MY BASEMENT PARKING PHILOSOPHY

They installed motion sensor lights in our basement parking. It is a beautiful thing- saves a lot of electricity. 

As you move towards your car, the lights flicker on, and turn off after a while..

The first day they did so, I enjoyed my walk to the car in my parking spot (furthest from the gate- of course!!) , an interesting thought occurred to me. Suppose I was afraid of the dark – of the unknown.. I’d never venture out towards my car because it would be too dark. And I’d never get to it, because it will always stay too dark. It is my action – my movement – that causes the lights to switch on. If I walk, the path lights up. If I do not walk, it stays dark. Is that not a lot how life is?

A big part of the plan, if there is any, is unknown to us. Life is a series of unknowns- and can be pretty scary. But when you know where your goal is, and when you have the conviction of moving towards it despite the dark – it is then that the lights switch on. It is our action- our determination to move on despite the darkness- that creates the light. We are the harbingers of light, and if we decide to wait for the whole path to be lighted before moving on- we might have to wait forever.

Those who do not walk to the unknown have a perfectly legitimate explanation- did it not stay dark forever? Were they not right by deciding not to walk into that abyss? It never lighted, afterall !!

Of course it never lighted- because you never walked.. The unknown will stay unknown – and frightening- unless you look at it in the eye and are prepared to meet and greet it like an old acquaintance. For it is at that point of time that the fearsome unknown turns in to an old acquaintance.

An ancient Sanskrit hymn says –“ Tamso ma jyotir gamay”, translated loosely as “ May I move from darkness to light”.  It is a major paradigm shift to realize, that the lamp we want to walk towards, is us ourselves.  And I have my motion sensor basement lights to thank for it. 

Are you busy?

It ‘s a busy life, as we jump from one activity to another. Paradoxically, in order to create the ideal, peaceful world that exists in only our mind. The IT manager struggles to meet his clients and his golf game (to meet more clients!), the recent graduate juggles deadlines and shopping lines, the working mother makes place for P.A. days in her crowded appointment diary…

As I peer out the window of my tenth floor flat overlooking highway 401, I see an endless stream of cars in a nonstop flow.

And then, I think about a question Eckhart Tolle asks his readers in his celebrated book,”The Power of Now”. Imagine all humans removed from the planet, and only plants and animals left behind. Imagine every man made structure removed as well, leaving only what is natural behind. In terms of civilizations as we define it today, this is probably a giant step backwards. But yet, it will be a place with zero stress, and infinite time. As Lao Tzu says, “Nature never hurries, yet accomplishes everything”.

You join a new job, and want to be the Employee of the Year in the first month. You have a baby, bless you, and can’t wait for her to attend university? Relationships break at record speed today; for who has time to slowly nurture them? Each year buzzes past, leaving behind a flurry of activities, and hardly any memories.

I find myself caught up in this rush a number of times. And then, I take time to remember that time is an illusion. It is created by the society that I live in- but it does not have to define me. I do not have to live by this society’s norms of success or it’s idea of time. Candles on my birthday cake are not my reflection. And just as I am done celebrating my independence of time, I get sucked in the activity-whirlpool again. Hopefully, with time, I’ll have better control over what I think…

Book Review- My Family and Other Animals.

I stumbled upon “ My Family and Other Animals” quite by chance. Eager to find something good and easy to read, I picked it up from the Raves and Faves section of my library. Good- it sure was; easy- not so much! The book grasped my attention from the first page, and held it till the last.

My Family And Other Animals retells the experiences of world famous zoologist Gerald Durell, when he was all of 10 years old living in the greek island of Corfu.  It takes you through his magical childhood, a childhood that anyone would envy. As you read the book, Gerald’s family and his love for various animals take almost a real shape as they live out their enchanting lives in the pages of this unstoppable book. Also worth mentioning is the author’s mastery of language and use of powerful similes.

The narrative starts with the family – Gerald, his siblings and his widow mother in England- sick of the typical English weather. The eldest brother- Larry, suggests they move to greek island of Corfu- for the sunshine and lower costs of living, and the adventure begins… The Author’s wit and humour fills the pages as the reader moves with the family exploring their new surrounding, and looking for a suitable house to live in. Through a sequence of events, we meet and become intimate with Gerald’s family- the unassuming mother, the stoic eldest brother Larry, the adventurous middle brother Louise, and the pompous sister, Margo. The beauty of the book lies in the fact that it strictly depicts the life as the author saw it as a 10 year old- so anything not important to the child Gerrald finds no place in the book. This spares the reader of irrelevant details, and showers him instead with the charm that only the curious eyes of a child can see in the mundane.

As Gerrald, or Garry as everyone calls him, moves around exploring this brave new world, he makes friends with local peasents and people, and also the local flora and fauna. The author describes his discoveries of various small animals- butterflies, bees, lizards, spiders , tortoises and even water snakes, gulls, and magpies with such observant detail that the reader can visualize it for himself or herself.  Sample this-“ I discovered that under the dry leaves of the fuchsia hedge lived another type of spider, a fierce little huntsman with the cunning and ferocity of a tiger. He would stalk about his continent of leaves, eyes glistening in the sun, pausing now and then to raise his hairy legs to peer about”.  In countless such lines, paragraphs and chapters, Garry paints for us a vivid picture of the island teaming with life. As I read this book, I realized how little I know of other species that co-inhabit Earth with us, and how much indeed goes on in their lives, just as in ours. Garry is able to turn his fascination of animals into something contagious, and the reader feels compelled to look outside the brick and cement urban jungle and wonder about the larger, uncovered life in the rest of the planet.

 The only downside of this book might be its’ language. The flowery and descriptive language that Gerrald chooses to employ has both pros and cons. On one hand, he reader is given ample literary aids to help him visualize each and every species and other stuff Garry comes in contact with. Even those readers with limited knowledge of animals, such as me, can paint a picture of the life of the island. On the other hand, Garry often goes overboard with his descriptions. It takes a lot of time and patience for a reader to understand and imagine the scene. Often I had to read a line twice or thrice to get the point beyond the similes and metaphors. For example, when Garry would describe a scorpion thus- “ They were weird looking little things, with their flattened oval bodies, their neat crooked legs, and enormous crab like claws, bulbous and neatly joined as armour, and tail like a string of brown beads ending in a sting like a rose-thorn.”

All in all, My Family and other Animals is a must-read book, though the language might require the reader to be at least a teenager. I do appreciate why the librarians put it in the ‘Raves and Faves’ section.