Friday 22 July 2011

WOODS AND TREES.

All of us are attached to our surroundings, a small child to it's mother,  a husband to his wife, a student to his studies, a home-maker to his/her home and definitely our life to our breathing. A few cases in point.
We are all so linked with emotions, that we get pulled into the whirl of life, and then these emotions govern all of our thoughts and actions.
We have been often told that detachment is the only way to really be, that it answers many questions. Not many in these times would ascribe to this , for it would be equal to to non-emotion, or at living in a completely emotionless state and that would be bizarre. How can anyone exist without love or loving anyone around or anything close to you?Would it not make you mechanical in what you do and then how would you appreciate anyone or anything around you? Most human qualities are linked to emotion. Sympathy, happiness , joy, love, empathy wonder, surprise, awe are some of the qualities which make us human. We will not get into get negative emotions here because at best they debilitate the one displaying them and hurt the one they are aimed at besides souring the surroundings, at worst they impact much more.

Some years ago I had with a group from  Bombay to Kolkata for a celebration . There we met others who had come from all over India . Some of us were chatting one evening and one of the older ladies asked me why I was not married ( this kind of invasion of privacy is considered perfectly all right even if one is not well acquainted ),  and not wanting to get into details I loftily answered that I  did not want to get into the attachments which marriage brings. There was a young woman who was present there and when I asked her if this was not true, she said something which left me speechless. She was from a small town not far away and had left her family ( which is not common) to be there for those few days.  "Dekho to bandhan, dekho to koi bandhan nahin" . If you look at it (married life) it is an attachment, if you look at it , there is no attachment at all.
WOW! A statement made without any sermonizing or the need for endless debate. So true for situations we find ourselves in everyday and when seen in a larger perspective.

When I started writing this , I was veering towards writing about my view of attachment vs. the necessity for detachment. This incident came to me ( the attachment of my psyche to the memory of the incident). There is no need to say more.

Sometimes one sentence can speak a thousand words.

Thursday 21 July 2011

Trysts

As I watch the rain playing gently outside the balcony accompanied  by the odd wet caw from a drenched crow and a few random honks from passing cars, the lilting melody takes me back to childhood trysts.Of looking at the flash of lightening a pure zigzag of beauty, awed at the wonder of it. We were supposed to be in bed, it was already past 9pm and were as usual resisting sleep. Amma came in to admonish us and tuck us in when there was a loud clap of thunder rumbling and continuous. The zigzag flashes followed instantly. Mom pushed us towards the centre of the room hen like in her protection. I struggled out of her clasp and rushed to the mesh door to watch the heavenly drumbeats and laser shows mesmerised at the wonder of it.

When the hailstones used to beat down both bhaiya and I would rush out to the veranda as soon as Mom had her back turned, and into the garden to collect the ice lollies and back into the safety of the veranda and then eat them with abandon. Several times. Small pleasures, simple games with nature.

We used to spend most of our school vacations in Allahabad . Arid summers with the hot wind called 'loo' locally, a wind which causes severe illness and fatality and best avoided.We were warned by the elders not to out of the house at those times.The fun only began when they retired after a heavy meal in the somnambulent afternoon. Racing trough the house into the compound back into the dining room hiding as close to to the buckets of luscious mangoes, grabbing and sucking the juice out of as many as was possible despite the warnings by the adults.
The hailstorms in Allahabad were more severe, I have seen a couple of them in the winter there but remember the huge bullets of ice which would hurt if one ventured out.The sound beating against the red tiled roof  sounded as ominous as  thunder. The sudden blitz and the just as sudden end made us rush outside despite the shivering freezing cold.

There were two most exhilarating storms that I  have seen, the Kaali and the Peeli Aandhi, black and yellow storms, but of that later, the experience can't be described in a few lines.

When I started writing this blog , Nikki  had said 'Well begun' . I almost left it half done, an endeavor towards completion will be attempted.