The golden shower trees have collaborated with the scorching sun and are giving scrawny, spidery shades after having shade all their foliage, that too, when their cooling shade is most missed. SO, folks, our Spring, fall and summer- is here.

Soon the trees will be covered with huge oblong chandeliers formed of dazzling yellow flowers, and the road will turn in to my “golden walk”-that’s what I call the road at that time of the year.it seems as if it was raining gold. the air would be rife with their pleasant, subtle perfume, bees and insects will contribute in the ever growing waves of the music created by the wind swaying in the boughs, it will become one of those magical pathways.

What do you see when you wake up early in the morning on the terrace? That the leaves are taking individual shake dance lessons, have you seen the ways trees prime themselves to face the new day? Each leaf shakes , you know, how you wave your hand, just that way but downwards, is it just the wind being naughty  ? or are they performing some sacred ritual? I asked the birds but they just went on chirping without bothering to translate.

Sugar-cane Juice! Ah, that sweet glass full of potential sugar. I do love it from time to time. Though , with the arrival of spring, also comes the 9 days of drinking one of the bitterest juices in this world, the neem juice. When the neem tree (Azadirachta indica) is flowering , people take down a few twigs with blossoms and make juice out of those, it is amazingly , numbingly bitter. So , most of the younger generation refuses to be coaxed in to drinking it,while it IS wonderfully good for a body.

Happy to report that Vidur is also as determined as Me to finish his 9 morning long bitter drink challenge. It really isn’t too bad, after you get over the first shock.

Whatever remains, including the crush, we sprinkle it in the garden ,it works as a fertilizer and keeps any kind of infection away from the trees too.

Spring also brings with it the magical fragrance of the queen of night (Cestrum nocturnum),Raat Ki rani in Hindi.It has this enchanting,unearthly perfume-When the night air is full of it's perfume,I feel like I am not stationary at all,may be it is my spirit that is floating on it. It is a smell that can transport you any where over the fabric of time,it makes me very creative,but also a unshakable lethargy steals over me at the very same time,so I can not exactly work on any thing.may be that is why it has been connected with love in our ancient texts.



There is a coppery spider who lives under a leaf in my garden, she is there, every morning and throughout the day – I just feel that it is a she and not a he, and we’ve made friends,but she is still a little camera shy, but we’ll get around to it i am sure. Of course, i am not betraying her trust and telling you all her home address, because, there are any number of leaves in the garden, you can go on and search each one of them.

Then there is the petite little she dog - she is always walking about on our little partition wall,watching me at work, drinking from the little water pot and sniffing around, she has such beautiful eyes-doe like, really.she is a beauty.the poor thing is so thin,but she seems to not want to eat all that much, even if you give her more,and she would eat so daintily,she puts me to shame sometimes with her infinitely tiny bites,I never take big bites but sometimes I can't take tiny ones, so now I call her miss World.she is a dear really,she never enters from the kitchen door if it is left open,a real lady, she would want to come to you and snuggle if you are sitting somewhere near the floor, and she loves to climb in to someone's lap.though, she is a stray. a rather bleached blond colour she has, I remember how she happened to come to this area, a wee puppy of a week,stumbling ,bereft and motherless, we all helped together and she grew, and than went away for about a year.

she is a free dog.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
so It has been a while since I was last trying to write. lots of inner turmoil and lots of real,tangible work prevented any more tries, though, the Little write in me is Always noting up small things in the back of my mind ,which ,it hopes,it will be able to retrieve when I can get around to writing again.
Last night I did a sketch,and I call it "the little mermaid's dream-too colourful to be true"

well,sometimes it is true.

"Talents are given for a reason. Don't ever feel discouraged." - so Says Hugh Jackman, and I am sure,he knows. reading that line somewhere made me want to write again today.

soo....how have the little bookworms been?

again,I Have been doing lots of NEW things.

life will never run out of new things to do,feel and learn, when it does,well,it means that you are dead. someone once cautioned me,at my expecting new and amazing things to happen all the time, with the best intentions of course- so that I might not be hurt or disappointed or sad when they failed to happen. But I mean to make them happen, I mean to keep living. I also mean to keep an open heart, as I have said before, an open heart is the most powerful one too. 

great things stop happening exactly when you stop expecting them to happen.

well, my new happenings are small,but delightful.

1) got a "rat rani" sherbet - (Cestrum nocturnum).so now I can taste it as well as smell it.

2) gave the ILETS exam- and received 8 bands, and got a lift on a bike from a fellow student from Ahmedabad to Gandhinagar- that was a first too.

3) worked in a show for the first time :D which was huge fun.so meeting lots of new people and understanding how the whole process works was interesting,before this it had been news interviews and interview by a documentary maker- a lot different with one hand held camera, this involved a lot more effort than just being honest and natural with my expressions and talk.

got to eat some new dishes, Including cheese fondue, oh THE cheese fondue, I am taking my loved ones to that restaurant with the money I won through the show _won something on TV for the first time too!

links to the show - 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxy1aL7Xl74&feature=share%27%2C%29

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDpsMqzWwrE&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJmoqsl_o6o&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4CSciRVIKs&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=896p4HbG6bo&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZV1Hra8lZk&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnHPI_4uNYM&feature=share

4) saw a cow giving birth for the first time.

5) attended open air ,classical music concerts for a week (jan)which were amazing, Including the fusion one. got myself some autographs from lots of great artists.

6)sold two more pictures.

7) working on my first thesis :P ...first time for sure-but designing  a natural history museum in all local stone masonry is something that I am loving.

8) reading Oscar Wilde for the first time and liking it.

9) found out that I totally connect to the "Anne of Green gables" books, it is a good feeling.

10) saw a real ,original Van Gogh painting by my very eyes! without having to go to Europe :D  this should come under "visited the Baroda Museum for the first time" but just can't :D I also saw a real - mummy for the first time.

- I wanted to stay the night in the museum and just wander and wander and wander.

it has such a delightful collection of art,artefacts, jewellery,cloths,lifestyle things,stones and shells,architectural interiors, bones,skeletons and animals,it has EVERYTHING.

11) I believe I will find my self studying botany again, after leaving it after high school,at first year college level, and will have to learn Forestry (I believe I shall like it too)- my forest ranger uncle (he is most interested in this) informs me that, considering my inclinations, these two are the ones that I should take up as my subjects for my examination - well- here is one leap in the dark,because ,I left conventional sciences 5 years back and took up designing, so.....it is like "why don't you give the "India forest services" exam, till you decide on your Masters in Architecture- which I am only going to do if I can get in to "sustainable planning". We are considering out options, so I filled the form for IFS yesterday.

I can't honestly say that I don't like the idea of work in the forests- I love it, but what than, of my own field? -supposing that I even pass it :P of course there is a HUGE competition and I don't exactly have high hopes - as the exam is scheduled in sometime in July, so is my final jury for thesis, I will have my hands full work on my architectural studies at the time.

12) I learned my first "Tarana" - mom and I are the first students to master it from the whole music class, as others are quaking in their boots just by looking at it's structure and are missing out on it's beauty, it is very simple really, we just let it's beauty sweep over us, and Voila` - there it was, on the tips of our tongues, all that we had to do after that was polish off some rough edges, still working on a few edges but it will be great.

I will have to record and put it up somehow, any ideas?

(a tarana is a song,sung in hidden words -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarana)

it doesn't mention it here, but it was invented because Aurangzeb - the great and the worst Mughal emperor didn't want any one singing prayers to Hindu Gods. of course,he was the enemy of all arts and culture- the radical extremist. so they invented the taranas, they,apparently, have no meaning at all, but if you know what each syllable is supposed to mean, than it is usually a prayer of lord Krishna)

13) I wrote a long letter that made me cry- hmmm.... not a first :P I am always so in touch with my words that all good books and good letters can do that to me, but the content was something new,so that kind of counts.

14)Met a friend from Korea.

15) the feeling of "oh I'll be over with my college soon" is building and is something very new.

16)saw my cousin jump off an aeroplane and do his first sky diving! that was when I was shouting and cheering on this side of the screen too. I want to do that.

17) had my first farewell party,and wore roses in my hair and a red sari.COUNTS.

18) saw this huge caterpillars in our garden, they were longer than my palm, and had a unicorn like horn- they were beautiful.

19) was boasted to about wealth by a wet eared youth (though he must be my age atleast),  who thought having expensive cars and advertising that fact was brilliant.

20)saw and touched a read Saint Bernard dog - that was exciting. my only question being, how did the poor creature feel in this horribly hot climate?

21) baked my own pizza base and pizza in the solar cooker.

ok ,enough of counting things, let's just see some little delightful things shall we?

a few pictures from the show shooting,and the restaurant that I chose.

 

and some other nice things.

 

the college corridor decorated by students.

and http://www.videofy.me/v/483850 something to make you smile.

don't you wish sometimes that we could talk to animals?

"What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected."
~Chief Seattle

over and out!