Clouds in the valley...

Seeing the obvious is easy. What takes effort is seeing what is beyond plain sight. As one of my managers had once said, often, it takes talent to see talent. For true value often lies right in front, but garbed in the most unobvious and unobtrusive of ways. The example need not be restricted at the workplace. Go out in the wilderness, take any sample look closely, and you are sure to have an ‘aha’ moment.  I had mine last weekend in Gerroa, a sleepy village on the NSW coast, with our simple but gorgeous stay overlooking the seven mile beach and along with it, a large swathe of wilderness, home to denizens of local birds. Cup of steaming tea in hand, seasoned with a whiff of indigo skies and drizzling rains, I looked out, trying to observe every little movement of the fauna. Not much later, I had a decent roster of Aussie birds - the overwhelmingly-coloured rainbow lorikeet, a majestic white bellied sea eagle (harangued unabashedly by the magpies), a sleekly terrific Nankeen kestre...

Summer has been very tolerant this year. There have hardly been days when temperatures have touched 40 degrees. On the contrary, there have been long spells of brooding melancholy - overcast skies, crackling thunderstorms, drizzling days and redeeming rains lingering on for day after cloudy day. For the pluviophile in me, it has been nothing short of pure monsoonal delight, the body ferrying from workplace to home, but the child-like mind already running through the muddy meadows and splashing in the rains. Unlike the locals here, whose coastal legacy has been to thrive on sunny days by the beach, I rejoice with the clouds - the sun is often too bright for me. But this is not the norm - it is an exception, with the La Nina bringing in wet summer for eastern Australia. The resulting bounty though has been phenomenal - regional and outback towns which were counting D-Day based on the number of days of water left in their reservoirs are now splashing in abundance, the muddy dying rivers n...

It is mid-summer here, and due to the La Nina effect, the otherwise arid and dry summer blitz has been gently tamed by mild weather, pleasantly interspersed by pensive clouds, sprinkling rains and a citrus sun. Yes, summer has been kind, especially after last year’s unprecedented bush fires. The vagaries of the weather have had one new impact on me – it has forced me to become more mindful of the world around. I now wake up every day and part the curtains of my bedroom, anticipating the surprise I will get to see – will it be a blistering sun staring right back, or will it be a brooding grey day? As the day passes by, and I go about on a walk, I feel myself more immersed with nature: the magpie larks are easily distinguished from their slightly larger cousins - the magpies, the breath of the hot earth alternating with the cool breeze is more easily perceived, and the shimmering play of light and shadow on the grasses makes me feel as if the earth is more alive than ever. But it is I, n...

I have come this evening at a nearby park for a stroll after work (from home). It is a pretty reserve, with manicured greens, a body of soothing water, replete with fountains and a flock of corellas on a nearby tree.  It is all very lovely, except for the fact, that despite the pristine beauty, it also seems lonely. Almost melancholic. The realisation feels a bit strange. Despite all the cloudy day beauty, I perceive loneliness, not solitude. Perhaps, we humans are programmed to align internally as per the vagaries of the exterior world.  I have seen this before - be it Kausani or Canberra, the cold just keeps people indoors, making the outer world a shade lonelier. Not just winters but also cold, dank, cloudy days such as today. I still remember, evenings turning dark as early as at 5 pm in Calcutta, immediately creating a sort of sinking feeling within, and urging to return to the warmth of home. Of course, you still had people thronging outdoors - though there would be much...

  They often ask, why do I paint you - Every year, this date Respect is good after seventy years, But the truth is we are late  Late to know your real life, Late to know your ‘death’ Now all that stays are statues, busts, And on special days, a wreath And we’ll never know what it meant to run Away to enemy lands, So much pain, to grant a bit Of freedom in our hands And even when you came you saw, Liberty - a bunch of lies, Nothing left to tell the truth You turned gumnaami in our eyes In seventy years, the world has changed Why then your tale to fuss? Because what is same, despite the times Is the battle inside us And it’s not to just not forget your life, These strokes of brush and hue, It’s to give us hope that perhaps there is, In us, a bit of you… 23rd Jan’2021

I took a deep breath and looked all around me, my mind desperately trying to cling on to the 360 degree HD wallpaper images on display on a crisp sunny, cloudless day. There, on the right were the twin peaks of Mount Lidgbird and Mount Gower, towering over the islands like ubiquitous sentinels. On my left, faraway glistened the sparkling white Old Settlement’s Beach, while in front was the languorous lagoon beach, children of all ages splashing in its shallow waters, while I bobbed on a glass-bottomed boat on the turquoise lagoon itself, marvelling at the massive green turtles that moved beneath nonchalantly. I was at Lord Howe Island (pronounced as ‘How’) on a tropical island vacation - can ‘holiday’ sound any more envious than this in the Pacific? Unknown to most travellers to Down Under, and perhaps even to a large proportion of locals, Lord Howe Island is NSW’s best kept secret. While Covid has crippled international travel altogether, and is intermittently maiming domestic travel ...

What strange days these are -  You might even think me a little insane, But am I really glad to hear,  My neighbours above sing a song again There was a time, not long ago ‘Noise!’ I would cry, in anger, plight ‘Have they nothing better?’  A bunch of friends, one Saturday night And every weekend I would drear, That the noisy friends would join anew, Bete noire, I would grumble, Alas, good times and friends: they are always few Then, the exile got worse, the summer cold Solitude felt lonelier than never before, And empty were the indigo skies,  With no more clouds and no downpour  The silence hard, the world had changed -  Unforgiving was the melancholy, Give me something from the past I knew -  That jostling world, where could you be? As an island,then, I got to see The beauty of the waves that splashed, All that I thought of noise before, Came back to me as sound, unabashed Then, when silence killed just all the days, I heard the guitar strum on a Sat...