Wisdom by Hindsight
Holi is here. Day temperatures are back to where we have to use ceiling fans and nights cold enough for comforters.
My daughter in love Manjiree talks to her plants every day and obviously it works.
I take my readers back to my post of eight years ago. The garden has been completely relaid since then. This morning however, I saw the same plant coming up bravely in the same place to have its place in the sun! Perhaps if Manjiree talks to it, the flowers will reappear!
My blogger and virtual friend Marie posted this on her facebook page yesterday. Please click on the image for a larger resolution.
Today is the eighth anniversary of the death of Urmeela. What the old man says resonates with me.
Strangely enough today is also Holi. Yesterday when Manjiree and Ranjan were discussing what should be done today, I simply said that it should be like any other day and we should not do anything out of the way either for the anniversary or the celebration of Holi.
My way of dealing with loss.
I just could not resist the temptation to suggest this topic for the weekly LBC post, as, it is a Friday which just coincidentally happens to be April Fools’ Day or All Fools’ Day as some would have it.
Lest the cartoon mislead you, in India, apart from the April Fools day, which is a hangover from our colonial past, we have other festivals where pranks are played, the most popular one being Holi. In fact it was played just last week over here.
I am sure that all my readers would have participated in playing pranks on this day or having been victims of pranks. The one prank that we used to play in school on this day is indelible in my mind for it having caused a lot of problems for my mother who had to repair the damage done. We used to carve the letters AF on sliced raw potatoes, as a kind of imitation rubber stamp and smear fountain pen ink; yes, those days before ballpoint pens, on it to tap friends with that so that the shirts would carry AF stamp on them. Naturally, I would also carry a few such stamps and to get rid of the stamps was quite a chore for my mother.
Of late, on this day, I have been quite wary of prank calls and visits and so, I have become a totally useless fellow for pranks. Since I do not have grand children and others to urge me to participate, it is by default that the first of April simply passes by like any other day. In my time, even as an adult, I have been both perpetrator and victim but it has been many years since I participated as age has finally caught up with me.
To sign off, let me share a piece of nostalgia from the sixties of the last century, two very popular Bollywood stars, Shammi Kapoor and Saira Banu in a typical Hindi film song and dance routine from a film aptly titled April Fool. Shackman should know that I am quite capable of producing something like this too!