Every day a good day?

After one year of near-perfect climatic conditions, when it rains non-stop for three whole days and nights, one starts to notice the changing inner weather-system.

Isn’t everything pristine as is? A day is a day. Clouds are nothing but clouds. Trees are simply trees. Nothing good or bad about them. They are what they are. When seen through a clean lens, things can be seen as they are. The smudges come from our judgements. It is one thing to notice how they make us feel and another to blame them for being there.

He shouldn’t have made that horrible remark.

The car was seriously misbehaving.

That fire-door nearly broke my arm.

What a noisy bunch!

Mango good. Jack-fruit bad.

Sun good. Rain bad.

Birth good. Death bad.

Untimely. Preventable. Tragic. Etc. Etc. Blah…blah…blah…

It is absolute. So is the mango, the rain, the love. Absolute.

One day I will die. I live, remembering that each moment that I am alive is a miracle. I am way beyond my preferences, opinions and thoughts. I am not them. They are not me. That every day is a good day, I am beginning to see.

Stories are us.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Why are they here? These random strange-looking foreigners? One is white and the other we’re told is from the north of India. Wonder which is worse. At least one of them is easy to steel from. Surely the other is obnoxious. But she teaches English at the Primary school for free. Wonder what’s in it for her. Oh yes. She’s using our kids to learn Kannada for free. That must be it.

The minds of the villagers are desperately trying to make sense of what we’re doing here, in this remote village. The nearest airport is 5 hours’ drive away and the closest decent hospital, at least an hour from our village. We don’t speak the local language and hardly anyone speaks Hindi or English.

The first story of us was that I am a film director and Si, an actor. We’re scouting a suitable location to shoot a period drama. But then no camera or crew showed up. So, that was discarded.

The next tale was that we are here to set up a petrol station. That’s how people with connections in high places syphon off their black money. That fits, they believed, knowing nothing about us. But then no signs of construction appeared for months.

The next guess was that we want to open a bar and restaurant. As we are close to the highway, it’s a great place to open-up something for the travellers to rest and refresh. That didn’t seem to be happening either.

What can it be? Oh. They both have seriously grey hair. All their friends must be old. They must deeply empathise with old people. They must be planning an old people’s home. Well, no signs of that yet.

What are they about after all? The dogs and kids seem to love them. They seem like nice enough people. Maybe they’re planning to start an orphanage? Don’t know. We’ll have to wait and watch.

Well, all they seem to be doing is planting more trees and making more compost and playing music to their plants, setting up irrigation systems and so on. Maybe they’re doing all the groundwork to ultimately grow cannabis.

Oh! How we need stories!

Timely rain.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

We had a proper tropical shower last week. I hadn’t seen such joy, relief and excitement from this simple act of nature before. The magic was in the timing of it. It came just when the coffee plants were thirsting to come into full blossom and release their fragrance to fill the atmosphere with Jasmine. Only in films had I seen one single rain shower give rise to such elation.

Yes. Coffee is in bloom. But I’m sick of my yo-yoing fever and this unpleasant cough. My body keeps stretching out to do all the things it wants to but it keeps getting pulled back into itself because it doesn’t have the strength. Maybe I need to raise my aspirations, then the Universe will provide more energy. Maybe I need to increase my desire to move and dance and sing and travel and trust that the body will be supported in that. Maybe I need to keep writing more of the nonsense I write so that I’m out there in the world of words and the right ones can find me. Maybe I need to keep showing up for myself and nicely saying NO to unnecessary stuff when I need to. Maybe I need to sit still and rejoice in the breeze that’s dancing with the trees. Maybe I should simply tune into the voice of the birds resonating with excitement. Maybe I need to be fully present in my body, a 100% here, unconditionally.

Before all of that, maybe I need to give my body the permission to fall ill, offer myself the care I would give someone I love, be patient and breathe with myself as though I was my own child. Excuse me, I need to make myself another cup of ginger tea.

What is your Superpower?

Posted by kidsaregifts20

When I lived a cramped, hectic life in London, I often romanticed the texture of life in a scenic little seaside cottage with no neighbours in Cornwall or a tiny remote island a few miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest or a lonely dwelling on the side of a vast mountain in the Himalayas. Deep down lay an incipient desire to experience it.

A few years on, I make the choice to live in a one bed-room house in remote South India. Malnad, the region of rain, notorious for a long heavy monsoon. The nearest airport, five hours by road on a good day and the closest half-decent hospital an hour’s drive away. After a few months the newness of this rural setting starts to diminish. Mornings begin with chirps and trills emerging out of a serene silence. I draw the curtains to find the morning fog gently floating across layers of overlapping lush green slopes, reaching right up to the horizon. I am filled with gratitude. I say to myself, ‘Don’t ever take this for granted.’

If I start listing all the things that are not here, an exhaustive inventory might appear – a library, a café, a restaurant, a museum, an art gallery, a community centre, a swimming pool, a book shop and so on. But I do have a superpower. On whatever I put my attention, that seems to grow, fill my awareness. Music, chanting, yoga, reading, writing, meditation, nature – all the things that I used to struggle to make time for, are now in abundance.

I can choose where I want to place my attention because this is my one precious life, my one chance to live and learn and enjoy. I am exactly where I want to be and need to be. This is the perfect opportunity to match my inner silence with the one I sit within. To observe and let go. Examine and let go. Feel and let it go. Think and let it go. Breathe in and let go.

Contentment does not need objects to justify itself. In every moment, it is present as a choice. At the tiniest hint of my attention, it shows up, smiling. The more I sit with it, the more it makes itself available. When I touch, its texture is silky.

Caves are well-known conduits to enlightenment. May be this is mine. I wonder if contentment is another name for happiness.

What’s wrong with Maybe?

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Maybe it’s two words, not one.

Maybe nothing is at it seems.

Maybe my eyes are utterly open but green.

May be there is no such thing as the absolute truth.

Maybe I hold on to mine for dear life ‘cause I wouldn’t know who I was without it.

Maybe all you need is love. Your own.

Maybe it’s okay to be green-eyed. Everyone is.

Maybe there is no hell or heaven or earth.

Maybe my name is so easily erasable, it’s hardly worth speaking.

Maybe I am exactly where I need to be.

Maybe everything is exactly the way it needs to be.

Maybe angels have appeared to me once or twice.

Maybe the only way forward is to stand still.

Maybe everyone was born to love for a bit and die.

Maybe there is no big meaning to anything.

Maybe each day that breaks into light is a miracle.

Maybe everyone is a little bit thirsty a lot of the time.

Maybe there’s enough water on the planet, maybe not.

Maybe God has his/Her hand on my head right now.

Maybe the light from the sun is on its way.

Maybe everyone has wings they cannot see.

Maybe that thirst is the one to be free.

Maybe no one knows what that really means.

Maybe it’s okay to be in love with the notion of Me.

May be a baby sparrow is opening its eyes right now, for the very first time.