I am just not doing nothing enough

What if I kept aside those little things that have piled up
On the right on my table
And in the centre of my attention
That email reply
That request from a friend for a reference
The car jack I need to buy on Amazon
The preparation for a workshop 
And for a difficult conversation
The gym or a swim, for a hundred reps
Within those hundred secs
Tidying up that cupboard because someone wrote a book on it
A silly payment on the card for something
I never needed in the first place.  Agreed, I don’t do this often.  

Even those little things

We pile up to Chill With

That movie, reviewed as dark humour and gripping

With comfort food and an open packet of something

The holiday on an Instagram bucket list 

Not even mine

That has a to-do list of its own

Planning. Heating. Washing. Booking

Searching. Deciding. OTPing. Cutting.

Lifting. Scrolling. Messaging. Packing. 

What if when opportunity knocks

I ask it to go to hell

And instead spent the day in indolence

Waiting for the stars on a monsoon-drenched evening

To twinkle

And the half-moon to shine

So that I would sit under them

Doing nothing

And ask for tomorrow to be like today. 

The Idiot of the Month

Among my deeply intellectual pursuits is the effort to ensure a monthly nomination of an Idiot, a prized personality of this humanity-enriching tribe.  Sometimes I post about these, sometimes I don’t (in the fond hope of reserving them for a future book that will fetch me a monthly royalty as a result of one half of the population wanting to read about the other half).

Now, I have been watching this Oh-la-la Agarwal guy with considerable interest and am enchanted by his affable, spiritual and warmly affectionate personality.  In his engagingly empathetic moments, he refers to people who argue with him in touchingly endearing ways, using references to their parental lineage which, he insists, is unknown or to their failure in serious pursuits in the broader canvas of Life (such as comedy).

To make matters interesting, he has now grown a ponytail which, when it becomes longer, will resemble that of a donkey.  The bray of the two personalities – I have heard both with deep absorption, missing no detail however slight - suggests an affiliation closer than friendship in an earlier life.

He makes stuff that looks like scooters (the Agarwal guy, not the donkey): they are shaped like scooters, they have buttons in the right place and speedometers that show the latest buy-value of Bitcoin because they fluctuate randomly and are unhinged to any known part of the scooter. These scooter-like-thingies even emotionally bond with scooters and sometimes catch fire after being overcome with explosive mirth and someone said that you can even do wheelies on them using photoshop.

He (Ponytail Oh-la-la, not Donkey) has an enviable business model: someone buys this scooter-lookalike, does the mandatory puja, without which this thing-that-looks-like-scooters will be a psychological wreck and need a sedative, and then rides out to the service centre owned by the same Agarwal, where it is parked for the rest of its short life for people on Instagram to post reels and for a look-how-funny-I-am guy called Kamra to write stuff on that X thing so that Ponytail replies with deep affection and love, all the while coming up with new products that will stagger civilization (but will not work).  What unites Kamra and Ponytail, of course, is that both of them are comedians.

I know what you are thinking: Agarwal is my Idiot of the Month.  No, no, you have got it all wrong and I would be unfair to this affable, spiritual and warmly affectionate personality (the last thing I want is a reference in Larger Society to my parental lineage).  If you know anyone who has bought one of those things that look like scooters and have buttons in the right place and even a headlight that works only when you lift the back seat and if you know anyone who has invested in Ponytail Oh-la-la …….now that someone is the Idiot of the Month.

It is time to apologise.  Did I say that Ponytail reminds me of a donkey? That is most objectionable being egregiously insulting to the donkey.  For one, the donkey moves. And when there is output – we intrepid wildlife biologists call it dung – it is from the other end (of the other side).

The Flower and the Flutter

 Around the first week of October every year, something magical unfolds.  Ceropegia is a tiny little creeper, nondescript for about fifty weeks in a year, one that you could easily pass by if not a trained botanist.  

Then one day it blooms, a lemon-yellow delicate bloom of rare beauty, nestled amidst grass and cumbersome touch-me-nots, with soft petals and a furry leaf, hence ceropegia hirsuta.  There is no fragrance for humans to inhale, for this is a fly-trap flower that is pollinated with ingenious design (more in the fascinating article below)..https://deponti.livejournal.com/1344391.html

 

There are a precious few of them here at the base of Laburnum Hill, just three plants as far as one can search but in the forest yonder, there are more.  Over the years, I have associated this little creeper in its beauty and simplicity with the Mahatma for they share birth-and-bloom days.  And never has this plant been seen in abundance.  

Wild boars, I am told by Ananda, the knowledge repository, scoop up the tuber of this plant, as do humans on occasion and, for once, I am dismayed at the thought and hope they - boars and bores - fail, give up and let live-and-bloom.  But is there a story to tell here of commensalism between boars and this plant, where the boars dig in (literally) but the plant stays unaffected?  A story beneath the earth, the secret life of a plant that will grow no matter what depredation happens?  Or one that needs the boar’s excavation skills to thrive?  

We don’t know what we don’t know.

And in that distraction of thought, a butterfly comes into view - the Common Silverline, I later learn - resplendent in the warm evening glow, flitting by, pausing briefly on flowers for a last sip before twilight sets in, searching.....

But then, aren't we all?