The ritual of the evening!

Mynah birds are often well groomed and look aesthetically different from some other birds! 

This Mynah taking about seven minutes to have successive dips in water bath, with the cleaning and drying ritual in between, followed a skilled activity in artistic way.

Such bathing rituals keep them flight ready. 

After drying in the sun, the Mynah looked dazzling and was ready to fly away! 

I have instances of parents talking about the struggle they have in getting toddlers into a rhythm of daily routines and chores! 

I found that when parents are used to reading picture books to infants and toddlers with different sequences of daily routines and chores, they get oriented visually and feel enticed to experience them without struggle! 

The parenting practices become easier when parents use appealing ways of fun, play and interaction. I know of a family who let their daughter play with doll in a bathing exercise, before she is given a bath, which parents found easy and entertaining! 

The journey to become companions and partners with toddlers and pre-schoolers in different activities of interest and value to them, when considered as a pathway of parenting, the parents and children find the experience refreshing and rewarding! 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Did hunger cause the strife?

 

Usually all feeding bowls in our garden have food enough for all visiting birds. By evening today, only one bowl had the feed left . 

I wondered if that was the precipitating factor for the strife between the pair of Bulbuls! 

One Bulbul continued feeding and the other had to wait for its turn !

This scene symbolised the hungry children waiting for their food in different parts of India!

There is enough food; but what hurts children with hunger is when food is not shared!

It was a custom for some charitable organisations to have an outlet of food banks. That too is a disappearing concept. 

How disturbing and uncharitable it is , when the those who are hungry are left helpless! They wait in despair!

M.C.Mathew( text and photo)

The breeding plumage !

I noticed a colourful bird flying into the thick foliage of a teak wood tree in our garden at day break today. It took a while to spot it to be an Indian pond heron in its striking plumage with dark maroon-brown back feathers, buff-brown head and neck details different from the usual.  I found help from Google which suggested it to be the a breeding attire of  a pond heron. Both male and female birds change their complexion during the feeding season. This change in their look from a dull earthy brown and grey look to a rich dark brown back with white plumes on the head are striking. 

The above tree being beside a stream, I shall look around to see if the bird would build a nest here or in other trees! They feel comfortable to breed closer to human habitation! 

That is worth looking and waiting for! 

M.C.MaTHEW(TEXT AND PHOTO)

The becoming of Self!

 On this Sunday morning,  our garden greeted us with these sights that brought stories of their journey thus far and beyond!

The journey of becoming is a common journey humans share with the flora and fauna! 

In the words of Carl Jung, the becoming of ourselves from a being a persona to individuation to be our Self is through a journey of shadows and integrating the unconscious Anima, the feminine in the masculine gender and Animus, the masculine in the feminine gender ! The anima connects a man to his emotion, intuition, and creativity. The animus connects a woman to logic, reason, decisiveness and action.  

The flowers in their fullness evolve through a formative process over weeks from being a bud!

This came as an invitation to my soul this morning with a renewed appeal,  as I am on a journey to be an elder in the seventh decade of my life, according to the eight stages of the psychosocial  development theory proposed by Erik Erikson! 

Yes, becoming is to grow into full humanhood and feeling anchored in God !

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

A festival of White in nature!

The twenty five flowers above, recent and mostly form our garden appear in this post to share my resistance to the idea of 'one nation, one election' that the Prime Minister of india is currently pursuing to enforce upon the nation! 

During the process of revising the electoral rolls for elections, it is now known that nearly one fourth of people are missing from the electoral roll in New Delhi. Similar omissions in large numbers are being reported from other states. 

In a hurry to push conducting the national elections and the 22 state elections concurrently, which has never happened in the 75 years of the democratic election process in India, the irregularities and questionable practices are overlooked by the government of India. With the current central government having three years more to govern, the mindless pursuit to introduce the policy of concurrent elections for the state governments and the central government is viewed by political commentators as an attempt to legitimise an autocratic approach to governance. 

All the twenty five white flowers exist in different hues of white, giving us a message of the spectrum of shades just in one colour! 

The nation of India is just a confluence of people of different cultures, languages, religions, traditions and socio-economic status. The 'double engine governance' which the Prime Minister  advocates involves the same political party governing the states as well as the central government. There is a strong feeling that if the state government is ruled by a government of a different political party such states get less allotment of funds and new projects. The participatory planning through the Planning commission to develop the states was replaced by another body with central control, by the current political party which governs the country since it came to power for the first time in 2014. 

Let me present the hues of the white colours to celebrate the festival of the white as a metaphor of the normal diversity that exists among humans even in one country! 

I feel pained that the  current president of the United States of America has divided the people of America as migrants and natives! While America came into being as a nation of migrants, migrants remained welcome and 'central to the thought of America'. The Israeli leadership got the sinister idea of eliminating the Palestinian presence from the example of the ugly path the President of America practices! 

The shades of white come from the differences in the colour pigments in the flowers as well as the way the sunlight allows the pigments to radiate the light! 

We as humans are different from each other, but each of us has something deep within us, which we resonate when the sunshine of God's presence comes upon us! 

We are people of similar origin on a similar journey towards a common destiny, although we live our lives differently creating a hue of colours of culture, race and nationalities!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)