The age of innocence...

As we age, childhood seems simple to us. 


Not because there were no rules or no pressures, no tests or no fears then. Because, looking back, as a child, i have had enough things to worry about and to cry over - grades to exams, sickness and hospital visits, dust, smoke and the myriad allergies, parents and their rules, many questions and the few answers.... 


They seem small right now but they were pretty big concerns to me then. 


But despite all this to almost everyone, childhood was simple. Simple... because we were simple people. Our minds, thoughts and words were simple. Words meant just what they said. As did people. There were no double or hidden meanings. Lines were lines and there was nothing between them. Friends were friends and foes were foes. Things were either good or bad. Everyone could be a best friend ! :) We had favorite colors, fruits, foods, animals, flowers - pretty much anything and everything. 


And then we grow up and somehow things become more complicated. Tears are a sign of weakness. We hate to not be independent. Nothing is as clear as black and white. The shades of grey fill our world. People too are not just good or bad. We learn to read between the lines and to find other meanings. Nothing is an absolute : favorite, best-friend or biggest-foe; the world is fuzzy and we are confused. But despite all this confusion, we have to pretend to see clarity, to see meaning. Our minds in fact are so convoluted with thinking and rethinking, with dissecting and tearing apart every thought; that eventually, we loose our innocence and our simplicity. 


The following is the text from a forward i received a few days ago. A simple forward that I thoroughly enjoyed and duly forwarded. 


While I laughed at the simple thoughts expressed by the children here, i realized that as adults, we are so far removed from that innocence, that we actually find it amusing. Our convoluted minds, trained by years of social training, actually find simplicity amusing and laughable. It's sad but its also true and perhaps even necessary !


But the innocence is truly endearing. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did. 


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While taking a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, I was interrupted by a little girl about 6 years old. Looking up and down at my uniform, she asked, 'Are you a cop? Yes,' I answered and continued writing the report. My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police. Is that right?' 'Yes, that's right,' I told her. 'Well, then,' she said as she extended her foot toward me, 'would you please tie my shoe?' 


While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. She was unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, 'The tooth fairy will never believe this!' 


A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, 'Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit. 'And why not, darling?' 'You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning.'

A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup out of the jar. During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone.. 'Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now She's hitting the bottle. 

On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from his mother. The note read, 'The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents ..' 

While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting, then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased. The minister's son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his father always said: 'Glory be unto the Father, and unto the Son, and into the hole he goes. 

A little girl had just finished her first week of school. 'I'm just wasting my time,' she said to her mother. 'I can't read, I can't write, and they won't let me talk!' 

A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages. With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, 'I think it's Adam's underwear!' 

Finding anchor...

Like many other journeys, this one too began with bookmarking an article as something to be read at a later date. I first  came across Andre Aciman's shadow cities on this blog post. And after what seems like a lifetime on my bookmarks list, I finally managed to read it a month or so back. And it was perfect resonance. It was beautiful and true. In someways, his words captured the thoughts that often skim the surface of my mind when the waters are troubled. 

Aciman said in shadow cities, "like all foreigners who settle here and who always have the sense that their time warp is not perfectly aligned to the city’s, and that they’ve docked, as it were, a few minutes ahead or a few minutes behind Earth time, any change reminds me of how imperfectly I’ve connected to it. It reminds me of the thing I fear most: that my feet are never quite solidly on the ground, but also that the soil under me is equally weak, that the graft didn’t take. In the disappearance of small things, I read the tokens of my own dislocation, of my own transiency. An exile reads change the way he reads time, memory, self, love, fear, beauty: in the key of loss". 

I could understand his words because a lot of me felt like that, a lot of the times. Somehow, the "new" at home was never as scary as even the "old" here is. Somehow the sense of being an outsider still lingered with me despite spending a year in this place. I still feel a little nervous when I'm doing something differently, even though I've familiarized myself with the place and the processes. Even though, I had a house that met my needs, I didn't feel like it was home. Something was missing. I still lived like an outsider, like a passenger who was going to get off soon. I lived like a nomad but out of fear of being uprooted again.

I have often balked at materialists and to those who paid attention to appearances. I have always thought that appearances are deceptive and that one should learn to look beyond them. But now after a year in this new place I have succumbed to the same "vanity" and have anchored myself in material possessions. And i have realized that sometimes appearances are all it takes to start with a new story.

I began my life in San Diego, with a strange sense of skepticism and wariness. I had limited my possessions and had built a life around few things. My house was cosy in its own way but it was also minimalistic - not how i usually live. Its empty walls and barely furnished floors also filled me with a sense of emptiness. I had let things drift in stasis only because i was wary of settling down. Strange as it may sound, I had spent a year here with the constant thought of being ready to pack up and leave. I was reluctant to accept this house as my home and this city as home for a few years. It was almost as if I was waiting for something to come along - something, someone, giving me some roots to anchor. But after a whole year, the wait seems pointless and i have finally decided to take the plunge anyways. I have always been someone who has trouble finding that middle ground between intimacy and aloofness. I give myself whole-heartedly to my people and it seems to be true with places too. Vacating that hostel room after three years, last year, left me in that nomadic state where I walked into a new country with nothing but three suitcases. And today after a whole year, I have finally been able to find some anchor in this new world. It's still nothing like home and I still want to go home in a few years but for now, this feels like another home away from home. I finally, ended up abandoning that sense of caution and anchored myself in some material possessions. I ended up buying some knick-knacks and some furniture. I ended up investing my time, energy, effort and money into making this house into home - a place where i want to come back to. A home where I could cherish old memories and form new. 

It finally feels like a part of me and I feel like a part of it. From living like a refugee, I finally decided to start growing some roots.

I finally feel at home - in a home I have invested myself in.

Musings from a road trip...

It's been a long, long time since I've posted anything here. Part of the reason is that I've been busy (yes, I've had things to do other than work and chores at home and that feels nice) and the rest of it is because I haven't had much to say. 

One of the good things that happened recently was a surprise three day trip during the Thanksgiving break. I say surprise not because i was abducted for it at the last minute but more because it was not something I was planning for. A couple of weeks before the break, I was invited to this three day Trip to Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park and to Death Valley by V and G. 

Now, I love travel but am often daunted by the prospect of all the planning and arrangements to be made by and for one person (that person being me definitely doesn't help...;)) !! Anyways, when this opportunity came up, I jumped on the offer even though I had a few reasons to say no. But at the end of it all I am extremely glad I didn't. 

It was a busy trip by all standards - to travel across three or four state borders in a span of three days is no mean feat. And it being the thanksgiving weekend didn't help as there were many travelers like us who wanted to visit places during the break. I could only sympathize with the guys behind the wheel for those seemingly endless hours of driving in difficult terrain and with short days and long nights. We spent more time in the car than outside perhaps... ;) It was not the kind of trip I would plan on taking again left to my own will but in hindsight (oh how I love that word) it was fun. 

And, now that I think about it, this trip was like a wine sampling tour. I tasted many different wines in small amounts. I could figure out what I liked and what I didn't. I certainly will have to come back for the places i really liked and to know these places like they deserve to be known; But despite everything, it was a wonderful primer to road trips and National Parks in the US and it was with some wonderful people.

Some Highlights to remember : 

It was my first road trip in the US.... and to me that's big in itself.

My first experience with Snow (I felt like a child when i first saw the white mounds of snow at Bryce) !! I still haven't seen a snow fall and I know it will be a lovely sight but I also know that I love the cold only from the comforts of a fireplace and a blanket for a few days. The tropical Indian in me can only live for so long without the sun... ;) I still do want to spend a white Christmas making snow men and throwing snow balls just for the fun of it... but now i am happy (really happy) that I didn't go to Boston or Canada. I love San Diego for its warm and boring weather now... ;) 

I loved going back to my geography lessons. There is so much that you learn as a child about the various rocks, ores, rock formations, the modes of erosion, the movement of tectonic plates, mining etc etc but all of that information is stowed away as meaningless facts in some remote corner of the brain till you see them in front of your eyes, doing what you were told they do. And in this trip I saw many glimpses of that information and that made me want to go back to my textbooks to read more. 

The canyons, hoodoos and natural bridges at Bryce were a sight to see. The fall colours at Zion warmed my heart despite the chill. The desolation and beauty of Death Valley transported me back to a time when men roamed on these barren lands in search of treasure, battling nature with sheer human will. Borax, calcite, chalcocite, cinnabar, galena, pyrolusite, magnetite, gold and silver - ores, I had read about and memorized were in front of me in all their beauty, coloring hills like an artist's brush. It stumped me to imagine that some of the rock sheets in Death Valley were from the beginnings of life itself. They were millions of years old and despite changing with the times, they held the secrets of the past locked in them. It amazed me that geologists could read rocks like books and could tell so much about the past and the future from the dust and rock that we trample underfoot. 

This trip, like a few other past trips, evoked a strange mix of emotions : of pride and humility at the same time. When I stood at the precipice of Bryce Canyon watching rocks being carved, shaped, chiseled, chipped, flaked, bruised and broken over millions of years; it made me feel small, almost inconsequential in the grand scheme of things (It is true but scarcely does one realize or acknowledge the fact as we live our lives ticking off our to-do lists and musing about our problems and solutions {imaginary and real}). 

During the sunset at Bryce, despite the whole day's fatigue and the stress of the travel, I felt like I could just sit there and stare at the rocks as they changed color with every passing minute as the rays of the sun struck them differently. I stood there in wonder in sub-zero conditions, watching the first rays of the sun nudging the valley up from its slumber. I stood there thinking of what the first men would have thought when they saw something so magnificent and out of this world (I later read that the local tribes considered the hoodoos to be their ancestors who had been transformed into rocks by the local coyotes...). For a "big hole in the ground", as some one called it, the Bryce canyon certainly evoked a mix of sentiments. And this when I went on the trip without minimum background information and saw very little of the whole. And yet, even as I felt awed by the sheer magnificence of nature, I felt proud in a strange way at the achievement of man. To carve tunnels through mountains, to reverse nature's doings, to make our own path where none existed (freeways and highways through the deserts, mountains and plateaus), to understand nature for what it was, to probe the depths of the earth for the secrets it held... mankind has certainly shown a lot of fortitude and aptitude. But even as you marvel at the achievements and potential of humanity, you wonder where that it taking us in the future.

On a more practical note, this was a trip that took us to some of the coldest and hottest places in the vicinity. While Bryce Valley was freezing with temperatures around -5 and -10 C. Death Valley was a furnace by comparison with daytime temperatures close to 35-40C. Some extreme adventure it was for me ! :)

The skies were a highlight through the trip. Never have I seen such open spaces such clear skies. The stars twinkling in the night sky were like sequins suspended in the fabric of time, beautiful and ever so mysterious. To spot the constellations and stars I had read about was totally fun...  :) 

I have always had a fascination for all that lies above us : the winds, the skies, the clouds and in this trip, I have spent many hours sitting and staring at the skies. It was beautiful to say the least. And that has bumped up the visit to a dark sky conservancy in my "wanderlust list" a little higher than where it was ! 

So much to see and do and so little time. 

With those brief glimpses of my trip, I am going to sign off with some pictures from the trip. I hope I have managed to capture the sense the awe and amazement that i felt through this little exploration... 

Finally, I can't thank V and G enough for the organizing and planning of the trip and of course for the invitation to join them... :)