You awake at first light. On a bay in the midst of giants. Giant boulders that emerge from the sea like prayers.
At the top of the deck is a group of tai-chi practitioners. Air seems to move through their limbs, guiding every turn; gentle, graceful, even.
In front of them, the sun rises to greet the prayers. The sky becomes sun. Prayers find their music.
Pic: Halong Bay, Vietnam.
We all carry a little whimsy somewhere
In our tiny cells
the sun frolicking between leaves
roses that wait and wait
before they open
a wind meant for a forest
blows a ship down
I knew such a wind
I’ve known such roses
We all carry a little whimsy in us
The earth’s play runs in its veins
Rivers and brooks off to a marathon
Volcanoes that pretend to be quiet
And then laugh without warning
Mountains inching towards the sky
Clouds vainly trying to keep them down
I’ve known such a volcano
I’ve known such rivers
The earth carries a little whimsy somewhere
In its tiny cells.
So do we, earth’s little tiny cells.
Evening falls.
The sun descends.
The earth rises with peals
of mist to greet the king.
Birds begin to sing.
An elephant swishes its tail dry.
The river clatters on
across countries.
Magic can be orange. Sometimes.
Evening falls early in the north east in winter. A slight fog descends as the sun falls back into the earth. An elephant quickly finishes its bath in the river, looking to make it back into the forest before dark.
On its left is India and on its right, Bhutan. To you and me.
To the elephant, it will just go back to where it came from.
This was a question I received recently. How can we remain motivated in a world where we are surrounded by death and suffering thanks to Covid? This is a question relevant for all times, and not just Covid times.
The first and most important step is gratitude. Stop for a moment and examine your life. There is so much to be grateful for. To be able to eat 3 meals a day, to be able to read and write and earn a living, to have gotten an education, to have access to so much literature online, to have the company of loved ones in your family or circle of friends, to have mentors and other teachers. At any given moment, you will find that there is far more to be grateful for than not. Cultivating that remembrance of gratitude regularly goes a long way towards motivation.
The second step — Let us learn from nature, from the earth. Everyday, the earth suffers in some place or the other. There are storms destroying trees, meteors attacking, volcanoes erupting. Yet, the earth grows its trees, flows its rivers, blooms its flowers, nourishes all living beings that depend on it.
We humans are piling on damage to the earth with our polluting ways, our incessant cutting of trees, hunting down species for sport, destroying habitats and ecosystems. Yet, we get fresh air to breathe, sunshine, cool breeze in the evenings. We still wake up in the morning to beautiful birdsong. Our summers are cooled down with rain. The earth gives us fruit. The trees shade us from the summer heat and lose their leaves in the winter to give us unfiltered sun.
We are the earth. We are the universe. All the 5 elements that make up the universe are in us. We are 70% water. We have fire in our bellies. Our bodies maintain a certain temperature, our inner fluids have certain temperature due to the fire within us. We have air. Our lungs, our. stomach and bowels have air. Our blood has oxygen. Without air, we would not survive. We have space. There is space between cells, between parts of the body. If you break us down to atomic levels, then every atom is filled with space. We are made up of earth. Our bodies are bio-degradable. From dust to dust, as the saying goes.
If the earth and our universe can keep giving; can remain cheerful even as calamities and destruction abound, then so can we.
It is as simple as that.
The daily Speaking Tree in Times of India is filled with opinions, advice, and commentaries on life by spiritual leaders of various denominations. Some of them get quite dense, verbose, and abstract. Occasionally, one gets a simple, gentle article that touches the heart in a way that only Ruskin Bond can.
To have got to this point in life without the solace of religion says something for all the things that have brought me joy and a degree of contentment. Books, of course; I couldn’t have survived without books and stories. And companionship – which is sometimes friendship, sometimes love and sometimes, if we are lucky, both. And a little light laughter, a sense of humour. And, above all, my relationship with the natural world – up here in the hills; in the dusty plains; in a treeless mohalla choked with concrete flats, where I once found a marigold growing out of a crack in a balcony. I removed the plaster from the base of the plant, and filled in a little earth which I watered every morning. The plant grew, and sometimes it produced a little orange flower which I plucked and gave away before it died. This much I can tell you: for all its hardships and complications, life is simple. And a nature that doesn’t sue for happiness often receives it in large measure.
Herein lies the question – what more great spiritual achievements does one need if one lives in harmony and in love with Nature?
http://m.speakingtree.in/spiritual-articles/new-age/it-s-all-right-not-to-climb-every-mountain
Pink Flowers in Kaas
I first read about Kaas in the in-flight travel magazine of Jet Airways on a flight just after I had moved back to India. The article spoke rapturously about a place in the Western Ghats where, at the end of every monsoon, little flowers bloomed with such profusion that all one could behold was carpets of colour. The colours would change every week, or with the rain. I made up my mind on the flight that if I ever ended up in Mumbai at the right time of the year, I would go to Kaas.
Fate has a strange way of making wishes come true. Two years later, I was working in Mumbai. My wife came across a web site run by a wonderful organization called the Bombay Natural History Society (www.bnhs.org). BNHS was organizing two fully guided tours of Kaas just after the monsoon. We signed up for the second guided tour at the end of September.
Timing is very important, so it’s important to track the fading of the monsoon. Typically, early – mid September is the right time to go. But in 2012, the monsoon was considerably delayed. I was pointed to a Kaas website run by the govt of Maharashtra Forest division to register for a visit. The website worked as often as a cool shower in a desert (it’s a lot better now). When I finally got access to it, I called the contact numbers listed on the site. The persons on the other end were very helpful and informed me that the best time to visit, given the late monsoon, would be end of September. We lucked out.
Kaas is a tabletop, a plateau, overlooking the town of Satara in Maharashtra. There is no place to stay in Kaas. The closest town one can stay in is Satara, a typical small Indian township, at the foothills of Kaas. Satara is a 5 hour drive from Mumbai. Perhaps because the flowering is a seasonal event that lasts just a month, Kaas / Satara still remain relatively obscure. As a result, there are neither any tourist trappings nor any tourist amenities in Satara. The best hotels on offer are 2 star calibre. You could label a few as 3 star but it would be a stretch. If you’re looking for a comfortable stay, it might be better to stay in nearby Wai or Panchgani. Be prepared to drive an extra 30 – 45 minutes to Satara, and then add another 45 minutes to get to Kaas from Satara.
The view of Satara valley on the way to Kaas
It’s a lovely drive up the mountains from Satara to Kaas. There are no indications, not even the tiniest hint, of what awaits in Kaas as one drives up. All one sees are green mountain sides, valleys, lakes, the Venna river, and flat green tabletops. There are some picturesque lodges, including one that looked haunted, and a few dhaba-style restaurants along the hillsides.
Mickey Mouse Flowers
As one gets closer to Kaas, the flowers start to show on adjoining tabletops. The good thing about going with BNHS was that our trip guide knew when to stop and explain the intricacies of the flowers to us. We stopped en-route to see the famed “Mickey Mouse” flowers as well as lesser known flowers such as the lantern flower.
You know you’re there when you hit the last tea stall and restaurant at a makeshift entrance onto the Kaas plateau. There’s a car park to leave your car behind at the entrance and walk the last 2 or so kilometers.
The Lantern Flower
If you have a driver or are in a bus, you can get dropped off at the very entrance and save yourself the walk. It’s a healthy walk amidst greenery, so there’s nothing saved by not walking it. Unless there’s rain (it’s the last vestiges of monsoon, remember?) or time is of the essence.
At the entrance, the forest officials will charge you a nominal entry fee, and an additional fee if you are carrying a camera. The area has been recently fenced off to protect the flowers from being picked and destroyed by passers by. It was unfortunate, but once inside, visitors were blissfully squashing the flowers in their attempt to get a Bollywood like photograph while laying down amid a bed of flowers. Children happily plucked flowers while the parents watched on, unmindful of large signs prohibiting the plucking of flowers.
The carpets of flowers are truly a sight to behold. The flowers are tiny. One should not expect a field of sunflowers or lilies in Kaas. However, there is such a large bounty of these little flowers that size truly does not matter. In fact, the small size creates the illusion of a finely weaved carpet, somewhat like a finely pixelated image.
At the Kaas Table top
Pink flowers, blue flowers, yellow flowers, white flowers, embroidered by lush green grass, and an occasional tree. Wherever we turned, that’s all we could see. The first afternoon was cloudy, but the next morning was bright and sunny. Thanks to the changing sky, we got to see Kaas in two completely contrasting moods. On the first day, the colours of the flowers stood out against a dark broody sky. On the second day, the flowers shone with delight, as they soaked in the daylight.
From the table top, we went down the other side to a serene beautiful lake. Here too were unique flowers along the shores. Not weaved into carpets, but sticking to trees and branches like little necklaces. As we reached the lake side, the scenery was of a kind that could have been anywhere. It could have been the US, or the UK, or Europe. I felt like I had seen this lake side many times in many countries. Pure, calm, serene. It was the temple that was the give away and brought the mind back to India.
Kaas Lake (temple on the other side)
The lake was large and we drove from one end to the other. At the other end, people had parked their motorbikes right by the lake and jumped in for a swim. It was the perfect thing to do on a warm sunny day. We were not swimsuit prepared and so all we could was vicariously enjoy the water before we headed back to Mumbai.
Kaas is often called Maharashtra’s equivalent of the Himalayan Valley of Flowers. It’s a lazy comparison. Kaas is not a valley, it’s a flat top of a mountain. The flowers are seasonal and tiny. Yet Nature remains unconditionally generous, offering the same beauty and healing to all, regardless of whether the “all” treat Nature with respect or disregard.
You can see more Kaas photos on my Flickr page.
A cave at Kanheri, MumbaiWhile browsing the Mumbai suburbs on Google maps one day, I noticed a vast expanse of green called “Sanjay Gandhi National Park” stuck plumb in the middle of the greater Mumbai mainland. Intrigued, I researched further and found it to be quite popular with the locals in the Northern suburbs. After some online searches combined with some non-Quoraesque Quora with colleagues, I discovered that the park was home to leopards and some ancient Buddhist caves called Kanheri caves. Notwithstanding the cats, the caves and the park itself was worth a visit, I was told.
A heron in Mahatma Gandhi Memorial GardenWe decided to check out the caves on the long weekend of MahaShivratri. Big mistake. We got to the park by 9 am only to discover hordes of people , mostly poor, queuing for a bus ride to the caves. Cars were not allowed and the government was sponsoring bus rides to Kanheri for all. Quite shocked to see such a resurgence in Buddhism in Mumbai, I asked a local park official what the commotion was all about. He informed us that there was a swayambhu (spontaneous) Shiva lingam in the Kanheri caves and we had stumbled into a national pilgrimage event in local Mumbai. So we contented ourselves with a glimpse of a heron in the Mahatma Gandhi memorial garden in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and headed home.
Some months later, and wiser, we set out early morning on a Sunday, – perhaps the only time every week when Mumbai is once again a civilized city – to visit Kanheri once again. As we entered the park at about 8:45 am, it was like entering an oasis. Once can see signs of encroachment, a few shanties here and there, but the greenery was vast and overwhelming, especially after being hurled through the crippled roads and haphazard concrete of Mumbai for the prior few months.
The caves were about a 15 minute drive into the park. The park was definitely popular with locals. There were joggers, cyclists, couples on bikes, walkers all along till we got to the caves. One could park the cars at the entrance to the mountain sides that contain the over 100 caves, some small and some major, that were built from 1st century B.C till 11th century AD.
The touring area had been developed reasonably well with railed pathways and stairs for all ages. Yet, one could turn the visit into a moderate exercise by walking up the hills rather than taking the easier pathways. The caves were obviously used by monks for meditation, but it seems highly likely that the monks had lived around there, sponsored by local kings at a time when Buddhism flourished in India post Ashoka.
Each cave contained statues of Buddha in various different styles, some cut into rock, some of Buddha as Avalokiteshwara, or on a lotus, or lying down, indicating the different eras when the caves were built. Seeing the various statues, I thought of the derision that is sometime poured on devout hindus for practicing idol worship. Yet, other religions create their own idols, be it in sculpture or painting, so why point fingers at a people practicing worship in their own way?
Buddhist art in Cave 67 in KanheriOne of the caves looked like a dining hall, some other caves looked like they might have been used as places to sleep, and some were clearly meant for meditation. There were about 110 caves dotting the hillside, but caves 11, 34, 41 and 67 were marked as must-see for their size and for the artistry. Cave 67, for instance, had 1000 sculptures of Buddha. Cave 34 had a colour painting, but it was on the roof and hard to spot in the darkness.
Walking in and around the caves does create a sense of history and awe, given that that Buddhist monks walked on the same ground some 2000 years ago. However, completely unexpected was the visual treat one gets as one climbs up the hills. Dense greenery, stains on a mountain hinting at an impending waterfall once the monsoon kicks in, a solitary white temple eaten up by trees, the wonderful vistas of Mumbai city in the backdrop of lush green hills. Most wonderful of all, a cooling breeze smelling of fresh air, drying off a sultry Mumbai. It was, of all things, the hardest thing to leave behind as we wound our way down before the noon heat kicked in.
A few helpful tips, not available anywhere on the net unfortunately.
A view of Mumbai from Sanjay Gandhi National ParkMore photos on my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chetanroy/sets/72157630263765370/
On my constant companions, my silent friends, trees. Courtesy Rob Breszny. Click on the images to see more.
Click here to see the world’s most beautiful tree barks
An incredibly colourful tree, the Rainbow Eucalyptus. Click here for more.
TREES
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.by: Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
I went searching for the holy grail of Indian Chinese in Mumbai, Lynx Pavilion, and wandered off the wrong way on Colaba Causeway.
As I was walking down the causeway, Moses stopped parting the waters, and down came a gush of the Indian monsoon. Although one does see thundershowers of this kind in NYC as well, it was still wonderful for me to savour an Indian monsoon after so many years.
The causeway is packed tighter with vendors than the Lincoln Tunnel with vehicles during rush hour. The hawkers have mini-stalls with tarpaulin and plastic roofs extending out. Although there’s a lot of complaints against street hawkers in India, it’s thanks to these hawkers that one can continue walking along the pavement even in the most torrential rain. As one walks under this “one roof of the world”, one can hear the rain blistering down on the tarpaulin. It feels like as if one is walking dry under a giant waterfall.
Perhaps I should record this sound and sell it as one of the many natural sounds for therapy. Sitting next to “Morning Birds” or “Sounds of Nature” in one of the yoga stores in the Catskill forests would be “Monsoon on Colaba Causeway”.
Heard this song today. Beautiful, relaxing composition by Vangelis. Great video as well.
The Rope Before The Snake 