A thirty feet upward journey !

It was Dulcie's unusual bark with a steadfast look in one direction that drew my attention to a caterpillar suspended in the air from a Christmas tree from a height of thirty feet. Dulcie's fascination to keep looking at its climb upwards, by shortening the height of its web strand and thereby moving upwards caught my imagination. 

I had to go inside our cottage to get another camera as I needed a macro view lens to get its movement upward. I could have used videography, but I chose the still as I felt that it was an effort to place the camera on a tripod in a short time before the caterpillar reached the top. 

In about eleven minutes it reached the top. At one stage, with the wind   the caterpillar was swinging in the suspended slender strand. I wondered whether the strand would get broken! That did not happen. By moving its body in to an upward and downward movement the caterpillar. 

It stopped at one place (last photo) and seemed to stay there for another ten minutes. With Caterpillar no more dancing in the air, Dulcie lost her interest to watch a spectacle. Dulcie was pushing me to go inside the cottage, as it was her breakfast time.  

The caterpillar suspended in a thin strand thirty feet below the tree and its climb of that height was a visual feast to behold. 

It has voyages and routines before it can become a butterfly. It soon would be in a cocoon for a while before it can fly into the wide open world in freedom to explore. 

What is this voyage! Its precariousness was what struck me. If the strand in which it was suspended was broken, it would fall on the ground and would have become a prey for the Myna who habitually vists the garden. 

The voyage is risky and and yet, it is only by creating its own strand of the web it can cover itself in a cocoon. Its instinct to live and become a butterfly gives it the courage to take the risk of loosing its hold from the web strand and fall into the mouth of waiting bird. 

We live by practicing to avoid loosing and to gain finally. 

The thirty feet journey of the caterpillar aroused within me the memory of journey of the last fifty years, since I graduated to practice medicine. 

I remember hanging on to uncertainty, when the process of personal and professional formation beckoned me into a different path from my own personal aspiration. It was at that juncture, I was protected by Anna and well meaning friends who prepared me to embrace a path that gave no clarity to the direction of the journey. I could have easily lost the path and the fruit of the voyage in my personal and professional life. The long wait at the cross roads and the winding path wearied me almost to a point of giving up! 

The sight of the caterpillar swinging dangerously in the wind, while hanging on to its slender strand of the web aroused within me memories of similar precarious situations of friends turning foes. One such occasion was in a formal meeting, when the group made me feel lost, with their impressions about the limited value of pursuing to develop a charity and be involved with developmentally challenged children. They were people who were companions whom I had depended upon. 

Thirty five years after that, seeing this caterpillar takes its voyage to its finish, made me marvel and feel amazed at its resilience. In hind sight, I was perhaps more vulnerable than the caterpillar with broken relationships and adverse conversations about Anna and myself because we resisted the collective advice.  

A voyage is often through the unknown. A voyage becomes a pilgrimage when we ready ourselves to walk steadfastly. The wounds caused by the falls or the bruises suffered while negotiating the wild or loneliness while enduring the desert are all akin to what a butterfly receives while staying in the cocoon to emerge freely and colourfully!

To turn the voyage into a pilgrimage is a choice one has to make! 

Seeing the caterpillar pause at one station and preparing for the next phase of its voyage, gave an indication of the nature's prescription for pilgrimage! God is calling and it is Him we are enabled to follow!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

 

The New life!

The golden hour of the morning for photography in our garden yesterday was misty with drizzle in between. That did not stop the birds from their special engagements. 

A male Sunbird was tunefully singing; a Myna was chirping from the tree looking towards another one in the lawn below and joining it on the lawn and a Greater Coucal with a worm between its beaks was arriving at its nest to feed its chick. The greater Coucal returned with a second helping of feed to its chick.

I thought the three birds gave away through their behaviour three phases in the  life span of  birds- calling for partner, time of courtship and the formation of a new family. 

I felt refreshed by seeing such sights right in front of my eyes in our garden, where avian life is lived with its full spectrum of physiological transition. 

I also felt good that our garden is a home for birds to be themselves and feel protected to pursue the call to be and become. 

Life begets life. In the original creation narrative in the book of Genesis of the Bible, the garden of Eden was the setting when a man and woman found their home to build a family. 

That beginning had set the trend for the life to progress into fullness to become families on earth. 

Anna and I witness avian lives lived and formed into families in our garden!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

 

A time for harmony!

I watched two bulbuls pick the black pepper berry in our garden. After the one above picked a few, it moved away and another Bulbul came to take its turn, as shown in the photos below.

There are a few striking behaviour styles of this flock of the Bulbuls. I suspect that there are about ten of them, who move between trees in the morning and evening in our garden. 

When they come to this pepper plant, where the pepper has become ripe, the Bulbuls take turns to pick the berry. 

They tend to pick it form the same site, although there are ripe berries elsewhere in the plant. 

The birds wait for their turn and do not force the way to interrupt another bird. 

The orderly and disciplined behaviour is not common for all avian families. 

There are four of them who  come to our backyard to feed on the banana we leave for them every morning. After they finished their meal, they would sometimes come into the kitchen. 

Birds develop their own strategy to take care of each other, when they live in a community. 

During the debate on Manipur, in the Raja Sabha of the Indian parliament, the Prime Minister of India who broke his silence after one year spoke, how the government is watching the ethnic conflict seriously. He  did not care to talk about the two hundred  or so people who died or about sixty thousand people currently living in refugee camps or hundreds of children missing a school year. He made a political statement on Manipur and but not a humanitarian view of the situation. I wish he cared to share sympathy and express regret for the happenings. 

One member of the parliament from Manipur choked a few times while talking about the suffering of people in Manipur state. The local government belonging to the political party that is the ruling dispensation in Delhi, has also been indifferent. The periodic eruption of violence might have the sanction of the political party that rules the state of Manipur, which is what is presumed by many. 

The Bulbuls live and behave harmoniously in a community. The people of different communities live with a quarrelsome attitude in Manipur. A paradox beyond our reasonable comprehension. 

The Yellow Bittern above, belonging to the heron family, was perched on a coconut palm, when I was returning after watching the Bulbul in the garden. I guess it is normally a resident of north India. I presume it is on its migratory journey. 

Birds can move away from their habitat and return to their regular territory after a while.  They move between territories for food, shelter during inclement weather, breeding and for other reasons. They continue the pattern the primary inhabitants of different countries who lived a nomadic life in the past. But humans now are residents and citizens, to whom the civil society owes protection and amenities.

Th failure to do so affects families and their coherent living. Some children from Manipur are studying in one boarding school in Kerala, about which there was news in the national news papers. What a state of unsettlement for children and their parents!

I wonder whether our political leaders have a feeling heart! Listening to the debate in the parliament, I suspect that they speak a hurting language to down size each other. I fear that both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition used a style, language, tone and content, which were meant to hurt. The language of conversation  is provocation and confrontation! I find a similar tone in the debates in the television discussions. A speech is judged to be good, if it had gives away some punches to the opposing speaker! What a distorted thinking! 

I go back to the Bulbuls, who showed the way of community living, each caring for the other!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Being with others at their cross road!

A closer look at the rose flowers in our garden during this monsoon season brought two realities to my attention. 

The flower petals have a dull look, probably because of being battered in the rain. There are insects which eat the petals and the buds. In the last photo, there is a Beatle in a bud, which is partly eaten by the insects. 

While listening to someone yesterday, I found out that, that person exists in a work environment, which invades that person's private life. There is fear of being misunderstood and criticised. The freedom to be oneself is denied. There is an intrusive atmosphere of judgemental attitude. 

Our formative process as individuals,  is facilitated by how much we feel accepted by others and encouraged to express ourselves. I remember several instances in my life when my work place became a growth experience, because there was encouragement to grow in a sense of belonging to people around. 

In one institution where I worked, I was asked if I would take an interest in keeping in touch with the middle level faculty! It was an invitation from the administration, which helped me to listen to several issues that they were confronted with. The two significant outcome out of that listening exercise, was the starting of a creche for infants and  toddlers of working parents and making provisions for part time job for professionals, when they encountered emergencies. 

It was during that season of several conversations and home visits to meet professionals, I became aware of the vulnerable situations that middle level faculty go through, unknown to those in the administration. 

The rose flowers get restrained by adverse circumstances. That is how many professionals feel when their needs and aspirations remain unattended. Their joy of work and growth personally get impaired when pressures of circumstances come heavily on them. The mid life is a season of generatively according to Erickson. It is a season of blossoming personally, socially and professionally. It is that formative experience which gets deranged, when people during mid life feel heavy with burdens to carry. 

A professional whom I met recently, whose infant was welcomed in the first batch of the creche in 2009, told me that it was that provision of day care of their child, which helped them to stay on in that institution. They were at that time getting ready to leave the institution. That couple since then has made a significant contribution in the life of that institution. Their home is a welcome place of hospitality now. 

How gratifying it is to be associated with the turning points in the life of people. 

When Anna and I were at a cross road, while living in Chennai to develop a Child Development Centre for developmentally challenged children in 1984, a friend created an opportunity for advanced training in child development and rehabilitation. We were beginning to feel bereft of ideas, enthusiasm and resources. The two years of training experience brought a sea  of change in our lives, which sustained Anna and me in the subsequent forty years of our involvement in child development activities.  

Life is in formation through different seasons. To accompany those who feel lonely or stranded is a gift of love, for their formative experience in life!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

In search of flowers!

On the first anniversary of my formal retirement from professional responsibilities in a hospital, after forty five years of work in six different  hospitals, I look time to revisit experiences and the journey path. It was with this inner orientation, I spent time watching the butterflies gathering around the lantana bush in our garden, during the in between dry spell on a rainy day. 

It was a festival time for the butterflies. It looked as if they were in desperation to find nectar. They moved between flowers and I noticed that different butterflies visited the same flowers. There was not enough nectar for all the butterflies. Theirs was an effort to find just enough that was still left in the flowers. 

My first monthly allowance during my internship was four hundred rupees in 1974. That was more than I paid for my medical education, when the fees for a quarter was four hundred rupees. That was therefore an occasion to feel grateful. That monthly allowance was just enough as one had to pay only around one hundred rupees in a month for having two meals from the hostel canteen. 

Fifty years later, I know how the upper middle class and the middle class live indulgently drawing fat salaries. My parents who were teachers drew four hundred rupees salary in a month in the late nineteen fifties. It was only in the mid sixties it doubled. 

In a presentation in the Indian parliament, I heard that about 20 percent of the population in India still live, struggling to exist without jobs, regular source of income or support during time of illness or other emergencies. A cobbler who sits at the pavement, has been on this job for thirty years. His daily income when he started was about thirty rupees. It is now about two to three hundred rupees in a day. With about two thousand rupees in a week, he struggles to sustain the family of five people. 

The butterflies kept looking for flowers for their nectar. A Section in our society in India, depends on the meagre income to sustain themselves. In a country when we are still struggling to offer welfare measures from the state, to those who need social security, the nectar of the essentials for daily living is far away from their reach. This takes place in a country which is starving to be third largest economy in the world. The prime minister o this country exalts himself for the growth in GDP where as, the per capita income remains far below the subsistence level of the 20 percent of the population. 

What pained me while on a reflection on the stress of living, is how churches who get regular income from their members, spend little to offer welfare services to people in the community. 

The nectar of daily needs is not within the easy reach of many people. On the doctor's day yesterday, a national news paper had four pages with messages from doctors with their photos. The list of the best hospitals mentioned in different categories and specialties were in the private sector, whose services are beyond the means of those who do not have insurance support. 

I realised how we live among people, whose nectar in life is distant from them!

It created within me a new awareness about the stress of living! I look forward to nurture this consciousness. If we reduce the level of creature comfort, we save enough to be mindful of others. Those who do not have, drown themselves in debt which is another burden to bear! 

The butterflies were messengers of a reality. I carry the message to live more responsibly !

M.C.Mathew (photo and text)

Between flowers !

The golden hours of the morning and evening are the suitable time to watch bird movements. 

In between the rain is the time to watch for movements of the butterflies. 

After summer, the butterflies are back in the garden and I counted ten different varieties of them on one day. 

They move between flowers in a hurry. It is seldom I noticed them otherwise. 

The two butterflies below were an exception. They remained glued to one flower during the twenty minutes I was in the garden.

This brought the difference between activity and pause for me to ponder upon. I have noticed that other butterflies also pause between their movements and flutter. 

Between the frenzy activities create because of the hurry with which we engage in them, and the short periods of pause, a transition takes place within. That transition is supposed to be a means of becoming. present to oneself. 

An activity is need based and takes us farther away from our inner being. When we pause we arrive to be present to ourself, which offers time for recollection, reflection and composure. 

I needed a reminder about the rhythm of activity and pause, as I felt pressured by the engagements I have for the next two days. Even when there was the threat of next rainy spell, the two butterflies paused to be quietly present. That is their way of living rhythmically.

I returned to my table carrying these thoughts of the essential requirement of living in touch oneself! When we pause, we return to be ourself!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)