A Happy Holi

My youngest child finishes college this summer.
He had planned to travel with friends over the long Holi/Good Friday weekend.
The travel plans didn't materialise, and so the SRE and I had the pleasure of his company, along with some of his friends, some of whom came, went, stayed......
We had a very low key Holi, when I made gujiya after years and years, as well as the traditional kanji. Since I couldn't find any black carrots, I used the red ones with a couple of beetroots for the colour.

We were all delighted to see these traditional items, but I realised that there are some things that you enjoy more in memory than in the present day!!!!
It's been a few days of feasting, conversations, late nights, midnight snacks and TV and movie watching at home. I realise how much I appreciate the wisdom and common sense of the young, and how much I will miss my son and the friends he has so kindly shared with us, as their lives and careers take them to different places. Here's wishing them all wonderful lives and great careers, and much love and laughter always!

A discovery!

 A friend had posted this on her Facebook page recently, and I was totally floored by this poem.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Spring/summer

Summer is here- we had to run the air conditioner for a while last night.
Morning walks are now a sweaty business.
And this is just the beginning.
I'd gone to pay the club bill, when I encountered these two beauties.

The bougainvilla was aflame with colour, while the subtle dull pink of the unknown flowering tree felt like a reminder of the beautiful spring weather that has suddenly vanished........