Summer Musings.

It has been a mild summer by North Indian standards,
almost cool.
There was a fierce half week of forty five degree
centigrade burning noons
which dissolved into cool duststorms,
thundershowers and
flash summer rains
late in the week.
The campus where we live is lush green and
exploding in a riot of summer colours. It is
a wooded area actualy belonging to an earlier forest
which covered
most of the city in the long past.
Yellows and reds dominate
over the
landscape, the Amaltas trees common in these regions
resplendent in
their golden yellow flowers matched by the Red of the
KrishnaChuras
GulMohars and the yellow of RadhaChura.
The campus is quiet and silent
without the usual hustle and bustle.
Its summer vacations and although
the institute functions teaching is suspended.

Another full night out, of playing with the arcane
mathematical symbols of
theoretical physics which are supposed
to represent the
reality of existence.
Its unlikely that these mere symbols can
grasp the jewel of
existence but they are beautiful in their own way.
Just another
element of the unreal we call reality,
but a beautiful one nonetheless.
Early dawn somke wisps blow away into the cool wind.
It had rained
last night and the earth of my garden is dried yet
cool to the touch.
Family is asleep in their warm security.
What calls in my mind and I
am distraught and lonely. Long cycle ride
down winding avenues of trees.
Morning suns first rays touch the yellow of
the Amaltas and
explode into an
ethereal golden half light.
Breath catches with so much
beauty to know
that all of life is impermanent.
Last year was pain and
suffering some
old Karma. Everything went wrong
starting with a loss
of a dear one.
Nothing worked not even of what
was absolutely certain.
Such is life
and it was a learning experience
to add to the wisdom.

Yet things change, just like that
in the new year it
has been a blast,
an explosion of feverish excited
activity covering
a beautiful and new
research area of hot excitement.
The excitement keeps me
awake night
after night. Its connected to a new
idea we have in our
research area
and now after several months of work
we can just see a
glimmer of an
exciting structure slowly emerging.
The excitement of chasing
these structures is just too much
and I am distraught and
restless with it.

Last six months all through the
preceding semester
it has been enormous effort from
three of us.
Although we were unable to realy
exploit the full significance of our idea
for the first simple system
where we applied it, we have some
interesting results.
We are now trying out a second system
in which we believe
we would be able to explore
our idea in a much better way.
So its wonderful now.
Mostly all that I
had lost last year has come back
doubled except the
pain of the loss.
Life is again like this,
ever changing like the flowers
that bloom everyday in my garden
and fall.
Mornings are relaxed in the study
of a wonderful thermodynamics book by a
Hungarian called Laszlo Tisza interrupted
by occasional
chats with friends over email.

Long afternoons surprisingly cool,
post lunch a small
chat with friends
and then with my son teaching.
Exasperation and impatience with
Samsara. I snap at him and then remember
to keep my patience.
Evenings in the swimming pool right
at the edge of the campus.
All around are vast open spaces
and the limitless evening
sky already darkening and
shimmering in the watery depths.
Fluorescent haze of
overhead lights and the water and
the sky are one.
Water is not a good
medium for myself, a Gemini which is
an air sign.
I feel light unstable and often
awkward in my balance. Slowly getting
to grip the basics
of the water.
Children and laughter all around.
Samsara in full flow.
How pathetic
that all these too are passing yet
how real also.
Beauty is in the
ethereal impermanence of all forms
physical and mental.

Late evening we return starved from
swimming, the
night air cool and fragrant.
Temple bells in the distance brings
the night to attention.
Then its back to
the office till midnight. Excited
discussions with
my research students steal a moment
for tea, snacks and a
chat with friends.
Midnight moon hangs clear in the night sky,
as late night
smoke diffuses
into the cool air in the cycle ride back home.
Campus is silent and the halogen lamps
are weary sentinels
of the night. Breeze blows the
fragrance of some half forgotten flower.
Suddenly on the
path a brown rabbit, common in these areas.
Both of us are startled,
its eyes shining in the light.
I stop and it bounds away to freedom.
Often when
returning in the night I am
confronted with NilGais
a member of the deer
family steel blue in colour and
very shy.
The males are dangerous in their
mating season when they are in rut.
They are big animals with horns and will
charge in their enraged mating states and
may cause serious injuries.

Its back home, shower and a TV Dinner.
Family is fast asleep
and still my excitement shows no signs of abating.
Many ideas jostle for attention
in my tired mind. Yet another night, I dont now.
All unreal in an impermanent universe.
Who am I ? Finally sleep ends all the questions.