Save Trees

It is every woman’s dream to become a mother some day. Well, not everyone succeeds. Adoption, IVF to name a few are some of the techniques women use to realize their dream for attaining motherhood.

However, one lady who stands out from this lot is Salumarada Thimmakka. She, along with her husband, Chikkayya, planted and took care of over 400 banyan trees along the bangalore-nelamangala highway.

The reason for this unique feat is because she was unable to conceive. Since they did not have any children, Chikkayya felt that they can earn lot of goodwill (punya) by planting saplings and looking after them as their own kids. And so this couple toiled day in and day out in not just planting the trees, but also manuring, trimming and watering them day in and day out.

Thimmakka and Chikkayya, although are from rural karnataka, and belong to less educated class are still far humane than some of us, so called highly-educated people.

Just last week, as I returned home from work a horrendous sight greeted me. One of my neighbours had got 2 huge trees chopped. These trees were growing outside his compound and were blocking the house remodeling work that he has undertaken. And in the evening, when I saw this, they had already chopped the trees to their trunks.  

When asked, the smart alec said “These trees were useless, they were termite-ridden. So, we got permit from Forest department to chop them”.

I was furious. How can forest department guys permit to chop trees without coming and seeing it for themselves? And, how can this guy comment that a tree is useless? Existence of tree is the sole reason why we are living on the face of this earth…

I just do not know what I should call such people? If each of us start doing what this guy did, how will our next generation survive? Why are we not thinking in this direction?

If we cannot be salumarada Thimmakka and plant trees, at least, let us learn to take care of the ones that exist…please note that it takes years and years for a tree to grow…while it takes 1-2 hours to chop one down

Please lets save earth from destruction before it is too late!!!

Rain and Songs

I have always hated getting drenched in rain. I loath the sensation of wet clothes clinging to my body not to mention the cold, cough and fever bouts common during this season.

But as I grew up, I realized rains had a positive dimension to them.

I could sit on the window ledge and watch the rain fall, I could make paper boats and set them sail in the running water, I could have hot pipping chai with onion pakodas… with a mushy-mushy nicholas sparks to read. I could afford to be lazy doing no work all day and blame it on rains. Not to mention experiencing the odd pull at my heart while listening to good old hindi songs. And this would be the icing on the cake.

I am a BIG fan of old hindi songs, especially songs that start with barsat, saawan, barish, rim jhim…. top of the list are:

Rim Jhim gire saawan, sulag sulag jaaye man, bheege aaj iss mausam main, lagi kaisi yeh agan… Who can really answer that?
Or
Rim Jhim ke geet sawan gaaye, haaye, bheegi bheegi raaton main… ke hoton pe baat dil ki aaye, haaye, bheegi bheegi raaton main
Or
Barsaat main, (tak dhina dhin), Barsaat main, hum se mile tum sajan tum se mile hum… Barsaat main (tak dhina dhin)

The lyrics of these songs are so delicately interwoven that the listener can actually see them blend into the rain. So silky and anonymous are these lyrics – one can never make out whether the song is being sung by humans or by Gods… Not to undermine the meaning associated with each word … So intricate and unimaginable… It always exports me to a different realm all together… Such is my involvement in these songs…

Now, I have stopped cribbing about rains. I start digging into my songs collection and begin to clear the dust off them – in parallel, I also clear the cobwebs from my mind …

Waves

A friend forwarded these images. I was struck with awe… How I wished I were standing by the beach looking at them or even surfing over them :p

I do hope to learn surfing someday just to tide over these waves. Must be awesome fun and a great experience…

Enjoy Maadi