Anish Nadh’s Blog

I just finished a documentary called A man among wolves  . The ways of the wolves are quite interesting. They have a hierarchy that decides the roles each individual plays in the pack. This hierarchy also decides what piece of meat they can eat to the smallest detail. This documentary shows a man living with wolves to learn their habits and language to help integrate wolves into our ecosystem to reduce conflict.  What I found most interesting was the howls they made tj mark the territory, almost like singing into the heavens to claim your space! 

I cannot believe I wrote consistently for a year!! I never missed a day! Thanks to my friends Andy and Solomon, the only two readers of my blogs, they reminded me if I was late to make the post!  I am sure these are not literary masterpieces, I’m just seeing it as a way of expressing and keeping this habit in my routine. There is no wealth of information in my blogs. These contain issues that I’m conflicting with, staying organized, politics, business, health, family, wealth, poetry, stories and personal life. All I can say is “yay I did it and I’m gonna do some more”. 

Working consistently and diligently will yield results in the long run. Preparing your body every single day, will help you suffer less when illness strikes.  Take the Israel-Palestine war, I was quite surprised at the meticulous preparations that the Israelites had done in order to detonate the missiles mid air. They work hard on their defence system and education, research, agriculture. They started again, new. They bled less in war!! 

When you have a mindset to repeat things, say for eg, exercising. Just the act of repeating this every single day trains your brain muscles to make this a permanent part of your life. You feel good doing this. At the same time if you practice being lazy over and over again, your practice makes permanent! You have perfected the art of laziness.  Practise makes progress. Never settle!

 …Backyard! Yes, the caterpillars were all over my favorite  Agathi plant, it was quite disheartening to see it being infested! Wait! Infested? Poor caterpillars were there to just be, for a few days of their life cycle. So I decided to not kill them by feeding them to the birds nesting on my terrace garden. I was inspired by Vani Murthy, she carefully picked the Mormon caterpillars and put them in a container with some curry leaves. This way she was sharing the curry leaves with the butterflies while saving her curry leaf plant, because these caterpillars are quite some magicians! They can make a small plant disappear within days!  I had no idea what my caterpillars will become. What if they turned into moths? I tried feeding them hibiscus and mulberry leaves, but these voracious eaters only wanted the leaves from the Agathi.  I thought something was wrong with some  caterpillars. It’s stomach began to bulge, and I was afraid it would burst, I was expecting it to get into a cocoon the

My job requires me to point out imperfections of my students, to improve their repertoire. My role here is of a coach, training athletes of smaller muscles, to help them develop their virtuosity on their instruments.  I have seen their nimble hands at work, getting better day after day and to see how I cannot do those things as my age catches up with me is quite disheartening. This makes me wonder if I’m like the girl who can’t dance, who finds imperfections with the others, as in the Jewish proverb.  In the end, the intend matters. Why point out faults? Is it to uplift someone you are responsible for? Or is it your own insecurity? 

Things these days are not built to last. I grew up in my maternal joint family where my grandfather’s cot was solid teak and was inherited! It moved through generations and is said to be over 200 years old! That bed still stays put without any qualm.   The leg of my queen sized cot came off within a few years of use.  I’m seeing this trend in relationships and goals. Immediate gratification, then boredom and then to the next thing exciting. It was not meant to last they say.  This attitude leads to a lot of wasteful resources, energy and reflects further into a poor economy. Let’s decide to create exceptional work, strong bonds that last through generations to come!

I started playing music to get attention. Even now it’s out there to grab a little attention. I was able to monetize this attention that I received. I have played in some of the best bands according to my standards. The God of music has blessed me with many things materialistic and for my soul.  Now my pursuit is for its knowledge. I need to know why  we are drawn to it. I need ti know why this works or don’t. Ineed to get better at reading musical rhythms as I play the correct notes. I need to be a good teacher. This drives me and motivates me to play. I also have the responsibility of sharing this knowledge with my students, especially Natalia. I’m gonna take a deep dive into the world of music! 

Growth happens when you suffer and survive. Life throws a lot of painful arrows at you. You need to be resilient to face them. It could be health, wealth, family or even some other external calamity that will bring you down. Suffering and surviving will build metaphorical calluses in your brain. So suffer and survive, then THRIVE! 

We bargain for small things like eggs, groceries and fruits. We also argue a lot with the newspaper collector for increasing 10 rupees. Whereas, we are ready to put up with the market chains and seldom bargain with them, where we are looted for thousands. We don’t take care of our home and things because, convenience. This cascades to more losses. We are programmed to be paisa wise and rupee foolish! 

Natalia has her exams going on. She comes back at around lunch time. We learn spellings, multiplication tables music and also walk in the park almost everyday when I have a lot of free time.  Today she ran, fell, scraped her knee a little. I got her back home and applied dettol and bandaid. This took me back to my childhood when I craved for bandaids. She wore the bandaid on her knee like a badge of honour.  May we all be courageous to not be afraid to fall and get up again and wear our scars as the badge of honour. 

Imagine you had God like powers. You can obtain anything you need! Anything materialistic is yours. When you have it all, does it motivate you to get up and work? You would be bored if you had everything in the world and things only worked your way. You need the chaos, the failures, the insecurities to get that drive that pushes you forward. 

Slangs are obtained through enculturation. Thanks to the internet we have a global understanding of short-language, in short, slang. I realised not everyone can understand slang unless they are culturally and socially introduced to it. It takes time to spread. Some slangs stay for ever, some just withdraw like a wave at the beach. I think it’s a wonderful way to express yourself but is considered informal. 

Yet another Saturday, today and I was not feeling it. I didn’t  feel like doing anything. I dragged myself to settle for a breakfast serving of guava and bananas. I sat with my niece to revise mathematics. She was not having a good day either. She had too much studies already. So I decided to brighten it up. I took her shoe shopping to PUMA store, I picked something and she wanted a blue pair that was slightly cheaper than what I had selected (so yay), on our way back we bought pizza and choco lava cake.  She wanted to wear her walking shoes to the park, so off we went. She returned to cartoons while I bathed Toffee. I have a lot more to do. And here goes another Saturday! 

I’m seeing a lot of improvement on my sinus related issues after introducing hot water into my life. I got myself a flask and this ensures that I have warm water throughout the day! I drink upto 2.5L of water everyday. Hot water also kept my throat in shape while my family was down with the viral fever.  I also ensure I don’t over do the hydration, all at once, but introduce water one cup at a time at regular intervals. 

I include 2 whole eggs with my breakfast, which I cook with utmost care, sunny side up and that runny yolk. Just perfect to my liking! It is cooked on a cast iron pan, with 2 table spoons of sesame seed oil, a pinch of salt and a thin layer of  black pepper  on and near the yolk. Eggs  are the most tastiest addition to my breakfast.  I also heard cooking eggs all the way takes away some of the nutrients from it. So that runny yolk ensures that not much of the nutrition is lost. 

I set up “full DND” on my Vodafone-idea sim. I get a lot of marketing calls and messages through out the day. Scams, dating services, credit cards, loans, social media marketing, insurance I’ve got it all. It became a little too much to bear, as I started getting more than 5 calls a day. I started blocking each number but they found other numbers to call back. Recently I got a message from Vodafone indicating that I can report these numbers on their app! So that’s exactly what I did, I would note down each of these numbers and messages and find time to report them all! Now the calls have reduced significantly! I get about five spam calls a week! Five a week is better than five a day ain’t it? 

I don’t know what to write! Do I write about the butterfly larve destroying my humming bird tree leaves? Or do I write about how lazy I’ve been feeling? Maybe I should write about how I approach food, or how I feel, or even the people around me.  Some thoughts are not worth sharing! It makes me that much vulnerable to write it down for someone to read in the future.  Or do I write about aging? Or people growing old around me?  I’m so full yet empty with thoughts. I’m full of emptiness. 

One kiss from her, and his heart went..  Boom Ta Ta  Ritashoo Brr Kita  Boom Ta Ta  Bidaboom paka choo  Boom Ta Ta  Ritashoo Brr Kita  Raka shika paka tuka  Ba da dam dish 

Carnations were her favorites. She asked for it once long ago. I got her a full bunch, because she deserved it. The bouquet also included some fillers, smaller pearly baby’s breath. She looked thrilled, it was also her birthday, we went to The Secret Place for lunch. 

Saturdays are for relaxing! But I find relaxation in giving Toffee a bath and revising lessons with my niece she learnt with my mom over there week. I also get some work done in the evening, but I spend most of the time with my niece. 

The first guava tree I remember was at my mom’s ancestral home. The guava was a mini guava variety, the size of a berry. It was very sour when raw and got better as it ripened. We would never get it ripened as it will be found by squirrels or some cousin before the smaller kids like us got to it.  Then there was one at the seminary where my parents studied. This was a tall old guava tree! Huge guavas for my small hands. I just remember it being very tall and we needed a big stick to pluck it. Perhaps everything seemed bigger for the little me, and the guava tree was just average. I hade no memory of how it tasted.  The next tree was at Holy Cross Church. I could proudly swing and pull myself up and even land on the inaccessible terrace through that tree. I was also nicknamed “monkey” for my act by the other Sunday school kids. The guava was medium sized and a tasty treat. It  had fruits almost, all the time.  Then there’s Ravi’s guava tree. We were going to rehearsals one day, as I wen

Festivals awaken the sleeping child in you. I don’t really put efforts on decking up for festivals but when you have children around they demand attention and effort from us. I ended up jumping the wall to collect wild flowers for my niece! I never thought I could/would jump walls again. Can’t wait for onam celebrations at Ravi’s later today! 

I’ve lived most of my independent life gobbling up delicious biryanis at-least four times a week. That could have contributed to some of the health issues I face today  but, I loved the taste of spicy, flavorful jeera samba rice and the juicy dum- chicken, marinated to tenderness perfection.  So I decided to restrict myself to having this, just once a week. But I would only eat the best biryani, once a week. Sometimes it’s from Khazana, other times it’s the spicy Uncle Kitchen biryani and most times it’s the aromatic, not so spicy malabar dum biryani to ease my digestion and old age. This decision gave me the discipline I needed to stay off unhealthy food, but allowed occasional indulgence.  I also apply a similar strategy on shopping, binge watching etc. I end up indulging on it, occasionally and only if it means that much to me.  Now-a-days, the biryani is sometimes replaced with a juicy KFC Zinger or Burgermiester burger. Popeyes was a repeated mistake, so maybe I’ll try Popeyes nex

My terrace garden is inviting a lot of sparrows and finches to build their nests. I’m seeing the grit and the resilience of these birds over the last month, collecting flexible blades of grass, soft cotton and threads to make a tiny nest. They start early, and it’s quite a sight watching them fly with long  blades of grass. I mistook the grass to be it’s long  tail. 

We were in UTC and I was in my 8th standard! My parents enrolled my sister for guitar classes and purchased a Hofner l guitar. She never really got played the instrument and I ended up with it. This guitar was quite big for us and I would sit on the verandah of Nile’s block and put my ears in on the side of the guitar and play just the big E string and fretted some notes. I still remember the tune I composed. This is my first memory of playing the guitar. What’s yours? 

This is the only idiot proof way of remembering everything. Note it down. I usually forget an appointment or miss out on important things when it’s not on a calendar.  I started noting things down on a google calendar. Including some of my weekly routines like giving toffee a bath on Saturdays and everything is planned. Some tasks have to be done at a particular time, while some are recurring. End of the day I check this calendar and look for pending tasks for that day and I get it done.  This saves a lot of time for me and releases me from unwanted worry of remembering things. Let the smart phone do it! 

Christmas is in 3 months! How soon the time has passed! The church group I’m working with has started with the Carol songs! Hopefully we’ll have a lot more guitarists in church in the future. Because I sure hate a karaoke track played in loud speakers for carols! You need the guitar chaos! You just do! 

  I am teaching my niece, Natalia, multiplication tables. I recalled how I learnt this. My dad gave me a tiny book that had all the tables and other formulae and he said with authority “study from 2 to 10 by the end of the day or else”. I was given no choice. I know the table of 2, 5 and 10. I had just one day to study the other 6.  That same evening I got caned for not memorizing them. I couldn’t recall most of it. I learnt with fear! I associated learning to punishments and long hours of tedious work. If only someone sat me down and taught me how to learn this. I didn’t even know or understand what multiplication was back then.  This time, I didn’t throw the book at her and her to study tables. I sat her down explained it’s use, and we learn little by little, everyday.

Cook, fuel, lube, cleanse, heal,   Various uses for the humble oil. Even the lord used oil In his parables. Medical science says,  Too much oil can kill you.  Oil, is indeed the perfect metaphor,  For love.