Sri Lanka's Ancient Cities: Photo Album

The ancient fort city of Sigiriya:

The ancient and abandoned city of Polanawura:

Centered on a Horizon

I journey to seek horizons - and this has been so for a very long time.

I climb hills to see fading arcs of dusty distance cup an infinite sky; I wander lonely valleys encircled by distant purple peaks; but most of all I return to the ocean - where a never ending deep sapphire reaches to consummate a vast azure stillness, of lit diurnal clarity, or sequinned sparks.

I journey to the horizon to anchor my within on its limitless silence, even while my days lap in gentle waves or lash out with ferocity obscuring and obliterating both the inner and the distant eternal. I journey to realize, again, that it is the unreachable, which makes my seeking worthwhile,  the unattainable that captures my imagination, and the virtual which anchors my concrete, and real - hopes, dreams and strife.

I center on the distant horizon, in poise and in balance, even as my days dance in melody, with the waves.

Cosmos in my Garden

When I returned from my trip, Cosmos were blooming in my garden...and so were many other flowers. I lie on my diwan and stare in wonder. I wander around, peer closely, and let the silence of the cosmos suffuse within. I share my garden now, with you.

Walking up the Elephants Hump and Sleeping on a Lemon Grass Bed

It has been over a decade since I thought I should go climb Savandurga - the kids call it the sleeping elephant. One can view it all along the Magadi road, after Tippugundanahalli - a giant monolithic rock crouched low, with a smaller head of the sleeping elephant. I have taken this route regularly, every couple of months or so, for this last over-a-decade.

Last Monday I went and climbed the rock.

My son and I decided to go and spend a night there, taking the lesser known and used route to the smaller hump. We carried some food, some water, and our sleeping bags up. It was a difficult but an extremely rewarding trek through dry raspy forests, along fort walls, climbing sheer rock faces with grooves - enough barely to hold with toes, on rock and wood bridges, crawling through caves and thorn thickets, mostly leaning low, sometimes on all fours...birds cooed and called through the still silence, seed pods burst with a snap, twirling silver seeds parachuted down in a gentle dance, golden leaves covered the forest floors. Sheer black rock face set off the neon greens while orchids of purple foliage clung to rocks, trees. Blue gray lichen abounded and ferns of many varieties peeked from under nooks and corners..begonias blossomed in startling profusion...I panted, soaking sweat and smiled.

We reached the top, explored tiny rock pools covered in green, sauntered through abandoned stone shelters and scavenged for wood. We carried stones to make a protected fire and rigged a flimsy grill to roast our potatoes. In the evening we lit a fire - roaring, crackling, snapping - and sat - staring. We wanted to sleep under the stars, but we got a flaming sky at sunset and an overcast night. We lay on sloped sides of the rock - no flat surfaces here - with a stiff breeze , that chilled us to the bone, even inside our sleeping bags. Finally at 3 am, we decided to try the stone shelter. It was protected, flat, and had a bed of lemon grass, ready for us in a corner. After checking the cracks and corners for snakes - we lay down a slept.

Magnolia Grandiflora

I once had a tree of Magnolia Grandiflora growing in my yard. Everything about this particular tree was unbelievably dramatic, opulent, sophisticated - from the deepest green satin leaves, to its golden velvet calyx which held most breathtaking and deeply sensuous, fragrant white perfect blossoms.

About eight years back, when I went scavenging for plants, seedlings, pods in the IISc quadrangle,  I found a tiny sucker growing next to a medium sized, but a non blooming Magnolia grandiflora tree. I brought it home,  with great care put it in a pot and kept it alive. Recently, after moving to my new home, I put the plant, still only a foot tall, into my sunlit yard. Over the last week, I have watched in excitement, a bud emerge tentatively, swell and break open - into a large and a perfect white flower. In an instant deja vu, I am transported into my youth of perfumed and starlit indigo nights, with walks along boulevards lined with ebony shadows and moon blossoms.


While no photograph can ever capture the touch, feel, smell or the soul of perfection, nonetheless, here are some images from a besotted gardener.

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I am Free

When I was young, I had romantic notions of freedom. I aspired for personal freedom - to be me - whatever that be - a current fad or a specific choice. I did not realize then that this was a very privileged kind of aspiration for one who already enjoyed many freedoms and was guilty of many others.

Today I realize that I am already free in a variety of ways. Let me list these:
I am free from hunger, free to have a shelter, free from ill health. I am free to travel, free (more or less) to protest, free also to know my rights. I am free from self doubt, and free to a large extent from individual fear. I am free to be greedy (in so many many ways), and free enough for intense self criticism. I have an independent conscience and am free to express, especially moral outrage at all wrongs and perceived wrongs - within or without.

I wrote all this as I traveled on a bus to the site of Ejipura demolitions and realised that no society was truly free where basic rights of all were still not secure. Today, I realise that I no longer aspire for freedom - but I strive intensely instead for justice - for All.

The Other

Ever since the recent heinous gang rape in Delhi and its aftermath, I have been thinking.

I have been thinking of what causes such senseless violence, what causes people to fill streets, only sometimes, and what causes their blood thirsty screams for vengence, castration, and killing. And in each of these cases, I come upon an 'othering' - her and them, her and us, us and them and so on. In fact, now when I stare at the world, I realise that all social behavior relies on this fracturing duality of identifying and separation.

Kabir confronts this separation and rejects it when he sings:

"Ham sab maahin, sab ham maahin
Ham hain bahuri akelaa"

I am in all, all are in me
I am alone and together

or,

"Chalati Chakki dekhkar, diya kabira roye
do paten ke beech me,sabat bacha na koye"

Watching the two grindstones, Kabir cries,
between the to stones, no one survives (from here)

referring once again to the harsh dualities of this world and their grief.

In a similar vein, Advaita Vedanta is based on the realisation of unity of all - self with the universe and the concept of "you are that"; while Lao Tsu in his famous Tao Te Ching talks about a life of harmony when the dualities get unified following the Path. In fact, his successor "Chuang Tzu felt it was imperative that we transcend all the dualities of existence. Seeing nature at work and the way in which it reconciled these polar opposites pointed the way to the Tao where all dualities are resolved into unity" (from here).

I suspect, more and more, that it is this separation between the internal and the external, the within and without, good and bad, man and woman, natural and manufactured, separations of class, caste, language, region, food, culture and every possible fragmentation that we create, which also creates the violence filled society that we see today.

So in the dawn of this yet young year I resolve:

I am both a man and a woman.
I am a harijan, banya, kshatriya, and a brahmin,
I am a hindu, muslim, sikh, christian, jew, jain; I am a believer and also a seeker
I am the rich and the direst poor
I am oppressed and oppressor; victim and the violator, sovereign and the subject;
I am both profound and the profane,
Infact, I am all the other while I am also Me.

Let me live in awareness of this.