Beautiful life will lead to beautiful death. Stay beautiful.

The month of “Eternal rest grant unto them O lord, and let the perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.” is indeed back to remind us that dust indeed we are and unto dust we shall return. The world chants ejaculations for the peaceful resting of departed souls. Proserpine has left the earth and her mother is not willing to bless vegetations any more. There is gloom all around. The "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” is half and a quarter turned to go. Gloom is ready to take its chair. Praying for the death at this time of the year is indeed apt. It’s getting bitingly cold. The snow is beginning to empower the land, turning landscape into snowscape. In a place like Thiruvarur, heaven’s great lamps seem to have dived into a long oblivion with the arrival of the Northeast monsoon. Winter nights are beginning to enlarge the number of their hours and with it winter blues. We die many deaths before we can properly die. Death and winter both bear darts and wound and sting with cold as love with heat. And yes, sickness, age, or grief will marry our body to dust. This nuptial for sure we cannot procrastinate for we are all traveling toward it every second speeding together with times’ wing chariot. Our west of life will be a matter of 12 hrs drive. Turning to dust makes a lot of sense.

But how does the concept of heaven and hell strike one? Are we all waiting for the blow of the archangelical trumpet? How many of us are trying to live a good life because we are scared of the perpetually burning flames of hell believing that God would not be God if He did not penalize the transgressor? The heaven where God dwells is also pretty attractive I suppose. Heaven has free flowing rivers of milk and honey they say. I like neither. Who wants to have a beautiful death? Let us all live beautiful lives first and not bother about death. Have you not heard what James Shirley had to say? Death is the leveller. Death does not define how beautiful, affluent or majestic one is. It levels. But life defines. One cannot have a beautiful death unless one has led a beautiful life. This November I wish all a happy, tranquil, facilitating living. Beautiful people with beautiful feet, hands, heart and mind stay beautiful.   

THE PATRIARCH

Certain things in life cannot be anticipated unlike the kind of pelf that one encompasses in the bank account. Life is not made up of a single entity though the body is one. Certain priorities, the arteries of blissful survival as social animals sometimes turn out to be a fiasco, a debacle, but that cannot be labeled as the unplugging of the life support tube. The human or for that matter all animals possess two very vital parts; the brain and the heart. The brain finds a snug place in the cranium which shields it like a caterpillar in the cocoon which in next to no time turns into a beautiful butterfly, with a difference in the outcome though. Every caterpillar evolves into arresting butterflies but the wits of human are not perpetually stunning. The brain unlike other organs cannot be transplanted which is one reason why it takes charge of the whole body commanding and ordering and transfusing itself through an assortment of channels, the five senses like a monarch who knows he can never be dethroned no matter what and does whatever he wants with his subjects. The subjects may be brainwashed or conditioned or persuaded is not the point but they follow and carry out the instructions willingly or half-heartedly. As a matter of fact human beings inherit and tag along this sovereign in different parts of the body. In some one can see it brimming through the mouth, whereas in some through the muscles, the eyes, the boobs, the bottom, the complexion, the calves, the hips etc. They are used to seduce, rape, molest, usurp, abuse, assault, create, destroy, harm, save, etc for better or for worse. In spite of the fact that this monarch finds himself immune against all odds from his subjects he also has a rival in the heart. 

M'bu, the millionaire...

Many a times I’ve heard people say that he or she is a seasoned banker, teacher, dancer, singer etc. But have you encountered a seasoned plant? If so, share with me the story of your plant. If nay, elongate your eyes, ears and meet M’bu, a plant which grows abundantly on the hill top village, Maram Khullen. It is not only a seasoned plant but also a versatile veteran, a trickster, a nanabush.

M’bu is a plant that will enticingly greet you the moment you step into the village. It is a beautifully made shortie. It has fat juicy shoots that can be easily dismembered from its parent stem. It is a millionaire in prickles. To a mere glance it looks harmless and painless and even inviting. Therefore, the first “don’t” that you should keep in mind when you accost this tantalizingly gorgeous green shortie is, you should never touch it with your bare hands. Sometimes I get a feeling that M’bu might be a female, a strong female who fence for herself by her own prickles like the skunk that keeps away enemies by its stink. If you have already experienced the kiss of this shortie you probably know what it means to be kissed by such a beauty as this. Yet, to those who haven’t the experience is like suffering a sort of private blitzkrieg. It leaves your skin turgid and can even cause high temperature. There’s no remedy but to lotion the affected area with your waste liquid.

To mark its existence may be M’bu is an eponym to M’buchiichiile, a fawn, blackish, whitest caterpillar, to M’buruina, a teeny-weeny black bird, and to M’bukouna, a green emaciated tiny caterpillar. M’buruina lives in the fields. The habitat for M’buchiichiile and M’bukouna is the M’bu itself.

M’buchiichiile, though not a common sight is a caterpillar that can smother you with excitement. The moment you bring to its knowledge of your presence by giving it a light nudge it starts to show its stunts and maneuvers, shaking its body violently. When as a child unprovided  for by circus or amusement parks M’buchiichiile has served umpteen times with the ambience of the missing man-made exhilarations.

M’bukouna is rather the most creative and wisest caterpillar. By the time it turns middle-aged, in the intricate fashion of the weaver bird it begins to glue the edges of the M’bu leaf and builds a snug castle. After a smug put it lies there happily for its turn to be a winged beauty. The curio in a child has often led me into opening up the homely foliage to see what the M’bukouna could be up to. Quite often I have found this fellow to be lying there snugly turning from green to white and from a black larva finally into a beautiful butterfly. The transport of cordiality with this fellow is never absent unlike other caterpillars.

M’bu does not serve only as treat for the eyes, ears, mind and heart but also has enough concerns for the physical needs of the human tummy. Broth prepared out of its tender leaves is a delicacy. Well, garnering the leaves is not an easy task but often a joyous one. A double edged bamboo blade is folded into a tweezers like cutter and used for plucking the foliage. Here goes the recipe:

v  Three or four cups of rice (double battered)

v  A basket of m’bu leaves

v  Shredded ginger (100gm)

v  Salt (two tea spoons)

v  Rinse the leaves thoroughly in water

v  When the water reaches the boiling point, put a bunch of m’bu leaves and sprinkle some rice over it. Continue the procedure until the desired amount is content in the pot. Slowly and steadily keep stirring (preferably with a wooden spoon) until the m’bu leaves are completely squashed.

v  Add salt and shredded ginger

v  Continue to stir until rice is cooked and soft

v  Serve hot

v  Best when cooked over firewood

v  Enjoy

M’bu broth tastes good and the aroma alone is a treat for the nostrils but gluttony is not a virtue for M’bu. It restricts your intake in its own way. If you gorge too much it holds your waste liquid and makes you undergo a queer flickering release within 24 hours.

Apart from all the above M’bu serves as a tool for grooming characters. Children and adults may be undeterred by the battering of any sort but it guarantees the heed being paid whether in chiding and chiseling a brat at home or an adult absent from Christmas carols or the festive gathering wakes.

  

              

    

Always Vivien's

Vivien, a young girl from the hills of the Himalayan ranges always wanted a huge Dictionary. A thick Dictionary which will endow her with all the meanings of the words she has always wanted to know. She did possess two or three in her life but was never contended. They were often gifted. One was a hand-down from her aunt who got it from her elder brother when he was done with college. When it came to her the cover had been tattered and certain pages dog eared. It was three inches in width and six inches in breadth and eight inches in length. Oxford English Dictionary in navy blue. Another came into her kitty for the best student award at school. The only difference with what she already has was the fact that the former was ancient and the latter novel. It hardly brought any additional excitement like getting a new sartorial in one’s granny fashion.  What she wanted was the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 7^th Edition in royal blue. Her thirst for it was like pouring water into a mouse’s hole. There were times when she wanted to ask her rich relatives to buy her one but somehow it never crawled beyond the nest of her longing.

Vivien worked industriously, cut-down her expenses and bought one in a book fair in 2006. It cost her precious little 500 bucks. Many of her friends complimented it an excellent one and they accessed it whenever they necessitated. She never felt it was hers solely like an aboriginal’s attitude towards land. A paperback Dictionary it was therefore she swathed it with crystal polythene.

Three odd years went by and her stance for the Dictionary stayed put like a rock undeterred by the falling rain. One fateful evening she left it on the window sill and overlooked all about it like a person suffering from dementia. In the early hours of the first day of the ninth month of the two thousand and ninth year she abruptly got up from her sleep like a mother who has heard the cries of her baby in deep sleep and charged towards the aperture terribly petrified that the Dictionary would have been drenched for it was a sodden night. To her relief only few drops of precipitation were resting on the coat glistening against the illumination of the tube-light like a dragonfly’s wing in the sunshine. Vivien took the Dictionary with the feeling of a mother rocking her baby from a nightmare and placed it dotingly on the bed and snugly resumed her sleep.

Vivien then entered the land of dreams. She dreamt that Mike, her boyfriend of three years was married and was blatantly and flagrantly enticing her to carry on their relationship sans interruption. Getting up from her sleep in haste she phoned Mike. To her bolt from the blue and spine chilling revelation he has turned off his cell phone. She turned around and witnessed the Dictionary laying by her side like a lover waiting to be embraced. The primary thought that came rushing to her mine was that she has never written her name on the Dictionary. And for the first time she took her pen and sealed her name on the front foliage of her Dictionary in a beautiful calligraphy, Always Vivien’s. 

Ten Reasons Why You Should Get Up Early In Maram Khullen

Maram Khullen

1.      The azure sister in perfect camouflage with the blue hills warms your heart and you are enticed into having a bite of the delicious morning.

2.      The Apollo in his golden orange cloak slowly takes a peep at your flower garden, then corridor and comes to tickle you through your front door, the fact that all the houses are build facing the Apollo.

3.       Either your rooster or your neighbours’ will constantly alarm you of the beautiful day laid before you.

4.      Your neighbours will definitely ask you why you got up late because you kick-off the day by lighting the tripod hearth, and to start the fire quicker you need live coals from your neighbour’s. Or your neighbours will come constantly knocking at your door for live coals with huge dry barks or neatly cut plate from canned fish tin.

5.       If you are late by an hour you’ll have to rush for your neighbours will give you a piece of their minds.

6.      Water is scarce therefore, if you want the best water you have to get up before dawn and collect from the village common pond.

7.      You don’t have anything readymade. You have everything fresh. To cook you need to go to your garden to pluck vegetables that you need especially the huge sweet cabbage (typical Maram Khullen Cabbage.)

8.       You don’t keep a nanny. You go and look out for people who are not going to the fields or office to take care of your baby for the day without any qualms from either side.

9.      You could manage all these in two hours time because you don’t have to worry about having forgotten to bring your dried clothes inside or having left a bucket or a knife outside your house. Your neighbour will take care. The fact that people do not have the system of locking their houses.

10.  People don’t count the day by hours but by the amount of work they have done and they follow the signs of Apollo and the calls of the roosters.