Mountain Dawn - with Nightcafe AI
Gratitude
Last night, as I went to bed, I had to remind myself to be present, to be here. To detach myself from the bloodlust and polarisation unleashed by the Hamas assault on Israel.
To disengage from the doom-scrolling that has become so reflexive.
I drew our bedroom curtains closed on the twinkling lights of Almora, and asked myself for permission - sometimes you need to pray for permission - to find the joy and beauty of this life, this now.
It was still dark when I got out of bed, and quietly pulled open the curtains in our living room. The lights of Almora were fairy sprinkles scattered above the clouds in the valley, now low and grey, but slowly acquiring a tinge of pink from the changing sky. The kitchen called, with the promise of coffee, but when I returned to my couch, the outline of Trishul was resolving into its trident shape, its three peaks shade-shifting from an orange blush to a fading yellow. On a lower ridge, an island of trees emerged from the misty shroud of the night, dark silhouettes that would turn to green with the alchemy of light.
Now Premila was in the kitchen, heating water for her coffee. I wiped the condensation from the window pane, and looked on to the garden, the blossoms of the Confederate Rose already a brilliant white against the dark green of the grass.
I told her about the school kids who waved from a jeep as they passed our gate last afternoon, when I was mounting my cycle. They must have stopped at Mauna, five kilometers down our hill, because they passed me again near the stream, and two girls turned to wave from the window, their smiles shy, then lost around a bend in the road.
Lveshaal was in the shadow of the evening forest when I slowed for a sip of water and the long ride back. The school jeep had drawn up beside a dhaba, and the driver smiled as he sipped his chai. A bunch of boys opened the rear door and communed with me.
“You must be tired, Uncle.”
“Why don’t you get off your cycle, have a chai in the dhaba?”
Instead, I bantered with them, tried to memorise their names. Deepanshu, with the milk teeth missing from his enormous smile, Rajesh, of the startling golden eyes, Tanuj, the littlest one, index finger stuck in his tiny mouth.
“Aur meraa naam?” Naman asked.
“Mera Naam Joker”, I riffed; his friends guffawed - “Joker, Joker!”
It was the name of a famous movie, I explained to him. He reached out for a handshake. “Don’t get too tired going home.”
What a blessing, I told my wife, to be blessed by such little souls.
What joy to surge through the forest, and clatter across the steel planks of the bridge above the water and the rocks, to greet a colourful cluster of hill-women gathering wood for the evening fires.
Namaste, I yelled.
Namaste, they tinkled back.
Gratitude for the strength to climb the long bend past Kaphura, the pedals threatening to slow to a stall.
Thank you, Mahesh, for shutting the gate behind me.
Thank you duckies, for waddling up to welcome me home, shedding your feathers as you shook the water from your back.
Thank you, Gopal, as you hammer the nails into our leaking roof, for the promise of rat-free nights.
It takes a village to raise a roof beam - or a child. It takes a swarm of blessings to lead one charmed life, one charmed day, one charmed ride into the wonderland of a mountain forest.
And for those millions of blessings, that constellation of happy happenstance, I pray for a lifetime of gratitude, of counting my blessings on a rosary of grace.
Amos Oz on Israel
In his memoirs, A Tale of Love and Darkness, novelist Amos Oz, whom I mentioned last week, outlines the impossible tangle of Arab and Jew in the tragic story of Palestine. I reproduce without quote marks, except those in the originals. My remarks are in italics:
A fellow guard talks to the author at the border of a kibbutz in southern Israel:
‘Murderers? What d’you expect from them? From their point of view, we are aliens from outer space, who have landed and trespassed on their land, gradually taken over parts of it, and while we promise them that we’ve come here to lavish all sorts of goodies on them - cure them of ringworm and trachoma, free them from backwardness, ignorance and feudal oppression - we’ve craftily grabbed more and more of their land...what did you think? That they should thank us? That they should come out to greet us with drums and cymbals? That they should respectfully hand over the keys to the whole land just because our ancestors lived here once? Is it any wonder they’ve taken up arms against us? And now that we’ve inflicted a crushing defeat on them and hundreds of thousands of them are living in refugee camps - what, do you expect them to celebrate with us and wish us well?’
The author - and he notes:
I was still a conformist product of a Zionist upbringing...this kind of thinking was seen as treachery. I was so stunned that I asked him sarcastically - ‘In that case, what are you doing here with your gun? Why don’t you emigrate? Or take your gun and go fight on the other side?
‘But their side doesn’t want me. Nowhere in the world wants me. That’s the whole point. That’s the only reason I’m here, That’s the only reason I am carrying a gun, so they won’t kick me out of here the way they kicked me out of everywhere else. But you won’t find me using the word “Murderers” about Arabs who’ve lost their villages. At least not easily. About Nazis, yes. About Stalin, also. And about whoever steals other people’s land.’
And what about what we have taken from them?
‘ Vell, maybe you happen to have forgotten that in ‘48 they had a go at killing all of us? Then in ‘48 there was a terrible war, and they themselves made it a simple question of either them or us, and we won and took it from them. It’s nothing to boast about! And because we have something now, we mustn’t take anything else from them. That’s it.’
Except, that it wasn’t.
Good read. Thanks
First of all , I want to express my gratitude towards you for enriching and educating us with your knowledge.
Secondly, if possible can you write a post on the why exactly are Jews unwelcome almost everywhere in the western countries (including Russia). I have read a lot of stories but none of them give any reason for I'll treatment.
Thank you for taking out the time to write this piece. Happy Dussehra!!