Brilliant Instances.

I breathed, deep. As the cool night air caressed. there are scattered white clouds in the sky, effectively covering up most of the smaller stars, accompanied by the town lights effect, the stars are not making a grand show of it.

The insistent urging sound, made by a scooter refusing to start, while its owner sweated and sweated, and at last, the noise of the engine whirring fills the almost still atmosphere. i  am happy that it started, it is not desirable that any one should be kept from home any longer than is necessary. 

The night insects are going on with their monotonous but beautiful lullaby, while the few mosquitoes can not be heard but are only felt by me, as i am sitting on the steps of our terrace. Inspiration, comes quickly to me if i am here, witnessed by the treetops, the stars, and the almost navy blue sky. I realise i haven’t been up here often enough these past few months. I pray , i am determined, that i shall never be too busy to get sometime out to talk with my self,  to converse with nature, to converse with God. I promise me this, that i shall always have time for the really important people in life, the near and dear ones, and always there will be reserved moments, for peace and self exploration, to admire the miracles of everyday life.

Have you ever found the night air to be scented, in that oh so subtle way? Utterly romantically beautifully. Amazingly loving is the breeze. I Find solace and comfort in the night, i need the music that is always playing in the night.

Silly me – why didn’t i come up here the first day i got a laptop? Aren’t we just foolish.

Any how....let me become my talkative self, i’ve been on a small trip! As we all know, i love our sudden, unplanned and unpredictable trips. Not to say that all our meticulously planned trips usually never happen , the unplanned ones are the best.

We went to Abu, the hill station, the town, of course, was carefully avoided, and we put our selves in the hands of nature. The arravallies were breathtaking at this time of the year, covered in a coat of lush green, it’s big bad boulders which were formed once by lava, where looking almost timid. Small and big waterfalls intercepted the curving road here and there. The grandfather of Himalayas was looking pretty pleased with everything, what with the green capped by a brilliant summer sky with soft, cotton wool clouds fluttering here and there.

It is not a long story, it is a story of a girl ( so i am 22:P ),her beloved family, and a bear. An Indian sloth bear.

Plus, lots of flowers, and moss, and orchids, and birds and palm civets, and late night stories and history lessons and treasure hunts and lots of fun.

finding clues in the treasure hunt.

rock faces-how many do you see?

shadows shadows,let us play.
as the caterpillars munch away.

moss flowers i call these

beloved

orchid

 

 

 

 

peace

the pretty bachelor.

It is just as well that i am accompanied by the insects and stars right now, down there i would have probably succumbed to sleep by now.

It was me,mom,dad,brother and granny. We reached there at 2:30 p.m. while every one indulged in their chosen past time, i proceeded to fool around with the camera alone, than I and brother went on out usual tracks of exploration here and there, while weaving wild fantasy stories featuring us two, naturally. Took more photos, played treasure hunt, saved a few caterpillars, though not sure they wanted to be. Went to dad and did some more official bird watching. Than went to mom and grandma, talked and talked and worried about the world.ran after dad as he called us orchid hunting, up the slippery slopes and boulders, and found some : ) took some more photos and saw butterflies. Than my brother became sleepy, so I and father set watching the birds go to roosts, in the tranquil  place facing the beautiful lush forest in front.and were joined by mom. We also took turns counting face formations in a big rock in front, i had the highest count, of 10. : )

At night, we went around in a 4 wheel, to may be see a bear, in that still night, as we set waiting on its usual path, slowly a darker spot emerged on the dark landscape, though it was still early in the night. it moved and kept moving towards us. I had seen 3 bears on my previous visit to this jungle, but this sighting was one brilliant happenstance, i had to keep focusing manually on him, as the guide was very particular about not frightening him by any sudden moves/noises and light, so the powerful torch was kept off.but as it inched close, the dim flash light of my mobile, which was on thanks to my brother in the covered back of the car,i was able to keep the focus more accurate. Well, one can’t focus while being perpetually blind! I was leaning out a little, and slowly, and slowly, we came near, or say, he did, he was a young male, around 5 years, just attaining adulthood. searching for more food he happened up to try sniffing under the car a little, and that brought us pretty much nose to nose, only separated by some 3 feet, or  so .I , of course, stopped taking photos, while every one else pressed on me to have a closer look, i tried to lean back inside the car body as i was pretty much out and my upper body in full clear hit able range. He grunted once ferociously, it was something that would make your heart leap, it made my brother drop the mobile, while i just continued to stare at him, he remained in easy reach distance for quite a while, so i did take a few shots, and he very generously provided me with this full front one. I remember thinking at the time that he  was giving it to me because i hadn’t been annoying and hadn’t  taken his photos while he was too near. ( i could have worked with my portrait lens, he was THAT near).

Ah ....isn’t life fascinating?

Tonight the night is not still and silent, tonight is the first night of the auspicious festival of dance, Navaratri. So till the ninth night from tonight, the music and the dance will go on till the early wisps of the light of dawn gathers in the eastern sky. A great tribute will be paid to the forces of nature for nine long nights,the 9 forms of the goddess will be worshipped.

 Lots of love affairs will start as well, as it always does each year at this time. Well, well,well- you know, will all the excitements and late nights and dancing and getting dressed,it’s just natural :D who am i to comment.

One does hope for some splendid raas performances though, why not remember lord Krishna and his late night dances with the gopies and Radha.  My, i do love our festivals, i love everything here. If i were to leave here, i don’t know how i shall do it.

Some one is letting out some pretty evil laugh out on the next road,while the blare of music is rather tiresome, they used to sing better songs in the past.

I sound soo like a granny right now.

Talking of being a granny, my grandma told me about her childhood and how tings have changed since, she was born in 1944, and the English left India in 1947.she used to dream a lot about Gandhiji, as she had a strong desire to meet him, well my grandfather had had that opportunity, i wish i had interrogated him more thoroughly about it when i had the chance, though we had talked about it ,i had just let it slip by. It is a year, this month, since he passed away.

We miss you grandfather. May be you met some amazing souls out there though.

Grandmom told me about the incident with the king of Bhavnagar, and a small farmer, as india was a democratic nation,the first king to merge his kingdom was Krishna Kumarsinhji, of Bhavnagar state of that time. Than he was appointed the governor of madras, so, a farmer, had lost a bullock(most probably it had been stolen),  he didn’t know anything about there being a government now,a different rule, he only knew that if he had a problem, he should go and see the king, he went to Bhavnagar,(being from a small village in that state)found that the king was in madras and collecting the address, went there, laying open his problem. The king did have a mighty time making him understand the situation, but he did it, than bought him a return ticket, also gave him a letter to be given to some staff of his back home, and the farmer was given a brand new bullock for all that freedom the country had. See- we kind of had some great kings. Who actually did something, the politicians seem like a hopeless lot now.

The king of vadodara, the famous Sayajirav Gaekwad,the great patron of knowledge, had made it compulsory for everyone in his state to have basic 7-8 years of studies, in the time before freedom,so even the girls in the most rural villages knew how to read and write.the enlightened kings did do a lot, though, i can not say that there weren’t some pretty weird and odd ones. After all,there were 580 princely states here, they all can’t be good.

She also told me about her trips in a train engine,in the last compartment of a goods train with the guard,and in the ferries that towed the maharaja-a- bhavnagar’s luggage to and fro when he went to his summer retreat on the shiyal island near pipavav, as well as truck lifts used to give chase to buses that left without you, in those good old times when you could trust people,and the khadi cloths induced some respect in people.

A dear friend asked me,not long ago, about the situation between India and Pakistan, the question that seemed to torment his gentle soul being why we couldn’t look at each other in the way the outsiders did,wouldn’t it make things better? Perhaps the people of the two countries should take an outsiders perspective and focus on the their similarities than their differences. 

Well, one wishes to, it is not as if the civilians of the two nations want to keep barking at each other like mad dogs after one rabbit. We have a similar language, clothing, food and mannerisms. Actually, the people, are not so much opposed to each other as the politics would have you believe. The dirty gamer here is the Pakistani government, untrustworthy all around, now that America is learning it too, i don’t really need to elaborate, India had told them- over and over again, to not give such alot of financial support with a free hand, they’ve just gone and snuggled up with China, the dragon that lives to swallow everything up if given half a chance. What did anyone do when it ate up Tibet? All talk, while India still plays a glad host to the Dalai Lama. It has it’s eyes on Indian land, has had from a long time. Honestly, the weasel like ways of China are more worrying to me than the clumsy manoeuvres of Pakistan.Pakistan does have to be more careful about who it befriends.

While, it is not honestly possible for us to not look askance at Pak. Just consider- at this moment, right now, a  gun battle is raging on between our army and 2 remaining terrorists in Kashmir ,came over from Pak, of the total gang of 7.they have taken a huge chunk of Kashmir under them, and we’ve not taken it forcefully because we seem to be the only ones who listen to what UN says.with all the wars in the past, and than the dirty terror tactics that keep turning up everytime India initiates peace talks, really does make it easy for us to take any milder perspective on the situation. The thing is this, we are not out siders,we live as their neighbours. It does give you every first hand information which is never on international media, the millions of fake rupees that are inserted in to our economy each year by them, the fisher men captured from the shared ocean borders and kept in inhuman conditions in their cells, not to mention their almost blatant support to terror groups which constantly keep harassing us is not something that will induce any sort of liking for them. As it is out cities that are plunged in to upheavals, it is our solders that die in gun battles each month. Those are Indian kashmiri girls who are threatened on way to their schools to leave studying or they’d be killed, rape, murder and plunder, it is all happening to our people. It is not just some brief line in some news.

I have all sympathy with the Pakistani people, actually. India helped Pak, in the recent flood situation, and it keeps trying to solve things out, though their cosy ing up with china is ominous-i do not care for the amount of nuclear power there between the two, who didn’t notice the Pak nuk scientist’s letter to his wife in Sweden in news today?

They are banning Indian films there, saying it steals all of their profit and makes people neglect watching their own movies. I have sympathy for that, i understand that they have a rather valid reason and it can’t be held against them,though they could have asked for some sort of a fee and prevented the drastic measures . as the people of pak protest saying the only  other outside entertainment is eating out, why they should be prevented from watching good movies, (their words not mine) as the pak film industry doesn’t sprout up a good enough movie in anything less than 10 years.

The point is, we are not against everything that is Pakistan, we are against all that is Against India, that wishes it harm, and no , it is not possible to take an outsider’s view on the political situation, as long as greed is there, there will be conflict. Some might hold the impersonal opinion that if India gave up Kashmir,everything will be solved, no, it won’t be, it will just make us look weak,and they’d keep wanting more, after all,India doesn’t have to behave like the most nicest boy in the school, doing just right and not making any one sad. Well, they always said- in each war- that they’d reach Delhi by the next day..hello.. yeah,like  we’d let you.

But, personally, i hate wars.

So, can’t they just stop turning beautiful Kashmir in hell, and make it an amazing tourist destination and split the earnings! Yey!

Err... sorry,..... just that, i shouldn’t get started on politics, i have a big opinion about everything.

I hope you enjoyed the different tones of this post. Now back to worrying about those exams!

Good night people : ) a bat is shrieking out side.good luck to every one, including me.