A Tree

Inspiration

I belong to a Bangalore e-group called 'HasiruUsiru' that actively works towards preserving Bangalore's natural heritage which include lakes, tanks, trees. I am a pretty passive member-but I am glad to keep informed about the onslaught of large development projects in the city and the heavy environmental price that we, as citizens, pay for this progress. I met Arun through one such mailing - his mail announced that he had tree saplings to give away to people that wanted them. I responded and then awaited the promised Jamun and Bel saplings that I could plant near home and farm.

The other day Arun came home bearing these saplings. He looked regular, spoke the normal middle class tongue, sat with us and shared a cup of tea. It is during the course of this conversation that I discovered something rare - a spark of real passion, commitment, and a willingness through small action to dream big dreams - infact, a spark enough to inspire a few jaded us. Arun said that he was sick of watching the trees being killed in the city - but there was no point just sitting around complaining, cursing - so he has decided to plant one tree for every day of the year and to this end, he gathers seeds, germinates them, nurtures them into sturdy saplings and then gives it away to anyone who has space to grow them. He also dreamt of a city, a world, which would be very different if each of us planted one tree for every day we lived.
Arun neither preached, nor bragged - he was just sharing a dream.

I was stunned. Here was a living inspiration that had come to my doorstep, bearing a gift of his dreams...and baby trees.

I am glad that my New Year begins thus.

Admiring India Together

It is hard to describe the great satisfaction I get from reading alternative journalism presented by the 'India Together' team. It is relevant, interesting, appropriate and empowering, unlike the many other genres of written word that pass off as journalism.
Today, the article that caught my eye, made my heart skip a beat, experience a ray of hope, was on Ganesh Mallya, a part time farmer, who was able to convert, with time and persistence, his bit of dry, barren land, into a veritable jungle of food, and trees. Read more about this amazing real life story, here.

Nag Lingam - Monsoon Passion

Its the beginning of the monsoon season. Nature's palettes are drippy, wet greens, new neon lush greens that merge, coalesce, under monsoon gray skies. It's season, to go in search of the Nag Lingams- flowers where the monsoon passions burst forth, in a brilliant show of colors, fragrance-a flamboyance only secretly displayed and rarely seen - a revealing of a different heart, red, passionate, with a touch of fuchsia, regal pink, with an undercoat of shimmering, shaded, yellow satin. The tree itself stands silent, tall, solid, with a covering of dark, variegated brown, almost, nondescript in form. It's in this season, that its inner self is revealed, unique, dramatic, but still held close to itself. The first sure give away is the fragrance, rich, deep, heavy, exotic and mysterious. The tree is beheld first on the floor it has now painted- in impressionistic hues of reds, pinks, and raw silks of yellow, brown...a glance upwards takes one to dizzying heights all along its long trunk, now covered with hundreds of flowers-waxy, full, deep, dazzling- allure of a temptress, seductive and sure - ensnaring the blue monsoon, with her heart of red and gold.