Broken Bangles: Travel, Stories, Thoughts

  (Clay licks of Amazon; image source: Wikimedia Commons) Hi traveller,  If you are enchanted by the splendid sights of nature and want to experience the ultimate charm of a rainforest, you must travel to the Amazon Rainforest. Furthermore, it will be the journey of a lifetime if you explore the mysteries of the forests. Here is a plan for this trip and the places you must visit.  Charles Darwin once described the Amazon Rainforest as “a view in the Arabian Nights.” The sunbeams filtering through tree branches (what the Japanese call komorebi), the light giving a godly glow to the hundred hues of the green forest, colourful birds and more magnificent Indigenous tribes, the adorable views from the forest canopy towers and lodges, the meandering mighty river, Amazon, its mist-covered surreal mornings, the giant lilies and tarantulas, the clay licks teeming with exotic animals, the list of wonders goes on and on.  The Amazon rainforest covers nine countries. You cannot...

(Image source: B. Lennart Persson, flickr.com) Ikebana is a noble hobby that involves flowers and everything else in life. It is more than putting some flowers and twigs in a vase. This article explores its philosophy and meaning. The Meaning of Ikebana Ikebana is like meditation; it has a deep spiritual quality to it. The beauty of this art form is that anyone can practise it, and it can become part of our ordinary domestic life, transforming mundanity into something extraordinary. Ikebana means arranging flowers, but the exact meaning is making flowers alive. It has a deep connection with the Buddhist approach to life. Ikebana did not lose its charm for the fair mind, and in a recent book, the author, Yuji Ueno, called it ‘The Zen Way of Flowers’. There is another name for Ikebana that reveals its spiritual undertones- Kado. Kado means the path of flowers. Learning and understanding this art is a profound spiritual journey to undertake. The Origin of Ikebana A Buddhist monk, Ikenobo,...

  Every day, we see many examples of action and thought justifying the maxim that the end justifies the means. This notion has haunted our ethical positions for centuries, more the reason for revisiting the concept and repeatedly proving it wrong.  If the end justifies the means, many acts of violence, cheating, and manipulation will acquire acceptance. We are familiar with this idea. The allusion is that harm can be done if it leads to a benefit that weighs more than the harm done. In other words, a noble outcome will justify even an unethical path to reach it. For example, a few people might be justifiably harmed to save a hundred or thousand or to build a better society; a river might be polluted if it helps generate employment through a polluting industry on its shore; a leader can be assassinated if it leads to a better man replacing him to rule the country; thousands of civilians and soldiers of another country could be killed in a war if it leads to economic and securit...

  The sights outside the metro train fleeted before my eyes, creating a mirage of green, grey, and blue. The evening metro was packed with office goers as they got cooked in the day’s sweat accumulated from their toil in hot offices. Summer was at its peak, the sun mercilessly scorching the steel body of the train. My childhood city, an ancient port on the western side of the Indian peninsula, is bound to drown in the Arabian Sea in the next 25 years when sea levels rise, if climate experts are to be believed. As I sat on the train, experiencing the extraordinary heat, I felt like I was inside a burning furnace about to fall into the sea. This teeming seaport of colonial verisimilitude, where the Dutch, Portuguese, and English built their forts and cemeteries to rule, live and die, had been a second home to me where our family lived when we were kids. Here, my father had a job, and I still have many friends from my school. In contrast, my village, where our family settled afte...