Making tea?

I have a friend who has an interesting way of making tea. He puts the tea leaves in a glass of hot water. These leaves accumulate on the top of the water level. However, as you watch, they slowly begin to drop and settle down the glass. After 15 minutes, most of them are at the bottom of the glass and the tea is ready. No need to strain the leaves.

That is what I want the next few days like. Put in the thought-leaves and let them settle. No stirring, sloshing, shaking the mix. Let them sink gently as and when they are ready. The question before me is, can I wait?

They say that all journeys..

They say that all journeys begin with one step. All journeys.

It is time to set afoot on another one. I don't know where it leads. Maybe up in the hills where the snow is or maybe down the ravines, maybe a flat walk on the plains or maybe a bumpy sail over the seas. I don't know. All this is metaphorical.

All I know right now is that I need to start walking. With time and distance, something will materialize. Some goal will make itself apparent and I will say, "Yes! that is what I need to aim for right now" and I will rush towards it. But then, I don't know.

Perhaps I will come back to where I began, feeling more hopeless. Feeling that nothing can be done which would change the way things are.

Perhaps, I won't. But one thing is certain. If I make the journey the aim, the searching itself the purpose, then there is nothing to be frustrated about. I will try and remember this every time I start on a new trail. Maybe that would help.

But then, I don't know!

It's the sun, stupid.

Am sitting far away from home.
How far?
About 11,500 km. Hmm.. about 15 hours of flying time.
Too far..

But yet, I feel as if I just turn around and speak something to the person sitting next to me in the bus, he would understand and respond to me in Hindi. As if this bus would drop me at the stop and I could just walk it to band-stand. As if at the next corner, I would see a chai wallah brewing tea and pouring it out in those small glasses. Why, I wonder?

It is the sun. The nearness to it. Actually, to be technically correct, it is the incline of the earth that now makes it just lean a bit closer to the ball of fire. Whatever it takes, the change is profound and long needed. As if the earth, asleep shrouded in a white blanket, is waking up.

It is so hard to even imagine that about just a month ago, I was in 4 layers of clothing, looking outside from the window of the same bus and nothing but bleak, forlorn, snow-laden trees. Cold getting to Colder.

But look at me now, dressed in a tee, I feel as if the winter is tale from the past. Long gone.Long forgotten.

Well, I know it is not home. The guy next to me wont reply in hindi. Band-stand and the chai shop are asleep. But yet, just a small tilt towards the sun and am already halfway across the world, imagining it here..Ah! the wonders of the sun. What power!!

Nuisance Value

What are these things that surround us? As I sit and write this, I see myself surrounded by so much............stuff.

How much of this is really useful NOW? How much of this is something I have kept because I "might" need it some day. There is a word for most of this stuff. Clutter.

It hides what is really needed. I have often spent hours searching for something I need and later found it hidden behind these inessential trivia. And I still spend so much time tidying it up, rearranging it, putting it in a neat order. Stuff I can really get along by without missing.

So, today I shall put them in a box. Give them. Leave them outside. I am going to create more space. So that I can see.

The good thing is that this applies also to my thoughts!

Contagious ..anytime!

First, watch this: 

What did you feel? 

Inspiring, yes! Simple, No.

A lot of this work is very conscious. Takes an enormous amount of balance and wisdom to not unduly influence and push the children towards work that we want them to do because it looks good. And also not to silence our own voices as educators.

It is not the stepping up and stepping back which is important. It is knowing when to.

Be inspired. Be prepared. Draw them out. Let them be..