Distant Ships On The Horizon

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness.
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another.
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

- - - -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tales of a Wayside Inn. Part iii. The Theologian’s Tale: Elizabeth. iv

And soon, too soon, we part with pain,
To sail o’er silent seas again.

Thomas Moore: Meeting of the Ships.

Fly High O Freebird.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

It is about a creature of high intelligence who was not appreciated by his flock - a gifted outsider.

A sensation when it was published years earlier in 1970, it features a seagull who breaks away from the flock and learns on his own to become an individual. He experiments with flying techniques in ways that seagulls would never do and, in that experience, finds freedom to fly in his own pattern. He risks disgrace, failure, and ostracism to go his own way, and in the process discovers experiences that the others could never know or enjoy.

Jonathan is no ordinary bird; he wants more than the other birds do. They're content to just do what they need to do to survive, but Jonathan puts his efforts into the glory of flying. He feels pressured by others - even shamed -- to conform to a more mundane way of existence, but he refuses.

He's utterly alone in his ambitions and experiences, especially when he learns to fly in the dark. Seagulls supposedly never do that, but he explores it and finds that he enjoys it. He brings his fear under control and sets out to break through the limitations imposed by the rules of the flock to become something entirely new to his species. It doesn't matter how lonely he feels; what matters is that he has become something amazing. The others view him as irresponsible and even dangerous, but Jonathan continues to go his way alone, content in being an outcast.

Eventually other outcasts join him, and they return to the flock to try to wake up the younger generation. Jonathan's guiding idea is, "You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self," and "Whatever stands against the freedom must be set aside." No limitation should be accepted. In the end, Jonathan is a Christ figure, both revered and reviled, and altogether misunderstood. He gives his message to a young disciple, who sees things as they are and prepares to pass on the wisdom.

Alpenglow

Mountains to me are more then rock and ice, they are the repository of my dreams, aspirations and ambitions.

Upwards they soar in a valiant attempt to breach the umbrella of the skies, and sometimes the clouds in the sky are brought down to shroud the mountain in mist. Adding mystery, aura and amazing views into the already perfect picture.

The sun rising and setting seen in the mountains is very unique as not all the landscape is lit up at the same time, if you are high enough you see patches of other peaks which glow golden and the skies which do a brilliant dance with the colors lighting it up.

There is nothing quite like it in the world to view and stand in stunned awe, mesmerized by it all.
It's also such a humbling experience as only when you stand close to them, can you really appreciate their massive size and girth which photographs can never truly convey (I've been trying for years to get their majesty down on film but as yet have never succeeded in their true portrayal - foreshortening can be such a bitch!!!) Its an ongoing quest which someday I hope will come to fruition .. till then I'll keep trying.

I am happiest when in their midst...And to the mountains is where I shall always return, no matter what.

White Limbo

This life of mine, if life I can call it, has become a strange affair, a kind of a metamorphosis in which every thing has changed.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that it was required of a man that he should share the action and passion of his times, at peril of being judged not to have lived, and for most of my early life I've followed this percept with uncommon faithfulness.

But now of late (the last decade or so) I find myself entangled in a web of days, time passing in a kind of a slow motion, yet seemingly the years flit by and I remain in the same place, unable to flog up interest in the world around me or the people who inhabit it..

I'm much like a meandering river still searching for a sea to unload itself of all that water.

This sort of detachment and apathy sometimes scares me.. but still I doggedly stick to the path
But to what purpose? What end?

I see myself upon the grim mile
The past hunting and future escaping
What was shall not be
Forever shall I thicken this belief

Frozen In Time.

Freezing Time is the only way to grasp Eternity for an hour..

And can eternity belong to me, Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

Those spacious regions where our fancies roam,
Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come,
In some dread moment. by the fates assign'd,
Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind;
And Time's revolving wheels shall lose at last
The speed that spins the future and the past:
And, sovereign of an undisputed throne,
Awful Eternity shall reign alone.

-Last verse by : Francesco Petrarch Source: Triumph pf Eternity (l. 102)

Young Buds

Countless the twigs which tremble at Dawn,
When Young Buds Lean on each other in yearning..
As little by little the night turns around

(The frangipani tree in my backyard at dawn, lyrics adapted from Pink Floyd's : Set the Control For the Heart of the Sun.)

India Is Great

Mera Bharat Mahan....
Celebrating 61 years of Independence.
(Back of a truck on the way to Shimla)

As Jug Suriya wrote in his recent Jugular Vein column

"India is vast space; space to accommodate the clamor of giant cities, teeming with the seething energy of millions and the silence of empty solitudes.

India is space; space to include the pilgrim and the politician, the poet and the revolutionary, the street urchin and the merchant prince, Ahimsa and nuclear might, 3,000 years and the 21st century.

India is the express highway thundering with traffic and the slip road beside it with the sign 'For camels, elephants and bullock carts'.
India is mega dams and factories, call centres and shopping malls, and the voices raised in protest against all these and more.

India is a colour TV, garlanded with marigolds and a picture of Lakshmi on top, playing MTV while grandmother counts the beads of her mala and grandchildren dream of US green cards.

India is the roar and tumult of democracy and the forgotten face of a forgotten neta on an election poster stuck on the crumbling mud wall of a village deserted by all but the ghost of hunger.

India is the faceless anonymity of cities where neighbors don't know the names of neighbours and it is the 'Ram, Ram' of timeless greeting exchanged by strangers who pass each other on a lonely path.

India is the smell of incense and ancient stone, of parched earth when the first drops of rain fall, of the dust and sweat of rattletrap buses, of the sweet, milky tea served in an earthen bowl by a 'chai , chaiwala !' on the whistle-stop railway stations of night.

India is the crowded bazaar where two dozen languages and half a dozen faiths negotiate the day-to-day transactions of buying and selling, and haggling and cheating, and quarreling, and, above all, always above all, living together.

India is much more than a million mutinies now; it is a billion-plus narratives of itself, waiting to be told. Not just once upon a time, but once upon a future"...


India is all that and more to learn and experience