Seasons

S is here and love her spontaneous bursts of creativity.
Her impromtu etching and coloring of the " Seasons"for me ,brought home the cheer and joy of the changing seasons....

The shift of the seasons spring eternal hope to me and bring so much to look forward to. I have come to beleive in Shelley when he wrote  "If Winter comes, can spring be far behind"? .
This transience also tells me whats enduring ..
It is our ability to find joy ..
In the backdrop of all that changes , we always possess the ability to appeciate what's lovely and make peace with what's not. This sense of wonder and connection with all that is around , i think , makes us more empathetic and compassionate .

I have come to cherish the fire of summer and the swish of the monsoons and the gentle warmth and breeze of the interludes.
For I know seasons turn and the kind cloud will be back after a fiery sun ..

Walking Trail

A few years back , i read an article - a sharing of a woman going through an intense phase in her life and how her saturday morning ritual of walking a forested trail , kept her going . She looked forward to this exploration of some uncharted portion of the trail .

I have often wished for these getting aways by myself .... long treks on trails known and unknown .
Cheryl Stryaed and her "Wild" remain one of my favorite journeys ..

There is a tiny trail  that leads to a small hillock which i spy from my window each day / every .day. Finally i had plotted my walk to this trail on a balmy sunday morning ...

Just under 5 kms one -way  , and lush with vegetation both sides of the track , has  a curated park at the end  - one of town's picnic spots .

That sunday morning , had that trail almost to my-self .. Came away sun soaked and energied :)

Back to the Village ...

This hamlet on the banks of river nila holds a speacial place in my book of childhood memories .
Thirunellayi village , in Palakkad district  where my grandparents lived a big part of their lives. summer vacations meant train journeys , playing from dawn to dusk with cousins in and around  the sprawling house, afternoons on the swing , jaunts to the river bank,village festivals and sweets..

It stays as beautiful as i see it in my minds eye, though caught up somewhat  with the trappings of modentity and development...

The house got re-built recently  by an aunt who organised for the family to get -together .

The mind still yearned for the sights of the yore , i reckoned ...

The Deluge and thereafter

A saurday morning and a feeble sun is out ..

There could not have been a more welcome sight to a people rained down and deluged over the past 4 days ...

The Floods arrived and how.

Water levels breached, homes inundated, people displaced , rivers changing course in spate , dams not opened in decades set free.

The floods also opened gates of compassion as people got to-gether to support one-another to rise up from the what the floods had brought and  taken.

If nature could break free, so could mankind  from limited definitions of mine and theirs .

If only we remembered...
The lessons of the Flood ...

Independence and freedom

Independence day with a group of  young women , this year..
A group task for them to explore what independence and freedom meant to them through a poster .
Young hands and minds got to work creating ..
And they had quite to few things to say.

As each of them , presented their idea on freedonm , independenance and Living in Free India  , felt heartened to be a part of their sharing.Bold colours, vivid words , powerful ideas and  strong voices that spoke passionately .

Wished for each of them , exciting lives ahead where they tested boundaries, tasted freedom and exercised choice in every which way possible !

My Month !

Its July and My month !

A Birthday rendered special as my best peeps arrived !
The local and very special A plotted that P arrives while S made a planned arrival to join my lovely family around .

All said ( which always turns to be alot with this special band around ) and done( making the most of the limited time we get ) , happy time having people that "get "me ,  and root and cheer for me !
I am also rooting around  this time and days to come   for a very special V , who has a great affinity to Gems , fiercely and prayerfully to turn the bend , become whole , heal and shine !

As i cherish Love  of the very special ones in my life ...I am reminded of Philosopher Martin Heidegger's words , when he said..
“Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? 
Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves.”

And I say Thank You to the special people whom i have become and and for who i remain . 

Rock and Tumble...

One of the places , around town , I always wanted to visit was a water fall that went by the name "Pattathi Para"..Para in Malayalam is rock. Its the first word that intigued me. As i deepened my understanding of the language and the ethos of the place i call home now, I came to understand that the word meant - brahmin woman , more specifically a tamil speaking brahmin woman.
A female to the male "pattar"..

This lent a world of imagination in my head as to why a rock would be called so ?!

I imagined a free- sprited young woman . Learned , astute but curious and somewhat wild who would make sojourns to the rock to commune with nature and be herself. Far-away from the piercing dogmatic eyes that would have her conform , behave in a certain prim and proper way.
It was her place, a place she owned by the sheer connection she had forged with the land.So strong her connection that the rock got named after her , her presence eternal with the rock.

Come June and a long weekend , on a monsoonal afternoon , we set out to explore this place. The road was motorable upto a point and beyond that was a small trek through a path marked out only for a single file ascent by years of feet treading the path .

Lush greenery all around, clouds pregnant with rain , we set out seeking . After a 20 minute ascent in a clearning was this beautiful sheet of water falling off a table like rock.
and so it was ..
A table of rock and not a huge boulder of my imagination , causing the water gushing from above to tumble like a sheet , collect in a basin below and flow down stream to meet the river...

Also had a reality bite when i learnt the sprightly woman in question actually had tumbled to death in the water-fall and hence the name.


May be she came trundling down often , sat on the rock , cooled off and went back to integrate to what life offered her.. may be she was a path breaker .. a vivid journey halted by a wee slip ...Who could tell ?

But she lives on in the lush , the rock and  the tumble of water , I told myself.

Kids and I had had an afternoon of exploration, walking a trail and soaking in the beauty of Pattathi para ...