Memento vivere!

Last night there was a feast for eyes and nose in my backyard. Four flowers of Brahma-kamala (apparently also known as "Night Queen") bloomed. And there was a brilliant blue moon too!


The flower started blooming around 10 p.m and had withered by around 1 a.m. These images were captured around 11 p.m. This particular plant gives delicately white flowers, though another sub-species is known to give pink-tinged flowers.

Pictures were taken with a Canon EOS 350D, using a 28-80 lens.


Comments are welcome. If anyone knows the botanical name of the flower, please let me know!

More photos are available in the album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/meera.hr/Brahmakamala

My Tuesday with Morrie

It was simply unputdownable, was Tuesdays with Morrie. Mitch Albom talks about his talks with his old professor, Morrie Schwartz, as the latter crosses that last bridge between life and death with ALS leading the way. Over the fourteen Tuesdays, they talk about all those subjects that any thinking person would have grappled with sometime. Death, fear of aging, feeling sorry for oneself, money, marriage, love, emotions…those conundrums that don't seem to have a formula to arrive at a solution no matter how hard you try.

Take Death, for instance. Each one of us knows that we have been on this planet, with a return ticket booked - we merely don't know the date on it. Yet, it is one of the most ironical facts of life that we merely treat death as if it's an something happening to others which we are immune to. If I were to know that I would die today, I most possibly would act differently. That's what Morrie talks about - about that little bird which sits on your shoulder and asks, "Is it today? Is today the day I die?". By preparing for Death, one prepares for Life. By facing death, one appreciates life more..the sunset, the music, the laughter, the whole caboodle. It's easier too, to set aside that ego and say that Sorry, utter that Thank You and express that love one has for one's kith and kin. Starting with Covey's "Begin with the end in mind", the same idea has been stated in numerous ways by a lot of self-help gurus but I now remember a verse in Sanskrit, which splendidly encases the idea :

करिष्यामि करिष्यामि करिष्यामीति चिन्तया /

मरिष्यामि मरिष्यामि मरिष्यामीति विस्मृतम् //

"I'll do it, I'll do it [some day], I'll do it", so thinking, one even forgets "I'll die, I'll die, I'll die".

So, little bird, is it today?

On the suds of soap operas

I never did stand a chance in the "Operation Remote Control". Ever since the sacrosanct hours, between 6.30 and 10 pip emma, have been taken over by soap operas of various hues and flavours, watching the pyramids on the Discovery channel or watching someone's Biography on History channel is a lost cause. One only has to walk down one of the roads in a residential area and depending on which is the language of the majority in the area, one gets to hear the title song of the favoured soap. There used to be a time when I'd return home at 9 and would listen to the collective chant of the ubiquitous Ashwath going 'Maya mruga, maya mruga..'. or after a while later, "Kyon ki saas bhi kabhi...".

I kept wondering what is it about these highly dramatised and maudlin serials that coerce folks to glue their orbs to the tube, until one day when I suddenly discovered myself asking my mother, "Now did that chap get convicted in the Chinerika case?". I was so utterly dismayed at myself and in retrospect, I think I came to appreciate what consummate players for the psychology of the individuals are these director chappies. Unbeknownst to myself, this gooey serial, the characters and the story, had grown on me like a weed, even though I was viewing it passively.

• First of all, what starts off this feeding frenzy is the basic human instinct of deriving solace from the witnessing the travails of other human beings. Tulsi (for pic, vide supra ) of KKSBKBT (my knowledge here is strictly hearsay and that probably is heresy to lot of folks) is that great Bharatiya naari who undergoes one fiery test after another. The middle-class heroes and heroines of T.N.Seetharam - ditto and ditto. There possibly is something very consoling about seeing a python swallowing your fellow explorer and while mere leeches are having a go at you. The fact that these characters facing the wrath of fate are virtual doesn't seem to matter. Schadenfreude (yes, that's what the verbose fellers call you folks who seem to go into raptures, albeit timidly, when witnessing how persecuted your lead character of soap is by the prosecution counsel and bless your soul that there are characters who are more unfortunate than you) in all its protean manifestations infests the id rather thoroughly.
• Secondly, and I personally feel that this is a milder but, in a sense, a more dangerous cause, there is a curiosity about what happens next. I should know, for, I had fallen prey to this one and it took one deuce of an effort to extricate myself. After all, that carefully created cliffhanger at the end of each episode is the director's way of ensuring that even the most bovine of storylines has an ovine following of staunch viewership. One cause feeding the other, ad infinitum, ensures that idiot box continues to enjoy a goopy gaping at it as a matter of routine.
• Thirdly there is another element which might cause people to go into throes of agony when asked to miss an episode after they have fed on this enough to internalise it. Craving for a break from the ennui of daily life, viewers take up living vicariously through these characters. It's that they'd have take a personal interest in these characters on the screen, living in a make-believe world where seeing 'their' character in a state of bliss wrests sighs of contentment from the audience and any worry furrowing the shapely brows of the actor derives indignation.
• Fourth and the rarest reason I've heard is that the goggle box playing out these soaps somehow give a feeling of normalcy and even a touching of base with reality. I personally can't understand this one at all, but for people who inhabit their dream castles day in and day out, some soap with even a hint of distorted reality might be the terra firma they're groping for.

Most of these soaps basically have all the elements of drama - tears, joy, mystery, extramarital affairs, filial love (and hatred), revenge et cetera et cetera - and the writers simply close their eyes, pick a fistful of these indiscriminately and generously sprinkle it around. Whatever their good effects, the question, of course, is "Quo Vadis, Viewer?"

I just finished reading The Alchemist.

Golly! What a book!

The boy, remaining nameless through the novel albeit being the main character, is so familiar and yet, it's the Alchemist who acts as his friend, philosopher and guide, who plays the extremely crucial role. The fear of leaving one's comfort zone, daring to dream, the lessons learnt en route, that one moment when one comes so near to giving it all up, learning to listen to one's heart - the list goes on. One can find parallels in one's own life so very easily. I guess that is what makes this book a classic.

Quoth Einstein "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle". For the boy, it certainly turned out to be so. In an estimably simple language does the Alchemist outline what happens when one doesn't go after one's dream. I certainly feel that this fable, treated as an extended metaphor, is eminently practical and gives us just that bit of extra hope that there is only one way to live and that is to pursue one's dreams. And as likely as not, we will come back to where we started but with a fresh perspective.

I can't help but remember T.S.Eliot's words here :

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.