Broken Bangles: Travel, Stories, Thoughts

Time is a Plural Life is full of phenomena that we find difficult to wrap our minds around. Time is one of them. It is an idea derived from our experience of planetary motions and the circadian rhythm, but philosophy kept asking whether time is an imaginary construct or reality.  Time is indeed real for us. It brackets our life on this planet; it is real because it is one of the variables against which science measures the parameters of our universe, and we measure life and death. Yet, time is a fleeting concept because how we experience it has a strong subjective element.  Aren't there different versions of the experience of time for each of us? Many personal versions of time. Time flies if we are into something enjoyable, and if we are bored, time lags on. As we age, the long time we have lived seems brief and gone in the blink of an eye. The truth is that in the cultural history of humans, different people experienced and perceived time differently. Aymaras Who walked from ...

  ( Statue of Yakshi by renowned sculptor Kanayi Kunjiraman, Malampuzha Dam, Kerala; image source: Ranjithsiji, Wikipedia) Kerala's White-Sari-clad Vampire  Her story is terror-evoking and awe-inspiring. She is culturally tethered to the gender politics of the society in which she exists as a myth and lore. The girls in a small region in south India (the Malayalam-speaking population) grew up listening to the terrifying Yakshi stories and assimilated from them, an odd feeling of empowerment. The Yakshis in these stories are the spirits of women wronged and killed by men. A Yakshi kills men and completes her revenge, not only on the individual who wronged her but the whole bunch of ‘mankind’. Her feet do not touch the earth when she walks. This is how you can know her for what she is. She will wait for her victims in twilight, dawns and dusks, on the edges of dark nights. She has long black hair that almost reaches her feet. Her lips are full and crimson, her eyelashes thick an...

  Wild Mushrooms: Diverse, Edible, Toxic, Beautiful Wild mushrooms are a great locally sourced food that is nutritious and free. Collecting mushrooms from the wilderness is one of the most nostalgic activities one could undertake, given how our lives changed as we urbanised.  Mushroom picking is a tradition still in many societies. Spotting and collecting orange Chanterelles, Parasol mushrooms, Boletus, and Honey Fungus, the foragers move in the woods with patience and a curious urge to find pristine food right from its source, Nature.    Beware of toxic lookalikes, and hone your skills to identify edible ones; once you are an authentic mushroom hunter, the wilderness will gift you many surprises for the palate, and you will remain in the safe zone.  Depleted as they might be, our forests and wilderness remain a rich haven of edible mushrooms such as parasols, morels, chanterelles, buttons, meadows, puffballs and horse mushrooms. Always remember that a toxic loo...