Serendipity… how lucky can one get!  Stepping out early for a tree walk on Sunday morning, I’m one of the privileged few to chance upon TONS of books someone is just giving away… mostly spiritual, but some not. What a collection! Wonder who this person is, so well read, so evolved. But giving books away! Now I have enough material to keep me engrossed for the next decade… :)

Dharavi Nature Park, or DNP….Even though it was HOT, what lovely trees, shrubs, herbs… old friends Brahmi Ashwagandha Rauwolfia  nudged me on about long-forgotten pharmacognosy texts…but encroachment by the slums that line the park continues, unchecked.

Oh yes, we have a pigeon birdling on the window sill! What magic, to see the change from perfect oval egg to chirping trembling mass. Yesterday it/she was all quiet, having moved from the aloe vera pot that it had earlier claimed as home.. checked a few times, from a distance of course, to see it was still alive. I guess this will take time...

It takes someone's loss, impending loss to show you how minimal, how insignificant your own trouble is, even if it aint going away someplace. Impending loss that, but of course one will battle, one will use up all the tools, with all that modern science etc etc offers, knowing, knowing the science, knowing the odds yet…Life…and life is so beautiful…sunlight,  a radiant halo around a sprig of buds and blooms, and you stop and stare and wonder why you never saw this before. And you wonder about loss, and the cost one pays incrementally over the years with cumulative loss, this one and that one, and that one, quite different but quite the same, and after a time one can react, feel no longer but just shrink, bow in  stunned silence.

PQ asked for photos of the park, so here we go...

orange copper pod sandwiched by bakuls

magnificent raintree... blooms too fine to be seen

fresh leaves on the kailashpati

kailashpati... what a heavenly scent

apta... bauhinia leaves

stylo! HK orchid , Bauhinia

tivar... a carpet of fine blooms underfoot

glorious gold

sita ashoka

the first amaltas or laburnum

persian lilac... delictate and poisonous as hell

amla!

the first gulmohur

our own problems shrink to insignificant.
in the park where i walk, angelika  walks too. sort of.
she's five.
she walks few hesitant steps.
and plops down, all tears.
her father and grandfather are coaxing her to walk. 
everyone tries to help. make her stand waist deep in sand at the beach.massage her legs. do this, do that.
now it is everyone's problem. a grandmother holds her hand and runs with her.
today she walked a great deal, fifteen steps, all alone.
everyone's happy.
yes, I can put foot in front of foot and walk. I can do that.

the Tivar are in bloom now, a fine carpet of red blooms beneath your feet.

Yet.
the copper pod trees have flared into bloom. All at once. As if someone put on a giant switch.
Despite all.
My grief claws about for a language.

I've just called off plans to go trekking  the next week.
Sorry GHNP, some other time -- if the fates will it. Else my backpack was packed and raring to go.
Given current exigencies, this decision was called for. Why handover someone a stick to beat you with?
Each day brings in new surprises. I could use a few good ones.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.