My Own!

When ominous clouds,
Of darkness and of despair,
Of sickness and of death,
Seek to smother you,
Seek to swallow you,
When your heart aches in anguish,
Screams and yearns for solace,
Lifts the veil of heaviness a moment,
A kindly light shines forth,
A warming ray of hope,
Silently whispering; My child!
Ere you donned the mantle,
Of human flesh in play,
You were always mine own;
The instant you shouldst drop it,
You’ll know, you’re always,
My own, my very own!
A being of light like I,
Immortal and Eternal,
For the fleshy garbs you wear,
Time after time after time,
Are but mere sandcastles,
You build,
To play anew on the shore!

Borrowed!

Flaming swords of grass aglow,
Lively sway they in yon breeze,
Luminous, bright and joyful,
Knowest they, one wonders,
Their effulgence borrowed from the sun!

Moonlight!

Through the moonlight of awareness,
Flit cloudlike forms of thought,
From nowhere they appear,
Only to disappear elsewhere!

Donning the mantle of flesh,
Awareness plays hide and seek,
While thoughts, as desires and fancies,
The sensory world doth create!

Sparks of awareness enact roles,
As individual egos, they play,
Engrossed, the play gets serious,
Playground and players so real!

As colorful varied scenes follow,
Interesting and exciting they seem,
But then repetitiveness reeks of boredom,
And disenchantment lashes out pain!

Fed up, the sparks now intent,
Seek not to play, but the playwright,
Entering the silence, their home,
Is awareness, awake from its dream!

Crabby Wisdom!

In our fields live a great many crabs. They dig holes and tunnels everywhere, excavating mud from the bottom. Hiding during the day, they come out at night to snip off the tender vegetable plants with their strong, sharp pincers. In olden times, they had natural enemies - foxes and owls that hunted them at night. With the advent of the green revolution and the rampant use of pesticides, the predators vanished, dead from eating poisoned crabs. But the crabs somehow outlived the poison. Now the crabs have multiplied to such an extent that they have become the nightmare of farmers. We and others who do only organic or natural farming never use pesticides to control them. Old farmers speak of the ancient way of saving the crops which we found to be highly effective.

Dry grass and weeds are sickled and arranged around the vegetable plants. The crabs are wary of approaching the plants because their many legs get entangled in the springy dry grasses and weeds. In this picture, you can see our cowpea seedlings shooting up through the grass which also acts as mulch and later crumbles unto compost. We always sow more seeds than needed, for a few cunning crabs simply tunnel under the grass and rise up right under the seedlings. The crabs get a share of the succulent young plants.

Soon, the plants grow and the stems become thicker and hard enough to survive the crab attacks. Nature always strives to maintain a balance!

A Melody of Nature!

Here are a couple of puff throated babblers entertaining us in their sweet, beautiful voices on the old staircase outside our window, two years ago. The video was recovered by my son from our old mobile phone which suddenly came to life after months of not working! The birds had a habit of visiting us every morning at around 8 am, singing and knocking on our window, before flying off to the woods. Enjoy!

To be a Rose!

A rosebud, half-eaten,
Turns not black, nor bitter.
In time, doth she bloom,
Fragrant, full of nectar!

Nature's Sparklers!

प्रकुति कि फूल झडि - പ്രകൃതിയുടെ കമ്പിത്തിരി!

A shower of blooms of miniature bamboo soaking in the rays of the morning sun.

A dew drenched strand of a web, shimmering with rainbow hues. The white light of the sun touching the strand, only to explode into myriad colors!