Madhumalati

It was just another day and as i drove along to my destination something stopped me right in the tracks.In any case i had to halt as the traffic signal showed red and this was going to be a more than 3 minutes wait as the digital meter at the traffic signal was showing 180.So i pushed the gear to neutral and let my Maruti 800 rest a while.Had to open my window screen now as the AC was off and while i did that the sight of something forced my mind to think of HIM.

Him who is etched to my childhood memories as much as this Rangoon Creeper that i saw in full blossom in some stranger's porch driving in Nelson Manickam road.There were mixed emotions now as i battled to have full view of this creeper as you don't get to see many of these in Chennai while thoughts were pulling me to that image of him which i wanted to remember clearly removing the cobwebs of my now hazy memory.

Thoughts are my own and i have the time maybe think of him later i said to myself and instead indulged in the beauty that my eyes wanted so badly to feast on.One always has a choice and this time my choice was Madhavi lata (creeper) first.Madhavi lata is the local Bihari nomenclature to Rangoon creeper which is also known as Red Jasmine.

So beauty entices isn't it true?And the more fleeting it is the more we want to linger.This particular moment i wanted to just walk out of my car and probably knock at the gate and ask permission to go near and just smell the flowers.i did have the scent in my memory but just wanted a fresh whiff.
Impulsive my husband would say to that however he was not there to reprimand me and ask me to stay put on my seat so i looked up at the digital meter which clocked 77 now.Still some time so i started but was stopped again in the middle of my tracks because a tin placard which had the picture of a ferocious dog with snarling canines jutting out, proclaimed,'Beware of Dogs'. Mustering some fearlessness i did walk near the gate and did what the onlookers would have thought about a crazy 40 something doing Praanayaam near an elaborately artistic wrought iron gate.

It was not bingo entirely but i got the same faint whiff and my day was made.Peering through the slits of the grill hoping to hear a growl i did manage good glimpses of the lusciuos green foliage and definitely the white...pink...peach...finally red blossoms when my mission was interrupted by the mad honking of automobiles.Needless to say how i ignored the dirty glances and shut my ears to fierce Tamil cursing in between lipsynching sorry to quieten the behind the wheels mobs.If looks could kill i would be dead but anyways i managed to scoot.Inside me a kaliedoscope which showed me these and kept me smiling instead of swearing.

Madhavi lata as we know it i wonder what Chennaites have against it. If i owned a house of my own instead of the bougainvillea this would have adorned my gate.Maybe Vasanti Amma is right when she says that fragrance attracts snakes or else how can one not have this which has beauty combined with a fragrance that either give you divine thoughts or romantic thoughts nothing in between.Actually nature brings you closer to God as i found out from this fellow blogger who too is enamoured by nature and says he feels closer to God when he takes his nature walks. http://jamesmissier.blogspot.com/2009/07/rangoon-creeper-vine-quisqualis-indica.html

So those who study about plants will know it as Quisqualis indica as for me i will know it as the evergreen and fragrant Madhavi lata and there are yet others who call it Madhumalati  also Radhamanohari and debate whether it has fragrance or is odourless but then i cannot agree to that because the one that i know from childhood , has a divine fragrance especially in the evenings and it reminds me of HIM.Him that i knew and lived next door and is a mortal just like me.Him will definitely occupy my next post as one cannot be dissociated with the other.

Once again when i Googled i got this from the net and because it is simple and beautiful i would like it to be here with my blog as i condense my thoughts.However once again i don't know the creator all it says is that it is contributed by Dr.Uma Asopa.
              
   " Madhumalti
Wise woman she is-
a cultivated creeper
grounded in stable soil                      
with wisdom worn like
green umbrella
interspersed with prints
of pink and white flowers,
Madhumalati is her spirited name;
she is sweet scent of night
walks in wilderness,
roaming like untamed bride.
Morning calls her back
She is home with first ray of light-
spirit loaded with perfumed flowers
coy and sleepy with night's plight."

Walked in wilderness when i did wasn't i too the untamed bride of that lanky and dark boy so much elder to me when i was say 7 or 10 and his family wanted me to be his bride when i grew up.
Oh no! not again that is going to take me back again to Boring road when it had just few concrete houses and where ever eyes could reach fields of tur dal (lentils) and paddy could be seen way upto Patliputra colony.
Maybe laters right now let me be with my Madhumalati...

                                 http://toptropicals.com/catalog/uid/QUISQUALIS_INDICA.htm

Image Courtesy:                                                            
                    http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/azgard/msg0911302328081.html
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/1461210181035151727MGkfHA
http://toptropicals.com/catalog/uid/QUISQUALIS_INDICA.htm
        
        

Hey It's Me

If there was one ad that touched me to the core and made me feel proud about what i am it was this.Can't really explain whether it is the brilliancy of the ad or some new found wisdom which dawns as and when you approach what is called the middle age that makes you stop being a critic of sorts and gives you this sensibility to mull over your own richness and fullness of what makes you YOU.

i am sure the ad is incomplete as there are endless things very common that can be added to this...attributes that wholly and solely belong to the Indians as there are atrributes belonging to say the Americans,the British,the Chinese so on and so forth.

So i begin to admire this guy Russel Peters who brings out these so brilliantly too in his Stand Up Comedy shows all over the world.i admire his observation ,his skill at delivering with ease these atrributes complete with aprropriate pronunciations, gesticulations and histrionics too.But it only happened after this.





On my initiation to phoren stand up comedy i was more hurt than being amused.When i first saw his show on Youtube that too on the insistence of my son who was in his first year of Engineering i actually hated the guy for making so much fun of all people.And when he cracked on Indians i felt sore and hurt because he talked about the smell of crap emanating everywhere you go in India.He made fun of Indian men holding hands while they took a stroll on the beach and he made fun on Indians being CHEAP.It was as if everything that is Indian was to be made fun off and scoffed  at and i felt like killing him in the first instance. i actually even thought of writing a long email to him blasting him for the way he's been portraying us and reminding him that he is also first born of an Indian and later raised in Canada.How could he go on ridiculing his roots like this.If one needs to be put behind bars for being a traitor then it should be him.Definitely i was more angry than being amused and was only swearing in my thoughts and calling him Gaddar (traitor) what to talk of even lipsynching with the taped laughter.Of course in front of my son i did not have to pretend that i was loving his new found interests.

It is silly how i reacted then and sort of watered down limp all of my son's enthusiasm who had just returned for his first semester break after having witnessed his first live show of the person i momentarily hated.So he kept quiet about the entire experience about the show.But then just like always he is my real window to all things young, new and happening.So he said a few things very wise in fact too wise for his age which was,"Ma if you are able to laugh at your own self for what you really are means you are good...means you really know who you are.It is so easy to laugh at other people and to joke and make a mockery of others but when you laugh at oneself you will always be guilt free." He went on to say more to make me so comfortable that anger was replaced with admiration for the happening  Stand Up Comedy talent that  he was familiarising me with.




Later when he left home to join his University back for the new semester he left me loads to beat the blues away including Seinfeld,House MD,Scrubs and others that he watched.But i became hooked to Russel Peters in so many ways that when Dan Nainan came to Chennai i went to see his show for the simple reason that he was i thought a protege of my new icon.The show was okay but i laughed more at Craig and Karthik (regular Stand Up Comedians in Chennai)  more than i could at Dan Nainan.Maybe that was so Indian of me.Or maybe Dan's sense of humour went over my head.Now my best of Russel Peters are these two.One in which he makes a crack on how Indians find it so hard to get the correct pronunciation of Louis Vuitton and the other in which he compares the Indians and the Chinese and explains with his usual humour why they can't do business together.



That i am every bit of what they say about being an Indian in the True Roots ad and more (that they could've missed fitting in due to time constraints) is evident from the fact that i am digging more and more into the phoren humour than i am at Raju Shrivastava who actually makes my stomache ache with laughter and eyes wet with moisture when i revisit all his best ones again and again.Also a mere recollection his Gajodhar episodes and the ones in which his characters are not human but something like lights or even local train and even the handlebars of local trains sees me smiling into my mundane routines.
So truly Indian of me trying desperately to fit in and talk in the social circles animatedly about my new found interests all the while nodding in unison to the Moghuls who say how pathetic Indian comedy is.While in my heart i know what i enjoy the best...be it Raju Shrivastava or Bharti when she acts out Lalli.Their talent makes me laugh without getting hurt.Even i remember the evenings when we guffawed to Movers & Shakers and it's fantastic host Shekhar Suman who would mimic all politicians with panache but i don't remember anybody getting pissed off with that either.
So am i again being prejudiced here or am i more aware of my roots now.Maybe yes maybe not but i do know one thing for sure that when i am really hungry i want my Dal Bhaat (cooked lentils with cooked  plain boiled rice) more than anything else.



That maybe one of the reasons why i find myself being a big PHONY or once again it is my involvement with this boy in 'Catcher In The Rye'....Why is it that when i'm talking now i remember Emma Thompson when she said,"Laughter is a celebration of our own failings.That's what clowns are for.And that's what I am." or i remember this by Carl Reiner,"Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself is a good thing to do.You may be a fool but you're the fool in charge." Wasn't there something by our very own Kabir which said of laughing at oneself and not at others but why can't i remember that. See that is the Indian me... but not so proud though to be like this.