Duet of One

Today , nature is creating magic outside my window. It was dark and rainy at around 8:00 am and suddenly a white light engulfed the landscape as sleet and rain began to fall. And then, dramatically, the scene was transformed as I watched “the woods slowly fill up with snow”…a white Diwali after all!! I cannot resist remembering my favorite Robert Frost poem: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

The falling leaves make me nostalgic. I remember the Nat King Cole song “When autumn leaves start to fall” . And my mind dives deep into it’s archives of saved images and sounds and smells. I woke up the other day remembering the hissing sound of the flame of a kerosene stove. Water for my bath is heating up and my dad is calling out to me to wake up – a National Echo radio is playing Meerabhai bhajans of Lata Mangeshkar- circa 1965. Its around 6;00 am. Later I called dad in Mumbai to share with him this vignette that flashed in my mind. He goes of on a tangent to some other mundane subject… Diwali is here. I send out greetings messages to everyone on my gmail contacts. We pick a box of kaju khatris from the local Desi store. We pray at the Balaji temple and the day is done.

On Saturday, I was at the beautiful Shri Ranganatha Temple at Pomona. I have been planning to go there for over a months but something would come up and I could not go- that told me this is not a place that one goes on a whim. And so , as I stood in front of the Deity, Lord Ranganatha, reclining so majestically, I knew that this was a special place. Some months ago, during a festival , the disciples spotted a Garuda, the Lord's "vahaana" circling the sky briefly and vanish. This is considered a miraculous occurrence. A priest was kind enough to explain to us the importance of the temple and the concept of Vishishita Advaita propounded by Ramanuja Acharya. By some strange coincidence, the priest was finishing his one year term at the temple that afternoon and on his way back to India. He would return to the Venkateswara Temple in Dombivilli, near Mumbai. If you would like to read about this temple click on this link: http://www.ranganatha.org/

As I type this I hear a knocking sound at my window and, lo and behold , there is this beautiful squirrel standing up with it’s two front legs resting on the glass. He had a brief look at me and ran away. Talking of squirrels, last week , I was driving to a store with the significant half beside me when suddenly she says in Tamil, ” Turn back fellow !”. I looked at her incredulously and she says, “Not you, there was this squirrel coming our of the garden patch and had crawled up into the road ahead and as if he could hear me, turned back into the grass safely!”. Not all have a safe trip across the roads though. You find them plastered on the road – a squash of flesh and blood. A couple of days ago, when driving to work on the highway- a six lane road with a center wall of around 3 feet height in the median, I noticed a squirrel dart across the road and climb up the center wall. I do not know if he made it across to the other side but it got me thinking. What was it on the other side th...