Month: October 2021

Musings

Taste of Oneness

Mani 9 Comments

[Adapted with gratitude from ISRO’s Insat 3D photo]

As always we were at the park by 0700: to amble and breathe the crisp clean air, absorb the rare element oxygen and do a bit of yoga on dew-damp grass, enjoy breakfast and coffee beneath the trees…ah, all so good for body, mind and soul in these troubled times.

Presently we strolled around the stalls and tables in the farmer’s market, picked up a few leafy vegetables and some little green elaichi bananas to ripen at home. We didn’t really need dry fruit, having stocked up amply the previous weekend; yet we stopped by Her table. She comes from a village near the twenty-five-centuries-old trading town of Herat on the Silk Road— in western Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s iron fist has struck the hardest. Her family trades in almonds, pistachios, walnuts, dates, figs and other dry fruit from Afghanistan, of such exquisite and unique flavor that we value them infinitely more than the slight premiums at which she sells them compared to the prices of similar produce marketed by the mega-kirana shops of Bezos, Biyani et al.

As always, we shared a smile and a quick word or three. As we turned to go, she softly called: “Wait!”  She picked up a date in delicate fingers, deftly opened it down the middle, selected a walnut kernel and placed it inside the date, folded the date shut, and then offered it to us with both palm extended, eyes shining, radiant with the invisible smile beneath the mask that erased the lines of anxiety and weariness from around her eyes and forehead.

Not long after, we were sprawled in deep shavaasana at a favourite spot—a little grassy plateau in a secluded corner of the park, shaded by a thick cluster of young trees, with the scents of myriad flowers and wet leaves in the air, inquisitive squirrels scampering about, and an orchestra of sparrows, mynahs, crows and an occasional lapwing providing ambient music to soothe the senses. A murmur reached our ears, a gentle ripple that brought us out of dreamy reverie: four women, young to middle-aged, had wandered into the grove. Briefly, they glanced at us: quick smiles and nods, and then they returned to their quiet converse, their eyes scanning the foliage above them. From time to time they reached up and plucked slender stems lined with light-green leaves, which they gathered in their palms like little bouquets. As they came close we sat up and exchanged namaskaars,

“What will you do with those leaves?” we asked.

They laughed and chorused: “We’ll eat them, of course!”

“But…what leaves are those?”

 “Why, tamarind of course!” they laughed again. “Haven’t you eaten tamarind leaf?”

“Tamarind!”

 “Yes, tamarind,” murmured one of them, clearly the eldest. “The young leaves are sweet to eat,” she went on. “They’re good to flavor your dishes with too.  The leafing time is nearly ended now; it’s hard to find any young leaves, they’re the most filled with flavor. But still, if you look hard enough you can find some…” Her Hindi carried the flavors of Rajasthan, her smile smoothened the deeply etched lines of a thousand cares and never-ending drudgery.

She nodded in farewell, and the group wandered off through the trees. We sank back into reverie, emerging when she suddenly reappeared. “Here, these are for you!” and she thrust a bunch of light-green leaves at us. “Enjoy their freshness,” she cried with a laugh and darted off to join her friends.

Two little flavoured moments: sweet nuttiness blending with earthy, lemony tartness. Two little moments: so inconsequential, yet filled with so much affection, spontaneous generosity and warmth, power, shared joy… elements that will endure long after the toxins of these dreadful times have dissipated; the elements that make up timeless memories, that become anchors for us to find stability and equanimity in the choppy unpredictable currents of life, blessings for which we are infinitely grateful.

Beastly encounters, General ravings

Tick Talk

Mani 3 Comments

[O most valued Reader, of late I’ve been feeling that everything’s going to the dogs… the world, the environment, politics, society, and of course my writing. An appropriate time, then, to present this short essay – published in May-June 1995 by my dear friend Uma in her magazine ‘Small Change’]

We’ve at last come to realize that humankind is not the sole intelligence in the universe.

Consider the tick.

Now, anybody who owns a dog or who’s ever had anything to do with dogs will certify the truth of the following statements:

1. Ticks love dogs.

2. Ticks feed on dogs.

3. When full, ticks drop off dogs and crawl up walls.

A tick not only crawls up the wall; with grim determination etched upon its face, it continues to crawl (upside-down) across the ceiling till it reaches some predetermined spot. And there, it settles down and waits.

The question that arises naturally is: waits for WHAT?

We asked the vet. He looked surprised and immediately replied: “For a dog, of course!”

We were nonplussed. We sought urgent clarification. Surely, we stressed, ticks might not have our levels of intelligence, but even they would know that dogs preferred to walk on the floors and were in fact rarely found scaling the walls of a room, forget the ceiling?

The vet chuckled and said we’d missed the point.

“It’s like this,” he said. “The tick, having fed on a dog, falls off the dog and on to the floor, right?”

We nodded.

“Now, then, the tick naturally needs to rest awhile and digest its food. But at the same time, it must be in a position where it can find a dog at short notice…so it doesn’t die of starvation, right?”

We nodded again.

“Now, if the tick remains resting on the floor where it’s fallen, two serious problems arise. One: even if a dog passes it by frequently, it’s not going to be easy for the tick to get back on board the dog; after all, the dog will be moving pretty fast compared to the tick, and so there’s not much chance for the tick to hop on to a passing paw or tail. Two: while the tick remains lying there, there’s every chance that it will be stepped on by a careless boot, or swept away or swabbed or vacuumed into oblivion.” He paused for breath.

“You mean…the tick knows all this?”

“Of course it does! Believe me, that little tick is mighty sharp. And so, what the tick instead does is, it heads for the nearest wall as fast as it can. Then, it crawls up the wall all the way up to the ceiling, and it crawls across the ceiling till it reaches a spot from where it has an uninterrupted view of the floor below. And there it waits…for a passing dog. Sooner or later, a dog will walk beneath it; whereupon, the tick judges the dog’s velocity, matches it against the estimated distance to the floor, swiftly launches itself…and lo! There the tick is, safely back upon the unsuspecting dog’s back for another enjoyable season of feeding…”

We were awestruck. “So….that explains why we sometimes find a tick or two crawling about on our arms when we visit people who own dogs,” we muttered. “The ticks must have fallen off the ceiling on to us; they must have miscalculated their launch angles and velocities, maybe leapt too soon or late…”

“You’ve got it all wrong!” the vet spluttered. “If and when a tick lands on you, it does so deliberately.  You see, the tick knows you like dogs…or at least it knows that you know the owner of the resident dog. And so, the tick knows that sooner or later you’re going to meet the dog, or the dog’s owner. And what better launching pad could the tick have to board its dog from, than your shoulder, or arm, or neck, or hair…”

At which point we fled.

Yesterday we read a news item headlined: ‘Search for Intelligent Life Continues in Outer Space’.

They’re looking in the wrong place!