Lucky Bamboo

Sublimation

The master of all absurdities wrote,
None comes, none goes, nothing happens,
Truer of this slow-moving life,
Than of anything else heard or seen.

The hourglass looks still apparently,
Though time moves in steady moves,
And will erase, rewrite, edit whatever was
Written with much pleasure and much pain.

Now the time has come to smile and part,
A farewell that tastes of victory and tears,
Victory that never came when dying of thirst,
A stream of delight for the tired warrior.

For there is no going back in any form,
The absurd heart knows too well,
That some solids shed no tears
Those who only sublimate.

Playing in the Rain

I want to play in the rain
Till my soul is wet with love.
I want to play in the rain
Till I hold your soul in my hands.
Through the same life spirit
That binds all beings
That brings us close
I touch your hand
And you touch mine
In silence.

Enjoyment

out beyond

Out beyond

be yourself

faith

Manual of the Warrior of Light by Paulo Coelho

Do you look at life and the universe with the wonder of a child? Do you accept failure with equanimity? Do you believe in fighting for your dreams? These are some of the questions raised by Paulo Coelho’s Manual of the Warrior of Light. This gem from one of the greatest storytellers of our time is a collection of philosophical meditations spun around the image of a warrior of light .

 The Manual was published in the newspapers as ‘Maktub’without the Prologue and the Epilogue, which connects the random meditations by providing a structure. They deal with the story of a village-boy who meets a mysterious woman at the beach who talks to him about the bells ringing from a temple beneath the sea. Years later, the same mysterious woman asks him to write about the Warrior of Light.

What is a Warrior of Light? The boy asks the woman. The woman replies that a Warrior of Light is one who understands the miracle of life, one who fights for his dreams and one who follows his dreams to reach his destiny. The boy is asked to write down the life lessons of the Warrior of Light.

The mediations deal with the life and nature of a Warrior of Light. All his mental, spiritual, social and emotional battles, his victories and defeats, his relationships with God, his companions, followers and enemies, his strategies in war are all described. At times the life lessons seem contradictory. This is because a Warrior of Light understands that everything around him is subject to change and he is competent enough to adapt strategy to situation. He is open-minded and receptive to the paradoxes of life.
Paulo Coelho’s Manual of the Warrior of Light is a quest for discovering the Warrior of Light within us.

For a sapling

Thappad

A True Gift in Green

To know the mind of woman, he has to know first, the mind of the land.

Sarah Joseph is one of the celebrated women novelists of Malayalam literature and she has he has received numerous awards and honours such as Kendra Sahitya Academy Award, Kerala Sahitya Academy Award, Vayalar Award, Cherukad Award and O.V. Vijayan Sahitya Puraskaram. Her Malayalam novel Aathi was published simultaneously with its English translation Gift in Green by Valson Thampu in 2011. In her interview with Valson Thampu, Joseph speaks about how she modelled the land of Aathi on a island Valanthakkadu in Ernakulam district of Kerala. She was amazed by the lives of the people who subsisted in fishing, picking mussels and farming Pokkali rice. They earned as much as Rs. 300 a day picking mussels but never fished for more than that as they count on the fish and mussels as their fixed deposits. The author praises the subsistence perspective of the people of Valanthakkadu by basing a novel on their simple life.

The land of Aathi is pristine covered with water on all sides. The people lived the water-life, drawing sustenance from the water and the fields. Their water-life meant that their daily immediate needs were met from earth and water as they could collect enough food to feed the whole family just by working till noon everyday. The mangroves that surrounded the land of Aathi contained plenty of fish, which the people used to catch with their bare hands. During high tide, these fish and prawns were carried across to the rice fields, from where the people caught them. They also knew the secret of growing rice in salty waters. In Aathi, people from the ancient times lived the water-life, harvesting only what they need from nature.

The destruction of the pristine, land, water and its people starts with the advent of Kumaran, a business tycoon who sees in Aathi, the means of making money. With his coming, the modes of living such as the water-life and farming are replaced by construction of buildings resulting in pollution, creation of toxic waste and destruction of natural habitat. The novel also shows the environmentalist concerns of the writer as she describes the present-day issues of Kerala such as water contamination, lack of proper waste disposal systems, dumping of biomedical waste in rivers and waterbodies, the use of endosulfan to ensure profit in farming, the problems of landfilling, destruction of marshes disposal of plastic and biomedical waste and so on. However, nature cannot be exploited and contaminated forever and the waters of Aathi rise in a flood and purify the whole land.

gratitude

Strangers Again

When you speak not,

And my ears hear not, 

Who is it to blame, 

You or I or us together

For the weighed words?

I wonder what story it was

We both wrote together,

Amidst dreamy eras 

And slow-moving time,

Your being there for me.

From two ends and spaces,

Two identities met as if

We fell into each other

By peels lying on the road, 

Looked like an accident.

Days wander and flow

Nights silent and slow,

Together we built towers,

That threaten heaven,

And touched the skies.

Then in one careless word,

The fury of heaven breaks,

Like the tower of Bablyon,

Our  virtual world crumbles,

Into understood niceties.

Will you remember how we began?

The tongues we spoke together,

Drawn by puzzles and threads,

Scattered through words on edge,

We stand, like strangers again.

a cup of coffee

Quote of the day

love

blessings

birdsong