Himalayan Birdsong

23/03/2025

Going to close this Insta account and my Fb soon. Hopefully almost all the people or businesses that I wish to stay in touch with, are already in my phone or email list. If you wish to keep in touch with me outside of here, I hope I too am in your contact lists outside of social media.

15/03/2025

Back to capturing moon shots on a camera, while I am in the plains for a longish hiatus. It's odd how much time I spend indoors, be it day or night, in the city. The focus is also different, the things I do are rather different too, as compared to my time in the mountain home, with forest surrounding us on all sides.
While there is no wildlife to look out or avoid at night in my gated community here, light pollution and air pollution make night skies very hazy, and unhealthy, most of the time. But spring offers some beautiful clear nights and those are the times I pick for my evening walks. Walks outdoor after sunset are a complete no back in the village. But i have balconies that serve as best seats for viewing sunrises and aunswrs, moom rise and star trails. Not just that, I have the bestest views of all this and more from all the beds and all the dining room chairs too, and from my kitchens too. It's just the opposite here. I have to make an effort and check the AQI before venturing to catch the moon, and stars gazing with the naked eye is literally just crumbs. And yet, I am at peace.
Day walks, even at noon time are a joy in the hills, with so much shade available wherever I go. That's something I won't try in Gurgaon easily, even in peak winter, unless it is a rare clean AQI day. Early waking is a joy in anticipation of the pre sunrise views of the mountain peaks from my cottage, right from my bed, or outside. Here, mornings are only about the rise in traffic and people rushing about starting their hectic routines. No time for them to stand and stare. Which is basically my state of existence almost all the time, everywhere :)
And yet, I relish my urban joys.Meting people much like me. Dressing up. Spring flowers and planned layouts of carefully tended gardens. Exhibitions, films shows, music events. The food at parties, so varied, with so much effort and thought gone into it. Window shopping.
I am content here, just as I am content there. The differences do not make anything more, or less, now. The balance is within, the fulfillment too. It is all one.

08/03/2025

Sukoon. Soul food. Peace. Love.
What the majestic mountains give us is life itself. What we do to them is unforgivable.
What matters in human ecosystems is also care. What is have as the major force all around is friction, jealousy, fears.
May my life practice, my saadhana, be fiercely focused on being caring, strong, present, dissolving vikaar and hard edges, and expanding my heart and vision.

Every moment we are born. Every moment we are free. Happy birthday to me.

05/03/2025

Spring holds in it the fading whisper of winter, while heralding the warmth of summer.
Ideal of long walks without hands covered in mittens or deep in pockets. All the better to touch and feel the new leaves, the emerging flowers and tender new greens. Ideal also for camera work without freezing your fingers off. And still, cold enough in the evening and early morning to enjoy a warm cuppa.

21/02/2025

Winter is gone, but its bounty can be around for long. Farm flowrs and farm produce being dried by

11/02/2025

Dog sweater, 🐕 , handmade, crochet artisan,

06/02/2025

2025 has been good for my reading endeavors. I am reading on average at least 2 good essays or articles daily, and i have completed reading two novels in January. A third about to be started, tonite, still in the first week of February. All three books happen to be slim and delightful, though with diverse stories and styles. Let's see how I go on, with my ambition being at least 3 books pwr month.

22/01/2025

Much is being made on social media about planetary alignment that's lined upnin the night sky these few days. While its good to have these views of planets and other night sky objects in the news, the thing is, it isn't all that much of a unique or rare set-up at all. Avid sky watchers know that. But the hype might just get those who dont usually look at the night sky to also pay more attention, and then expand their sense of connection to an existence that is ever-expanding, ever-changing, and massive beyond imagination.
Meanwhile, this winter has been one of unprecedented cosmic connect for me, because of the glimpses into deep interstellar space we got thanks to Ramesh Talhan ji. Catching sight of what is both a birthplace and graveyard of stars with our earthly eyes, through ultra high-tech equipment and lenses crafted by the mind and neqns of mortal humans, felt mind-boggling and incredible. And even then, my experience - while unprecedented and specail for me - is not all that unique, actually, because astrophysicists and astronauts and those in space related work record and observe much more of this all the time. Why, right in my own family, my son has worked on such equipment, tracking star systems and such during his college work in America, at a very young age. But I can not work even a slightly complex photogrpahic camera or binoculars myself, leave alone a sophisticated telescope. And yet, since my earliest memory, I have looked at the night sky and wanted to tear through its veil of darkness to behold time before time. The end of 2024 made it happen for me.

19/01/2025

12/01/2025

11/01/2025

A recent road trip to Chaukori led us along and across three big and beautiful rivers that begin somewhere in the glaciers up ahead. The Pindar, then the Gomati, and finally Saryu. I could have stayed by their side forever, but the road and our destination beckoned.
This pull to the rivers is how early settlements began, of course. People could live better, eat better, with a river beside them. And they could send stuff and maybe even boats on the river. They could fish.They could run water mills.
These days, I worry about the depleted snow which feeds these rivers. How long will humans survive if the rivers dry up?