A Walk through the Woods

The week before last, we wanted to take a walk through the woods. It was not an easy wish to be satisfied, considering the nearest woods were an hour’s drive away from home and cost $5 per person. But even flimsy excuses never work with it’s a holiday and there are four people in the house milling about aimlessly. Surprisingly, I was even willing to sacrifice a nice sleeping-in-on-a- holiday session for this trip, and that happens only on extremely rare occasions. So we packed our lunch before I had time to change my mind to snuggle back into bed. A previous trip to Muir Woods was too long ago to be conveniently forgotten, and I didn’t waste my energies to try and remember. My energies had been solely reserved for the greater adventures of the day, and I didn’t want to waste them on daydreams.

An hour later, this felt too good to be true. It was incredible that I had escaped the drab old concrete of the city and the discomforts of congestion, in a matter of less than an hour! It was also hard to believe that true paradise existed so close to home and that I had been so blind to it. The Muir woods stood beckoningly before me. I took in grateful lungfuls of air, enjoying the smell of Californian redwoods, and the rejuvenating freshness of the air. There was a surreal perfectness to these woods, and they were exactly the way I had pictured them be. Something about the way the light came down in dim, magical streaks to the world alive in silent seclusion enchanted me. Surrounding me was a colourful little world full of pleasant smells, moisture which clung to my body, and incredibly tall trees. They reminded me of countless fantasies—everything from the Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts to the forests of the Land of Narnia to the recent fantasy movie A Bridge to Terabethia.

I remembered that the redwoods were one of the tallest tree species in the world. The fact looked undisputable as I stared up to the skies, trying to gauge the lengths to which they extended. There was an air of permanence about the place, like these mighty trees had lived for all of eternity. It was hard to believe that they would fall one day, when I observed how clearly rooted they were to the ground, and how they clung to the earth with a solid force. I took time to read those little information boards all along the way. Apart from describing plant anatomies, they told me stories, making me want to attribute character to each tree. They were the voice of these ancient gaints, echoing the many years of growth, experience, and struggle of the trees. They told me of trees charred to death by forest fired, yet miraculously produced shoots next spring, of weather-beaten trees too old to live who had bravely continued to stand against all odds. “This tree is Wise,” I felt like saying, “And the other one over there is a grouchy fellow….” I learnt of the way the redwoods guarded the tender world below them by diffisuing sunlight. And by doing that, they were painting the world below with splendid colours. Everything from moss to ferns thrived in the gracious shade of the redwoods. We hiked through a forest trail (although a not a very challenging one), reveling in pleasant talk and clicking pictures. We did spot a little deer (it definitely looked like one), feeding on some leaves by the side of the little creek. That had me all excited. I definitely felt refreshed, and couldn’t believe I had actually considered sleeping-in to this heavenly experience.

I was also reminded of one of those episodes on Discovery Channel. It is about ‘Forest Therapy’, and also about the way in which some civilizations worshipped the forest. Some civilizations actually believed that the woods had some untapped healing power…..a way of gently cleansing you of respiratory problems, curing you of mental sickness and reviving you. A walk through the woods was supposed to be the answer to your sickness, a gate key to heaven. As we rushed back home through the crowded streets of San Francisco, it seemed like someone had wispered this timeless secret in my ear. I knew, without quite knowing how I knew it, that there must be some hidden wisdom in that belief after all.

(The credit for all the pictures goes to my little brother, who was adamant to capture as much of the experience as possible.)

Monsoon Memories

“Dear Journal “I had scribbled in an immature hand, “Today had been so much fun. It really was wonderful,” and had simply left it at that. For a person who is reading this one and a half years later, it is quite an arduous task to sift through her memories to remember what had been so fun, and what had made her feel so wonderful back then. Sometimes, I despise my own journal entries because they do not tell me everything. They merely reflect my mood on some particular day, or record the irrelevancies of my life which are of no significance to me now. For some vague reason, I was perturbed. I went to sleep with a question prodding my mind, like a playful cat toying with its food. “What had happened that day? Why was that day so wonderful?”

In sleep, something intruded into my dreams. It was a tenuous wisp of a memory which answered the puzzling question. I saw it clearly in my brain:

I remembered that evening. The day was done for the most part, and we watched the people worm their way homewards, through the muddy roads, dressed to evade the rains. The rains had been especially torrential, and many had grown weary of them. But we didn’t mind, my cousin and I, we loved the monsoons. That evening, a mild rain started off again, and we watched fascinated, like children. Soon, there was power-cut, mystifying the environment. We couldn’t have waited for a better invitation. That day, we called the neighbors over, and we soaked to the bones, screaming with delight as we drenched. We laughed and sang as the thunder set up a tempo. Oh yes, I remembered now, writing to my journal in semi-darkness, scribbling badly because I couldn’t see in the faint light of the lamp. “Today had been so much fun. It really was wonderful,” Nothing seemed more obvious, and my experience seemed to require no further explanation.

This was followed by one memory after another.

It was another wasted day, and I was slightly grumpy. I had finished my homework, devoured all the available novels, and wrapped up my studies. Nothing had interested me, and I felt strangely detached. I slipped outside, into the backyard, and saw no stars. I sought comfort in staring up at the skies, seeing those smiling stars winking at me. But that day, the skies were an ominous grey, and they frustrated me with their solemnity. But there was a wind, so I settled down, enjoying it. And gradually, the winds got stronger, and a rain started off, washing away my frustration gracefully. I was not cold, but I closed my eyes, and found thrill in the sensation of rain drops landing on my arm. I knew no one would think I’m crazy to be wetting myself in the rain this way, simply because no one was watching. I hummed a nice melody as I swayed with the wind. Minutes later, my frustration felt unreal, and I returned to my room, smiling without knowing why.

It was the holidays. I was relaxing in my bed, reading a somewhat boring book called “The Haunted Island,” My concentration was slipping away, and my eyes were running down the sentences without understanding them. I heard a rumble outside, and I threw the window open, and waited. The rains lashed outside, and I enjoyed listening to this. Suddenly, the book became a favorite. I stayed up, reading it until it’s finished.

I woke up with the memories still clinging onto my eyelids and squinted. The Californian sun was blazing outside, intruding into my bedroom. I stared out of my window. It looked quite sunny, but I knew I would shiver if I stepped out. The world looked a bit too bright for my liking. The autumns here will be uncertain; they always play with my senses. The weather changes rapidly as it fancies, and is very inconsistent. I scolded my inquisitive brain for making me remember the monsoons. I was missing the rains again, and sometimes, I thought, it’s better if some questions are left unanswered. The next day, I was blessed with mild rains, in the middle of autumn! I would never have expected it, that too in California....It looked like someone had suddenly decided to change the weather for me. I'm enjoying it while it lasts, this brief spell of rain, revisiting my monsoon memories again and again.

Virtual Dreams

I was once a millionaire who owned a sprawling mansion in the middle of nowhere, cared for an exotic azure cat, and constantly saw to it that fairies sprinkled pixie dust all along the way. My world was utopian, perfect, exciting. The only problem was, it was virtual.

I was introduced to a website called neopets at the age of eleven---the age when my common sense was slumbering peacefully somewhere in the back of my brain. Neopia was the promising land where all my desires could be fulfilled. There were unlimited games, virtual rewards, and an opportunity to claim a non—existent creature as my own. The internet told me an attractive lie, and I easily fell into the vicious trap. Every day, my “virtual” pets would demand some food, clothing, shelter, a companion, and it was my responsibility to satisfy their cravings. I soon developed an emotional attachment to them, even though I knew, somewhere in the depths of my heart, that they were not living things, but merely an artificially programmed images, and very immature imitation of biological beings. Another reason for my apparent addiction to the website was that the virtual me found success very easily, and was more responsible, skilled and purposeful than the real me. I saw a superior image of myself projected there, and it soon grew into an obsession. I wanted to keep on going.
I spent more of my sunny days that year, ruining the keyboard, than stepping outside to breathe in the fresh air, skip about the pavement, or feel the grass under my feet. Soon, I was not even a millionaire. I now was nearing a billion neopoints in my virtual bank, and I seized every opportunity to work on the website. One day, my father took me to the library, to browse for books, but I wasted the day using the library computer instead, playing games, earning more neopoints than ever before! It seemed like an achievement, and in that moment of blissful jubilation, I forgot to log out. I was ecstatic all the way home, I kept reciting to myself, like a familiar mantra, “Hundred more points for a billion….hundred more….”
As soon as I was home, I rushed to the computer again. My eyes were never tired of feasting on my exotic pets (I had now painted them purple), and my fingers never fatigued in the effort of dragging my virtual car (which was being bombed by the enemy) to safety, and my mind never took a break from trying to crack difficult anagrams. All these would earn me neopoints, and I logged on to the computer again. That day, my bank showed I owned no money, my deposit a horrifying single “0” where there supposed to have been 9 of them. My inventory had been robbed, my pets stripped of their luxuries. That day, I faced utter devastation.
My eleven year old brain was shattered, I sobbed into the night. My parents told me it was nothing to worry about, that my fears were imagined. Neopia was not real, so was my loss. I lived in denial of the fact for many days, finding the truth hard to ingest. Gradually, I grew out of it, started spending my summer days skipping on the pavement, rather than shopping in a virtual supermarket. It was easy for me to forget my addiction, but it is not so for millions of kids around the globe. Virtual heavens and computer games have tremendous psychological impact on a child. I know it from experience that there is no good to be gained from them. I’m not saying this because I’m not a virtual billionaire anymore, but I’m saying this with the realization of the amount of time and effort I wasted to nurture false dreams. Such things are nothing less than self-deceit. What bothers me of late is that more such websites are cropping up everywhere on the internet. Much to my disappointment, my favorite magazine, Tinkle has launched tinkleindiaonline.com, a very similar website, which rewards kids with virtual money for playing games. Although the games are considerably less violent, they can still addict kids. It’s a major issue, and I have no answers to resolve it. All that I know today, as I breathe in the fresh air, and enjoy the moist of the very dewy grass below my feet, the world is beautiful. More importantly, it is real, and very much here. I just hope that computer game addicts would sense that, instead of chasing after something which only superficially looks splendid. True splendor can be uncovered in the intricate web a spider builds, or a mountain flower in full bloom. Today, I am grateful for that helpful guy who robbed me of all my virtual money. Without him, I would never have understood the simple truth that this world is the loveliest part of my existence.

A bitter-sweet day and a promise

The 17th of May 2008, was a very special day for me, and I realized that as soon as I woke up to feel the warmth of the sun on my face, and observed that the curtains were all aglow with the eerie early morning sunlight. There is something to be said about this, because I normally (make that never) wake up on early mornings voluntarily. It was pure excitement which made me unable to slip into that state of passivity I enjoyed so much. Yes, that day was going to be special, and I had made arrangements to see to that.


That day was going to be bitter-sweet. I knew that because it was the day I would say my official ‘good-bye’ to my best friend in a very grand way, and it was the day we were going to watch a much-awaited movie. When my friend and my cousin came over, we hired an auto to MG road. The newest of the Chronicles of Narnia series, the movie Prince Caspian was out, after a month of eager anticipation. We were wild with excitement. The experience was ultimately rewarding, and we watched it with mouths agape, like the old times. It was still very early by the time the movie ended, and we decided to do something fun together.


There, in a coffee shop, sipping some Butterscotch Frappe’, we let the conversation carry us endlessly from one topic to another, shifting pace, drifting into one memory after another, and thoughts of how much we would miss each other in the days to come. And then, we made a promise, the kind teenagers these days never do. Deepti and I decided to become pen-friends.
It is true that we are markedly alike in our tastes, and our perspectives often collided with surprising similarity. That day, we swore to keep the promise alive. We believed in the joy of handwritten letters, of the warmth it bought to you…..because we had never experienced it. I, at least, never had a pen friend in my life, and the whole concept was new to me. I was tired of the adults reminiscing about the good old days of the handwritten letters. I still believed there were ways of bringing things back. We could reach each other easily on email or on orkut, but that wasen’t really the point. The point was that we were trying to experiment, to find out how beneficial writing was.
2 months after coming here I received my first letter from Deepti as promised, I experienced an inexplicable thrill. The day seemed suddenly more colourful. Oh, how lovely it was to find my name written on a brown envelope, which has arrived all the way from India! I now seemed to grasp the secret appeal of letters, and comprehended with perfect clarity why adults turn nostalgic about them.

But day by day, it is getting more difficult to keep that promise alive, since both the letters I wrote to deepti never reached her. And with the postal prices skyrocketing in India, I do feel a twinge of guilt for making her spend so much for me. But all I’d like to say is that we will maintain it as long as we can, because none of us are willing to let go.
Deepti wrote this for my upcoming birthday, when I’ll be turning 18:

“May you be happy throughout your life
May you keep love and joy always by your side,
May you experience the magic of being fully alive,
And may life’s best be always yours.”
And they are best birthday present I have received so far.

(Read Deepti’s response on http://deeptiraghuram.blogspot.com/2008/10/reply-to-friend.html)

Biking

A few months ago, I chanced across a very good deal while shopping---a brand new mountain bike for 64 dollars, and it seemed like nothing in the world was fairer. The bike conveniently appealed to my taste, with a coat of metallic red which literally shone to heighten it’s presence. A little tweaking here and there, and the bike was ready to come home. We bought it along with us, with the bike securely attached to the back of the car.


The next few days were spent in admiring my shiny new cycle from all angles. It was obvious that I was excited, but I was satisfied enough by simply by staring at it. Then, I delicately locked it away. Only when my brother accused me of not using my cycle for anything did I resentfully take to biking. I only did it to prove him wrong.


Today, biking has become an obsession. When my life relapses into that habitual phase where everything follows a customary order, and everything falls into a predictable plan, It is often my impulse to do something to break the pattern. The pre-decided sequence of things seems like a comforting regularity for many people, who are all too happy to get adjusted to the monotony of daily life. I feel the simple life of college, homework, studies, reading novels, sleep, and food lulls my senses into that sleepy condition, until even surprises look ordinary. And this time, I have taken to biking on a whim, simply to break that sequence. There is nothing like cycling away aimlessly, letting the hours slip by irresponsibly. Having a friend tagging along in your worthless pursuit adds a little more spice. My favorite times to bike are in the evenings, when the heat of the morning fades away like it never existed and the sparrows throng the fences, chirping away madly. I immensely enjoy those moments of waywardness, feeling the winds on my face, allowing them to whip my hair around me playfully, I love the sound of the wheels on the tar, and the honest sweat on my brow as I continue to peddle forcefully. My friend maintains a continuous babble behind me as we peddle and it is now my responsibility to insert a “whoa!” “uh-huh” “Great!” in the conversation. At least, that has grown to be the silent agreement between the both of us.

Well, we bike until late evening until my weary joints stop assisting my urge to continue with this forever. The magic fades, and I return to my daily routine life, my heightened senses quickly slipping back into that dulled stupor, but I look forward to the next day optimistically, promising my friend a greater adventure in the days to come.

Student Psychology

(cartoon from the book The Complete Idiot's Guide to calculus)

In the beginning of the second year of pre-university, most students do the easiest thing they are allowed to do for the year—they set up a goal. It is a fairly simple thing to do: to say something like “Father, I’ll get a 90% in the final exams because I am going to study five hours everyday!” But the student discovers, much to his dismay, that the individual who authored his physics textbook fancies writing in a forgotten dialect that he is unable to comprehend.
“Not my fault I didn’t understand! The textbook is too complex!” he whines, conveniently blaming the defective book for all his agony. Just as he is about to sneak out of his bedroom, his mother spots him,
“Why are you not studying?”
“I can’t understand the textbook, ma. It’s so horribly written! It has a ton of mistakes, printing errors. I don’t know why I bought Bosco publications, I should have gone for MES publications. Studying is a serious business!”

The next day morning, the student’s (study) table is cluttered with stacks of newly bought textbooks, homework helpers, logarithmic tables, CET and COMED-K guides. The student intuitively realizes that there is no other excuse—his life and bookshelf are now crammed with these things.

Now, only the student is aware of the bitter truth that most of the books he has bought (which is the only thing in the world that his parents are willing to spend an infinite amount of money on) are unworthy of his interest and attention, and that they mean very little to his colourful life, a greater part of which includes eating pani-puri from a roadside stand and zooming away on a bike. The initial plan is abandoned, and those books which treasure all the wisdom of the world are now free to collect dust on his clumsy bookshelf. In the end, the student has just enough time to go over the textbook he detested in the first place, and prepare for the final exam. When Second PU finally concludes, the student views this as an appropriate time to dispose of these unwanted things and he now rushes to the paper waalla to exchange them for worthier rewards like money (which will be spent on the in the noble past-time of eating pani-puri from the roadside stand.) Some strange teenagers even pass on ‘knowledge’ in the form of careworn textbooks as legacies to their favorite siblings with the safe presumption that their books will be made use of. After the second year concludes admirably fast, the student assumes the powerful title of a sagely and wise creature, someone from whom the so-called “juniors” can draw inspiration from. They view him with awe-stuck wonder, and faithfulness as he shares his invaluable information with them. He is now the guide, the person with answers. And what does he tell his juniors?
“Look, there is nothing like setting up a goal, like I did. I promised myself that I would study 5 hours a day. And I was determined enough to follow my dreams. I referred all the study guides I could, I revised atleast 7 times. Don’t ignore your textbooks, they treasure all the wisdom in the world.”
The others are left to prospect how much of truth there is in these words.

The 17 mile Drive

[This is on my visit to the 17 mile drive, a scenic drive along the sea side. We visited this place on the 1st September 2008.]

Driving along 17 miles of road, in this sweltering Californian heat isn’t exactly anyone’s idea of fun, but it helps when the sun is forgiving, and the turbulent sea is by your side always, and the numerous crashing wave pools send some sea froth flying to you in welcome. It does lift your spirits, making you forgot how sapped out you were just a few hours ago. One of my favorite things to do on the 17 mile drive is simply throw away my burdens, spending those timeless hours gazing into the horizon. I am carefree here, careless in my observations, (which is rare for me), wasting away those unhampered hours doing nothing significant.

( Seen above is the sunset I witnessed. )

What is not beautiful about the seaside? There is something enchanting which delights your eyes, calms your waywardness, caresses your face with that gentle touch. This place has attracted me three times, but with every visit, I fall more in love with it. And there is this raw beauty in everything around me, right from the crooked, bleached, ghostly trees, to the red moss which hangs limply onto the rocks. This place is the unmasked, bare face of nature and it is animated with life—and that is why it appeals to me even more.

(The little bird I could capture---unfortunately, I couldn’t capture a sea-gull! )

The emotional person gets confused here, because everything looks metaphoric. For those who can extend their visions beyond what they can see, they sense a deep solemnity and a silent majesty in the presence of the lone cypress (which is a tree growing out of a rocky cropping, with very less water to support it, and still has survived for nearly 150 years)….and of course, the sea always seem to be smiling. Yes, I stayed back to watch the sun set over the pacific, and I admit, it’s one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. Well sorry, i’ve been unable to inform you precisely of how my journey was, as I am not much of a researcher, when it comes to writings. I could have provided you with more factual information like how far the sea coast is from freeway 101, and how to get there. It is just that I look at life a bit differently. It does not matter how I got there, or which freeway I took, it only matters that I enjoyed the experience. And that is how I choose to remember most of the things which happen to me—only experiences remain understood, while all the facts are mysteriously erased. Yet, one fact I do remember, that this has been my most enjoyable weekend in America this year. I have had a lot of fun on the trip, and I’ll cherish that.

(Sunset)

(The sea in the evening.)

(The lone cypress tree---one of my favorties.)

[Click to enlarge]