Sunday, August 18, 2013

Ashiyana

1.5 years ago when I had planted random plants in the balcony of my apartment, it was just to make the balcony look little green which is otherwise so barren. Interestingly, I ended up harvesting around 750gms of French Bean, more than a 1 Kg of tomatoes and 6 lemons so far. But, what I discovered this morning was amazing. I had put 3 mango saplings in one tub, and over the time the saplings have grown quite leafy and resembles a thick shurb. I saw a small bird's nest being built in the midst of the saplings with the leaves of the mango plants. The nest is engineered very well and I have seen a small bird (smaller than a sparrow), coming and going to the nest. I think its still under construction and the bird hasn't yet got the possession. But it was so nice and cute to see the nest. An ashiyana coming up inside mine.  

Home Sweet Home
Ashiyana (आशियाना ) is a Hindi word meaning 'Home'

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Return to Innocence

While cleaning up my bookshelf, I stumbled upon an old book of my brother and a letter inside it which I wrote to him 13 years ago. The letter is dated 13th September, 2000 and was written almost a month after I started my engineering course in NITK (National Institute of Technology Karnataka - http://bit.ly/14JDlqF), which was KREC (Karnataka Regional Engineering College) those days. As I read the missive after so many years, it made me go down memory lane 13 years back. The words rightly reflects the excitement of a small town guy being in a college campus, a little bit nervous and home-sick, a turbulence in the heart and mind of the mama's boy on encountering a totally different lifestyle and the difficulty faced when he was all by himself. The 1st semester restrictions seem to play a spoilsport on the overall experience of the boy!

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The boy has grown, he is a man now. Many things have changed in all these years, but it looks like just yesterday. And its 'Yesterday Once More by Carpenters which comes to my mind:

... ...
Those were such happy times
And not so long ago
How I wondered where they'd gone!
 ... ...
... ...
All my best memories
Come back clearly to me
Some can even make me cry
Just like before
It's yesterday once more

 [Yesterday Once More Lyrics - Carpenters - http://bit.ly/1aeYj8V]