Uninvited Guests!

We were very happy when we moved to our new house. Our dream of living in our own home was a reality at last. We were just 2 plus 2 and everyone was happy with their own spaces- until one day when I got an urgent call from R.

I was on my way to office when my mobile slithered and vibrated in my pocket. It was a call from R and she screamed that we have an uninvited slithering guest at home. You guessed it right- it was a snake, a baby snake. I returned home. When R went to open the side entrance for the house maid to enter, she found to her horror a snake had already entered. Though I had seen people catching snakes by their tails with ease on TV, I was reluctant. Seeing the commotion some people had already gathered. There were few construction workers also. I opened the door and the snake moved to the adjacent garden and took shelter in a pipe. The whole pipe was carried by closing the ends and let off safely in a far off place. In the melee I forgot to photograph my `uninvited guest’.

On another day R said we have a peeping tom in the window. I checked and found a fellow sleeping on the window bar.



I caught him and left him outside. Now I have to tell you about this guy. After two days he was back in to my backyard. I caught him again and threw him away a little far off. When I almost forgot about him, he was back again. It is amazing and mysterious how it gets back. I have caught and thrown away this uninvited guest about five times at different and far off places, somehow he has managed to come back.



We have a tiled canopy in front on my house and everyday morning I used to be greeted with small chewed fruits and droppings. At first I thought it must be some bird since there were a lot of birds in my garden.



I waited outside at nightfall to see who that uninvited guest was. My uninvited guest came flapping its wings- but it was not a bird – it was a fruit bat. Well, he/she has made my tiled canopy almost its permanent shelter.



The garden and lawn of my home is home to many creatures – large and small. These garden lizards go hunting on day time and during night take rest in one of the potted plants.





Here are some more of our uninvited guests.







We have some invited guests also.




Now we are not just four- our family has countless members.

The term `barber'- is it barbaric?

Today my friend A spoke to me about my posting `Musings in front of a barber's mirror'. He said that I should not have used the term 'barber' because it is derogatery. No, I have not used the term in that sense. I view it as any other profession like a carpenter or a blacksmith or even an assistant professor. Anyhow, I have edited that posting and changed the term barber to hairstylist.

Reason For Hope

I watch news on TV for a few minutes after I return from office while sipping my tea. Serial blasts at Srinagar, Kashmir was the major news. Attacks were mainly on tourists. Tea tasted bitter. I looked out of the window. A sort of gloomy weather. It has not been raining though it is monsoon. Dust coloured clouds hover with no sign of water in it. I had to drop S for maths tuition. I decided to spend one hour around his teacher's home- there is a tree with a stone bench underneath. I took along with me the book 'Essential Zen' to cheer me up. The evening and the cool breeze soothed me a little bit. I read the book till the sun completely disappeared. Reading Zen has a magical effect.

He was offered the whole world,
He declined and turned away.

He did not write poetry,
He lived poetry before it existed.
He did not speak of philosophy,
He cleaned up the dung philosophy left behind.

He had no address:
He lived in a ball of dust playing with the universe.
(Jung Kwung)

I took a walk since I had another 15 minutes to spend. Moreover I could not sit on the bench further as mosquitoes had started attacking me. I thought, they also have a right to live. Another Zen koan which I had just read came to my mind.

A student asked Soen Nakagawa during a meditation retreat, "I am very discouraged. What should I do?"
Soan replied, "Encourage others"

All the cheerfulness I had forced upon me soon fizzled out when I reached home. News of serial blasts in Mumbai was there on all news channels. I felt very uneasy and restless. I am very discouraged and helpless. But how can I encourage others? While I was enjoying the cool breeze along with Zen, bombs had exploded in trains at Mumbai snuffing out many innocent lives. While I returned home, many people would never be able to.

I couldnot sleep. Browsed net for some news. Read about Zidane and Materrazzi. It seems Materrazzi insulted and humiliated Zidane and he retaliated with a head butt. But what did these innocent tourists in Kashmir or train commuters in Mumbai do to these killers? What did the parents, wives and children of these dead persons do these terrorists?

Two days back I had bought a book 'Reason For Hope' by Jane Goodall, the great Chimp researcher whose video 'Among the Wild Chimpanzees' (by National Geographic) I had watched several times. Instead of reading from the beginning I chose the chapter 'Death' where she had written the trauma and pain of losing her husband. In the Introduction she writes: '......People ask how I can be so optimistic in the face of so much environmental destruction and human suffering; in the face of overpopulation and overconsumption, pollution, deforestation, desertification, poverty, famine, cruelty, hatred, greed, violence and war. Does she really believe what she says? they seem to be wondering. What does she really think, deep down? What is her philosophy of life? What is the secret ingredient for her optimism, her hope?'

She has a reason for hope, and I believe we all should have, even it means waiting eternally.

Musings in front of a hairstylist’s mirror

I look at the mirror everyday, like everybody else- while brushing teeth, while shaving and while combing my hair. During such face-to-face episodes not much thoughts cross the mind except to determine when I should go for a haircut or shave my beard.

But this Sunday it was a different sort of face reading experience. I went to haircut with S, my son. He likes haircuts and is always eager to go for one. When I was a child, it was totally a different matter. I do not know why, but I hated haircuts, even now I feel miserable and vulnerable in a hairstylist’s chair. As a kid, I always felt hairstylist would make me look ugly. After haircuts, I hesitated to go out to play with friends fearing that they would tease me and prayed for restoration of my hair.

While hairstylist was busy with his scissors and comb I had ample time to read and observe the details of my face in the wide mirror in front of me. The front and back mirrors form infinite number of images and reminds of my physics lessons. Suddenly I felt I was becoming an old man (Just another five years to score an half century). I felt my face has more wrinkles than I had imagined and eyes more sunken. Most of the beard stubbles were gray and I thought, if I grew a beard I would look more like a very aged man. I forgot the hairstylist, my ears distanced itself to the click click sound of his scissors, the whole world vanished leaving only two people- me and my image in the mirror, each staring at each other. I felt like Alice, who entered the wonderland through the looking glass. Quickly I came out of it, but the visions of wrinkles and sunken eyes in my face laced with gloominess never let me go.

I shave everyday. Is it because of my anxiety of not to let people know of my age? Many of my friends do not colour their moustache. Why do I do it? Do I have an unknown fear, which I am afraid to explore? Few months back I decided not to colour my gray hair. R said I look like a sick man. At my hometown my cousin said I have a look of a respectable elder. How many more years I have? I am accustomed to young people calling me ‘uncle’ which reminds me of my elderliness.

Well, I always wonder- do our thoughts also age along with us? When we get old, do our thoughts also will be of thoughts of an old man? But many of my childhood memories are still fresh in my mind- my very first day at school, the snubbing of my teacher when I sang a song, the smell of ‘uppittu’ which was regularly served at lunch time in my PC Halli School, the anger in my dad’s face while thrashing me when I had forgotten addition and subtraction during my summer holidays …. Memories are in abundance. Does the glut of childhood memories indicate the sign of aging? Some philosopher said, ‘While the body may decline in function slowly, like the gentle falling of a leaf in autumn, the human soul never ages’, which reminds me of Victor Hugo’s words, ‘The heart does not grow old, but it is said to dwell among ruins.’

I look at my kids and I remember my childhood. I try to search myself in their naughtiness and playfulness; try to listen to my voice in their talks. A science book had said, ‘It is a substratum that lives on through generation after generation, transcending the millennia. It was the kind of immortality we have through our children. I am carrying within my beating heart the DNA of my father, and his father before him……’
So, I am a sort of an immortal! Or is it my father? Or his father?…..