Confessions of a closet gardener

So, I'm a closet gardener. Or at least that's how I think of it. I don't have seed catalogs. I don't have gardening gloves and equipment and all the other paraphernalia. I don't even have a watering can come to think of it! But I love plants. I love having them around. I love playing in the mud. I love digging right into the mud with my hands. I love the smell of the mud when water is poured into it.

I love coming home at the end of a long day at work and going to each of my plants and stroking their leaves, touching the blooms, sticking a finger in the mud to see if they have enough water. I love seeing them early in the morning before I begin my day. And yes, I might as well tell you, I love talking to them. Admittedly I don't have long gossipy conversations with them. I like telling them bits of my day or even simply asking them sometimes how they're doing. I know , I know it sounds like I'm nuts. But the truth is there is something comforting about the way they stand there steady and somehow eternal and silent.

The best bit of growing plants though is when the flowering ones bloom. There are few things as satisfying as seeing that first bud grow, fatten, feel the life grow in it and then finally one fine morning the petals open -sometimes slowly and sometimes all of a sudden in a glorious burst of life and pure happiness and color.

Miss Violet with her first blooms

I plan to make a tropical forest in my balcony if it kills me or even if makes my nails absolutely ragged and dirty!I love those beauties. And the first ones to burst into bloom have been my African Violet and my beautiful Begonia. Violet here is a bit of a fuss pot with all her exacting temperature and water requirements but it's been a pleasure watching her bloom...The Begonia though has been bursting with waxy red blooms ever since she arrived. And for such a little plant she's been quite prolific.

Begonia

 







We have also acquired two different kinds of jasmine, a couple of geraniums and a deep red salvia. Can't wait for them to bloom!

The other residents

I often imagine these guys just sitting there and contemplating life. Or not contemplating. But simply being. That sense of just being. Breathing, drinking, blooming, growing. Silently. Steadily. Always. You do see a world in a wild flower. No wonder a bunch of daffodils moved a man to write a poem. How could one not? These lovelies make poets out of the driest of us I think. And let me tell you something else- there is nothing more startlingly wonderful than the encounter between a child and a plant. Ever seen that happen? There are few things that will surprise you as much as that, trust me...

2012

Source: here

The last few weeks of the past year were given over to various illnesses and end of the year stuff. So, a new year and a clean slate-well an almost clean slate. This is the time for new beginnings and wonderful new resolutions and standing at the beginning of a sparkling new year that is now about a week old, the thoughts of potential adventures , potential mistakes , potential victories and a whole bunch of other potentials have me excited.

This year also happens to be the first time that I'm entering a brand new year with no plans at all. I have always been one of those creatures that had a bunch of things that had to be achieved in a particular year. But now I think I may have finally learned to let go. I have decided that this year I will take each day as it comes. I will take lots of time for myself. I will indulge in all the things that interest me at any given time. I will live in the moment and travel wherever I can. I would also like to do something that makes me go weak at the knees. Hmm. Cliches they may be. But those really are the things I would like to do.

I think - and maybe this is the Indian/mystical new agey person in me talking- but opening one door is going to let in all sorts of other possibilities. And for an eternally restless, chronically dissatisfied person like me, the thought of possibilities is deeply comforting.

Happy New Year!

Of stardust and things beyond us

From here

For the second time in as many weeks an interesting person came to work to show us a world beyond our narrow ones. This time round it was an astronomer- the director of the Palomar Observatory to be precise. This wonderful elf-like man named Shrinivas Kulkarni stood up on stage and showed us worlds that one would think were the stuff of our wildest imaginings.

From here

One of the things he said that grabbed hold of me and hasn't let me go was about how the universe is a destructive place but also, how that destruction is necessary to maintain us as us. Through a wonderful alchemy or perhaps just as magical physics , the destruction of a star is what releases the iron that constitutes our blood. It amazes me that it takes an explosive instability to create whatever it is that makes us relatively stable as humans. And not just iron. But every stable element that constitutes the human body. There is stardust in each of us.

I have been long since convinced that our entire existence is tied in with the world around us. The Gaia Theory   hypothesizes just such an interconnectedness.

Self-examination on a sunny day

We did not see the sun for close to a week in this part of the world. I was miserable! Apologies to all those who thought it was 'romantic'. I don't get it. One sudden cloudy afternoon is nice but a week of cloudy, damp days is just such a downer.
Today the sun is out in all its glory and I have spent an hour just letting its warmth soak into my bones. Maybe it's age or maybe I just appreciate these simple pleasures  a lot more these days. A couple of weeks ago , for example, I found myself just looking , really looking at a gloriously blood red sunset.There is something to be said for mindfulness.
And then yesterday, at work, for a couple of hours a lovely woman came by and just lifted us all out of ourselves. It was Deepti Naval.

Frankincense is for remembrance

So, this is my 'Oman binge' part of the week /month. The 'Oman binge' is that part of the week/month when I cannot stop thinking about the place and very much resembles those moments of brilliantly unadulterated longing that strikes when thoughts of a beloved paramour come unbidden. And of late, the one thing that absolutely satisfies the craving short of actually packing my bags and hopping on a plane is the prose of Tim Mackintosh-Smith.

I am one of Tony Judt's 'edge people'

My earliest and clearest memory is of the mountains visible from the windows of the living room of our flat in Muttrah, Oman. They were a mix of an unrelenting ocher and a darker shade of brown for 355 days of the year. And then with the winter rains , suddenly they burst forth in an abundantly rich green growth interspersed with tiny gushing white rapids of rainwater. This phenomenal display lasted about ten days and sometimes less. I don't remember feeling anything particularly by way of emotions looking at the scene. But I do remember not being able to look away. My four year old self of course had no specifically profound thoughts to think about those mountains.  Neither does my adult self come to think of it . Perhaps this was when I began appreciating beauty for beauty's sake. And that isn't such a bad thing you know.

In any case I often wonder ( when I do wonder) about my identity in some vague and wondrous way. I do not seem to have one as an Indian at least not in the ways that I think about myself as an Omani and otherwise hopelessly restless wanderer. Can I possibly think of myself as an Omani because my earliest ( and happiest) memories are all of Oman? How could I possibly be an Indian if the only thing about India that I can say is that this is where my parents are from and this is where I studied for a few years in young adulthood. And yet, I suppose I am Indian too in more ways than a couple of pieces of paper can attest. And my parents themselves have in fact lived in Oman far longer than they have ever lived in India. Now you see why my profile says 'undecided'. I am a work in progress and quite confident will always be even as all that I am evolves and dilutes and concentrates in different ways. I am a mixed-up, deconstructed, reconstituted, twisted, completely wholesome, thoroughly unwholesome, thoroughly Omanized, Anglicized, 'Americanized', Indianized, 'Muslimized' ,'completely at peace with my mixed-up potpourri of an identity' mess. And I love every minute of it and all the perspectives it provides even to the point of a cultural schizophrenia. 'Cosmopolitan' does not even begin to define the messy, twisted spaghetti-noodleness of  all the things that I am and will be.

And the point here, if one must be made , is that some time last year I found this beautiful piece written by that beautifully, achingly brilliant man , Tony Judt , just before his death and it's called Edge People. And this is what he had to say in it :

"I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another—where cosmopolitanism is not so much an identity as the normal condition of life. Such places once abounded. Well into the twentieth century there were many cities comprising multiple communities and languages—often mutually antagonistic, occasionally clashing, but somehow coexisting. Sarajevo was one, Alexandria another. Tangiers, Salonica, Odessa, Beirut, and Istanbul all qualified—as did smaller towns like Chernovitz and Uzhhorod. By the standards of American conformism, New York resembles aspects of these lost cosmopolitan cities: that is why I live here.
To be sure, there is something self-indulgent in the assertion that one is always at the edge, on the margin. Such a claim is only open to a certain kind of person exercising very particular privileges. Most people, most of the time, would rather not stand out: it is not safe. If everyone else is a Shia, better to be a Shia. If everyone in Denmark is tall and white, then who—given a choice—would opt to be short and brown? And even in an open democracy, it takes a certain obstinacy of character to work willfully against the grain of one’s community, especially if it is small.
But if you are born at intersecting margins and—thanks to the peculiar institution of academic tenure—are at liberty to remain there, it seems to me a decidedly advantageous perch: What should they know of England, who only England know? If identification with a community of origin was fundamental to my sense of self, I would perhaps hesitate before criticizing Israel—the “Jewish State,” “my people”—so roundly. Intellectuals with a more developed sense of organic affiliation instinctively self-censor: they think twice before washing dirty linen in public.
Unlike the late Edward Said, I believe I can understand and even empathize with those who know what it means to love a country. I don’t regard such sentiments as incomprehensible; I just don’t share them. But over the years these fierce unconditional loyalties—to a country, a God, an idea, or a man—have come to terrify me. The thin veneer of civilization rests upon what may well be an illusory faith in our common humanity. But illusory or not, we would do well to cling to it. Certainly, it is that faith—and the constraints it places upon human misbehavior—that is the first to go in times of war or civil unrest.
We are entering, I suspect, upon a time of troubles. It is not just the terrorists, the bankers, and the climate that are going to wreak havoc with our sense of security and stability. Globalization itself—the “flat” earth of so many irenic fantasies—will be a source of fear and uncertainty to billions of people who will turn to their leaders for protection. “Identities” will grow mean and tight, as the indigent and the uprooted beat upon the ever-rising walls of gated communities from Delhi to Dallas.
Being “Danish” or “Italian,” “American” or “European” won’t just be an identity; it will be a rebuff and a reproof to those whom it excludes. The state, far from disappearing, may be about to come into its own: the privileges of citizenship, the protections of card-holding residency rights, will be wielded as political trumps. Intolerant demagogues in established democracies will demand “tests”—of knowledge, of language, of attitude—to determine whether desperate newcomers are deserving of British or Dutch or French “identity.” They are already doing so. In this brave new century we shall miss the tolerant, the marginals: the edge people. My people.

So, this is me signing off for now firmly , stubbornly and comfortably perched on the edge. 

Got this beautiful pic of Jebel Shams, Oman here

Benetton's efforts to undo hate

I am a Benetton fan and have been ever since I got my first t-shirt in the fifth grade. I have loved their products and  have been a huge fan of their ad campaigns. The latest one is no exception. The visuals of the lip-locked sworn enemies are simply wonderful. My favorites are these:

From Huffpost

From Huffpost

I wish the company hadn't given in to pressure from the Vatican  though. 'Constructive provocation' is a useful strategy when all else fails no?