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Showing posts with the label Rains; Mumbai

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Newasa - Encountering an unique form of Vishnu, and Sant Jnaneshwar

The year was 1290 . A crowd had gathered around a clearing, where broken down pillars marked the presence of an ancient temple, now long gone. A young boy, just 14 years old, leaned against one of those pillars, deep in thought. Then, he began speaking, and the crowd fell silent, listening to his every word. He spoke without any notes, translating the Bhagavat Gita, from Sanskrit, which only the pundits knew, to the language everyone in the village knew and spoke – a variety of Prakrit which developed into the Marathi language. Even as he spoke, one of the men in the audience realized how momentous this event was, and how important this composition would be. He began writing down the words the young boy spoke, and this composition was named by its author and composer, the Bhavartha Deepika – the enlightening meaning (of the Bhagavat Gita). Now, the ancient, holy text, was no longer restricted to the pundits, but accessible to all, understood easily by them, composed as it was, in their...
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Monsoon in Mumbai - Time for snails and mushrooms....

It has been raining off and on , and when it rains, it pours!!! Here's what we saw as we waited for our bus to arrive.... Some umbrella-like mushrooms dripping with water.... and our first snail of the year !!!
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The advent of the creepy - crawlies....

Its pouring out there as I write these words, the windows tightly shut to prevent my computer getting wet! No words today, just pictures...... taken a couple of days back.. Yes, now that the rains have begun, I have started carrying my camera along as we wait for Samhith's bus, managing somehow to click pictures of creepy crawlies, juggling with my mobile and camera in one hand and an umbrella in the other, not to mention trying to stop Samhith from running off into the rain! Here's our first visitor - a beetle scuttling off in the water...... And these aren't visitors - these are permanent residents - centipedes - but they look a bit more attractive in the rains (If u can call them attractive, that is..) And if you were wondering how many of these were around, here's a glimpse... that's just one small patch of the wall!!! And here are a few mushroom s... they grow and disappear miraculously soon! That's all for now, but the monsoon has jus...
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Rains in Mumbai

The rains came at last , and brought along the usual problems – flooding for one, failure of my network for another. The latter was simply because some water entered the main switchboard of our broadband connection in the building, and it took them 2 whole days to figure out what the problem was. Water logging in Mumbai is no longer news, though the news channels keep calling it ‘breaking news’ for some reason which somehow makes no sense to me. After all, what else can we expect, living on an island which once belonged to fishermen, but now belongs to builders who are intent on covering every piece of land with concrete? The area we live in was once covered with salt pans. Some chap got the idea of leasing it out to builders, who promptly built around a 100 buildings in the area. The salt commissioner then went to court, challenging the ownership of the land. That was about 35 years back. Till date, there has been no settlement, the case is still in court, and we are technically liv...
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More from my garden.....

The rains are here, but it still doesn't seem the same . It rains, but in a desultory way, as if it's heart isn't in it. More of concern is the fact that there has been very little rain in the catchment areas, which means that we are looking at a major water problem. It has already been announced that the water cut is being taken further, so we shall get water just once in two days from now on! On a personal note , Samhith is upset that the snails haven't appeared yet. We spend our few minutes waiting for his bus looking for snails and earthworms, but haven't seen one yet. Meanwhile, as we wait for the snails and the creatures of the rain, here are the birds and other members of our extended family whom we have been noticing from our window - Red-Vented bulbuls - there are plenty of them around, and they regularly come to eat the food we put out for the crows (a tradition which symbolises providing food for our ancestors). But I have never been able to take ...
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The rains are here!!!!!

Ah! At last! I can hear the pitter-patter of the drops as they fall on my window pane….. When I open the window, the smell of wet earth fills my nostrils… how I have waited for this! Since the first week of June, we have been preparing ourselves for the monsoon, and every day that passed without rain was a depressing one. Then, we were hit by the water-cut, which only made things worse. All over, people are praying for rain. While some look at scientific methods, others perform havans. Some, like my mother-in-law and her friends, read slokas which are guaranteed to bring rains. Whatever the method, the aim is just one – a normal monsoon – not just for Bombay, but all of India. As the days passed, and July approaches, the hopes dipped, and all over, there was talk of a missed-monsoon and drought! But at last, there is hope! Since the last two days , it has been raining here (at least in our locality). The Met Department says these are just pre-monsoon thundershowers, but whatever the...
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