This Blossomed Tonight

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I Want One Too...

...(in a few years from now) but sans the morning sickness and labour pain, and if possible toilet-trained at birth. And please God, make them chubby, healthy, quirky and fun and may they...

...jump onto my bed and have a fit of giggles about my funny morning hair.

...look at me with those liquid black eyes.

...delight in playing hide-and-seek.

...be the cutest thing ever!

...be aware of their cuteness and use it to their full advantage to melt my heart.

Random Stuff I Miss At 1am #1

His name is Bhola, and for the medical interns posted at Boko, Assam he is the unofficial protector, companion while watching a starlit sky, reluctant offerer of its back to scratch, obliging listener to secret confessions, prompt fetcher of wayward shuttlecocks while playing badminton, drooler at kitchen door, loud barker, and quite the dude. 

Relics of Childhood

Today I saw a beautiful and moving series of photographs of children from different corners of the world being photographed with their most precious possessions. The little girl from Zambia and the little boy from Bangkok are so cute, I want to gobble them up!

I tried to recollect the most treasured (material) possessions from my early childhood. Mostly they were comic books and Enid Blyton mysteries. I stacked them in a brown cupboard with a glass door, and in the evening I used to return home after a delightful hour of playing with the neighbourhood kids and my cousins, splash some water on my face (to appease my mother), sit cross-legged on my bed and take out a book from that cupboard. It was a solitary hour of reading that I looked forward to every day; but those books and the cupboard got left behind while moving to a new place. I just hope some kid, who liked reading, found them.

A few days ago I had helped my mother clean up the old trunks in the attic. And it was here that I found certain run-down relics of my childhood.

An unusually cheerful Garfield that liked to hug.

 I called her Tiffany, after the actor who played Vicki the Robot in the series Small Wonder.

This is my favorite childhood possession. My father had bought this glow-worm when I was barely two years old. I liked to think of it as an extremely hunch-backed, chubby-cheeked and kind old woman looking out for me whenever I woke up in the dark after a nightmare.

Happy Birthday

Four years of mute fishy joy. Happy birthday :)

Snippets from Elu Devi Baruah's Sketchbook

She writes prolifically, novels and newspaper columns. She cooks the best chole ever. She paints panoramic landscapes, portraits and carries a sketchbook around everywhere. She is brimming with creativity that pours out through various channels; a pen, a paintbrush, a ladle. She keeps her sketchbook locked in an old Godrej wardrobe. The sketches are just an creative outlet for her restless fingers, they weren't meant to be shared. But when I chanced upon them, I realized it would be a crime not to share these snippets from my aunt's sketchbook, sketches that hardly takes less than an hour to materialize. I am honoured to be the first one to share these works of art through my blog. I apologize for the poor resolution of the images, as I had only my phone camera at hand.

Portraits of the departed: My aunt's in-laws

Boat of destiny: Where will you steer it?

Bare necessities: A hut on the way to Cherapunjee

The Embrace

Sensuous Femininity

A rough sketch of the Venetian canals

Sun and Shade

Room Vignettes

Books. A bamboo mat during summer. Flowers. Jasmine-scented candles.

My 'Ek, Do Teen' Clock.

My Conjoined Twin, My Study Desk.

Clock Fetish, yet Punctuality-Challenged. My Library Clock

My Room on a Sleepy Autumn Afternoon

The Protector. A Small Prayer Nook with my Ganesha Idols.

Journal. Notebooks. More Books. Purple Pens. Cookie Jar. Sketch Book. Water Colours.

Kisses, Friends and Spring on My Wall.

My World

Mawphlang Sacred Grove, Shillong: And It Was Everything I imagined It To Be.

Arrival. A forest awaits.

Leaves crackled underneath our feet. The lone sound. No bird calls.

Black, lithe limbs arising in a web of a green. We stooped. We jumped.

Moss and Mushroom.

Undisturbed, the forest flourishes. I walked through a jungle.

Flora breeds Flora. An unassuming red orchid.

The thicket leaks an eerie green light.

The tree with the bulbous nose.

Moss covered roots. Do they hide burrows to a Wonderland?

The guide tells us this frail white plant is used in the manufacture of 'incense sticks'.

A fan of red mushroom peeks from a log.

Fallen. Casualty of a storm? Victim of human hands?

A leafy canopy. A green shroud.

Tangled roots.

It conjured images of the Slytherin monster.

Shades of nature. Brown and Green.

Stone relics. Monuments to souls of the past.

I hallucinated. "Snakes!", I screamed.

A rare clearing. A carpet of crunchy, brown leaves.

A pop of clementine. More mushrooms.

Entry and Exit point. "Pray to the forest God before you step in", the guide advises.

Lilliputian yellow suns in a goliath green ground. Pretty flowers.

Soaking in more greenery. Oxygenated. Rejuvenated.

How green IS my valley.

Untamed. Pristine.

The sun-bathers.

 

 

 

 

 

I might visit the Eiffel Tower someday. Or the Pyramids. Even the vast Amazon. But this sacred grove in all its untamed, undisturbed and eerily calm allure will be lodged in my heart as a refuge from modernity, a mystical place where elfs or goblins might be watching from behind shrubs, the pulsing and wildly throbbing heart of nature, and even a Narnia sans the lamp post. I will return, someday.