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The fat cat who roams the subdivision and looks like a tiger cub – suddenly ran to the Dogwood tree and swiftly climbed up its winter bark, reaching for a high branch with the impressive agility the animal is known for. She sat there on top of the tree, glancing far into the street. This seemingly simple sight felt so surreal, for few moments the rest of the street in…
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In March of 1958, the leaders of China commanded citizens all over the country to come out of their houses to bang pots & pans and force the local sparrows to fly constantly, not letting them come down or rest in their nests. The goal was to cause them to drop dead from exhaustion – for a mass extermination drive called “Eliminate Sparrows Campaign”. Millions of people followed the orders.…
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Have you ever been promised something by a total stranger? Something unexpected. You don’t call it a necessity but your heart knows, it is. An appearance. A smile. A gesture. A blessing. The unspoken promise of receiving it at an implicit time is your treasure. In this situation, you are curious as to who that stranger is, but only for a while. Then it stops to matter. Better yet, it…
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The most gratifying moments for me standing in front of my refrigerator are – when I am making check marks on some sheets of paper on its door. The local bird supplies store where I buy my backyard birds’ food send promotional flyers in snail mail, often accompanied by delightful, informative content about birds. To my utter relish, I once received a three pages leaflet – with pictures of about…
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It has been about eight years since the time I moved to a part of this rare planet, where one can see Northern Cardinals. The males are bright red, with almost round appearance when their feathers are fluffed up, a short, thick beak, and an adorable, annoyed-for-God-knows-what kind of expression on their faces. To draw a popular culture reference, “Red” in the Angry Birds game & movie is roughly based…
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We keep saying yes to our chaotic, confused and imperfect life with courage and eagerness, all year long. When a year comes to an end, we may be happy about it, or sad. But sometimes, we simply feel lost, bewildered by the never-pausing cycles of clocks, calendars, and, time – the limited one, of our lives that is, and also, the eternity. At times we are puzzled about our priceless…
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Feature Image by Peter H on Pixabay
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The sight of a thousand marigolds made me unsettled recently. What sent a peculiarly disquieting jitter through me was not a disheartening sight by any cultural or social parameters though. Quite the contrary. What I saw was the lavish décor of a typical Indian wedding – hundreds of hanging garlands, covering the pillars & walls of the place from ceilings to floors – made with thousands of marigold flowers, pierced…
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Before I moved a few months back, for years, the sight that I woke up to every dawn, was a voluminous tree canopy looming over my bedroom window. It was a River Birch. When I had seen that tree for the first time, I was quite disappointed to find a “very old”, almost dying tree in front of my home. I didn’t know anything about Birches at the time and…
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I had seen them peeking their innocent faces out of that stubby, worn out fence made with drift wood. Whether those geese were kept by a homesteader or they were en route to somewhere and had chosen to make a stop during their flight, I would not know. They were not the only pristine white beauties there, I also caught a glimpse of some delicate white bulbs scattered all over,…
