The fragrant cloud

I love birds a lot. My compound is full of birds due to the high level of tolerance from my side. Waking up to the sound of the chirping of birds early in the morning used to be so refreshing. However, of late, they are becoming too friendly. Sparrows are the most numerous. They are busy throughout the day. They will take every opportunity to enter my house and will come in pairs. The heavy curtains are a haven for them. They will hide behind these curtains and try to build a nest there, of all the places. If I see them inside a room, they will be so scared of my presence that they cannot find their way out of the room and I must be quiet so that they will calm down and retrace their steps. Early morning, some beautiful flower buds will be waiting for the sun to come up so that they can blossom in the sunlight. By that time, my mischievous friends would pluck them off...making me boil inside! I don't know what they do with these buds, just dropping them there neither using it for f...

One evening, my kids were playing in our courtyard and I was busy with my household chores. It was rainy season and the rain had stopped that evening but there were puddles here and there. Suddenly my younger son fell down on the concrete floor and cried. I rushed to him but he cried so much and could not tell me where he was hurt. He was four years old then. I searched all over his body but could not find any injury. I carried him inside and then my elder son suddenly pointed out a faint reddish graze on his forehead. I tried to examine him for any signs of head injury but he became drowsy and slept. After some time, he woke up and started vomiting. I was quite alarmed. He had also taken a packet of juice before sleeping. Whether it was a case of indigestion or a manifestation of head injury was hard to decide.  I am not a neurosurgeon but for any doctor when it concerns your own flesh and blood, decisions are bound to be biased. I decided to take him to a hospital where CT sca...

At bedtime, my two sons would demand only one story, the story of the flying bed. All other stories had been exhausted, our own folktales, the universal fairy tales, spy stories, robot stories, stories about famous people, etc., etc..I even made them listen to online stories but the clear voice and intonation made them even more awake than drowsy. So, finally, at my wit's end, I invented the story of the flying bed. The big bed where the three of us slept was the main theme of the story and we three would be the great adventurers. We took along the Genie too, quietly sleeping inside his lamp at the footend of the bed. We would be Captain Columbus(regardless of my gender), Captain Optimus and Captain Maximus...no lieutenants except for Genie, our errand boy. Our bed would be flying every night on an important mission and the boys would be so excited to be on a new adventure every night and I would be wracking my brain creating new episodes night after night. Episode 1: Setting the b...

We never know when our wish will be granted. But when it happens it takes you unawares and then you start probing your memory trying to recollect what else you wished for. After I finished school and stood at the threshold of a more responsible phase of life, I was quite uncertain as to what I should do. All along I have wanted to be something else but it was better to follow the road usually taken by most people than take the one less trodden...or so I thought remembering the poem 'The road not taken' by Robert Frost. So, like most of my friends, I also decided to take the entrance test for studying medicine. However, with my mind wavering this way and that, on the day of the test, I woke up at 3 am in the morning and found that there were so many things I still did not know. But, I decided that I had to clear this test. And who else to turn to at a crucial moment like that? I prayed to God and made a bargain with him. Hmmm...you must be thinking I was out of my mind. I p...

I have a little pond at home which serves as the perennial source of water for my flowers throughout the year. There are also many small fish in the pond which make a routine show of underwater ballet in the morning sun everyday. They have become so used to my harmless presence that they have given up their habit of deep diving the moment they sense my footstep. So, it is peaceful co-existence now...fish, flowers and me. One fine morning, as I bent to collect water from my pond, I saw a strange thing. A long beaded thread like thing, black in colour, each bead about 1 mm in diameter. I tried to touch it with the bucket but it was so slippery. I could not get it out of the water, so I left it there. On further analysis, I came to the conclusion that it must be fish spawn!  There's a friend in my office who recently built a small pond in his house. He bought small fish and put in his pond but all of them died, thereby losing a small sum and a little bit of his enthusiasm in the ...

My mother's hand lens: when I visited my mom's place this time I found a small hand lens kept so carefully in a small pouch and an atlas. I asked her what she was doing with the atlas and the lens. What she replied was way beyond my imagination. My brother lives in the US. Every time he changes his address, my mom is finding out the address from the atlas with the help of the hand lens and studying the places nearby. Every night when everyone else is asleep she is busy with this pastime of hers. She says this makes her feel closer to her son who is far away. For me it opened my eyes to another aspect of a mother's love for her child. Unconditional and unfathomable. All this time we have failed to see the longing inside due to the brave front she puts up.

The sound of the loom: l shifted to a new neighborhood recently. Everything is new about the place- the lifestyle, the priorities, even the color of the day and the sound of the night! Something which I have not heard for a very long time caught my ears late at night and early in the morning too. The sound of the loom. The womenfolk, the brave homemakers toiling till late at night and getting up and working again before everyone gets up....to keep the hearth burning! It made me feel very sad at first..to think how many more hurdles one has to cross to enjoy the basic comforts of life, which someone else is taking for granted elsewhere! It also made me feel guilty somehow  if I did not keep on doing something. Then, I realized that I was witnessing the basic core of womanhood..endurance... the courage to fight against all odds! Ladies of the world, my humble salute to all of you! Happy new year to all of you and the men and women you nurture in this world! .

The tortoise: My elder son is now five years old. Much as I want to cling onto the memories of his baby days, each new day brings out something new from the repertoire of mother-son relationship. Lately, he's been asking which animal lives the longest. I say it's the tortoise which lives for 200yrs as my GK is limited and I don't know more than that. Again, he says that he will become a scientist and make a medicine so that his parents and grandparents will never grow old as he is always worried that we wont be there when he grows up. Then, last night we were brushing our teeth together in the bathroom before going to bed. Suddenly he asked, 'Mama, when I am 100 yrs old, with whom will I be brushing my teeth?' I felt sad because he looked sad. So, I said, 'with the tortoise', jokingly, of course! Because, both of us know that when he is 100 yrs old, I won't be around. Just praying that you live up to 100 yrs, my son!