Hebron, New York & New Delhi, India

As I stayed awake all night in New Delhi, I enjoyed reflecting on my life back home in the US.

The guest cottage gives me a peek through my iPhone lens. Giving me a lucky and auspicious addition of turmeric to the already glorious even if rather big landscape that I have grown to love, grown to cherish and also fear. The silence of the nights in the lap of such beauty - always something that worries me, and then fades into the morning with nary a reason to have been worried.

We are all guests. Some visit for longer than others. Some see one thing and others a completely different picture and reality whilst sleeping or walking or discovering the same setting. It is this plurality of experiences that makes us who we are and should give us a cushion to find comfort in when we feel life has dealt us tough blows.

How can I write such thoughts and not live them? Why am I so fickle?

Look at me the land around us says to me. See me mighty, seem me strong. See me full of hope, see me ready to burst and break. But see me for sure. Being lost to my many attributes it tells me is nothing but foolishness. Am I ready to believe? Ready to see the truth? I do live in Washington County - a verdant area, blessed by God with beauty that should be inspiring. But political correctness and laziness of its populace have also made it one of the most lethargic communities anywhere. I call it home. I LOVE it dearly. What to do? What should be done? Shall I become one of the many that live in its lap who do not care, who find it easier to accept and not question? The other, the questioning, is not easy, makes for difficult conversations and leads to an effort being made by all in the community to sow seeds of change. That clearly has now become unpatriotic and not the American way. What am I to do? Choke to death? Or do what I do best? To be the problem that hurts, that seems wrong, but may be ahead of its time and doing something deeper than the skin.

Wide, dark and bright, green and gray, light and bright, dark and deep - life or the landscape? Both, really.

The willow tree that makes home next to a brimming pond, hardly seems affected by the low water table. Why then can I not move on, live my life, make peace with my fathers loss? What is so special about me? Why do I have to take so much time? Make so much fuss? Am I not another little nothing in the larger and grander subject - life?

Dark, shining, green and lush, hopeful and bleak - all at once. Like only the sky can be.

We stole all the goose eggs it seems. So no goslings this year. How can I mourn dad's loss when I have inflicted loss to my own dear geese? Is there some similarity in these actions? Is it not wise to at least ponder over such truths? At least I have some baby ducks to enjoy. To watch as they deal with life in a pond, where hopefully they shall live many comforting and comfortable years.

Babies born this spring. Coming of age and enjoying their own union with their future, their on comforting home, the pond at American Masala Farm.

Only if clouds could speak, perhaps I would find answers to my questions. Questions that keep me up at odd hours of the night and asleep reality when awake and in the midst of a world thumping with energy and life.

Finding colors, finding buds and blossoms of hope around the farm to cajole me into believing that the loss of my beloved father too has a greater purpose and a silver lining somewhere. Perhaps in the colors that I am finding at the farm. Colors that were not there just last summer.

Aasha, our blue tick coonhound that has lost her elder brother Sebastian a few weeks ago. She has come of age in the weeks since that loss. Matured instantly. Not unlike the man writing this. Who since the loss of his father, has become a strange being, with a strange sense of purpose in this world.

Clethera - a sweet scented flower like this belongs on the garlands that we put around loved ones when mourning their sudden loss. Where was it when we were garlanding my father? Was it mean to blossom now to wake me up and teach me to live in the present and garland my father even if only through my actions and this new presence I have come to accept for him - an omnipresent presence that keeps him around me, even if I am lost to the moment.

Big, beautiful, RED (the color of life and blood and all things hopeful and empowering) - this hibiscus blossom gives me reason to believe there is a majesty in this world that does not translate into spoken or written words. Not even into photographs really. I could have gone closer into the flower to hide the ugliness of the satellite dish. Would that have erased its presence though? Such reality always exists. We sift through the happenings of life that which we care to, and sadly, sometimes allow unreal realities to become our misbegotten reality. I do not make sense. Perhaps I should go to sleep, or at least wake up and leave the computer and go enjoy the birds of Delhi as they rouse those like myself through their songs of hard work, reality and life.

The guest cottage gives me a peek through my iPhone lens. Giving me a lucky and auspicious addition of turmeric to the already glorious even if rather big landscape that I have grown to love, grown to cherish and also fear. The silence of the nights in the lap of such beauty - always something that worries me, and then fades into the morning with nary a reason to have been worried.

We are all guests. Some visit for longer than others. Some see one thing and others a completely different picture and reality whilst sleeping or walking or discovering the same setting. It is this plurality of experiences that makes us who we are and should give us a cushion to find comfort in when we feel life has dealt us tough blows.

How can I write such thoughts and not live them? Why am I so fickle?

Farmhouse in Hebron - My Night at home in New Delhi

As I stayed awake all night in New Delhi, I enjoyed reflecting on my life back home in the US.
Such is the curse of one like me, the first generation to emigrate to another country - that we are never all there in either the place we move to (which we clearly love and find compelling) or comfortable when back in the comforts of the place we left.

Of course some have to leave their homeland out of horrible realities of a tough life. Often made tougher and uglier because of forces not the least in their own control.

Then there are those fools like myself that leave a culture to live dreams that they enjoy when seeing the greener pastures on the other side.

Such pastures exist? Maybe. Maybe not. But they do pain glorious pictures and very doable realities in the minds of those that are sitting throwing pebbles of hope and vision into the vast ocean that is the imagination.

The silence in my parents home in Delhi, the home I grew up in, was not unlike the silence at the farm. In fact It was even more silent than the remote farm in Hebron that Charlie and I have made our home. Is such silence possible? YES! Even in a city as populous as Delhi. I wonder if my dad wanted to let his absence be known, clearly, wholly, and in full detail. Nothing I could say, write, touch, dream of, fathom - was bringing him back, or making any noise to change my thoughts, or wake me up from my awakeness, or put me to sleep whilst awake. What madness, what calm. What beauty!

I miss dad. But most of all I marvel at my mother. A pillar of strength to my father, and to his parents. Also a giver of joy, comfort and support to her own parents. When I think of her, I also see a woman who always has the ability to find beauty in the most macabre of realities, the meanest of people, and the most hopeless of moments. How can she do this? Is she not as mortal as me? How does she have such clarity of vision? Such magnanimity of being and thoughts? If she can be so stoic, so calm, so strong and so inspiring - can I not let two months give me enough time to embrace my loss and make peace with the world?

This night which has already turned into morning here in New Delhi - have given me another night of contemplation and given me another reason to believe in the world in ways only my parents could have taught me to. For their sake, for my own sake, and for the sake of my hunger to live and share - I too must allow days to pass into night, night into morning, sorrow into joy, joy into the nothing-ness of the mundane and so on. But am I ready to live? Ready to allow my self a lack of shackles? Shackles bring comfort too. Of a very warped type. The type of comfort that allows us to wallow in self-pity and mistakenly feel that life will continue to live, even if we choke any and all life out of it.

Hebron is where these photos were taken At American Masala Farm. But New Delhi is where these thoughts came out. My life is a blend of reality and dreams, vision and lack of it, sorrow and joy that each come alive at strange moments and in most awkward of places. I can crave India with most hunger when sitting enjoying the comforts of the farm in North Country, NY. But then I am homesick for the farm when in the deeply familiar comforts of the four walls I knew as home before I knew any other. Am I allowed such conflict? I hope so. Conflict it seems educates me best. How I wish I am ready to learn. I know I am hungry to learn. Now only if I could be present in the moment and allow life to educate me as it does any and every time I am mindful of my breathing.

Comments

[Soos]

I'm sorry for the loss of your father - two months is too short to have gotten over it. It's the nature of some of us human beings to feel conflicted, and tugged at between both the present and the past. And for you, between two continents - two worlds. And to be human is to be imperfect.

[Suvir Saran]

Soos, thanks for your note. Two months is indeed a very short time. I am glad to know my imperfection is just a sign of my being a mortal human.
I hope the 3rd month can make things seem cleared and more hopeful.

[cheap hats]

I am glad to know my imperfection is just a sign of my being a mortal human.

[Soma]

I have no words, but I have read this so many times and in so many ways this speaks my heart. I am so sorry.. I lost my ma 10 years back.. 10 years seems to be a very long time compared to the 2 months. But all these years could not take away the pain. As you speak of plurality/duality, I am trying to embrace the philosophy of "nothing is lost".. all remains in one form or the other, somewhere, some place.. I guess we only need to learn to connect and I keep praying that I can sometime in this lifetime understand that within myself and make that connection. I would be happy if this was all an illusion.
hugs...