theres a cold rain falling outside, the gurgle of hot dark coffee, shobhana's chocolate brownie melting where the tongue meets the taste, the quiet of this rare evening at home and rashid khan soaring. i've seen worse days :-)
surely must be a monday today in an alternate universe. otherwise why would i be writing you this email today?! the rains taken a curved line and joined the summer and winter and i'm not complaining. the weather has been incessantly glorious this year. and theres even a winter in ettimadai. well, almost! but the sweaters and the monkey caps are out (on some), and the skin occasionally starts singing when serenaded by the cool wind for a kiss. i like the cold! the lower the temperatures drop the more i enjoy my cold water baths (and the shorter they get :-)
i have enjoyed the winters of my life though they're almost a mist in my memory now, coimbatore not really having a winter it can boast about. that cold misty morning winter fog of delhi, calcutta and now, yercaud. and the joy of snuggling in just a bit longer under the blanket :-) the hot tulsi chais of the delhi winter afternoons and the hot lemon teas of the joka winter afternoons. that seeking of the winter sun and its slowly diffusing warmth. the gloriously colored sweaters and stoles of the delhi girls, winter shopping in sarojini nagar and connaught place, the vibrantly alive cultural scene of delhi winters, and that soft sooty dusk of winter evenings. as the temperatures dropped. and then the mist returned.
the misty fogs of winter. there were times in joka when the fog was so thick that you could eat it as ice-cream. there were nights it hung low, somewhere between the ankles and the neck. and we were all disembodied ghosts walking in the iim campus with just our heads visible. and if you were really short it could get really interesting :-)
and snow. i remember the way my bathroom slippers sunk into that soft white carpet on that first snowy winter of my life when i was visiting my brother in chicago. bathroom slippers! those were the days when nothing could separate me from my bathroom slippers, much to my families despair. that chicago snow cured that habit rather quick :-) but the snow that snow! when the snow first announces its presence in your world, it does something to you. as karan johar would say "kuch kuch hota hai"!
it was the last thursday of november the last week, and its a very special celebration in america that they call thanksgiving. wikipedia tells us that it was prinicipally a harvest festival in the us and canada, a thanksgiving for a bountiful harvest. much as in many of our own festivals in india. and as in our own festivals its a time when families get together, and feast! thanksgiving dinners are legendary, though for some reason not very popular among turkeys (:-). and we had our share of some too. wonderful multicultural memories these - american (peter saar), sri lankan (ammi), carribean-japanese (roblyn & yumi). beautiful friendships they were, that we feasted upon...
the soul of thanksgiving is of course in the thanks giving. and its a funny thing this gratitude. its taps are often rusty, they open slowly and with some effort but once open, the flow becomes unstoppable sometimes. where do you stop?! once you start truly reflecting, theres only thanksgiving, little else. shobhana just finished the book shes been writing and was working on the preface and acknowledgements recently. and that acknowledgements page just expanded and expanded! when i think of our times in ettimadai, when i really reflect upon them, then all the complaints and cribs slip away like thieves in the dark of the night. all that remains is an immense thanksgiving. how much love & respect this place has given us.
this weeks poem is yet another another return. to one of my favorite poets - e e cummings. already featured in the monday mails, e e cummings returns to put words to a familiar feeling, in ways only he can.
i thank you God for this most amazing...
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e e cummings
and thank you too. to all of you who actually wrote in to ask "hey, what happened to my monday morning mail?!" i was beginning to wonder too! but you asked, and the mail returned :-) and even i get the pleasure of reading it :-) thank you and may these mondays of all the parallel universes of our lives always be filled with this. thanksgiving.
much love, d&s |
