To Delhi, with love

Delhi's scarlets (Day 2 in the city)

The resplendent scarlet caught my attention as I drove through Delhi. The flamboyant color stood apart amidst the ruinous quarters in the city. There is something about those scarlets that stir the deepest in you...

And not long after, I was scrounging the ground for fallen buds as if picking memories from the past. Remember those good times - A distant scarlet covered road, beauties on the ground... Sometimes picked for silly meaningless games and sometimes squashed by a wanton spirit. They were there as the school year began as if celebrating with us in our new beginnings. The scarlets challenging the ruthless sun of summers taught us to dream big dreams. The slow twirling dance to the ground taught us about the joy in letting go... Days went by under those Gulmohar trees where life led us in gay abandon.

As the flash drive moved in slow motion, the wind stirred us up.. The scarlets started falling to the ground as I gazed at the random motion.. I heard a distant voice from the present running after the falling petals. Sehar was trying to catch a falling flower for her friend, Melody.. I smiled and not long after we were running and jumping on the street around the Gulmohar tree... Tired, we decided to sit on a bench. We gazed at the tall leaves touching the sky and there they were again - the scarlets challenging the ruthless summers of Delhi and the falling flowers twirling the sweet tango. And this time they had a story to tell............

Day 15 (Delhi - Sattal)

My tryst with the scarlets didn't end in Delhi. The hills beaconed us but not without telling us what we would miss back home. The scarlets bumped their heads at odd corners as we drove on NH 24 and NH 87.  At Moradabad they stood in contrast to the green city. Their presence unchallenged and they looked beautiful and at peace. At Rampur and Bilaspur the Mangoes seemed to have borrowed a little of their orange from the Gulmohars. They made an odd pair. The Mango trees poised and dense with their rich green leaves and the Gulmohars confident and brash with their scarlets. At Haldwani, the scarlets grew darker as if the fertile soil of the Himalayan foothills fed their color.. I saw my last scarlet at Kathgodham and from there we headed into the hills where there were newer trees, their identity lost in the larger than life Himalayas. The brashness of my scarlets seemed to be missing here. It lived in the city where it belonged.... It lived in the eyes of the millions teaching them to dream big dreams and it lived on the streets in a child chasing a kite..

The Himalayas envelope you everytime you go there. The sense of eternity lives there in every moment. Its difficult to leave a place where your mere existence leaves you and yet is so reaffirmed every time you gaze at the snow-capped hills. With a heavy heart I started back from Saattal - our adobe for a few days. The seven lakes were unpreturbed by my departure. They stood still in their timelessness. I was sad and the hills had nothing of that emotion shaking them.

It was a familiar tree at Kathgodham that welcomed me.. Its branches swinging with joy and the scarlets doing their twirling dance.. As I spread my hand outside the window to still that sweet tango in my palms, I knew I was about to reach home...
P.S : This is dedicated to my school and all my school friends with whom I spent endless days under the Gulmohar trees from 1982-1995....

The Truth called Love:

It was a beautiful day on my birthday and we had some awesome Thai dinner with friends. We were chatting, singing and enjoying the pleasures of life that comes with togethernss...Radha had brought a book with her about Benjamin Franklin and was reading it to all of us. She read "Benjamin Franklin lived a long time ago" It was then that THE DISCUSSION began......


Now, dying is a very difficult subject to talk about. Even as mature individuals we are in a constant endeavor to evade the topic, leave alone talk about it with our kids. Isn't this amazing - dying is the ultimate experience of life and yet how unwilling we are to even talk about it. Or is it?

Back to the story. So where was I? Yes, Radha began reading-"Benjamin Franklin lived 200 years ago" However, thats not how Sehar heard it. "Mumma, has he died", she asked. Engrossed in the moment called life I answered - "Yes Sehar he has died". I didn't know Benjamin Franklin and didn't really care about him dying. Ofcourse, my lack of compassion for Ben Franklin wasn't my real failure in that moment. My failure was my inability to comprehend my child's mind, her fears and her doubts. Sehar, who was in deep thought asked me - "Why did he die?".."Because he was old", I answered...

As if, this was exactly what she feared I would say, Sehar started crying. I heard these words amidst her incessant sobbing"Mumma, I don't want you to ever get old and I don't want you to die."

The moment had slipped quietly out of our hands into our child's teary eyes, where it popped the last question for the day.. Enough to break any parent's heart she asked "Mumma, am I going to die too? and if I do will you get a new Sehar"..

We quietly kissed her and held her tight as we slipped into the zone where our parents stood years back. We asked her to touch our heart and we touched hers. And as we did that we told her, "We all are never going to die as Mumma and Daddy will live here in your heart and you in ours.  And that's a magic spell which will keep as young, forever"..

With her fears allayed, Sehar smiled and after sometime dozed off. She held my finger tight through that night...

And thats when another truth about parenthood dawned on me - " Parenthood is not about  telling "THE TRUTH". Its about concocting stories to see a different truth"...

And as if on cue I called my parents..................

Mountains can be made of anything:

On our way to school as we turned into Main St., Sehar saw a little mountain knocking at her outside the car window. Its then that she asked me THE QUESTION. "Mumma, how are mountains made?"
Now, I love the mountains and marvel at their eternity and their ability to make you look small  but nothing in those emotions ever prepared me to answer this question. So, I decided to stump Sehar this time with a question as an answer - "So Sehar, what do you think mountains are made of?"
Sehar obviously had her take on the issue, like she always has on everything - "Mumma, mountains can be made of anything.. Like sometimes, mountains are made of snow, sometimes of sand.. Sometimes we can make them with leaves and jump on them and sometimes of flowers and smell them.. Sometimes you can put stones together and sometimes draw it on the paper like a triangle"..
Simple yet profound.. And all I could hear was the crunching of the leaves and the many drawings on the board I made as a kid... We made mountains everyday, climbed them, broke them and then made them again. Mountains never tired us, they were neither eternal nor did they ever make us look small... They were there to be made and scaled and remade........
As I heard her I decided to climb my little mountain that day. And my mountain that day was made of words. As the words popped in my head and I typed on the screen, I realised I had so many more mountains to create everyday... For mountains can be made of anything...
So which mountain did you make today?
P.S: Please answer with your mountain's details :) Should be fun!

THE SUN HAS WINGS

It was a lazy afternoon and the sun was finally blessing us with its beauty after a really long winter. I drove Sehar back from school and thinking was the last thing of my mind. Sehar however, had a very different idea of her afternoon. She was carefully watching the sun. She was quiet and thoughtful. And as we reached  the signal near the home - out she popped THE QUESTION- Mumma, the sun is following us? Can it walk? Does it have feet?
This time I wasn't going to get fooled by Science and so I decided to create a little journey out of our wondorous life. I decided to chase the sun and let Sehar guide me. Some places the sun was behind us, some places ahead of us and some places next to us. Sehar was glued to the window, nose pressed and eyes wide. She was carefully watching the sun and wondered if the sun had a wand that helped it reach places so fast. It was absolute magic. Hey, I heard you saying direction. No, no, no - don't let the educated mind fool you, it doesn't know everything. For a moment, let go and let the magic talk to you.
It was not long, before Sehar fell asleep and I took her back home. Happy with our mini adventure, I looked at the Sun and found it smiling back. It was in the game with us. I felt the warmth on the cheek and for a moment wondered if it was there, right next to me.
As expected, Sehar's mini adventure continued in her dreams and when she woke up she came running to me - "You know what Mumma, the sun doesn't have feet. Actually, it has wings, those shiny things around it, thats why it can go everywhere in the sky".
I smiled and wondered if the sun flew to me on that wild sunny afternoon...

Stumped.....

Yesterday night as we playfully hit the bed, Sehar, my 4 year old asked me THE Question - Mumma, did God create us? A question sages have pondered for ages, philosophers have written books about and scientists have spent lifetime answering. Stumped.... I really didn't know how to answer that one. My simpler self prevailed and I told her - Yes, God created us.
Being a biochemist by education, my scientific self felt guilty and I felt I need to provide a legitimate answer to this curious mind. Now isn't that what the kids book tell us?
Charles Darwin and Robert Hooke prevailed on my brain and I started talking about evolution and cells.. I told her about how life began with a single cell which evolved to make animals, plants and monkeys/apes and eventually, human beings.. Monkeys, that's funny, she laughed... Mr. Huxley, take a walk.......
I don't know what brain cell triggered the next question - Mumma, but how do they remember.. Finally, years of genetic experiments didn't go waste as I proudly spoke about Mr. Crick's DNA.. I was so proud of myself, I am educating my child in a legitimate way. DNA? Mumma, Whats that? Deoxy ribose nucleic acid... Hun.. thats a funny name.. Ha ha ha. So does it remember like I remember English and maths. I obviously didn't want to delve further into the DNA's manufacturing and supply chain and wanted to end it there.
God was a simpler answer, this is getting complex, I thought to myself.. I need to wriggle out of this one.. Sleep was taking over and my memory and age were failing me...... God, need help...Forget it Sehar, God created all of us.
Sehar thought and pondered - Mumma, so did he put the bones together, put in blood and painted the face? Well.... yes, that's what he did..
Sometimes, simplicity is so much simpler :) And we both slept...