Did you take your vitamins today?

"A caterpillar is letting itself down on a thread, twirling slowly like a rope artist, spiraling towards his chest. It's a luscious, unreal green, like a gumdrop, and covered with tiny bright hair. Watching it, he feels a sudden, inexplicable surge of tenderness and joy. Unique, he thinks. There will never be another caterpillar just like this one. There will never be another such moment of time, another such conjunction. These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. - Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003) 

These caterpillars are from Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai. It is purely due to a lack of effort that at the moment I am unable to call them by their given names. That is my one failing. Even though for years I have been captivated by caterpillars. As proof I present a post I wrote sometime back.

The Inconsequent Wild Roses

The complete photo album is here: Wild Roses

Henri Rousseau, the French painter best known for his paintings depicting elaborate jungle scenes and exotic landscapes, had never visited a jungle. In fact, he never left France. His inspiration came from illustrated books of famous expeditions, the botanical gardens of Paris and stuffed wild animals in the museums. Also perhaps, a desire to escape the banality of modern existence. In his living years he was ridiculed because his jungle paintings were 'mere' fantasies without any regard to geography or even a sense of proportion; his 'exotic' imaginings. Even though he steadfastly described himself as 'one of France's best realist painter'. These contradictory reactions to his art were precisely the reasons why he became famous after his death. His paintings are beautiful for not only what they depict but also for what the particular manner of depiction evokes.

In India the jungle of our mythologies and bedtime stories is more real than the one that is a short train ride away. The peacock after pecking at the open garbage dump, may settle for the night on the Neem tree in our suburban neighbourhoods but the one that dances underneath that flowering tree with parrots and bulbuls next to a stream overflowing with lotuses is more alive to our senses. We have no desire to see because we know how it feels. At times it seems even our perceptions are preordained.

The first word that comes to mind when confronted with the English landscape is agreeable, even polite. However, some miles down, one often comes upon a dramatic dialogue between the lone tree and the raging winds. For a few moments even the sheep look on in suspended animation. The woods here have been called tame*. There are no tigers coughing at twilight, no cobras coiling in the shade of the banyan. But to a child's 'alluring eye' as Louis MacNeice writes, they are 'a kingdom free from time and sky'. Only to appear tame again as the child grows up– each moored to a village with its 'inconsequent wild roses'.

In all the instances mentioned above to my mind's eye the most alluring is the moment when the wild rose becomes 'inconsequent'. How and when and by what alchemy does this transformation transpire? What catalyst, what reagent is at work here? And in the end result if something is gained, then what is lost?

Henri Rousseau's jungle paintings are here.

*Woods by Louis MacNeice

My father who found the English landscape tame
Had hardly in his life walked in a wood,
Too old when first he met one; Malory's knights,
Keats's nymphs or the Midsummer Night's Dream
Could never arras the room, where he spelled out True and Good
With their interleaving of half-truths and not-quites.

While for me from the age of ten the socketed wooden gate
Into a Dorset planting, into a dark
But gentle ambush, was an alluring eye;
Within was a kingdom free from time and sky,
Caterpillar webs on the forehead, danger under the feet,
And the mind adrift in a floating and rustling ark

Packed with birds and ghosts, two of every race,
Trills of love from the picture-book---Oh might I never land
But here, grown six foot tall, find me also a love
Also out of the picture-book; whose hand
Would be soft as the webs of the wood and on her face
The wood-pigeon's voice would shaft a chrism from above.

So in a grassy ride a rain-filled hoof-mark coined
By a finger of sun from the mint of Long Ago
Was the last of Lancelot's glitter. Make-believe dies hard;
That the rider passed here lately and is a man we know
Is still untrue, the gate to Legend remains unbarred,
The grown-up hates to divorce what the child joined.

Thus from a city when my father would frame
Escape, he thought, as I do, of bog or rock
But I have also this other, this English, choice
Into what yet is foreign; whatever its name
Each wood is the mystery and the recurring shock
Of its dark coolness is a foreign voice.

Yet in using the word tame my father was maybe right,
These woods are not the Forest; each is moored
To a village somewhere near. If not of to-day
They are not like the wilds of Mayo, they are assured
Of their place by men; reprieved from the neolithic night
By gamekeepers or by Herrick's girls at play.

And always we walk out again. The patch
Of sky at the end of the path grows and discloses
An ordered open air long ruled by dyke and fence,
With geese whose form and gait proclaim their consequence,
Pargetted outposts, windows browed with thatch,
And cow pats - and inconsequent wild roses.

Light and Darkness

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. ― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

The photo album is here: Light and Darkness

The Woman Who Stares at Birds

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 
 
While the first part of this aphorism, perhaps, is a caution to activists of all manner and fashion, it is the second part that I can attest to. For I have stared long at birds, and the birds have stared back at me. Though in 99% of the cases it is the birds that have noti

ced me first, what with me being nothing but a clumsy ape.

In the process I am most certain we have gazed a bit into each other too.

I can almost see the question form on your lips, “And what have you learnt?” I could counter with a question of my own, “Does every life experience need to end in a lesson learnt?” For if we gaze, howsoever briefly, into the human world learning– as in acquiring knowledge or skills– wouldn’t be our shining beacon. Though for a bird acquiring knowledge and skill is often a matter of life and death.

But staring at birds has made me realize a few things about birds and about humans. Birds aren’t indomitable. Their life too is all about struggle and adaptation. No less than the life of any human. Their songs may appear to be joyous and rapturous, even effortless, but like any artist they are almost killing themselves to produce beauty: Pouring huge amounts of energy and a collection of past experience of generations to distill a few notes of sheer brilliance.

If we could suspend our arrogance, our sense of superiority, for just an instance then perhaps happiness would not be a pursuit. Nor the end point of all our pursuits.

The Birds: Painted Stork, Purple Sunbird and a very wet House Sparrow.

Also would like to add that the facebook page will feature more photography while the blog will feature longer writing pieces.

To whomsoever it may concern

 
Four years and 300 plus posts later the blog now also has a facebook page. Maybe you'd like to come by and say hello: https://www.facebook.com/SometimesIWriteSometimesIAm
Thank you all for stopping by, reading and commenting. It has been hugely encouraging.

Smiles of a Summer Day

Cloudy

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.*

Almost three years back I did a post on clouds, which has gone on to become one of the most visited posts on the blog. In part, it is because of the poem by Billy Collins. In part, because it alludes to Constable and his masterly cloud studies. Also, I hope, in part, because of the photographs that accompany the text. But mostly I think it is because it concerns clouds.

Weather, as the stereotype goes, is one of the things that people in this part of the globe are most obsessed with. Or more specifically the presence, or the fervently hoped absence, of clouds.  And as with all stereotypes people here sometimes confirm to it too. The operative word being sometimes, not all the time. Especially, at times like this when the summer is said to be the wettest in recorded history. Though most of the time they wax eloquent about it all– the raging winds, the falling rain, the wandering clouds, the cornflower blue skies– in pictures, and in words.

Cloudy. The word often refers to things murky, obscure and difficult to understand. In primary school the water cycle, the originator of clouds, was one of the easiest ways to understand the interconnectedness among all things on earth. A simple diagram with a few squiggles and arrows was all that was needed to make clear one of the most irrefutable truths about all life.

*From The Cloud, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelly. The complete poem is here. Shelly's sentient cloud is a pleasure to behold as it moves along its earthly journey– from birth to death to renewal, constantly transforming itself and all that it comes in contact with.

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,

There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

Limits, a poem by Jorge Luis Borges (From The Self and the Other)
The sign in the last photograph roughly reads," Those who have a strong desire to reach moksha will find the path (anyhow)".

London Rain

The rain of London pimples
The ebony street with white
And the neon lamps of London
Stain the canals of night
And the park becomes a jungle
In the alchemy of night.

My wishes turn to violent
Horses black as coal--
The randy mares of fancy,
The stallions of the soul--
Eager to take the fences
That fence about my soul.

Across the countless chimneys
The horses ride and across
The country to the channel
Where warning beacons toss,
To a place where God and No-God
Play at pitch and toss.

Whichever wins I am happy
For God will give me bliss
But No-God will absolve me
From all I do amiss
And I need not suffer conscience
If the world was made amiss.

Under God we can reckon
On pardon when we fall
But if we are under No-God
Nothing will matter at all,
Arson and rape and murder
Must count for nothing at all.

So reinforced by logic
As having nothing to lose
My lust goes riding on horseback
To ravish where I choose,
To burgle all the turrets
Of beauty as I choose.

But now the rain gives over
Its dance upon the town,
Logic and lust together
Come dimly tumbling down,
And neither God nor No-God
Is either up or down.

The argument was wilful,
The alternatives untrue,
We need no metaphysics
To sanction what we do
Or to muffle us in comfort
From what we did not do.

Whether the living river
Began in bog or lake,
The world is what was given,
The world is what we make
And only we can discover
Life in the life we make.

So let the water sizzle
Upon the gleaming slates,
There will be sunshine after
When the rain abates
And rain returning duly
When the sun abates.

My wishes now come homeward,
Their gallopings in vain,
Logic and lust are quiet,
Once more it starts to rain.
Falling asleep I listen
To the falling London rain. 

London Rain, a poem by Louise MacNeice.
(Glenn Patterson in a BBC profile of Louise MacNeice says he "captured the essence of those rare fleeting moments when everything seems to come together, to make sense"– such an apt description of his lyrical poetry.)

In the begining there was the word

and some time back there was this post.

Lets pretend nothing bad ever happens.

Even if it does, it happens to others, far away.

Other lives like so many species of flies.

Each distinct and separate from us.

Lets pretend that words are living–

Poetry saves lives. These squiggles have depth and meaning.

Lets pretend art is beauty. And beauty is our saviour.

We shall rage against the night for beauty. And only beauty.

Lets pretend every dissenting voice is a cynic.

A miasma. A pebble in the eye.

We shall write them words full of beauty.

See. Lets pretend they shall. 

Lets pretend everyone else is stupid.

Lets pretend we get depressed

because no one understands what we understand.

We see things that no one else sees.

We shall collect words that speak to us.

We shall read more. Every sentence, every paragraph

another brick in our immaculate comprehension.

Lets pretend this is the true purpose of life.

Not another Bob Dylan concert

Just because we bought your stuff doesn’t mean we owe you anything.

Flash back: You are at a Bob Dylan concert. And it is awful. It is so awful that you feel like recording it and re-playing it back to him in an attempt to make him appreciate what you are going through. It is so awful that you close your eyes in an attempt to block the thought of all the money you have given him over the years, not to mention the small fortune you’ve spent to be here along with all these other suckers. You try not to think of how far the cost of the ticket would have gone–– grocery for a couple of weeks or more, the tube fare for the month, a (minuscule) part of the down payment on a new flat, even a meaningless bauble for I, me, myself. For you’ve had it up to here subsiding other people’s lifestyle. At the very least you’ll go home and Google ‘Henry Timrod’.

But the hype like an iron clamp will grip your throat and even though people are getting up during the songs to refill their glasses to drown their sorrow, they will give you hard, meaningful glances. As if they’ve identified you as the weakest link. For they’ve worked long and hard on what they’ll put up on facebook along with blurry pictures of Dylan (in the same, white hat always) seen from, what appears to be many, many miles away. (Is he even there?) And no one can take that away from them. Damn it! After this they deserve something. Anything.

Was ‘mumblecore*’ invented to describe the brutality being unleashed on stage? And the eyes turn back towards you; smoldering holes in your back. You have been scarred for life.

But it’s al’right, Ma. I was already bleeding.

Flash forward:

You, “Dylan is playing at Hop Farm this summer.”

Me, “Yeah. Right.”

Both together, “Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Tears of laughter. Over and out.

*Nope. It is a term used to describe low-budget independent American films of early 2000's. Do they have anything in common with Bob Dylan? Answer: Well, you've heard Dylan muttering on stage. Now would you call him a 'slacker'?

Marginalia

Marginalia: the scribbles and doodles on the margins of books. First recorded use of the word is in 1819 in Blackwood’s Magazine.

Fermat’s Last Theorem is possibly the most famous marginalia. Around 1637 Fermat wrote, what is considered his Last Theorem, in the margin of his copy of the Arithmetica next to Diophantus' sum-of-squares problem ending with the words, “I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.” He never wrote about the proof ever again. Till 1995, when it was finally proven, Fermat's Last Theorem was considered the most difficult problem in Mathematics.

Samuel T. Coleridge’s marginalia, the scribbles he made in the margins of other people's books, is published in five volumes.

A secondhand book on science bought from Broadway Market Bookstore travels the seven seas just because of the dedication scribbled on the opening page by a 9 year old in 1936. One-dimensional flowers and butterflies pop out from dairies that haven’t been opened in ages. Characters with their eyes about to burst out, the same toothy donkey, extra-terrestrial beings, anatomically implausible birds, little girls with triangular bodies, the occasional dog, more flowers than one can count, rudderless boats, esoteric line drawings of nothing– are scattered all around the house, living within the pages of various books.

But our marginalia is cloistered mostly in notebooks and diaries. Any conversation we are having with the text is not recorded for posterity in the margins of the book being read. We somehow never got to the stage of leaving a mark on books like a dog does on a hydrant.* That is something that is encountered only in books found in second-hand bookstores or the one’s borrowed from the library. In case of the latter various found objects––airline boarding passes, laundry and ATM receipts,  unidentifiable food stains, email address noted on torn edges of envelops––add to the mystifying dialogue.

All this, though, pales in the face of the scribbles of overworked monks and copyists. Michael Camille even wrote a book about it. The 'amusing doodles' found in the margins of the illuminated texts shine a light on the life of the 'others'– the underbelly of society. The marginalia found in medieval manuscripts, overwhelming feature the grotesque and the profane, and seem to subvert the message of the texts they appear on the margin's of. However, they often not only uphold, but also reinforce the conventional, rigid hierarchies. Or as Camille writes, “the edges of discourse...always return us to the rules of the center.” (Suffice to say a longer explanation would require going into among other things the nature of and the relationship between the sacred and the profane through the ages, which is way beyond the intention and scope of this post.)

Then there are the modern day scholars scribbling in the margins of much loved/hated texts in college libraries.  Some content to express their feelings through the amount of energy expended in underlining the fateful lines. Others making “in-jokes” that in just a couple of years will seem redundant if not completely absurd. Though some jokes, mostly involving the grotesque and the profane, seem to live long and prosper.

*Tara Bray Smith

Afterword: Of course not everyone is enthused by marginalia. For me personally, food stains on books are a cause of great agony. For libraries marginalia, of any and every sort, is an act of vandalism.

For those enthralled by marginalia, more can be found in a book about readers writing in books. H J Jackson, an editor of Coleridge’s poems (which could explain her fascination with the subject), scours though books and the annotations made by readers, famous and obscure, over the last three centuries in an attempt to cover the history, psychology and the ‘dark side’ of marginalia and brings into focus the war between the ‘annotators’ and the ‘bibliophiles’.

Or else, here is Billy Collins reading his poem titled Marginalia, which incidentally is the only instance in which I find food stains on books beautiful.

An Afternoon in the Stacks

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

- An Afternoon in the Stacks, a poem by William Stafford

Why it is better to watch a Fellini film rather than logging onto facebook

Just the other day I realized that facebook is like a public square– a public square from a scene from a film by Federico Fellini. We had just watched Fellini’s I clowns and so, naturally one’s mind was sharp as a razor and attuned to all sorts of metaphors and comparisons, invented or real.

Recollect the opening of Amarcord– the burning of the ‘Old Witch of Winter’ and celebration of the arrival of spring. Now remember the people milling around in the square: the town idiot, the blind accordion player ridiculed by the schoolboys, the buxom and stout middle-aged tobacconist, the street vendor who is an incorrigible liar, the town lawyer who has a penchant for narrating the town’s history (even when no one is listening), the mindlessly exhibitionist motorcycle rider clad in black and of course, the town beauty. Not to forget the odd nymphomaniac. Well, that’s the average person’s facebook wall. A public square in a sexually repressed provincial town in a film by Fellini.

The way one would behave in a public square then, it seems, is the ideal way to behave on facebook. Look at the displays in the shop windows, enter only if you see something that catches your eye, there is no obligation to say you ‘like’ something even if you like it, smile if someone makes an eye contact and speak only when you are spoken too. In short, try not to be the village idiot standing on the soapbox mouthing inanities or the motorcycle rider ceaselessly vrooming to and fro in a pathetic attempt to catch everyone’s attention. Most importantly, only visit when you need something or  when something special is happening. Even then chances are it wouldn’t be half as fantastic or rewarding as a Fellini film.

That’s why it is always better to watch a Fellini film rather than logging onto facebook.

Love is not all

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.

Love is not all, a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

A beautiful reading of the poem accompanied by paintings of Edvard Munch is available here.

Rainy Day Thoughts

I am holding Granta's May edition titled ‘Britain’ in my hands, and staring at the cover all I can think of is:

And the crack in the tea cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.*

How strange this connection between man and poetry. 

If you have ever read a poem and felt the lines spoke to you; they articulated your thoughts and hopes then you'd understand why 'In relation to the future, a poem is like a note sealed in a bottle and thrown into the sea'. Charles Simic in a recent post in NY review of books states, “If poetry is not the most utopian project ever devised by human beings, I don’t know what is”. You’ll have to read Simic’s post to work out how (or even whether) this sentiment applies to your understanding of poetry. For words and the constant misunderstanding of the intent behind them could, if one is pressed for a quick response, be summarized as the sum total of the drama that is human existence. Though one would, perhaps, end with a flourish– ‘all existence is meaningless’.

Talking about meaning and misunderstanding, or should it be called different ways of understanding, the poem that comes to mind is Yeats ‘The Second Coming’**. Lines from this poem get quoted with regular frequency whenever the world has faced a crisis in recent history, just like Keynes during an economic crisis. And just like Robert Frost and the end of 'The Road Not Taken' (it is the sigh– I shall be telling this with a sigh––that makes one pause and consider the road not taken), here too it is the last few lines that have been widely interpreted.

Though if you read the poem carefully and ‘see’ the vast image brought forth by the Spiritus Mundi (spirit of the world) would you still believe that the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem could be our saviour? And if you read about Yeats and his theory of gyres then the doubts will recede further.

Why does a poet write? Why does a reader read? Sometimes these seem like questions worth considering, though most of the time a person pens a few lines and moves on. Another person reads them and moves on. Just like life.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.***

*W.H. Auden, As I walked out one evening.

**TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Interesting trivia: The Second Coming has not only been quoted in many books, comics and music albums, but also has been the source of the titles of some very popular books:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

***The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald.

Quit Your Books

Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

The Tables Turned, a poem by William Wordsworth.
The singing bird is the Chaffinch, not the throstle (song thrush) mentioned in the poem. 

A season by another name...but just as sweet

In another corner of the earth it is monsoon that ushers in the season of flowers and you feel like whistling even though your shoe is full of slush.* After the May flowers are done with their fiery display a cloud chased by another and then another comes bursting through the sky. And the forecast promises rain. And more rain. Days upon days of rain. As buckets of rain begin to fall, the children start dancing in the street their faces uplifted to the sky.

In another part of the city a different kind of celebration is underway.  Every walk through overgrown, dense vegetation bustling with life is too put it blandly an adventure. And if, like me, you have an irrational fear of snakes often a heart stopping one. But the raindrops come falling and flowers, some only half awake, nod in tandem. From high up in the trees the koel (cuckoo) sings a– in part melancholy, in part joyous– tune; much like the monsoon state of mind.

Thus in another hemisphere, in another era, a poet puts his pen on paper in praise of the darkening skies and clouds bulging with the promise of rain.

Wildflowers in order of appearance:
Celosia argentea (known as cockscomb in the gardens).
Argeya nervosa or woolly morning glory or elephant creeper (leaves look like elephant's ears), native to India. Known in Hindi as ghav bel (gugguli).
Forest turmeric (wild haldi– the first flowers of the monsoon).
Hibiscus tertaphyllus (wild bhindi/lady finger/okra).
Commelina or dayflowers.
Costus speciosus (crape ginger, known as keukand in Hindi).
Smilax fruit. The plant is known as kumarika in Hindi.
Trichosanthes (belongs to cucumber family; same family as gourd and pumpkin).
Red Java tea a medicinal plant native to India.

All flowers identified with help from Flowers of India and SGNP flickr group.

*Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. – Doug Larson

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

So it begins again. A walk in a grassy meadow. A violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye*. A handful of pictures. And then hours of poring over field guides and a long world wide web search. First comes resemblance, then a mass of confusion. What's the difference between a harebell and a bluebell? If you had been paying attention you'd know by now that the knapweed is nothing like the melancholy thistle. The Astragalus genus (common name milk-vetch) has about 3000 species. And the Asteraceae group has more than 22750 species spread across 1620 genera and 12 subfamilies. That includes the aster, daisy, marigolds, chrysanthemums, zinnias, dahlias and sunflowers. If that isn't a humbling encounter with biodiversity, then what is? Finally along comes a name and with it an introduction to  the fascinating world of what we call 'wildflowers' affording us a tiny glimpse into the other far more enduring and enthralling world wide web. The one where Lucy and a violet by a mossy stone not only share a common ground but also a common fate. Or as Shakespeare wrote, one touch of nature makes the whole world kin*.

Wildflowers in order of appearance: scabious (rare to picture without a butterfly or a moth feasting on its rich nectar), early marsh orchid, mountain buttercup, bladder campion, harebell, hawkweed, Astragalus monspessulanus(?), Cat's ear (with the background blur composed of red clover, white daisy and yellow kidney vetch).

*She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways by William Wordsworth a poem that instilled a lifelong search for unappreciated beauty epitomized by wildflowers.
** From Troilus and Cressida