Bangalore's Hebbal Lake: When Enchantment Came Calling

The beach at Lake Superior

I still remember the first time I was in awe of a lake. We had been driving around Upper Michigan for a few days back in 2014, cutting through vineyards, desolate pine-tree thick landscapes, icy, tumbling rivers, and of course, the Great Lakes. Up till then, for me, the Great Lakes earlier had simply been a famous cluster of distinctive blue shapes on a map and to imagine that we were travelling around - lakes - was difficult to grasp for they did not seem to me as much lakes as captive seas. And indeed, as we stood below a cirrus-streaked blue sky on the shores of Lake Superior, I realised that lakes too have beaches although they were not as distinct or prominent as those of the sea. I recall standing there, gazing into the hypnotic endless sea as it merged with that of the sky, realising that I would never again see lakes as I once used to do.

Hebbal Lake

Bangalore, of course, is the city of lakes: beautiful lakes, ghost lakes, dying lakes, lakes on fire. What was once home to over two hundred eight lakes have now dangerously dwindled to only fifteen healthy ones, the remaining ones sewage fed. It made me think more about the idea behind healthy lakes, what is it that makes a lake healthy. If the lakes are being pushed beyond their limits, ravaged beyond description, local citizenship initiatives here are taking the mantle of restoring and rejuvenating lakes to promising results. Afroz Shah's incredible clean-up operation at Versova Beach, Mumbai and the subsequent arrival of the Olive Ridley turtles to nest after over a decade is a testament to the difference a noticeable change in the environment makes to its inhabitants and how they respond to it. Given the hugely important role that lakes play in Bangalore's heritage, water supply, and indeed its very character since its inception, it is so imperative that every effort be taken to preserve them. The apocalyptic sight of the Bellandur lake on fire, breathing ugly white foam should be enough of a frightening deterrent.

Enchantment

After moving here to Bangalore, I have visited Ulsoor Lake several times as well as paid a trip to Sankey Tank. Yesterday, though, it being a Sunday and having been in a lackluster mood all week, I wished to venture out a little further to Hebbal Lake Park, which fringes the Hebbal Lake. The park itself is not very big but it was crammed nevertheless with visitors, couples mostly, enjoying their quiet time as they sat on stone benches overlooking the rippled waters. Families played tag and badminton on a rectangle of lawn while there were several those walking around with a camera undoubtedly there to capture the lake at sunset, much like me. I was sorry to see though that the visitors had no qualms in scattering their rubbish all across the place as well as towards the lake edges too despite the presence of rubbish bins. The sight of washed up plastic bottles, chip packets, discarded paper cups, and more was an eye sore and more.

Yet such was the beauty of the lake and its surroundings that I found myself lost in contemplating it. The seemingly embroidered dense thicket of leaves fringing its edges, I could only gaze in delight at  the still sleeping fuschia candle-buds of lotuses emerging from a city of lilypads in the middle of the lake. As we walked on the lake edge, hearing the lake and the birds, the copper-pods, gulmohur, jacaranda, and jarula showering bright yellow, red, purple, and pink blooms upon our heads, I was disappointed to reach the end. But there was a magical lush bougainvillea tunnel to console us, the paper bougainvillea carpet crunching below our soles. On the other side of the park, after navigating some ugly construction, we spotted a distant cluster of reed-covered shore and islands in which sat a pair of ducks.A shining black cormorant swam and hunted, briefly disappearing into the water before triumphantly emerging with its evening meal White egrets shimmied across the water and eventually into the sky only to join their brethren on a tree at some distance away; an elegantly long beaked bird emerged from the rushes and patiently waited on the shores, undoubtedly in hunt. Dragonflies looped in twos and threes over the thrumming water and I wondered which insect was making a buzzing, tinnitus-type sound while secreted away in the leaves. Suffice to say, I had come to be enchanted, to be spirited away from the world of urban chaos, noise, and drama - and I was well and truly enchanted.

Fishing, Fisherman

Before we said goodbye, we made our way to the pier; a father and son were taking turns to pose against the sun which lay low in the sky along with one lone ragged scrap of a cloud. The lotuses were now beginning to open; as I bent down to take their picture, I noticed a fuchsia bougainvillea slumbering on the lily-pad, like a fairy, eliciting a gasp of delight. There was a man sitting there, fishing ever since we had arrived at the park; I watched him putting dough as bait and hauling silvery palm-sized fishes within minutes, depositing them in a plastic sack. I gazed at the water as long as I could, the jade-greenness of it all, trying to mentally crop out the eyesore of the buildings sprouting in the distance.

Floating

                                                                 
Would this lake survive? The presence of wildlife despite the rubbish and the construction despoiling the area provided a glimmer of hope. And then, as if to further placate me, a clever coconut husk masquerading as a boat began to float on the water, a nature's toy dancing of its own accord. It appeared lost in its own private world, a world which would always be there, if I allowed it to be, if I did my part too. I watched it for a long time and then turned away, mouthing a goodbye.

What Happened When 2016 Became 2017: Notes

The last post I wrote was about burning autumn trees. The last post I tried to write was about trees with pink flowers which I saw on a warm November morning in Delhi. It remained incomplete. But the tree and pink flowers have followed me here to Bangalore, which incidentally is my new home. The gorgeous, joy-making pink tabuleia plume the tops of trees, reminding me of cherry blossoms that I used to see during spring in the United States. I see the pink flowers silhouetted against the blue sky, carpeting the dusty sidewalks below, or simply spiralling in the air - and I smile.

It's spring in my heart.

What have I been up to in the last few months? I moved, I travelled, I did a road trip in Rajasthan (birds, mirror lakes, sunsets, haunted ruins, dogs), I stood on top of a mountain in Oman (smelling ghost roses), I climbed trees, and photographed a lot.

I didn't write much.

I visited Blossoms bookshop one cool Sunday morning and bought ten books. The first book I am reading is Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole, inhaling his words, as if I am afraid that they will evanescence into air and I will never ever know what it was like to read them, experience them.

Delhi is a blurred, hot, uncomfortable memory.

Bangalore is trees with pink blooms, trees that deserve odes written to them, rust soil, colorful kolam patterns, fresh flowers, sugarcane stalks, ice-cream hued homes, the smell of old books, streets of art, and snacks wrapped in banana leaves.

I know there is much more to it. And I am waiting to explore.

But for now, I leave you with this. Happy 2017 everyone.

Of Autumn Nostalgia, September, and The Blank Spaces Between Chapters

 

I remember the first time I saw trees in fiery autumn finery. It was late September; I was a newly arrived undergraduate at the university that I was attending in West Midlands, United Kingdom. As I battled all-consuming homesickness, cultural disorientation, and other newbie university student challenges, I nevertheless did occasionally emerge from my fog of bewilderment to briefly appreciate the brilliant theatre that these trees were putting up on display. They were in decay, true, but they appeared no less magnificent than in their glorious summer plumage. But I didn't take any pictures of them. All the photographs that I took of those initial months on my analogue camera depicted my university, my friends and the exciting memories I was making and accumulating. I experienced three more autumns during the time I lived and studied in United Kingdom but apart from a handful of pictures taken in my Oxford college's garden where bright yellow and orange autumn trees provide an arresting backdrop, it never occurred me to photograph the autumnscape for posterity.

 

 

How times have changed! Or, perhaps, more significantly, the way and how I look at nature. I made up for my earlier lack of autumn appreciation when I lived in Pittsburgh for a year and half, savoring how autumn unfurled over the months. I learned to love its nuances: the toast-crisp air, the sharp, invigorating, buttery sunshine, and a certain headiness that belongs to only autumn. I remembered exclaiming in surprised delight when the massive tree just outside my apartment window seemingly turned scarlet overnight. Yes, the summer was over, we were approaching winter - and yet, there was a promise in the air that was autumn's alone. That I could not photograph. What still vividly remains in my memories is the pleasure of walking out on a cool autumn morning, bundled up just so, literally drinking in the autumn air, the leaves crunching below your feet, so thickly, densely carpeting the path ahead that you could scarcely see the gray concrete or the viridian grass below. If no one was looking, I would take a childish pleasure in running through the leaves, seeing them swirl in the air,  like birds agitated into flight. 

 

The other day, while glimpsing these orange gulmohurs dotting the soil, I couldn't help but remember similarly hued orange leaves, as they must once more densely fall on the ground in various parts of the world while the season transits from summer to autumn. There is no autumn here, of course. The monsoons have concluded in Delhi, at least...but still, something feels different. It gets darker a tad earlier each day and the cool morning breeze makes me smile in anticipation for the mellower, delicious days of between late October-early December

Perhaps, the season reflects my current state of mind (or is it vice versa?) I  must admit that I too am in transit, immersed in a limbo. I feel that I currently inhabit the blank spaces in between chapters of a novel. The hectic summer flew past and I wonder what beckons in the newly forming season ahead. So I hibernate in the den of my words, the short stories that I am trying to write, characters who are slowly beginning to form and take shape on my pages. I don't know them and they don't know me - yet. And so we are both in - there's that word again - limbo. But I persevere, writing and writing, persuading them to reveal themselves. And perhaps, by doing so, I will migrate to my next chapter, writing myself into what is going to happen next. 

September is not over yet.

 Inspired by this Instagram post of mine

The Story of a Lotus Bud

I found it at my flower-wallah on Sunday night. This flower-wallah was the one whom I had been buying my flowers from ever since I had moved to Delhi. In all these months, I had previously never seen lotuses there; I was instead accustomed to choosing from a library of roses, carnations, gladioli, marigolds, mogra, chrysanthemums, and rajnigandha, becoming blase about their beauty in the process. The lotuses were a pleasant surprise to encounter. A few days ago, I had seen them featured in pink bloom on someone's Instagram feed. A month ago, my family had sent me pictures after pictures of pink, white, and ivory-hued lotuses while holidaying in Sri-Lanka, where the blooms lay luxuriously massed upon the tables as temple offerings or sold in street-side shops. I remembered the first time I had seen devotees offer lotuses at temples in Bangkok; they resembled pale gray green candles from the distance until I peered closer and realised that they were in fact lotus buds. I tried to recall where I had last seen a lotus; I could not remember. I thought of the Buddhist mantra I frequently chanted these days, the lotus a powerful symbol and component of its spiritual structure.

I did not have to think twice about buying the lotus buds. I don't know why I bought just one though. The first lotus that I saw was greying, its outer almond-shaped petals the color of an ageing flamingo. Please give me a new, fresher one, I imperiously declared. The flower-seller picked one out from the many buds nestling together in their current home, a greying green bucket and began to swaddle it in a newspaper sheet for me. The lotus exuded no fragrance though. For fragrance, I bought my mogras, whose scent I forever associated with summer, smelling of rain when there was none. How long will it take to bloom, I asked, after he finished wrapping the lotus bud for me. Not much time, he replied. Not much time: that was hardly any time at all! I was prepared to wait. 

I posted a portrait of it on Instagram the next day, murmuring about the multiple beautiful truths that resided within its delicately striated pink bud. I talked about the delicious anticipation of waiting to see it bloom. I was in oblivion until Subhashini gently reminded me that lotuses usually do not bloom outside of water. But of course! How could I have forgotten? Was mine a magical lotus that would bloom in air? She instead asked me to carefully open the petals to discover what lay inside. I felt as if I was being asked to go on a treasure-hunt. Our conversation took place during the night. I waited until the next morning to perform this pleasurable task. But alas! I thought I was being careful but I was not. As I coaxed the bud to open, the petals swiftly and disintegrated, detaching themselves from the stalk like the pages of a dying antique book fleeing from its spine. I was left with the denuded heart and the petals scattered around me. The lotus was no more. I touched its heart. I wished I had been more gentle, more thoughtful, I said. But there will be a next time: a new lotus, a new heart to love, new petals to read. Until then, I will content myself with a memory of eternal longing, the longing of waiting for it to bloom.

July

So when did July arrive and when did it decide to disappear so quickly? For the longest time in my life, July was synonymous with holiday or at the very least, anticipating some sort of travel. I can only think of two or three Julys which I entirely spent in one place (usually, Oman), going about my daily life while simultaneously wishing every day that I was on a plane or train or car and heading somewhere.

This July was fortunately no exception though; I have just returned from a hectic five day trip to Bangalore, where I joyously glimpsed numerous gorgeous trees (Bangalore trees, you have my heart), colonial mansions turned into hip contemporary spots, beautiful fresh rangoli decorating the thresholds of homes everymorning, winding roads, overdressed sari shop window displays,  the famous Bangalore weather, and finally, consumed a lot of goodies from Bangalore bakeries and an authentic bene dosa from CTR in Malleshwaram. It was such a good dosa that I doubt that I will be eating one for a while in Delhi without remembering its Bangalore counterpart's finger-licking buttery, goldeny goodness!

However, my two most favorite memories involved visiting National Gallery of Modern Art and spending a very happy three hours discussing everything under the sun and its beautiful, beautiful spreading, giving, warm trees with Vidya, turning our so far virtual friendship into a face to face one. I also spent a peaceful twenty minutes wandering around the gardens of the gallery before she arrived; it was especially such bliss to be in the proximity to this enormous, spreading, long-limbed rain-tree,  whose formidable presence dominantly permeated the whole garden and yet, there was such serenity to be found standing beneath it. 

The other memory involved visiting a quaint little second-hand bookshop, The Select Bookshop at Brigade road; my husband used to buy a lot of books from there when he was growing up in Bangalore and I was charmed by how the book-shop owner greeted him, asking where he had been all this time. Having either shopped from chain-store bookstores or ordering books online lately, I had only heard of such bookshops, where the owners knew your name, thoughtfully recommended books, and took the trouble to find them for you from the depths of the crammed bookshelves. Vidya had also recommended the bookstore to me when I had mentioned wanting to visit another famous Bangalore bookshop, Blossom. It was so calming to stand there and browse through the books whilst soaking in in the wistful-making smell of old books and thinking of the journeys they had travelled when espying years-old inscriptions written in them. I even spotted a book edited by one of the first persons I had followed on Instagram many years ago! Needless to say, I left the bookshop, armed with several new old books that I cannot wait to read.

July has also seen me making my Guardian debut. I am happy to share about my first piece for the Guardian; it is an insider's guide to Jodhpur, where I wrote about its architecture, music, food, green initiatives, art, and more. Writing about cities and that too one of my most favorite cities in the world? I couldn't be more glad! Have a read here!

My other published writing this month was about how collaging and scrapbooking has helped me write better; there is something so orderly about assembling your otherwise scattered thoughts into a jigsaw of collage and watercolor before proceeding to sit down and write.

The rains have poured down this year, walls of rains sheeting down throughout the night until dawn, accompanied by sauna-like humidity, which I am not too terribly fond of. However, all is forgiven when you glimpse how incredibly green everything is! The trees have shed their summer skin of dust to reveal a brand new green being beneath. I have reveled in clicking the green, the rain-drop jeweled flowers, the redness, the greenness, the pinkness of it all. What I especially loved chancing upon was how I found a beautiful, intact, yellow-hued white plumeria bloom only to see that someone had made an arrangement out of few upturned plumeria flowers. Those serendipitious discoveries make my day, honestly speaking!

So this has been my July so far. How has yours been?

Of Nature's Stories, Land Art, and Morning Altars

The first time I chanced upon the idea of nature/land/earth art was when I glimpsed sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist, Andy Goldsworthy's work in The Clothes Horse's blog. I was simply enchanted by the notion of abstracting stunning site-specific art from natural surroundings, putting together fallen leaves, branches, twigs, flowers, seeds, and fruit, rocks, pebbles, and feathers into art that entirely and literally emerges from and connects to the earth, seamlessly integrating itself into the environment.  I have been lately been pinning a ton of land art on my Pinterest and have discovered examples which left me breathless and marvelling at the artists' ingenuity and creativity, such as swirling twig waters around a boulder, stone paths in forests, and stone sculptures silhouetted against the sky. Here's a gorgeous Andy Goldsworthy in which he arranges numerous stones in graduated shades of gray to form an existential black hole of sorts in the vast universe that is nature.

After seeing scores and scores of incredible land art works, I wondered if I too could create miniature examples myself; a little bit of researching led me to realise that I had been partially doing it with the fallen flowers, seeds, seed-pods, and fruit I found during my morning walks. Having photographed the trees and plants, I found myself engaging with the gifts that they left for the earth - and for us to discover. I sometimes arranged what I found in a simple pattern or grid format, displaying the diversity of what I had found; it reflected both the species growing in my immediate environment as being season-specific, such as summer displaying a great deal of gulmohur and laburnum, for example. This earth art below below depicts the various stages of a gulmohur bloom that I found in one of my favorite neighborhood parks: bud, budding, blooming, bloom, and flower itself.

Yesterday, after posting a picture of my walk finds: a peepal tree leaf, bougainvillea, gulmohur petals, and a branch of lime green neem fruit on Instagram, Day Schildkret of Morning Altars liked it and which fortuitously led me to explore more of his work. I was intrigued by what he is doing: creating gorgeous, intricate morning altars, foraging from his surroundings to create the most exquisitely detailed works. It celebrates the ephemeral and the deeply rooted, nature with all of its bountiful glories and its cycles of death, rebirth, and growth. Here's one of his morning altars dedicated to spring below:

Inspired by his morning altars, I decided to create one of my own today morning. In the park, it was quiet except for the birds twittering and the sound of plum yellow neem fruit plopping on the ground; this was the background to which I created my first altar wrought from bougainvillea, laburnum, and gulmohur flowers and champak and bougainvilleas leaves. It celebrates the joy these nature's morning colors gives me and to brighten my day ahead, the little joys that I derive from these nature gifts and compensating for potential challenges and disappointments that may lie ahead in the day. Of course, I do wonder what will become of them once I leave...will nature find a way to make its own unique installation out of them?

I enjoyed the process so much that I ended up creating two more earth art works later today from found champak flowers, leaves, and neem fruit:

This activity gives me much peace as well as making me aware of the healing, restorative, and creative powers of nature; I find myself contemplating and appreciating nature's diverse manifestations much more closely. In this age, when we are battling climate change, habitat destruction, species' extinction, and many other depressing stories of environmental degradation, it powerfully drives home the message that we can no longer take nature and stories for granted for it may potentially disappear one day; let us hear its stories and more importantly, strive to conserve and preserve them.

Have you ever made impermanent art? I would love to hear!

What Writing Nature Diaries Have Taught Me

The other day, I read this piece in which the writer describes the lively antics of a blackbird seeking to make a nest in the English countryside; it was featured in a column entitled, 'Country Diary' and the title made me think how many of my daily entries in my own journal have lately been largely dedicated to nature and observations about nature. All through spring, I wrote about the trees, which bloomed, which stopped blooming, the new ones that bloomed. I described my blog as a garden of sorts in the debut post and my journal too has became a figurative garden in which I write about physical gardens.

I also wrote about the birds that I saw: jade-sheened black humming birds drinking from kachnar orchids, an orange-mohawk bird contemplating the trees from our window sills, a tiny black bird which could have fit inside my palm nibbling on peepal fruit, palm doves performing trapeze-artist theatre on the parabolas of wires strung between buildings. I wrote about the sparrow that flies from our window as soon as I open it towards the opposite end; it was the World Sparrow Day sometime ago and I was sorry to hear that these humble birds have become an endangered species. I wrote about the marauding ants navigating the undulating terrain of visible tree roots, turquoise and black butterflies dancing on concrete, and of course, the street dogs, some extroverted and tame enough to proffer their handsome tapered heads for a pat while others skitter away at the sight of you, burying themselves in a damp sand hole.

Today, as I leaned out of my window, I noticed that a spider has built two webs in between the grilles and that the kachnar tree is leafing in sporadic spurts, unlike the enthusiastically blooming gulmohar or the silk cotton tree with their exploding seed-pods, cotton spheres floating in the wind before resting upon the ground, like unmelting snow. It's all a matter of looking and looking carefully; for all these years, I was looking but I never really saw. I was ignorant of the flowers blooming, birds building nests, termites constructing homes, dragon-flies shimmying in the air, and invisible armies of ants. I only became aware when I had to be, when my world collided with that of the natural one, when I once saw a dead dragon-fly flutter down at my feet or the blooming mogras' gorgeous scent called out to me. 

Now that I have begun to see, really begun to see, what will I get to discover?

Friday Poetry: The Poetry of Silent Trees

Trees

which had been silent

all this while

have now decided to speak:

their poetry blooms under my feet,

and I listen carefully,

not wishing to miss

a single

syllable.

Friday Poetry: Beauties Sleeping

BEAUTIES SLEEPING

Beauties sleeping,

dreaming of pink bloom,

unaware that they are ghosts of

what they once were,

what they will never be again.

 

Five Thoughts About April

1. I began a collaging-scrap book which is becoming a novel of my thoughts. I also painted a bit more this month, specifically expanding on my love for dots; I don't know where it has sprung up from, this inclination towards embedding the page with dots but it is a very calm, meditative process and imbues the painting with a strange, structured quality. Here is a third such chapter from my book: The Art of Cloud-Making.

2. I attended my first art event in ages and surprisingly, only my second one in Delhi after all this time living here, what with its uber-packed art and culture calendar. It was the closing ceremony of  multi-media and disciplinary artist, Satish Gupta's At The Feet of Buddha, where he presented ten sculptures, eight paintings and seventy two haikus. We heard Buddhist monks in orange robes chant, renowned Indologist, a venerable looking Professor Chandra in a crisp white kurta and dhoti talk about Buddhism, saying something which particularly resonated me that Buddha saw the entire universe in a leaf, and finally, the artist himself reciting his haikus. The giant contemplative Buddha was the focus of everyone's attention, mogras buds scenting the air all around him. We briefly chatted to the artist and he told us that it took him two years to wrought it. I have to say though  that my favorite part of the evening was hearing his wonderful haikus; read them here and here.

3. Time to blow my trumpet a bit! I wrote a piece about my love for the trees in spring-time on a whim inspired by a beautiful writing cue, participating in a writing competition for the first time in years (another first!). To my pleasant surprise, my entry was among the five winning entries for this month. You can read the piece here:)

4.  My abandoned sofa trail saw me spotting one in Mehrauli after almost a year since my last sighting in Delhi; it was unobtrusively hidden in a tangle of forest and scrub, its extremely dilapidated state indicating that it had been there for a while, almost becoming a part of the forest itself. It looked so at home in the spot, if one could say, that I wasn't tempted to extricate its back-story. This was its story.

5. It's the season of mogras once again. I bought a string or two from my local flower-seller and wrote about a poem about it, kickstarting my Friday poetry posts. The other evening, sitting inside the car and waiting for the traffic light to turn green, a man swung an entire bunch in front of us and offered to sell them for a bargain. "I need to go home and get rid of them," he succinctly told us. I had been planning to buy a couple of strings and so immediately leaped at the chance to buy a bunch of gorgeous-smelling mogra. Since then, they swayed on the rearview mirror, scented my living and bedrooms, and are now slumbering in the cold, protected confines of the fridge.

How was your April? I would love to hear!

Friday Poetry: A Country Where Many Reside

A COUNTRY WHERE MANY RESIDE

The octopus tentacles of tree roots

lie flat upon the leaf-strewn soil,

exuding tiny ink-spots of an ant-army:

crawling, scurrying, cargo-bearing

before disappearing inside

their cool, black holes 

of subterranean palaces.

Watching them reminds me that

a tree just does not exist for itself:

actually, it cannot.

That would be far too self indulgent, a selfish act.

It is a country, after all, where numerous citizens reside

and which they call home.

Friday Poetry: The Birds Whose Music Invisibly Perfumes The Spring Air

THE BIRDS WHOSE MUSIC 

INVISIBLY PERFUMES THE SPRING AIR

I discover today that the birds

whose concerts richly, invisibly perfume

the still, warm spring morning air

are called Indian treepies.

They flit from the kachnar tree

to the neighboring gulmohar,

a kinetic, musical long-tailed blur of tan, white, and brown

from a muddy green universe

to a bright green one.

The jade-sheened glossy black humming bird no longer sups

from the kachnar orchids,

which became pod earrings when no one was looking -

and the crows have found elsewhere to feast upon

now that the flamboyant, plump blood-red

monstrously beautiful silk cotton flowers are fat green pods

of future flowers, leaves, roots, and branches.

Only the sparrow traverses

the invisible trapeze-rope in the air,

metal grill to metal grill,

its clay water bowl empty and parched

like a summer desert.

Friday Poetry: The Season's First Mogras

 

THE SEASON'S FIRST MOGRAS

The season's first mogras cost twenty rupees:

the boy takes them out of their plastic home,

pouring them into the bowl of my palm.

In the new moon light, they are phosphorescent,

the half-open buds gradually emerging,

like teeth in a baby's shy smile.

They slumber overnight,

luxuriously curled up

in a bowl full of written water.

When I wake up,

they have already made themselves home.

I journal about the poetry of their fragrance,

which seeps into my words,

the texture of my thoughts. 

The next morning,

they are already gone,
their fragrance a distant, bittersweet memory:

crumpled tea-brown white petals

fall apart in my palms,

like a ransacked city,

the ghost of what it once was. 

** I have started writing poetry again after a very long time - and so, every Friday, I will be featuring a poem of mine accompanied by a photograph. Sometimes, the photograph will inspire the birth of a poem or vice versa. Let us see where this journey of poetry will take me. I will look forward to your thoughts about these tentative re-explorations of mine into the world of poetry!**

Jacaranda Journeys

Entwined

First of all, isn't jacaranda such a beautiful sounding name for an undoubtedly beautiful flowering tree? Actually, I have to be a little bit honest: I don't find the individual mauve jacaranda flower as lovely as glimpsing them collectively blooming upon the trees, the bloom-laden branches silhouetted against the clear sky or scattered en masse upon the grass below.

We are fortunate to live in a neighborhood dotted with lots of gardens, consisting of both large, sprawling and cosy, miniature ones; I discovered one such latter garden during a spontaneous afternoon stroll on a moody, cloudy, cool Delhi day. I had seen the jacaranda blooming there from the distance but I didn't realise it was more than one tree that was blooming; it was only when I explored the garden that day that I observed it was a triad of trees in various stages of bloom, one already having considerably leafed. Being the only jacaranda trees in my immediate vicinity, I was thoroughly enchanted to be caught in a quiet drizzle of jacaranda flowers as they joined the sea of flowers splashing the emerald green grass below.

Sea of Purple and Green

Ever since I have discovered that garden, it has become one of my little pleasures to stop by there during my morning walks and sit beneath these trees; it's invariably deserted when I arrive so I have the satisfaction of having the garden to myself, rendering it in my eyes a secret garden. Even if it's just for five minutes, I quietly sit on a flower-speckled stone bench below the jacaranda trees, glimpsing the flowers fluttering here and there in the air before gently coming to rest upon the ground. 

Radiating

I have lately been taking great pleasure in making flower-dot paintings and so while I was sitting below the tree one morning, I scooped up a few jacaranda flowers, deciding to abstract something out of them too. I had called it the 'Journey of the Jacaranda Flowers' on Instagram, the flowers migrating from the tree to my palm to my sketchbook. There is something so calming and indeed, meditative arranging these flowers upon the stark white desert of my sketchbook, making it bloom before inserting the bindis of dots (perhaps, you could say that I am inspired by Bharti Kher's bindi explorations to a certain extent). Once I have painted, photographed, and Instagrammed the painting, I leave it upon my desk and when I return the following day, I find that the flowers have become dessicated yet certainly not diminished in any which way beauties. And so completes the circle of spring.

A Boat Ride on the Ganga

I have never been much for rivers, I have always claimed. The first rivers that I saw were the wadis in Oman; they weren't technically rivers, I suppose, pop-up rivers, really, which birthed into existence immediately following the rains and then, swiftly vanished a few days afterwards. In any case, I imagined rivers to be like the way I saw them for the first time in atlases: silver snakes laboriously crawling across the pink, green, and yellow-hued landscapes, in manner of the Nile or the Amazon or the Mississippi. 

I kept on bumping into rivers nevertheless. I remember taking a dip in the Ganga's icy, gray waters at Haridwar many years ago as a child. I saw the Thames, Danube, and the Rhine. I sat by the Charles river in Boston one spring afternoon last year with an upset stomach, an unread Marquez, and feeling lost. The river prettily gleamed in the fading light but I derived more comfort from the weeping tree standing next to me, which reminded me of a kind elephant. And then, of course, I lived in a city of rivers, three rivers, to be precise: Pittsburgh. I recall spending one warm autumn night by the river, the city's glittering skyline reflected in its mirror-calm waters; I trailed my fingers in the water, saw it silently embrace the rocks clustered upon the bank. Yet, in all that time I lived there, I could never bring myself to appreciate the beauties and complexities and gifts of the river. Perhaps, I had lived by and loved the sea for too long; I was too accustomed to its exciting tumult, its mercurial color palette, the beach's unique universe, and the vast infinity of the sea, as it married the horizon.

Sometime ago, we took a boat ride on the Ganga in a place called Garmukhteshwar. It would be a new moon night the following day and which would attract scores and scores of visitors, the boatman told us. There already seemed to be so many people around, many of them bathing and immersed in the water: women, fully dressed in saris and salwar-kameez, their heads still nevertheless covered, men, children, young, old, middle-aged, everyone. I saw an old lady set a bowl stitched from dried leaves and containing marigolds and pedas into the water as an offering. People were also filling up large white transparent plastic cans that they had purchased from river-side stalls with the holy water.

I didn't bathe or buy or worship the water; I took a boat-ride instead.

We shakily stepped onto the boat - and the boatman lifted his pole and began the journey.

It was hot, very hot; the heat had bleached the sky almost white.

The river meanwhile was the color of soil: it resembled liquid earth. This was the Ganga. When I placed my palm upon the river skin, it felt like lukewarm tea. The boatman strenuously ploughed through the water. I asked him how long he had been doing it. Ever since I was a child, he told us, I usually take up to twelve people on the boat but there are only two of you today. I thought of one of my favorite books, Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy in which the characters go for boat-rides upon the Ganga in the fictional city of Brahmpur. In one scene, as the city burns following terrible Hindu-Muslim riots, a couple still nevertheless goes for a boat-ride, saying that you can't set fire to water. 

If I accidentally leave the boat unmoored at night, it will travel downstream - but there's usually someone to find and bring it back to me in the morning, the boatman says, affectionately, glancing down at both the boat and the river. 

I gaze at the heat-enshrouded horizon: the river merges with the sky in the distance until it is difficult to distinguish where the sky begins and the water ends. I am starting to understand a little bit as to why you might want to spend so much of your time on the river: there is something comforting being on this strip of water in the land, the river arguably not as overwhelming as the sea, whose vastness can be simultaneously beautiful and frightening. Perhaps, the best way to appreciate the river was to be within it: I had been looking at it from the wrong end all this time.

Around us, as the sun traced its arc in the sky, the river quietly flowed, as it had done for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

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River-reading: I have so enjoyed following environmental photographer and journalist, Arati-Kumar Rao's evocative pictures and words as she documents the Brahmaputra river basin and powerfully drives home the significance of rivers over here

Photo-Story: Of Trees and Old Monuments

Wherever I go, I find them again and again, the ruined monument and the tree growing alongside each other, seemingly content in the other's company. The tree may be significantly younger than the monument and yet, you can intuit a quiet, beautiful rapport between them, regardless of barriers of age and character. The monument must tell stories to the tree - and how many stories must it have! - and it communicates them to us through the rustle of its leaves, a storyteller narrating what the stone cannot share.

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Speaking of trees, I had the honor of interviewing one of India's most iconic photographers, Raghu Rai and talking about his recent exhibition of tree images in Delhi recently; it was a pleasure to glimpse his photographic forest and hear about his creative processes...have a look at the piece here

Tree Stories

Spreading, Bangalore (2015)

When reading this article today, I learned that it was International Forest Day on March 21st; this article incidentally happens to explore the politics of trees in Africa, which certainly made me pause and consider the way trees shape and influence our landscape in multiple ways.

Embrace, Fallingwater (2013)

I have previously blogged about my fascination for trees; I once again wonder if it stems from the fact that I grew up in Oman, where I mostly saw trees as gnarled, hardy, antique characters dotting the desert scrub or insulated, almost snobby clusters of exotic tree species, rather than grandly massed in forests? When we lived in Pittsburgh, I especially grew to love walking upon nature trails which wound through densely wooded parks during heady summer days; the urban drabness receded into the distance and I found myself enveloped in a leafy, green-light filtered world, hearing only bird-song and unique musical notes that only rustling leaves are capable of creating.

Telescoped Time, Sequoia National Park (2014)

Before we left the States, my husband and I embarked upon a month long cross-country trip where we visited several National Parks in the American South-west (aside: I really should blog about that epic journey one of these days!) One of the parks was the Sequoia National Park in California where we encountered some of the world's largest and tallest trees. As you wandered amongst groves of these giant sequoia trees, many of which were thousands of years old, you couldn't help but wonder: who and where exactly were you in the the grand scope of the Earth's history and existence? My personal perception of time and space were greatly telescoped, scaling down my trivial concerns and worries; I similarly felt that way when I was sitting by the sea. It was an undoubtedly powerful experience to be in the company of these august tree giants, who stoically and solidly continued to grow, as they had done for many a millennia - and I remember feeling both fulfilled and yet, a little depleted when we reluctantly left the park and returned to the identical monotony of a Californian freeway.

The Architecture of a Leaf, Delhi (2015)

I guess it is why I feel so strongly about the necessity of large and multiple green spaces in urban environments; you need such spots in which to escape the soul-sapping demands of urban life, no matter how temporarily, in order to contemplate, recuperate, and relax. Indeed, when I am in the presence of old, venerable trees, with their spreading branches, labyrinthine roots, and serried leaves, I feel that they radiate a contagious calm, which immediately envelops you in its fold. 

I recently read about and spotted Jahanpanah Forest in Delhi the other day and which I would quite like to explore. In the meantime, as I write, I see the tree outside my apartment window filled with soft red flowers; the tree neighboring it has sprouted feathery green leaves, which provide accompaniment to the parabolas of the chocolate-hued seed pods limning its branches. There are plenty more trees to encounter in my neighborhood, including the huge peepal tree behind my apartment whose leaves' shadows dapple my walls, drop gifts of leaves in my balcony, sing along with the rain, and seemingly protectively curtain me from the surrounding world. 

We Barely Know Each Other, Delhi (2015)

Speaking of protectiveness, I would like to bookend this post with another article and also, a wonderful story about tree canopy shyness; I thought it so perfectly illustrated the innate beauty, dignity, and wisdom of trees.

Do you have a favorite tree - and tree story?

A Semblance of Spring in the Air

The winter is nearing its conclusion over here - and I can smell a semblance of spring in the air. However, I can't help but think about spring in a city in a country thousands of miles away though. At the moment, it is probably bone-white and a punch-in-the-solar-plexus cold and unrelentingly blank there; yet, there are also stubbornly budding trees, determined to fruit and flower in spite of the cold and ice. Isn't it the season of magnolias? Have the cherry blossoms emerged yet? I suddenly experience a strong, almost unbearable nostalgia, imagining standing on my Pittsburgh apartment balcony and witnessing the dead landscape gradually being resurrected in the months to come.

Fish-flowers

However, this much I acknowledge: nature offer its gifts wherever you go. There will be new trees and flowers to encounter over here too. In the meantime, I see paint daubs of orange and red everywhere, even in cloth bundles unspooling on the ground. Bright orange flowers erupt like fishes shimmying in and out of a choppy green sea.

Illumination

Red in Death

Fat, flamboyant, maximalist orange flowers illuminate an otherwise austere tree; nudged on by the dusk breeze, they gently fall, descend and lie upon the ground, turning blood-red as they decay. I must find out their name, I really must. From my study window, I can see nests sharing branch-space with fat chocolate brown seed pods on the tree growing outside. I collect fallen leaves, flowers and seed-pods; I photograph them, I make whimsical little arrangements out of them and leave for passerby's to discover.

Suspended, in hope

Wherever I have lived, whichever place I have called home, there has been a tree growing outside my window; its branches, whether leaf-laden or not, have represented an embrace, that of hope and succor.

A few days ago, while walking past a fledgling tree in my neighborhood park, I noticed something hanging from its branch; I went closer towards it and realised the object was a tiny glass square wrapped multiple times in green spring and in turn suspended from the branch. What was it? Who had put it there? I mused that it resembled a protective amulet and it was then I noticed that the string's green mirrored that of the buds gently emerging from the tree's branches. 

If nature could provide gifts to us, perhaps someone had in turn had presented a gift to the tree. That gesture made me smile, filled with a feeling of well-ness for the invisible humanity and their affectionate gestures.

Spring is indeed on its way.