Sights and Scenes-2019 in our garden!

These pictures tell a story of Anna and myself in our cottage through the year of 2019! A year of visitations and reflections adding depth and enlargement to our lives. We say farewell to 2019 gratefully and rejoicingly with candles and cake !

Whether Dulcie sitting and sleeping in the courtyard or the Kingfisher looks heavenward while singing its birdsong, each of these pictures represents meaning and experiences we treasure!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Farewell 2019

There are five thoughts that capture my attention on the last day of 2019. They are both lessons learned and stories that continue to engage me!

The first reflection is the story of a colleague in the hospital where I work who set out to learn percussion and now ready to perform publicly. He was a late starter, but practised long hours to come to a level of transforming his skills to a performance level. His long hours pf practice and sense of mission caught my attention. Life is an opportunity and those who use it well are those who can touch the live sof others. 

The second is about birds in our garden around our cottage. Of late even migrant birds arrive and stay on. It is the eight year since Anna and I have been living in this property. We allowed the shrubs and trees to grow without trimming them or de-weeding unless it was necessary. When the environment is  left without too much interference, the birds have a homely feel about the place. It has helped butterflies, dragon flies, beetles, honey bees, spiders, etc too.  What contributes to the life of other living creatures is a stable and settled environment. It is a lesson in mindfulness. Yesterday, some of my colleagues dropped in for a conversation and we drifted in to the realm of spirituality. It was a time to become aware of the spiritual consciousness of each other. Knowing others can happen when there is conversation time and conversation intent!

The third reflection is on the larger space the mobile phones occupy in our lives. My phone gives me a message each evening of the time I spend using it. It is about two hours on an average. It has increased three times during 2019. I looked at my book reading habit. Although it has not decreased significantly, the newspaper reading has dropped considerably. I subscribed to five news papers till early in the year. Now it is only three. Even that appears too much. The internet news that I depend on dwells on the sensational items, where as the news papers have articles on a wide range of societal issues and humanity across the globe. The mobile is a good add on but cannot be a substitute if one wants to stay alert to larger realities of human journey and formation. I close the year regretting the loss of balance in reading time that crept in because of larger time the mobile phone occupied my attention.   

A fourth reflection is about a father and son becoming a musical team performing at a Christmas get -together. Both are accomplished musicians and instrumentalists who perform regularly on public functions. The father is the tutor to his son. The family times are spent in practices. I heard from the father that it was the love for music which makes them practice and not just the compulsion of practice for performance. That intrigued me. Both of them have a musical bent of mind and an intuitive inclination for music. I found that inspiring. They are musicians because music enlarges, uplifts and forms their lives. They make music an ingredient in their lives and has become integral to their daily rhythm. I pause to reflect on the rhythm of my life. I still have a fragmented and cluttered feel about my life. A few experiences hold our lives together and bring coherence and connectedness. The walks, meditation, reading times, quiet times, in between recollections are some of the bridging events in my daily rhythm. When these get replaced by crowding events, it is like being drawn away from being centred.  Life is for living and for being fully alive! I am now on a recovery struggle!  

The fifth reflection is about the year ahead! 

The peach coloured rose flower in our garden is different from the many others. This flower lasts in all its freshness for at least a week. It withstands the heat of the day and the dew of the night. It in its nature to convey its richness of resources to be fresh and fragrant, although fragile. This is its vocation. I have felt subdued during the current year by illnesses, sudden changes in work settings,  demanding adjustments to circumstances, etc. It is as if I was held back and overcome by them! This flower announces the overcoming spirit!

The desire is to begin the year 'looking unto God', who is ever present in making our steps steady! 

I draw the year to a close gratefully and joyfully. For Anna and myself it has been a year of finding strength and encouragement from each other!

So we Greet the new year expectantly and hopefully!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo) 

Christmas carol

One special experience during this advent season was the lead that the Developmental Paediatrics and Child Neurology team provided to sing carols. On Saturday, they sang with others at a college function of Christmas get-together. 

A small contribution to share the Christmas message of joy, peace adn goodwill!

M.C.Mathew (text nd photo)

Bird of the day-a pair !

 They are flower peckers, probably Tickell's flower pecker, male and female! They are only about 8cms in length with with an olive brown in complexion on the feathers and body, normally seen in groves, orchards and scrub jungle. It is a restless bird with constant movement that it is nightmare for any photographer to get a good picture. It is bird call chick-chick-chick that alerts one of its presence in the garden. They fly between their hide outs with the bird calls. Even a tracking mode in  a telephoto lens does not focus the bird well because of its swift movement.  

I like watching these birds because they are small, beautiful, and well groomed all the time. They look elegant and impressive although small and go unnoticed often!

Somehow small things and beings can have a greater significance disproportionate to  their size !

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Bird of the day!

I sighted this bird in our front yard of the cottage. It vanished form my sight in less than a minute! I was least prepared for taking its photo!

M.C.Mathew (photo)

Lamptaput hospital.

Anna and I were able to spend a day with two couples Drs Varghese Philip and Nirmala and Manoj Jacob and Manju, who started a hospital in Orissa about thirty years ago. The other couple who were along with them were Drs Joseph Thomas and Grace. All the three couples left to pursue their other vocations when other doctors came to continue the work, which is  a now a hospital with a variety of community activities such as day care centres for children, running a school, offering agricultural training for farmers, running village clinics in tribal areas..etc. It is a hospital now well known for its secondary care services in different specialties. 

The occasion was the engagement of Dr Manoj and Mnju's daughter, Mona, whose brother is in the centre of the back row of this picture. 

What a privilege it was to meet with them and feel the warmth and regards they had towards us. I remember having been in the board of their trust for a few years in the initial stage of their time at Lamptaput.

They moved away form a regular stream of medical work when they were young to give their service to a tribal community!

They are an outstanding example of being faithful to a calling to serve!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Jew Town, Kochi

Drs Nirmala and Verghese Philip was interested to visit the Jew Town about which they heard a lot about. 

Being  a Friday, the synagogue was closed  to visitors in preparation for the Sabbath.  The synagogue located in  a quadrangle has a history of 200 years. There were over 100 hundred families living here till late nineteen sixties.. Now perhaps a few older people are left.

The synagogue is  a tourist attraction as it i sone of the few synagogues in south India. 

But what seems to attract the visitors is also because of the two parallel streets adjacent to the synagogue, which have shops of treasures form the past in museums, art gallaries and antique shops located on either side of the road. 

For us it was more than just history...it was a recollection of the story of the pilgrim community who remained scattered all over the world till they were united after Israel was declared as a nation. 

The government of india is now in an attempt to bring back Hindus scattered in adjacent countries. Some fear that it is an attempt to declare India as a Hindu country from what it is now a secular country. We are in the midst of a resistant movement against the recent legislation to allow the returns of Hindus without giving the same privilege to Muslims.

The history of  a nation of Israel is a story of conflicts and resettlements. The ongoing struggle with Palestine is a rather painful one wondering why Israel resists to accept Palestine as a nation!

I wonder whether  the territorial conflicts would ever come to end! 

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Bird of the day!

M.C.Mathew (photo)

All season jackfruits.

This tree produces jack fruits through the year. With  a jackfruit fetching even upto five hundred rupees there is an aggressive planting of this specially genetically created jack fruit saplings in many places in Kerala now.  

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Unwelcome visitors !

I was on  a morning walk in  a hospital I recently visited in search of birds. I did sight birds, but also monkeys on the terrace of a residential building in the hospitla campus. 

During my stay in CMC hospitla campus at Vellore, I was used to the tricks and trpaa the monkeys created. A family of monkeys almost lived on the trees outside the college provision stores. On one occasion, I was walking out of the store with a bunch of bananas in my hand. One monkey jumped in front of me and I froze. Another monkey in that moment grabbed the bananas form my hand and I was left with just two of them in my hand. The monkeys usually grabbed food packets from children and left them frightened. 

Anna recalls the days of her life in the women's hostel. The monkeys would enter their rooms and collect whatever food they can get. When the students came back in the evening to their rooms, they only found wrappers of biscuit or bread packets or banana peels in their rooms Anna when she became the warden of women's hostel in the nineties got the rooms fixed with grills to prevent the monkeys from invading the rooms.  

It was an annual ritual in the CMC campus that monkeys were trapped and left in the jungles far away, only to return to the campus in about three months. 

I spent a while watching a family of three monkeys. As they descended form the trees, the watchman started chasing them away with minimal success. He told me that the monkeys would jump in front of any one who carries a bag with food. So it is their habit.

They can be a health risk as monkey bites can spread zoonotic infection to humans. 

It is a yet another challenge for the estate manager of the hospital to keep the monkeys away!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Two birds with striking beaks!

The sunbirds have long beaks. But the second photos is of one which has a long and bent beak! They were perched in the same tree. They might be a pair!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Cycling enthusiasts

I met these siblings in an evening walk, who stopped me to tell me about their passion for cycling. As they are not allowed to go to school cycling, they have a one hour of cycling in the evening on this road which has only occasional movement of four wheelers. They seemed to think that cycling is better than other sports activities. They even offered me to ride their cycle!

To find school going children who befriend a stranger and engage in conversation of their interest was  indeed surprising. May be my camera with its telephoto lens made them curious to stop and chat. 

They were social activists in the making!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Uncommon butterfly

I am yet to identify the family to which this butterfly might belong!

It is larger with some exquisite designs on its wing.

It seemed to hover around the butter cups alone. It was larger than the usual butterflies.

The dragon flies and butterflies are ornamental visitors to the garden!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

A bird call..!

The male magpie robin in the first photo is a resident in our garden. It is regular with its bird calls in the morning. Yesterday, I noticed a female bird arriving in response to the call!

So another family is about to  be formed!

That is the benefit of some resident birds our cottage. Other birds too become residents.

When birds accept an environment, they announce it to others in their species!

When there are birds, butterflies, dragon flies, etc. in a garden, the garden is a homely place.

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Tree formation !

These sights at the Bangalore Baptist Hospital garden caught my attention.

The trees had acquired an unusual shape and pattern for the stem. The jack fruits rest on the bifurcation of the trunk, which indeed might explain why the tree trunks acquire a twisted upward growth! They respond to a need!

Twists and turns in our lives too happen in response to different needs. 

A friend who visited me told me that I appear to have withdrawn from being in contacts with people.  It helped me to dwell on the changing circumstances in my life. While I live a truly fulfilled and cheerful life corresponding to my advancing age in life, others view it as unusual. 

What appears unusual is not odd, but a design or pattern that is equally purposeful!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

All on a wayside!

Each of these sights on an evening walk captured my attention because there is so much all around us which might look ordinary but significant in purpose. The parrots and the beatle live on fruits and flowers.

The plants and leaves sustain lives.

And yet it is this environment humans despise by dumping all waste into the earth without processing them properly to reduce their toxic effects on the soil. 

The instinct to preserve nature is what we need to promote in order to sustain environment for the health of flora and fauna.

We might give attention to our courtyard and backyard, but our interest ought to go well beyond!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)