘the present cannot be changed’. The characters are all very simple middle class folks like you and me and the authors sketch them out beautifully.
I am very fond of Japanese novels and read many of them and one of the common traits I find is that they are very simple and have very simple lifestyles, they are very hard working, have very strong ethics and family values. The same is true here.
There are 4 short stories but the characters in all 4 stories are the same - which you do not realise in the start but the author is able to generate a feeling that these stories are happening between a few close friends. It’s like a few friends are getting together after a long time and sharing stories. I liked it a lot.
Back to Future is one movie which is my favourite & I had seen it growing up & I still loved Michel J Fox in that.
Whom would I want to meet or be at an incident if I could go back.
I would like to meet Maa, my MOM who died in 2012 quite suddenly. Since I moved out of Delhi in 2006, our interactions were only when we went to meet her or she and baba came over to meet us. She spent the last year or two of her life in loneliness, as she became more and more immobile because of multiple fractures in her hand and differences with baba which took a very negative turn. She kept away from most of her friends and spent her last 1 or 2 years in loneliness. I was busy shaping my life with 2 small children, a new job & a new city and never saw this coming. She loved celebrating birthdays and maybe I would like to visit her on her birthday and talk to her for a whole day.
The only thing I have to do is find the cafe now which allows for time travel :)
I read the review and found it to be a kind of slow and emotional movie which I would like. Although I am one of those who follow lists and see only those movies and read only those books which I want to see, I make these random choices which most of the time turns out well.
I saw the movie over 1 week since I was managing home and then hospital with Papa and then both kids were coming home - so the viewing was in phases.
The theme running through the movie was that of loneliness. In some sense we are all lonely and we are also connected. But in between our travel, office, home and running errands there is this space where one just finds oneself a bit alone - it need not be a continuous thing, it can be a stab of pain or miss someone or an incident reminds you of your college.
Chihiro is a former sex worker who now works in a small bento shop. She has no inhibitions of her past work and is a carefree girl who is happy and always helping people around her with her warmth and care - whether it’s a homeless old man whom she gets home, gives her a bath and food and continues to do so for some time, or it’s a boy whose mom is not able to care about her because of her schedule - she builds bonds with them and genuinely cares about them. It’s not like a deep relationship but a relationship which has genuine warmth and caring.
She keeps visiting a blind old lady as a caregiver and takes a puzzle with her because she loves solving puzzles. She carries one unique puzzle with her everytime she visits and that is the challenge her patient waits for. One of the poignant moments is when she takes her in her car to a place where she can hear the rain and smell the earth - because she cannot see it.
It's a slow movie and slightly over 2 hrs so it will appeal to those who are looking for a slow unwind with the movie, maybe with a glass of wine with someone you love.
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| Source: thepathway2success.com |
Few days back I finished a 21 day mindfulness challenge.
I always wanted to do a course on mindfulness, having read so much literature around it. So when the 21 Day Challenge was organised free, thanks to the Wellbeing movement - I jumped in and joined on the 9th day.
I could not do all the 21 day prompts - because I realised that many of the activities were something I picked up as part of my DIY in the last few years & have been doing it off and on. I focused on stress / anxiety release, focusing on breath and a few others - which were in the form of guided meditation. I have been using the app CALM for 10 years listening to London English so it was a good change to listen to Sumati in Indian English & she has a beautiful & soothing voice which envelops you as you put on your headphones.
From a framework perspective,
Everyone is clear on What ? (Mindfulness & Meditation is needed to be calm). How ? is where everyone struggles. How to be mindful. How to do deep listening ? How to control anger ? How to be more compassionate?
The 21 days challenge clarified 3 things to me:
One, it establishes the fact that it’s not 1 thing, it’s an essential ingredient in everything. Morning Walk, eating, bathing, listening in addition to the mindful practices like meditation to release stress / anxiety or meditation to focus on breath.
2nd, With so much literature / videos / opinions we should not get overwhelmed (I was) - start small & do it. I will do some of the 21 day activities but 1 thing I have taken up as a challenge is for the month of June - every day I will do a 10 mnt anxiety meditation in the evening after work & before I go to sleep.
Lastly it helps us understand that mindfulness is not a magic wand - we have to practise it daily and every moment till the last breath.
Even at 87, the Dalai Lama gets up at 4 and practices.
How old are you ?
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| Venice - Some day Soon :) |
The weather in Bangalore is at its best now which is just before the monsoon rains come in. From where I sit, I can feel a cold breeze, the sun is not yet up but there is light and if you observe closely you can see the intensity change very slowly. Birds of all kinds are the most active flying, chirping, searching for their food & animals not seen by us but foraging for food under bushes or trees. Sometimes I hear the koyal kooing. It’s a beautiful medley of nature in the midst of a concrete city.
He is in artificial sleep thanks to tranquilizers and is unaware of what’s happening around him. His caregiver is busy preparing for the awakening of her patient so she can feed him, give him medicines and put him back to sleep. His walking is like a toddler if he can stand he rushes from point A to point B so that he finishes his task and comes back, in recent days this also has become rare. Food is fed and he is sponged & clothed like a mother would do a child.
When the day ends and I walk outside alone I often wonder - Is this really worth it ? Is this life or imprisonment, a stage where death is more welcome than cure. From being independent and head of family you have become a cause for all possible pain and discomfort to the family. What is there to look forward to apart from the day when you breathe your last?
Will I go through it? Will I have a choice in this matter ? Human mind grapples with these questions which are quite pointless. Or Does it help you define your point of view? Having a cancer patient at home, stories of cancer survivors and otherwise come to us every day. In one of the stories I heard, a lady after being detected with cancer - she refused any treatment and said she would rather make the best of the rest of the days left than be in bed. She famously said to her son ‘I would rather make that trip to Venice which I always wanted to do and die in a year than lie in bed for the next 3 years’.
Objectively, sitting here and imagining that this can happen I would like to follow her principle. It makes sense to prioritize experience over survival.
But as John Lennon famously said ‘Life is what happens to you as you are busy making other plans’.
Postscript: She made the trip to Venice & lived for more than 3 years. She was living not surviving.
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| On A Good Day |
One of the toughest jobs being a caregiver is to understand the unsaid. How can you get a cancer patient to voice what’s going on in their mind? The only question in their mind is When? In most cases death is the only finality which one reconciles to unless a miracle is on cards. Yes they do happen but you need to want it.
I had 2 lived experiences, one which is over and one which I am living through.
In baba’s case he had surrendered his care to ME & I became a primary source & decision maker. So at least the line of control was clear and the larger aspect was that he was willing to try everything possible to heal himself - from kiwi to coconut water to some herbal medicine. Super positive and disciplined about everything. At that point it looked normal but looking back I can realize what it would have taken to have that mindset. As I reflect back, one thing which worked was that we were a TEAM and worked towards a common goal.
In my current experience I am not a caregiver directly but being a small house experiencing what she is going through. Unlike baba here it’s complete anarchy and revolt, he does not want to take medicines or food. Is abusive towards his caregiver and adamant to go to the toilet at night resulting in him falling in the bathroom and developing a clot in his brain. She has lived through all this treating him like a child and offering all possible options of food but in the end he might just eat a spoon and she will have the leftover even though we will tell her not to. Despite the treatment she continues to get, she is soft spoken, does not raise her voice and accommodates him in all possible ways.
Not sure how she manages it but even from a distance most of us are at a stage where we avoid getting into a discussion on food or medicine as it leads to shouting and screaming at her.
From his perspective - he is hovering between sanity and insanity. I never knew the power of the subconscious but seeing him smile, talk about his childhood and cousins and incidents just shows what’s hidden inside the brain and when it will lay bare without us knowing it. Scary - but his locus of control is his caregiver and he punches it with all his might. Till he can that is.
My sense of right or wrong get’s grayer as I toss and turn both perspectives. My own frailty and shortcomings tints the glass further making further viewing a tough going.
But then we have to walk, time stops for no one nor can we.
It’s a BIG book - 700+ pages & the first question you have after reading the book is the question, Is she a botanist? And the answer to that is No, which is more fascinating because I haven’t learnt so much about plants before reading this book.
2 large sections of the book are about Goethe & Linnaeus - both are philosophical botanists, and their way of looking at plants as a whole and not as a specimen or a classification. I got the philosophy but I found the whole thing a bit long and arduous to read. Yes, it brought out the 19th century poet's obsession with plants and how he looked at every individual plant or leaf as one leaf and not as a shrub. With drawings he explains that the same plants growing in 2 different places will grow differently. One growing under the shade of a tree and the other in the open.
I could relate to it especially my new connection to sustainability and visiting our farm in Solan. Also reading about cultivation & farming and talking about it in the climate challenge, hearing stories about people who have left their corporate job and then started farming and in the process how they connected to the earth / soil. How they are trying to lead a slow life which looks deeply & lives mindfully.
The central premise of the book is interdependence between beings - humans, forests, animals (biodiversity). How we existed so peacefully and in balance with nature and how that balance was disturbed by science, development & I guess by greed / desire to control everything and understand everything so we can use it to our advantage.
Growing up in the 70's / 80’s & even early 90’s we were still living in an Indian way - our food habits, thinking was balanced. I always referred to baba’s generation as a generation of scarcity and our current generation a generation of too many choices. While I also enjoyed the hyper choice & the blinkered view of ‘focusing on discount’ and less on the question ‘do we really need the t-shirt, in the last 5 years I stopped buying and kept only what I need and not what I can afford.
Reading the book also gives a small peak into Meghalaya culture / traditions and tribal life and their beautiful & musical connection to earth. Come to think of it - this may be the first book I have read on North East, the only other author I recollect is Anjum Hassan which was a decade back I think. There is so much less written about the North - Eastern part of India that it is an enigma to many of us.
I can also connect to my Assam days where solutions to all health ailments were found in plants, shrubs, seeds, fruits grown around. In fact just a few days back I was telling my cousin if she can send me some dried thankuni leaves which are very good for the stomach and she said they are not available & grown in our homes. We have migrated to artificial and manufactured medicines which have side effects. (Found this interesting article Thankuni - Health Benefits, Uses and Important Facts https://www.potsandpans.in/blogs/articles/thankuni-health-benefits-uses-and-important-facts - Was pleasantly surprised that someone wrote about this obscure plant)
Read the book to re-establish your trust in nature.
